The first half of the twentieth century witnessed crucial shifts in global politics. In 1919, many of these distilled into a series of watershed moments. For a long time, 1919 has been primarily viewed through the prism of the Paris peace conference and its impact on the post-war, or inter-war, European order. In the wake of 1919’s centenary, the study of 1919 has globalised. The course brings together the histories of empires reshaping themselves and of emerging polities, following also the circulation of ideas of sovereignty, self-determination and independence. 1919 was as much a crisis of an ‘old’ imperial system as it was a time for the increasing articulation of alternatives to it. As we travel around the world of 1919, we engage with a range of historical processes, including the (broken) promises of the Wilsonian moment and the Bolshevik revolution, peace-making in Europe, anti-Westernism, anti-imperialism, anti-colonial nationalism as well as feminism, pan-Asianism and pan-Islamism. Together, they make 1919 an assemblage of important turning points that reshaped the twentieth century.
- Kursleiter:in: Dr. phil. Maximilian Drephal