8. The Reagan administration, SDI and the Second Cold War
This course provides students with a broad understanding of the 20th and 21st centuries while engaging them in multiple historical topics and questions. The course covers a wide range of subjects, including the evolution of democracies and dictatorships, wars, empires, decolonization, inequalities, the Welfare state, and the processes of global integration along with its manifold crises.
I. Pathway – sessions 1, 2
The course begins with a methodological and historiographical pathway. This pathway will introduce students to the field of international history. Although the field is the oldest discipline of historical studies, it has recently expanded and produced some of our profession's most exciting and innovative research. In the first session, we will discuss the history of political relations between states and empires, introducing students to the field of diplomatic history – the brokerage of treaties and alliances, negotiations about war and peace, the international order, and international thought – as well as to the cultural history of diplomatic encounters. In the second session, we will examine the history of non-state actors in world politics, including the role of international political movements as well as nationalist, ethnic and religious groups. The course will provide students with a solid overview of historiographical developments and methods of international history.
Seminar Readings
I: M. Del Pero, G. Formigoni, “Toward a New International History”, Ricerche di storia politica, Quadrimestrale dell'Associazione per le ricerche di storia politica" speciale/2017, pp. 25-32,
II: T. Zeiler, “The Diplomatic History Bandwagon: A State of the Field”, The Journal of American History, Vol. 95, No. 4 (Mar., 2009), pp. 1053-1073
II. Atlantica: origins, developments, and challenges
The course then focuses on a specific dimension of international history, namely the origins and development of the Atlantic Community. The course is designed as an in-depth and multifaceted analysis of the evolution of US-European relations since 1945, within the wider framework of international history. Two major overarching themes will run through our seminars. The first concerns the framework of postwar transatlantic relations: the political, intellectual, cultural, economic, social as well as diplomatic and military ground on which they developed. Specific questions will be raised and discussed: how do we conceptualize and investigate the Atlantic Community in an international context characterized by the East-West conflict? On which pillars was it established? How was it constructed, what actors, discourses and networks made it possible? How did it relate to its different constitutive parts, American and Western European? The second major theme revolves around the development of the European integration narrative within the framework of the Atlantic Community. You will be asked to think of broad and challenging questions: How do we interpret the creation and development of the European Community in this scheme? Have the two processes been reinforcing, competing or independent from one another?
The period covered runs from the end of the Second World War to the present. Particular attention will be paid to specific transitions (the Cold War, the 1970s, the end of the Cold War, 9/11) and to the frequent controversies within the Atlantic alliance and between the United States and its main European partners.
After a broad introductory lecture, the seminars will follow a chronological pattern.