Deals with the opening of the trans-Mississippi frontier. Topics emphasized include land policy, railroads, Indian wars and water policy. Surveys the growth and development of the American South with specific attention to the plantation economy and slavery, the Confederate experience, the riseof segregation and the Second Reconstruction. An analysis of contemporary Asian problems which considers their cultural and institutional origins, their 19th-century development under the impact of Western influence and their culmination in contemporary Asian nationalism. A long-range historical approach to the Middle East's role in world affairs and the development of its cultural, political and military institutions.
Emphasis is placed on strategic and diplomatic considerations.
The evolution of Latin American societies from independence to the present will be studied. Analyses ofsocial and political issues like slavery, race, immigration, popular religion, militarism, dictatorship, and revolution will be the focus of the course. Particular emphasis will be placed on Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Peru,Chile, and Cuba. A survey of social, cultural and political developments on the African continent from the era before European colonization to the present. Pre-Columbian empires like the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca are studied through examinations of their cosmologies, styles of warfare, expansion, imperial consolidation, and collapse.