HIST 125: Introduction to Global History

HIST 125-006: Introduction to Global History
(Fall 2025)

12:00 PM to 01:15 PM T

Innovation Hall 103

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Section Information for Fall 2025

This class examines the forces, trends, relationships, and events that have shaped the modern world, from about 1300 to the present. We will touch on the particular histories of a variety of regions—East Asia, South Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, and North America—but the overall theme of the class is less these particular histories than the creation and evolution of the global systems of politics, trade, and power relations that tied them all together. Through a variety of sources, we will explore and attempt to understand the ways in which these global systems were created, contested, and transformed over the course of the late medieval, early modern, and modern eras. The main themes of this history include trade and mercantile activity, colonialism and imperialism, industrialization and consumption, revolution and nationalism, and resistance and anti-colonialism. These are big concepts and broad themes, but we will also try to be attentive to the ways these processes shaped and were shaped by individual and local experiences. 

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Course Information from the University Catalog

Credits: 3

By focusing on historical experiences that reflect the diversity of Mason’s student body, students will be able to see how their families and communities fit within, and contribute to, global history from the pre-modern period to our present day. This course offers a long-term historical perspective on structural issues challenging our world today, including demographic and environmental changes, national and global inequalities, and the underrepresentation of marginalized groups. Students will gain an understanding of how interconnections and inter-dependencies have been forged through the global movement of people, pathogens, goods, and ideas. Offered by History & Art History. Limited to three attempts.
Mason Core: Mason Core, Global History
Schedule Type: Lecture, Recitation
Grading:
This course is graded on the Undergraduate Regular scale.

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