History 280B: “Year Books” and Global Early Modern History

This course takes seriously the conceit of academic and popular historical writing that makes use of the unit of the year – annus mirabilus – as a moment or “event” of structural transformation and/or as revelatory of some large-scale historical processes and narrative claims, including globalization itself. This course focuses on “year books” (books about particular years) written about the Early Modern period, from the 15^th to the end of the 18^th century. It is organized around canonical years (eg, 1492, 1789) and unexpected ones (eg, 1536,1668). We will use these monographs – some less scholarly than others – to reflect on event, process, and structure in a global perspective, and on historical writing more broadly.