HIST241

Humanities (HU), Global Perspectives (GP)

300 years after the "fall of Rome," a barbarian named Charlemagne was crowned emperor and a renewal of imperial forms and governance transpired in western Europe. This course unearths the circumstances that led to the rise, spread, and fall of the first medieval pan-European empire, from the collapse of western Roman power in the fifth century to the collapse of Carolingian power at the end of the ninth. We examine how the Latin Christian church and barbarian kings preserved and transformed aspects of Roman life; how a family of usurpers from northern Europe came to dominate the former western provinces; how colonization and imperialism within Europe prefigured the expansion of European colonizers across the globe; how both elites and commoners experienced a Carolingian world; how the experiences of free and unfree persons shaped these communities; and how the idea of Europe itself was forged within the crucible of Charlemagne's empire. No prerequisites.