(BA) (4-year-programme) - The University of Hong Kong

125from the international community. Finally, this course will help students understand how and whyJapan’s military and colonial past has shaped Japan’s history and how they continue to influence thiscountry’s relations with virtually every country in the Asia and Pacific region today.Assessment: 100% courseworkHIST2107.The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, 1931-1952 (6 credits)Few events in the modern history of Asia and the Pacific have been as important or as transformativeas the Second World War. This course explores the far-reaching effects that this conflict had on thestate, society, and individuals in, and between Japan, China, the United States, the Soviet Union, andthe British and French Empires. Importantly, this course will examine how this conflict helped changewar—conceptually and in real terms—from a narrowly defined engagement between military forcesto one that encompassed a ‘total experience’ involving the mobilization of virtually all segments ofsociety. In this course we will also trace the interconnectedness between the transformation of warand the development of new technology, changed concepts of morality, ‘just war,’ and alteredperceptions concerning the relationship between the state and society, the soldier and the civilian.Finally, this course will help students understand more fully how and why this war, and the numerousacts of barbarism that defined it, still influence relations today on personal, national, and internationallevels in Asia and the Pacific.Assessment: 100% courseworkHIST2108.Empire and the making of modern France (6 credits)This course examines the history of the French empire and its links with the making of identity inmodern France. It focuses primarily upon modern French history as lived experience rather than on‘high politics’ while also providing students with knowledge of key events, debates, theories andconcepts relating to theories of postcolonialism. The starting point for the course is an understandingof metropolitan France as the centre of an imperial nation-state the ‘civilizing’ cultural influence ofwhich was understood to radiate out from Paris and large provincial cities to metropolitan France andoverseas colonies beyond the héxagone, transforming the peoples and societies with which it cameinto contact.This course examines the multiple interrelationships developed between centre and periphery in themodern era. It foregrounds the dual influence of metropole and colonies upon imperialism. In doingso it engages with theories of race, identity, governance and culture. It traces the ways in whichEuropean identity was reconceptualised in the colonies and how the European presence contributed tothe transformation of colonised societies. Examining the decolonisation process, the course also takesup the controversial issues of how the history of the French empire has been written, and the Frenchcontribution to the development of postcolonial theory.Assessment: 100% courseworkHIST2109.Modern France: Society, politics and culture (6 credits)The course discusses key events in modern French history, from the revolution to the present day. Itexamines crucial moments in the evolution of French politics, culture and society, and the actorsinvolved, explaining their meaning and significance for France, Europe and the World. The courseexamines the French contribution to modern culture, critical scholarly debates on the course of Frenchhistory and the experiences of different sections of French society as they engaged with the dramaticchanges of the modern era.Assessment: 100% coursework