Course 2024-2025 a.y.

In this elective course, we examine through ten topics how the global economy emerged in the past and how global trade and global empires changed the world. The first part of the course traces the connection between European colonial empires and the making of the global economy until the Industrial Revolution. We study how the rise of the West impacted other world regions. The second part of the course discusses globalisation and deglobalization and the shifts of global economic power in the modern age. We teach modern economic history in a global context and focus mainly on non-European regions. The syllabus covers the following topics:

Part 1

• The origins of globalisation
• The Atlantic economy
• The Asian empires
• The rise of the West  
• War and revolution

Part 2

• European hegemony 
• American leadership
• Latin America: catching up and falling behind
• The rise of the East
• The poverty of the South

• Identify the main drivers and the economic consequences of globalization
• Understand the connection between theories and the history of globalizaiton
• Discuss economic development in a historical and global perspective

• Identify key facts and trends in global economic history
• Understand the role of culture and geopolitics in economic development
• Summarize complex interpretations
• Demonstrate critical thinking
• Develop skills in academic writing

• Lectures
• Individual works / Assignments

The lectures are designed to engage students on the course topics and to help them summarize and understand the content of the course readings. In their individual assignments, student write a critical book review. The assignment requires each student to read a major scholarly work on one of the course topics and to demonstrate how well they can make a critical assessment of complex narratives and the types of evidence economic historians examine. The course director provides guidelines on the assignment, but students prepare their individual assignments independently outside class time.

The assessment methods do not distinguish between attending and non-attending students, but students can choose between two forms of assessment: coursework and general exam. Assessment by coursework comprises one written examination at the end of the semester (worth 70% of the final grade) and an individual assignment that students prepare independently during the semester outside class time (worth 30% of the final grade). The individual assignment is a critical book review. The written examination includes essay questions on all course topics, but it allows students to specialise by selection from a list of alternative questions. The general exam consists of open-answer questions covering all course topics and based on all course readings and accounts for 100% of the final grade.

All course readings will be listed by topic in the course syllabus. The two main textbooks used in the course are:

Robert C Allen (2011), Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press.

Pim De Zwart and Jan-Luiten Van Zanden (2018), The Origins of Globalization: World Trade in the Making of the Global Economy, 1500–1800. Cambridge University Press.

Both textbooks and all other completemntary readings used in the course are freely accessible to students either through the Bocconi Library Catalog or on the Blackboard course page. Students will not have to buy any textbooks.