Cultural History

The cultural map of Europe in the 18th century. Images of Europe and its regions. Cultural institutions, school system and universities, literacy and the circulation of the press. Towns and the countryside. The nobility, the bourgeoisie, the « third class ». Linguistic practices.
Changes in the spiritual horizon. The role of churches and traditional religions; rationalism and the Enlightenment; other cultural directions (Storm and Stress). Science. Connecting the cultural centres and the intelligentsia. Freemasonry. Reform absolutism and its aftermath. National and cultural movements. Art. Smith's The Wealth of Nations.
The cultural history of the French Revolution. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and its influence on the liberal movements. Code Napoleon. The influence of the French Revolution on new forms of bourgeois political culture. The new concept of homeland, patriotism and loyalty.
The beginnings and the formation of the modern bourgeois industrial society. Laissez-faire and British utilitarianism. The school system and the spreading of literacy and education. A new type of university: Humboldt university. The growing role of the media and the press. Types of parliamentary political culture. Liberalism, conservatism, ultramontanism. Science, art – man's view into the future, and science fiction. The relations between the genders and the position of women. Changes in the structure and role of the family. The changed relations between the town and the countryside. The differences in the structure and social power of the bourgeoisie. The development of consumption; new cultural needs. The bourgeois and workers' world. The bourgeois behavioural code. Liberalism, socialism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, racism. Europe and the world. The path towards the First World War.