Debating Democracy in the Long 19th Cent (V1499)
Debating Democracy in the Long 19th Century
Module V1499
Module details for 2026/27.
15 credits
FHEQ Level 6
Module Outline
How can we make sense of the multiple crises of democracy today? This module encourages you to think historically about this question. Examining a range of nineteenth-century debates about democracy’s promise and its peril, you’ll discover how democracy was fought over and contested between the age of revolutions and the First World War. At the beginning of this period, few believed that democracy could be made to work in the modern world. By the period’s end, democracy’s arrival was widely seen as inevitable, and perhaps the only legitimate way of organising modern states and societies. This is a global story, and you’ll discover how ideas of democracy were intertwined with debates about truth, mass politics, war and peace, race, and capitalism across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Focusing on the history of political ideas in their historical contexts, you’ll gain new insights into how ideas function in political debate and set the frameworks of the worlds in which we live.
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