HY400      One Unit
Crisis Decision-Making in War and Peace 1914-2003

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

The course is intended for students with or without a detailed knowledge of the international relations of the twentieth century. Students without a detailed knowledge are advised to undertake preliminary background reading.

This course offers an in-depth analysis of the major international crises that shaped the history of the twentieth century. It is much more than an overview of international politics since 1914 that is offered by undergraduate courses. With firm factual grounding, it focuses on the decision-making and decision-makers that moulded and determined the course and outcomes of the crucial political crises of the twentieth century. As it also addresses the consequences of the crisis decision-making, the course critically appraises the main historiographical interpretations and debates. As such, it is suited to Post-graduate level and is intended to stimulate challenging interpretations of the decisions that determined to course of the twentieth century history.

Particular attention is placed upon key turning points and on crisis decision-making. Topics examined in this course include the outbreak of the First World War in 1914; peace-making, 1919; Manchuria, Abyssinia and the crises of collective security; the Munich agreement; the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the outbreak of war in 1939; Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union; the outbreak of the Pacific War; the creation of the state of Israel, 1948-49; the Berlin Blockade; the outbreak and escalation of the Korean War; the Suez Crisis; the Cuban Missile Crisis; the US and Vietnam, 1961-65; the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973; the collapse of the Soviet bloc and end of the Cold War; the Gulf War, 1990-91; the NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999; and the road to the 2003 Iraq War.

1 hours of lectures and 20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.
18 hours of seminars and 2 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

There is a revision lecture at the end of the WT. Students will be expected to read widely in documentary and other primary sources, and to participate actively in the seminars, which will address the historiographical debates raised in the secondary literature on the topics covered.

This course has no designated weekly lectures; it is taught through two-hour seminars. Students wishing for a survey of the period and topics covered by the course are welcome to attend or listen to the lectures for the undergraduate course HY116 International Politics since 1914.

Students will write two essays (one in the AT and one in the WT), of up to  2,500 words in length, drawing upon primary sources.

Full bibliographies are provided on the HY400 Moodle. Students may consult the following introductory accounts:

W. R. Keylor, The Twentieth-Century World and Beyond: An International History

A. Best, J. M. Hanhimäki, J. A. Maiolo, and K. E. Schulze, International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond

S.Marks, The Ebbing of European Ascendancy: an International History of the World, 1914-1945

Z. Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1919-1939

R.W. Boyce and J. A. Maiolo (eds.), The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues

O. A. Westad, Reviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretation, Theory

D. J. Reynolds, One World Divisible: A Global History since 1945

M. P. Leffler and O. A. Westad, eds, The Cambridge History of the Cold War

Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period