Turning Points in Modern History

For a video course- you kind of expect more use of audio-visual supplements to enhance what the lecturer is discussing. Not only to help keep your attention but to deepen your understanding of a cultural issue or turning point. I found myself falling asleep in every lecture- they just were not engaging. I also can't remember half of what was discussed. Maybe I'll read the guidebook instead of watching the lectures- they have the same information.

Despite the following critique, I highly rate this editorial-style course and recommend most of the thought experiments Liulevicius provides. Unfortunately several lectures of this 2013 course are deeply one-sided and another is outdated according to other Great Courses. This review illustrates how learning from multiple professors (before final conclusions) makes The Great Courses such a potent force in education. This course was a gift. ONE-SIDED: The sadly common university tool of abusing only one party in historical conflicts (almost always white Europeans) is used or implied in several lectures. Sometimes Liulevicius freely gives away his bias. For example, Lecture 12 (L12) on the Opium Wars applies the term “Imperialism" only to European militaristic expansionism. Unfortunately, in the same lecture there is video map graphically illustrating the massive militaristic expansion of China through Mongolia, Manchuria, etc. without ANY recognition of this as Chinese Imperialism. Then via the incredibly arrogant rejection by the Manchu emperor of British trade offers (shown word for word on the screen) the Chinese created a horrendously antagonistic relationship. This hubris directly led to the vindictive British opium trade enforced by British imperial guns that won out over less effective Chinese imperial guns. DIVISIVE: At other times, neglecting facts villianizes one party. Sugar was once affordable only to the extremely wealthy until Caribbean sugar cane fields existed. The L11 video states that some Quakers in the colonies and England gave up sugar in protest of slavery. But Liulevicius ignores the fact that prior efforts to harvest cane in Saint-Domingue using other races had failed: white prisoners died from tropical disease & local natives escaped (TGC African Experience_Vickery L13&14). Because of tropical diseases Europeans never entered central Africa until after the Civil War: thus whites bought BUT DID NOT enslave blacks. As Liulevicius admits, there was only a 10% European survival rate even on the African coast. Black chiefs enslaved not only “war prisoners” (from the Ashanti/Fanti and other tribal wars) but also their own countrymen. A well-documented example given by Vickery is Chief Kzinga (later titled “King Afonso” by his patron - the King of Portugal) of what is now the Congo. You can Google a picture of the dapper Afonso as “der Konig in Congo Fig. L”. After the British outlawed slavery, Afonso is reported to have had “regret" over the depopulation of his territory. Vickery's Great Course also uncovers the hushed up Islamic trade of blacks. When the British outlawed slavery In the 1830s, it forced Tippu Tip (Hamed bin Muhammed) to stop exporting ivory and African slaves to areas that included Arabia, Persia, East Africa & Zanzibar. Haven't heard of what happened to the slaves sent East? It wasn't nice: check out Vickery’s L19. Making one race solely responsible for slavery inaccurately leads to today’s divisiveness. OUTDATED: Despite Darwin’s clever idea of evolution via "natural selection” Liulevicius credits over 30 people (including his grandfather) with preceding this idea (see L13). Sutherland's Great Course "Introduction to Paleontology" discusses Hunt’s study of “251 data sets of the morphological characteristics from 53 different evolutionary lineages…” Directional trends (chance and/or Darwinian mechanisms) accounted for a tiny 5%, 45% remained static, and 50% were random (ie. non-linear, chaos driven) “random walks”. Similarly, those familiar with complexity theory, (see TGC “Chaos" by Strogatz) have enormous difficulty with “phyletic gradualism” (changes in evolution due solely to Darwin’s natural selection) as a major evolutionary force. ? ONE-SIDED: Turning points are tricky: My mother was a WW2 mathematician. I have multiple accomplished daughters. So the standard Turning Point conclusion of L15 on New Zealand feminists resonated. But a Turning Point is not gospel. Yes, U.S. women have benefited. But the N.Z. opposition prophetically feared: “…women and men would become unsexed and society would collapse.” Recently the U.S. opened its borders to millions because American women have not achieved replacement birth rate. Without enough workers, the $32 trillion federal debt is unsupportable (TGC Unexpected Economics by Taylor). Is this a death knell for Liulevicius’ "Westphalian order of territorial sovereignty"? We’ll see.

the Prof is excellent; but i found some of his choices - intended as Turning Points - unsatisfactory. Specifically, #8 Diderot i believe overvalued the situation; #15 Women Voting (in NZ) similarly gave too much weight to a really minor aspect; #21 Walking on the Moon was hardly a turning point; & #22 Nixon to China had good intentions, but would have been much more on point if it focused several years later when Mao died, thus ridding China of an incompetent tyrant, & opening it up to the real cchnages that have made it a powerhouse.

Interesting materials well presented. The individual turning points were well select and the professor's commentary connected them into a more complete story.

This is the sixth series of lectures that I have purchased from this historian. I have purchased nearly forty selections from The Great Courses in the past eighteen months. Having taught history in middle and high schools for just over forty years I feel that I recognize excellent teaching when I see it. I highly recommend this series. Now, it is time for me to make my next selection!

His presentation is so packed with information, and he doesn't seem to use notes. Obviously, his knowledge is encyclopedic. After every lecture, I always say "absolutely fascinating"!

The misplaced icons of Modernity Professor Liulvecius teaches several courses in The Great Courses. He is a gifted narrator who constantly calls upon his auditors to exercise their imagination and reason to evaluate the magnitude of his narrative and he additionally underscores his narrative with anecdotes, humour and wry irony. What is further distinctive about his narrative is a reasoned passion, a sense of suppressed outrage at the credulous and the only too credible folly of a humanity who launch their schemes with all innocence only to discover the hidden implications of their innocence, ignorance and blithe optimism have manifested themselves in ways they cannot control and over which they have no competence to manage. The only exceptions to this dubious 'progress' was women's suffrage and the end the abolition of slavery, both of which, ironically, vested interests were haunted by misgivings and predictions of ruin. For all of the above reasons I find his courses compelling, informative and moving. I have experienced, during the course of my life, chagrin ; causes to regret in old age, movements that I embraced in my youth, and early manhood, displaying uh of the careless rapture of unmitigated and groundless optimism and now I watch his courses, only astonished at my heedless optimism. Perhaps that is the fate of historians ; to recall their salad days collapse into monstrous and infernal contraptions that fail to deliver 'liberty' and instead only deliver further contractions of 'freedom' I find consolation in what might be regarded is meretricious. I acquired a copy of the history of France and on one plate their were grouped three icons of modern France; Charles DeGaul, The Citroen 2 CV and Bridget Bardot. Of these icons I have no cause for regret Bardot. BaruchXVIII

I enjoyed "Turning Points in Modern History" with Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius. The course had good visual aids, though mainly it was the Professor lecturing. Nothing wrong with that, he did an excellent job presenting his course. While I question some of his turning points (The Russo-Japanese War and not World War II, for example) even the chapters I might question proved quite interesting and educational. He does seem rather hung up on the "great" voyages of Admiral Zheng He however. Still and all an excellent course and one I highly recommend.

After watching this course, you will fully understand why some events were a turning point in Modern History and how this is still affecting us in the 21st century.

An entertaining, whirlwind review of a curated series of turning points. The turning points are not just by themselves worthy of inclusion on such a list; but the Professor gradually weaves an interconnecting thread between them. At the end, you are left not only better understanding the flow of modern history, but also better prepared to identify what may be an emerging turning point. As usual Professor Liulevicius excels in his political analysis; but he also does a very credible job of analyzing turning points driven by technological, exploratory, and social factors. Another great, Great Course.