Brett Olmsted, PhD

U.S. History Professor

Western Civilization II


~1500-Present


Survey of the social, political, economic, cultural, religious, and intellectual history of Europe and the Mediterranean world from the 17th century to the modern era. Themes that should be addressed in Western Civilization II include absolutism and constitutionalism, growth of nation states, the Enlightenment, revolutions, classical liberalism, industrialization, imperialism, global conflict, the Cold War, and globalism.

Link to YouTube Playlist Lectures
  • Age of Exploration & Conquest
  • European Witch hunts
  • Protestant Reformation 
  • English Reformation
  • Counter-Reformation
  • Wars of Religion
  • Absolutism in Western & Eastern Europe
  • Constitutionalism
  • Scientific Revolution
  • Enlightenment
  • 18th Century Life
  • French Revolution
  • Napoleonic Era
  • Industrial Revolution
  • Age of Metternich
  • Romanticism
  • 19th Century Life
  • Realpolitik
  • Age of Mass Politics
  • New Imperialism
  • World War I
  • Russian Revolution
  • Age of Anxiety
  • Democracies of the 1920s
  • Totalitarianism
  • World War II
  • The Cold War
  • Nationalism and the end of the 20th Century
  • Economic Recovery, Unity, and Globalization