History of International Politics

The first unit will focus on international relations between Europe and the United States since the end of the 19th century up to the Second World War, with particular attention to the origins and the evolution of the Anglo-American special relationship. The following will be analyzed: American imperialism, its characters and implications on relations between the Old and the New world; the inheritances of the First World War on relations between the US and the UK; British contribution to the League of Nations project; British and American behaviour with regards to authoritarianism and totalitarianism in Europe and in the Pacific; how much personalities mattered in international politics between the 1920s and the 1940s, focusing on the personalities of Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and their staff.
The second unit will focus on international relations between Europe and the Unites States during the first decades of the Cold War. Thanks to primary sources the following will be analyzed: political, economic and cultural cooperation between NATO members; how much Labour Party in Great Britain and personalities such as that of Ernst Bevin mattered in forging British post-war policy and British-American relationship; the moments of strength and weakness in the special relationship; British and American policies towards others countries and regions such as China, the Middle East and, in more general terms, the newly independent States; the special relationship in the years of Dwight Eisenhower and John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
The third unit will focus on international relations between the United States and Europe in the framework of the "second European integration", from the Great Detente years to the "transatlantic Drift" after 2001. In particular, the unit will analyze the evolution of the special relationship after the end of the Cold War and how the UK and the US acted when facing new conflicts such as the Gulf and the Kosovo wars.