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Starting with the crises afflicting Catholic Europe during the fourteenth century and ending with Napoleon, this course explores, through lectures and primary source readings, the new historical realities which forever changed the West and thus the rest of the world as well. The spiritual confusions of the Western Schism and the physical ravages of the Black Death; the rebirth of classical culture; the discovery and colonization of new lands by European explorers and missionaries; the fragmentation of Christian unity during the Protestant Revolt; the development of new political theories, forms of government, and technological innovations: these and many other factors challenged long-standing traditions and laid the foundations for the modern, secular nation-state.