The course will presents a summary of International Relations in the 19th and 20th centuries with special reference to the political, diplomatic and geopolitical aspects, as well as to the role of the great Statesmen of the era.

After an introduction on European diplomacy and Great Powers at the beginning of 19th Century, the course will deal with the following topics:

• The Congress of Vienna and the “Congress System”
• The balance of power and the bourgeois revolutions in the first half of the 19th Century
• The unification of Germany; the unification of Italy; the fall of the Papal States
• State and Nation during the age of the imperialism
• The First World War and the attempt to build a New World Order
• Popes and diplomacy: Benedict XV, Pius XI and Pius XII
• The Second World War and the New Bipolar System
• The Cold War during the second half of the 20th Century
• The fall of the Berlin Wall end the end of the Cold War Selecte

Bibliography

• J.L. GADDIS, The Cold War, London, Allen Lane, 2006;
• H. KISSINGER, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994;
• P.C. KENT - J.F. POLLARD, Papal Diplomacy in Modern Age, Westport, Conn., Praeger, 1994;
• Paul KENNEDY, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, London, Fontana Press, 1989;
• R.A. GRAHAM, Vatican Diplomacy: a Study of Church and State on the International Plane, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1959.