Description: Based on Robert B. Marks, Origins of the Modern World, Introduction and Chapters 1-3.
Required length 750-1000 words. Due by 11:59 P.M. on September 11, 2012. Submit on Blackboard Home Page for this course, through icon "Marks paper 1".
All historians write history books to convince readers that what he or she is writing about is persuasive. To accomplish this, authors usually fashion a thesis, a central argument that the author tries to support by invoking historical evidence. Robert B. Marks is no different. What do you think Marks' thesis is? As you answer this question, consider what Marks writes about the traditional "master narrative" of the "rise of the West" and what problems he finds in that narrative as we try to grasp the "origins of the modern world."