Through an introduction to the origins, method and definitions of the discipline, the course traces the history of international relations from the Great War to the present day, with particular attention to the political, economic and military evolution of the international system from the I World War to the bipolar system, the emergence of the global dynamics of the post-colonial world and, in particular, the evolution of the current international and European political system.

Ennio Di Nolfo, Dagli imperi militari agli imperi tecnologici. La politica internazionale dal XX secolo a oggi, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2023. It is also recommended Ennio Di Nolfo, Prima lezione di storia delle relazioni internazionali, Roma-Bari, Laterza 2006.

The history of international relations: origin, method and definitions; 2. From diplomatic history to the history of international relations; 3. The history of international relations in the contemporary age.

1919 -1929. The Paris peace conference and its consequences in Europe; the new international order outside Europe; executionist politics and its limits; the Franco-German rapprochement and the illusion of "collective security".

1929 - 1939. The economic crisis of 1929 and the fall of the Versailles system; the coming to power of Hitler and the transformation of the international scenario up to the Spanish civil war; Asia and Africa between the two world wars; towards World War II.

1939 - 1945. The European phase of the Second World War; the conflict becomes global; «the turn of the tide»; the allied victory; the Dumbarton Oaks and Bretton Woods conferences; the Yalta conference; the atomic weapon, the surrender of Japan and the Potsdam conference.

1945 - 1956. Historiography and interpretations of the Cold War; the sovietization of central-eastern Europe and the militarization of the East-West confrontation: the "Truman doctrine" and the Marshall plan; the Korean War, NATO and German rearmament; the death of Stalin and the «first détente».

945 - 1960. Decolonization and liberation movements; non-alignment; the disintegration of the French empire: Indochina and North Africa; the Middle East from the birth of Israel to the Suez crisis; Latin America and the growing intolerance towards the hegemony of the United States.

1957 - 1969. The bipolar world and the premises of the «great détente»; the East - West confrontation in the Khrushchev era: Berlin, Cuba, the Test Ban Treaty; the USA and Indochina from Kennedy to Johnson; the Sino-Soviet conflict, the Third World and Europe.

1968 - 1980. The fracture of the seventies; the Bretton Woods crisis and the oil shock; Henry Kissinger and the great détente : successes and limitations; Europe and Brandt's "Ostpolitik"; the Carter administration: from the season of human rights to the crisis of great détente.

1979 - 1991. From the new cold war to the end of the East - West confrontation; Reagan's America and the "second cold war"; the Europe of Delors and the Single European Act; Gorbachev's leadership and the fall of the Berlin Wall; the Gulf War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union; the end of the cold war in Europe and its consequences in the rest of the world.

1992 - 2001. The illusion of a new international order; the Treaty of Maastricht and the birth of the European Union; the crises in the Balkans and the Yugoslav wars; the evolution of NATO and the final phase of the Yugoslav conflict; globalization and the «no global» movements.

2001 - 2019. From a multipolar world to a new international disorder? ; 9/11 and its aftermath; the war in Iraq and the Middle East; Putin's Russia; Lula's Brazil; the rise of China; the illusion of the EU as a "civil power", the enlargement to the east and the failure of the constitutional treaty; the Trump Presidency in a divided West; the arc of crisis from the Mediterranean to the Middle East; Africa and Latin America; concluding considerations.

E. Di Nolfo, Dagli imperi militari agli imperi tecnologici
Laterza, Roma Bari, 2021, ISBN 978-88-420-8495-2