AP World Unit 4
"People Who Have Interrupted Empire": African and Indigenous Resistance in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
I’ve looked at more world history textbooks than I want to admit. One thing almost all of them have in common is some discussion of Portuguese maritime expansion along the western coast of Africa in the fifteenth century and the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the Americas in the
What We Can Learn from a Pair of Skating Owls: Teaching the Little Ice Age and its Importance for Today
For a number of years, Donald Trump has been tweeting about the myth of climate change based on cold weather. Just this past week, he even sarcastically called for more global warming. While most people reading this essay will quickly dismiss Trump’s claims, it’s important to consider how
Two Views of Global Lisbon
In October of 2016, I was exploring the Navy Museum in Lisbon. For a country with such a rich maritime history, I was somewhat disappointed with the museum itself. But as I was wandering through the bookstore on my way out, I came across this incredible book by edited by
More than Four Turtles: Global Renaissances in the Fifteenth Century (Part II)
In the final part of the Harkness discussion on Day 3, we talk about the second part of my essay “Reimaging the Renaissance,” which focuses on events in Central Asia in the fifteenth century. Central Asia never seems to get the credit it deserves in world history classes. Besides the
More than Four Turtles: Global Renaissances in the Fifteenth Century (Part I)
After spending two days setting up the big picture of the revival of Afroeurasia in the fifteenth century, we dive into the Renaissance, or Renaissances, on the third day. I use two different readings with the students and set up the class in a sort of a modified Harkness style
Don’t Call It a Comeback: Afroeurasian Revivals in the Fifteenth Century
Don’t call it a comeback I’ve been here for years I’m rocking my peers Puttin’ suckers in fear Makin’ the tears rain down like a monsoon Listen to the bass go boom Explosions, overpowerin’ Over the competition I’m towerin’ Wrecking shop when I drop these lyrics
Healing the Sick Man of Europe
If the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was going through a period of transformation, rather than beginning a 400-year decline, it would seem that the Empire, which collapsed in 1922, had to be declining in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While it’s true that the Empire
Globalizing the Renaissance
About ten years ago, I developed a lesson on “Placing the Renaissance in a Global Setting.” The lesson can still be found on the AP World History Teacher Community, although you need to have an account to access it. The lesson was partially a response to an earlier discussion on
When the End of Growth is not the Beginning of Decline
If the myth of isolation is one of the main consequences of Eurocentrism for how we think about the history of East Asia, Eurocentric approaches to the history of the Ottoman Empire have encouraged us to begin to see its actual end in 1922 long before it occurred. A quick
Eurocentrism and the Myth of East Asian Isolation
Explores the eurocentric tendency to describe early modern China and Japan as isolationist. Instead of thinking of these states as isolationist, we should view them as simply having a different model of foreign relations.
