Perceptions of outsiders and interactions with them varied across Eurasia. Students will compare and contrast the Tokugawa and Mughal responses to outsiders, with attention to the impacts of those decisions. Students will create a world map showing the extent of European maritime empires, the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Mughal Empire, China under the Qing Dynasty, Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Ashanti, Benin, and Dahomey ca. 1750. Students will compare the size of these states, empires, and kingdoms relative to the power they wielded in their regions and in the world.
Individuals used Enlightenment ideals to challenge traditional beliefs and secure people's rights in reform movements, such as women's rights and abolition; some leaders may be considered enlightened despots. Students will explore the influence of Enlightenment ideals on issues of gender and abolition by examining the ideas of individuals such as Mary Wollstonecraft and William Wilberforce. Students will examine enlightened despots including Catherine the Great.
Enlightenment thinkers developed political philosophies based on natural laws, which included the concepts of social contract, consent of the governed, and the rights of citizens. Students will examine at least three Enlightenment thinkers, including John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and key ideas from their written works.
Those who faced being colonized engaged in varying forms of resistance and adaptation to colonial rule with varying degrees of success. Students will investigate one example of resistance in Africa (Zulu, Ethiopia, or Southern Egypt/Sudan) and one in China (Taiping Rebellion or Boxer Rebellion and the role of Empress Dowager CiXi). Students will investigate how Japan reacted to the threat of Western imperialism in Asia.
Agricultural innovations and technologies enabled people to alter their environment, allowing them to increase and support farming on a large scale. Students will examine the agricultural revolution in Great Britain.
Independence movements in India and Indochina developed in response to European control. Students will explore Gandhi's nonviolent nationalist movement and nationalist efforts led by the Muslim League aimed at the masses that resulted in a British-partitioned subcontinent. Students will compare and contrast the ideologies and methodologies of Gandhi and Ho Chi Minh as nationalist leaders.
Cultures and countries experience and view modernization differently. For some, it is a change from a traditional rural, agrarian condition to a secular, urban, industrial condition. Some see modernization as a potential threat and others as an opportunity to be met. Students will investigate the extent to which urbanization and industrialization have modified the roles of social institutions such as family, religion, education, and government by examining one case study in each of these regions: Africa (e.g., Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone), Latin America (e.g., Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico), and Asia (e.g., China, India, Indonesia, South Korea).
Nationalism in the Middle East was often influenced by factors such as religious beliefs and secularism. Students will investigate Zionism, the mandates created at the end of World War I, and Arab nationalism. Students will examine the creation of the State of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the communist bloc in Europe had a global impact. Students will investigate the political reforms of glasnost and economic reforms of perestroika. Students will examine the impacts of those reforms within the Soviet Union, on the Soviet communist bloc, and in the world.
African independence movements gained strength as European states struggled economically after World War II. European efforts to limit African nationalist movements were often unsuccessful. Students will explore at least two of these three African independence movements: Ghana, Algeria, Kenya.
The Cold War was a period of confrontations and attempts at peaceful coexistence. Students will investigate the efforts to expand and contain communism in Cuba, Vietnam, and Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Students will examine the new military alliances, nuclear proliferation, and the rise of the military-industrial complex. Students will examine the reasons countries such as Egypt and India chose nonalignment. Students will explore the era of détente from both American and Sovietperspectives.
Tensions between agents of modernization and traditional cultures have resulted in ongoing debates within affected societies regarding social norms, gender roles, and the role of authorities and institutions. Students will investigate, compare, and contrast tensions between modernization and traditional culture in Turkey under the rule of Kemal Ataturk and in Iran under the Pahlavis and the Ayatollahs. Students will explore how changes in technology, such as communication and transportation, have affected interactions between people and those in authority (e.g., efforts to affect change in government policy, engage people in the political process including use of social media, control access to information, and use terrorism as a tactic).
Globalization is contentious, supported by some and criticized by others. Students will compare and contrast arguments supporting and criticizing globalization by examining concerns including: free market, export-oriented economies vs. localized, sustainable activities development of a mixed economy in China and China's role in the global economy multinational corporations and cartels (e.g., Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) roles of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and microfinance institutions economic growth and economic downturns (e.g., recession, depression) on a national and a global scale economic development and inequality (e.g., access to water, food, education, health care, energy) migration and labor ethnic diversity vs. homogenization (e.g., shopping malls, fast food franchises, language, popular culture).
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