Students will examine the physical and human geographic factors associated with the origins, major players and events, and consequences of worldwide exploration, conquest, and imperialism.
Explain the causes and conditions of worldwide voyages of exploration, discovery, and conquest. Identify the countries involved. Provide examples of how people modified their view of world regions as a consequence of these voyages. [Origins, Change Over Time, Sense of Place, Spatial Interaction, Spatial Organization]
EXAMPLES: Alexander the Great and the development of the Helenistic Period (350–300 B.C.); Mongol conquests of India and China (711–1300 A.D.); Spanish and Portuguese exploration and conquest (1400–1800 AD); English and French exploration and conquest (1400–1800 AD); exploration of the New World (1400–1800 AD); voyages by Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) explorers in the early 15th Century around India to Africa; European view of world regions—Asia and Africa (1500–1800 AD); Manchu conquest in 1644 of all of China and Inner Asia
Use maps, timelines, and/or other graphic representations to show the movement, spread, and changes in the worldwide exchange of flora***, fauna****, and pathogens***** that resulted from transoceanic voyages of exploration and exchanges between peoples in different regions. Assess the consequences of these encounters for the people and environments involved. [Spatial Interaction, Change Over Time, Diffusion, Human Environment Interactions]
EXAMPLES: Compare world maps of the 15th century to the world of the 16th century that show selected crops grown for food; analyze how the Industrial Revolution affected agriculture in Europe and the Americas (1700–1900 AD); compare and contrast two or more regions of the world relative to major life-threatening diseases prior to 1492 and after this date
Identify and compare the main causes, players, and events of imperialism during different time periods. Use a series of political maps to examine the global extent of imperialism. [Changes Over Time, Spatial Distribution, Spatial Interaction]
EXAMPLES: Illustrate the colonial focus of the following European nationalities: Spanish and Portuguese (1492–1825); British, French, Belgian, and Dutch (1800 – 1970); link European countries to their colonies in Asia and Africa in relationship to resources and trade patterns in the 19th and 20th centuries
Analyze and assess how the physical and human environments (including languages used) of places and regions changed as the result of differing imperialist and colonial policies. [Spatial Interaction, Changes Over Time, Cultural Landscape, National Character, Physical Systems, Sense of Place, Spatial Variation, Spatial Organization]
EXAMPLES: Native Americans in Mesoamerica in relationship to Spanish conquistadors, missionaries, and traders; Africa and the slave trade: such as the Atlantic slave trade involving Europeans and African; the Arabic-Islamic slave trade involving indigenous African peoples and directed northward and eastward within the continent of Africa and into the Middle East, and the slave trade involving only indigenous black Africans in the interior of the continent; economic dislocations in India (1500–1947)
Analyze and assess ways that colonialism and imperialism have persisted and continue to evolve in the contemporary world. [Spatial Distribution, Spatial Interaction, Spatial Variation, Human Livelihoods, Sense of Place, Cultural Landscapes]
EXAMPLES: (All examples 1850–Present). Disparate effects of global economic competition; patterns of variation between developed and less developed countries; the global division of labor, especially between developed and less developed countries; the magnitude and direction of the flows of cultural exchange between former colonies and colonial powers
* Imperialism—A national policy of forming and maintaining an empire; it involves the struggle for the control of raw materials and world markets, the subjection and control of territories, and the establishment of colonies.
** Post Colonialism—The ways that colonialism and imperialism persist and evolve after formal dissolution of colonial and imperialistic empires.
*** Flora—plants or plant life of a region or environment
**** Fauna--all the animal life in a particular region or period
***** Pathogen—Any organism capable of producing disease.