World History 1200 Course Overview
WORLD HISTORY 1200 COURSE OVERVIEWOER Project: World History 1200 (WH 1200) is a dynamic high-school history course. Easily aligned to your state’s social studies standards, this course provides teachers with the tools to turn every student into a young historian. To learn more about the overall OER Project: World History curriculum’s approach, structure, and materials, please visit the World History Course Guide. This guide provides specific information for the WH 1200 course.What is World History Project 1200?If you’re looking for a course that covers human history from 1200 CE into the future and aligns with standards that begin with that period, WH 1200 is the right course for you. Starting with the tapestry of diverse regional webs in 1200 CE, this course covers key topics from medieval trade routes through transoceanic interconnections, revolutions, and global conflicts, and continues right up to the world we live in today. Students analyze history through the course’s three frames: communities, networks, and production and distribution.Periodization SchemeStudents begin the course by exploring regional connections in 1200. Then, they assess how life changed after 1450 as the two hemispheres were connected by the Columbian Exchange. The long nineteenth century is divided thematically, with students tackling topics such as revolutions, industrialization, and imperialism in each unit. As a result, there is overlap between units, both thematically and chronologically. All periodization schemes are created by historians to help organize and make sense of the past. We hope that this thematic periodization helps students make sense of the horrific violence and remarkable progress of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.Standards AlignmentMany state standards begin their world history coverage in or around 1200 CE. If your state’s world history standards begin between 1000 and 1550 CE, WH 1200 is the right course for you.
2World History 1200 Course OverviewWH 1200 Course FrameworkThe following is an overview of the course framework. Within each unit, you’ll find a series of lessons, each divided into sections. Most lessons will take between one and three 50-minute class periods. For more detailed information, follow the links to unit guides.Unit 1: Narrative and FramesUnit 1 Problem: How does changing perspectives change our understanding of history?1. How do historians use evidence to create narratives about the past?2. How can frames help us understand history?3. How does scale switching help you make sense of your world?Click here for the Unit 1 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 2: The Global Tapestry (1200 to 1450 CE)Unit 2 Problem: How did networks of exchange connect societies, and how were communities changed by these connections?1. How were human communities organized and how did they interact during this period? 2. How and why did the interconnections among human societies grow and shrink at different times, and how did these changes affect communities and networks? 3. What were the positive and negative consequences of increased connectivity? Click here for the Unit 2 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 3: Transoceanic Connections (1450 to 1750 CE)Unit 3 Problem: How did transoceanic connections transform economic systems and societies in different parts of the world?1. To what extent can the Columbian Exchange be considered one of the most important turning points in history? 2. What were the impacts of the Columbian Exchange for people living in different regions and social classes around the world?3. How did environmental changes, demographics shifts, and the development of the transatlantic slave trade affect some regions of the world more than others?Click here for the Unit 3 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.
3World History 1200 Course OverviewUnit 4: Revolutions (1750 to 1914 CE)Unit 4 Problem: How did people transform the political systems under which they lived, and were these changes felt equally around the world and within communities?1. What are some explanations for the emergence of liberal and national revolutions in the long nineteenth century?2. How were the liberal and national revolutions of the long nineteenth century connected to each other?3. How did nationalism spread—and change as it spread—over the course of the long nineteenth century?Click here for the Unit 4 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 5: Industrialization (1750 to 1914 CE)Unit 5 Problem: How did industrialization transform societies around the world?1. How was the Industrial Revolution experienced differently by people around the world?2. What factors led to some regions industrializing quickly, others slowly, and some even deindustrializing during this period?3. What were the long-term impacts of the Industrial Revolution and how are they apparent in today’s world?Click here for the Unit 5 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 6: Industrial Empires (1850 to 1950 CE)Unit 6 Problem: How were industrial empires created and contested, and how did those processes shape our world today?1. What were the factors that motivated imperialism, and what made it possible?2. How did different communities experience colonialism, and how does colonialism still impact our world today?3. What were the different ways colonized people responded to colonialism?Click here for the Unit 6 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.
4World History 1200 Course OverviewUnit 7: Global Conflict (1914 to 1945 CE)Unit 7 Problem: What caused the global conflicts and atrocities from 1914 to 1945, and how did people experience this period of global war?1. To what extent was the First World War both a “global” and “total” war?2. Why do you think internationalism failed to stop the rise of extreme nationalism and fascism in the years between the First and Second World Wars?3. What made the violence of war, the Holocaust, and other war crimes, crimes against humanity?Click here for the Unit 7 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 8: Cold War and Decolonization (1945 to 1990 CE)Unit 8 Problem: What can we learn when we study the Cold War and decolonization together? 1. What were the causes and effects of the Cold War? 2. What factors made it possible for anticolonial movements around the world to achieve independence during this period? 3. How did the Cold War and decolonization end, and how were they similar and different in the ways in which they concluded? Click here for the Unit 8 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 9: Globalization (1900 CE to the Future)Unit 9 Problem: How has globalization made our lives today more interconnected while also producing new divisions and conflicts?1. What are the positive and negative impacts of globalization?2. How has the increasingly rapid movement of people and ideas through global networks changed our sense of identity, and how have people responded to these changes?3. How have the transformations and conflicts of globalization influenced the ways that people imagine communities at different scales?4. What other historical frames do you think would be most useful for understanding our world?Click here for the Unit 9 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.
5World History 1200 Course OverviewWH 1200 Frames NarrativeThis course asks you and your students to examine world history through three different lenses, or frames. The frames for this course are communities, networks, and production and distribution. The frames provide narratives that help students organize all the information they encounter in this course, offering them a tool to make sense of the vastness of world history. For more information on the frames and how to teach them, please refer to Frames of OER Project: World History. CommunitiesNetworksProduction and DistributionCommunities are the ways in which we organize the groups we live in, from families and neighborhoods to massive empires and religions. Throughout history, human communities have generally grown, and frequently changed.Students will encounter:• The Mongol Empire• Administration of land-based and oceanic empires • The Islamic world• Indigenous societies in the Americas and Polynesia• The Renaissance and the Reformation• Revolutionary ideas about sovereignty• Nationalism and the nation- state• Imperialist hierarchies• The nuclear family• The rise of fascism• International institutions• Globalization of culture• Digital communitiesNetworks are the connections linking people and their communities. They enable people to move and share ideas, goods, crops, animals, pathogens, and even people. In general, humans have built larger and larger networks over time. Students will encounter:• Regional exchange networks including the Silk Roads and Indian Ocean trade• Long-distance trade routes in the Americas• Spread of the Black Death• The Columbian Exchange and the spread of plants and animals across networks• The transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage• Revolutionary networks• Transnational reform movements• Labor migration patterns• Industrial communication technology• Digital networks and globalizationProduction refers to how we make things. Distribution is how we share, sell, or trade the things we make. Production and distribution have changed dramatically over time, becoming increasingly larger and more complex. Students will encounter:• Local and familial systems of production• Development of taxation and money• New patterns of agriculture and consumption• The plantation and slaving systems• Colonialism and resource extraction• The Industrial Revolution• New economic systems such as capitalism and socialism• Industrial transportation technology• Division of labor and wage labor• Total war and global conflict• Digital systems of distribution
6World History 1200 Course OverviewCourse Pacing GuideUnitLessonsPacingUnit 1—Narratives and Frames4up to 10 daysUnit 2—The Global Tapestry 1200 to 1450 CE9up to 30 daysUnit 3—Transoceanic Connections 1450 to 1750 CE9up to 30 daysUnit 4—Revolutions 1750 to 1914 CE5up to 16 daysUnit 5—Industrialization 1750 to 1914 CE8up to 26 daysUnit 6—Empire and Other Consequences of Industrialization 1850 to 1950 CE4up to 15 daysUnit 7—Global Conflict 1914 to 1945 CE8up to 27 daysUnit 8—Cold War and Decolonization 1945 to 1990 CE7up to 21 daysUnit 9—Globalization, Internationalism, and Nationalism8up to 26 days