World History 1750 Course Overview
WORLD HISTORY 1750 COURSE OVERVIEWOER Project: World History 1750 (WH 1750) 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 1750 course.What is World History Project 1750?If you’re looking for a course on modern world history that aligns with standards such as those of New York and California, WH 1750 is the right course for you. This course starts with the world of 1750 CE, covering key topics such as the Enlightenment, revolutions, industrialization, and global conflicts, and it 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 the diversity and surprising commonalities linking societies across the world in 1750 CE. The long nineteenth century is divided thematically, with students tackling topics such as revolutions, industrialization, social reform, and imperialism in each unit. Next, students dive into the global conflicts and global connections of the twentieth century. 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 AlignmentSome state standards divide world history coverage between modern and premodern. If your state’s world history standards begin in the eighteenth century—or if you teach in New York or California—WH 1750 is the right course for you.
2World History 1750 Course OverviewWH 1750 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: The World in 1750 (1750–1914)Unit 1 Problem: In 1750, how were humans and societies connected to each other, and how were they distinct and unique? 1. What are some advantages or limitations of starting a course in 1750? 2. What are some narratives that are used by historians to interpret the history of the period from 1750 to the present and how might we test those narratives? 3. How can we describe the world in this era in terms of communities, networks, and systems of production and distribution? Click here for the Unit 1 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 2: Liberal and National Revolutions (1750–1914)Unit 2 Problem: How were ideas about political identity transformed by revolutions and nationalism? 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 2 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 3: Industrialization (1750–1914)Unit 3 Problem: How did industrialization transform societies around the world? 1. What were the local, regional, and global reasons that the Industrial Revolution began first in Great Britain? 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 3 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.
3World History 1750 Course OverviewUnit 4: Reform Movements (1750–1914)Unit 4 Problem: How did people respond to the transformations of the long nineteenth century? 1. How did perceptions of enslavement and the slave trade change during this period, and how did these shifts lead to abolition?2. What new ideas emerged about labor and production and distribution during this period and how do they relate to today’s world? 3. How did conceptions of gender and childhood change in this period and how widespread were these changes? Click here for the Unit 4 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 5: Industrial Empires (1750–1914)Unit 5 Problem: How were industrial empires created and contested in the nineteenth century, 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 5 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 6: World War I (1914–Present)Unit 6 Problem: How was the First World War the result of changes that occurred in the long nineteenth century? 1. What are different explanations for the origins of the First World War, and which one do you think is most compelling? 2. To what extent was the First World War both a “global” and “total” war? 3. How did the First World War end, and do you think its outcomes created any problems for the future? Click here for the Unit 6 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.
4World History 1750 Course OverviewUnit 7: Interwar and World War II (1914–Present)Unit 7 Problem: How were the horrors of the Second World War possible, and what conflicts did that war resolve or leave unresolved? 1. How did the peace negotiated after the First World War help contribute to the causes of the Second World War?2. Why do you think internationalism failed to stop the rise of extreme nationalism and fascism in the interwar years?3. Do you think the Second World War could have been avoided?4. What made the violence of the war, the Holocaust and other war crimes, and crimes against humanity possible? Click here for the Unit 7 Guide, which includes direct links to all lessons.Unit 8: Cold War and Decolonization (1914–Present)Unit 8 Problem: What can we learn when we study the Cold War and decolonization together? 1. What was the Cold War really about and what happens if we ask this question from different perspectives—from that of the US, the Soviet Union, the Caribbean, or Vietnam? 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 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 1750 Course OverviewWH 1750 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 the 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:• Comparison of states and empires in 1750• Enlightenment ideas about society• Revolutionary ideas about sovereignty and rights• Nationalism and the nation- state• Social impacts of industrialization• The emergence of the working class• Gender roles• The nuclear family• Imperialist hierarchies• 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:• The transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage• The opening of trade between China and Britain• Revolutionary networks• Transnational reform movements• Women’s suffrage movement• Labor migration patterns• Industrial communication technology• Internationalism • Connected struggles for liberation and decolonization• 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:• The plantation and slaving systems• The Industrial Revolution• Colonialism and resource extraction• New economic systems such as capitalism and socialism• Economic imperialism• Industrial transportation technology• Division of labor and wage labor• Total war and global conflict• Digital systems of distribution• The Great Acceleration
6World History 1750 Course OverviewCourse Pacing GuideUnitLessonsPacingUnit 1—The World in 1750 (1750–1914)7up to 24 daysUnit 2—Liberal and National Revolutions (1750–1914)7up to 25 daysUnit 3—Industrialization (1750–1914)5up to 19 daysUnit 4—Transformation of Labor and Social Relations (1750–1914)6up to 21 daysUnit 5—Imperialism, Colonialism, and Responses (1750–1914) 5up to 19 daysUnit 6—World War I (1914–Present)5up to 17 daysUnit 7—Interwar and World War II (1914–Present)7up to 25 daysUnit 8—Cold War and Decolonization (1914–Present)7up to 25 daysUnit 9— Globalization, Internationalism, and Nationalism8up to 26 days