This is a fun way to think about differing perspectives and how a simple shift in viewpoint might completely change the meaning of something. Multiple historians looking at one event will often come up with very different interpretations of the same historical account. This can also be said about how any two people can have differing views of the same process or situation. This is often most noticeable in political debates, but also when there are different perspectives of an event, such as the interpretation or recounting of a war from the winning versus losing side.

Read the following poem.

Worst Day Ever?

by Chanie Gorkin

Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don’t try to convince me that
There’s something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don’t last.
And it’s not true that
It’s all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be attained
Only if one’s surroundings are good.
It’s not true that good exists
I’m sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It’s all beyond my control
And you’ll never in a million years hear me say that
Today was a very good day.
—
Now read it from bottom to the top, the other way,
And see what I really feel about my day.

Once you’re done reading the poem in both directions, think about how this poem can be an analogy for how historians (and people generally) often interpret the same event in a variety of different ways. Can you think of a more recent time when people had very different views of the same event or circumstances?

Plants play a major role in world history, and the plants that moved as a result of the Columbian Exchange are a great example. After 1492, plants moved across new channels, and they had monumental effects on populations, the environment, and production and distribution, decisively changing the face of the planet.

The Era 5 Problem asks: How did the first ongoing global connections among the hemispheres promote change both globally and regionally? This article will give you evidence you can use to think about this question. Specifically, this article provides information on how the transfer of plants across the Atlantic impacted the populations and environments of different regions. You’ll build on this information in later articles and videos in this lesson.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What’s the difference between staple crops and cash crops? What different effects did they have?
2. How did European plantation owners maximize profits?
3. In what ways did European colonists impact networks and production and distribution?
4. How did European use of crops and animals affect the environment in the Americas?
5. What effect did the introduction of the potato have on European populations? How did this change over time?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. The author of this article argues that the “Columbian Exchange completely changed the face of the world.” Based on the evidence in this article, do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?

Christopher Columbus’s voyages to the Americas created new pathways of exchange between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas—for better or for worse. These exchanges gave the Irish potatoes and the Italians tomatoes, but also led to diseases and invasive species that decimated populations in the Americas. Overall, the global population rose, but for many communities in this region, the Columbian Exchange was a disaster.

This article introduces the Columbian Exchange: its effects on the population, environment, and labor after 1492. It’s your first deep look at the first global age, so it will be central to your response to the Era 5 Problem: How did the first ongoing global connections among the hemispheres promote change both globally and regionally? It will highlight similarities and differences between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia before and after the Columbian Exchange, allowing you to analyze and compare its uneven effects.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What were indigenous communities like before the Columbian Exchange?
2. Why were indigenous Americans so vulnerable to diseases?
3. How did epidemic diseases affect the environment and the economy?
4. What animals were domesticated by humans in the Americas, before and after the Columbian Exchange?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. The author of this article argues that the “Columbian Exchange completely changed the face of the world.” Based on the evidence in this article, do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?

In this activity, you have an opportunity to be creative while considering the biological impact of the Columbian Exchange. By creating menus related to what was available on each side of the world and how this availability grew once the world zones connected, you will have a more concrete sense of how an everyday activity like eating was so drastically changed by globalization.

In this activity, you will create a café menu that represents different world zones and uses what was available in each zone, both before and after the Columbian Exchange.

In the article “Crops that Grew the World,” you learned about the biological impact of the Columbian Exchange. In the article “The Columbian Exchange,” you learned more about the details of what came from each world zone, the massive impact of the spread of disease, and a bit about how the movement of plants and animals impacted communities, networks, and production and distribution. In this activity, you’re going to zoom in and think more about the everyday lives of people—in particular, what those people ate.

Imagine that you are restaurant owners getting ready to open The World Zone Café. This café will not only serve delicious food, but will teach people about the origins of flora and fauna (plants and animals), and how the movement of these plants and animals changed people’s lives. To do this, you are going to create a small café menu with two appetizers, two entrées (main dishes), and two desserts. Two of the menu items must be made from ONLY plants and animals available in the Americas; two items must be made from ONLY plants and animals available in Afro-Eurasia; and two items must include ingredients from BOTH world zones. You can use the infographic from the article “The Columbian Exchange” to remind yourself of which plants and animals originated from which area.

Once you’ve created your menu, be prepared to share your meal ideas with the class. Do the things you enjoy eating most originate in the Americas or Afro-Eurasia, or do they mostly come from both places? How might your meals (and traditions associated with them) be different today if the world zones had not connected in this way? Also, do you think connecting the world zones was worth it, keeping in mind the legacy of destruction in the wake of Columbus’s explorations? Finally, if you could have a meal from any of the menus in class, which one would you choose and why?

John Green explores the impact of the Columbian Exchange, tracing the monumental effects of the movement of diseases, plants, animals, and people across the globe. From totally new cuisines to demographic devastation and then explosion, the Columbian Exchange changed populations, cultures, labor, and the environment. But John Green poses the question: Did it leave us better off?

This video focuses on the major changes that happened after 1492, which will help you tackle the Era 5 Problem: How did the first ongoing global connections among the hemispheres promote change both globally and regionally? You’ll be able to build on what you learned in earlier articles about the Columbian Exchange, and you’ll deepen your understanding of how the population and the environment changed in different regions. This information will help you compare across different contexts, and it will also help you understand how the uneven effects of the Columbian Exchange have shaped our present world.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. What effects did the Columbian Exchange have on the global biological landscape?
2. What were the demographic effects of the Columbian Exchange in the Americas?
3. In what context were Europeans able to take over Aztec and Incan lands?
4. How did animals from Afro-Eurasia impact the Americas?
5. Out of the four categories discussed—disease, animals, plants, and people—which had the biggest effect on Afro-Eurasia, according to John Green? What were some of those cultural and demographic effects?
6. Initially, the Columbian Exchange led to the decimation of the population of the Americas, mostly as a result of disease. How did this pattern of demographic decline change over time?
7. By the end of Era 5, what were the principal global effects of the Columbian Exchange?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. While the Columbian Exchange arguably made the world more similar and connected, its effects were unevenly felt in different parts of the globe. Use evidence from this video to think through these Era 5 Problems: How did changes in the environment, demographic changes, and new forms of coerced labor affect some regions of the world more than others? What were the impacts of the Columbian Exchange for people living in different regions and social classes around the world? Why and how were the impacts similar and different?
2. At the end of the video, John Green poses the question: “Are longer, healthier lives for more humans worth the sacrifice of an impoverished biosphere? And most importantly, how will your conclusions about those questions shape the way that you live your life?” How might the patterns and trends presented in the video have importance for other studies, later history, or your life more generally?

People tend to focus on the benefits of global interactions, but the costs are just as important. Historians don’t know the exact number, but global interactions between 1500 and 1600 led to a staggering number of deaths to indigenous American and African populations. There were also negative consequences for regional cultures and economies. When we evaluate the impact of the Columbian Exchange, we need to consider them.

This article will build on earlier articles and videos about the Columbian Exchange. It has a special focus on the environment and population of the Americas and in Africa. While previous articles talked about both the good and the bad, this article is entirely about the disastrous results the Columbian Exchange had on some regions. This regional-level evidence will help you compare across contexts and switch scales from global to regional. It will also help you see an important world-historical pattern, which is that big changes lead to uneven results for different communities.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Why is it difficult for historians to determine the scale of the Great Dying?
2. What groups of people migrated to the Americas involuntarily?
3. What do the categories “mestizo” and “mulatto” mean? Who came up with these categories?
4. How did the population of sub-Saharan Africa change as a result of the Columbian Exchange? How did this affect production and distribution?
5. What was the plantation complex? Whom did it benefit?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. The author claims that “demographic changes in both the Americas and Africa were mostly disastrous for indigenous peoples. European economies and communities were the ones that mostly benefited from their arrival in the Americas and from the Atlantic slave trade network.” Using this article and other articles and videos in this lesson, find evidence that supports, extends, or challenges this claim.

People moved across the Atlantic Ocean for many reasons, but most migrants didn’t have much of a choice. Some migrants were looking to escape from religious persecution or were trying to find jobs, while others were kidnapped into enslavement and forced into lives of hard labor. Combined, this movement of led to huge changes to environments, populations, and cultures.

This article gives you some context about transatlantic migration patterns and why they happened. It shows how changes in one region caused global changes that affected many other regions, which gives you evidence you can use to answer the Era 5 Problem: How did the first ongoing global connections among the hemispheres promote change both globally and regionally? You’ve already learned a lot about the Columbian Exchange’s movement of plants, animals, and germs in previous articles and videos, but this article takes a closer look at the movement of people and its dramatic effects.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads Worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. According to the article, what three key events shaped transatlantic migration patterns in this period?
2. What were the main reasons Europeans voluntarily migrated to the Americas in this era?
3. How did the forced labor of African and indigenous people in the Americas affect the lives of working class Europeans?
4. What nineteenth century trend began to change transatlantic migration patterns yet again?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. How did the shape of communities change in the Americas due to the circulation of both voluntary and involuntary migrants? Which groups were easily able to shape their new communities, and which groups appear to have had more difficulty? How might these different experiences affect societies in the Americas, still, today?

You’ve likely heard the name Pocahontas before. Who was she? She was a Powhatan woman named Amonute who intervened in the relationship between her people and early English colonists in Virginia. Beyond that, the facts of her story are disputed. We present two different versions of her early years and show how scholars try to navigate the evidence.

Sometimes, it seems like there are so many different stories about the past that we can hardly tell what really happened. Amonute’s story is a good example. It is the inspiration for the main character in the Disney movie Pocahontas, but that film is based on only one type of source about her life—texts written by Europeans. Oral tradition passed down from the Powhatan people gives us a very different story. Navigating between these sources is the job of historians who want to understand how indigenous Americans and European settlers interacted.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. You should also spend some time looking at the images and the way in which the page is designed. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Who was Amonute?
2. How did Amonute become important to the English settlers in Virginia? What are the key elements of the story John Smith told about her?
3. How does Karen Ordahl Kupperman evaluate John Smith’s story of Amonute?
4. What are the key arguments made by the oral historians of the Mattaponi people, as presented in this biography?
5. What are some doubts raised about the oral tradition version of events, by anthropologists like Helen Roundtree?
6. How does the artist use art and design to show that there are different stories about Amonute?

Evaluating and Corroborating

In this read, you should use the graphic biography as evidence to support, extend, or challenge claims made in the course.

1. Which version of Amonute’s relationship with English settlers do you think is more likely to be accurate? Why?
2. How does this biography of Amonute support, extend, or challenge what you have learned about European relations with people of the Americas in this period?

After Spanish conquistadors sacked the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, they tried to convert the Aztec and other indigenous peoples in the region. Missionaries soon followed the conquistadors. The Spanish used a variety of strategies to speed up conversion, both forcing people to convert and providing incentives to encourage them to do so. Indigenous people both violently resisted and accepted the new religion. But there was a lot of ground in between these two choices. And as more people converted, more elements of indigenous religion and culture blended with Catholicism. The effects of this blending are still felt in Mexican and global Catholicism today.

This article uses the communities frame to reflect on the cultural aspects of the Columbian Exchange. By providing you evidence at the local and regional level, it will prepare you to respond to the era problem and understand how the global connections forged after 1500 changed communities and reshaped cultures on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What is the difference between Spanish conquistadors and missionaries?
2. What were some reasons the Spanish were so eager to get people to convert?
3. What were some strategies used by the Spanish to try to convert the indigenous population?
4. What were some things that motivated some Aztecs to convert?
5. How is the Lady of Guadalupe an example of religious syncretism, according to the author?

Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. This article focuses on how religious syncretism shaped communities. What are some ways that networks likely played a role in the conversion of Mesoamerican indigenous communities?
2. This article makes the point that the Columbian Exchange wasn’t just a biological exchange but also a cultural exchange. Can you think of any ways that the biological exchange of plants, animals, and people also created cultural shifts in different parts of the world?

3x5 note cards or cut up paper

This sourcing collection, along with the Quick-Sourcing Tool, gives you an opportunity to practice a quicker kind of sourcing than you do in the sourcing practice progression. The tool and the process for using it—specifically designed for unpacking document collections—will help you be successful when responding to DBQs.

Note: If you are unfamiliar with the Quick-Sourcing Tool or the process for using it, we recommend reviewing the Quick-Sourcing Introduction activity in Lesson 5.1.

The Quick-Sourcing Tool can be used any time you encounter a set of sources and are trying to respond to a prompt or question, as opposed to the deeper analysis you do when using the HAPPY tool that is part of the sourcing progression.

First, take out or download the sourcing collection and review the guiding question that appears on the first page. Then, take out or download the Quick-Sourcing Tool and review the directions. For Part 1, you’ll write a quick summary of each source in terms of how it relates to the guiding question (we recommend using one note card or scrap of paper for each source).

For Part 2, which uses the first four letters of the acronym from the HAPPY tool, you only have to respond to one of these four questions. You should always include the historical significance or “why” (the “Y” in “HAPPY”) for any of the four questions you choose to respond to.

In Part 3, you’ll gather the evidence you found in each document and add it to your note cards so you can include it in a response later. Once each document is analyzed, look at your note cards and try to categorize the cards. There might be a group of documents that support the claim you want to make in your response, and another group that will help you consider counterclaims, for example.

To wrap up, try to respond to the guiding question.

This collection explores changing belief systems, from the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation to devotional movements like Sufism and the Bhakti movement. It also looks at the political dimensions of religion, from Christian Europe to the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Courts, all of which were entangled in sectarian struggles.

The primary source excerpts in this collection will help you grasp why religions transformed and, in some cases, split during this period. You will learn about the Protestant Reformation, Sunni-Shi’a split, and the rise of devotional movements like Sufism. This will help you understand some of the differences between faiths that persist today. In addition, you’ll work on your sourcing skills using the Quick-Sourcing Tool.

We recommend using the accompanying Quick Sourcing activity (above) to help you analyze these sources.

In this activity, you will extend your sourcing skills by reading two primary source documents, each written from a different perspective, about the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. As you analyze the documents, you’ll focus on the Historical Context, Focus, and Importance rows of the Sourcing Tool. In doing so, you’ll also learn how using multiple sources from different perspectives can give you a better understanding of a historical event.

Claim testing, comparison
You’ll once again use your claim-testing skills to evaluate two historical documents that provide different perspectives of a historical event. In addition, you’ll compare these documents to one another to develop a more complete view of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.

In this activity, you'll work either in pairs or on your own to read two primary source documents, complete the Sourcing Tool focusing on the Historical Context, Purpose, and Importance rows of the tool, and write a response to a prompt.

First, your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire worksheet, which includes both the document excerpts and the Sourcing Tool. Read the excerpts starting with the introductory paragraphs. As you read, think about these questions: What were the motivations of the Spanish conquerors? And what were the responses of the Indigenous peoples to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire?

After you’ve finished reading the excerpts, complete the Historical Context, Purpose, and Importance rows of the Sourcing Tool.

Then, write a one- to two-paragraph response that answers the questions posed earlier: What were the motivations of the Spanish conquerors? And what were the responses of the Indigenous peoples to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire? Your paragraphs should make specific reference to the Historical Context, Purpose, and Importance portions of the tool but can include other categories as well.

Your teacher will collect your worksheets and paragraphs to evaluate your sourcing skills.