Industrial Revolution: Video Review

Studying the Industrial Revolution?  Do you need a good video review? If so, check out this 7-minute clip from the CUNY School of Professional Studies called"The Making of Industrial Society, Part 1.

The host is not Steve Heimler or John Greene but he's still pretty good. Part 1 reviews the development of the industrial revolution and Part 2 examines Marxism and capitalism.

Kashmir and India's Religious Citizenship Test: Resources

Two issues: Kashmir and India's religious citizenship test

Here are some interesting links to news stories and essays that break down India's move to the right under Narendra Modi and his attempt to make India a Hindu country at the expense of Muslims.

There are close to 200 million Muslims in India, more than in Pakistan.  The Muslim presence in India is a result of the Mughal invasion of northern India in the 1500s. The Mughals were one of three so-called gunpowder empires who came to power during that time. The Ottomans conquered the Byzantine Empire in modern-day Turkey and the Safavids conquered much of modern-day Iran.

In India, The Mughals ruled until the British took power away from them in the 18th century.  Today, the Modi government wants to erase all memory of the Mughals, even street names from the Mughal era. You can read about the origins of this move to the right in Ohio State's history magazine, Origins. 

In addition, The Modi government recently allowed Hindu citizens in northern India to destroy the Muslim holy site of Ayodhya, because it was the birthplace of the famous Hindu god, Ram. The BBC has a good story about that verdict.

The Modi government also recently introduced a citizenship test based on religion.  Both The Week and the New Yorker have stories about this test, which essentially will make Muslims second-class citizens.

Modis' government turned two Muslim states in northern India,  Kashmir and Assam, into concentration camps. Kashmir has long been a disputed state between India and Pakistan.  But in October India divided the state into two  Federal territories and immediately began to tighten control over the state.  Authorities turned off the internet and refused to allow reporters into the state. You can read about Kashmir in this excellent essay by Dexter Filkins for the New Yorker.

And in Assam,  Foreign Policy notes that Muslims have become stateless citizens.

You can find all the links below, as well a couple of video clips, one from the PBS NewsHour  and another from Al Jazeera,  reviewing the religious citizenship test

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Origins, Right-Wing Politics in India

The Week: India is laying the groundwork for a mass faith-cleansing,

Al. Jazeera, What you should know about India's 'anti-Muslim' citizenship law

New Yorker, Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi’s India

Al Jazeera: What the Zaira Wasim controversy reveals about contemporary India

New Yorker: The Violent Toll of Hindu Nationalism in India,

BBC News: Ayodhya verdict: Indian top court gives holy site to Hindus,

New York Times: India Takes Step Toward Blocking Naturalization for Muslims,

New York Times: India Adopts the Tactic of Authoritarians: Shutting Down the Internet

New Yorker: India’s Citizenship Emergency

New York Times: As Modi Pushes Hindu Agenda, a Secular India Fights Back

Foreign Policy: All Are Stateless. Some Are Hopeless: Hindus left stateless in Assam think Modi will save them. Muslims fear the worst.

NDTV: India's 1st Illegal Immigrant Detention Camp Size Of 7 Football Fields

Washington Post: India’s Muslims and activists face mass arrests, beatings amid citizenship-law unrest

New York Times: We Are Witnessing a Rediscovery of India’s Republic

Impact of China's One Child Policy

I just finished an all-day PD with the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. Eric Fish, the author of China's Millennials, discussed his book with us and shared two cool current essays about modern China.

One essay from the South China Morning Post discusses the consequences of the one-child law instituted in 1975. Another article looks at how the policy has skewed the sex ratio

And an essay from Time Magazine examines the threat posed by China's aging population. Both essays might be great for the modern unit. Students might analyze population graphs over time and figure out which policies might have affected the population trends.

Finally, filmmaker Wang Nanfu uncovers the untold history of China’s One-Child policy and the generations impacted in a documentary called "One Child Nation," which you can watch on Amazon Prime here. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Muslim Detention Camps in China: Resources

Here are resources for teaching about the Muslims camps in China.

Vox offers a good 9-minute overview of the camps below.  Facing History has a lesson in which students read personal accounts of Uighurs in the internment camps in Xinjiang Province.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published a leak of highly classified Chinese government documents from the camps.   And the New York Times published a terrific story highlighting the important takeaways from the documents.

Here's an awesome comic book from Note about "missing" Uighur woman (thanks to Jeremy Green for posting the link). The Washington Post has a story about her (Mihrigul Tursun) and the comic book called "Japanese manga about a Uighur woman’s persecution in China becomes viral hit." In addition,  you can read her testimony before Congress in November and see a short video of her testimony.  She did another interview with Radio Freee Asia here.

Another testimonial from the camps comes from Ferkat Jawdat,  a Uighur who is an American citizen and lives in Virginia. His mother is in a detention camp in Xinjiang. He appeared on the Micahel Barbaro show on December 9th. You can listen to it here.

• New York Times, A Crackdown on Islam Is Spreading Across China 
• New York Times, China Said It Closed Muslim Detention Camps. There’s Reason to Doubt That.
• Foreign Policy Magazine: Xinjiang’s New Slavery, Coerced Uighur labor touches almost every part of the supply chain.
• CHINA CABLES International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Exposed: China’s Operating Manuals For Mass Internment And Arrest By Algorithm
• Foreign Policy Magazine:
• Atlantic Magazine: Uighurs Can’t Escape Chinese Repression, Even in Europe
• The Conversation: I researched Uighur society in China for 8 years and watched how technology opened new opportunities – then became a trap
• New York Times: Absolutely No Mercy:’ Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims
• New York Times: 5 Takeaways From the Leaked Files on China’s Mass Detention of Muslims
• The Week: Inside China's 're-education' camps
• Facing History, THE TARGETING OF UIGHUR MUSLIMS IN CHINA
• Vice Newes: A Teen Condemning Uighur ‘Concentration Camps’ in China Goes Viral on TikTok
• Council on Foreign Relations: China’s Repression of Uighurs in Xinjiang
• The Listening Post: The China Cables: Disrupting Beijing's Xinjiang narrative

Zoroastrianism: Resources

Here are a few interesting resources for studying Zoroastrianism.  They include several news stories including a couple that came out after the release of the movie, Bohemian Raphsodie, about Freddie Mercury. His parents were Zoroastrian.

And here are are a couple of short clips that review the history of Zoroastrianism.

• New York Times: Zoroastrians keep the Faith and Keep Dwindling

• Christianity Today: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism got their belief from Zoroastrianism.

• Religion News Service: Freddy Mercury's Family Faith; The Ancient Religion of Zoroastrianism

• BBC: Why India's Wealthy Parsi Community is Dying

• Washington Post: The ancient Persian god that may be at the heart of ‘Game of Thrones’

• BBC: Why is India's wealthy Parsi community vanishing?

• BBC: The Obscure religion that shaped the West

Global Silver Trade: Resources

Here are several great resources about the global silver trade and the development of Potosi. 

I particularly like the episode from 15-minute History and the story from Aeon by Kris Lane about Potosi. 

Kahn Academy, Spain, Portugal, and the creation of a global economy

15 Minute History, The Trans-Pacific Silver Trade and Early-Modern Globalization

A short video lecture from  Ursula Kampmann about the impact of the silver trade.

Untold History Potosi, The Silver El Dorado Documentary, below

Story of cities #6: how silver turned Potosí into 'the first city of capitalism'

From Aeon, The first global city

Hagia Sophia: Great Review of its History

Here's an excellent review of the Hagia Sophia from Religion for Breakfast.  

Andrew Mark Henry, the host, reviews the history of the Hagia Sophia. 

He explains how it was first built by Justinian and dedicated to holy wisdom and how in 1453, Turkish Muslims conquered Constantinople and eventually turned the Christian church into a mosque with minarets.

The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean

The New York Public Library has a terrific online exhibit about Africa in the Indian Ocean from the 7th century through the early modern period.

The exhibit includes short essays, images, video clips,  and maps.

Click on essays, then East Africa, and you can read about the Swahili and the trading networks in which they were involved.

You can also read about the influence of the Arabian Peninsula,  especially Yemen and Oman, on the Swahili coast.

The exhibit covers the other major players in the Western Indian Ocean network including India, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives.

Some of the maps show African migration across the Indian Ocean.

Here's a hyperdoc I made based on the site.

Seven Excellent Essays about Race, Segreation, & Reparations

Here are seven excellent essays about race and democracy.  Ted Genoways, the author of This Blessed Earth, tweeted these stories to show the "widespread reassessment of American History" that he argues is happening now. 

1. The Great Land Robbery: The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms Kicked Off the Land: Why so many black families are losing their property, By Lizzie Presser
   Race, History, and Memories of a Virginia Girlhood, Drew Gilpin Faust
2.   The Fight to Redefine Racism: In “How to Be an Antiracist,” Ibram X. Kendi argues that we should think of “racist” not as a pejorative but as a simple, widely encompassing term of description, By Kelefa Sanneh 
3. Can Stacey Abrams Save American Democracy? By Alexis Okeowo 
4. Stacey Abrams’s Fight for a Fair Vote: As the 2020 elections approach, Abrams is leading the battle against voter suppression, By Jelani Cobb 
5. A Lost Work by Langston Hughes Examines the Harsh Life on the Chain Gang In 1933, the Harlem Renaissance star wrote a powerful essay about race. It has never been published in English—until now 
6. Segregation Now ...Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, the schools in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, show how separate and unequal education is coming back, By Nikole Hannah -Jones
7. The Case for reparations two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. By, Ta-Neshisi Coates

Afro-Asian Perspectives on the Cold War & Decolonization

Medium, the online magazine, has a fascinating section called "Afro-Asian Visions: New Perspectives on Decolonisation, the Cold War, and Asian-African Connections." 

It includes dozens of essays from a non-western perspective, many of which should be ideal for the world history classroom.

In one essay, for example, called "Africans in World War Two Asia: Encounters Across Continents," the author, Oliver Coates, notes that over 46,000 East Africans fought in World War II.  Although the East Africans faced "open racism" which included pay discrimination, dietary regimes, and leave restrictions,  they learned a lot about new cultures like language, religion, and food.

In another essay called "‘China and the Devil Slaves’: challenging Afro-Asian solidarities in Tanzania," author George Roberts, shows how Tanzania fell under the influence of China after decolonization adopting a Mao brand of socialism that "romanticized the peasantry." Roberts notes that the West feared "Red Guards descending upon already troubled Africa," which added fuel the developing Cold War.

Thanks to history teacher,  Jeremy Green, for tweeting the link.

Amazing 3D Model of an 18th-Century Slave Ship

Here is an amazing 3D model of an 18th-century slave ship called the Aurore.

Researchers from Emory University worked with Dr. Nicholas Radburn, the co-editor of the "Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database," to develop the 3D model.

The Aurore left La Rochelle in France in August 1784 bound for the African coast to buy slaves to work in sugar and coffee plantations in Santa Domingue.

The 3d model is based on a set of existing slave ship plans.

The result is an amazing 4-minute review of the horrors of a slave ship.

400th anniversary of 1619 & Start of American Slavery

If you teach world history, keep your eyes out for the August 18th edition of the New York Times Magazine.

According to the twitter thread below, the Times will publish a special digital section about that fateful year and its legacy. You can see below the list of historians who will be contributing. Here's the link on twitter.

Thread by @nhannahjones: "So, here it is. If you follow me on here, if you know me in real life, then you know I'm obsessed with the year 1619 & how the start of […]" #1619Project #project1619

Hindu Creation Story

Teaching Hinduism?  Think about beginning the unit with this awesome creation story.

Hinduism has many creation stories. That's because Hindus believe there is no single creation but rather cycles of creation.

 Here, Gillian Anderson narrates our creation story for BBC Radio 4.

Astronomical Advances before Classical Greece

Long before Classical Greeks like Pythagoras, Babylonians in the first millennium BCE were making revolutionary observations about the universe, according to a review of cuneiform tablets by Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid. ‏

Dr. Al-Rashid notes that between 2000 and 1600BCE, Babylonians "began systematically to record celestial phenomena and their related terrestrial events."

 Some of the tablets, she notes, record "daily astronomical observations in detail, like the position of the moon, occurrences of eclipses, and the location of planets in the sky."

 The takeaway from all this, at least from a world history point of view, is that astronomy and math did not begin with Classical Greece. As Dr. Al-Rashid notes

Thread by @Moudhy: "I opened a lecture on the history of astronomy in ancient Mesopotamia today by acknowledging that cuneiform tablets, to an untrained eye, ca […]"

How Zoroastrianism Shaped the West

Teaching Zoroastrianism?  Here' s a fascinating essay that outlines its influence today!

Which religion influenced the beliefs of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism?

Monotheism started with its founder long before Abraham. The idea of heaven and hell originated with it, as did the idea of good and evil.

Not only did its ideas influence the Abrahamic religions, but they also influenced culture.

Richard Strauss' "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"  can be seen in the score of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Freddy Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, got inspiration from the religion's founder and the Mazda car maker takes its name from the founder.

Zoroastrianism started in Iran and grew with the three great Iranian empires which included that of Cyrus the Great, but began to weaken after the invasion of Alexander the Great and the later development of Islam. Many Zoroastrians fled and migrated to India where they became known as Parsis.

In a terrific essay for BBC Culture, called "The Obscure Religion that Shaped the West," Joobin Bekhrad, examines the influence of Zarathustra's beliefs on western culture.

You can find out more about Zoroastrianism from BBC Religion.

And here is an interesting article about the vanishing population of India's Parsi community.

Why We Must Understand Chinese Philosophy

Wikipedia Commons

Here's an interesting essay that reminds us why we should study Chinese philosophy

Most American know little about Chinese philosophy. They know little beyond the idea that Confucianism is based on five relationships and Daoism has something to do with nature.

In addition, few philosophy departments in the top universities even have a regular faculty member who teaches Chinese philosophy.  Of course, you can find a lot of Greek philosophy.

But, according to Bryan W. Van Norden, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor at Yale-NUS College, understanding Chinese thought is a matter of urgency.  He outlines three reasons in a terrific essay for The Conversation called, Why the US doesn’t understand Chinese thought – and must.

1. China's economy could become the largest in the world by 2030. We should understand the philosophical and religious framework of a country with so much influence  because, notes Professor Norden, "traditional philosophy is of continuing relevance in China." 
2. Chinese philosophy has a lot to offer. For example, Confucian ethics can "provide a deeper understanding of ethical issues regarding the family and can even inform policy recommendations."
3. Finally, Professor Norden argues that we need more cultural diversity in our philosophy departments. They are too Euro-centric in focus. They should diversify into Asia and consider feminist, indigenous American, Islamic, Latin American and South Asian philosophies.

Just as one might need to understand the Judeo-Christian background of the United States in order to understand some of the political policy, one should understand the Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist philosophies that inform Chinese policy.

Bartolomé de las Casas -- Short clip about his Importance

Here's a terrific six-minute review of the importance of Bartolomé de las Casas from Ohio State University's  (OSU) Origins.

De Las Casas was a 16th-century Spanish Dominican friar who protested the treatment of slaves in the Carribean. He petitioned the Spanish crown in 1515 in an attempt to stop the abuses. He was among the first to report on the exploitation of indigenous Americans and call for the abolition of slavery.

Four Throughline Podcasts Ideal for World History

Here are FOUR awesome episodes of Throughline that are ideal for World History. The first one compares the life of Simon Bolivar to that of Hugo Chavez, who died in 2012.

The second episode traces the conflict between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam while the third episode outlines the origins of the split between North and South Korea in light of President Trump's overtures to Kim Jong Un.

The last episode examines the assassination of the popularly elected Iranian leader, Mohammad Mossadegh.

The two hosts do a great job of tying the historical event to current events.

• El Liberator compares Venezuela's Chavez to Simon Bolivar

• War of the Worlds explores the Sunni Shia split

• The Forgotten War  reviews the Korean War

• How The CIA Overthrew Iran's Democracy In 4 Days outlines the assassination of Mohammad Mossadegh and its reverberations today.

Student-Centered Blended Learning

Here is an excellent video clip from Edutopia that shows what a student-centered blended learning class looks like.

It shows how students at different learning levels can master skills and content at their own pace.  Instead of listening to a lecture, students usually start class with a video and take notes.  They then move on to an actual lesson assignment and then to an exit ticket to show mastery.

Some students have to listen to the video a couple of times while some might need to listen only once.  Consequently, students are often working on different lessons.  The teacher circulates and helps students as needed.

This sounds great but seems to require a big investment in planning multiple lessons each day.  While one student works on lesson two, another might be working on lesson four, which means teachers have to have a lot of lessons on tap each day, if I understand the concept correctly.

Persuasive Maps

The Cornell University Library has an awesome collection of "persuasive maps" like the one above.  The collection, which comes from Cornell's rare maps division, includes maps great for both American and world history.

The purpose of the maps is to influence opinion and would be great for students to practice their sourcing skills.

The maps employ different persuasive tools like allegory and satire.