The era known as the Age of Exploration, sometimes called the Age of Discovery, officially began in the early 15th century and lasted through the 17th century. The period is characterized as a time when Europeans began exploring the world by sea in search of new trading routes, wealth, and knowledge. The impact of the Age of Exploration would permanently alter the world and transform geography into the modern science it is today. Explorers learned more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and brought that knowledge back to Europe. Massive wealth accrued to European colonizers due to trade in goods, spices, and precious metals. Methods of navigation and mapping improved, switching from traditional portolan charts to the world's first nautical maps. New food, plants, and animals were exchanged between the colonies and Europe. Indigenous people were decimated by Europeans, from a combined impact of disease, overwork, and massacres. The work force needed to support the massive plantations in the New World, led to a 300 year slave trade that had an enormous impact on Africa. The impact persists to this day, with many of the world's former colonies still considered the "developing" world, while colonizers are the First World countries, holding a majority of the world's wealth and annual income. The Age of Exploration ended in the early 17th century after technological advancements and increased knowledge of the world allowed Europeans to travel easily across the globe by sea. The creation of permanent settlements and colonies created a network of communication and trade, therefore ending the need to search for new routes.
WH.H.4 - Analyze the political, economic, social & cultural factors that lead to the development of the first age of global interaction. 4.4: Analyze the effects of increased global trade on the interactions between nations in Europe, Southwest Asia, the Americas, Africa WH.H.5 - Analyze exploration and expansion in terms of its motivations and impact. 5.1: Explain how and why the motivations for exploration and conquest resulted in increased global interactions, differing patterns of trade, colonization, and conflict among nations (e.g., religious and political motives, adventure, economic investment, Columbian exchange, commercial revolution, conquistador destruction of Aztec and Incan civilizations, Triangular Trade, Middle Passage, trading outposts, plantation colonies, rise of capitalism, etc.). 5.2: Explain the causes and effects of exploration and expansion (e.g., technological innovations and advances, forces that allowed the acquisition of colonial possessions and trading privileges in Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Columbian exchange). 5.3: Analyze colonization in terms of the desire for access to resources and markets as well as the consequences on indigenous cultures, and environment (commercial revolution, Columbian exchange, religious conversion, spread of Christianity, spread of disease, spread of technology, conquistadors, slave trade, encomienda system, enslavement of indigenous people, mixing of populations). 5.4: Analyze the role of investment in global exploration in terms of its implications for international trade (e.g., transatlantic trade, mercantilism, joint-stock companies, trading companies, government, monarchical funding, corporations, creation of capital markets)
Essential Questions:
1. What are the positive and negative implications of human connection and interaction? 2. What motivates human beings to explore and expand? 3. How does increased human interaction and exploration impact physical geography and shape our environment?
Major Learning Points:
1. The methods of and motivations for exploration and conquest can result in increased global interactions, differing patterns of trade, colonization, and economic and political conflict among nations.
2. Economic revolutions and political developments instigate global trade, promote new business methods, and increase competition for profits.
3. Colonialism increases a nation’s wealth by guaranteeing control of resources for trade, raw materials for developing industry, and markets for their manufactured products.
4. Exploration and conquest lead to both intended and unintended consequences for indigenous populations and the environment.
5. Age of Exploration: The economic and geopolitical causes that led groups and nations to seek expansion, The search for a sea route to Asia, and the arrival of Columbus and other Europeans to the Americas helped create the Columbian Exchange, ability explorers had to expand their travel beyond traditional routes due to technological innovations
6. The Scientific Revolution - spirit of inquiry underlying interest in exploration Technological innovations that were made by the Portuguese and Spanish in shipbuilding, navigation and naval warfare astrolab, cartographers
7. Columbian Exchange - The movement of human beings, agricultural, mineral, and trade goods, as well as disease, between Europe, Africa, and the Americas is known as the Triangular Trade. How and why colonization prompted conflict between Europeans and Native Americans. The motivations for the establishment of the Transatlantic slave trade and the impact of that trade on African societies and European settlements in the Americas.
8. Chinese and Japanese isolation amid European exploration (imperial policy of controlling foreign influence and the creation of foreign enclaves to control trade)
9. Founding of the British colonies in North America occurred within a wide context of events: the decline of American Indian populations, the rise of the Spanish empire, conflict with other European powers, the African slave trade, and the transatlantic trade, and migration of Europeans. The effects of colonialism on both the imperial power and the colonized land and people. The economic system of mercantilism, voluntary and coerced interactions among American Indians, Africans, and Europeans in Spanish colonies laid the foundation for centuries of conflict.
10. economic systems changed as a result of exploration. new business and investment methods (e.g., joint-stock companies) developed in the medieval era allowed people to pool large amounts of capital needed for overseas ventures. encomienda system, The Commercial Revolution, a period of European economic expansion, colonialism and mercantilism which lasted from approximately the 13th century until the early 18th century. Expanded international trade and the push for overseas empires helped the growth of European capitalism.