The Big Six: Trimester 3
1A. Why do different civilizations have different types of governments?
1B. How much control should a government have over the governed?
2A. How does where you live affect how you live?
2B. What motivates groups to conquer other lands and people, and what effect does being colonized have on the people in the conquered lands?
3A. How do groups that are unlike one another come together to work for a common cause?
3B. Do values impact society or does society impact values?
Categories Trimester Three
Main Concepts
I. Political History: Political history includes - political leaders (elections), laws, types of government and influence on modern politics, military issues (leaders, significant battles and wars)
1. French Revolution
● Louis XV, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
● Three Estates-Estates General System
● Phases/Tennis Court (National Assembly); Reign of Terror (Thermidorian Reaction; National Convention); Directory
● Napoleon
● Conference of Vienna
2. Russian Revolution
● Tsarist Russia
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Alexander II, Alexander III, NIcholas II, Rasputin
● Byzantine and European influence on the development of Russia
● Challenges faced by Czar Nicholas II-such as: Russo-Japanese War, Bloody Sunday, October Manifesto/Duma, Rasputin, WWI, lack of industry
● Karl Marx develops ideas on communism--worker vs. worker for benefit of corporate elite (and WWI’s affirmation of that)
● Modern importance of social class words such as proletariat and bourgeoisie, Dictatorship of the Proletariat
● March Revolution, November Revolution, Assassination of the Tsar
● Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky
● Reign of Stalin - such as Collectivization, Five Year Plans, Gulags, Purges
3. Comparative study of Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America
● Effects of Colonialism -- As it pertains to the region taught: Such as - Berlin Conference (Africa), Treaty of Tordesillas (Latin America), and colonizers such as Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Dutch, British, etc.
● Comparative study could include examples such as:
-Brazil vs. South Africa; El Salvador vs. Democratic Republic of the Congo
-Or let students pick a country from each to study in a group
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ South Africa and Apartheid (causes and effects)
-Election of Nelson Mandela and its effect on South Africa
-Impact of Communism / Socialism
-Transformation of the country post-apartheid
❖ Sierra Leone/Liberia-Child Soldiers, Conflict Diamonds and Minerals
❖ Sudanese Civil War
❖ Rwandan Genocide
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Spanish conquest and rule
❖ Brazil’s development as an independent Nation
❖ Operation Condor
❖ The drug trade’s impact on governments
A. Geography
1. French Revolution
● Size/location/power: such as the War of Spanish Succession
● The impact of geography on Napoleonic expansion
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Unusual weather cycle-(volcano-snow-floods-drought-crop failure)
2. Russian Revolution
● Vast size of Russia as factor preventing unification
● Vast ethnic diversity/geographic differences: European vs. Asian Russia
● Ability to navigate in Russia by river/canal in West
● Interaction with Constantinople
● Trans Siberian Railway
3. Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America
● Impact of Colonization
● Key regions and features
● Human/environment interaction-How does where you live affect how you live?
B. Warfare
1. French Revolution
● The various coalitions and interventions by outside powers
● Rise and fall of Napoleon as leader such as - Continental System, Russian Campaign, Peninsular Campaign
2. Russian Revolution
● Effects of Russo-Japanese War
● Russian Revolution Phases one and two
● Class warfare/civil war; Whites vs. Reds (US involvement Polar Expedition)
3. Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America
● European Conquest
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Genocide in Rwanda vs. Darfur; conflict diamonds; Child Soldiers; the Drug Wars
II. Economic History: Economic history includes - money, taxes, trade, labor, land Economics
1. French Revolution
● Debt--out of control state spending such as: Versailles, French and Indian War/Seven Year’s War, Marie/Louis’ spending, American Revolution
● Poor Harvest: drought, cattle, disease, heavy taxes, high bread prices
● Economics of Estates System
● Radicalization of poor by middle class--Storming of the Bastille, the Great Fear
2. Russian Revolution
● Industrial Revolution causes new industrial working class and small wealthy elite impacting Marx’s ideas
● Karl Marx’s economic theory spelled out in Das Kapital
● Russia’s lack of industrial base at turn of century
● Tsar’s tolerance of economic inequality
● Russia’s need to industrialize to become a modern power
● Problems for communist theory—no industrial working class in Russia
3. Sub-Saharan Africa/Latin America
● Impact of Imperialism
● The Columbian Exchange
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Impact of Apartheid, boycotts of S. Africa, conflict diamonds and minerals
❖ AIDS’ impact on the Economy
❖ Drug Trade
❖ Portugal's differences from Spain in its interaction with the New World
❖ The significance and importance of the Amazon
❖ Other ideas such as the World Cup and Olympics
III. Religious History: Religious history includes - god(s), religious groups/movements and influence and conflict
1. French Revolution
● Anti-clerical nature of revolutionary--Dechristianisation--Civil Constitution of the Clergy, Enlightenment influence or Cult of the Supreme Being (Deism)
● Church as preserver of status quo/enemy
2. Russian Revolution
● Ties to Byzantine Orthodox church
● Rejection of religion by communists—“Opiate of the masses”
● Cult of Personality
● Atheism and Communist State
3. Sub-Saharan Africa/Latin America
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Creation Stories
❖ Religious influences: The Spanish and Catholicism, African influences on Latin American religious movements, Sudan/Darfur-Animism, Christianity, Islam
IV. Social History: Social history includes - identity/assimilation, class groups, living conditions/leisure, gender issues, family issues, moral issues, racial issues
1. French Revolution
● Class Warfare
● Revolution
● Anti-clerical movement
2. Russian Revolution
● Peasant life-farmer and industrial worker
● Small elitist ruling class
● Radicalization of the middle class
● Class as a way of looking at warfare—who benefits from war?
● Communist famines and purges as ways to control population and dissent
● Communism as the determining factor in all areas of Soviet life
● Censorship issues/freedom of religion/anti-Semitism/Pogroms
3. Exploration
● White is right/manifest destiny
● Colonialism
● Slavery
● Mercantilism
4. Sub-Saharan Africa/Latin America
● Gender roles
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Apartheid’s impact
❖ Causes of the Genocides in Rwanda and Darfur
❖ The impact of AIDS on the family
❖ How Brazil has dealt with Race and Identity
❖ Why it’s called Latin America
V. Intellectual History: Intellectual history includes - ideas, thinkers, philosophers, books that move ideas, education, technology, inventions, machines, communication tools
1. French Revolution
● Enlightenment Ideas and Old-school kings
● Communism in earliest form
● Declaration of the Rights of Man--Locke and Rousseau
2. Russian Revolution
● Adam Smith—Wealth of Nations
● Karl Marx—Das Kapital
● Origin of ideas in the Commune in France
● Industrial Revolution and the enslavement of the lower classes
● Machines vs. the Individual
● Use of Propaganda
● Literature and Plays as Dissent in Communist Russia
● Censorship
3. Sub-Saharan Africa/Latin America
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Pan-African Movement
❖ Latin America-anti-Colonialism
VI. Artistic History: Artistic history includes - architecture, fine arts (literature, theater, music, books, painting, sculpture, etc.)
1. French Revolution
● Versailles
● The Marseillaise
● Neoclassical Art-Jacques Louis David
2. Russian Revolution
● Russian brilliance in art, literature and music
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, etc
● Communist Art—tool of the state
● Architecture of the Kremlin
● Communist Utilitarian Architecture
● Dissent through Fine Art
3. Sub-Saharan Africa/Latin America
● The blending of European, native, African art and architecture
Teachers have flexibility to use examples such as the following:
❖ Diego Rivera