Lesson #37 - Exploration and Isolation

Today's lesson will be a continuation of what we started yesterday. Tomorrow, we'll focus more on China and Japan's decisions to turn inward toward isolation at this time period. This Age of Exploration (and its consequences) is basically our topic for the rest of the way.

Here's where we left off... I'll give you a few minutes to meet with the others who had the same voyage(s), and then we'll hear from all the groups.

Conquest of the Oceans:

• Treasure fleets of Zheng He
  
• Prince Henry sends ships along the African shore
  
• First voyage of Cristobal Colon (aka Christopher Columbus)
  
• de Gama's sea voyage to India
  
• Magellan circumnavigates the world

Using both the notes and the sources, try to figure out answers to these questions:

1. Who ordered or authorized the voyage?
2. What reasons were given for making the voyage?
3. How was the voyage paid for?
4. What were the attitudes of the voyagers towards the people they met?
5. What problems were encountered with people they met?
6. Who benefited from the voyage? How?

"Routes to Empire" - This will sort of work like a "Readers' Theater" presentation. We'll give you each a primary source, and you'll be divided into two groups. One group will look at Portugal's new empire in Asia, and the other will consider Spain's empire in the Americas.

Your job is this. You'll have 20 minutes to prepare. The "big question" that you need to answer is below. You can take it in a number of various ways, but that's the general topic. I want to hear support, evidence, or proof from EACH of the primary sources that you have. You can read a line or a paragraph or whatever, but someone in your group should be reading a section from every document you have to support your answer. It might work to sort of have a narrator or moderator, but I'll leave that up to you.

Portugal: How, and with what success, did Portugal shift from finding sea routes to controlling them, and to building a maritime empire in Asia?

Spain: How did Spain shift from finding a continent to controlling it and to building a land empire in the Americas?

With the time remaining, we'll shift our focus toward two civilizations that chose not to participate in the Age of Exploration, China and Japan. To get you started, we'll do a little poetry...

"History Haiku" - As you'll be reading tonight, the haiku is a Japanese three-line verse where the syllables per line follow a five-seven-five pattern. I can't think of a better way to have you all introduce a specific person or idea from the China and Japan sections tomorrow. You'll each claim one of the following, and we'll double up on a couple. (Each of you does your own in that case.) You are also allowed a sentence of introduction before you read your story. That way, you can give us the long name, important years or other information that doesn't fit in your haiku... Yes, you get five points for giving this a good try. HAVE YOURS READY TO SHARE IN CLASS TOMORROW.

China
Ming Dynasty
Hongwu
Zheng He
Manchu
Qing Dynasty
Kangxi

Japan
Oda Nobunaga
Totoyomi Hideyoshi
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Tokugawa Shogunate

HOMEWORK for tomorrow - Thursday, May 24th

Please read Section 3 of Chapter 19, "Japan Returns to Isolation." The quiz will be matching.

Your "History Haiku" should be ready to share at the appropriate time tomorrow.