Saylor.org's Early Globalizations: East Meets West (1200s-1600s)

Dear Wikibookians,

No doubt some of you are familiar with the free college courses available on Saylor.org. Much like the Wikimedia community, we are committed to providing free and accessible education for everyone with internet access. At Saylor, we combine some of our custom-created educational materials with materials that are already available throughout the internet. However, because we sometimes use links to third party materials, those sections of our courses are not entirely sustainable. The Saylor Wikibooks Project is a way for you to help minimize that threat. We’ve uploaded a number of our course outlines to Wikibooks in the hope that you all will contribute to our effort. Our course outlines have been developed by our consultant professors by studying a collection of syllabi of relevant courses from various traditional brick and mortar institutions. This guarantees that our students will be provided the same learning opportunity as a student enrolled in a traditional institution. We believe that we have created the best structure for our courses, which optimizes the information that students would be expected to know. By creating openly licensed content that fits in with Saylor’s established course outlines, (in the form of Wikibooks’ textbooks), you can add to the ever-expanding body of wiki material, while simultaneously improving the sustainability of our courses.

Thanks for your help,

The Saylor Team

If you'd like to learn more about the project please visit User:Thomas_Simpson

Summary

This course will introduce you to the history of the world’s major civilizations from medieval times to the early modern era. You will learn about the pivotal political, economic, and social changes that took place in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe during this period. The course will be structured chronologically, with each unit focusing on the expansion or decline of a particular civilization or the interactions and exchanges between civilizations. The units will include representative secondary and primary source documents that illustrate important overarching political, economic, and social themes, such as the transformation of western Europe during the Renaissance, the emergence of a more inclusive world economy, and the impact of early European exploration and colonization. By the end of the course, you will understand how many different civilizations evolved from isolated societies into expansive, interconnected empires capable of exerting global influence.

Global Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

Think critically and analytically about world history in the medieval and early modern eras.
Identify and describe the emergence, decline, and main features of the Byzantine Empire.
Identify the origins and characteristics of the European medieval period and describe the rapidly changing forces at work in society, the economy, and religion during this time.
Identify the origins of the Aztec and Inca civilizations and assess how these empires affected socio-economic development in the Americas.
Identify the origins of the Tang and Song dynasties in China and assess the impact of these empires on Chinese government, society, religion, and economy during what scholars refer to as the “golden age.”
Identify the origins of the Mongol Empire, which dominated much of Asia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Students will analyze the nature of this empire created by nomads.
Identify the reasons for a changing balance in the world economy in the 1400s and analyze why Europe superseded Asia as the most dominant civilization on the globe.
Assess how and why the European Age of Discovery had such a large impact on the New World, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Identify the origins and characteristics of the Renaissance and describe its impact on European civilization as a whole.
Identify the origins of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Europe and assess how this movement altered the social, political, and religious fabric of Europe.
Identify the origins of colonial Brazil and New Spain. Students will also be able to assess the impact of Spanish and Portuguese colonization on the New World, Africa, and Europe.
Identify the origins of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires and assess the unique characteristics of these dynasties and their impact upon Asia and the world.
Identify the origins of the Atlantic slave trade, assessing how this forced migration of peoples affected Africa, Africans, Europe, and the New World.
Analyze and describe the Asian trading world, the Ming dynasty in China, the “warring states,” and early modern eras in Japan.
Analyze and interpret primary source documents from the medieval period to the early modern era using historical research methods.

References

The information presented in this Wikibook has been drawn from various open source or public domain materials from saylor.org and Wikimedia. The use of this material is in compliance of the Terms of Use of Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikimedia Commons, etc.