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Trading Patterns in AfroEurasia Before 1000 C.E.
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by Shari Cohen
Hazel Crest, Illinois
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Buy This Teaching Unit ($8.00)
Abstract
This unit focuses on trade and economic patterns in the AfroEurasian world before 1000 C.E. Although most inhabitants of AfroEurasia had no direct role in long-distance trade, the unit demonstrates the significance of the interconnections among numerous goods, merchant communities, ecological zones, and transport systems for the whole population of this immense region. The lessons show students how historians use evidence to construct their understandings of the past, giving attention to the distinction between primary and secondary sources. The four regions of AfroEurasia on which the unit centers are labeled as Silk Road, Red Sea-Persian Gulf, Baltic-Black Sea, and trans-Saharan regions.
The pedagogical strategy of this unit is to lead students through translating information on patterns of trade from maps to charts to debates about sources to narrative summaries, and then reversing the direction of translation until the unit ends up with a map as a culminating activity. The titles of the lessons reflect the succession of methods of analysis students will conduct: mapping, classifying, debating, narrating, debating, classifying, and mapping.
The five units address the geography of commerce in AfroEurasia; the concept of "Southernization" as developed by historian Lynda Shaffer; analysis of connections among the commodities, the environment, and the transportation of goods; identification of the roles of women in AfroEurasian trade; and an overview of the elements of the AfroEurasian trading system.
Students use accounts of travelers along the different routes; practice applying archaeological evidence to historical questions; and analyze histories, geographies, and maps created during this period before 1000 CE. Classroom activities include reading and drawing maps of trade routes; Socratic seminar in the concept of "Southernization," filling in charts linking commodities, environment, and transportation; class discussion of women's roles in commerce; and a mapping exercise to develop a global synthesis of materials in the unit.
Main Points of the Unit
Big Questions
Best Practices
Lesson Summary
Assessment Overview
AP World History Course Description Connections
Objectives
Materials
Big Questions
- How do historians use diverse types of sources to identify patterns in trading systems before 1000 CE?
- What are the benefits of various ways (maps, charts, narratives) of representing trade in AfroEurasia?
- Are there similarities in trading patterns of different geographic areas?
- How does trade in the Eastern Hemisphere demonstrate that people in various parts of the hemisphere were aware of people in other trading areas?
- What aspects of trade reveal information about gender relations?
Best Practices
Best Practices are teaching strategies that are interactive and involve high-level thinking skills (see AP World History Best Practices Guide, eds. P. Manning and D.S. Johnston). The appropriate Best Practices vary widely with teacher strengths, school environment, student population, and experience. But all student populations will benefit from experience with strategies showing that world history is much more than lectures and more than a survey of facts and dates. This unit, within its individual lessons, includes the following examples of Best Practice teaching strategies:
- Create and analyze maps
- Socratic seminar
- Create analytical chart on trade
- Conduct a document-based debate
Lesson Summary
Lesson 1. Mapping Transportation and Trade
Students read maps, predict how topography affected trade, discuss how historical maps are constructed, and (for homework) construct a map of the topographical features in AfroEurasia and transfer information from maps to a chart classifying trade routes.
Lesson 2. Classifying States and Trade Routes
Students discuss the trading patterns they identified when they transferred information from the maps to the chart on states and trade routes.
Lesson 3. "Southernization": Discussing a Historian's Model
Students read historian Lynda Shaffer's essay, "Southernization," which provides a broad interpretation of trade and economic change in AfroEurasia before 1000 C.E. They then participate in a Socratic seminar on the historiography of trade, reviewing the article's argument and assessing the source material on which it is based. Further, for homework students conduct an additional exercise in historiography, looking at a selected list of sources and predicting how historians might use them to write about trade patterns before 1000 C.E. in AfroEurasia.
Lesson 4. Narrating Evidence on Interregional Trading Connections
Students combine the materials they have explored and created in previous lessons to write a narrative of the process of AfroEurasian trade.
Lesson 5. Debating Gender and Long-Distance Trade
Students return from narrative to debate of historiography, conducting a debate on the role of women in AfroEurasian trade before 1000 CE, relying on the interpretations of two historians and the other materials they have been exploring.
Lesson 6. Classifying Interregional Trading Connections
Students conduct a further exercise in classifying information, drawing on summaries and excerpts of various sources to fill in a chart on AfroEurasian trading patterns and connections before 1000 CE. The chart indicates the goods traded, the environmental conditions of trade, and the means of transportation.
Lesson 7. Mapping Trade Patterns
Students translate and synthesize their understanding of trading patterns, drawing on all the materials in various media to complete the unit by drawing a mental map of AfroEurasian trading patterns, with attention to trade routes, varying environments, and systems of transportation for the interconnected regions of AfroEurasia.
Assessment Overview
In Lesson 1, teachers may assess student maps. In Lesson 2, teachers may assess student analysis charts and participation in discussion. In Lesson 3, teachers can assess student participation in the Socratic seminar. In Lesson 4, teachers can assess student narratives of interregional trading connections. In Lesson 5, students self-assess and peer-assess in the course of a debate. In Lesson 6, teachers may assess student analysis charts. In Lesson 7, students assess their peers' work on mental maps of trade.
AP World History Course Description Connections
Themes
- Interactions in economy and politics
- Technology, demography, and environment
- Cultural and intellectual developments
Habits of Mind
- Constructing and evaluating arguments
- Assessing change and continuity
- Seeing local and global patterns
Major Developments
- Developing agriculture and technology
- Classical civilizations
- Late classical period
- Interregional networks and contacts
Objectives
Content Objectives
- Define how syncretism and the establishment of trade diasporas related to the development of the long distance trade in AfroEurasia
- Identify the locations of key political units in different trading areas
- Identify similarities and differences in trading patterns among the four trading areas: the Silk Road(s), the Trans-Saharan routes, the Indian Ocean/Arabian routes, and the Baltic Sea/Eastern European routes
- Discuss historiography, how historians use sources to write about the past
Skill Objectives
- Transfer information from text and map sources to a map
- Transfer information from maps and text sources to a chart
- Apply a synthesis of map and chart information to two types of discussions (Socratic Seminar and a debate)
- Assess interpretations in concise historical documents
- Write a narrative summarizing the information previously explored
- Debate a historical interpretation
- Analyze knowledge about patterns and connections by completing a chart
- Conclude by creating a map from memory that demonstrates a clear thesis about the trading patterns in AfroEurasia in the period before 1000 CE
Materials
- Handouts, including maps, charts, catalogues of sources, and student assignments
- Web sites showing maps, images, and text documents
- Lynda Shaffer's article on "Southernization" (reprint)
- Images of artifacts: coins, horses, camels, jewelry -- these images can be found in many textbooks and support materials, primary source readers, art books, and Web sites. A partial list of Web sites is included.
General Editors: Patrick Manning and Deborah Smith Johnston; World History Center, Northeastern University
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