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The Encounters of 1492 and Their Influence on the Wider World
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by Donald Johnson
World History Center, Northeastern University
Boston, Massachusetts
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Disclaimer
Most of the information on these websites is dated and refers back to the AP® World History Curriculum prior to the course revisions implemented in the 2011-12 academic year.
The encounters from 1492 through 1550 brought together three worlds placed at the fringes of the Atlantic: the worlds of Europeans, Africans, and Amerindians. Three distinct cultural and historical experiences came together, although the peoples were far from equal in power. This unit emphasizes the changing conceptualizations and relationships of the groups, several of the major exchanges among the groups, and the impact of these exchanges worldwide.
The six lessons of this unit focus on contrasting the worldviews of Amerindians and Europeans, tracing the initial encounters between Amerindians and Europeans, analyzing diseases from Africa and Europe as they affected the Americas, evaluating the biological mixing of the three continental populations, the exchange of foods among continents, and a review of the unit.
Student activities include exploring worldviews through text documents with an "option schema," analyzing initial encounters through "inner/outer circle," writing a newspaper article, discussing text documents in class and in writing, and participating in a talk show.
Main Points of the Unit
Big Questions
Best Practices
Lesson Summary
Assessment Overview
AP World History Course Description Connections
Objectives
Materials
Big Questions
- How did the prevailing worldviews of both the Spanish and the Amerindians shape the interactions of their first encounters?
- What were the main exchanges and mixes of the encounters of 1492?
- Could the conquest of the Amerindian civilization and death of millions of its people properly be called a form of "genocide"?
- Can we pass judgment upon the historical actions of individuals or empires in evaluating the encounters of 1492?
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:
- Analyze and compare text documents
- Inner/Outer circle seminar
- Compose a news story or cartoon
- Create a map of a historical process
Lesson Summary
Lesson 1. Worldviews of the Amerindians and Europeans
The lesson focuses first on helping students understand that they have worldviews, even if they don't perceive this as a fact, and secondly that their worldviews help shape their lives. The lesson then asks students to analyze readings that look at the worldviews of the Amerindians and Europeans before contact. The first part of the lesson could be eliminated if worldviews were addressed in a historiography unit (see sample in Introduction to New World History unit) or in Foundations.
Lesson 2. The First Encounters
Students read five primary sources on various aspects of the encounter and prepare to ask higher-level questions on these documents. Through participating in an inside-outside seminar, students explore diverse interpretations while analyzing documents.
Lesson 3. The Role of Disease
Through primary, secondary, and literary sources, students read excerpts on the impact of disease on the Amerindians. After a brief discussion of the sources, students produce a newspaper product emphasizing point of view and evidence: a political cartoon, news story or editorial.
Lesson 4. The Exchange of DNA -- Biological Mixing
Through the reading of a secondary source, students look at racially mixed families in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. A discussion follows focusing on the impact on the gender and social structure by these new groups of people.
Lesson 5. Exchange of Foods
Students use their own pantries as well as a case study of the potato to explore movement of food products as a result of the Columbian exchange. By mapping these agricultural connections, students can see which areas benefited from the exchange.
Lesson 6. Role Play and/or Written Assessment
Teachers have the option of having students participate in a role-play of a circa-1540 talk show or complete an in-class written assessment. Teachers may wish to pass out the roles for the talk show early in the unit. Procedures and materials for both alternatives are included.
Assessment Overview
For the "option schema" of Lesson 1, students will assess their own and each others' options; teachers will assess their choices. Lesson 2 includes a graded inner/outer circle seminar. Teachers assess the homework assignments completed at the end of Lessons 3 and 4, and the maps they create in Lesson 5.
AP World History Course Description Connections
Themes
- Change and continuity
- Technology, demography, and environment
- Systems of social and gender structure
Habits of Mind
- Constructing and evaluating arguments
- Using texts and other primary documents
- Assessing diversity of interpretation
Major Developments, Comparisons, and Snapshot
AP World History Course Description, Major Developments 1450-1750: 1 - Questions of periodization; 2 - Changes in trade, technology, and global interactions; 5 - Demographic and environmental changes.
Objectives
Content Objectives
- Develop a basic understanding of the major worldviews of the two civilizations that were involved in the encounters of 1492 and how these affected their on-going responses
- Understand and appreciate how relationships between peoples evolved during the first fifty years of the encounter
- Understand the major changes in world agriculture and the world economy as a result of the introduction of foods and animals from one part of the world to others
- Learn and appreciate the role that germs played in the encounter
Skill Objectives
- Learn the use of an "option schema"
- Note-taking in an inner/outer circle seminar
- Analysis through mapping
Materials
- Blank paper for mental maps or blank outline world maps
- Copies of handouts within the unit
- Access for teacher to the Web or print version of Best Practices -- Options schema
General Editors: Patrick Manning and Deborah Smith Johnston; World History Center, Northeastern University
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