Middle East
“All People Oppressed by Imperialism around the World”: Competing Global Visions in the Interwar Period, 1919-1939
A discussion of how to teach the 1920s and 1930s that explores competing ideologies, including anticolonialism.
More Thunderbolts: Gunpowder and the Ottoman Empire
An example of the use of gunpowder weapons to facilitate expansion of the Ottoman Empire
“A Period of Hatred and Despair”: Middle East and North Africa in the Era of New Imperialism, c.1830 - c.1940
A discussion of how to teach New Imperialism in the Middle East and North Africa
“Addicted to the Coffeehouse”: Snapshots from the Ottoman Empire
A discussion of the challenges of teaching the Ottomans in world history courses and how to use an Ottoman coffeehouse to teach about the empire
More than Four Turtles: Global Renaissances in the Fifteenth Century (Part I)
After spending two days setting up the big picture of the revival of Afroeurasia in the fifteenth century, we dive into the Renaissance, or Renaissances, on the third day. I use two different readings with the students and set up the class in a sort of a modified Harkness style
Healing the Sick Man of Europe
If the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was going through a period of transformation, rather than beginning a 400-year decline, it would seem that the Empire, which collapsed in 1922, had to be declining in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While it’s true that the Empire
Globalizing the Renaissance
About ten years ago, I developed a lesson on “Placing the Renaissance in a Global Setting.” The lesson can still be found on the AP World History Teacher Community, although you need to have an account to access it. The lesson was partially a response to an earlier discussion on
When the End of Growth is not the Beginning of Decline
If the myth of isolation is one of the main consequences of Eurocentrism for how we think about the history of East Asia, Eurocentric approaches to the history of the Ottoman Empire have encouraged us to begin to see its actual end in 1922 long before it occurred. A quick
Explanations, Conjunctures, and Teaching about the Islamic State
“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” — H.L. Mencken in “The Divine Afflatus” in New York Evening Mail (16 November 1917) Recently it’s been almost impossible to look at a newspaper, watch a
