Middle School History: Ancient Civilizations—Semester B

Sample Lesson - Introduction

Lesson 11.08: Detour Ahead

What? No Cinnamon? Egads!
(Source)

Things had been going so well with trade along the Silk Routes and then, almost suddenly, not so well. The Mongolian Empire started collapsing (thanks, plague), the Ming Dynasty came to power in China, and they "unfriended" pretty much everyone and pretty much shut down the Silk Routes.

Without the Chinese end of the Routes open anymore, a lot of the trading goods and partners were just out of the game. And so that was the end of international trade. No more silk, no more spices, no more pottery, none of it.

Just kidding. You don't really think those Europeans were going to just give up on the whole thing after over a thousand years of successful trade? Nah, these guys had plans. And today's lesson will reveal their schemes and how they played out. Because you gotta know things are going to happen when the cooks run out of cinnamon.

You know what happens when roads are closed, right? They just reroute traffic to go around another way. It's called a detour, and that's exactly what the Europeans had up their sleeves—nice, big, puffy Middle Ages sleeves full of ideas and plans.

Now, if they couldn't get the goods by traveling over land, as they'd been doing, what do you suppose they decided to do? If you guessed "go by water," you get a thousand shmoints. Unfortunately, shmoints don't count for anything along the Silk Routes.

Back to the point. Get ready to look at this adventure-by-sea and find out what happened when merchants took to the seas and opened up the Age of Discovery.

Sample Lesson - Reading

Reading 11.11.08: The Long Way Around

People had really come to rely on the goods they'd been getting through trade on the Silk Routes. After all, they'd been going for almost 2,000 years.

China was done, though—they wanted to keep to themselves, thank you very much. They did a little trading within the Indian Ocean, mostly led by an explorer by the name of Zheng He, but nothing on the scale of what the Europeans were about to get into.

Which was fine for China, as they had been major suppliers during the Silk Routes era, so they were pretty set with what they needed. Europeans, on the other hand were not so cool with this new arrangement. Sure, they'd stocked up on silk and were able to get it from other places now that the silkworms had been smuggled out. But the spices that they'd gotten so used to wouldn't grow in their climates, gosh darn it. And they had a hankering for some of that flava.

Now, there were some established trade routes between Northern Africa, Persia, India, and Southeast Asia—remember the Spice Routes? Yeah, those guys. So folks already knew that taking to the seas was an option. But there wasn't a direct path from Europe to those places—and that was a problem.

A Conundrum

Why not just keep on using those ports at the eastern end of the Mediterranean? Couldn't those Europeans just dock there and buy the spices that were still being sold there? If only it were that easy.

Unfortunately, there was this little spat between the Christians (mostly in Europe now) and the Muslims. The Muslims had taken over all of those ports between the mid-1400s and 1500s, and they were jacking up the taxes, especially in trades with Christians. That's what you call a monopoly.

So yeah, they had to find another way around. You know what they say, "when one door closes, another one opens." And open wide it did.

It's Round, I Swear!

You probably know this story. In 1492, A guy by the name of Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Yep, he was looking for those coveted spices and planned to get to India by sailing clear around the world. Instead, he found the islands southeast of North America, which ended up getting called the West Indies. You know, it's okay to be wrong sometimes, but not that wrong.

Some other Portuguese dudes made it around Africa six years later and actually did get to India, where they managed to set up trade and get their hands on the ingredients they needed. (That was quite the shopping trip.) Over a number of years, they partnered with some Dutch friends and set up trading posts all along their routes, including Southeast Asia, the Indo-Pacific, Africa, and back up to Europe.

These journeys were made possible by new and improved ships called caravels. Read more about caravels here.

Besides cool new ships, improvements in navigation technology allowed for these long voyages. Check out this article here to learn more about this technology.

Learn more about what made this sea route possible here.

Reforming and Revolting

And just when you think things were getting back on track for smooth sailing, trouble arose again. This time it was in the form of religious turmoil. You see, there was a spilt within the Christian community in Europe. It had been all-Catholic all the time until a few guys decided that things needed shaking up. The Dutch folks fell in with the reformers, and that made their Portuguese friends not so friendly anymore (leading to, ahem, the Dutch revolt). Their trading partnership broke up, and the Dutch business ended up coming out on top. That's why you hear about this business called the Dutch East India Company, or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie.

Try saying that five times fast.

Get the lowdown on the Dutch Revolt here.

They stayed on top of the trade game for a couple hundred years until Japan started cutting off trade, and the French Revolution made things kind of messy.

While We're At It…

So now the Dutch were doing their thing trading spices, and the Portuguese were taking their newly designed ships and navigating instruments (and sea legs) and continuing their exploration. Columbus wasn't really Portuguese, though he had strong ties in Portugal—like his wife. He was actually born in Italy, but since Portugal trained him and sent him out, they tend to count him as one of theirs.

Other Portuguese explorers included da Gama, Magellan, Dias, and the Corte Real brothers. The Portuguese weren't the only ones, though. There were folks from other countries who'd had their interest piqued by what was happening on the seas. Most notably were the French (including explorers Cartier, Marquette, and Champlain), Spaniards (holla at explorers Cortez, Ponce de Leon, De Soto, Pizarro, and Balboa), and English (what's up Raleigh, Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins).

For more on each of these guys, skim through this handy pdf.

If you're curious, you can also check out the biographies of these explorers.

This time of exploration is known as the Age of Discovery, and you can see why, right? Okay, granted, most of these places were already inhabited by native peoples, but hey, if it's new to European explorers, it gets a shiny name.

The Age of Discovery was about to lead to some interesting developments, some good, and some totally, totally bad.

Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 11.08: It All Started When…

The Silk Routes getting shut down, while certainly frustrating at first for those Europeans whose food was starting to get super bland, led to a boom in nautical exploration. And that's some pretty exciting stuff right there.

As such, we're gonna ask you to do some extra digging and prepare a PowerPoint presentation on the explorer of your choice.

First of all, you've got to make sure that you link your explorer's voyages to the closing of the Silk Routes. Maybe they weren't directly involved in hunting down spices (or maybe they were), but all of these explorers were influenced in some way by that event (even if they were just inspired by it). So that's one thing we want you to note.

What else do you need in your presentation? Here goes:

• All the important biographical deets—name (duh), date and place of birth, etc.
• Details about what made your explorer want to explore
• Details about where their voyage(s) took them
• A note about what their biggest accomplishment was
• Some interesting detail about them that might be unrelated to their voyages (did they play the violin, have a famous family member, or keep a pet cockroach?)

Your presentation should be no less than nine slides long, including a title slide, and should include at least one picture on each slide, and a total of 150 to 200 words of text.

Like this:

Slide 1 – Bob was born on… In the quiet seaside town of…His mother was a… His father was a…

Slide 2 - He was the youngest of eight children (no wonder he wanted to sail the ocean blue).

Slide 3 – Ever since Bob was a young child, sitting on his great uncle Frank's lap listening to tales of his adventures, Bob dreamed of being captain on his own boat.

Slide 4 – When he was in school, and not biting on the ends of his pencils, Bob studied extra hard in science class, dreaming of one day finding a new species of…

Slide 5 – Bob's first voyage was an utter disaster, but the next three brought him fame and fortune as he discovered the lands of…

Slide 6 – Once Bob became famous, his expeditions grew to a fleet of sixteen fast-sailing clippers that took him and his crew to…

Slide 7 – On the 15th of October, 1462, Bob and his fleet landed at… The discovery they made there was so big, no one will ever forget.

Slide 8 – You'd never know it by looking at him, but Bob is an accomplished knitter. He knits socks for his entire crew every year for Christmas.

Slide 9 – Not only that, but Bob also sings backup in a jazz band.

Obviously, our man "Bob" wasn't one of the great explorers during the Age of Discovery. It's just an example, okay?

When you're finished with your masterpiece, upload it below.