Here are some excellent ideas for teaching the Haitian Revolution from Professor Julia Gaffield, author of Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution. In the short video clip below, Professor Gaffield explains how different stakeholders in revolutionary Haiti understood equality and liberty.  In addition to the video,  you can explore Professor Gaffield's website,  Haiti and the Atlantic World here. It includes links to both primary and secondary sources. And here's a link to a terrific essay about Jean-Jacques Dessali ..read more

Here's an interesting story from the PBS NewsHour about a Muslim slave from West Africa who was kidnapped and brought to Ameria in the 1800s. The slave, Omar Ibn Said, wrote his autobiography in Arabic so it could not be edited or censored by masters or even abolitionists. Said begins his autobiography with a quote from the Quran that says only God has true possession of human beings. It's an interesting story because it dispels the idea that slaves were illiterate or incapable of culture. The Library of Congress digitized the autobiography.  It also has a link to a podcast ca ..read more

Here is one of my favorite clips to show students when discussing revolutions. Max Fisher explains the origins of national identity in this excellent five-minute clip for the New York Times. He notes that the idea of a national identity is relatively new. Just before the French Revolution, for example,  France was not really a nation. Half the people could not even speak French.  Ethnicity did not line up with borders either. Over time, the idea that language race, and borders should equal a country developed.  And then nations began to create myths to suggest that their nati ..read more

Teaching the French Revolution?  Was it just ten years of senseless killing? That's what columnist Peggy Noonan suggested in an essay for the Wall Street Journal. Two historians, Mike Duncan, a revolutionary history podcaster, and David A. Bell, a history professor at Princeton, took Noonan to task on Twitter for not knowing her history. Both historians suggest that the revolution, while horrifically violent,  made significant contributions to the world. Here are PDFs of Duncan's and Bell's Twitter threads about Noonan's essay. Bell reminds us of the dev ..read more

One of my favorite sites for teaching medieval cities like Mali, Calicut, and Quanzhou is called  Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World.  It comes from The University of California at Davis and includes lessons with primary sources, maps, charts, and graphs. The lesson on Calicut, for example, explores the importance of the spice trade in food and medicine and even includes medieval recipes. A lesson about the monsoon winds in India includes a chart of monsoon sailing dates between 1480 and 1500. Students analyze the chart and figure out the best times for sailors to travel ..read more

Here are some fascinating Islamic art and architecture threads from the Arabic Art House Bayt Al Fann. They include threads about Islamic calligraphy, Islamic gardens, unique mosques in Africa, the dome interiors of mosques worldwide, and the use of geometric patterns in Islamic art. These threads, which I have saved as pdfs, could work well in a unit on Islam in World History.  Groups might work on one of the topics, create a short Google slide show, and then present. Arabic Calligraphy Islamic Gardens Geometric patterns and Islamic art 20 Famous and Unique Mosques in Africa 24 Dome ..read more

Should we throw out everything we’ve learned about the Silk Roads?   The writer William Dalrymple thinks that we should in this fascinating essay for the Guardian titled "The Silk Road still casts a spell, but was the ancient trading route just a Western invention?"  He notes that the term “silk road” was a Western invention popularized by a Prussian geographer in 1877 and did not appear in English until 1938.  Since then, Dalrymple says, “the term has captured the global imagination.” Indeed, we now teach the Silk Road as an east-west exchange over which goods like silk ..read more

Here is a fantastic resource for your revolutions unit called "Age of Revolutions." It is an open-access academic journal with essays, roundtables, and book reviews. In an ongoing series called "Teaching Revolutions,"  you can read essays that offer new ways to frame the way you teach revolutions.   In "Finding Genres of Revolution in the Classroom," Aaron R. Hanlon, a professor at Colby College, attempts to get students to "mute the tendency to conceive of all revolution within a liberal framework."   He suggests one way to do that with a comparative exerci ..read more

Here is a terrific site that features biographical stories of specific slaves, slave owners, and traders. It comes from the same people who created the "Slave Biographies: The Atlantic Database Network." You can read dozens of short sketches about specific slaves like Felisberta who was born in 1820 in Central West Africa. She was a household slave and wet nurse who served a wealthy family in Southeastern Brazil. Readers learn about the work of a wet nurse.  The majority of materials on child care during the Brazilian Empire recommended the exclusive care of one wet nurse to ..read more

   What was life like in Cairo in 1321?   Coptic Christians and Mamluk Muslims did not get along.  In fact, in 1321 violence broke out and spread throughout the city.  According to this fascinating essay on the Medievalistsnet website written by Peter Konieczny,  "over a couple of weeks, eleven Christian churches would be damaged or destroyed in Cairo, and another 49 in other parts of the country." Violence continued and grew.  Some of it had to do with anger over the Crusades and the belief that Coptic Christians supported them.  ..read more