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Newly Updated! The Indian Ocean in World History
An Educational Website
 The Indian Ocean Basin is becoming an important topic in middle and high school world history and geography courses, but one for which there are few instructional resources. The Indian Ocean in World History website helps teachers incorporate the Indian Ocean into world history studies by illustrating a variety of interactions that took place in the Indian Ocean during each era. The material has been assembled into an integrated and user-friendly teaching tool for students in upper elementary, middle and high school. It offers students the chance to investigate primary sources that illustrate historical interactions, helping them to become more adept at the analytical historical thinking skills that are required by virtually all state history standards today.
The Indian Ocean has been a zone of human interactions throughout world history. As a body of water, of course, it has not been host to a civilization, and for this reason, it has been neglected in standard studies of world history for decades. Historians have only recently begun to think of the world's seas and oceans as theaters of human history. Fernand Braudel pioneered in viewing the Mediterranean Sea as a historical region beyond its shores, and since his seminal work The Mediterranean, terms such as the Atlantic World, the Pacific Rim and the Indian Ocean Basin have come to reflect the mainstreaming of important new research on maritime regions in world history.
Approaches to world history that emphasize a series of discrete civilizations make it difficult even to cover a terrestrial region like Central Asia, much less to find room for a maritime region that covers an arc from East Africa to the Indian Subcontinent and Australia. Modern world history surveys, on the other hand, often emphasize the "unknown" Spice Islands during the medieval period, and only bring an Indian Ocean trading system into focus with the entry into that zone of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498. For young students learning about world history for the first time, this is equivalent to stating that the region only became a part of history at this time. In recent years, the Indian Ocean has been mentioned in connection with the trading expertise of the Arabs, and Zheng He's voyages are also mentioned. Only seldom are maps showing the entire region presented, much less maps that portray the interconnections between the various societies studied in the medieval period, such as China, India, Islam, Southeast Asia, East Africa and the Pacific Islands.
Organization of the Website
The site is intended for use by middle and high school teachers and students in connection with the surveys of world history, geography and cultures that are required by nearly every state's academic standards in social studies. Map pages and primary sources cover the following eras of world history:
* Prehistoric Era, 90,000 B.P. to 7000 B.P.
* Ancient Era 5000 B.C.E. to 1000 B.C.E.
* Classical Era, 1000 B.C.E to 300 C.E.
* Medieval Era, 300 C.E. to 1450 C.E.
* First Global Era, 1450 C.E. to 1770 C.E.
* Industrial and Imperial Eras, 1770 C.E. to 1914 C.E.
* Twentieth Century and Globalization, 1914 C.E. to the present
For each of these world eras, the site provides a collection of primary sources on the Indian Ocean Basin. The resources illustrated and described on the maps for each era fall into eight categories, each represented by an icon:
* Documents
* Technologies
* Places
* Goods
* Geography
* Routes
* Travelers
* Objects
There is a key on the bottom left hand side of each era map in the form of a scroll. You can click on these individual icons in the map key to find skill lessons on how to read and analyze the different types of primary sources represented by the these icons.
For each era, a set of icons is arranged on a physical map of the Indian Ocean, illustrating cultural interactions and historical processes during that era. The icons are identified at mouse-over, and upon clicking the icon, a brief, illustrated text opens in a pop-up box. The skill lessons provide a set of questions to ask about the objects, documents and other features on the map, and explain the importance of the questions for understanding the map content. These skills lessons are adapted from the expert lessons on historical evidence located at the web site "World History Sources" at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
A model lesson plan is provided in the Learning Tools drop down menu that suggests ways of interacting with the web site for individual, small group and whole class engagement. Note-taking organizers can be downloaded for recording information from the site. Whatever the era or method chosen, however, students will benefit from familiarizing themselves with the icons that appear on each map, and taking time to do the skills lessons for each type of resource represented by the icons.
Visit the website now to learn more about the Indian Ocean region throughout history.
Newly Updated! The Indian Ocean in World History
An Educational Website
The Indian Ocean Basin is becoming an important topic in middle and high school world history and geography courses, but one for which there are few instructional resources. The Indian Ocean in World History website helps teachers incorporate the Indian Ocean into world history studies by illustrating a variety of interactions that took place in the Indian Ocean during each era. The material has been assembled into an integrated and user-friendly teaching tool for students in upper elementary, middle and high school. It offers students the chance to investigate primary sources that illustrate historical interactions, helping them to become more adept at the analytical historical thinking skills that are required by virtually all state history standards today.
The Indian Ocean has been a zone of human interactions throughout world history. As a body of water, of course, it has not been host to a civilization, and for this reason, it has been neglected in standard studies of world history for decades. Historians have only recently begun to think of the world's seas and oceans as theaters of human history. Fernand Braudel pioneered in viewing the Mediterranean Sea as a historical region beyond its shores, and since his seminal work The Mediterranean, terms such as the Atlantic World, the Pacific Rim and the Indian Ocean Basin have come to reflect the mainstreaming of important new research on maritime regions in world history.
Approaches to world history that emphasize a series of discrete civilizations make it difficult even to cover a terrestrial region like Central Asia, much less to find room for a maritime region that covers an arc from East Africa to the Indian Subcontinent and Australia. Modern world history surveys, on the other hand, often emphasize the "unknown" Spice Islands during the medieval period, and only bring an Indian Ocean trading system into focus with the entry into that zone of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498. For young students learning about world history for the first time, this is equivalent to stating that the region only became a part of history at this time. In recent years, the Indian Ocean has been mentioned in connection with the trading expertise of the Arabs, and Zheng He's voyages are also mentioned. Only seldom are maps showing the entire region presented, much less maps that portray the interconnections between the various societies studied in the medieval period, such as China, India, Islam, Southeast Asia, East Africa and the Pacific Islands.
Organization of the Website
The site is intended for use by middle and high school teachers and students in connection with the surveys of world history, geography and cultures that are required by nearly every state's academic standards in social studies. Map pages and primary sources cover the following eras of world history:
* Prehistoric Era, 90,000 B.P. to 7000 B.P.
* Ancient Era 5000 B.C.E. to 1000 B.C.E.
* Classical Era, 1000 B.C.E to 300 C.E.
* Medieval Era, 300 C.E. to 1450 C.E.
* First Global Era, 1450 C.E. to 1770 C.E.
* Industrial and Imperial Eras, 1770 C.E. to 1914 C.E.
* Twentieth Century and Globalization, 1914 C.E. to the present
For each of these world eras, the site provides a collection of primary sources on the Indian Ocean Basin. The resources illustrated and described on the maps for each era fall into eight categories, each represented by an icon:
* Documents
* Technologies
* Places
* Goods
* Geography
* Routes
* Travelers
* Objects
There is a key on the bottom left hand side of each era map in the form of a scroll. You can click on these individual icons in the map key to find skill lessons on how to read and analyze the different types of primary sources represented by the these icons.
For each era, a set of icons is arranged on a physical map of the Indian Ocean, illustrating cultural interactions and historical processes during that era. The icons are identified at mouse-over, and upon clicking the icon, a brief, illustrated text opens in a pop-up box. The skill lessons provide a set of questions to ask about the objects, documents and other features on the map, and explain the importance of the questions for understanding the map content. These skills lessons are adapted from the expert lessons on historical evidence located at the web site "World History Sources" at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
A model lesson plan is provided in the Learning Tools drop down menu that suggests ways of interacting with the web site for individual, small group and whole class engagement. Note-taking organizers can be downloaded for recording information from the site. Whatever the era or method chosen, however, students will benefit from familiarizing themselves with the icons that appear on each map, and taking time to do the skills lessons for each type of resource represented by the icons.
Visit the website now to learn more about the Indian Ocean region throughout history.
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Educational Links
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Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center |
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