This project emerged out
of a dialogue between world historians and world geographers. It
addresses the rampant historical and geographic illiteracy among the current
student population and their lack of preparation in analyzing connections
between the two disciplines. These tutorials foster a greater
awareness of the impact of geography in understanding history and the importance
of historical analysis in recognizing spatial conceptions. Too often,
students think of history as a study of people and events and geography
as a study of places. These tutorials demonstrate major historical
and geographical processes that have shaped the world we live in today.
Processes are defined as broad movements of peoples, ideas, technology,
organizational principles, religions, commodities, and general economic
structures across cultural and regional boundaries. Such movements
have occurred since Homo sapiens emerged and spread from Africa to inhabit
much of the planet starting 150,000 years ago. Simply understanding
the importance of an event such as the life of the Buddha and the place
he lived, northern India, for example, does not teach students how and
why this religion shaped the history of societies as diverse as the pastoral
nomads of Central Asia to rice growers in Southeast Asia.
Students need to understand how geography,
people, and events influence processes over long distances and over long
periods of time. Understanding such long-term processes is the crux
of both World History and World Geography. We aim for a better concept
of metageography, “a set of spatial structures through which people order
their knowledge of the world; the often unconscious frameworks that organize
studies of history, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science,
or even natural history.” (Martin Lewis and Karen Wiggins, The Myth
of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, University of California
Press, 1997, p. ix)
A lack of adequate resources handicaps
teachers and students of both disciplines. Textbooks tend to divide
subject material into narrowly defined regions that mirror current perceptions
of geography and culture. Chapters are organized to focus on individual
regions or societies. They often fail to capture the larger processes
that transcend those regions or societies over time. For example,
the Eastern Coast of Africa became predominately Muslim after 1000 C.E
and remains so today. This resulted from a system of trade and cultural
exchange that transpired among various societies in the Indian Ocean basin
that began long before Islam even emerged in the seventh century.
But by focusing on Africa as a unit, many textbooks reinforce the idea
of Africa as a separate entity.
Maps available for students and teachers
also hinder the awareness of large historical and geographic forces operating
throughout human history. They too are often regionally focused and
even if they explore transregional processes, tend to be limited in chronological
scope. And too many maps are constructed using the prism of nation
states that exist today, and do not consider other ways of organizing and
representing long-term processes that transcend this paradigm. Besides,
printed maps are static and have a hard time explaining change over long
periods of time and wide space.
The following tutorials use the power
of the Internet and animation software to address these problems.
Each one explores an historical process that transpired across region,
culture, and time. The center of each tutorial is an animated map.
They also include related Internet sites to provide further visual and
textual information to explore the process in further detail. Theses
activities force the student to analyze the role of geography in shaping
historical development. And they move beyond the simple study of
events and places in order to encourage the realization that events and
places are better understood as parts of widespread and long term processes
that have shaped the past, the present, and will continue to do so in the
future.
Note: The maps used below show contemporary
boundaries of nation states. This is intended to give students a
reference point, not to suggest that nation states guided the processes
examined.
