World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ______________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 1: The Agricultural Revolution
Fill in the blank
1. In just _____________ years, humans went from hunting and gathering to create such improbabilities as the
airplane, the Internet, and the 99 cent double cheeseburger. 15,000 years ago, humans were _____________
and hunters. Foraging meant gathering fruits, nuts, and also wild grains and grasses. Hunting allowed for a
protein-rich diet, so long as you could find something with meat to kill.
2. While we tend to think that the lives of foragers (hunter/gatherers) were pretty bad, fossil evidence suggests
that they actually had it pretty good. Their bones and teeth are healthier than those of _____________; they
actually work a lot fewer hours than the rest of us; and spend more time on _________, music, and
_____________.
3. It’s important to note that cultivation of crops seems to have arisen independently over the course of
millennia; using crops that naturally grew nearby—_______ in Southeast Asia, _____________ in Mexico,
_____________ in the Andes, _____________ in the Fertile Crescent, _____________ in West Africa —
people around the world began to abandon their foraging for agriculture.
4. Let’s first take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of agriculture:
you’re growing the
crops and breeding them to be healthier and heartier, you get a bit more say in whether you starve.
___________ ____ _____ ___________________.
_____________possible. Agriculture can support people not directly involved in the production of food, like,
say, _____________ who can devote their lives to creating better farming equipment (or _____________).
can support cities are not actually beneficial to the _____________ or even necessarily its human inhabitants.
requires extensive manipulation of the environment; e.g., _____________ or _____________.
—so hard that one is tempted to for instance claim _____________ over
other humans and then force them to till the land on your behalf—which is the kind of non-ideal social order
that has tended to emerge again and again in agriculturalist communities.
5. _____________ is a very good and interesting alternative to foraging. The upsides of herding are obvious:
animals are not only _____________ sources of meat and milk; they also help out with _____________ by
providing wool and leather. On the downside, you have to ________ _____________ a lot because your herds
always need new grass to eat, and it’s hard to build cities when you’re constantly moving. (These people are
called _____________.)
6. So why did the Agricultural Revolution occur? We don’t have records, but historians love to make guesses.
gave people leisure time to experiment with domestication or planting originated as a fertility right or—as some
historians have argued—people needed to domesticate grains in order to produce more _____________. (The
History of the World in Six Glasses)
of an
evolutionary desire to produce ________ ____ ______.
7. No doubt that the impact of the discovery and adoption of agriculture is probably the most momentous
“event” in human and the planet’s history. Without agriculture we couldn’t have large groups of people in the
same place (they’d starve) and therefore no _____________ societies, cities, religions, _____________,
metalworking, …
8. It’s also true that without agriculture we wouldn’t have all the bad things that come with complex
civilizations, like _____________, patriarchy, _____________, and unfortunately famine.
9. And as far as the planet is concerned, agriculture has been a big loser – without it humans would never have
changed the environment so much, __________________________, moving rivers, building _____________ to
create and preventfloods, drilling wells for agriculture, and in the 20th and 21st century drilling for oil to
process into _____________.
Question: In your opinion: What is the greatest advantage to the Agricultural Revolution? Greatest
Disadvantage? Was the Agricultural Revolution inevitable?
World History
Ms Cannavina
Name: ___________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 2: The Indus River Valley Civilization
1. So what is a civilization? Well, diagnosing a civilization is a little like diagnosing an illness. If you have four
or more of the following symptoms, you might be a civilization.
enough food to feed several people, it becomes
possible to build a ______, another symptom of civilization.
to _____________.
shared values, generally in the form of _____________, and writing.
______. Because they’re flat,
they’re well watered, and when they flood, they deposit nutrient-rich _________.
2. The Indus Valley Civilization was located in the flood plain of the Indus and Sarawati rivers, and it was
about the best place in the world to have an ancient civilization because the rivers flooded very reliably
_________ a year.
3. We know the Indus Valley Civilization flourished around 3000 BCE and they were trading with
_____________ as early as 3500 BCE. We also know that it was the largest of the ancient civilizations.
Archaeologists have discovered more than _______ sites.
4. Everything we know about the Indus Valley Civilization comes from archaeology, because while they did use
_____________ _____________, we don’t know how to read it.
5. So here’s what we know, they had amazing cities. _____________ and Mohenjo Daro are the best known,
with dense, multi-story homes constructed out of _____________ sized bricks along perpendicular streets. This
means they must have had some form of _____________ and _____________, but we don’t know what gave
this government its authority.
6. Cities were oriented to catch the _____________ and provide a natural form of air conditioning. And they
were clean. Most homes were connected to a centralized _____________ system that used gravity to carry
waste and water out of the city in big sewer ditches that ran under the main avenues, a plumbing system that
would have been the envy of many 18th century European cities.
7. In Mohenjo Daro, the largest public building was not a temple or a palace, but a _____________
_____________, which historians call the Great Bath. We don’t know what the great bath was used for, but
since later Indian culture placed a huge emphasis on _____________ _____________, which is the basis for the
caste system, some historians have speculated that the bath might have been like a giant baptismal pool.
8. Also, they traded. One of the coolest things that the Indus Valley Civilization produced were _____________
used as identification markers on goods and clay tablets. These seals contained the writing that we still can’t
_____________, and a number of fantastic designs, many featuring animals and monsters. How do these seals
let us know that they traded? Well, because we found them in _____________, not the Indus Valley. Plus,
archaeologists have found stuff like bronze in the Indus Valley that is not native to the region.
So what did they trade? _____________ _____________.
9. But here’s the most amazing thing about the Indus Valley people. They were _____________. Despite
archaeologists finding 1500 sites, they have found very little evidence of _____________, almost no
_____________.
10. So what happened to these people? Sometime around _______ BCE, the Indus Valley Civilization declined
until it faded into obscurity. Why? Historians have three theories.
people from the Indus Valley were completely overrun by people from the Caucasus.
environment.
much that a lot of the tributaries dried up. Without adequate water supplies for irrigation, the cities couldn’t
sustain themselves, so people literally picked up and headed for greener pastures.
Question: Why is the Indus River Valley area classified as a “civilization”? Why do we know so little
about it and how can that affect its “status” in history?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ______________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 3: Mesopotamia
1. So 5,000 years ago in the land meso, or ____________, the Tigris and Euphrates potomoi, or ____________,
cities started popping up. These early Mesopotamian cities engaged in a form of ____________, where farmers
contributed their crops to public storehouses out of which workers, like metalworkers or builders would be paid
uniform "wages" in grain.
2. One of the legacies of Mesopotamia is the enduring conflict between country and city. You see this explored
a lot in some of our greatest art such as in the _______ ___ ______________, one of the oldest known works of
literature.
3. Uruk was a walled city with an extensive ____________ system and several monumental temples, called
____________. The priests of these temples initially had all the ____________, because they were able to
communicate directly with the gods who were moody and vindictive.
4. The Tigris and Euphrates are decent as rivers go, but had certain disadvantages:
lently.
5. So I mean given that the region tends to yo-yo between devastating flood and horrible ____________, it
follows that one would believe that the gods are kind of random and capricious, and that any priests who might
be able to lead ____________ that placate those gods would be very useful individuals.
6. But about 1000 years after the first temples we find in cities like Uruk, a rival structure begins to show up,
the ____________. This tells us that kings are starting to be as important as priests in Mesopotamia.
7. These kings, who probably started out as ____________ leaders or really rich landowners, took on a quasireligious role. So the priests were overtaken by kings, who soon declared themselves priests.
8. Mesopotamia gave us a form of writing called ____________, which was initially created to record
transactions like how many bushels of wheat were exchanged for how many goats.
9. I don't think you can overestimate the importance of writing but let's just make two points:
ng and reading are things that not everyone can do. So they create a ____________ distinction, one that
in fact survives to this day.
archaeology.
10. So why did this writing happen in Mesopotamia? Well the Fertile Crescent, while it is fertile, is lacking the
pretty much everything else. In order to get metal for tools or stone for sculptures or wood for burning,
Mesopotamia had to ____________. This trading eventually led Mesopotamia to develop the world's first
territorial ____________.
11. So the city state period in Mesopotamia ended around 2,000 BCE, probably because drought and a shift in
the course of rivers led to pastoral ____________ coming in and conquering the environmentally weakened
cities.
12. These new Mesopotamian city states were similar to their predecessors but they were different
-socialism was replaced by something that looked a lot like ____________ enterprise,
where people could produce as much as they would like as long as they gave a cut, also known as
____________ to the government.
-blown kings, who tried to
extend their power outside of cities and also tried to pass on their power to their sons.
13. The most famous of these early monarchs is ____________ who ruled the new kingdom of Babylon from
1792 BCE to 1750 BCE. His main claim to fame is his famous _____ _______which established everything
from like the wages of ox drivers to the fact that the punishment for taking an eye should be having an eye
taken.
14. In the law code Hammurabi tried to portray himself in two roles that might sound familiar: ____________
and ____________. So again we see the authority for protection of the social order shifting to men, not gods,
which is important, but don't worry, it'll shift back.
15. The thing about Territorial kingdoms is that they relied on the poorest people to pay taxes, and provide
____________ and serve in the ____________, all of which made you not like your king very much so if you
saw any nomadic invaders coming by you might just be like "Hey nomadic invaders! Come on in; you seem
better than the last guy."
16. Well, that was the case until the ____________, who have a deserved reputation for being the brutal bullies
of Mesopotamia came along.
17. The Assyrians did give us an early example of probably the most important and durable form of political
organization in world history the ____________, which is the extension by conquest of control over people who
do not belong to the same group as the conquerors. The biggest problem with empires is that by definition
they're diverse and _________-_________, which makes
18. Beginning around 911 BCE, the neo-Assyrian Empire grew from its hometowns of Ashur and Nineveh to
include the whole of Mesopotamia, the ___________ _____________of the Mediterranean and even, by 680
BCE, ____________! They did this thanks to the most brutal, terrifying and efficient army the world had ever
seen. For one thing the army was a ____________. Generals weren't chosen based on who their dads were,
they were chosen based on if they were good at “Generalling”.
19. The armies also used ____________ weapons and chariots and they were massive. Like the neo-Assyrian
Empire could field 120,000 men. Also, they were super MEAN. Like they would ____________ hundreds of
thousands of people to separate them from their ____________ and their families and also moved skilled
____________ around where they were most needed. Also the neo-Assyrians loved to find would-be rebels and
lop off their appendages; particularly their noses for some reason.
20. So what happened to the Assyrians? Well, first they extended their empire beyond their ____________,
making administration impossible. But maybe even more importantly, when your whole world view is based on
the idea that the apocalypse will come if you ever lose a battle, and then you lose one battle, the whole world
view just blows up. That eventually happened and in ____________ BCE, the city of Nineveh was finally
conquered, and the neo-Assyrian Empire had come to its end. But the idea of Empire was just getting started.
Question: What is the tension that existed b/w the kings and priests and why is that important?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
#4—Crash Course World History # 4: Ancient Egypt
Fill in the blank.
1. In discussing agriculture and early civilizations, we’ve been approaching history through the lens of
_____________ distribution and geography. And just as the violent and capricious Tigris and Euphrates rivers
shaped the worldview of early Mesopotamians, the _______ shaped the world view of the Egyptians.
2. The Nile was regular, navigable, and benign, making for one of the safest and richest agricultural areas in the
world. Each _____________ the river flooded the fields at precisely the right time, leaving behind nutrient-rich
silt for planting season.
3. Unlike most river valley civilizations, Egyptian communities existed ONLY along the Nile, which was
navigable enough to get valuable resources downstream from timber to ___________, which the Egyptians
considered the divine metal.
4. The Nile is also easily _____________. While other river valley civilizations needed complicated and laborintensive hydraulic engineering projects to irrigate crops, the Nile was so chill that Egyptians could use a simple
form of water management called _____________ irrigation, in which farmers used floodwaters to fill earthen
basins.
5. In short, the awesomeness of the Nile meant Egyptians could create big food _____________ with relatively
little work, allowing time and energy for some pretty impressive projects.
6. Also, the Nile may help explain the ancient Egypt’s general optimism: while ancient Sumerian religion, for
instance, saw the _____________ as this gloomy, dark place, Egyptians were often buried with things that were
useful and pleasurable to them in life, because the afterlife was seen as a _____________ of this life, which, at
least if you lived along the Nile, wasn’t half-bad.
7. Historians have divided Egyptian history into three broad categories:
Giza, the sun king
Ra, and the idea of divine kingship. The pyramids were built partly by _____________who were required by
Egyptian law to work for the government a certain number of months per year, and partly by slaves. Old
Kingdom Egypt was also remarkably _____________: They had two forms of writing, hieroglyphics for
_____________ _____________and then demotic script for recording contracts and agreements and other
boring stuff.
nges: First, the rulers
were outsiders, from downriver in _____________. Second, they fostered a new pantheon of gods, the star of
which was Ammun, which means hidden. So Ammun eventually merged with Ra to form the god Ammun-Ra,
all the Middle Kingdom pharaohs made temples for him and devoted their entire surplus to his glory. The
Middle Kingdom also developed an interest in conquering; they were able to conquer much of Egypt using
superior military technology like _____________weapons, compound bows, and chariots. One group, the
Hyksos, were able to conquer all of Egypt, but rather than like destroying the Egyptian culture, they just relaxed
like the Nile and _____________ into the Egyptians.
g conquered, Egypt eventually emerged from
its geographically imposed _____________ New Kingdom Egypt continued this military expansion but it
looked more like an empire, particularly when they headed south and took over land in an attempt to find
_____________ and _____________.
8. Probably the most expansive of the New Kingdom pharaohs was Hatshepsut, a _____________ who ruled
Egypt for about 22 years and who expanded Egypt not through military might, but through _____________.
9. But most new kingdom pharaohs being dudes, focused on _____________ expansion, which brought Egypt
into conflicts with the _____________, and then the Persians, and then _____________ the Great and finally,
the Romans.
10. New Kingdom Pharaoh Akhenaton tried to invent a new _____________ for Egypt, Aten. After his death
he was replaced by his wife, and then a daughter and then a son, _____________, who turned his back on the
weird god Aten. And that is about all King Tut did before he died...probably around the age of 17. Honestly,
the only reason King Tut is famous is that most Pharaohs had their graves robbed by ancient people; and King
Tut had his grave robbed by 20th century _____________ people. Since the tomb was discovered in
_____________, technology has established that Tut probably died of an infected broken leg and/or malaria.
11. King Tut leads us nicely to the really crucial thing about Egyptian culture. Because King Tut lived right
around the same time as the pyramids right? Wrong. Remember the pyramids were built around 2500 BCE
during the ____ _________. King Tut died in 1322 BCE, 1200 years later! But because Egypt was so similar
for so long, it all tends to blend together when we imagine it.
12. Ancient Egypt lasted 1000 years longer than _____________ has been around, and about 800 years longer
than that other super-long lived civilization, _____________. So there was an entire culture that lasted longer
than Western Civilization has existed and it had run its course before “the West” was even born.
Question: How was the Egyptian civilization different/ similar to the Mesopotamian civilization (2 ways
for both)?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ____________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 5: The Greeks and the Persians
1. The Persian Empire became the model for pretty much all land-based empires throughout the world’ except
for—wait for it—the ____________.
2. Much of what we know about the Persians and their empire come from an outsider writing about them which
is something we now call history, and one of the first true historians was ____________, whose famous book
The Persian Wars talks about the Persians quite a bit.
3. Now the fact that Herodotus was a Greek is important because it introduces us to the idea of ____________
____________.
4. So the Persian Achaemenid dynasty was founded in 539 BCE by King ____________ the Great. Cyrus took
his nomadic warriors and conquered most of Mesopotamia, including the ____________, which ended a sad
period in Jewish history called The Babylonian Exile (or Captivity).
5. But his son, ____________ the First, was even greater: He extended Persian control east to the Indus Valley,
west to ____________, and north to Anatolia. There were Greeks in Anatolia called ____________ Greeks.
6. The Persians ruled with a ____________ ____________: Like conquered kingdoms were allowed to keep
their kings and their elites as long as they pledged allegiance to the Persian King and paid ____________,
which is why the Persian king was known as The King of Kings. Plus taxes weren’t too high and the Persians
improved infrastructure with better ____________ and they had a ____________ ____________-like mail
service of which Herodotus said: “… they are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from
accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.” (Sound familiar?)
7. The Persians embraced freedom of religion. They were Zoroastrian, a monotheistic religion. It was really
Zoroastrianism that introduced to the ____________/____________ dualism we all know so well. The Persians
weren’t very concerned about ____________ people of the empire to their faith. Plus, Zoroastrianism forbad
____________.
8. We all know about the Greeks: ____________. Philosophy. Literature. Greek poets and mathematicians,
playwrights and architects and philosophers founded a culture we still identify with. And they introduced us to
many ideas, including ____________.
9. Greeks lived in ______-______which consisted of a city (polis) and its surrounding area. Most of these citystates featured at least some form of slavery and in all of them citizenship was limited to ____________. Each
of the city-states had its own form of ____________, ranging from very democratic—unless you were a women
or a slave—to completely dictatorial. The people who lived in these cities considered themselves
____________ of that city, not of anything that might ever be called Greece; at least until the Persian Wars.
10. So between _____ and _____ BCE, the Persians made war on the Greek city states. This was the war that
featured the battle of Thermopylae where 300 brave ____________ battled--if you believe Herodotus--five
million Persians. And also the battle of ____________, which is a plain about 26.2 miles away from Athens.
11. The whole war started because Athens supported those aforementioned ____________ Greeks when they
were rebelling in Anatolia against the Persians. That made the Persian king ____________ mad so he led two
major campaigns against the Athenians, and the Athenians enlisted the help of all the other Greek city states. In
the wake of that shared Greek victory, the Greeks began to see themselves as Greeks rather than as Spartans or
Athenians or whatever.
12. Athens emerged as the de facto capital of Greece and then got to experience a ____________ _____ and
built the ____________, a temple to Athena that later became a church and then a mosque and then an armory
until finally settling into its current gig as a ruin. When you combine the high minded rhetoric with the
undeniable power and beauty of the art and philosophy that was created in ancient Athens, it’s not hard to see it
as the foundation of ____________ civilization.
13. The Peloponnesian War, a 30-year conflict between the ____________ and the ____________. The
Spartans did not embrace democracy but instead embraced a kingship that functioned only because of a huge
class of brutally mistreated slaves. The war was not about politics but rather about ____________ and power.
14. Thucydides wrote the ____________ of the Peloponnesian War in which he states, “The strong do what
they can and the weak suffer what they must.” This statement is sometimes seen as the first explicit
endorsement of the so-called theory of ____________ in international relations. For realists, interaction
between nations (or peoples or cultures) is all about who has the power. Whoever has it can compel whoever
doesn’t have it to do pretty much anything.
15. So here’s a non-rhetorical question: Did the right side win the Persian wars? Most classicists and defenders
of the Western Tradition will tell you that of course we should be glad the Greeks won. After all, winning the
Persian war set off the cultural flourishing that gave us the ____________ age. And plus, if the Persians had
won with their monarchy that might have strangled democracy in its crib and gave us more one -man rule.
16. But as a counter argument, let’s consider three things:
last five thousand years of human history, you’ll find a lot more successful and stable empires than you will
democracies.
their government was notoriously ____________. And ultimately the Athenian government derived its power
not from its citizens but from the imperialist belief that “____________ _________ __________”. It’s true that
Athens gave us ____________, but they also killed him or they forced him to commit suicide. Whatever,
Herodotus, you’re not the only one here who can engage in historical bias.
weakening the Greek city states so much that ____________ “Coming Soon” the Great’s father was able to
conquer all of them and then there were a bunch of bloody wars with the Persians and all kinds of horrible
things and Greece wouldn’t glimpse democracy again for _____ millennia. All of which might have been
avoided if they’d just let themselves get beaten by the Persians.
Question: If you could choose to live under the Greeks or the Persians, which one would you choose?
Give two reasons. Why are we drawn to the Greeks and not the Persians?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ___________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 6: Buddha and Ashoka
1. So as you no doubt remember, the ________ ________ was one of the earliest cradles of civilization and that
original civilization basically disappeared sometime after 1750 BCE.
2. Then there was a long period of ________ migration, people from the Caucasus who left behind religious
texts, called the ________; the earliest texts of what will come to be known as _________.
3. The ________ system is one of India’s most enduring and fascinating institutions. Let us read from one of the
Vedas about Purusha, the universe-pervading spirit, was divided and gives a divine explanation for the caste
system.
Brahmins – the priests, who as Purusha’s ________ speak (to the gods), are at the top.
Kshatriyas – from Purusha’s arms became the _____________,
Vaishyas – the _____________ and _____________ who provide money for the priests and the warriors
came from Purusha’s thighs.
Sudras – are at the bottom. They’re the feet, the _____________ and _____________ who are the
foundation of the social order.
4. The Caste System is the foundation for another big concept in Hinduism, _____________, basically one’s
role in life and society and it is defined primarily by birth and by caste.
5. Samsara, Moksha, and Karma – There are both _____________ and ________ reasons for doing your
dharma. Right, the social reason is obvious that dharma and caste combine for excellent social cohesion.
Samsara, or the cycle of _____________, often called reincarnation, is basic idea is that
when you die your soul is transferred to another living thing as it is being born. And if you fulfill your dharma,
things improve and you get re-born into a higher being.
-___-_____________”, this is called moksha.
Aranyaka
Upanishad: “The doer of good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous
action, bad by bad action.”
There was this prince, Siddhartha Gautama, whose father kept him locked away in a palace because a
prophecy foretold that the family would lose the kingdom if he ever left. But as house arrests go, this was a
good one: Siddhartha had great food, great entertainment, and a hot cousin for a wife, etc. But he suspected
there was more to life, so he snuck out of the palace a few times. On these travels, he encountered an old man, a
sick man, and finally a corpse. Having realized the ubiquity of suffering, Siddhartha left the palace, renounced
the crown and sought out all the holiest men to try to find out how it could be possible that life would come to
such a terrible end.
6. Eventually Gautama became an ascetic, _____________ and meditating for days at a time, hoping to find
__________________. And finally, after meditating for about a month under a tree, it came to him. Nirvana.
He finally understood the meaning of life and began teaching it to people who would become his disciples. He
had become the Buddha, which means teacher, and he taught the ________ ________ ________. They are:
ust sexual desire, but all wanting of stuff and
is a set of eight prescriptions on how to live.
7. So as a religion, Buddhism involves a lot of _____________ and moderation and if you’re a Buddhist monk
you don’t get to have power like most holy people do; you have to _____________ everything.
8. Buddhism eventually migrated to ________ and became a religion with fun rituals and all kinds of great stuff
that Siddhartha Gautama probably wouldn’t even have recognized.
9. Buddhism was very attractive if you were a low-caste Hindu, because there is no ________ system. In theory,
anyone who follows the Eightfold path and renounces desire can be freed from suffering and achieve nirvana,
maybe even in THIS life instead of having to get re-born for maybe millennia and knowing that each time there
is only a tiny chance that you will end up something awesome.
10. For most of Indian history, India it was not one _____________ place; it was tons of different principalities
and city-states and everything else. But India did experience indigenous political unification twice, first under
the Mauryan Dynasty in the ________ century BCE. And then again under the ________ Dynasty from the
300’s to the 500’s CE. 9:38
11. One particular leader from the Mauryan Dynasty, Ashoka, attempted to rule through quasi-_____________
principles from 269 to 232 BCE. Ashoka was initially a _____________ who ended up expanding the empire
that his grandfather started. Ashoka experienced this conversion to Buddhism after he saw his own army
devastate the Kingdom of Kalinga. So, Ashoka built stupas, mound-like monuments to the Buddha, all over
his kingdom to show his _____________. He also put up pillars throughout his empire that proclaimed his
benevolent rule.
12. Ashoka’s empire wasn’t actually very Buddhist because ultimately Buddhism isn’t that concerned with the
________ of the world. Buddhism argues that the fulfillment of the self will lead to the order of the world. In
the end, Ashoka’s empire didn’t outlast him by much, and soon enough Buddhism _____________ in India,
almost to the point of extinction.
13. Hinduism is the most flexible of all the world religions, which is part of the reason it’s often described as
_____________. The belief that god(s) can take many different forms makes it easy for Hinduism to
_____________ other religious traditions; which is exactly what happened with Buddhism. In time the Buddha
came to be worshipped as another _____________of one of the Hindu gods, and not as a mortal teacher. So in
the end, Hinduism, rather than purging the Buddha, enveloped him.
14. So all this means that while Hinduism has a tremendous amount of variety and flexibility, its core tenets of
samsara, karma, and the caste system have provided a remarkable amount of cultural and social ________ to the
Indian subcontinent for millennia.
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: _________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 7: 2,000 Years of Chinese History! The Mandate of Heaven and
Confucius
1. China was really the first modern state--by which I mean it had a ______________ government and a corps
of ______________ who could execute the wishes of that government and it lasted, in pretty much the same
form, until 150 BCE to 1911 CE.
2. Chinese history is conveniently divided into periods called ______________ which are ruled by a king, or as
the Chinese know him, an emperor, who comes from a continuous ruling family. The dynasty can end for two
reasons: either they run out of ______________ (which never happened thanks to the hard work of many, many
concubines), or the emperor is overthrown after a ______________ or a ______________.
3. Leaving aside the Xia dynasty, which was sadly fictional, the first Chinese dynasty was the ______________,
who were overthrown by the ______________, which disintegrated into political chaos called the Warring
States period, which ended when the _______ emperor was able to extend his power over most of the heretofore
warring states, but the Qin were replaced by the _______, which was the dynasty that really set the pattern for
most of China’s history and lasted for almost 400 years after which China fell again into political chaos – which
only means there was no dynasty that ruled over all of China –and out of this chaos rose the ______, who were
followed quickly by the ______________, who in turn were replaced, after a short period of no dynasty by the
______________, who saw a huge growth in China’s commerce that was still not enough to prevent them from
being conquered by the _________, who were both unpopular and unusual… because they were Mongols,
which sparked rebellions resulting in the rise of the ________, which was the dynasty that extended the Great
Wall and made amazing vases but didn’t save them from falling to the Manchus who founded a dynasty that
was called the __________, which was the last dynasty because in 1911 there was a rebellion and the whole
dynastic system came to an end.
4. The concept of the ___________ ______ ___________dates from the Zhou Dynasty and current historians
think that they created it to get rid of the Shang.
5. So basically the fact that one dynasty falls and is replaced by another in a ______________ that lasts for
3000 years is explained, in the eyes of early Chinese historians, by divine intervention based on whether the
ruler behaves in a ______________, upright manner.
6. Let’s see an example of the mandate of heaven in action. The Qin dynasty on lasted only _____ years, but it
is one of the most important dynasties in Chinese history, so important in fact that it gave the place its name.
The accomplishment of the Qin was to ____-__________China under a single emperor for the first time in 500
years, ending the warring states period. The great Qin emperor Qin Shihuangdi, and his descendants developed
a reputation for ______________ that was justified. But it was also exaggerated for effect so that the successor
dynasty, the Han, would look more legitimate in the eyes of Heaven.
7. The early Han emperors, such as Wen, who came to power in _____ BCE and ruled benevolently, avoiding
extravagance in his personal behavior and ruling largely according to Confucian principles. Under Wen, there
were no more harsh punishments for ______________the government, executions declined, and, most
importantly for the Confucian scholars who were writing the history, the government stopped _______ books.
8. So who is this Confucius? Confucius was a minor official who lived during the ______________
______________period and developed a philosophical and political system he hoped would lead to a more
stable state and society. He argued that the key to bringing about a strong and peaceful state was to look to the
______________and the model of the sage emperors. By following their example of ______________ upright
behavior, the Chinese emperor could bring order to China.
9. Confucius idea of morally upright behavior boils down to a person’s knowing his or her place in a series of
hierarchical ______________ and acting accordingly. There are five key relationships—but the most important
is the one between ______________and _______, and one of the keys to understanding Confucius is filial piety,
a son treating his father with reverential respect.
10. Ultimately the goal of both father and son is to be a “_________ _____” (chunzi in Chinese). If all men
strive to be chunzi, the society as a whole will run smoothly. This idea applies especially to the
______________, who is like the father to the whole country.
11. So how do you know how to behave? Well, first you have to look to historical antecedents particularly the
sage emperors. The study of history, as well as ______________ and paintings in order to understand and
appreciate beauty, is indispensable for a chunzi.
12. The other important aspects to chunzi-ness are contained in the Confucian ideas of ren and li. Ren is usually
translated as “propriety”. It means understanding and practicing proper ______________ in every possible
situation, which of course depends on who you’re interacting with, hence the importance of the five
relationships. Li is usually translated as “______________” and refers to rituals associated with Chinese
religion, most of which involve the veneration of ______________.
13. Traditional Chinese historians were all trained in the Confucian ______________, which emphasized the
idea that good emperors behaved like good Confucians. In this history the political fortunes of a dynasty
ultimately rest on one man and his actions, whether he behaves properly.
14. The Mandate of Heaven is remarkably ______________ as an explanation of historical causation. It
explains why, as dynasties fell, there are often terrible storms and floods and peasant uprisings... If the emperor
had been behaving properly, none of that stuff would have happened.
15. Now, a more modern historian might point out that the negative effects of terrible storms and floods, which
include peasant uprisings, sometimes lead to changes in ______________. But that would take the moral aspect
out of history and it would also diminish the importance of Confucian scholars. In short, the complicated
circularity of Chinese history is mirrored by the complicated circularity of the relationship between those who
write it and those who make it.
Question: We have been discussing that there is a close relationship b/w religion and govt. Why does the
religion of Buddhism help to reinforce a king’s power like other religions? How has the religion of
Hinduism worked to unite India in spite of a strong centralized power?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ___________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 8: Alexander the Great
1. Alexander of Macedon, born in 356 BCE, died in 323 BCE at the ripe old age of ______.
2. Alexander was the son of King __________ II, and when just 13 years old he tamed a horse no one else could
ride named Bucephalus, which impressed his father so much he said: “Oh thy son, look thee at a kingdom equal
to and worthy of thyself, for Macedonia is too little for thee.”
3. Let’s to look at Alexander of Macedon’s story by examining three possible definitions of greatness.
destroyed the __________ Empire. He conquered all the land the Persians had held including Egypt, and then
marched toward __________, stopping at the Indus River. Also, Alexander was a really good general, although
historians disagree over whether his tactics were truly brilliant or if his army just happened to have better
_________________, specifically these extra long __________called sarissas.
-building.
ey became important dynasties. The Alexander
specialized in the tearing down of things, but he wasn’t so great at the building up of _________________ to
replace the things he’d torn down. And that’s why, pretty soon after his death, the Greek Empire broke into
three empires, called the Hellenistic Kingdoms. Antigones in __________ and Macedonia, the Ptolemies in
__________, the Selucids in __________, all of which lasted longer than Alexander’s empire.
se he had an enormous __________ on the world after
his death. After Alexander of Macedon died, everyone from the Romans to Napoleon loved him, and he was an
important __________ model for many generals throughout history. But his main post-death legacy may be that
he introduced the Persian idea of __________ __________ to the Greco-Roman world, which would become a
pretty big deal.
to spot them because he named most of them after himself and one after his horse.
rning in the classical world, and was home to
the most amazing library ever, which Julius Caesar probably “accidentally” burned down while trying to
conquer Egypt, language, Greek, which facilitated conversations and commerce.
ad a huge impact on __________. He gave the region its common language,
Greek.
third definition of greatness: Maybe Alexander is great because of his __________: Since no accounts of
his life were written while he lived, embellishment was easy, and maybe that’s where true greatness lies.
4. So in Alexander the Great we have a story about a man who united the world while riding a magical horse
only he could tame across __________ where it magically rained for him so that he could chase down his
mortal enemy (__________) and then leave in his wake a more enlightened world and a gorgeous, murderous
wife (__________).
5. In short, Alexander was great because others decided he was great. Because they chose to
__________ and emulate him.
Question: In your opinion, does Alexander deserve the title, “Great”? (two reasons)
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 9: The Silk Road & Ancient Trade
1. The Silk Road was not a road; it was an ___________ route where merchants carried goods for trade. But it
was really two routes: One that connected the ___________ Mediterranean to ___________ Asia and one that
went from Central Asia to ___________.
2. Further complicating things, the Silk Road involved _______ routes: Many goods reached Rome via the
Mediterranean, and goods from Central Asia found their way across the ___________ to Japan and even Java.
3. So we shouldn’t think of the Silk Road as a road but rather as a ___________ of trade routes.
4. So what’d they trade? Well silk, for starters. For millennia, silk was only produced in ___________. It is
spun from the cocoons of ___________ tree-eating worms and the process of silk making as well as the
techniques for raising the worms were closely guarded secrets, since the lion’s share of China’s wealth came
from silk production.
5. But the Silk Road wasn’t all about silk. The Mediterranean exported such clichéd goods as ___________,
olive oil, and wine. China exported raw materials like ___________, silver, and iron. India exported fine
___________ textiles; the ___________ that originated in East Africa made its way across the Silk Road; and
Arabia exported ___________ and spices and tortoise shells.
6. With the growth of the Silk Road, the ___________ people of Central Asia suddenly become much more
important to world history. Much of Central Asia isn’t great for agriculture, however, it lends itself fairly well
to ___________, and since nomads are good at moving around, they’re also good at moving stuff from Point A
to Point B, which makes them good traders. Plus all their travel made them more resistant to diseases.
7. One group of such nomads, the Yuezhi, were humiliated in battle in the 2nd century BCE by their bitter
rivals the Xiongnu, who turned the Yuezhi king’s ___________ into a drinking cup, in fact. In the wake of that
the Yuezhi migrated to Bactria and started the Kushan Empire in what is now ___________ and Pakistan.
8. Although Silk Road trading began more than a century before the birth of Jesus, it really took off in the
___________and ___________ centuries CE, and the Kushan Empire became a huge hub for that Silk Road
trade.
9. The cities that had been founded by nomadic peoples became hugely important. They continued to grow,
because most of the trade on the Silk Road was by ___________, and they had to stop frequently; these towns
became fantastically wealthy.
10. Silk was so popular among the Roman elite that the Roman Senate repeatedly tried to _______ it,
complaining about trade imbalances caused by the silk trade and also that silk was inadequately ___________.
And yet all attempts to ban silk failed, which speaks to how much, even in the ancient world, ___________
shaped governance.
11. The merchant class that grew along with the Silk Road came to have a lot of ___________clout, and in
some ways that began the tension that we still see today between wealth and politics.
12. Did the Silk Road affect the rest of us? Yes, for three reasons.
lives to making that silk.
ing traded along
the Silk Road: ___________. For example, the Silk Road was the primary route for the spread of
___________.
Mahayana Buddhism, and it differed from the original teachings of the Buddha in many ways, but one that
was fundamental. For Mahayana Buddhists, the Buddha was ___________. The idea of ___________ also
transformed from a release from that cycle of suffering and desire to something much more heavenly. Rather
than focusing on the fundamental fact of suffering, Mahayana Buddhism offered the hope that through worship
of the Buddha, or one of the many bodhisattvas – ________ ________ who could have achieved nirvana but
chose to hang out on Earth with us-one could attain a good afterlife.
convenient weigh stations for caravans.
erconnectedness of populations led to the
spread of ___________. Measles and Smallpox traveled along it, as did bubonic plague, which came from the
East to the West in 534, 750, and—most devastatingly—in ___________. This last plague—known as the
___________ ___________—resulted in the largest population decimation in human history, with nearly half of
Europeans dying in a four-year period. If you look at it that way, the ______________________ fostered by
Silk Road affected way, way more people than just those rich enough to buy silk, just as today’s globalization
offers both promise and threat to each of us.
Question: What are the social, political, and economic effects of the Silk Road?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: _________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 10: The Roman Empire or Republic or...Which Was It?
1. The story of Rome begins when twins, Romulus and Remus, who’d been raised by wolves, founded a city on _____
hills.
2. What does SPQR stand for? It means Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate and the People of Rome), one of the
___________ of the Roman Republic.
3. Rome was divided into two broad classes: the ___________ – the small group of aristocratic families and the
___________, basically everybody else. The ___________ were drawn from the Patricians.
4. The Senate was a sort of a mixture of ___________ and giant advisory council. Their main job was to set the policy for
the Consuls.
5. Each year the Senate would choose from among its ranks _______ co-Consuls to serve as sort of the chief executives of
Rome. There needed to be two so they could check each other’s ___________, and also so that one could take care of
Rome domestically, while the other was off fighting wars, and conquering new territory.
6. There were two additional checks on power: First, the _____-______ term. And secondly, once a senator had served as
consul, he was forbidden to serve as consul again for at least _____ years.
7. The Romans also had a position of ___________, a person who would who’d take over in the event the Republic was in
imminent danger.
8. The paradigm for this selfless Roman ruler was Cincinnatus, a general who came out of comfortable ___________ at
his plantation, took command an army, defeated whatever enemy he was battling, and then laid down his command and
returned to his farm. ___________ ___________ was heavily influenced by Cincinnatus when he invented the idea of a
two term presidency.
9. So along comes Caesar. Coming as he did from the senatorial class, it was natural that Caesar would serve in both the
___________ and the ___________, which he did. He rose through the ranks, and after some top-notch generalling, and a
gig as the governor of ___________, he decided to run for consul.
10. Caesar succeeded in becoming consul in 59 BC and thereafter sought to dominate Roman politics by allying himself
with ___________, Rome’s richest man, and also with Rome’s other most powerful man, the general ___________. The
three formed the so-called first ___________, and the alliance worked out super well, for Caesar. Not so well for the
other two.
11. Caesar landed the governorship of ___________, at least the southern part that Rome controlled. He quickly
conquered the rest of the territory and his four loyal armies—or ___________, as the Romans called them—became his
source of power. Caesar continued his conquests, invading ___________ and waging another successful war against the
Gauls.
12. While he was away, Crassus died in ___________ with the Parthians and Pompey, who had become
Caesar’s rival and enemy, was elected Consul.
13. Pompey and the Senate decided to try to strip Caesar of his command and recall him to Rome. This
led to a civil war between Caesar and Pompey. By 48 BCE Caesar was in total command of all of Rome’s
holdings, having been named both ___________ and ___________.
14. Caesar set out to ___________ to track down Pompey only to learn that he’d already been assassinated by agents of
the Pharaoh Ptolemy. Egypt had its own civil war at the time, between the Pharaoh and his sister/wife ___________.
Caesar sided with Cleopatra.
15. Caesar made his way back from Egypt to Rome, stopping off to defeat a few kings in the east, and
was declared dictator again. That position that was later extended for ten years, and then for ____.
16. By 45 BCE Caesar was the undisputed master of Rome and he pursued reforms that strengthened his own power. He
provided land ___________ for his soldiers, restructured the ___________ of a huge percentage of Rome’s debtors, and
also changed the ___________ to make it look more like the one we use today.
17. By 44 BCE, many Senators had decided that Caesar controlled too much of the power in Rome, and so
they stabbed him _____ times on the floor of the Roman Senate.
18. The conspirators thought that the death of Caesar would bring about the restoration of the Republic, and they were
wrong. A Second Triumvirate was formed by Caesar’s adopted son ___________, along with his second in command
Marc ___________ and a general named Lepidus. This triumvirate was an awesome failure, degenerating into a second
civil war. Octavian and Antony fought it out. Octavian won, changed his name to Caesar ___________, became sole
ruler of Rome, adopted the title ___________, and started printing coins identifying himself as Divini Filius: Son of God.
19. So did Caesar destroy the Republic? No, he’s only really to blame if he was the first one to do that. And he wasn’t.
Take the general Marius, for instance, who rose to power on the strength of his generalship and on his willingness to open
up the army to the ___________, who were loyal to him ___________, and not to Rome, and whom he promised land in
exchange for their good service in the army. This of course required the Romans to keep conquering new land so they
could keep giving it to new legionnaires. Marius also was consul ______ times in a row 60 years before Caesar.
20. Or look at the general ___________ who, like Marius, ensured that his armies would be more loyal to him personally
than to Rome, but who marched against Rome itself, and then became its dictator,
___________ thousands of people in 81 BCE, 30 years before Caesar entered the scene.
21. You’ll remember that empire had some characteristics that made it imperial: a ___________ system of government,
continual military expansion, and a ___________ of subject peoples. The Roman Empire had all three of those
characteristics long before it became The Roman Empire.
22. Rome started out as a ___________, and then it became a city state, then a ___________, and then a Republic, but that
entire time, it was basically comprised of the area around Rome.
23. By the 4th century BCE, Rome started to incorporate its neighbors like the ___________ and the Etruscans, and
pretty soon they had all of Italy under their control. If you want to talk about real expansion and diversity, you’ve got to
talk about the ___________ Wars.
Punic War, Rome wanted ___________, which was controlled by the Carthaginians. Rome won, which
made Carthage cranky, so they started the second Punic war.
th
elephants. Hannibal and his elephant army almost won, but alas, they didn’t and as a result the Romans got
___________. People in Spain are definitely NOT Romans which means that by 201 BCE Rome was definitely an
empire.
third Punic War was a formality – Rome found some excuse to attack ___________ and then destroyed it so
completely that these days you can’t even find it on a map.
24. Eventually this whole area and a lot more would be incorporated into a system of ___________ and millions of people
would be ruled by the Roman Empire. And it’s ridiculous to say that Rome was a Republic until Augustus became
Rome’s first official emperor, because by the time he did that, Rome had been an empire for ___________ years.
Question: In your opinion, was Rome ever a republic? If so, when did it switch over to an Empire?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 11: Christianity from Judaism to Constantine
1. Any understanding of Christianity has to start with _____________ because Jesus was born a Jew, and he
grew up in the Jewish tradition. He was one of many teachers spreading his ideas in the Roman province of
Judea at the time, and he was part of a _____________ tradition that helps us understand why he was thought
of not only teacher but something much, much more.
2. The _____________ initially worshipped many gods, making sacrifices to them in order to bring good
weather and good fortune. But they eventually developed a religion centered on an idea that would become key
to the other great western religions. This was _____________, the idea that there is only one true god.
3. The Hebrews developed a second concept that is key to their religion as well: the idea of the _____________,
a deal with God. The main man in this was _____________.
4. So, some important things about this god: 1. _____________. He—and I’m using the masculine pronoun
because that’s what Hebrew prayers use—does not want you to put any gods before Him. 2. He is also
_____________, having always existed and he is deeply personal – he chats with prophets, sends locusts, etc.
He doesn’t take corporeal form like the Greek and Roman gods do.
5. Probably most important to us today, and certainly most important to Jesus, this god demands_____________
righteousness and _____________ justice. So, this is the god of the Hebrews, _____________, and despite
many ups and downs, the Jewish people have stuck with him for- according to the Hebrew calendar, at leastover 5700 years.
6. By the time that Jesus was born, the land of the Israelites had been absorbed into the _____________
Empire as the province of Judea. Both Herods ultimately took their orders from the Romans, and they were
Hellenizers, bringing in _____________ theater and architecture, and rationalism.
7. In response to those Hellenistic influences, there were a lot of preachers trying to get the Jews to return to the
traditions and the godly ways of the past, including the Sadducees, the _____________ the Essenes, and the
Zealots. And one of those preachers, who didn’t fit comfortably into any of these four groups, was Jesus of
_____________.
8. Jesus was a preacher who spread his message of _____________ love and, above all, _____________ across
Judea. He was remarkably charismatic, attracting a small but incredibly loyal group of followers, and he was
said to perform _____________ —although it’s worth noting that miracles weren’t terribly uncommon at the
time.
9. Jesus’s message was particularly resonant to the _____________ and downtrodden and pretty radical in its
anti- _____________ stance. All of which was kind of threatening to the powers that be, who accordingly had
him arrested, tried and then executed in the normal method of killing rebels at that time, _____________.
10. So why would people believe that Jesus was the Messiah? First, the Jews had a long tradition of believing
that a _____________ who would come to them in a time of trouble. And Judea under the rule of Herod and
the Romans… definitely a time of trouble. Also, many of the prophecies about this savior point to someone
whose life looks a lot like Jesus's. So some religious Jews saw Jesus in those prophecies and came to believe
either during his life or shortly thereafter, that he was the messiah.
11. There are three possible historical reasons why Jesus became more influential than Augustus:
Reason #1: The Romans continued to make things bad for the Jews. In fact, things got much worse for the
Jews, especially after they launched a revolt between 66-73 CE, which did not go well. By the time the dust
settled, the Romans had destroyed the _____________ and expelled the Jews from Judea, beginning what we
now know as the Jewish _____________. Without a Temple or geographic unity, the Jews had to solidify what
it meant to be a Jew and what the basic tenants of the religion were. This forced the followers of Jesus to make a
decision; were they going to continue to be Jews following stricter laws set forth by _____________ or were
they going to be something else. The decision to open up their religion to _____________, or Gentiles, people
who weren’t part of the covenant, is the central reason that Christianity could become a world religion instead
of just a _____________, of Judaism.
Reason #2: Is related to reason number 1 and it’s all about a dude named _____________ of Tarsus, who
after having received a vision on the road to Damascus, became Paul and began visiting and sending letters to
Jesus followers throughout the Mediterranean. And it was Paul who emphatically declared that Jesus followers
did NOT have to be _____________ that they did not have to be circumcised or keep to Jewish laws. The other
thing to remember about Paul is that he was a _____________ citizen which meant that he could travel freely
throughout the Roman Empire. This allowed him to make his case to lots of different people and facilitated the
_____________ spread of Christianity.
Reason #3: Christianity was born and flourished an empire with a common _____________ that allowed for
its spread. And crucially, it was also an Empire in _____________. Like even by the end of the first century CE,
Rome was on its way down. For the average person, and even for some elites, things weren’t as good as they
had been, if fact they were getting worse so fast that you might have thought the end of the world was coming.
12. But then as the Roman decline continued, Emperor _____________ allowed the worship of
Jesus and then eventually converted to Christianity himself.
Question: How did Christianity become a world religion and not a localized religion like Hinduism?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: _____________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History #12: Fall of the Roman Empire & The Byzantine Empire
1. How and when Rome fell remains the subject of considerable historical debate—but today I’m going to argue
that the Rome didn’t really fully fall until the middle of the ______ century. Technically the city of Rome was
conquered by _____________ in 476 CE.
2. Rome was doomed to fall as soon as it spread outside of _____________ because the further the territory is
from the capital, the harder it is to _____________.
3. Thus _____________ itself sowed the seeds of destruction in Rome. This was the argument put forth by the
Roman historian Tacitus, "To _____________, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they
make a desert and call it ____________.”
4. There are two ways to overcome this governance problem: First, you rule with the proverbial ______
_______. Regardless, the Romans couldn’t do this because their whole identity was wrapped up in an idea of
justice that precluded indiscriminate _____________. The other strategy is to try to incorporate
_____________ people into the empire more fully: In Rome’s case, to make them Romans. This worked really
well in the early days of the Republic and even at the beginning of the Empire. But it eventually led to
Barbarians inside the Gates.
5. The decline of the _____________ started long before Rome started getting sacked. It really began with the
extremely bad decision to incorporate _____________ warriors into the Roman Army. By the ________ and
________ centuries CE, though, the empire had been forced to allow the kind of riffraff into their army who
didn’t really care about the idea of Rome itself. They were only _____________ to their commanders.
6. This was of course a recipe for _______ ______, and that’s exactly what happened with general after general
after general declaring himself _____________ of Rome.
7. There was very little stability in the West. For instance, between 235 and 284 CE, _____ different people
were either emperor or claimed to be.
8. So remember when I said the Roman Empire survived until the 15th century? Well that was the Eastern
Roman Empire, commonly known as the _____________ Empire. So while the Western empire descended into
chaos, the eastern half of the Empire had its capital in Byzantium, a city on the _____________ Strait that
Constantine would later rename _____________ when he moved his capitol east.
9. As the political center of the Roman Empire shifted east, Constantine also tried to re-orient his new religion,
_____________, toward the east, holding the first Church council in Nicaea in 325. The idea was to get all
Christians to believe the _______ ______-that worked- but it did mark the beginning of the emperor having
greater control over the Church.
10. Although the Byzantines spoke _____________ not Latin, they considered themselves Romans. There was
a lot of continuity between the old, Western Roman Empire, and the new, Eastern one. _____________, each
was ruled by a single ruler who wielded absolute
11. War was pretty much constant as the Byzantines fought the _____________ Sassanian Empire and then
various Islamic empires.
12. _____________and valuable agricultural land that yielded high taxes meant that the Byzantine Empire was
like the Western Roman Empire, exceptionally rich, and it was slightly more compact as a territory than its
predecessor and much more _____________, containing as it did all of those once independent Greek city
states, which made it easier to administer.
13. Like their Western counterparts, the Byzantines enjoyed spectacle and _____________. Chariot races in
Constantinople were huge, with thousands turning out at the _____________ to cheer on their favorites.
14. Perhaps the most consistently Roman aspect of Byzantine society was that they followed Roman _____.
15. The Eastern Roman Empire’s codification of Roman laws was one of its greatest achievements. Much of the
credit for that goes to the most famous Byzantine Emperor, _____________. He was born a _____________
somewhere in the Balkans and then rose to became emperor in 527. He ruled for almost 30 years and in
addition to _____________ Roman law, he did a lot to restore the former glory of the Roman Empire. He took
_____________ back; he even took Rome back from the Goths, although not for long. He’s responsible for the
building of one of the great churches in all of time— which is now a mosque—the _____________
_____________or Church of Saint Wisdom.
16. Maybe the most interesting thing Justinian ever did was be married to _____________ who began her
career as an _____________, dancer, and possible prostitute before become Empress. And she may have saved
her husband’s rule by convincing him not to flee the city during riots between the _____________ and
_____________.
17. Theodora fought to expand the rights of _____________ in divorce and property ownership, and even had
a law passed taking the bold stance that adulterous women should not be executed.
18. So, in short, the Byzantines continued the Roman legacy of empire and war and law for almost
_____________ years after Romulus Augustus was driven out of Rome.
19. The Byzantines followed a different form of Christianity, the branch we now call Eastern or sometimes
Greek _____________.
20. How there came to be a split between the Catholic and Orthodox traditions is complicated – In the West
there was a _____________ and in the East there was a _____________. The Pope is the head of the Roman
Catholic Church. He sort of serves as God’s _____________ on earth and he doesn’t answer to any secular
ruler. In the Orthodox Church they didn’t have that problem because the Patriarch was always appointed by the
_____________. So it was pretty clear who had control over the church, so much that they even have a word
for it- _____________: Caesar over Pope.
21. The fact that in Rome there was no _____________ after 476 meant there was no one to challenge the Pope,
which would profoundly shape European history over the next _________ years.
Question: Why does John Green dispute when Rome fell?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ______________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History #13: Islam
1. Islam, which like _______________ and _______________ grew up on the east coast of the Mediterranean.
2. In less than __________ years Islam went from not existing to being the religious and political organizing
principal of one of the largest empires in the world.
3. The story begins in the _______ century CE when the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad, a 40-ish guy
who made his living as a caravan trader and told him to begin reciting the word of God.
4. A few things to know about the world Islam entered: First, Muhammad’s society was intensely
_______________. He was a member of the Quraysh tribe, living in Mecca and tribal ties were extremely
important.
5. Also, at the time, the _______________ Peninsula was like this crazy religious melting pot. Like most tribal
Arabs worshipped gods very similar to the Mesopotamian gods and by the time of Muhammad, cult statutes of
many of those gods had been collected in his hometown of Mecca in this temple-like structure called the
_______________.
6. Arabia was also a home for _______________ like Christianity and Judaism, even a bit of Zoroastrianism.
So the message that there was only god wouldn’t have been like as surprising to Muhammad as it was, for
instance, to Abraham.
7. At its core, Islam is what we call a radical _______________ religion—just like Jesus and Moses sought to
restore Abrahamic monotheism after what they perceived as straying, so too did Muhammad.
8. Muslims believe that God sent Muhammad as the ______________ ________________to bring people back
to the one true religion, which involves the worship of, and submission to, a single and all-powerful God.
9. The _______________ also acknowledges Abraham and Moses and Jesus among others as prophets, but it’s
very different from the Hebrew and Christian bibles: For one thing it’s much less narrative, but also its the
written record of the _______________ Muhammad received—which means it’s not written from the point of
view of people, it is seen as the actual word of God.
10. The Quran is a really broad-ranging text, but it returns again and again to a couple themes. One is
_______________ _______________and the other is the importance of taking care of those _______________
_______________than you.
11. These revelations also radically increased the rights of _______________ and orphans, which was one of
the reasons why Mohammad’s tribal leaders weren’t that psyched about them.
12. The ____________ __________________of Islam are the basic acts considered obligatory, at least by Sunni
Muslims.
a) First is the shahada or the profession of the _______________: There is no god but god and Muhammad is
God’s prophet
b) Second, salat, or ritual prayer _______________ times a day—at dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset,
c) Third, sawm, the month-long _______________ during the month of Ramadan, in which Muslims
do not eat or drink or smoke cigarettes during daylight hours.
d) Fourth is zakat, or _______________, in which non-poor Muslims are required to give a percentage of their
income to the poor,
e) and lastly _______________, the pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims must try to fulfill at least once in their
lives, provided they are healthy and have enough money.
13. One more thing about Islam: Like Christianity and Judaism, it has a body of law -- it’s called _______.
14. People who embraced this worldview were called Muslims, because they submitted to the will of God, and
they became part of the _______________, or community of believers.
15. So as Muhammad’s following in Mecca grew, the umma aroused the suspicion of the most powerful tribe,
the Quraysh, because they managed the _______________ trade in Mecca, and if all those gods were false, it
would be a disaster economically.
16. The Quraysh forced Muhammad and his followers out of Mecca in 622 CE, and they headed to Yithrab,
also known as _______________. This journey, also known as the Hijrah, is so important that it marks year
______ in the Islamic calendar.
17. In Medina, Muhammad severed the religion’s ties to Judaism, turning the focus of prayer away from
_______________ to Mecca. Also in Medina, the Islamic community started to look a lot more like a small
_______________ than like a church. Like, Jesus never had a country to run.
18. In addition to being an important prophet, he was a good general and in ________, the Islamic community
took back Mecca. They destroyed the ___________ in the Kaaba, and soon Islam was as powerful a political
force in the region as it was a religious one.
19. When Muhammad died in 632 CE, there wasn’t a religious vacuum left behind: Muhammad was the final
prophet; the revelation of the Quran would continue to guide the umma throughout their lives. But the
community did need a political leader, a _______________. Soon disputes over the new leader began the divide
between the two of the major sects of Islam: Sunni and Shi’a.
20. To Sunnis, the first four caliphs—Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali— are known as the
_______________ _______________ Caliphs, and many of the conservative movements in the Islamic world
today are all about trying to restore the Islamic world to those glory days when Islam became stabilized and
spread across the Middle East and North Africa.
21. It’s common to hear that in these early years Islam quote spread by the _______________ and that’s partly
true; many people, including the _______________, embraced Islam without any military campaigns. In fact,
the Quran says that religion must not be an act of compulsion.
22. While the Islamic Empire didn’t require its subjects to convert to Islam, you paid lower _______________
if you converted.
23. Not only were the Muslims great conquerors, they spawned an explosion of _______________ ______
_______________that lasted hundreds of years. They saved many of the classical texts,
while Europe was ignoring them, and they paved the way for the _______________.
Question: How was Mohammad different from Jesus, at least politically?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ___________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 14: The Dark Ages...How Dark Were They, Really?
1. The period between 600 and 1450 CE is often called the Middle Ages in Europe because it came between the ______
_________—assuming you forget the Byzantines—and the beginning of the ______________ _____.
2. And it’s sometimes called the ________ ______, because it was purportedly unenlightened.
3. Medieval Europe had less _________, fewer __________, and less cultural _______ than the original Roman Empire.
4. But with fewer powerful _________________, wars were at least smaller, which is one reason why Europeans living in
Medieval Times lived slightly longer.
5. Instead of centralized governments, Europe in the middle ages had ______________, a political system based on
reciprocal relationships between lords, who owned lots of land, and vassals, who protected the land and got to dress up as
____________ in exchange for pledging loyalty to the lords.
6. The lords were also ____________ to more important lords, with the most important of all being the king. Below the
knights were _________ who did the actual work on the land in exchange for protection from bandits and other threats.
7. Feudalism was also an ______________ system, with the peasants working the land and keeping some of their
production to feed themselves while giving the rest to the landowner whose land they worked.
8. This system reinforces the status quo – there’s little _____________ and absolutely no social _____________: Peasants
could never work their way up to lords, and they almost never left their villages. One more point that’s very interesting
from a world history perspective: this devolution from empire to localism has happened in lots of places at lots of
different times. And in times of extreme political stress, like after the fall of the Han dynasty in China, power tends to
flow into the hands of local lords who can protect the peasants better than the state can.
9. We hear about this a lot in Chinese history and also in contemporary Afghanistan, but instead of being called feudal
lords, these landlords are called ______________.
10. The other reason the Dark Ages are called Dark is because Europe was dominated by _________________ and by
religious debates about like how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.
11. All that noted, things were certainly brighter in the ____________ world, or Dar al Islam.
12. So when we last left the Muslims, they had expanded out of their homeland in _________ and conquered the rich
Egyptian provinces of the _____________ and the entire Sassanian empire, all in the space of about 100 years.
13. The Umayyad Dynasty then expanded the empire west to _________ and moved the capital to Damascus, because it
was closer to the action, empire-wise but still in Arabia.
14. Their replacements were the Abbasids which hailed from the Eastern and therefore more ___________ provinces of
the Islamic Empire.
15. The Abbasids took over in 750 and no one could fully defeat them—until 1258, when they were conquered by—wait
for it—____________________.
16. The Abbasids kept the idea of a hereditary monarchy, but they moved the capital of the empire to _______________,
and they were much more welcoming of other non-Arab Muslims into positions of power.
17. By about 1000CE , the Islamic Caliphate which looks so incredibly impressive on a map had really descended into a
series of smaller ____________, each paying lip-service to the caliph in Baghdad.
18. This was partly because the Islamic Empire relied more and more on soldiers from the frontier, in this case
_________, and also slaves pressed into military service, in order to be the backbone of their army.
19. More important than the Persian-style monarchy that the Abbasids tried to set up was their ______________ to
foreigners and their ideas. That tolerance and curiosity ushered in a ____________ ________ of Islamic learning centered
in Baghdad; and Baghdad was the world’s center of scholarship with its __________ ___ ___________ and immense
library.
20. Muslim scholars translated the works of the Greek ______________ as well as scientific works. They translated and
preserved ____________ and Hindu manuscripts that might have otherwise been lost.
21. Muslims made huge strides in _____________ as well. One Muslim scholar Ibn Sina, wrote the Canon of Medicine,
which became the standard medical textbook or centuries in both ____________ and the Middle East.
22. The Islamic empire adopted mathematical concepts from _________such as the zero, and the symbols we use to
denote it “Arabic numerals.”
23. Muslim mathematicians and astronomers developed ____________ partly so they could simplify Islamic inheritance
law. Plus they made important strides in _______________ so that people understand where to turn then trying to turn
toward Mecca.
24. Baghdad wasn’t the only center of learning in the Islamic world. In _________, Islamic Cordoba became a center for
the arts, especially ________________ and engineering.
25. Muslim scholars took the lead in ______________ science, improving yields on all kinds of new crops, allowing
Spanish lives to be longer and less hungry.
26. Meanwhile, ___________ was having a Golden Age of its own. The ________ Dynasty made China’s government
more of a meritocracy, and ruled over 80 million people across four million square miles.
27. The Tang also produced incredible art that was traded all throughout Asia. Many of the more famous sculptures from
the Tang Dynasty feature figures who are distinctly not-Chinese, which again demonstrates the ______________ of the
empire.
28. The Song Dynasty, which lasted from 960 to 1258, Chinese metalworkers were producing as much _____________ as
Europe would be able to produce in the 18th century. Some of this iron was put to use in new ________, which enabled
agriculture to boom, thereby supporting population growth.
29. _______________ was of such high quality that it was shipped throughout the world, which is why we called it
“china.”
30. And there was so much trade going on that the Chinese ran out of metal for coins, leading to another innovation–
_____________ _______________.
31. By the 11th century, the Chinese were writing down recipes for a mixture of saltpeter, sulfur
and charcoal, that we now know as ____________________.
Question: In a worldview, would you consider this time to be the “dark ages”? Why or why not?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: _________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 15: The Crusades - Pilgrimage or Holy War?
1. Initially the Crusades were not a __________ ______ on the part of Europeans against Islam, but in
important ways the Crusades were driven by religious faith.
2. If the Crusades had been brought on by the lightning-fast rise of Islamic empires and a desire to keep in
_________________ hands the land of Jesus, then the Crusades would’ve started in the _______ .
3. But early Islamic dynasties, like the Umayyads and the Abbasids, were perfectly happy with Christians
and Jews living among them, as long as they paid a ______. And plus the Christian _________________
business was awesome for the Islamic Empire’s economy.
4. But then a new group of Muslims, the _____________ Turks, moved into the region and they sacked the
holy cities and made it much more difficult for Christians to make their pilgrimages.
5. The ________________ felt the threat and called upon the west for help.
6. So the first official crusade began with a call to arms from Pope _____________ II in 1095. This was
partly because Urban wanted to unite Europe by giving them a common enemy.
7. Crusades were not primarily military operations; they were _________________ with a touch of
______________ on the side.
8. Some modern historians might ignore religious motivations, but medieval crusaders didn’t. To the
Crusaders, they were taking up arms to protect ___________ and his kingdom. So when these people
cried out “________ ______ ____!” to explain their reasons for going, we should do them the favor of believing
them.
9. Following preachers like _______ ____ _________, thousands of peasants and nobles alike volunteered
for the First Crusade and had a rough time going. There was no real leader so they were constant rivalries
between nobles about who could supply the most troops.
10. But despite the rivalries, and the disorganization the crusaders were remarkably successful. At Antioch
the Crusaders reversed a seemingly hopeless situation when a peasant found a ________ that had pierced the
side of Christ’s side hidden under a church, thereby raising morale enough to win the day.
11. By 1100CE European nobles held both Antioch and Jerusalem as ________ Christian kingdoms (most
Christians in the Levant were Orthodox).
12. The third Crusade was a European response to the emergence of a new Islamic power, led by Saladin. The
Crusaders were ultimately led by ____________ I of England.
13. Although crusading continued throughout the 14th century, the ______ Crusade is the last one we’ll focus
on, because it was the Crazy One. The Venetians built ______ ships, but then only 11,000 Crusaders
actually made it down to Venice, and there wasn’t enough money to pay for those boats, so the Venetians
made the Crusaders a deal: Help us capture the rebellious city of Zara, and we’ll ferry you to Anatolia.
This was a smidge problematic, Crusading-wise, because Zara was a Christian city, but the Crusaders
agreed to help, resulting in the Pope ___________________ both them and the Venetians.
14. Later the excommunicated Crusaders fought for the _______________ emperor who failed to pay them
so the Crusaders decided to __________ the Byzantine Empire…but never reclaimed any of the Holy
Land. The fourth crusade pretty much doomed the Byzantine Empire, which never really recovered.
Constantinople, a shadow of its former self, was conquered by the _________ in 1453.
15. So ultimately the Crusades were a total failure at establishing Christian kingdoms in the Holy Land long
term. And with the coming of the ____________, the region remained solidly Muslim, as it is (mostly) is today.
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ____________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 16: Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa
West Africa
1. Much of African history was preserved via ________ rather than written tradition.
2. But we do have a lot of interesting records for some African histories such as the tale of king _________
_______, who ruled the west African empire of _______, and in 1324ish he left his home and made the
__________, the pilgrimage to ____________.
3. He brought with him an entourage of over _______ and, most importantly, ______ camel loads of gold.
Along the way Mansa Musa spent freely and gave away lots of his riches. Most famously, when he reached
______________, he spent so much gold that he caused runaway _____________ throughout the city that took
years to recover from.
4. He built houses in __________ and in __________ to house his attendants, and as he traveled through the
world, a lot of people—notably the merchants of _____________—spread tales of Mansa Musa’s ridiculous
wealth, which helped create the myth in the minds of Europeans that West Africa was a _______ ___
__________, an El Dorado.
5. So what’s so important about the story of Mansa Musa?
a) It tells us there were African kingdoms, ruled by fabulously wealthy African kings; which undermine one of
the many stereotypes about Africa, that its people were poor and lived in tribes ruled by ________ and _______
________.
b) Since Mansa Musa was making the hajj, we know that he was __________ and relatively __________.
c) And this tells us that Africa, at least western Africa, was much more _________________ to the parts of the
world we’ve been talking about than we generally are led to believe.
6. The empire of Mali ran from the coast hundreds of miles into the interior and included many significant
cities, the largest and best-known of which was ______________________.
7. The story of the Islamization of the Empire, however, is a bit more complicated. The ___________ were
early converts to Islam, and Islam spread along pre-existing ________ ___________ between North and West
Africa.
8. The first converts in Mali were traders, who benefited from having a religious as well as _______________
connection to their trading partners in the North and the rest of the Mediterranean.
9. The kings followed the traders, because sharing the religion of more established kingdoms in the north and
east would give them ________________, not to mention access to scholars and administrators who could help
them cement their power.
10. African Muslim kings would often _____________ traditional religion with Islam. For instance, giving
women more _______________ than was seen in Islam’s birthplace.
11. The first kings we have a record of adopting Islam were from ____________, which was the first “empire”
in western Africa and it was later replaced by Mali.
12. When Mansa Musa returned from his hajj, he brought back _____________ and ___________________ to
build mosques.
13. The reason we know a lot about Mali is because it was visited by ______ ____________, the Moroccan
cleric and scholar who traveled from Mali to ___________________ to India to _____________ to Indonesia.
Everywhere he went he was treated like a king and then he went home and wrote a really famous book called
the _________, which people still read today.
14. The Malian Empire eventually fell to the _____________, which was eventually overthrown for being
insufficiently Islamic, meaning that centuries after his death Mansa Musa had succeeded at bringing Islamic
piety to his people.
East Africa
15. The eastern coast of Africa saw the rise of what historians called the ____________ civilization, which was
not an empire or a kingdom but a collection of ______ ________—like Zanzibar and Mombasa and
Mogadishu--All of which formed a network of _________ ___________.
16. There was no _____________ ________________; each of these cities was autonomous; ruled usually by a
king.
17. There were three things that linked these city states such that we can consider them a common culture:
____________, ______________ and ____________________.
18. The Swahili language is part of a language group called ________, and its original speakers were from
West Africa. Modern day Swahili, by the way, is still a Bantu based language, although it’s been heavily
influenced by _______________.
19. Arab traders arrived in the 8th century seeking goods that they could trade in the vast __________
____________ network, the Silk Road of the sea, and of course those merchants brought __________.
20. Most of the goods exported were raw materials, like ____________, animal hides, timber; also _________
were exported, although not in HUGE numbers, and they exported gold. They imported finished luxury goods
like ______________ and __________.
Question:
Who is history would Mansa Musa remind you of?
Why don’t we thing of the East African states as an “empire”?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: __________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 17: Wait for it….. The Mongols!
1. We imagine the Mongol Empire as stereotypically _________________.
2. A different view of the Mongols might emphasize the amazing speed and success of their conquests—how
they conquered more land in ____ years than the Romans did in _____.
3. One historian has even claimed that the Mongols “smashed the __________ _________” and created
international law.
4. The Mongols are renowned for their religious ______________.
5. They migrate according to ______________ conditions so they can feed their _________.
6. When both men and ____________ must work for the social order to survive, there tends to be less
patriarchal ________________ of women.
7. The Mongols were much ______________ than other pastoral groups.
8. The reason the Mongols came to dominate the world really started with one guy-- ______________
_________.
9. Genghis Khan promoted people based on _____________ rather that ___________ position.
10. By the time he died in his sleep in 1227, his empire stretched from Mongolia all the way to the
________________ _______.
11. The Mongols were uncommonly adaptable. Even though they had never seen a castle before raiding it, they
became ___________ at siege warfare by interrogating _________________.
12. The Mongols also adopted _______________, probably introducing it to the Europeans.
13. Often cities would surrender the moment the ________________ arrived, just to escape
_________________.
14. The Mongols increased ____________________ throughout Eurasia by developing this pony express-like
system of weigh stations with horses and riders that could _________________ relay information.
15. Cuisine also travelled the Mongol trade routes. It was because of the Mongols that _____________ became
a staple of the __________________ diet.
16. The Mongols were not much for administrative tasks like keeping ______________ so they found people
who were good at that stuff and just moved them around the
_______________.
17. They themselves were ____________________, believing in nature spirits, but since their religion was tied
to the land from which they came, they didn’t expect new people to _______________ it and they didn’t ask
them to.
18. Genghis Khan’s definition of happiness: “The greatest happiness is to _______________ your enemies, to
chase them before you, to __________ them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp
to your bosom their wives and daughters.”
19. With their use of trade routes, the Mongols were probably responsible for the _______________
_______________.
20. The Mongols promoted ______________, diversity, and tolerance.
21. They also promoted slaughter and senseless __________________.
Question: Would you put the Mongol empire on the same level as the Roman Empire? Why or why not?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History #18:International Commerce, Snorkeling Camels, and the Indian Ocean
Trade
1. The Indian Ocean trade system was like the ___________, in that it was a network of trade routes that
connected people who had stuff to people who wanted it and were willing to pay for it; there were lots of Indian
Ocean trade routes connecting various port cities around the Indian Ocean Basin, including ___________ and
Mogadishu and Hormuz and ___________________________.
2. But Indian Ocean trade was bigger, richer, and featured more ___________ players than the Silk Road, but it
is much less famous probably because it does not have a snazzy name…how about the
______________________!
3. By about 700 CE, there was a recognizable Monsoon Marketplace, but it really blew up between 1000 CE
and 1200. It then declined a bit during the ______ ________________, when overland trade became cheap and
safe, because---wait for it---The Mongols.
4. The Indian Ocean trade surged again in the 14th and 15th centuries when the trading partners included the
___________coast cities, ___________ empires in the Middle East, ___________, China, Southeast Asia, but
NOT ___________.
5. The Indian Ocean is home to a set of very special winds called ___________. These winds were so
___________ that early maritime travel guides often listed ideal times of departure down to the week and
sometimes the day.
6. This meant lower risk, which meant ___________ trade, which meant more trade.
7. Indian Ocean trade incorporated many more people than participated in Silk Road trade. There were
___________ people and people from ___________ to Malaysia and India and ___________, all sailing around
and setting up __________ ____________where they would act as middle men, trying to sell stuff for more
than they bought it for and trying to find new stuff to buy that they could sell later.
8. The Western half of the Indian Ocean basin was dominated by ___________ ___________who had the
money to build ships, although we will see that in the 15th century the Chinese state could have changed that
balance completely.
9. In the Indian Ocean, the most amazing thing, except for a few pirates, all of this trade was ___________. For
the better part of ___________ these merchant ships were free to sail the seas without the need for protection
from any state’s navy.
10. For the first time we see the beginnings of goods being traded for a ___________, instead of just luxury
goods, like silk for elites.
11. The ___________ city states imported finished goods such as silk and porcelain from China and cotton
cloth from India. Spices and foodstuffs like rice were shipped from ___________ ___________ and especially
Sri Lanka where __________ ____________was a primary export good and the Islamic world provided
everything from coffee to books and weapons.
12. But it wasn’t just products that made their way around the eastern hemisphere thanks to the Indian Ocean.
___________ spread, too. Like the ___________ ___________, came from China. Muslim sailors popularized
the ___________ which made it easier to navigate by the stars. Boats using stern-post ___________were easier
to steer, so that technology quickly spread throughout the Monsoon Marketplace.
13. The Islamic world also produced the triangular ___________ sail, which became super important because it
allowed for ships to tack ___________ the wind. This meant that a skilled crew could make their way through
the ocean even if they didn’t have a strong tailwind.
14. And just as with the Silk Road, ___________ also traveled in the Monsoon Marketplace. For instance today,
more Muslims live in Indonesia than in any other country; Islam spread to Indonesia via the Monsoon
Marketplace.
15. After the 1200s, the region which had previously been heavily influenced by the Indian religions of
___________ and ___________ became increasingly Islamic as rulers and elites adopted the religion so they
could have religious as well as ___________ ties to the people they were trading with. But Islam didn’t spread
as effectively to ___________, Laos, Cambodia or ___________because they weren’t centers of trade.
16. How do you become a center for trade? Let’s use the Strait of Malacca as an example. You can see how it
could act as a ___________ point for trade. Any city that controlled that strait could stop the ships from going
through it, or more likely ___________ them. And that’s exactly what happened, to such an extent that a
powerful merchant state called Srivijaya rose up on ___________.
17. This brings up a key point about Indian Ocean Trade: which is that it was indispensable to the creation of
certain city states. Without trade, those places wouldn’t have existed, let alone become wealthy and grand.
Trade was a huge source of wealth for these cities because they could tax it; through import and export duties or
port fees. But the fact that they are no longer powerful shows that trade can be a pretty weak foundation on
which to build a polity, even a small one. There are many reasons for this: like high taxes can motivate traders
to find other routes, for instance, but the main one is this: Reliance upon trade makes you especially vulnerable
to the peaks and troughs in the ___________.
Statement: This episode does not focus on one empire, conqueror, or religion. Yet, it is probably the
most informative about the lives of actual people living at this time. Explain.
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: _________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy
Crash Course World History # 19: Venice and the Ottoman Empire
1. One mutually beneficial relationship, between the Venetians and the Ottomans, led to two really big deals:
The European _____________________ and ___________ __________.
2. Venice is a city made up of hundreds of islands at the northern tip of the ___________ Sea, but walking
around it, you can’t help but feel that the city is essentially a collection of floating buildings tied together by
some canals. Venice was literally built for _____________________trade.
3. First, Venetians became experts in shipbuilding and were famous for merchant ships like the _________and
the _________.
4. The Venetians formed trade treaties, sometimes called _____________________, with the Byzantines, and
then when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans and became ______________, the Venetians were quick to make
trade treaties with their new neighbors.
5. But even before the Ottomans, Venice had experience trading with the Islamic world: It initially established
itself as the biggest European power in the Mediterranean due to the lucrative ___________ business with the
Egyptians.
6. Due to the ___________ the Egyptian merchants were not so welcome in Europe. But they controlled both
the overland and oversea access to the Mediterranean.
7. Two Venetian merchants hatched a very clever plan to get around this objection…they went to Alexandria on
business, stole ___________body and then hid it in a shipment of pork. Then, forever after, the Venetians were
like, “Listen, we HAVE to trade with these guys. We use it as a secret way to ferry saint bodies out of Egypt.
We don’t WANT to become fantastically wealthy. It’s just a necessary byproduct of our saint-saving.”
8. So what did Venice import? They imported a lot of ___________ from the Ottomans.
9. The Venetians also had a diverse economy beyond trading. They also produced things like ___________ and
___________.
10. In fact Venice is still known for its glass, but they couldn’t produce it without a special ________ that they
used to make the colors. The ash came from the ___________.
11. One last thing about Venice that makes it special, at least for its time: Venice was a ___________. Its
leaders were elected, and had to answer to the populace.
12. The ruler was the ___________ and he got to live in a very nice house and wear a funny hat.
13. The Ottomans were an empire that lasted from around ___________until ___________, making it one of
the longest-lasting and richest empires in world history.
14. The Ottomans managed to blend their pastoral ___________ roots with some very un-nomadic
empire building, and some really impressive architecture.
15. The Ottomans were greatest in the 15th and 16th centuries under two famous sultans: First, Mehmet the
Conqueror ruled from 1451 to 1481 and expanded Ottoman control to the ___________, which is why there are
Bosnian Muslims today.
16. Ottoman expansion reached its greatest extent under ___________ the Magnificent, who ruled from 15201566. He took valuable territory in ___________ and Egypt, thus securing control over the western parts of the
Asian trade – both overland and oversea. He also defeated the king of ___________ and laid siege to Vienna in
1526. He turned the Ottomans into a huge _______________ power.
17. The Ottomans basically controlled about half of what the ___________controlled, but it was much more
valuable because of all the ____________ __________trade.
18. The Ottomans created an entirely new ruling class, a system some historians call a ___________
aristocracy. The Ottomans just bypassed the problem of hereditary nobles altogether by creating both an army
and a bureaucracy from scratch so they would be loyal only to the Sultan.
19. The devshirme, a program in which they kidnapped ___________ boys, converted them to Islam, and
raised them either to be members of an elite military force called the ___________, or bureaucrats who would
collect taxes and advise the Sultan.
20. Originally eunuchs probably only served as ___________ guards, for obvious reasons, but emperors
quickly realized that they would be more reliable than nobles as advisors and administrators because their
___________ were less likely to be divided.
21. This system eventually broke down as Janissaries (who had guns) lobbied to be allowed to
have___________. But until that happened, the Ottomans system using a mix of eunuchs and slave
administrators to run everything worked incredibly well.
22. After the Ottomans captured ___________, they pretty much controlled the flow of trade through the
Mediterranean, but the Venetians had and centuries of experience as mariners. So the Ottomans were content to
let the Venetians do all the trading and carrying of goods, and they just made their money from taxes. This set
up a ____________ __________relationship.
23. For instance, Venice became super rich, and being super rich was a prerequisite for the European
Renaissance because all that art and learning required money, which is why Venice was a leading city at the
beginning of the Renaissance before being eclipsed by ___________, ___________, and Rotterman.
24. Also, this relationship established firm connections between Europe and ___________ world, so ideas could
flow again—especially old ___________ideas Muslims had preserved and built upon.
25. Perhaps the most crucial result of the Venetian and Ottoman control of trade was that it forced other
Europeans to look for ___________ ___________to the riches of the East. That fueled huge investments in
___________.
26. The ___________ sailed south and east around the tip of Africa, and the ___________ went west, believing
that the Indies and China were much closer than they turned out to be.
Question: How did the Ottomans become a successful empire?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ____________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 20: Russia, the Kievan Rus, and the Mongols
1. Most historians now believe that the settlers of Kiev were ____________ people who migrated from around
the ____________ ______.
2. But there’s an older theory that the settlers of Kiev were actually_________ who came down to Kiev from
rivers like Dnieper and founded outposts.
3. ______________ was hugely important to Kiev. Almost all of their __________ ended with trade
concession treaties, and their _____ ______ were unusually devoted to the subject of commerce.
4. The Rus traded ______ ____________ like fur, wax, and also slaves—which may be an explanation that
word __________ derives from the Latin word for slave.
5. They also relied on agriculture—and your relationships to the land determined both your ________
________ and your _____ _______________.
6. The ruler of Kiev was called the ____________ _________________, and he became the model for future
Russian Kings. Also, the early grand princes made a fateful decision: They became Byzantine Christians.
7. According to legend, Prince Vladimir chose to convert the Rus to Byzantine Christianity in the 11th century
over Islam because of Islam’s prohibition on __________________.
8. The Kievan Rus eventually fell in 1240 when the _____________________ showed up and replaced them.
9. The Mongols did set up the Khanate of the ______________ __________ in Russia, but it didn’t leave much
lasting impact on the institutions of the region, which had already been set up by the Kievans.
10. The Mongols were comparatively _____________ ________________: they were happy to live in their
________ and collect ___________________ from the ever-bickering Russian princes.
11. Perhaps most importantly, Mongol rule cut the Russians off from the ___________________ and further
isolated them from _______________ .
12. But the Mongols did help propel _____________ to prominence and in doing so, created the idea that this
was Russia.
13. The Muscovite princes won—that is to say purchased—the right to ____________ ___________ on behalf
of the Khan from other princes.
14. One prince who was particularly good at this was known as Ivan Kalita which translates roughly as
“_______________ ______________.”
15. Plus Moscow was at the headwaters of four rivers which made it well-positioned for _________________.
And because they were kind of the allies of the Mongols- the Mongols rarely attacked them-which meant that
lots of people went to Moscow because it was relatively safe.
16. In fact, Moscow also became the seat of the _________________ ________________ ______________ in
1325.
17. After Basil the Blind, came the real man who expanded Moscow’s power, Ivan III, later known as
_________ _____ ____________.
18. First, he asserted Russian _____________________ from the Mongols and stopped paying _________ to
the khan--after the khan had named him Grand Prince, of course.
19. Ivan later declared himself sovereign of all Russians and then married the niece of the last
_____________________ emperor, thus giving him even more legitimacy.
20. He took titles autocrat and _____________, which means Caesar. Basically, Ivan created the first
________________ Russian state and for doing that he probably deserves title “the Great.”
21. While Ivan III consolidated Muscovite power, the undeniable brutal streak in Russian governance comes not
from the Mongols, but from Ivan IV, better known as Ivan the __________________________.
22. But in the beginning, he was really an innovative leader; he reformed the _______________, emphasizing
the new technology of ___________________________.
23. But in the second part of his reign, Ivan earned his nickname, the Terrible—psychological historians will
point out that things started go terribly wrong with Ivan after the death of his beloved _______________,
Anastasia Romanov.
24. In the end, Ivan IV established absolute control of the czar over all the Russian people, but he also set the
precedent of accomplishing this through ___________________, _________________ ___________________,
and the suspension of ___________.
Question: Did the Mongols help or hurt Russia? Give reasons.
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 21: Columbus, de Gama, and Zheng He! 15th Century Mariners
1. From China, ______________, who, when it comes to ocean-going voyages was the first major figure of the
15th century.
2. _______________________, from scrappy little Portugal, who managed to introduce Europeans to the Indian
Ocean trade network.
3. From Genoa, Italy, we have _________________, who sailed west for the Spanish and discovered the New
World.
4. As you’ll no doubt remember from our discussion of Indian Ocean trade, it was dominated
_______________ merchants, involved ports in Africa and the Middle East and India and Indonesia, and China
and it made a lot of people super rich.
5. Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng He led ___________ voyages throughout the Indian Ocean, the expeditions
of the so-called treasure ships, and they were huge. Zheng He led an armada of over _________ships, with a
crew of over 27, 000.
6. Zheng He wasn’t an explorer: China was the leading manufacturer of quality goods in the world, and there
wasn’t anything they actually needed to import. What they needed
was____________________________________ so that people would continue to see China as the center of the
economic universe, so there was a __________________________ through which foreign rulers or their
ambassadors would come to China and engage in a debasing ritual called the ____________ wherein they
acknowledged the superiority of the Chinese emperor and offered him or her but usually him gifts in return for
the right to trade with China.
7. These tribute missions brought lots of crazy things to China, including exotic animals such as
______________________________________________.
8. So why, then, did these voyages end? They were more concerned with protecting China from its traditional
enemies, ___________ from the steppe. So they extended the ____________________________ and became
9. Prince _____________ the Navigator was a patron, not only of sailors themselves, but of a special school at
Sagres in which _______________ _______________ was collected and new ____________ were made.
10. Henry commissioned sailors to search find path to the _________ ________ so they could get in on the
lucrative spice trade.
11. Da Gama was the first of Henry’s protégés to make it around __________, and into the Indian Ocean.
12. In 1498, he landed at Calicut, a major trading center on India’s west coast. And when he got there,
merchants asked him what he was looking for. He answered with three words:
__________________________________.
13. So, once the Portuguese breached the Indian Ocean, they were able to capture & control a number of coastal
cities, creating what historians call a ___________________________________. They could do this thanks to
their ______________________________, which captured cities by firing cannons into city walls like IRL
Angry Birds.
14. Portuguese merchant ships would capture other ships and force them to purchase a permit to trade called a
______________, without one a merchant couldn’t trade in any of the towns that Portugal controlled. This
system worked for a while, but the Portuguese never really took control of Indian Ocean trade.
15. They were successful enough that their neighbors Spain, became interested in their own route to the Indies,
and that brings us to _________________.
16. Columbus and his crew knew the earth was round. He was just wrong about the earth’s ___________. He
overestimated the size of __________ and underestimated the size of the ________________.
17. Columbus never thought he’d made it to China. He called the people he encountered “Indians” because he
thought that he’d made it to the _______ ______________, what we know as Indonesia.
18. In 1494, Pope Alexander VI settled a dispute between __________ and _____________________ by
dividing the world into two parts; the Spanish could claim lands __________ of the Line of Demarcation while
the Portuguese could claim lands ___________ of the Line.
19. On Columbus’s first journey (he made __________), he initially landed on a small Caribbean island he
called _________________________.
20. Columbus’s voyages were funded by _____________ and _____________ of Spain, partly because they
were full of Crusading zeal after expelling the Muslims from Spain, and partly because they were desperate to
get their hands on some of that __________________ richness.
21. Columbus of course, failed at finding riches—he returned with neither spices nor gold—but in terms of goal
accomplishment, Columbus was much less successful than either _____________________ or
___________________.
Question: Which mariner do you think had the greatest impact and why?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: __________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History #24: The Atlantic Slave Trade
1. From 1500 to 1880 CE, somewhere between ______________ African slaves were forcibly moved from
Africa to the Americas. And about 15% of those people died during the journey.
2. Those who didn’t die became _______________, bought and sold like any commodity.
3. Where Africans came from, and went to, changed over time, but in all, 48% of slaves went to the Caribbean
and 41% to Brazil—although few Americans recognize this, relatively _______ slaves were imported to the
U.S.—only about ________ of the total.
4. The first real “European” slave trade began after the _________________ in 1204.
5. Most of them were _____________ who worked as household servants, but many worked processing sugar.
6. One of the big misconceptions about slavery was that Europeans somehow _____________ Africans, put
them in chains, stuck them on boats, and then took them to the __________________.
7. In fact, Europeans obtained African slaves by ______________ for them. Because trade is a two-way
proposition, this meant that Africans were captured by other ____________ and then traded to Europeans in
exchange for ___________, usually like metal tools, or fine textiles, or guns.
8. In many places, slaves were one of the only sources of __________ ____________ because land was usually
owned by the state.
9. The lives of slaves were dominated by __________ _______ _________, but mostly work.
10. Slaves did all types of work, from housework to skilled crafts work, and some even worked as
______________, but the majority of them worked as agricultural _______________.
11. Slaves would often work ______________ straight during harvest time, working without
________________ in the sweltering sugar press houses where the cane would be crushed in hand rollers and
then boiled.
12. Slaves often caught their hands in the rollers, and their overseers kept a ____________________ on hand
for amputations.
13. Other slave owners were calculating that if they kept their slaves healthy enough, they would
________________ and then the slave owners could steal and sell their ______________. Or use them to work
their land.
14. Atlantic World slavery was different, and more horrifying, because it was chattel slavery, a term historians
use to indicate that the slaves were __________________ _________________.
15. Slavery is: “the permanent, _____________, and personal domination of naturally alienated and generally
______________ persons.”
16. Ultimately then, what makes slavery slavery is that slaves are ____________________.
17. The Romans also invented the _________________, using mass numbers of slaves to work the land on
giant farms called latifundia.
18. _______________ _____________ were the first to import large numbers of Bantu-speaking Africans into
their territory as slaves.
19. As the first colonizers of the Americas and the dominant importers of slaves, the ______________________
and the ________________ helped define the attitudes that characterized Atlantic slavery, beliefs they’d
inherited from a complicated nexus of all the slaveholders who came before them.
20. In short, Atlantic Slavery was a monstrous tragedy— but it was a tragedy in which the ____________
____________ participated.
Question: How was the African slave trade different from the ancient slave trade?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 25:The Spanish Empire, Silver, & Runaway Inflation
1. In the years before Columbus three impressive civilizations arose in Mesoamerica: the _____________, the
Mayans and the _____________.
2. The Aztecs formed out of an alliance of three major cities in modern day _________ in about 1430, just 89
years before Cortez and his conquistadors showed up.
3. The Aztec state was very hierarchical, with an ____________ at the top and a group unruly noble beneath
him. In addition, there was a class of powerful _________ whose job it was to keep order in the cosmos.
4. The Aztec religion held that history was cyclical and punctuated by terrible ___________ and then would
ultimately end with a massive apocalypse. The job of the priests was to avoid these disasters, by appeasing the
gods, generally through ____________________.
5. The Aztecs extended their control over most of southern Mexico, parts of Guatemala and the ___________.
They demanded ___________ from conquered people in the form of goods,precious metals, and people to
sacrifice.
6. The Aztecs accomplished some amazing things. Especially the building of their capital city Tenochtitlan, on
the site of modern day ___________________, which was like Venice in that it was divided and serviced by
canals.
7. They also had ___________________, called chinampas, which provided food for the city.
8. Founded in the 13th century, the ________ Empire ruled between 4 and 6 million people by the time the
Spanish showed up in 1532. _________ and a very effective administrative structure held the empire together,
which was even more impressive when you consider all the __________ and temples that were built atop
mountains with nothing to haul things up those mountains, except for _______________ and people.
9. The Inca had no ________________ _________________ but they were able to keep records with knotted
strings called quipus.
10. And vitally, they ordered every male peasant under the Inca control to do unpaid work for the Inca
government for a specified period of time each year. This system, which the Inca called ____________ allowed
them to build all those roads and temples.
11. So, the Spanish arrived in Mexico in _________ and in Peru in _______, benefiting in both cases from total
chaos due to __________________.
12. After conquering the Incas and the Aztecs, they created an empire with two administrative divisions. The
Viceroyalty of _______________________, founded in 1521, and the Viceroyalty of ____________, founded
in 1542.
13. While most of the Spanish aristocrats who came over ran large agricultural operations, the real glory for
conquistadors was ___________.
14. Initially they found some, both in the Caribbean and in ___________, but never enough to get, super-rich.
They did, however, find a mountain made of ____________.
15. The Spanish adapted the _____________ system to mine and process that silver.
16. Now, you might wonder why the Spanish didn’t purchase African slaves to work in the mines. They did in
Mexico, but in _________________ it was cheaper to use indigenous labor. Purchasing slaves was inefficient
because
1. They didn’t have ________________ working at high altitudes, and
2. Mine work was super deadly.
17. _________________ poisoning among miners was so common that parents would often maim their children
to keep them from having to work the mines.
18. Spanish mines in the Americas produced over 150,000 tons of silver between the 16th and the 18th centuries,
over __________ of the world’s supply.
19. Spain became the richest nation in Europe and Spanish silver pesos became the de-facto ___________.
20. The huge influx of silver caused skyrocketing ________________, and since they never set tax rates to
account for it, they collected the same amount of money sixty years after the discovery of silver, but that money
was worth a fraction of what it once had been. Spain also used silver to fund many 16th century ___________.
21. Charles V’s ambitions of a united Europe were shattered and he gave the ___________ half of his kingdom
to his son Ferdinand and gave Spain with the American stuff to ______________ in 1556.
22. Philip II also inherited a rebellion in the _______________, because the Dutch were like, “We’re gonna be
__________________, also you guys know nothing about economics.” And then the English sided with the
Dutch and there was a war featuring a disastrous invasion of England, called the ______________
_____________, in 1588. England’s success against the Spanish, even though it can largely be chalked up to the
__________, was credited to Queen Elizabeth I.
23. Most of the silver mined in the Americas went to Europe, but at least a third of it went to ______________;
either directly on Spanish galleons, or indirectly through the purchase of Chinese goods.
24. China began making their coins out of silver. Now, China didn’t have a lot of silver itself, but __________
did, so they traded manufactured goods for it, but soon even that wasn’t enough.
25. In the early part of the ____________ Dynasty, Chinese farmers paid their taxes in goods,mainly grain, and
labor. But as more silver entered the economy, the Ming government changed its policy and required
___________ to be paid in silver.
26. The Spanish empire’s silver trade was the first truly global market—even __________ was involved.
27. Both Spain and China experienced inflation that ______________ their governments. The
_____________________ suffered. The search for precious metals led the Spanish to find and eventually
destroy two of the world’s great empires, the ___________ and the ______________. Many thousands were
killed mining silver and the mercury used to refine it.
Question: what brings about the decline of the Spanish Empire?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: _________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 29: The French Revolution
1. France in the 18th century was a rich and populous country, but it had a systemic problem collecting ___________
because of the way its society was structured. They had a system with kings and nobles we now call the __________
regime; where the people with the money—the nobles and the clergy—never paid taxes.
2. By 1789, France was deeply in debt thanks to their funding the __________ Revolution and the extravagant lifestyle of
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
3. This nicely coincided with hailstorms that ruined a year’s _________, thereby raising food prices and causing
widespread hunger.
4. So basically the peasants were hungry, the intellectuals were beginning to wonder whether God could or should save
the King, and the nobility were dithering about, and failing to make meaningful _______________ _______________.
5. In response to the crisis, Louis XVI called a meeting of the ___________ __________, the closest thing that France had
to a national parliament, which hadn’t met since 1614.
6. The Estates General was like a super parliament made up of representatives from the First Estate, the ________, the
Second Estate, the ________, and the Third Estate, ________ ________.
7. Disagreement developed and the Third Estate left and declared itself the ________ ________. They later met in an
indoor tennis court where they swore the famous Tennis Court Oath; agreeing not to give up until a French
_________________ was established.
8. Louis XVI responded by sending troops to Paris primarily to quell uprisings over food shortages, but the
revolutionaries saw this as a provocation, so they responded by seizing the ___________ Prison on July 14th.
9. The really radical move in the National Assembly came on August 4, when they abolished most of the ancien regime-___________ rights, tithes, privileges for ___________, unequal taxation; they were all abolished --in the name of writing
a new constitution.
10. On August 26th, the National Assembly proclaimed the ___________ ___ ___________ of Man and Citizen, which
laid out a system of rights that applied to every person, and made those rights integral to the new constitution.
11. In October of 1789, a rumor started that Marie Antoinette was hoarding ___________ somewhere inside the palace of
Versailles; and in what became known as the ___________ ___________, a bunch of armed peasant women stormed the
palace and demanded that Louis and Marie Antoinette move from Versailles to Paris.
12. This is a nice reminder that to many people at the time, the French Revolution was not primarily about fancy
_________________ ideas; it was mostly about lack of ___________ and a political system that made economic
contractions hardest on the poor.
13. The most radical wing, of the French legislature, the Jacobins, called for the creation of a ________________.
14. Meanwhile, France’s monarchical neighbors were getting a little nervous about all this republic business, so Leopold
II of ___________, Marie Antoinette’s brother and King William Frederick II of ___________ together issued the
Declaration of Pilnitz, which promised to restore the French monarchy.
15. Louis XVI encouraged the Prussians, which made him look like an enemy of the revolution, which, of course, he was.
And as a result, the Assembly voted to suspend the ___________, have new elections in which everyone could vote and
create a new republican constitution.
16. Soon, this Convention decided to have a trial for Louis XVI, who was found guilty and, by ___________
___________, sentenced to die via guillotine.
17. Dr. Joseph Guillotine, the inventor of the guillotine, envisioned it as an egalitarian way of dying. They said the
guillotine was ___________ and it also made no distinction between rich or poor, noble or peasant. It killed
___________.
18. The death of Louis XVI marks the beginning of The ___________ ___ ___________, the best known or at least the
most sensational phase of the revolution; the government was under the leadership of the Committee of Public Safety led
by Maximilien _______________.
19. The Committee of Public Safety changed the measurements of ___________ because the traditional measurements are
so irrational and religion-y. So they renamed all the months and decided that every day would have 10 hours and each
hour 100 minutes.
20. After the Terror, the revolution pulled back a bit and another new ______________ was put into place.
21. At this point, France was still at war with ___________ and ___________, wars that France ended up winning, largely
thanks to a little corporal named ______________ Bonaparte.
22. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte led a coup d’état which established him as the ___________ ___________ of France.
23. As with the American Revolution, it’s easy to conclude that France’s revolution wasn’t all that revolutionary.
Napoleon was basically an ___________ and, in some ways, he was even more of an absolute monarch than Louis XVI
had been.
24. Gradually the ___________ came back to France, although they had mostly lost their special privileges. The
___________ ___________returned, too, although much weaker because it had lost land and the ability to collect tithes.
25. When Napoleon himself fell, France restored the ___________, these were no longer absolute monarchs who claimed
that their right to rule came from God; they were _______________ monarchs of the kind that the revolutionaries of 1789
had originally envisioned.
26. Some argue the revolution succeeded in spreading ______________ ideals even if it didn’t bring democracy to
France.
27. I’d (Mr. Green) argue that the French Revolution was ultimately far more revolutionary than its American counterpart.
America never had an ___________, and the American Revolution did nothing to change that polarization of wealth.
What made the French Revolution so radical was its insistence on the _____________ of its ideals.
Question: Was the French Revolution truly revolutionary?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ___________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History Video Notes # 31: The Latin American Revolution
1. Before independence, Latin American society was characterized by three institutions that exercised control
over the population.
a. The first was the ______________ crown, or if you are Brazilian, the ______________ crown. The job of
the colonies was to produce ______________ in the form of a 20% tax on everything that was called “the royal
fifth.”
b. Secondly, the ______________which even controlled time – the church bells tolled out the hours and they
mandated a six day work week so that people could go to church on Sunday.
c. And finally, there was ______________. In Latin America, like much of the world, husbands had complete
control over their wives and children.
2. Couple other things: First, Latin America led the world in transculturation or
____________________________. A new and distinct Latin American culture emerged mixing
a. Whites from ______________ called Peninsulares,
b. Whites born in the ______________ called creoles,
c. Native Americans,
d. African slaves.
3. This blending of cultures may be most obvious when looking at Native American and African
influences upon ______________. The Virgin of Guadalupe, for instance, was still called Tonantzin,
the indigenous earth goddess, by Indians, and the profusion of blood in Mexican iconography recalls the
______________ use of blood in ritual. Transculturation pervaded Latin American life, from food to secular
music to fashion.
4. Somewhat related: Latin America had a great deal of racial diversity and a rigid social hierarchy to match.
There were four basic racial categories: white, black, ______________–a mix of white and American Indianand ______________, a mix of white and black.
5. Successful people of lower racial ______________ could become “legally white” by being granted gracias al
sacar. By 1800, on the eve of Latin America’s independence movements, roughly a ______________ of the
population were mixed race.
6. Like a lot of revolutions in Latin America, Brazil’s was fairly conservative. The ______________ wanted to
maintain their privilege while also achieving independence from the Peninsulares. And also like a lot of Latin
American revolutions, it featured ______________.
7. When Napoleon took over Portugal in 1807, the entire Portuguese ______________ ______________and
their royal court decamped to Brazil. And it turned out, they loved Brazil that even after Napoleon was defeated
at the Battle of Waterloo, they just kind of stayed in Brazil.
8. In 1821, the king reluctantly returned to Lisbon, leaving his son Prince ______________behind.
9. Meanwhile, Brazilian creoles were organizing themselves around the idea that they were culturally different
from Portugal, and they eventually formed a Brazilian Party to lobby for ____________________.
10. So Pedro declared Brazil an independent ______________ monarchy with himself as king. As a result,
Brazil achieved independence without much bloodshed and managed to hold on to that social hierarchy with the
plantation owners on top. And that explains why Brazil was the last new world country to abolish
______________, not fully abandoning it until 1888.
11. Latin America’s independence movements began not with Brazil, but in ______________ when Napoleon
put his brother on the Spanish throne in 1808. Napoleon wanted to institute the liberal principles of the French
Revolution, which angered the ruling elite of the Peninsulares in what was then called _____ _________.
12. Massive ______________ uprisings began, led by a renegade priests Padre Hidalgo and Father Morelos
without much success. In 1820, when Spain, which was now under the rule of a Spanish, rather than a French
king, had a REAL ______________ revolution with a new constitution that limited the power of the church.
Soon peasants and Creoles joined forces and won independence with most of the Peninsulares returning to
Spain.
13. The interior of Venezuela was home to mixed-race ______________ called llaneros who supported the
king. They kept the Caracas revolutionaries from extending their power inland. And that, is where
______________ ______________, “el Libertador,” enters the picture. After uniting the various groups he
quickly captured the northern area of South America including Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.
14. Argentina’s general Jose de _____ _________ was also vital to the defeat of the Spanish. He led
expeditions against the Spanish in ______________ and also a really important one in Lima, Peru.
15. In December of ________, at the battle of Ayacucho, the last Spanish viceroy was finally captured
and all of Latin America was free from Spain.
16. So by 1825, almost the entire western hemisphere –with a few exceptions in the ______________ —was
free from European rule. Oh, right. And ______________.
17. The most revolutionary thing about these independence movements was that they enshrined the idea of so
called ______________ sovereignty in the New World.
18. In a number of ways, Latin American independence wasn’t terribly revolutionary. First, while the
Peninsulares were gone, the rigid social ______________, with the wealthy creoles at the top, remained.
Second, whereas revolutions in both France and America weakened the power of the established church, in
Latin America, the ______________remained very powerful in people’s everyday lives. And then, there is the
______________, where women were not extended voting rights until the mid-twentieth century.
19. Latin America’s revolutionary wars were long and bloody, they didn’t always lead to ______________, and
it’s important to note that fighting for freedom doesn’t always lead to freedom; the past two centuries in Latin
America have seen many military ______________ that protect private property at the expense of egalitarian
governance.
Question: How would you compare the American, French, and Latin American revolutions? Who had
the most radical revolution; the least radical?
World History
Ms. Cannavina
Name: ___________________________________
Our Lady of Mercy Academy
Crash Course World History # 34: Samurai, Daimyo, Matthew Perry, and Nationalism
1. So, if you’re into European history, you’re probably somewhat familiar with nationalism and the names and countries
associated with it. ____________ in Germany, Mazzini and Garibaldi in __________, and Mustafa Kemal (aka Ataturk)
in Turkey.
2. But nationalism was a __________ phenomenon, and it included a lot of people you may not associate with it, like
Muhammad Ali in __________.
3. Nationalism was seen in the British Dominions, as Canada, Australia and New Zealand became federated states
between _______ and _______. I would say independent states instead of federated states, but you guys still have a queen.
4. It’s also seen in the Balkans, where Greece gained its independence in 1832 and Christian principalities fought a war
against the __________ in 1878, in India where a political party, the Indian National Congress, was founded in 1885, and
even in __________, where nationalism ran up against the dynastic system that had lasted more than 2000 years.
5. Let’s define the modern nation state. A nation state involves a __________ government that can claim and exercise
authority over a distinctive territory. That’s the state part. It also involves a certain degree of linguistic and __________
homogeneity. That’s the nation part.
6. So how do you become a nation? Well, some argue it’s an organic process involving __________ similar people
wanting to formalize their connections. Others argue that nationalism is constructed by governments, building a sense of
__________ through compulsory military service and statues of national heroes. __________ __________is often seen as
part of this nationalizing project. Still other historians argue that nationalism was an outgrowth of __________ and
__________.
7. So emerging nations had a lot of conflicts, including: The Napoleonic wars, which helped the French become the
French. The __________ (Sepoy) Rebellion of 1857, which helped Indians to identify themselves as a homogeneous
people. The __________ Civil War. I mean, before the Civil War, many Americans thought of themselves not as
Americans but as Virginians or New Yorkers or Pennsylvanians or Georgians. I mean, our antebellum nation was usually
called “these united states,” after it became “the United States.”
8. Often, nationalism was a __________ force for multi-ethnic land-based empires. This was especially the case in the
__________ Empire, which started falling apart in the 19th century as first the Greeks, then the Serbs, Romanians and
Bulgarians, all predominantly Christian people, began clamoring for and, in some cases, winning independence.
9. Egypt is another good example of nationalism serving both to create a new state and to weaken an empire. __________
____and his ruling family encouraged the Egyptian people to imagine themselves as a separate nationality.
10. __________ had been fragmented and feudal until the late 16th century, when a series of warrior landowners managed
to consolidate power. Eventually power came to the __________ family who created a military government or bakufu.
11. The first Tokugawa to take power was __________, who took over after the death of one of the main unifiers of
Japan, Tyotomi Hideyoshi.
12. In 1603 Ieyasu convinced the emperor, who was something of a figurehead, to grant him the title of “__________.”
And for the next 260 years or so, the Tokugawa bakufu was the main government of Japan.
13. The Tokugawa bakufu wasn’t much for centralization, as power was mainly in the hands of local lords called
______________________.
14. One odd feature of the Tokugawa era was the presence of a class of warriors who by the 19th century had become
mostly bureaucrats. You may have heard of them, the __________.
15. As with kings and lesser nobles anywhere, the central bakufu had trouble controlling the more powerful daimyo, who
were able to build up their own strength because of their control over local __________. This poor control also made it
really difficult to collect __________; so the Tokugawa were already a bit on the ropes when two foreign events rocked
Japan.
16. First was China’s humiliating defeat in the __________ Wars, after which Western nations forced China to give
Europeans special __________ privileges. But even worse for the Tokugawa was the arrival of __________ __________.
17. The Tokugawa are somewhat famous for their not-so-friendly policy toward foreigners—especially western,
__________ ones—for whom the penalty for stepping foot on Japanese soil was death.
18. So the American naval commodore arrived in Japan in _______ with a flotilla of ships and a determination to open
Japan’s markets. Just the threat of American __________-powered warships was enough to convince the bakufu to sign
some humiliating trade treaties that weren’t unlike the ones that China had signed after losing the Opium Wars.
19. So what does have to do with nationalism? First off, the perceived threat provided an impetus for Japanese to start
thinking about itself differently. It also resulted in the Japanese being convinced that if they wanted to maintain their
__________, they would have to re-constitute their country as a modern nation state.
20. The Tokugawa didn’t give up without a fight, but the civil war between the stronger daimyo and the bakufu eventually
led to the end of the __________. In 1868, the rebels got the newly enthroned Emperor Meiji to abolish the bakufu and
proclaim a __________ of the imperial throne.
21. Now, the Emperor didn’t have much real power, but he became a __________ __________, a representative of a
mythical past around whom modernizers could build a sense of national pride. In place of bakufu, Japan created one of the
most modern nation states in the world.
22. After some trial and error, the Meiji leaders created a European style __________ system of government with a prime
minister and, in 1889, promulgated a constitution that even contained a deliberative assembly, the __________, although
the cabinet ministers weren’t responsible to it. Samurai were incorporated into this system as bureaucrats and their
stipends were gradually taken away.
23. Japan also created a new conscript __________ that eventually created a patriotic spirit and a loyalty to the Japanese
emperor.
24. The Meiji leaders also instituted compulsory __________ in 1872.
25. In Japan, nationalism meant __________, largely inspired by and in competition with the West. So the Meiji
government established a functioning __________ __________, they built public infrastructure like harbors and
__________ lines, invested heavily in __________, and created a uniform national currency. But the dark side of
nationalism began to appear early on. They became imperialistic by taking over neighboring islands.