themes

Themes

The APWH course requires students to engage with the dynamics of continuity and change across the historical periods that are included in the course. Students should analyze the processes and causes involved in these continuities and changes. In order to do so, students should focus on FIVE overarching themes which serve throughout the course as unifying threads, helping students to put what is particular about each period or society into a larger framework. The themes also provide ways to make comparisons over time and facilitate cross-period questions. Each theme should receive approximately equal attention over the course of the year.

1. Interaction between humans and the environment

  • Demography and disease
  • Migration
  • Patterns of settlement
  • Technology

2. Development and interaction of cultures

  • Religions
  • Belief systems, philosophies, and ideologies
  • Science and technology
  • The arts and architecture

3. State-building, expansion, and conflict

  • Political structures and forms of governance
  • Empires
  • Nations and nationalism
  • Revolts and revolutions
  • Regional, transregional, and global structures and organizations

4. Creation, expansion, and interaction of economic systems

  • Agricultural and pastoral production
  • Trade and commerce
  • Labor systems
  • Industrialization
  • Capitalism and socialism

5. Development and transformation of social structures

  • Gender roles and relations
  • Family and kinship
  • Racial and ethnic constructions
  • Social and economic classes

The interaction of themes and periodization encourage cross-period questions such as “To what extent have civilizations maintained their cultural and political distinctiveness over the time periods the course covers?”; “Compare the justification of social inequality in 1450 with that at the end of the twentieth century”; or “Discuss the changes in international trading systems between 1300 and 1600.”

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THEMES in APWH CLASS - CCOT CHARTS

You will want to keep these themes in mind for use as a means of analyzing societies or events and you will be required to complete Change Over Time Analysis Charts. Often in your essays you will be asked to analyze societies in these areas and sometimes in more than one area. These themes do have overlapping areas, however I have tried to separate them out for your use below.

Environment

    • climatological and other geographical influences
    • impact on human societies
      • impact of populations on the environment
  • Impact of technology on the environment

Demography

  • population growth and decline
  • disease
  • patterns of settlement - movement towards or away from cities - urbanization
  • migrations - nomadic, invasions, missionary, etc.; labor inspired free and unfree

Social systems

  • gender roles and relations
  • family structures and life styles
  • constructions of ethnicity (“race”), related issues and relations among ethnicities
  • basis of social structures – economic, education, social status, income, birth, etc.;
  • mobility, inequality, and relations among among all social classes

State systems

  • functions of states – laws, courts, rule, safety, prosperity
  • actors in states – leaders, elites, bureaucrats
  • structures of states: empires, nations, city-states, and other forms of governance
  • attitudes toward states: nationalism, ideologies, revolts, revolutions, etc
  • political structures – political identities, organizations, political culture

Intellectual and cultural developments

  • traditions
  • art, architecture, music, writing, literature
  • philosophies and belief systems
  • math & science (but technology examined separately)
  • education, cultural and intellectual movements

Technology

    • agriculture
    • tools, weaponry, transportation
    • manufacturing, industry
    • impact on people and the environment (examined under environment)

Economic systems

  • kind of production – agricultural, pastoral, manufacturing, industrialized, etc.
  • labor system being used to get people to do the work and how – feudalism, capitalism, socialism, etc.
  • form of labor being used - who is doing the work and why - peasants, serfs, slaves, indentured servants?
  • types of industry or commerce

Global trade

  • items traded and by what means – caravan, monsoons, MNCs
  • trade patterns, systems of national, regional and international exchange
  • impact of interaction among major societies

International relations

  • interactions among and within societies – internal, regional, transregional, and global
  • impact of interaction among major societies – conflict, war, diplomacy, treaties, imperialism
  • international structures and organizations – companies, NGOs, courts and laws

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