Unit 2: History of Governments
Unit Overview:
Unit 2 covers just what the title suggests: a history of governments. The first lesson reviews the basics of what a government needs to accomplish and then the next few lessons provide detailed descriptions of the historical governments of ancient Greece, Rome, Medieval Europe, and the unit concludes with a description of Fascism and Nazism. This unit is constructed in a similar manner to the last unit, and the unit essay is virtually the same topic: In Unit 1 students write an essay comparing three modern government types and discussing how well these governments served the needs of their people. In Unit 2, students write comparing three historical governments using the same standards.
Unit Essay: Historical Governments
In this unit you learned about the historical governments of Greece and Rome, the Feudal system of the Middle Ages, and the Fascist governments in Europe in the 1930's. While the democracies of Greece and Rome bear some resemblance to modern governments, each of the historical governments mentioned here ruled for a time, and like the various government types you studied last unit, each can be measured by how well they fulfilled basic duties of government like liberty, security, and prosperity. For this unit essay, write a well thought out essay of 600 or more words describing these three historical governments and explaining whether they fulfilled the needs of their people well or poorly.
Helpful links:
For this project you must define the terms listed below and explain each term's significance to the unit/era being studied. Your definition should be 2-3 sentences long and may be copied and pasted from a source like Wikipedia, but the significance of the term must be in your own words and based on your own understanding. To fill out a term's significance, ask yourself, "Why is this item included in my study of this unit? Why is this term in a history book?" The answer to this question is your term's significance.
Unit 2 Key Terms:
Greek City States
direct democracy
Cleisthenes
Oligarchy
Plebeians/Patricians
The 12 Tables
Roman Republic
Pax Romana
Byzantine Empire
Codex Justinian
Charlemagne
Feudalism
investiture/vassalage
Magna Carta
Fascism
Totalitarianism
Federalist Papers
Soviet Union
Nazism
3rd Reich
Below is an example of a key term done with the proper format:
William the Conqueror: William I (c. 1028[2] – 9 September 1087), also known as William the Conqueror (Guillaume le Conquérant), was the first Norman King of England from Christmas 1066 until his death. He was also Duke of Normandy from 3 July 1035 until his death, under the name William II. Before his conquest of England, he was known as William the Bastard because of the illegitimacy of his birth.To press his claim to the English crown, William invaded England in 1066, leading an army of Normans, Bretons, Flemings, and Frenchmen (from Paris andÎle-de-France) to victory over the English forces of King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings, and suppressed subsequent English revolts in what has become known as the Norman Conquest.[3] (I copied and pasted this definition from Wikipedia)
Significance: William the Conqueror is significant because his conquest of England created the first nation state in Europe. His rearrangement of English feudal territories to give himself dramatically more power than the the barons and nobles around him caused him to be the most powerful monarch in Europe and eventually led to the rise of other nation states over the next few centuries. (These are my words based on my knowledge of English and European history.)