5
1
Why are our personal accounts important?
Voices from History
Record: A Documentary History of America; in it the vivid sights, sounds and smells of the early settlements in Virginia come to life. historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6475
3
B
A
daily pleasure of mine is listening as students react to the primary texts we read in class. Though the vocabulary of colonial English and the complex sentences of official texts present challenges, students engage. Why did Jefferson blame King George and not Parliament for the abuses listed in the Declaration? Why did the authors of the Constitution set up the electoral college and need urging for the Bill of Rights? Other readers connect with the humanity—sometimes cloaked, sometimes fully expressed—in the words left behind. We use primary documents in all our history classes. What do these reveal about the individuals and the world from which they came? What do they reveal about you and the world today? Ann Foster, History Department
efore warfare and disease led to Spanish victories against the Aztecs in 1519–20, Hernando Cortés and his men were astonished by the size and sophistication of the capital city. The Human Record: Sources of Global History includes a letter written by an ordinary Spanish soldier. In this collection, Cortés’s detailed account to Charles V of Spain provides a glimpse of the city Tenochtitlan and vivid descriptions of the food and customs of its people. Through it we learn not only about the Aztecs, but also about the way 16th-century Spain was like and unlike the royal culture of the Aztecs under Montezuma. www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ mod/1520cortes.html
2
What would your plan be, as an early settler?
afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/cup/ meritorious_deeds.pdf
5
In ancient Babylon, what rights would you have?
E
xcerpts from the Code of Hammurabi provide insight into the daily lives of the complex city-states of ancient Babylon. What should the penalty be for looting the burning house of a neighbor? (See Law 25.) Relations between men and women, husbands and wives, begin with Law 128. What rights would you have, under the reign of Hammurabi? Scanning the collected codes, what jobs and roles do you see recurring? What crimes? Read the haunting invocation that precedes Hammurabi’s code and translations of the laws that have survived from antiquity. avalon.law.yale.edu/ancient/ hamframe.asp
How fixed is the past, anyway?
P
eter the Great’s plans for modernizing Russia engage students with what can seem like arbitrary and random edicts. Why was he concerned with the clothing people wore and men’s beards? Why would he change the calendar, or allow the buying of entire villages, including the people living there? What accounted for his interest in shipbuilding? With historians’ accounts providing necessary background (we learn that Peter penned 3,000 edicts over a 25-year period), other primary sources help loosen Peter the Great’s grip. Different authors provide overlapping and sometimes divergent accounts. How fi xed is the past? fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/ petergreat.html
4
T
he accounts of ordinary people help us understand the risks and miscalculations that clouded the hopes of early English settlers to North America. Students are sometimes uncomfortable with the quiet desperation in a poignant letter from Richard Frethorne to his parents. Richard was a young Englishman who sold his labor for passage to Virginia. What had he hoped for in this voyage? Do his requested provisions make it to Richard’s hungry hands in time? Our excerpt is from For the
scholars do you find helpful, if any? What world is made visible? What world is hoped for? What forces are at work in Ming China?
Are the rules at Milton Academy Confucian?
I
n studying Ming China, we read “Meritorious Deeds at No Cost,” a Confucian advice pamphlet for the peasants, scholars, gentry and merchants of the time. Students encountering these lists and categories bring their own questions and observations. Are elders responsible for the wrongdoing of their younger siblings or children? Are the rules at Milton Academy Confucian? What advice for Fall 2012 3