Asia
Short Teaching Module: Premodern Chinese Maps and the Global Maritime World
Premodern Chinese maps offer fascinating sources for teachers and students of world history.
Selden Map
The Selden Map held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, where it has been kept since 1659. This beautifully illustrated manuscript map shows East and Southeast Asia and marks maritime trading routes in the form of lines across the region.
Guang yutu map
The map of the “South-Eastern ocean barbarians” from the 1558 edition of the atlas Guang yutu. This atlas is divided into two parts, the first one deals with the geography of China, the second one with the Chinese borderlands, thematic maps, and maps of non-Chinese regions.
Southern Manchuria Railway (1906-1945)
The world’s earliest locomotive-operated railroads, short stretches transporting coal and ore locally from mines to factories and furnaces, were developed in Britain between 1800 and 1825.
Coffee Production in the Dutch East Indies
This is a page from an educational print for children called Gambar-Gambar akan Peladjaran dan Kasoekaän Anak-anak dan Iboe-bapanja (Prints for the Benefit and Pleasure of Young and Old).
Long Teaching Module: Masculinity and Femininity in the Mongol Empire
This module examines ideals of masculinity and femininity among the Mongols, the Central Asian nomadic pastoralists who in the thirteenth century under their leader Chinggis Khan created the largest land-based empire the world has ever seen.
Sorghaghtani Beki and Tolui
In this illustration from Rashid al-Din’s Compendium of Chronicles Sorghaghtani Beki and Tolui sit together on a pillowed throne.
Sorghaghtani Beki in the eyes of court historians
Sorghaghtani Beki, the wife and then widow of Chinggis Khan’s youngest son Tolui, appears in many contemporary written sources about the Mongol Empire, and is always viewed positively.
The Anda Bond
Along with practices of male bonding that are shared with other times and places, such as membership in all-male groups with distinctive uniforms or clothing or socializing in places where women are not allowed or do not go, the Mongols also had a specific type of male bonding, the anda
Chinggis Khan and his wife Börte in The Secret History of the Mongols
Chinggis Khan had four sons by his principal wife Börte, though there is some question as to his eldest son Jochi’s true father.