Browse

Global

Typed letter
Methods

Primer: Intellectual Exchange

Ideas do not confine themselves to national borders, and thus intellectual exchange provides an invaluable lens for exploring world history. Tracing how knowledge develops and ideas spread requires a close analysis of exchange of ideas across regions — sometimes across large distances.

Photograph of a large ship loaded with shipping containers
Teaching

Short Teaching Module: Using Ships as Guides for Transnational Adventures through World History

Ships travel across oceans and in doing so connect people in disparate places across the globe. In this essay, Brandon Tachco explains how a focus on ships as a theme can add much to the study of world history.

Painting of a Spanish Galleon at sea firing its canons
Source

A Naval Encounter between Dutch and Spanish Warships

Spanish galleons were large ships specifically built to carry a huge amount of cargo across the vast distances of the Spanish maritime empire. The Manila Galleon Trade is a common topic in world history courses and represents the first truly global trade in world history.

Photograph of a ship with three masts tied to a dock.
Source

Balclutha

Balclutha was built in 1886 on the River Clyde near Glasgow, Scotland, for Robert McMillan, a Glaswegian shipbuilder who occasionally owned ships as a side-business.

Photograph of a large ship loaded with shipping containers
Source

HMM Algeciras

As of the beginning of 2021, the Algeciras class is the largest container vessel in the world, able to carry nearly 24,000 TEU (twenty-foot long containers). It is constructed by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and owned by Hyundai Merchant Marine.

Gold sculpture of a bird with it's head turned backwards
Methods

Primer: Technology

Technology, broadly defined, denotes not only transformative innovations but the whole spectrum of tools, skills and artifacts with which human societies construct their worlds.

Map of the earth showing areas where lights can be seen from space at night
Methods

Primer: The History of Globalization

Globalization, defined here as the integration of an interdependent economy that simultaneously enhances cultural exchanges relying on the mobility of people, animals, plants, pathogens, objects, and ideas, is a useful concept for exploring connections across space and time.

Map of the earth showing areas where lights can be seen from space at night
Source

World Light Map

In "38 maps that explain the global economy", Matthew Yglesias has captured for Vox the prominent features of our contemporary global economy and society.

Posada Broadsheet
Methods

Analyzing Newspapers

A newspaper is a publication intended for a broad audience that appears regularly, often daily, and claims to contain factual accounts of recent events. Usually newspapers are published with the intention of making a profit.

Partial image of a map with a focus on a compass, surrounded by the word 'America'
Review

Discovery and Exploration

The maps in the collection depict many geographical points of view, including the entire globe, specific areas of focus such as America itself, or even of specific coastlines.