History: What do you think is needed?

[There'sNoPlaceLikeHome]

I am thinking about taking next year to focus primarily on early US history (Colonies to the Gold Rush) with my middle school kids.  What world history events and people do I HAVE to make sure to cover so that they are prepared when we go back to world history the following year (US Civil War to the present)?  Thank you!  :001_smile:

[Aurelia]

Technically, nothing. That's what we covered when I was in school. 

 

Maybe the settlement of Australia, British civil war and restoration, Peter the Great, the French Revolution, and Napoleon.

[MEmama]

I think for a comprehensive middle school study on early American history, it's important to understand the reasons people left Europe to settle in a comparitive wilderness (though understanding it was far from a wilderness would make an important starting place). I'd say studying the oppression of absolute monarchical rule in England, for example, is crucial to making the connection, and for really understanding why our early government was set up the way it was. Same for world colonization--why France, the Netherlands, Spain and England were taking over large regions of the world, and how North America fit into that scheme. Understanding the Triangle Trade helps explain the realities of setting up the large plantations and slave culture in the mid Atlantic and South, and how seemingly unrelated colonies were made essential to and used to exploit one another. The Revolution was as desperate for England as it was for the colonists. Having some background with the relationship between France and England helps connect their relationship in land holdings in North America, why France would aid the colonists and later why the long French and Indian wars occurred.

 

That's all I have before another cup of coffee. :).