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The Drama of World History - Friends Seminary (New York), 1995

From: Jean Johnson
New York University
635 East Building
New York, NY 10003

Friends Seminary in New York City has a two year world history course offered to 9th and 10th graders. Enclosed is the syllabus I prepared for the first year.

The Drama of World History

Setting the Stage

  1. What: The Historian's Job
  2. Where: Distance is in the Eye of the Beholder
  3. When: Time is a Cultural Concept
  4. Who: What does it mean to be human?

Act One: Origins of the Human Community: Learning to Cooperate (From early times to 3500 BCE)

  1. Setting the Stage
    1. Creation: How did it all begin?
    2. Evolution: How did we get to be Human?
    3. Africa, Birthplace of human life
  2. Gathering and Hunting: Humans Share the Resources
  3. Settling Down: Revolutionary Changes brought by

    Agriculture

  4. Nomadic Herdsmen: An Alternate Lifestyle

Act Two: Surplus, Specialization and Cities (The third millennium BCE)

  1. Setting the Stage

1. Why should we cooperate with strangers? 2. What is so special about river valleys? 3. Technology: Foods, plows and irrigation 4. Characteristics of urban life
B. Sumer: City-states in Mesopotamia

  1. Knowledge as a Key to Power: Writing
  2. Courtiers and Courtesans court Divinities
  3. Africa: The Nile River Valley Civilization
  4. 'The Gift of the Nile"
  5. In contact with gods and the dead
  6. Orizins of Bureaucratic rule

D. India: the Harappan Civilization

  1. Baked bricks and sophisticated cities
  2. Who was behind the city planning?

3. The Great Bath and ritual purity?
E. Aegean: Minoan Hegemony

  1. Contacts and Control
  2. The Factory system: Transforming nature into commodities
  3. The Middle Kingdom: Settlements along the Yellow River
  4. Sage Rulers
  5. The Mandate of Mien
  6. The Importance of Written Chinese
  7. On-going contact with ancestors

G. Summary: The Advantages of Cooperation &

Interdependence

Act Three: Nomadic Migrations and Invasions (2nd millennium

BCE)

  1. Setting the Stage: The Nomadic Herdsmen on the Move
    1. The cast: Indo-Europeans and Semites
    2. Pushes and Pulls from steppes to cities
    3. The role of technology: The Chariot Revolution
  2. Nomadic Invasions in Mesopotamia

1. Setting the Stage: Patterns of Invasions 2. Myths reflect tension between Temple and Palace 3. Power shifts from temple to palace 4. Law: Key to internal control
5. Military: Key to control of the border C. Nomadic Invasions into the Nile Valley

  1. The Hyksos
  2. Bureaucrats become empire builders
  3. Seeking one God
  4. Kingdoms of Kush: Kerma & Napata
  5. Covenant and Conquest of the Hebrews

E. The Aryans in India

  1. The Vedic Age
  2. Power shifts from Warriors to Priests
  3. The Epic Age: Vira at play in Mahabharata

F. The Middfe Kin~~dom under the Shang and Chou

  1. The Shang: tinifiers from within
  2. The Chou: Gentlemen rule

G. Achaeans and Dorians move into Hellas

  1. The Trojan War: A case study in conquest
  2. The Dorians and the Dark Age
  3. Changing Status of Gods and Goddesses
  4. What about the Women?

H. Who is peopling the Americas?

  1. Migrations into the Americas
  2. The Olmec: Mother Civilization of Mesoamerica

I. Interaction and Change: Who conquered whom?

Act Four: The Axial Age (Middle of the first millennium BCE)

  1. Setting the Stage: The times are out of joint
  2. The Axial Age in the West Asia
    1. Setting the Stage: Empire Building, Assyrian Style
    2. The Hebrew Prophets: Monotheism, ethics and law
    3. Zarathustra: I)ualism and war
  3. The Axial Age in India

1. Setting the Stage: Brahmin Domination leads to the

Upanishads
2. Play your role: Dharma, the Ramayana and caste 3. Don't play

  1. Mahavira: Ahimsa and Tolerance
  2. The Buddha: Snuffing out Desire
  3. The Axial Age in the Middle Kingdom
    1. Setting the Stage: The Era of Warring States & The Art

      of War

    2. Confucius: Harmony in Hierarchy
    3. Flowing in Harmony with the Tao
    4. Order and Security with the Legalist
    5. The Axial Age in Hellas
    6. Setting the Stage:
  4. The Economic Base of Humanism
  5. New Loyalties: Citizenship and the Polis
  6. Arete and the Athlete: Make competitions not war
  7. The Ionian Philosophers
  8. Arete, Spartan Style
  9. Arete, Athenian Style

F. Have we learned how to tame the warrior?

Act Five: Establishing a Synthesis (The First millennium BCE)

  1. Setting the Stage: Characteristics of Empires
  2. Persia: Empire Builder in West Asia
  3. The Hellenistic Synthesis
    1. The Hellenic View of the Persian War
    2. The Hellenic Golden Moment
    3. Arete and Hubris: From Delian League to Athenian

      Domination

    4. Greek Philosophers Face the Break-up of the Polis
    5. Alexander of Macedonia's Conquest
    6. The Hellenistic Synthesis:Hellenic? Persian? African?

      Indian?

  4. The Conquest of Ideas in India
    1. The Mauryan Empire
      1. Chandragupta relies on the Arthasastra
      2. Ashoka: Experiments of a Buddhist ruler
    2. The Hindu Synthesis

      a Caste: A place for everyone & everyone in place 

        b. The Four Goals of Life: Something for everyone 
        c. The Four Stages of Life: For everything a season 
        d. The Bhagavad Gita: Putting it all together

E. The Middle Kingdom defines itself as the People of Han

  1. Establishing Order: Ch'in Style
  2. The Han Synthesis
  3. Evaluating the Han Empire
  4. Law and the Military triumph in the Mediterranean World
  5. Rome enters the drama
  6. Reason for Roman expansion
  7. How military success transforms the Republic
  8. The Augustan Synthesis: Roman, Persian and Hellenistic
  9. Meroe: Synthesis of Egyptian and Nubian styles
  10. The cycle of empires: Why don't empires last?

Act Six: Interacting Worlds (First millennium CE)

  1. Setting the Stage: Ideas, Goods and Diseases Travel
  2. Routes over land & sea span Eurasia
  3. The Spread of People
    1. Diaspora of the Jews
    2. Migrations in Africa
    3. Germanic peoples follow pattern of invasions and conquest
    4. Kushans move into the Indian subcontinent
    5. A river valley civilization develops along the Niger
  4. The Spread of Ideas
    1. The Spread of Buddhism 
        a. Mahayana Buddhism 
        b. Along the trade routes to the Middle Kingdom 
        c. Reconciling Non-self and Filial Piety

2. Indian influences in Greater India 3. From Jesus to Christendom

  1. The Life of Jesus: Whom do they say that I am?
  2. The Good News & the Church
  3. Spreading the faith
  4. Islands reflect their mainland civilizations
  5. Stirring on the British Isles
  6. The Japanese Archipelago enters the drama
  7. Aspects of Mesoamerican civilization
  8. Cultural Diffusion around the world

Act Seven: The Flowering of Human Culture (300 CE to 1000 CE)

  1. Setting the Stage: Make art, not war
  2. The Golden Age in India
    1. Kushan and Gupta. rulers bring peace
    2. Artistic and Scientific achievements
    3. God and gods in Hinduism
  3. The Flowering of the Byzantine Empire
    1. Byzantium: Entrepot of the world
    2. A wider synthesis: Roman, Hellenistic, and Christian
  4. The Islamic Achievement
    1. From Mohammed to Dar al-Islam 
        a. Mohammed, the seal of the Prophets 
        b. Creating unity among Muslims 
        c. The Community splits 
        d. The Ummayid Caliphate

2. The Abbasid Caliphate
3. The flowering of Islamic learning
4. Islamic traders in the Afrasian world E. Cultural brilliance in the Middle Kingdom

  1. The Sui and the Grand Canal
  2. The Tang
  3. The Song: Trade, prosperity & poetry
  4. Assimilation and innovation in Southeast Asia
  5. Refections and innovation from the Japanese archipelago
  6. Aesthetic expressions
  7. Buddhism in Japan
  8. Family, clan and feudal life
  9. Cultural achievements in Mesoamerica
  10. Teotihuacan: sacred, cosmic, political and trading center
  11. Flowering of the Maya
  12. Community Solidarity in Africa
  13. Setting the Stage
  14. Kingdom of Ghana
  15. Is there an "African" Worldview?
  16. Church and Manor in Europe

Act Eight: The Afrasian World System (1000 to 1500 CE)

  1. Setting the Stage: New Waves of Invaders and Ideas
  2. The Turks follow the pattern of invasion and conquest
    1. Seljuk victories
    2. Saladin and Islamic unity
    3. Sultanates in T;ldia
  3. The Mongols follow the pattern of invasion and conquest
    1. Setting the Stage
    2. Genghis Khan and the Mongols on the Move
    3. The Yuan Dynasty
  4. A biological invasion: The Plague
  5. Invaders in Western Eurasia
    1. Anglos & Saxons follow pattern of invasion and conquest
    2. What Crusaders experience
    3. Discovering a Classical heritage
    4. Borrowings: Hellenistic ideas, Crossbows, Canons and Credit
  6. Traders in West Africa
    1. Camel, caravan, gold and salt
    2. Mali and Songhai

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