Trade Networks, Empires & Disruption — Workshop · Global History & Geography I: Early Societies to c. 1750, Grade 9
Five focused units, followed by an evidence workshop, chapter review, and chapter quiz.
Evidence workshop: Trade Networks, Empires & Disruption
Your assignment
How did networks transmit goods and knowledge while creating uneven risks?
Three 45–60-minute sessions: examine the packet; draft and discuss; revise using the marking criteria.
Prepare
- The supplied source-study packet, chapter explanations, and labeled evidence cases.
- Notebook and timeline. Linked original images or full documents are optional extensions.
Plan, draft, revise
- Identify the original item, its date, place, maker if known, and form.
- Separate supplied observations, catalog information, and later interpretation.
- State a bounded claim answering the chapter question.
- Connect two chapter examples to the source-study packet.
- Draft 350–500 words or an equivalent annotated oral presentation, explaining a mechanism and a limit.
- Compare the four-paragraph model after attempting your answer; revise chronology, evidence, and unsupported generalizations.
Discuss your choices
- Which observations directly support the claim?
- What can the item not tell us about other people or places?
- Which independent evidence would test the explanation?
Success criteria
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence to an explained conclusion.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an evidentiary limitation or a distinction that qualifies the claim.
Original-source study packet: A silk-and-gold textile under Mongol rule
Original item: a textile fragment dated to the second half of the thirteenth through fourteenth century in the Metropolitan Museum catalog. Object record 453371 associates luxury silk-and-gold textiles with Mongol and Ilkhanid elite consumption.
Supplied catalog description, not a merchant’s eyewitness account: costly materials and specialized weaving support questions about production, patronage, and movement of techniques. The object’s fragmentary survival and broad date range limit what can be inferred about a particular maker or journey.
Inquiry task: connect material production to exchange networks, then test whether an elite luxury object proves that trade was peaceful, profitable, or safe for everyone.
Chapter evidence for comparison
The cases below are course-authored teaching scenarios or summaries. Invented numbers and claims are labeled; they are not transcriptions of historical witnesses. Attempt the inquiry using the supplied material before consulting the model.
| Unit | Evidence case |
|---|---|
| Silk Roads: Intermediaries, Ideas & Institutions | Illustrative network: goods pass from City A to B to C. A’s trader visits only B; C’s buyer acquires them from B’s trader. No direct A–C journey occurs in the case. |
| Indian Ocean: Monsoons, Ports & Maritime Communities | Illustrative voyage: a trader waits three months for a favorable seasonal return wind, pays storage costs, and sells part of the cargo locally. |
| Mongol Empires: Conquest, Administration & Connections | Teaching summaries: one route has a protected postal station; another city’s earlier conquest record describes destruction. The records concern different dates. |
| The Black Death: Evidence, Responses & Uneven Effects | Illustrative town register: 120 deaths appear among 600 registered residents; 150 additional residents’ records are missing. Migration is not recorded. |
| Korea & Southeast Asia: States, Water & Cultural Choice | Teaching scenario: a major reservoir needs repeated repairs; nearby settlement evidence continues after a royal center’s importance declines. The dates are approximate. |
Parent / teacher model and marking guidance
The chapter explains exchange as a network of routes, intermediaries, institutions, and risks. Silk-road traffic and Indian Ocean shipping connected different places, while Mongol expansion changed protection and coercion across particular territories. The textile is relevant to these connections but cannot represent the experience of every traveler.
The catalog’s broad date and association with elite luxury consumption locate the object within a period of Mongol and Ilkhanid patronage. Its costly materials support a question about resources and specialized work. They do not independently identify the weaver’s status or every route by which skills and materials moved. A complete production history would require more than the surviving fragment.
The Mongol teaching case shows why protection for some merchants can coexist with conquest and unequal treatment. The Black Death case adds another consequence of connected movement: disease transmission, with uncertainty about precise routes. Those mechanisms should be explained separately. A valuable textile is not evidence that conquest was harmless, and an epidemic is not proof that every exchange network always produced the same danger.
A bounded conclusion is that elite demand and political arrangements could support long-distance transmission of materials and skills while distributing costs unevenly. Compare workshop records, other dated textiles, travel permissions, local accounts, and archaeological settings to test particular connections. Distinguish observed features from catalog attribution and later interpretation. The source packet describes an object; it does not supply invented testimony from its maker or owner.
- Describe the historical context and institutions accurately.
- Connect relevant evidence to an explained conclusion.
- Represent particular perspectives without stereotypes or invented testimony.
- Identify an evidentiary limitation or a distinction that qualifies the claim.
Accept a different interpretation when the learner supports it with relevant evidence. Discuss the draft before assigning a final mark.