Ask a Historian: Bridgette Byrd O'Connor

Bridgette OConnor , thanks for taking questions! 

My AP World History students are currently writing their first LEQ in response to the prompt: 

Evaluate the extent to which new transportation technologies changed economic activity in the period circa 1200 to 1450.

We've practiced contexualization using the Thesis and Contextualization actiivity, contextualizing Mansa Musa, creating an argument tower for an LEQ prompt about the Mongols, and sorting a list of topics into evidence or context. However, a few students are still struggling to contextualize this prompt. Any words of wisdom for them?

Hey Anne Koschmider and that's a great question! As you know, it's often difficult for students to contextualize this early in the course because they may not remember the details from their past history courses, and so, they lack the required content knowledge. I'm sure you probably do some sort of Unit 0 with your students and I think that's where I would set the stage a bit for this prompt. For example, having them read "The Silk Road" article from Origins that's also located in Lesson 0.3 of the AP course might help them understand the transportation technologies that existed prior to c. 1200 CE that they can then use in their contextualization paragraph for the LEQ. You could also use the activity What Caused the Expansion of Trade? and add a category of analysis: technology. So, students would find two pieces of evidence that helps explain why trade expanded in this period from a technological (innovation) perspective. Hope this helps and if you happen to use one of these methods or think of another method that would be helpful, please share it with us because I'm sure there are other teachers out there who would be happy to know how it all went. Thanks!

Those are excellent suggestions, thank you very much!

Bridgette OConnor Thank you for offering your insights in the Forum! I’ve just started Unit 5 of the 1750-Present: Industrial Empires. My students keep using the terms “imperialism” and “colonialism” interchangeably, despite having defined them alongside the Unit 5 Introduction article and the Unit 5 Overview video. Quite honestly, I’ve done it too. But I’d like to do better, and help my students to understand why this distinction matters, both historically and today. Do you have any strategies or analogies that help clarify the difference between the two for high school students? And how do you recommend explaining why this distinction is historically significant?

Hey Julie! That's a great question and I've also used them interchangeably at times because they are similar. But I think a good way to explain these terms and their differences to students is to think about how imperialism is more about ideas and about exercising control over a region indirectly. This can mean that empires use economic or military pressure to bend a region to its will. Colonialism is more about exerting control in practice by taking over a region, setting up a government, and moving permanent settlers into that region to then bend the Indigenous people to their will. Colonialism can also refer to the ways in which the Indigenous people experienced this foreign control of their territory. So, I think maybe stressing the imperialism = ideas/beliefs connection and colonialism = those ideas in practice (boots and people moving in on the ground) and the ways in which Indigenous people experienced these practices might be useful. I'm also tagging in Trevor Getz because he's way more of an expert on this distinction than I am.

Friends.  I apologize for the delay in responding. I will put below the definitions I use, but they are difficult because in common usage they do overlap to such a degree, and also because informal imperialism (such as gunboat diplomacy) in action often looks like colonialism. But with those caveats, here goes: 

Imperialism is the name for the culture, ideology, and doctrine in support of the creation and maintenance of empire. When held by significant and opinion-forming segments of society, often within the context of tension between great powers, it can become inextricably intertwined with other economic, social, cultural, demographic, environmental, gendered, and political aspects of society so that it is relevant both to domestic politics and foreign affairs. When political decision-making bodies translate imperialist sentiments into action, it is expressed as an aggressive set of policies culminating variously in formal dominion or informal control over external polities or peoples (i.e., empire), as well as being characterized by belligerence toward rival expansionist powers.

Colonialism, properly, refers to the set of practices and policies implemented by imperial agents to obtain and maintain control, stability, economic objectives, and social engineering in the constituent polities of the imperial periphery. These projects may be formulated by metropolitan agencies, colonial officials, or in rare cases local groups. In every case, however, the manner in which they unfold is heavily influenced by decisions undertaken by locally stationed agents of the imperial power and by the actions of the inhabitants of these overseas regions. Thus, while colonialism is related to imperialism, it is tied much more closely to events within the colonized regions and among colonized peoples and becomes therefore somewhat different in practice. The study of colonialism by necessity takes into consideration the manner by which populations, groups, and individuals accommodated, negotiated, resisted, infiltrated, cooperated, and tried to manage colonial rule.

In other words, in MY distinctions, 'imperialism' properly reflects the attitudes and design of empire, while 'colonialism' reflects the actual operation and experiences mostly felt in the colonies... but of course this can all be disputed.

Thanks Trevor Getz I knew you would come in with a fantastic response!

Thank you both for such thoughtful input! I knew I was barking up the right tree. I shared your responses with my students today and they got a real kick out of having you weigh in on our conversation. We ended up using your distinctions as yet another lens into Kipling's "White Man's Burden" poem.

Would also be a good discussion with the Gentlemen of the Jungle activity. That's what came to mind as I was composing my answer. Thanks for updating us with your students' reactions:)