What are your favorite resources to provide multiple perspectives on Imperialism?

Thanks for this timely post, Kathy Hays! Imperialism is such an important topic. Unfortunately, due to a February intercession, students scheduling for the fall, and trimester exams, my window to teach it is woefully short this term. 

I have been trying to pare down my usual unit to the essentials. I think the Imperialism Cartoon analysis, Claim Testing, and Contextualizing the Opium Wars are going to be keepers. The DBQ will be the end-of-unit assessment. 

If anyone has suggestions on how to give this topic the attention it deserves in a short period of time, please feel free to chime in!

In my WHP 1750, this is probably the unit where we spend the most time on perspective so I'm glad it's chockfull of resources.  The cartoon analysis is a must.  While I haven't used the Different View or Gentlemen of the Jungle activities, I introduce perspective using the dress situation.  It never fails to help generate a boisterous discussion on perspective and makes the transition to serious history a little easier.  

The dress situation is such an engaging hook activity! I just used the Gentlemen of the Jungle activity with my AP European History students as a hook. Since we do so much close reading and analysis, it's novel for the students to have story time. I also like the nuance that the discussion questions bring up. There's a question about whether it's possible to have peace without violence that we'll come back to again and again. 

Is it more of an AP activity or do you think WHP students would appreciate it? 

I've used it with my freshmen in WHP, too! With my AP students, they read the abridged portion on their own and then I filled in the ending aloud and with the freshmen I read the entire passage aloud to reinforce the "story time" feeling (and to make sure they all actually heard the story). 

Thanks for the feedback Erin.  Maybe I'll give it a try for next year.  

Though there are a lot of great OER resources, I wanted to share a personal perspective. I share the images below one at a time. They are images of my great-grandfather's passport. Imperialism led to his reclassification as a "British subject." The second image shows some of the countries he visited. We launch imperialism with a discussion about the passport as I show each of the images one at a time, revealing only at the end this is a family passport. I love sharing this piece of family history with the class each year.

Way to make history come alive for your students, Hajra Saeed  I hope your students are able to respond to this and really see that these events are not just abstract but had very real impacts on very real people. 

One source set I use is these Personal Accounts of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. The topic is a bit difficult to speak about - I find that bringing in the primary source documents helps students to get past abstract notions of just oppression and really hear from people who experienced the horror of this historical moment. I've always been interested in the question of whether it's really possible for us - as teachers, students and observers of history - to understand the pain and suffering of others. One thing I try to do is lead a discussion with my students around these documents with this question - how can we understand the experience of those who experienced the transatlantic slave trade? 

Excellent point, Adam Esrig! We just used this document set paired with the Quick Sourcing Tool in my AP World class earlier this week. I feel like it can be hard to find the right words when teaching about this topic, so examining primary documents feels like a good approach to learn from authentic stories and exercise historical empathy.