African Empires

What do we know about life in the great African medieval kingdoms?

How do we know this?
What happened to these civilisations? Why did they fall?




VIDEO
Mansa Musa's pilgrimage
Great Zimbabwe - Lost Kingdom of Africa
West African Kingdoms
The lost library of Timbuktu



Mansa Musa, the gold of Mali and Britain's wealth




The Kingdom of Ghana - from a website created by Ghanaians keen to preserve their history.

West Africa before the Europeans - created by the National Archive, the British government's centre where historical records are kept.
West African Empires - from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Timbuktu - from the Muslim Heritage website set up by the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation.
African timelines - on a website set up by a College in the USA.
Great Zimbabwe - from the BBC.
Songhay - from the BBC.
Ancient Ghana - from the BBC.
Mali - from the BBC.
Benin - from the BBC.
Kilwa - from the BBC

For advice, ideas and help from a fellow Year 8 student click here.

For information about the trade in enslaved Africans go here or here or here

For links on the abolition of the slave trade click here.

Where would we be without Islamic history?

The Great Mosque at Cordoba
An Islamic map of the world

In the Middle Ages between the 8th and 15th centuries Islamic lands spread right into Western and Eastern Europe.

Muslim societies were rich in science, technology, art, poetry, architecture and medicine.

Today the West seems to have the most advanced technology.

However, we learned much of our mathematics, medicine and architecture from the Arab Muslims.

They passed on and developed what they learnt from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians.

Do we have the Arab Muslims to thank for our number systems, for the beauty of churches and cathedrals, for fine arts?

What were the great cities like Cordoba in the west (modern Spain) and Baghdad in the east (modern Iraq) really like?

If you could travel back in time to medieval Cordoba and Baghdad what would you find? Would you see great advanced civilisations and how much do we now owe to them?

The textbooks Islamic Empires (pages 14-29) and SHP History Year 7 (pages 160-165) are excellent starting points. Then follow these links:

Medieval Islam
BBC: What the Islamic World did for us.

1001 inventions exhibition
1001 inventions film

Here are links to videos on Islamic inventions. They are all YouTube sites and will lead you to others:


the elephant clock
optics
medicine
home comforts
The Library of Secrets
list of inventions

The Middle Passage

The transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans affected millions of people.
The link below takes you to 4 stories.


Liverpool International Slavery Museum.


B. How did the trade in enslaved people affect the Caribbean, Africa and Britain?

The links below take you to 3 pages from the National Archive website. Each page has links to original documents from the time. From each page choose one document that you feel best shows the effect of the slave trade and explain why you chose it.

Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Britain and the trade.

The Caribbean and the trade.

VIDEOS

Development of the transatlantic slave trade.

Olaudah Equiano's story.

Plantation life.

Slave religion, beliefs and traditions.

Revolution in Haiti

Runaways and Maroons

The abolitionist movement

Mary Prince and Sam Sharpe

A slave trader speaks

Mary Prince

Equiano speaking

...............................................................................................................

More links.

Fjolla's blog for Year 8 students.

"Eye of newt and toe of frog..."

Witch crazy!!

"When shall we three meet again -

In thunder, lightning or in rain?

When the hurly-burly's done,

When the battle's lost and won"

"Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble."

These are the words of the three witches in Shakespeare's play Macbeth written 400 years ago.
We are still fascinated by witches. Just think of Hallowe'en, Harry Potter or even the latest Shrek movie.

When you think of a witch, is your image something like this?

The real story of witches is quite different, though.

The image of an old 'ugly' woman with a cackling voice, a broom and a cat dates back to the Middle Ages in Europe.

At that time strong, independent women were often seen as a threat.

In the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries thousands of innocent women (and some men) were accused of evil magic, brutally tortured and often burnt to death in public.

What kinds of women were accused and why?

What exactly were they supposed to have done?

Did they really do these things?

Who accused them?

Why were there more attacks at particular times, for example in the 1640s in England?

Find out whatever you can. Then write up your conclusions......

Timelines TV

Learnhistory

The witch trial that made legal history

Experience the Salem witch trials for yourself.
Beliefs and superstitions - information and a worksheet.

Gendercide
The story of the Pendle witches of 1612.

All kinds of documents and details.

Witch hunters.

Videos on You Tube - two excellent programmes.

The Pendle Witch Child

The Burning Times: 

Part 1     Part 2    Part 3    Part 4     Part 5    Part 6

Pirates of the 'Whydah'

The Whydah was a pirate ship that sank off Cape Cod in North America in 1717, after a bad storm.

The wreck of the ship was found in the 1980s and is still being explored.

Treasure hunters have found the ship's bell, its cannon and pieces of gold.

The Whydah was first of all a slave ship carrying slaves from Africa to America.

The ship was attacked by pirates led by 'Black Sam' Bellamy. It became their pirate ship.

When it sank it had 146 crew members and was carrying 180 bags of gold and silver.

The treasure had been shared equally among the crew.

TASK ONE: Find out about Sam Bellamy's pirates. Fill in the sheet the teacher will give you. You will find the information here

TASK TWO: Find out more about the Whydah and make a slide show about the treasure hunters. Find information here and here.

Pirates - the truth?

These are stereotypes of pirates.

What were pirates really like in the 18th century Atlantic?

It is difficult to know because most of the records we have were written by people in government, army and navy officers or victims of pirates.

This evidence can be one-sided (biased)

One way to find out is through marine archaeology: looking at the wrecked ships at the bottom of the sea. In the 1980s an explorer found the wreck of the Whydah, a pirate ship that sank off Cape Cod in the USA.

We now know a lot about the pirate captain, Black Sam Bellamy, and his crew.

The Whydah is telling us - bit by bit - what pirate life was like.

LINKS:

All about the Whydah.

The crew.

The exploration.

Another shipwreck - this time a treasure ship.
Pirates of the Whydah

YOUR TASK

You have been commissioned by the editor of a magazine to write an article about the pirate ship Whydah.
The article should be fun, interesting to read and easy to understand. It should contain ideas to make the reader think.
Use the links above to find information about the ship, the crew and how experts have found out about them.
Your article can be handwritten or wordprocessed using Word. It should have some illustrations.

It should cover:

• The story of the ship
• The lives of the crew members
• How it was discovered
• What was found on the ship
• What we learn from the Whydah about the real world of pirates.

You can also try some pirate adventures.