Age+of+Exploration

Students analyze political and economic change in the sixteenth, seventeenth,

and eighteenth centuries (the Age of Exploration, the Enlightenment, and the

Age of Reason).

1. Know the great voyages of discovery, the locations of the routes, and the influence of

cartography in the development of a new European worldview.

2. Discuss the exchanges of plants, animals, technology, culture, and ideas among Eu­

rope, Africa, Asia, and the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the

major economic and social effects on each continent.

3. Examine the origins of modern capitalism; the influence of mercantilism and cottage

industry; the elements and importance of a market economy in seventeenth-century

Europe; the changing international trading and marketing patterns, including their

locations on a world map; and the influence of explorers and map makers.

4. Explain how the main ideas of the Enlightenment can be traced back to such move­

ments as the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Scientific Revolution and to the

Greeks, Romans, and Christianity.

5. Describe how democratic thought and institutions were influenced by Enlightenment

thinkers (e.g., John Locke, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, American founders).

6. Discuss how the principles in the Magna Carta were embodied in such documents as

the English Bill of Rights and the American Declaration of Independence.