The web of maritime connections between Western Europe, western and central Africa, and the Americas that made up the Atlantic world is the focus of this section of "On the Water: Stories from Maritime America", an online exhibition from the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Students will learn how Atlantic-based trade shaped modern world history and life in America. Topics covered are the tobacco and sugar trades, the Middle Passage and the transatlantic slave trade, and the piracy that plagued the Caribbean Sea and North American coast during this period.

This map series contains animated historical maps related to colonial expansion and imperialism.

Students will examine content related to mercantilism. Students will use a map to identify political boundaries, analyze primary and secondary sources, and evaluate the impact of economic forces. Students will also participate in an activity to simulate the flow of goods and gold between colonies and the mother countries.

Students explore the two worlds that made contact when Columbus stepped ashore in the New World in 1492. The goals of this lesson are to gain an understanding of the forces within European society that found expression in the voyage of Christopher Columbus, to examine the cultures of those whom Columbus and his successors encountered in the New World, to analyze the degree to which cultural expectations shaped the encounter experience for Columbus, and to reconstruct the encounter experience for those who saw Columbus sail into their world.

This article explains Portuguese motives for exploring Africa in the 15th through 17th centuries. Motives included access to commodities and a faster means to South Asia. In addition, religion played an important role in Portuguese exploration of Africa.

Students will summarize the treatment of North African women by both North African men and the colonial powers. Students use primary text and visual sources to evaluate the multiple perspectives of the treatment of North African women. Students will write an essay summarizing the lesson.

This unit brings together multimedia resources describing the Age of Exploration. Multiple documents are available for examining notable voyages of discovery from various perspectives including economic, technological innovation, and trade as well as explaining the consequences for native peoples and enslaved populations.

In this lesson, students read excerpts from Columbus's letters and journals, as well as recent considerations of his achievements. Students reflect on the motivations behind Columbus's explorations, his reactions to what he found and the consequences, intended and unintended, of his endeavor.

Students will analyze primary text and visual sources in order to identify the roles of women in the development of the Cape Colony. Students will identify point of view in a variety of sources and understand the difference between different types of written documents, such as journals and diaries, letters, or legal documents. Students will write an essay summarizing the lesson.

In this project, students select a modern trend and follow it through various media outlets. By choosing articles, analyzing them, and writing about them, students begin to see how their respective trend influences the modern world. In the second half, students go back through history and research the same trend in the past. After compiling historical data on the trend, students combine the modern and the historical into a research paper that expresses their new understanding of the world.