Think As Historian: THINK AS A HISTORIAN: APPROACHES TO MAKING HISTORICAL CONNECTIONS

Making historical connections requires the use of three reasoning processes: comparison, causation, and/or continuity and change. Following are questions you can ask yourself to make historical connections using these processes. The answers to these questions will reveal connections.

• Comparison: What topic, idea, or event in history is like another topic, idea, or event? How is one topic, idea, or event like and/or unlike another? Possible answer and connection: The expansion of sea routes for trade is like the expansion of the land-based Silk Roads for trade. They are alike in that they both extended global interconnections and depended on new technologies.

• Causation: What caused something to happen? Possible answer and connection: China’s withdrawal from sailing to distant lands caused a return of piracy in the China Sea.

• Continuity and change: In what ways is something a continuation of what came before it? In what ways did something differ from what preceded it? Possible answer and connection: Trade in the Indian Ocean had periods in which it flourished before the spread of Islam, and flourishing trade continued after the spread of Islam. Some changes after the spread of Islam were the high regard afforded Muslim merchants and the expansion of trade routes.

Make three historical connections between what you read about in this topic and what you learned in previous topics, or even what you know about other times in history, including the present. Ask yourself the above questions to discover the connections. Write them down and share them with your classmates.