🌊 Bon Voyage!

🏎️ How can we use Storytelling to Investigate What Sparked Global Exploration and Understand its Impact?

🤔 What is Exploration? 💭

Imagine eating a big plate of pasta with lots of tomato sauce and cheese sprinkled on top. Imagine if I told you that if exploration never happened you probably wouldn’t be eating that? Exploration introduced so many new things to the Europeans and the Indigenous peoples. Sounds like a win win right?! No, not at all. The Europeans brought things such as guns and knifes and kettals that made life easier for the Indigenous people, but they also brought sicknesses like smallpox which nearly wiped out all of the indigenous population. The Europeans got things such as beaver furs which they shipped back to Europe to make hats. They used something called imperialism.

Imperialism means a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means. It connects to colonization because it allows for the Europeans to colonize other peoples land.

Causes of Exploration

Valuables

The Europeans wanted to to trade to increase their wealth.

Power

Since if everyone knew that they had conquered land, then they would listen to them and they could spread their ideas.

New foods and animals

They wanted to bring back food that would be very rare and make it more common so everyone could have it and they brought animals back to Europe to put on farms so they could breed them and use them for food.

Trade

The Europeans wanted to trade for valuables such as beaver skins.

God

They wanted to share Christianity with the rest of the world and they thought it was their job to share gods word. They wanted people to share their worldviews.

Technology

They wanted to find and obtain new technology such as tools and ideas.

People

They wanted slaves and people that they could take advantage of for not just trade, but to use for farming.

Glory

They wanted money and recognition from their country and they would give their land to their king and he would make them famous as well as give them power and wealth.

Navigation

They wanted to learn how to navigate the seas better from people who had lots of experience with it.

The Story

We had to write a story about the age of exploration and the Europeans going over to North America and how it impacted and affected the Indigenous people. We planned it out using a story map…

Then, we got revisions from our peers