U.S. History: American Empire
California State History-Social Studies Content Standards:
Common Core State Standards:
Driving Historical Questions:
Big Ideas:
Unit Summative Assessments:
California State History-Social Studies Content Standards:
- 11.4. Students trace the rise of the United States to its role as a world power in the twentieth century.
- 11.4.2. Describe the Spanish-American War and U.S. expansion in the South Pacific.
Common Core State Standards:
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including analyzing how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10)
Driving Historical Questions:
- Why did the United States decide to begin to establish new colonies and seek territory?
- What allowed the U.S. to do this at the time? Why had they not done so prior
- How did the U.S. take over Hawaii from the native rulers, like Queen Liliuokalani?
- Was Sanford Dole’s revolt justified? Was the United States justified in the annexation? How did the native Hawaiians likely feel about this?
- Why was Alaska paid for and not taken over in the same way Hawaii was?
Big Ideas:
- The United States became a large enough nation to begin to establish its own colonies, much like the European powers
- The United States ‘morally’ justified their takeover of sovereign nations, or disregarded the native’s claim to the land
- Colonies were established primarily as means of expanding both militarily and economically
- During this period, Hawaii was particularly important and was a natural choice for annexation, given the economic relations shared during that time
- Imperial/Colonialism was a natural outgrowth of the American concept of Manifest Destiny
Unit Summative Assessments:
- Students will be required to provide a definition in their own words of pertinent vocabulary (i.e. annexation, expansionism, imperialism, etc)
- Students will be required to identify and describe two motivations for American expansionism in their Writing Journals
- Students will write out two key events that took place in the process of the Hawaiian annexation
- Students will evaluate and write about whether they think that the United States actions were justified back then and if that same reasoning still holds true in our modern era
- Students will be asked to envision themselves as either Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii or President Cleveland and decide what actions they would take were they in similar situations, respective to the individual historical figure and their relationship to the other