The emergence of America as a world power at the end of the 19th century and its acquisition of overseas territories.

Nigerian born Chinua Achebe is one of the world's most well-known and influential contemporary writers. His first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), is an early narrative about the European colonization of Africa told from the point of view of the colonized people.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the motivations and realities behind life in the American colonies. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This lesson focuses on John Winthrop's historic "Model of Christian Charity" sermon which is often referred to by its"City on a Hill" metaphor. Through a close reading of this admittedly difficult text, students will learn how it illuminates the beliefs, goals, and programs of the Puritans. The sermon sought to inspire and to motivate the Puritans by pointing out the distance they had to travel between an ideal community and their real-world situation.

Motives to Colonization Before dealing with the Danish colonization of St. John, it must be asked why Denmark ventured into the tropics after 1650 when there was risk of conflict with stronger European nations, and when she had problems enough in the Baltic. When considering the establishment of trans-Atlantic colonies attention must also be drawn to nationalistic motivations. Sweden, Denmark's Baltic rival, had begun to take an interest in West Indian and African colonies (2). From a political point of view Denmark was being outdistanced by the Swedes by 1650, and because of competition and prestige she could not sit back and watch calmly as they got ahead in the race for the riches from foreign parts of the world. Still, from either a materialistic or a political point of view, there is no disputing that the desire for economic gain provided the primary incentive behind Danish expansion into the Caribbean, and for the colonization of St. John. 

This collection uses primary sources to explore early exploration of the Americas. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

For every object that ends up in a library or museum collection – whether it’s a manucript, a photograph, or something more approaching the concept of “art” – there is a narrative, a story that gets told. The story a visitor to an exhibit ends up hearing, of course, is dependent upon who is telling the story and the slant of their own perspective. When the subject of the exhibit is Native Americans in the Upper Midwestern United States during the extraordinary upheaval of the 19th century, one must be particularly careful about the story being told since the narrative that largely exists is one of cultural denouement, of endings, as told by a colonizing population to its descendants. The dominant narrative of the demise of traditional Native American culture in the face of colonization, conversion to Christianity, confinement to reservations and economic collapse is, however, not the only story that can be told. The accounts of the lives of Native Americans during the 19th century that are told by Native peoples themselves are strikingly different to those recounted in history books, movies, and all too frequently in museums. Rather than narratives solely recounting destruction and demise, Native stories about Native history tend to focus on what White Earth Ojibwe scholar Gerald Vizenor has called survivance – a narrative incorporating themes of survival and resistance that insist on the inclusion of the Native presence. The following is an exhibit of resources that can be found within the Digital Public Library of America retold through the lens of Native American survivance in the Minnesota region. Within are a series of objects of both Native and non-Native origin that tell a story of extraordinary culture disruption, change and continuity during 19th c., and how that affects the Native population of Minnesota today. This exhibit was created by the Minnesota Digital Library.

This lesson will introduce the students to the challenges of American foreign policy in the late 19th century and specifically to the political debate over whether the United States should acquire further territory and/or become a European-style empire.

On April 11, 1898, two months after the battleship U.S.S. Maine was destroyed by an explosion in Havana harbor, President McKinley sent a message to Congress requesting authority to use the U.S. armed forces to end a brutal civil war in the Spanish colony of Cuba. This lesson plan, through the use of primary sources and a WebQuest Interactive, will focus on the causes of the war and the political debate in the United States over the advisability of intervening militarily in the affairs of countries.

The treaty of peace ending the Spanish-American War resulted in the United States obtaining the Philippine Islands from Spain. Despite intense political opposition to the acquisition of the islands, the U.S. Senate ratified the treaty. The political impact of anti-imperialist arguments, the difficult experience of suppressing native Filipino resistance, and the lack of attractive opportunities for further territorial expansion, all effectively stalled the American imperialist/expansionist movement.

In 1899 and 1900, Secretary of State John Hay issued what became known as the Open Door Notes to foreign powers involved in China. Secretary Hay called on those powers to respect the rights of each other, to agree to an open market and equal trading opportunities for merchants of all nationalities, and to respect the territorial and administrative integrity of China.