Spanish History

Topic: Spanish History prior to the colonization of the Americas

Lesson: El Cid and Medieval Spain under Moorish Occupation

Key Points: From the second half of the 8th Century to the end of the 15th Century, the Iberian Peninsula was in a period of political and social turmoil. Muslim invaders from North Africa known as the Moors had taken over the majority of the peninsula and the Christian inhabitants there were forced to flee to the North or submit to Islamic rule in present day Southern Spain and Portugal. During this time Spain was not a unified country and was divided between the kingdoms of Aragon, Castile and Leon. Prior to the Moorish invasion these kingdoms were often at odds and warred against one another. However, the invasion of the Moors served to unify the Christian kingdoms in Spain to repel the Muslim invasion. Perhaps the most famous warrior in Spain during this time is El Cid. El Cid reconquered large portions of Southern Spain and unified much of what is today Valencia and Andalusia. It was in part due to this unification that Christian forces in Spain were able to permanently expel the Moors from their last stronghold at the Alhambra in Granada Spain in 1492. Of note, just three months after retaking Granada, Queen Isabel II met with Christopher Columbus in the Alhambra and agreed to fund his 1492 voyage which would result in the opening of the Americas to European colonization.

Importance: Spain and Portugal had been under Moorish rule for 700 years and the region had experienced constant turmoil and warfare. As a result of this warfare and the persecution of Christians under Moorish rule, the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula had developed an intensely zealous religious and warrior culture (of which Don Miguel de Saavedra satirizes in his most famous work, “Don Quijote”). This religious and military zeal was a large contributing factor to the manner in which the new world was colonized and the Native American inhabitants were treated by Iberian military, political and religious authorities.

 

 

Online Collaboration for Group Project

Topic: Online Collaboration

Assignment: Sign up for a zoom account to assist your group in completing your group project.

Due Date: 11/15/2017

Discussion: Some of you have voiced concern over being able to complete your group projects on time due to scheduling and transportation difficulties. In order to assist you in completing your projects, I’d like you to sign up and begin using zoom which is a web-based collaborative tool that will be very useful to those of you who are unable to meet up in person on a regular basis. It’s a very simple program to use (even for me), so I don’t anticipate you tech savvy young people having any problems putting it to good use. Please just follow the steps below, and take a few minutes to view the instructional video I’ve embedded. We’ll also take a few minutes to discuss this in class next week, but I wanted you to have a bit of a head start using zoom in case you wanted to begin online collaboration this weekend.

1. Select a group leader if you haven’t already.
2. The group leader will ensure that he/she has everyone’s email address and will create a discussion group on zoom.
3. We’ll use the last 15 minutes of class on Monday to create a schedule whereby each group will meet up online to ensure that there are no technical issues. During this pre-scheduled meeting, the group leader will also invite me to sit in on a brief discussion so I can make sure that there are no issues and check your progress on your group project.
4. As you saw above, I’d like everyone to have created their account and conducted the initial online meeting by November 15th so that I can be certain that you will have plenty of time to work out any issues before we hit the Christmas season and you begin semester finals for your other classes.

As always, email me if you have any concerns, and I look forward to seeing you on Monday. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Mr. P

NATO and the Warsaw Pact

Class: AP Social Studies (11th and 12th Grade)

Timeframe: The Cold War

Topic: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact

Students,

Good afternoon, this brief video will serve as a primer to help prepare you for tomorrow’s continuing discussion on the Cold War and its effects on 20th Century European politics. As we discussed last week, following the Second World War, much of Europe was divided into two spheres of influence; the United States with her wartime allies, Great Britain and France dominated the Western half of Europe while the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe. Due in large part to high levels of mutual mistrust between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR), both sides formed defensive military alliances that incorporated the majority of the countries on either side of the Berlin Wall. Western Europe was largely integrated into the NATO alliance which was headed militarily by the United States and served to coalesce western Europe into a common defense framework buttressed by the concept of “military interoperability,” which simply means that the various countries would adopt similar or identical military tactics and use interchangeable military equipment. In Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union’s counterpart to NATO was the Warsaw Pact, which served a similar purpose and was also designed to achieve maximum military interoperability in order to facilitate efficient and effective military operations when and if required during a military conflict.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the largely concomitant disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Warsaw Pact simply ceased to exist, though many of the former constituent members voluntarily remained militarily allied with one another. NATO however continues to exist to the present, which has prompted many political scientists to question the legitimacy of a military alliance that no longer has a viable adversary. These are topics that we’ll be discussing in class over the course of the next several days, so to begin with, I’d like for you to listen to this very brief podcast to get the ball rolling for tomorrow’s lesson. Have a great evening, and I look forward to your comments and tomorrow’s lesson!

Week 3 Update (The Andean Region)

Hey there class, I thought that I would share one of my favorite Latin American recipes with you. As you know, we just got finished with our unit on the Andean region which is comprised of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. With the exception of Bolivia, all of these countries have large areas that border the ocean, and consequently seafood is a major portion of their national cuisines. One of my favorite dishes that’s typical of the Andean region is “ceviche.” Ceviche is made with either fish or shrimp and mixed with vegetables, spices and citrus fruits. It’s consumed widely throughout the region, and served as either a meal unto itself, or paired with crackers or bread. The recipe is below, and I encourage you to try it for yourself, it’s simple and oh so delicious!

Begin with 1lb of mild tasting fish or shrimp.

Soak the fish or shrimp in the juice of 12 limes for about 30 minutes, (the acid from the limes will cook the fish or shrimp, trust me).

Mix in 1 white onion, 1 clove of garlic, 1/2 bell pepper, and cilantro and salt to taste

Let the mixture sit in the fridge for 1 hour, then add tabasco sauce to taste

Mix everything together and eat it like a soup or use it as a dip for crackers or chips

Mr. P

Week 2 Update (Spain)

Well, our tour of Spain has come to an end, and given the feedback I got from last week’s blog post, I thought I’d post another recipe that you can make from home. When I lived in Spain, one of my favorite things to do was go from restaurant to restaurant and sample all the amazing appetizers or “pasapalos” they had to offer. Pasapalos differ substantially depending on the region of Spain in question. I lived in Andalucia which is has a Mediterranean climate and relies heavily on seafood grapes and olives. So, if you want an easy snack and really want to score some points with your parents, make the appetizer below.

Buy some queen sized Spanish olives, remove the pimento and soak them in extra virgin olive oil for about 2 hours, (the salty flavor will disappear).

Get a loaf of sourdough bread, cut it into pieces and pour some olive oil over the pieces until they’re moist throughout.

Bake the bread at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes until it’s crusty.

Chop 2 Roma tomatoes very finely and soak them in the olive oil from the olives.

Chop the olives and mix them with the tomatoes and olive oil and spread them across the bread.

It’s simple and delicious!

Week 1 Update (The Southern Cone)

Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay are famous for their steaks, and really any kind of meat you can imagine. As we talked about in class, the “Southern Cone” region which is comprised of these countries has some of the most fertile grasslands in the world, and consequently the meat is absolutely amazing has truly become part of the culture, (and we thought Texans were crazy about BBQ!) The key to a good BBQ from the Southern Cone is indirect heat. The way the Gauchos have cooked meat for hundreds of years is to light small fires in a circular formation and place the meat about 6 inches within the small fires. The gauchos would then turn the meat about every 30 minutes so it would cook very slowly and absorb the flavor of the smoke. After the meat had cooked, they would make a sauce called “chimichurri” which was composed of basically whatever ingredients were available, but typically included garlic, parsley, oregano and oil. The gauchos would then soak the meat in the chimichurri and eat it next to the fires they had used for cooking. As we discussed in class, the Southern Cone’s history has a lot of parallels with our own Southwest history, to include our love of BBQ! I hope you enjoyed last week’s lesson, and get ready for even more virtual travel next week!