This enquiry challenges some of the depictions of ‘pirates’ in popular culture (as shown in the photo), introducing students to the real-life privateers of the early modern period.
First, your students first create a graph to show the highs and lows of English privateering activities during the early modern period. This gives them the contextual knowledge they need to unlock this enquiry.
They can then move on to categorising the reasons for the increase in these privateering activities. Here they consider the role of the monarchy, of international rivalries and financial concerns in prompting increased privateering, before reaching their own, nuanced conclusions.
Simple: yes. Effective: yes!
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- Lesson presentation: PowerPoint
- Lesson write-up:PDF
- Resource 1: PDF
- Resource 2: PDF
- Worksheet1: PDF
