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CLSM · World History · Progress Check 4
Impacts of Imperialism
Read the situation. Connect the ideas. Show how you know.
Name ___________________________Class __________ Date __________
01 Recall, then make a connection.
Extraction
Assimilation policy
Self-definition
Contrast extraction with an assimilation policy. Explain how evidence of self-definition could complicate an official claim that a railway or cultural policy benefited everyone equally.
Read the situation.
Imperial projects often presented infrastructure and extraction as signs of progress. A railway could move goods more efficiently while serving unequal priorities, using coerced labor, or changing access to land. The existence of infrastructure is not enough to establish who benefited, who decided, and who bore the costs.
02 Organize the information.
Whose question does it answer?
Classify the main information in each fictional project record.
Sort the records.
A. Transport or extraction outputB. Community experience or control
Example
Category letter
1. A ledger counts exported freight loads.
2. Residents describe losing access to land.
3. A report gives the number of trains per week.
4. Testimony describes labor imposed under threat.
5. A petition asks who has authority to choose the route.
Explain one placement using a detail from the example.
CLSM · World History · Progress Check 4
What does the evidence show?
Impacts of Imperialism
03 Follow the evidence.
Test the progress claim
Claim: “More exports prove the project benefited every resident.”
Select all evidence that challenges the inference.
Community testimony documents loss of land access.
Labor records identify coercive recruitment.
A freight ledger shows higher output.
The railway map has more stations than before.
Name the useful records and explain how they answer the claim.
04 Apply the idea.
Australian policy and identity
Separate historical case: assimilation policies sought absorption into a dominant national culture. Official and community histories document continued Aboriginal cultural identity and resistance to surrendering it.
Which explanation fits?
Colonial interaction pressured identity, while community action sustained and reshaped self-definition rather than simply erasing it.
An official policy automatically replaced every person’s identity.
Communities had no role in defining their own belonging.
Choose a conclusion and explain why it fits the situation.
05 Carry the idea forward.
Write a two-part analysis: first explain why the fictional railway’s output increase cannot establish universal benefit; then explain how the Australian assimilation case shows interaction between imposed policy and identity. Keep the cases distinct.