Curriculum Economic History

Economic History

The crises, turning points and eras that explain how today's economy got built.

The Great Depression The economic collapse that reshaped how governments respond to a crisis. 📄 Read-aloud
Bretton Woods The 1944 agreement that built the modern international monetary system - and what happened when it collapsed. 📄 Read-aloud
The 2008 Financial Crisis How a housing market problem in one country triggered a global financial crisis. 📄 Read-aloud
Economic History: Checkpoint 1 Covers the Great Depression, Bretton Woods, and the 2008 financial crisis. 5 questions
The COVID Economy How the COVID-19 pandemic produced an economic shock unlike any prior recession, and what followed it. 📄 Read-aloud
Hyperinflation What happens when inflation spirals out of control, and how it usually starts. 📄 Read-aloud
The Industrial Revolution The transformation that created the modern economy, and the disruption it caused along the way. 📄 Read-aloud
Economic History: Checkpoint 2 Covers the COVID economy, hyperinflation, and the Industrial Revolution. 5 questions
The Rise of China How China moved from a largely agrarian economy to the world's second-largest in a few decades, and what drove it. 📄 Read-aloud
The Gold Standard and Why It Ended What it meant for money to be backed by gold, why countries abandoned the system, and what replaced it. 📄 Read-aloud
Stagflation in the 1970s How the U.S. economy faced high inflation and high unemployment at the same time - a combination economists had assumed couldn't really happen. 📄 Read-aloud
Mercantilism vs. Free Trade in Early Economic History How the old idea that trade is a contest one country wins gave way to the idea that trade helps everyone. 📄 Read-aloud
The Marshall Plan and Rebuilding Postwar Europe How a large US aid program helped rebuild Europe's economy after World War II - and why it worked. 📄 Read-aloud
The History of Central Banking How institutions like the Federal Reserve came to exist, and what problems they were created to solve. 📄 Read-aloud
The Dot-Com Bubble and Crash How enthusiasm for the early internet inflated a massive stock bubble in the late 1990s, and what happened when it burst. 📄 Read-aloud
The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 How a currency collapse in Thailand spread across Southeast Asia and reshaped how countries manage foreign debt. 📄 Read-aloud
The Oil Shocks of the 1970s How two sudden oil price spikes in the 1970s exposed how dependent modern economies had become on cheap energy. 📄 Read-aloud
The Fall of the Soviet Union and Economic Transition How Russia and other former Soviet states shifted from central planning to markets, and why the transition was so painful. 📄 Read-aloud
The Silk Road and Ancient Trade How overland and sea trade routes linked China, India, Persia and Europe for centuries, what was traded, and how ideas travelled with goods. 📄 Read-aloud
The Great Divergence Why Western Europe pulled ahead of China and India economically from around 1800, and the competing explanations historians offer. 📄 Read-aloud
The Bengal Famine of 1943 How millions died in Bengal in 1943, why Amartya Sen argued it was caused by collapsing purchasing power rather than a simple lack of food, and its lessons. 📄 Read-aloud
The Black Death and the Economy How the plague of the 14th century killed a huge share of Europe's population, raised wages for survivors and reshaped economic institutions. 📄 Read-aloud