Many wars have been fought over land, for both farmland and areas rich in minerals and other natural resources. Many wars have revolved around strategic trade crossroads, where large amounts of traffic passes over a very limited geographic area. This assignment will look at both of these causes of war.
Those directions should be pretty easy. Now, what things should go on the map? I think natural resources from the past and present would be appropriate. For past scarce resources, like nutmeg or silphium, note where the resource could be found (often only one place on earth), and when it existed there. For present resources, note their locations and when that resource became important to people.
Here's a list of resources. Some are no longer valuable, or even available. Some are illegal in most countries in the world, but are nevertheless traded and their production affects the course of nations. The list is by no means complete, so feel free to add others you can imagine:
This should be more than enough for any one class to research in its entirety, so be careful in what you select to put on your map. Should you find something which doesn't seem all that important, after all, feel free to research something else.
For the natural resources, I'll need to know where the resources are located (not too specific: general area OK), what the resource is used for, and when the resource was used or important to world trade. For the drugs and oil, I'll also need to know what the major trade routes are for those items, as those tend to affect world affairs on a frequent basis. For crops like sugar, tobacco, and cotton, I'll also need information on when those crops were dependent on slaves for production and how the slave trade was set up to accomodate those industries.