AP World History: Modern study guide
AP World History: Modern · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
AP World History: Modern is a College Board advanced placement course and exam in world history from c. 1200 to the present. The AP World History: Modern study guide has 9 sections and about 3,219 words.
01The Global Tapestry (c. 1200–1450)
Between 1200 and 1450 the world contained several thriving, differently organized states rather than a single system. In China, the Song and then the Yuan and early Ming built a bureaucracy staffed by examination-selected scholar-officials, legitimated by Confucian revival and the Mandate of Heaven, with printing, gunpowder and Champa rice supporting a commercialized economy.
372 words, about 2 min02Networks of Exchange (c. 1200–1450)
The 1200–1450 period is defined by expanding exchange across three linked arenas. On the Silk Roads, the Mongol Empire's pax mongolica lowered the cost of overland travel: caravanserai, standardized weights and paper money moved goods, technologies (gunpowder, printing, the compass), religions and diseases between China, Central Asia, the Islamic world and Europe.
366 words, about 2 min03Land-Based Empires (1450–1750)
Between 1450 and 1750, large land-based empires consolidated power through three recurring instruments: ideology, bureaucracy and military force. The Ottomans combined a devshirme levy of Christian boys trained as janissaries and administrators with the millet system of religious self-government for non-Muslim communities, and a Sunni identity sharpened against the Safavids at Chaldiran (1514).
347 words, about 2 min04Transoceanic Interconnections (1450–1750)
After 1492 the Atlantic replaced the Mediterranean as the center of gravity of world commerce, creating the first sustained link among all major ocean basins. The Columbian Exchange moved maize, potatoes, tomatoes, cacao and tobacco eastward and wheat, horses, cattle, sugar and - decisively - smallpox and measles westward, with catastrophic demographic consequences in the Americas that in turn created labor demand.
347 words, about 2 min05Revolutions (1750–1900)
Between 1750 and 1900, three revolutions interacted: intellectual, political and industrial. Enlightenment thinkers - Locke on consent, Montesquieu on separated powers, Rousseau on popular sovereignty, Wollstonecraft on women's reason - supplied arguments that American colonists, French revolutionaries, Haitian insurgents under Louverture and Latin American leaders such as Bolívar and San Martín put into practice unevenly.
359 words, about 2 min06Consequences of Industrialization (1750–1900)
Industrialization changed imperialism's form. Earlier maritime empires had been largely commercial; the "new imperialism" of roughly 1850–1914 was industrial, territorial and fast, driven by demand for raw materials and markets, nationalist rivalry, strategic chokepoints like the Suez Canal, and an ideology of racial hierarchy expressed in Social Darwinism, the "civilizing mission" and the White Man's Burden.
359 words, about 2 min07Global Conflict (1900–1945)
The two world wars turned industrial capacity against populations. World War I's causes are usually grouped as militarism, alliance blocs, imperial rivalry and Balkan nationalism, ignited by the assassination at Sarajevo; its conduct - trenches, machine guns, gas, submarines, blockades - made it a total war that mobilized economies, colonies and propaganda.
358 words, about 2 min08Cold War and Decolonization (1945–1991)
The Cold War was a rivalry between a capitalist, US-led bloc and a communist, Soviet-led one, fought through ideology, alliance systems, economic aid, espionage, arms racing and proxy wars rather than direct superpower combat. Origins lie in wartime conferences at Yalta and Potsdam, the division of Europe, containment doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and crises such as the Berlin blockade and airlift and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
357 words, about 2 min09Globalization (1991–present)
Since 1991 globalization has accelerated through four channels: trade, capital, labor and information. Trade liberalization - the WTO, NAFTA, the EU's single market - plus containerization and just-in-time supply chains fragmented production across borders, so a single good may be designed, componentized, assembled and sold in different countries.
354 words, about 2 min