AP World History: Modern study plan

Map the main maritime routes opened by Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and England between 1450 and 1750, and label the goods each network carried.

Explain how the Columbian Exchange reshaped populations, diets, and labor systems in at least three regions, naming specific crops, animals, and diseases.

Compare coerced labor systems - encomienda, hacienda, chattel slavery, and indentured servitude - and identify which empires relied most heavily on each.

Trace how American silver moved through Manila and Seville into Ming and Tokugawa markets, and explain the effect on Asian trade balances and taxation.

Analyze three short primary sources (a conquistador account, a plantation inventory, an Asian merchant's report) for point of view, purpose, and audience.

Sequence the American, French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions on one timeline and annotate the specific Enlightenment or religious idea each revolution invoked.

Distinguish political, industrial, and social revolutions, then supply one concrete 1750–1900 example of each with a named actor or document.

Explain how coal, iron, and steam innovations spread from Britain to continental Europe and to Meiji Japan, noting what slowed or sped diffusion.

Compare the outcomes of the Haitian and French Revolutions for citizenship, slavery, and labor, citing at least two specific measures each.

Evaluate two competing explanations for why industrialization began in Britain rather than in Qing China or Mughal India.

Compare how the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, Qing, and Russian empires legitimized rule, citing a specific title, institution, or ritual for each.

Explain how gunpowder weapons and new military organization enabled territorial expansion in at least three of these empires.

Describe three methods these empires used to manage religious diversity and name one rebellion or tension each method produced.

Analyze how the Ottoman devshirme, the Mughal mansabdari system, and the Chinese civil service examination recruited and controlled elites.

Identify the internal and external factors that had weakened the Qing and Mughal empires by 1750.

Explain how industrial demand for raw materials and new markets drove imperial expansion in Africa and Asia after 1750.

Compare economic, political, and cultural justifications for imperialism using specific evidence from British India and the Congo Free State.

Describe three forms of resistance to colonial rule - such as the Xhosa cattle killing, the Sepoy Rebellion, and the Boxer Rebellion - and state each outcome.

Trace how labor migration, indentured servitude, and the coolie trade reshaped societies in the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean rim.

Evaluate the environmental consequences of industrial extraction, including deforestation, soil exhaustion, and the spread of plantation monoculture.

Compare state-building in Song China, the Abbasid Caliphate, Mali, and the Aztec Empire, naming the source of legitimacy for each.

Trace the Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and trans-Saharan networks, naming two goods and one transport or financial technology exchanged on each.

Explain how Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity spread along trade routes and adapted to local beliefs, with one specific example per religion.

Describe the demographic and environmental effects of crop diffusion and the fourteenth-century plague across Afro-Eurasia.

Explain why the Inca and Aztec states developed outside Afro-Eurasian trade networks and what that isolation meant for their encounters with Europeans.

Explain how the Green Revolution, container shipping, and telecommunications accelerated global economic integration after 1945.

Compare arguments for and against economic globalization, citing specific roles played by the WTO, the IMF, and multinational corporations.

Trace the growth of one global supply chain - such as electronics or apparel - from raw material to consumer market.

Analyze how globalization reshaped gender roles, migration, and labor in at least two different regions.

Evaluate the environmental costs of globalized production alongside the rise of international environmental movements and agreements.

Compare the causes and consequences of World War I and World War II, focusing on alliance systems, total war, and civilian mobilization.

Explain how the Cold War split the world into competing blocs and give one proxy conflict associated with each superpower.

Trace decolonization in South Asia, Africa, and Southeast Asia, comparing nonviolent mass movements with armed liberation struggles.

Explain how the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of apartheid reshaped the international order after 1989.

Analyze the causes of twentieth-century mass atrocities and evaluate the institutions created in response, such as the United Nations and the Genocide Convention.

Reconstruct a timeline from 1200 to the present and place 25 key events, empires, and turning points on it correctly.

Complete three timed SAQ sets and two timed DBQs under exam conditions, scoring each with the official rubrics.

Drill the four reasoning skills - comparison, causation, continuity and change, and contextualization - using released-style prompts.

Re-teach the five sub-topics you missed most often, working from your accumulated error log rather than from notes.

Rehearse the exam's pacing plan, allocating specific minutes to multiple choice, short answer, document reading, and essay writing.