World History
What the questions test
World History items on this exam are broad in scope but specific in demand: they typically ask you to place an event in the right era, connect a cause to a consequence, or compare two civilizations. Organizing your review around periodization and theme is more efficient than memorizing isolated dates.
Core concepts to master:
- Early civilizations and exchange: river-valley societies (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus, Shang), classical empires (Han, Rome, Maurya/Gupta), and the trade networks that linked them (Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, trans-Saharan).
- Post-classical reorganization: feudalism in Europe and Japan, Islamic caliphates, Song China, Mongol Eurasian integration.
- Early modern watersheds: Renaissance, Reformation, Columbian Exchange, Atlantic slave trade, gunpowder empires, absolutism vs. constitutionalism.
- Modern era: Enlightenment, Atlantic revolutions, industrialization, imperialism, the two world wars, decolonization, and the Cold War.
Traps to expect
- Date drift - items often place an event one century off. Anchor a few hinge dates: 1453, 1492, 1789, 1914, 1945, 1989.
- Conflation of revolutions - the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions differ sharply in class base and outcome.
- Eurocentrism - a stem may describe global change as solely European; strong answers note African, Asian, and American agency (e.g., Song economic dynamism, West African gold-salt trade).
- Continuity vs. change - a change over time item wants both what shifted and what persisted.
Rule of thumb
When comparing two periods, ask three questions: what institution changed, who held power, and how did exchange (goods, ideas, disease) intensify?
Worked example: "Which factor best explains the rapid spread of Islam between 632 and 750 CE?" Eliminate answers that overstate forced conversion. The strongest causal cluster is military expansion plus trade networks plus administrative tolerance - a multi-causal answer beats a monocausal one on this exam.