NY Regents Global History and Geography II cheat sheet

Neolithic Revolution (c. 10,000 BCE): domestication of plants and animals led to settled agriculture, surplus food, specialization of labor, and the first permanent villages such as Catalhoyuk and Jericho.

River valley civilizations: Mesopotamia (Tigris-Euphrates), Egypt (Nile), Indus (Indus), and Shang China (Yellow River) all arose on floodplains where irrigation supported dense populations and centralized authority.

Code of Hammurabi (c. 1754 BCE): Babylonian law code inscribed on a stele; punishments varied by social class (lex talionis, 'an eye for an eye'), a key primary source for Mesopotamian society.

Classical Greece: Athenian democracy (direct participation of male citizens only), Spartan militarism, and the Persian Wars (490-479 BCE) preserved Greek independence; Alexander the Great's conquests (334-323 BCE) spread Hellenistic culture.

Roman Republic to Empire: the Twelve Tables, Senate and consuls, the Punic Wars against Carthage (264-146 BCE), then the Pax Romana under Augustus; the empire split in 395 CE and the western half fell in 476 CE.

Major belief systems: Hinduism (Vedas, reincarnation, caste), Buddhism (Four Noble Truths, Eightfold Path, spread by Ashoka), Confucianism (filial piety, Five Relationships), Daoism (wu wei), Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Five Pillars, hijra 622 CE).

Silk Roads and Indian Ocean trade moved goods, technologies, and religions; the bubonic plague (Black Death, 1347-1351) killed roughly one-third of Europe's population, weakening serfdom.

Islamic Golden Age: House of Wisdom in Baghdad preserved and translated Greek texts; advances in algebra (al-Khwarizmi), medicine (Ibn Sina), and optics (Ibn al-Haytham).

Mongol Empire (1206-1368): Genghis Khan unified steppe tribes; the Pax Mongolica secured trade routes but Mongol rule also spread the plague and destroyed Baghdad (1258).

Absolutism: Louis XIV of France ('L'etat, c'est moi') built Versailles and revoked the Edict of Nantes (1685); Peter the Great of Russia westernized through the Table of Ranks and founded St. Petersburg (1703).

Scientific Revolution: Copernican heliocentrism, Galileo's telescope observations, Newton's Principia (1687) with laws of motion and universal gravitation shifted authority from revelation to observation.

Enlightenment thinkers: Locke (natural rights, consent of governed), Montesquieu (separation of powers), Rousseau (social contract, general will), Voltaire (religious toleration), Wollstonecraft (women's rights).

Political revolutions: American Revolution (1776), French Revolution (1789, Declaration of the Rights of Man), Haitian Revolution (1791-1804, first successful slave revolt), Latin American independence led by Bolivar and San Martin.

Industrial Revolution began in Britain c. 1750 with coal, iron, the steam engine (Watt), and textile factories; urbanization, child labor, and the factory system followed, prompting reform laws and unions.

Economic theory: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) argued for free markets and division of labor; Karl Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto (1848) predicted class struggle and revolution.

Imperialism after 1870: Berlin Conference (1884-85) partitioned Africa without African representation; causes included raw materials, markets, nationalism, Social Darwinism, and the 'White Man's Burden.'

Nationalism and unification: Italy unified under Cavour and Garibaldi (1861); Germany unified under Bismarck through 'blood and iron' after the Franco-Prussian War (1871).

Meiji Restoration (1868) in Japan ended the Tokugawa shogunate and rapidly industrialized and militarized Japan, later defeating Russia in 1905.

Causes of World War I: MAIN - militarism, alliances (Triple Alliance vs. Triple Entente), imperialism, and nationalism; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (June 1914) was the spark.

Treaty of Versailles (1919) imposed reparations and war-guilt on Germany, redrew borders, and created the League of Nations; harsh terms are cited as fueling later German resentment.

Russian Revolution (1917): Bolsheviks under Lenin overthrew the tsar, withdrew from WWI, and created the USSR; Stalin later imposed collectivization and Five-Year Plans.

Fascism: Mussolini's March on Rome (1922), Hitler's rise to chancellor (1933), and Nazi racial laws; appeasement at Munich (1938) failed to stop German expansion.

World War II (1939-1945): Axis vs. Allies; the Holocaust killed six million Jews; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945) ended the Pacific war.

Cold War: containment (Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan), NATO (1949) vs. Warsaw Pact (1955), Berlin Blockade, Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), and proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam.

Decolonization: Indian independence (1947, Gandhi's nonviolence, Partition), Ghana (1957), and African independence in the 1960s; the Non-Aligned Movement offered a third path.

End of the Cold War: Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and the dissolution of the USSR (1991).

Globalization: trade agreements (NAFTA, WTO), multinational corporations, the internet, and global migration; critiques cite inequality, outsourcing, and environmental costs.

Physical geography: Earth's plates move via tectonic activity, producing earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain ranges; climate zones (tropical, arid, temperate, polar) are shaped by latitude, altitude, and ocean currents.

Human-environment interaction: desertification, deforestation, irrigation, and dam building (e.g., Aswan High Dam) show how people modify and are modified by environments.

Population: the demographic transition model moves from high birth/high death rates to low/low through industrialization; rapid growth strains food, water, and housing.

Population density is uneven; the majority of people live in the Northern Hemisphere and near coasts; megacities (Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai) exceed 10 million residents.

Migration push factors include war, famine, and persecution; pull factors include jobs, safety, and education; refugees are protected under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.

Cultural geography: language families, world religions, and ethnic groups diffuse through trade, conquest, and migration; cultural diffusion shapes food, religion, and technology.

Economic geography: developed vs. developing countries (measured by GDP per capita, literacy, life expectancy); the Brandt line divides wealthy North from poorer South.

Map skills: latitude/longitude coordinates, scale, legend, and projections (Mercator distorts area; Robinson balances shape and area); thematic maps show population, climate, or resources.

Sourcing: identify author, date, audience, purpose, and point of view before using a document; ask why the author created it and who might be excluded.

Contextualization: place a document in its time and place - political, economic, social, and cultural conditions - to explain meaning and reliability.

Causation: distinguish long-term causes (underlying conditions) from short-term triggers; use 'because,' 'led to,' and 'resulted in' to show chains of events.

Comparison: identify similarities and differences between societies, revolutions, or documents, and explain reasons for the differences rather than just listing them.

Continuity and change over time: identify what stayed the same and what changed across a period; avoid claiming total change or total continuity.

Enduring issues: recurring problems such as power, inequality, conflict, scarcity, migration, and human rights; define the issue and trace it across at least two cases.

Document-based essay: use at least one outside fact per body paragraph, cite documents, and analyze bias; a thesis must be arguable and address all parts of the prompt.

Reliability: eyewitness accounts may be biased or limited; government propaganda and official records serve the state; corroborate with multiple independent sources.