World History
Domain II covers world history from early river-valley civilizations to contemporary globalization. Questions emphasize comparison across regions, causation, and continuity and change over time.
Core eras and anchors
- River valleys: Mesopotamia (Tigris–Euphrates; Hammurabi's Code), Egypt (Nile), Indus, Huang He.
- Classical empires: Greece and Rome (Twelve Tables, later Justinian's Code), Han China, Maurya and Gupta India, Persia.
- 600–1450: Islam's rise (hijra 622; expansion to 750), Abbasid Baghdad, trans-Saharan and Silk Road trade, Pax Mongolica, European feudalism and manorialism, Magna Carta (1215), Black Death.
- 1450–1750: Renaissance, Reformation (1517), Columbian Exchange, absolutism, Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment.
- 1750–1914: French (1789) and Haitian (1791) revolutions, industrialization, Latin American independence, unification of Italy and Germany, imperialism, Berlin Conference (1884–85).
- 1914–present: World War I, Russian Revolution (1917), Treaty of Versailles (1919), totalitarianism and the Holocaust, United Nations (1945), decolonization, Non-Aligned Movement (1961), 1989, globalization.
Worked example
Which factor best explains Islam's rapid expansion, 632–750? Best answer: the exhaustion of Byzantium and Persia after long wars, combined with mobile armies and a system that offered conquered Peoples of the Book protected dhimmi status and taxation rather than forced conversion. Distractors such as mass forced conversion misstate the dhimma system; gunpowder is anachronistic; a Mongol alliance is chronologically impossible.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating the Columbian Exchange as only crops and goods; it also moved pathogens, people, and animals.
- Mixing the causes of the French and Russian revolutions: both had food scarcity and fiscal crisis, but Russia's was shaped by WWI and a Marxist party.
- Assuming decolonization was immediate; many states gained independence over decades.