World History
What the domain tests
World History spans early civilizations to globalization, stressing interaction across regions: trade, migration, empire, belief systems, and technology.
Core rules
- River valley civilizations: Mesopotamia (Tigris-Euphrates), Egypt (Nile), Indus, and Shang China developed irrigation, writing, and centralized rule.
- Classical empires: Rome, Han China, and Maurya/Gupta India expanded through roads, bureaucracy, and law; their fall created new political patterns.
- Belief systems: Buddhism spread along trade routes; Islam expanded through conquest and commerce; Christianity moved through the Roman Empire and later missions.
- Trade networks: the Silk Roads, Indian Ocean, and trans-Saharan routes moved goods, technologies, and diseases, including the Black Death.
- Revolutions: the Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment, and political revolutions reshaped authority; industrialization began in Britain and spread unevenly.
Worked example
A question asks why the Industrial Revolution began in Britain. Rather than listing inventions, connect coal and iron, capital from trade, agricultural surplus, colonial markets, and stable property rights. Explain that these conditions reinforced one another.
Traps
Treating Europe as the default center; calling all change “progress”; confusing the Renaissance with the Enlightenment; ignoring the Columbian Exchange’s demographic effects; assuming decolonization produced stable states.