AP World History

Unit of Study Outline

1750 C.E.-1914 C.E.

1750 C.E. to 1914 C.E.

 What students are expected to know:

Major Developments:

1.      Questions of Periodization

Continuities and breaks, causes of changes from the previous period and within this period

2.      Changes in global commerce, communications, and technology

a.       Changes in patterns of world trade

b.      Industrial Revolution (transformative effects on and differential timing in different societies; mutual relation of industrial and scientific developments; commonalities)

3.      Demographic and environmental changes (migrations, end of the Atlantic slave trade, new birthrate patterns, food supply)

4.      Changes in social and gender structure (Industrial Revolution; commercial and demographic developments; emancipation of serfs/slaves; tension between work patterns and ideas about gender)

5.      Political revolutions and independence movements; new political ideas

a.       Latin American independence movements

b.      Revolutions (United States, France, Haiti, Mexico, China)

c.       Rise of nationalism, nation-states, and movements of political reform

d.      Overlaps between nations and empires

e.       Rise of democracy and its limitations:  reform; women; racism

6.      Rise of Western dominance (economic, political, social, cultural, and artistic, patterns of expansion; imperialism and colonialism) and different cultural and political reactions (reform; resistance; rebellion; racism; nationalism) 

Impact of changing European ideologies on colonial administrations

7.      Diverse Interpretations

a.       What are the debates over the utility of modernization theory as a framework for interpreting events in this period and the next?

b.      What are the debates about the causes of serf and slave emancipation in this period and how do these debates fit into broader comparisons of labor systems?

c.       What are the debates over the nature of women’s roles in this period and how do these debates apply to industrialized areas and how do they apply in colonial societies?

Major Comparisons and Snapshots

·        Compare the causes and early phases of the Industrial Revolution in western Europe and Japan

·        Compare the Haitian and French Revolutions

·        Compare reaction to foreign domination in:  the Ottoman Empire, China, India, and Japan

·        Comparative nationalism (e.g., China & Japan, Cuba & the Philippines, and Egypt & Nigeria)

·        Compare forms of western intervention in Latin America and in Africa

·        Compare the roles and conditions of women in the upper/middle classes with peasantry/working class in western Europe

Examples of the types of information students are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things students are not expected to know for the multiple-choice section:

·        Women’s emancipation movements, but not specific suffragists

·        The French Revolution of 1789, but not the Revolution of 1830

·        Meiji Restoration, but not Iranian Constitutional Revolution

·        Causes of Latin American independence movements, but not specific protagonists

·        Boxer Rebellion, but not the Crimean War

·        Suez Canal, but not the Erie Canal

·        Muhammad Ali, but not Isma’il

·        Marxism, but not Utopian socialism

·        Social Darwinism, but not Herbert Spencer