AP World History: Modern

Course Overview

Dave Phillips
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​AP World History: Modern is an introductory college-level survey of modern world history. It investigates significant events, individuals, developments, and processes from 1200 to the present.

The course focuses on cultural developments, political and economic systems, social interactions, technological innovation, and people and their environments.

Students develop and use skills used by historians, analyze sources, build arguments, make connections, and think about continuity and change over time.  Students should be able to read a college-level textbook and write grammatically correct, complete sentences. 

College Board AP Exam Information
See here for details about the College Board AP World History Exam.

Contents

• Course Goals
• Course Outline
  1. ​Global Regions, c. 1200-1450
  2. Global Interactions, c. 1450-1750
  3. Global Empires, c. 1750-1900
  4. Global Challenges, c. 1900-Today
• Course Themes
• ​Historical Thinking Skills

Course Goals

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1. Learn the basic chronology of major events and trends in modern World History.​
   
   
2. Construct a mental map of Earth in order to understand the role of geography in human history.
   
   
3. Understand the principal themes in modern World History.
   
   
4. Analyze and interpret historical evidence in order to understand the unique perspectives of people in space and time.​
   
   
5. Construct historical arguments in writing.​

Course Outline

The course covers four time periods organized into 14 units.

Global Regions, ​c. 1200-1450

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c. 1200-1450 CE

Asia

• Religious Traditions
• East Asia
• South & Southeast Asia
• Oceania
• ​Dar al-Islam
• Mongol Empire​

Africa

• Maghrib & Ethiopia
• Ghana & Benin
• Mali & Songhai
• The Swahili Coast
• ​​Kongo & Great Zimbabwe

Europe

• Judeo-Christian Traditions
• Feudalism
• Manors & Burghers

The Americas

• Moundbuilders & Cliff-dwellers
• Aztecs
• ​Incas

Regional Trade

• Commercial Innovations
• Trade Routes
• ​Mercantile City-States
• Travelers

Global Interactions, ​c. 1450-1750

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c. 1450-1750 CE

​Discovery

• Renaissance
• The Scientific Revolution
• The Reformation and European Wars of Religion
• Transoceanic Travel
• ​Portuguese Empire
• Spanish Conquest and Empire

​Maritime Empires

• Great Britain
• The Dutch Republic
• Bourbon France
• Ming and Qing China
• Tokugawa Japan
• African Kingdoms and the African Diaspora

​​Land Empires

• Gunpowder Empires​
• Mughals
• Ottomans
• Safavids
• ​Russia, Prussia, and Austria

​Global Empires, ​c. 1750-1900

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c. 1750-1900 CE

​Revolutions

• The ​Enlightenment
• The American Revolution
• The French Revolution
• Latin American Revolutions
• Nationalism
• Political Ideologies
• Reform Movements​

Industrialization​

• The Factory System
• The Second Industrial Revolution
• ​Transportation, Communication, and Financial Networks
• Social Class and Labor Movements

​Imperialism

• The Civilizing Mission
• The New Imperialism
• ​American States
• ​Migration
• ​Modernization 

​Global Challenges, ​c. 1900-Today

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c. 1900-Today

​World Wars

• The Mexican Revolution
• ​​​The Great War​
• ​Imperial Collapse​
• Soviet Modernization
• The Great Depression
• Fascism
• The Second World War
• ​Total War and Genocide

​The Postwar World

• The Iron Curtain
• East Asia, 1945-present
• South Asia, 1945-present
• The Middle East, 1945-present
• Africa, 1945-present
• Latin America, 1945-present
• Fall of Communism
• The European Union and Russia

​Globalization

• International Organizations
• Global Networks
• Food and Medicine
• Energy and Climate Change

Course Themes

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Commerce

• As societies develop, they affect and are affected by the ways that they produce, exchange, and consume goods and services.​

Culture

• The development of ideas, beliefs, and religions illustrates how groups in society view themselves, and the interactions of societies and their beliefs often have political, social, and cultural implications.

Environment

• The environment shapes human societies, and as populations grow and change, these populations in turn shape their environments.

Politics ​

• A variety of internal and external factors contribute to state formation, expansion, and decline. Governments maintain order through a variety of administrative institutions, policies, and procedures, and governments obtain, retain, and exercise power in different ways and for different purposes.

​Society

• The process by which societies group their members and the norms that govern the interactions between these groups and between individuals influence political, economic, and cultural institutions and organization.​

Technology

• Human adaptation and innovation have resulted in increased efficiency, comfort, and security, and technological advances have shaped human development and interactions with both intended and unintended consequences. ​

​Thematic Overview Worksheet

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Historical Thinking Skills

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Chronological Reasoning

• Events rarely have a single cause. Identify, analyze, and evaluate short- and long-term historical causes and effects. Differentiate between coincidence, causation, correlation.
• ​Recognize, analyze, and evaluate continuity and change over years, decades, or centuries. What is the same? What is different? Be able to relate these patterns to larger historical processes or themes.
• ​Describe, analyze, evaluate, and divide history into time periods. Identify turning points and split the grand historical narrative into manageable chapters. Recognize choices of specific dates favor certain narratives, regions, or groups.

Comparison and Contextualization

• Describe, compare, and evaluate historical developments within a society, or between societies separated by time and/or space. Be able to analyze historical events from multiple perspectives.
• ​​Connect historical developments to the specific circumstances of time and place and to broader regional, national, or global processes. How do unique local conditions influence events? How do events fit into the big picture?

Crafting Historical Arguments from Historical Evidence

• ​Address questions about the past by arguing. Do not report events. Instead use clues to form theories providing deeper insight. Present a theory in a thesis statement supported by relevant historical evidence.
• Analyze evidence from written documents, art, artifacts, maps, and statistics. Consider the source. How does its author, purpose, format, and audience shape it? Consider the context in which the evidence was produced and used. Who made it for whom, and why? Extract useful information, make inferences, and draw conclusions.
• ​Be able to pick apart others' arguments. Describe, analyze, and evaluate a theory's validity in light of available evidence. 

Historical Interpretation

• Describe, analyze, evaluate, and construct different interpretations of the past. Be aware that the past is not neutral territory. Historians and historical actors are biased by their own social, political, religious, economic, and cultural circumstances. With all the centuries, lives and accumulated experiences of the past, the selection of what we study is a statement of current-day values. Interpretation requires analyzing evidence, reasoning, contexts, and points of view found in both primary and secondary sources. 

The table below presents the historical reasoning processes students should develop in AP history courses. ​Every AP history exam question will assess one or more of these skills.

The table below presents the historical thinking skills students should develop in AP history courses. ​Every AP history exam question will assess one or more of these skills.