AP World History Cumulative Test

Neo-Confucianism

Neo-Confucianism

Popular during the Tang Dynasty; fused elements of Buddhism and Confucianism.

Catholic Church

The largest of the three main branches of Christianity; centered in Rome and led by the pope; found most often in Europe, the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of East Asia.

Eastern Orthodox Church

The third largest of the three main branches of Christianity; originally based in the Byzantine Empire; found most often in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and parts of Central Asia.

Shi'a

One of the two main branches of Islam; rejects the first three Sunni caliphs and regards Ali, the fourth caliph, as Muhammad's first true successor; most commonly found in Iran, but otherwise constitutes 10 to 15 percent of Muslims worldwide. Followers known as ***ites.

Sunni

one of the two main branches of Islam, commonly described as orthodox, and differing from Shi'a in its understanding of the Sunnah and in its acceptance of the first three caliphs; is by far the most common branch of Islam worldwide.

Chinampa (floating garden)

A form of Mesoamerican agriculture in which farmers cultivated crops in rectangular plots of land on lake beds; hosted corns, beans, chilies, squash, tomatoes, and more; provided up to seven harvests per year. Common in Aztec capitol of Tenochtitlan.

Mit'a

A mandatory public service system in the Inca Empire requiring all people below the age of 50 to provide tribute labor to the Inca Empire; later adopted by Spanish conquistadors as a coercive labor system in the Americas.

Mandate of Heaven

Ancient Chinese concept stating that the right to rule was granted by the heavens; used to explain the rise of every Chinese dynasty, including the Qing in 1644.

Grand Canal

World's longest canal, connecting the fertile Huang He River to the highly populated cities in the north; allowed grain to be shipped easily.

Champa Rice

Introduced to China from Vietnam; allowed the Chinese to have two harvests per year, dramatically improving output; combined with an improved infrastructure, led to a significant growth of the Chinese population.

Al-Andalus

Islamic state located in modern-day Spain; led by the Berbers; renowned for its achievements in science, mathematics, and trade.

Astrolabe

Introduced to the Islamic world in the 700s, where it was perfected by mathematicians; used by astronomers and navigators to determine latitude through inclination.

Trans-Saharan Trade

Trade network starting in the 400s and 500s; thrived due to an organized network of camel caravans carrying gold, salt, cloth, slaves, and other valuables; allowed the kingdoms of Ghana and Mali to thrive, and as Islam spread to Africa, allowed its teachings to impact the lives of kings and traders.

Feudalism

Political and economic system that developed as a result of the decentralization and collapse of Western Roman Empire; lords, usually noblemen, protected vassals in exchange for mandatory labor or military service; vassals received a feif, or grant of land (Japan had a similar system)

Bills of Exchange

Written guarantees of payment that were essentially the forerunners of modern-day bank checks; helped facilitate trade; known as sakk in the Islamic world; also used in China during this period.

Crusades

Holy wars launched by Pope Urban II in 1095 that called for Christians to reclaim the Holy Land of Israel from Muslims; its four campaigns, lasting almost 200 years, were unsuccessful; stimulated European-Muslim trade and reintroduced Europeans to ideas that had been last taught during the classical period.

Ottomans

Group of Anatolian Turks who, in their dedication to Islam, attacked the weakening Byzantine Empire and captured Constantinople in 1453; expanded to create an empire in the Middle East and Southeast Europe; collapsed after World War I.

Mongols

Group of Central Asian nomads from Mongolia who, under the leadership of Genghis Khan, conquered large portions of the Asian continent; four empires, centered on Russia, China, Persia, and the Central Asian steppes, were led by Khan's successors until the Mongol Empire collapsed into disunity and civil war.

Genghis Khan

Mongol clan leader who united the clans and made the Mongols the most feared force in Asia; under his leadership, the Mongol Empire expanded greatly into China, Persia, Central Asia, and Tibet; sons ruled the Four Khanates that followed; grandson, Kublai Khan, became leader of the Yuan Dynasty in 1271.

Mansa Musa

Ruling from 1312 to 1337, he was the most famous of the Mali emperors; capital city, Timbuktu, was a center of trade, culture, and education; most famous for going on pilgrimage to Mecca (a practice that few Muslims in his time actually did) carrying a large caravan with satchels of gold, which he used to fund schools and mosques across North America.

Swahili city-states

Cities in East Africa (present- day Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania) that became bustling ports due to interchanges between Bantu and Arab mariners; in an effort to facilitate trade, the Bantus created a hybrid language, Swahili, that allowed them to communicate with the Arabs (a language that is still spoken by over 80 million East Africans).

Melaka

Located in modern-day Malaysia; port city that became a waystation for sea traders from China and India in the fourteenth century.

Bubonic Plague

Disease that spread from China to Europe through rates and decimated Europe's population; ended the feudal system and led many people to question religion; also known as the Black Plague or Black Death

Ibn Battuta

Islamic traveler who, in the fourteenth century, visited the kingdom of Mansa Musa in the Mali Empire. His writings stimulated an interest in African trade.

Marco Polo

Venetian merchant who spent over 20 years traveling the Silk Road through the Mongol Empire, where he actually served on the court of its ruler, Kublai Khan; his efforts stimulated interest in trade with China.

Renaissance

A period of artistic and scientific discovery and relearning of Classical wisdom, particularly from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries; stimulated by the crusades and soldiers' exposure to Muslim advances in math, science, and the arts; also led to questioning of the nature of religion and natural phenomena.

Christopher Columbus

Italian navigator who attempted to find a westward route to Asia under the sponsorship of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain; First European to discover the New World in 1492

Conquest of Constantinople

In 1453, the Ottomans conquered the Byzantine capital and ended the Eastern Roman Empire, giving rise to the Ottoman Empire, which lasted until WWI.

Caravel

Inspired by the Arab dhow, a compact ship of Portuguese origin that featured triangular sails and a sternpost rudder making it capable of crossing oceans; used during the Age of Exploration.

Dhow

Arab sailing vessels with ones or more masts and lateen sails, used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region

Lateen Sail

Triangular sail that allowed ships to sail against the wind, increasing maneuverability and making early oceanic sailing possible.

Junk

Chinese-built cargo ship with a stern-post rudder that allowed for efficient steering.

Joint-Stock companies

Large, investor-backed companies that sponsored European exploration and colonization in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; precursors to modern corporations; famous examples are the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company.

Columbian Exchange

Beginning with the explorations of Christopher Columbus, the interchange of plants, animals, pathogens, and people between the Old World and the New World. One example was the "great dying where indigenous people died.

Mercantilism

Economic system focused on maintaining a positive balance of exports to imports that encouraged domestic employment; measured the economic strength of a state relative to its neighboring states.

Sugar Cultivation

Specialized resource extraction process that relied on African slave labor after indigenous populations were decimated by disease; foreshadowed the intensive manufacturing of the Industrial Revolution.

Gunpowder

Chemical explosive developed by the Chinese; spread along trade routes like the Silk Road; Europeans introduced a slow-burning propellant to maximize the potential of explosive weapons.

Mughal Empire

Empire that reunified India in 1526, advocated religious tolerance, and sponsored great art and architecture projects; later collapsed because of Hindu/Muslim conflict and the competition of European traders.

Songhai

Successor of the Mali Empire in West Africa in the 1500s; instituted administrative and economic reforms throughout their realm; conquered by the Moroccans in 1591.

Creoles

Persons of Spanish blood who were born in the Americas; descended from the Penninsulares who came from the continent.

Mestizos

Persons of mixed European and Indigenous descent in the Spanish colonies

Mulattoes

Persons of mixed African and Spanish descent in the Spanish colonies

Manchu

Nomadic group from Northeast China who were the principal rulers of the Qing Dynasty; created a multiethnic Chinese state; later came into conflict with Europeans, paricularly the Russian Empire.

Peter the Great

Tsar of Russia from 1682-1725, he rapidly modernized Russia under autocratic rule; moved the capital to St. Petersburg to provide better access to Europe.

Tokugawa Shogunate

Ruled Japan from 1600 to 1867; isolated Japan from the rest of the world, banned Christianity, and ejected foreign merchants other than a small number of Dutch and Chinese ships annually.

Daimyo

The class of lords in a feudal system centered on the relationship between lord and warrior or peasant, which was reformed during the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Triangular Trade

Trade route between Europe and Africa (manufactured goods), Africa and the New world (enslaved people), and the New world and Europe (raw materials, like precious metals, sugar, and other agricultural products).

Encomienda

Spanish system of land grants that allowed colonists in the americas to force labor from indigenous populations (related to Spanish mita systems).

Haciendas

Spanish system of landed estates in the colonies; owners practiced the encomienda system and later the repartimiento system of labor, where workers were paid.

Queen Nanny of the Maroons

An 18th-century leader of a formerly enslaved group of African maroons. She and her followers fought a guerrilla war over many years against British authorities in the Colony of Jamaica, earning their sovereignty.

Printing Press

Invented in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg in 1456; made mass literacy possible and contributed to several important social movements, such as the Protestant Revolution and the Enlightenment

Scientific Revolution

Period in which scientists challenged traditional accounts of reality by investigating the nature and natural phenomena like astronomical events; led to the scientific method and progress in all of the natural sciences; early figures like Galileo were persecuted by the Catholic church.

Enlightenment

Post-Renaissance period in European history devoted to the study and exploration of new ideas in science, the arts, and philosophy.

American Revolution

Conflict between American colonists and the British government, caused by growing resentments based on taxation and governing policies; Revolutionary War lasted from 1775 to 1781; ultimately ended in American independence and the first large-scale democracy since ancient Greece.

French Revolution

Conflict between the Third Estate (peasants, townsfolk, and merchants) and the First and Second Estates (clergy and nobility, respectively) for political and social control; inspired by the American Revolution; various political factions competed for control of the government, with Napoleon Bonaparte ultimately seizing power in a coup.

Maroon

Term for nineteenth-century escaped slave in the Americas who established his or. her own French colony of Saint-Domingue became the independent nation of Haiti, the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere and the world's first black republic.

Haitian Revolution

Slave revolt that lasted from 1791-1804 led by Toussaint L'Ouverture; the former French colony of Saint-Domingue became the independent nation of Haiti, the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere and the world's first black republic.

Latin American independence movements

Movements against Spanish colonial rule in Central and South America in the 1810s and 1820s, which led to the independence of every nation in the region; inspired by the success of the Haitian Revolution; a key leader was Simón Bolívar.

Nationalism

The tendency of people to see themselves as part of a broader community with unifying forces such as common territory, history, culture (religion) and language; this sense of national identity and pride both fueled the expansion of empires and often occurred as a reaction against imperial rule.

Adam Smith

Scottish economist whose 1776 work The Wealth of Nations advocated a laissez-faire policy toward economics (minimal government interference), making him one of the fathers of modern capitalism.

Factory system

System of labor that uses rigorous mechanization and large numbers of unskilled workers to mass-produce goods that were once made skillfully by hand; developed during the Industrial Revolution; the use of interchangeable parts simplified assembly but made work repetitive.

Global division of labor

The system in which industrialized societies utilized the raw materials of less industrialized societies (e.g., cotton from India, rubber from Brazil, metals from Central Africa) to facilitate large-scale manufacturing and transportation; the growth of these industrialized societies provided an impetus for imperialist conquests later in the nineteenth century.

First Industrial Revolution

Rapid development and industrial production that occurred in European countries and the United States between 1760 and 1820; the development of the steam engine allowed steamships and early locomotives to rapidly increase the speed at which goods, people, and ideas spread.

Second Industrial Revolution

Continuing industrialization that occurred between 1870 and 1920, which included revolutionary new methods of producing steel, chemicals, and electrical power; changed society in Western Europe, Japan, and the United States by introducing new ways of working and living.

Railroads

Steam-powered locomotives invented in England in the 1820s; started a "transportation revolution" in which mass-produced goods could be transported over- land more quickly and inexpensively than ever before; by 1900, virtually every industrialized nation had a well-developed railroad system.

Liberalism

Political and economic ideology based on Enlightenment philosophies that advocated for constitutional government, separation of powers, and natural rights as well as limited government involvement in the regulation of the new industrialized economy.

Socialism

Utopian ideal developed in response to the poor working conditions faced by factory workers; in this radical form of society, the workers would run the economy in a self-sufficient manner and share everything fairly, thereby eliminating the wealthy classes.

Communism

Extreme form of socialism in which governments centrally plan the economy; inspired by The Communist Manifesto (1884), which advocated the overthrow of the bourgeoisie (capitalist middle-class) by the proletariat (working class).

Tanzimat Movement

Period of reform in the Ottoman Empire, lasting from 1839 to 1879, that resulted in a modernized infrastructure, a new legal code modeled after the French system, and religious equality under the law.

First Opium War

Conflict waged between China and Great Britain in 1839 after Chinese customs officials refused British imports of Indian opium due to the addictive effects it had on Chinese workers; this war weakened the Qing Dynasty and made China more vulnerable to unequal trade with the West.

Second Opium War

Conflict between China, Great Britain, and France that lasted from 1856 to 1860; spurred by the desire of the European powers to further weaken China's position in trade negotiations, to legalize the opium trade, and to expand the export of indentured workers from China.

Self-Strengthening Movement

Attempt by China, in the 1860s and 1870s, to modernize its military and economy under its own terms; changes were minimal due to imperial resistance.

Taiping Rebellion

Christian-based uprising led by Chinese scholar Hong Xiuquan that lasted from 1850 to 1864; the violent reaction by the imperial court left China financially strained and caused the bloodiest civil war in world history.

Boxer Rebellion

Movement undertaken by a secret society of Chinese and backed by Empress Cixi that sought to rid China of foreigners and foreign influence; the Boxers were defeated by a multinational force that included the United States, Russia, and Japan.

Meiji Restoration

Successful rebellion in which young reform-minded Japanese sought to overthrow the isolationist Tokugawa shogunate and restore the power of Emperor Meiji; sparked by contact between Japan and the United States; following the restoration, Japan experienced rapid industrialization and modernization.

Imperialism

Policy of a country extending its rule over other countries often by force; the world saw a wave of imperialism from 1750 to 1900 in particular, which was spurred by industrial countries' need for raw materials and for markets for their goods, as ell as justified by various cultural, racial ideologies about superiority of imperial powers.

Social Darwinism

Popular nineteenth-century theory used to justify capitalism and imperialism; drew on evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin's view of "survival of the fittest."

Indian Rebellion (Sepoy Mutiny) of 1857

Conflict fought in India between the British and the Indian soldiers in British service; the British victory strengthened the legitimacy of their rule.

Congo Free State

Colony in Central Africa established in 1885 by Belgium's King Leopold II; despite the name "Free State," it consisted of a series of large rubber plantations worked by forced labor in brutal weather and working conditions; in the 1960s, it declared independence, became the nation of Zaire, and is currently known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Indentured servants

System of coercive labor which workers are contracted to work for a fixed period of time, usually for a low wage, in exchange for land or other assistance. Was revived in 19th century after abolition of slavery.

Chinese Exclusion Act

Law enacted in the United States in 1882 that severely limited immigration from China, which had been prevalent earlier in the nineteenth century during the time of the California Gold Rush and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Emancipation of slaves

Process by which slavery was abolished and slaves were granted their freedom; partly the result of a new political movement that found slavery to be incompatible with Enlightenment ideals; between the 1830s and the 1880s, every industrialized nation and its colonies gradually abolished slavery, turning to other labor systems such as wage labor and indentured servitude.

Emancipation of serfs

Process by which serfdom was abolished in Russia and serfs were granted freedom from their feudal obligation to a lord; the result of Russian Tsar Alexander's attempt to modernize the Russian economy after being beaten by industrialized powers in the Crimean War.

Feminism

Movement undertaken by women that emerged in the context of the Atlantic revolution and the industrial revolution; challenged established gender roles and advocated for increased political and legal rights for women.

Alliances

a formal system of treaties binding participant states to mutual military aid in the case of attack by a third party

Militarism

System of National Organization that prioritizes spending and glorifies conflict and military service; examples include the British Empire and Soviet Union

World War I

Global conflict that began in Europe in 1914 and continued until November 1918, concluding with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Total war

style of warfare which reorders national economies toward war and includes civilians as targets; movement away from the rules of limited engagement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; common examples as WWI & WWII

League of Nations

International organization created after WWI as a part of the peach effort; weakened by the absence of the US, which never joined, and the Soviet Union, which was expelled; precursor to the UN, dissolved prior to WWII

World War II

Global conflict from 1939 to 1945 between the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allied powers (Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the US); led to the collapse of the European and Japanese empires and changed the world's political and economic structure.

Great Depression

Global economic crisis sparked by the collapse of the American stock market in 1929, led to the rise of fascism and WWII; affected the global economy but was especially severe in Europe, which was still recovering from WWI.

Fascism

Governmental system organized around extreme nationalism, militarism, and consolidation of state power in a single charismatic leader

Benito Mussolini

Leader of Italy's Blackshirts and key proponent of fascism as an anti-communist movement; deposed King Vittorio Emmanuel II and established a fascist government in 1922

Adolf Hitler

Austrian-born German leader who planned to restore Germany to is prewar status 126 through militarism, ultranationalism, extreme violence and anti-Semitism; appointed chancellor in 1933; leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), commonly called the Nazi Party.

Joseph Stalin

Took control of Russia after the death of Vladimir Lenin; created a system of one-man dictatorial rule known as Stalinism; oversaw mass purges and pogroms in Soviet Russia until his death in 1953.

Firebombing

Use of incendiary bombs during warfare, often directed at cities and other civilian targets; used extensively during World War II.

Atomic bomb

developed in the us during WWII and used against teh japanese cities of hiroshima and nagasaki, sparing an arms race that continued into the cold war

United Nations

International organization founded in 1945 with the intent of settling postwar concerns and the creation of a new global order based on mutual peacekeeping; mostly focused on human rights in the modern era.

Cold War

Ideological struggle between the capitalist US and the communist Soviet Union from 1949 to 1993 that included many other states in proxy wars and alliance networks, like NATO and the Warsaw Pact

Vladimir Lenin

Leader of the Bolsheviks in Russia during WWI; seized power in 1917 and created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Replaced by Joseph Stalin