AP World History Summer Assignment Vocabulary Guide

The AP World History exam requires students to master key terms. You will take a quiz the first day of school with ten random terms from this list—you’ll need to recall their definitions without any hints.

Political Authority and Governance Structures

  • Abdicate: To give up power (e.g., the last Chinese emperor in 1911).

  • Bureaucracy: Different levels of government (e.g., centralized in Song Dynasty China).

  • Conscription: Mandatory enlistment, often for military service (used by China for army and public works).

  • Nationalize: To take private businesses or resources into state control (e.g., Egypt's Suez Canal in 1956).

  • Fragmentation: Breaking apart, like what happened to China in 1911 after the dynastic system collapsed.

  • State: The government, which can use religion or control media to maintain authority.

  • Undermine: To weaken something gradually (e.g., WWI weakened Western Europe's power).

Economic Systems and Labor

  • Bullion: Gold or silver in bulk form.

  • Centrally Planned Economy: An economy where the government makes all the economic decisions (e.g., Soviet Union, China).

  • Command Economy: A type of centrally planned economy, like North Korea.

  • Mercantilism: Economic theory that a nation’s strength comes from its wealth (linked to gold and silver).

  • Public Works: Infrastructure projects to improve community, like the New Deal’s roads and bridges.

Social Structures and Human Rights

  • Abolitionist: Someone who wants to end slavery.

  • Emancipation: Freeing slaves legally or socially (e.g., 13th Amendment in 1865).

  • Manumission: A slave owner letting a slave go free.

  • Patriarchy: A male-dominant society (reinforced by the Industrial Revolution).

  • Suffrage: The right to vote; universal male suffrage was granted in Japan in 1925.

Cultural and Religious Integration

  • Schism: A formal division (e.g., Catholic and Orthodox churches split in 1054).

  • Secular: Non-religious, advocating for secular governments (e.g., Young Turks).

  • Syncretism: Combining cultures or religions (e.g., Vodun blends Catholicism and animist beliefs).

Historical Methods and Global Interactions

  • Historical process: Events and developments influenced by many factors.

  • Allude: To hint at something.

  • Diffusion: To spread ideas or culture, like Islam in North Africa.

Human Geography and Settlement Patterns

  • Agrarian: Societies focused on farming.

  • Sedentary: Settled people, often engaged in agriculture.

  • Indigenous: Native to a region.

Technology and Physical Changes

  • Metallurgy: The process of working with metals.

  • Lucrative: Something that makes a lot of profit, like cash crops.

  • Contradict: To say the opposite of something.