AP World History - Exam Prep Notes

Exam Preparation Notes

Early Quiz Questions and Answers:

• Byzantines versus other options: Initial uncertainty and revisions in answers, reflecting the difficulty in pinpointing specific historical details.

• Medieval European traveler: Struggling with the question, highlighting gaps in knowledge about specific historical figures and their works.

• Guitar origin:

  • The guitar began to transform the Afro-Eurasian war after 1200.

  • The guitar likely emerged in China.

• Wars and Asian luxury goods: The need to identify wars that increased European exposure to Asian goods, pointing to the Crusades as a likely answer.

• Diaspora in Malaysia and Southeast Asia: Confusion and eventual correction regarding the Chinese diaspora, underscoring the complexities of migration patterns and cultural influence.

  • Struggles between Chinese dynasties: One dynasty dies out and another would rise to power, resulting in struggles for the people.

  • They would leave China to find better conditions somewhere else.

• Ironworking and environmental stress: Connecting ironworking to deforestation due to the demand for charcoal, illustrating the environmental impact of technological advancements.

• Tokugawa Ieyasu:

  • Prior to the health care system.

  • Prior to him taking power, Japan was known for warring warlords that were always in conflict with each other which was very decentralized and ununified.

  • Tokugawa changed all of that.

• Twalver Shia: Emphasis on Azimuth which could be a made up word.

  • Parallax is definitely not a made up word, but I don't know what it is in relation to navigation.

  • Latitude is your position horizontally, like how north or south are you in the globe.

• Atlantic commercial system: Identifying the Triangular Trade and its components (raw materials, finished goods, enslaved people).

  • Triangular Tree: Europe, North America, and Africa.

  • Enslaved people going from Africa to North America.

  • Cash crops and food going from North America to Europe.

  • Finished materials are coming from Europe to North America and Africa.

  • Factories in Europe that turned stuff.

  • Consequences of industrialization.

• Peasants: Another word for peasant, they're not technically enslaved, but they don't own the land that they work on either.

  • They basically have to pay rent by giving a portion of their harvest to their lord or local.

• Ivory sources: Identifying elephants and walruses as sources of ivory, highlighting the impact on animal populations.

  • Walruses are the ones that have their nest.

  • So they have ivory I know if you could refer them. There's two that I'd be correct.

• Meiji Restoration: Understanding the Meiji Restoration in Japan as a period of modernization and industrialization, contrasting it with previous isolation.

  • It's literally in the name of the system that Tokugawa Iyasu had set up a few hundred years before.

  • The eighteen hundreds, the same time as the American Civil War is going on, actually.

  • They end up with a more modernized industrial state.

  • Previous, they have been isolated for so many years.

  • They were not industrialized. They were still kind of behind the rest of the world.

• Native worker exploitation: Native workers were exploited in The Congo and in Peru's Putumayo region to harvest which commodity.

  • Anytime you hear The Congo, it's rubber.

• Romanticism: Connecting romanticism to the social and economic conditions of the Industrial Revolution, emphasizing its escapist and fantastical nature.

  • The industrial revolution, that was a pretty, like, dark, dank, tough time for a lot of people to be living in. So, y'all, this is gonna become very relevant in today's society too.

  • What happens to art when the economy goes into a recession or when people are struggling? Art gets less realistic.

  • Art gets more escapist.

  • Art gets more fantastical.

  • Romanticism corresponds with this kind of tough, dark, dank time in Western European history, the industrial revolution.

• High-rise buildings: Identifying steel as the material that enabled the construction of high-rise buildings during the industrial era.

• Population essay: The speaker said they can eliminate Frederick Eagles because Frederick Eagles was a coauthor of the communist manifesto.

  • They believed communism could solve poverty in modern society.

  • It's definitely not Frederick Ingalls.

• Goodbye Asia Essay: Kukwazawa Yukichi's 1885 essay, Goodbye Asia, is generally seen as expressing Japanese nationalism and expansionist ambitions after the Meiji Restoration.

  • This is when Japan's ideas about its superiority start brewing.

  • This is when Japan starts thinking about going to war with China and Russia to take more territory.

• Cash crop monoculture: Cash crop monoculture in China during the eighteen hundreds was most likely to involve opium.

• Anti-government protests:

  • 1989 is the very tail end of the Cold War.

  • There are tons of student protests in China, and there's a very famous image of one man standing in front of a tank.

  • The tank is trying to drive through the square, and it you know, tanks are big. They're hard to maneuver. It backs up. It turns to go around the guy, and he just sidesteps to be in front of the tank again.

  • Turns, try to get around him. He just sidesteps. That's the main weakness of it?
    Corruption, the people were protesting corruption in the government until they did their.

• Turning points battle: Protesting corruption in the government until they did their Is there still corruption today? There's corruption everywhere.

• US Intervention in Chile: Outlines the US intervention in Chile, including the role of the CIA in ousting a democratically elected leader and supporting Pinochet's regime, underscoring ethical concerns and the impact on human rights.

  • So the story here is that Chile were trying to elect somebody that was not really willing to do business with The United States. So what did The United States do? We sent the CIA to help get rid of this democratically elected leader in Chile and put this guy in power.

  • And then what happens? He murders thousands of people.

• Ethnic minority suffering genocidal violence: The speaker said they got it right for the Rohingya months.

• Black is beautiful:

  • Rain simple. It is a movement in the African American community to push against the negative stereotypes that have been communicated about them for so long.

  • The neighborhood movement was kind of an early relation of that, right, where we wanna see more black creatives, more black authors, more black poets, That would be capitalism.

• Rosie the Ripper: And US gender history, Rosie the Ripper remains an iconic symbol of why is in the picture moving?

  • That was propaganda used during World War two trying to get more women to build roles in manufacturing factory work that were left vacant by men who were recruited as sole hires.

AP Test Sample Questions Discussion:

Key Points:

• Question Format: AP test questions are passage-based, requiring connections to broader historical contexts, not just direct recall.

• Passage Analysis: Extract key details (time period, location, actors) to narrow down answer choices.

• Historical Understanding: Use knowledge of historical events (e.g., World War II promises to colonies, Cold War dynamics) to infer correct answers.

• Process of Elimination: Eliminate unlikely options based on historical inaccuracies or logical inconsistencies.

• Mau Mau uprising: Wambui Oktyanyo, Kenyan activist wrote a description of her participation in the Mau Mau uprising against British rule in Kenya in the early nineteen fifties that was included in her autobiography published in 1998.

• The Soviet Union: The Soviets wished to undermine Western governments during the Cold War.

• Gandhi: The Hinswaraj movement led by Gandhi in India, which sought to achieve an independent India through protest and civil disobedience.