AP World History Cram Session Notes

Round One: Important Founders and Builders

  • Focus: Identifying leaders who built nations, societies, and cultures.

  • Instructions: Avoid using the chat to allow individual thinking.

Leader 1

  • Emergence: Early 1800s, Egypt.

  • Role: Ottoman who helped Egypt break away from the Ottoman Empire.

  • Economic Impact: Recognized the benefits of a global economy and produced cotton.

Leader 2

  • Type: Absolute monarch.

  • Nickname: The Sun King.

  • Accomplishments: Built the Palace of Versailles and engaged in land and naval wars.

Leader 3

  • Background: Veteran of the Long March, successor to Mao Zedong in communist China.

  • Policies:

    • One-child policy: State authority over population.

    • Special Economic Zones: Foreign companies receive better trading privileges.

    • Responsibility System: Farmers give a quota to the government and sell the rest for profit.

  • Significance:

    • Broke Marxian-Mauian rules (except for free speech).

    • Led the Tiananmen Square massacre.

    • Important for understanding China's foreign policy and capitalism vs. communism.

Leader 4

  • Context: South Asia division between Hindus and Muslims in the 1930s-40s.

  • Position: Wanted a minority state for Muslims.

  • Concern: Feared persecution of Muslims by the Hindu majority if South Asia gained independence.

  • Outcome: Became the first governor-general of an independent Pakistan.

Leader 5

  • Role: Most important daimyo shogun.

  • Accomplishments: Created a united feudal society.

  • Policy: Closed access to Europeans due to fear of change, trade, and faith (similar to Ming China).

Leader 6

  • Role: Expanded the Mughal Empire through conquest.

  • Characteristics: Gunpowder empire leader known for tolerance.

  • Policies:

    • Tolerated the Hindu majority and Jesuit missionaries.

    • Eliminated the jizya (tax on non-Muslims).

Leader 7

  • Context: China in conflict and chaos.

  • Philosophy: Promoted five relationships (e.g., ruler to subject, father to son) and filial piety.

  • Impact: Created a stable society through the five relationships, filial piety, and civil service exams.

Leader 8

  • Role: Leader of a West African state.

  • Fame: Known for being rich and traveling to Mecca and Medina on the Hajj.

  • Impact: Promoted Islam and trade, built mosques and libraries in Timbuktu.

Leader 9

  • Role: Long-ruling Ottoman Sultan.

  • Nickname: The Lawgiver, the Magnificent.

  • Expansion: Expanded deep into Eastern Europe (e.g., Bosnia).

Leader 10

  • Role: Succeeded Vladimir Lenin as leader of the Soviet Union.

  • Characteristics: Totalitarian leader driven by nationalist beliefs.

  • Actions:

    • Aligned with fascist Hitler (Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact).

    • Allied with the West during WWII.

    • Opposed the West during the Cold War (Korean War, divided Germany).

Leader 11

  • Role: Ruled the eastern portion of the Roman Empire.

  • Accomplishments:

    • Helped build the Greek/Orthodox-influenced Roman Empire to the East.

    • Rebuilt Constantinople and developed the Hagia Sophia.

    • Codified Roman law.

Leader 12

  • Role: Considered the last prophet of Allah.

  • Significance: His revelations are the words of God (Quran).

  • Context: His beliefs were popular in a society with existing Jews and Christians.

Leader 13

  • Role: Saw the horrors of the Industrial Revolution.

  • Critique: Observed poverty amid wealth in the West.

  • Significance: Considered the father of communism.

Leader 14

  • Role: Father of Western liberalism.

  • Philosophy: Promoted the idea that all are born free with rights to life, liberty, and property/pursuit of happiness.

Leader 15

  • Role: Unified German-speaking people around 1870.

  • Belief: Believed in realpolitik.

  • Actions:

    • Called the Berlin Conference to share Africa.

    • Sought to advance Germany's interests by acting in its best interest.

Answer Key and Discussion

  • Answers: Muhammad Ali, King Louis XIV, Deng Xiaoping, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Tokugawa Ieyasu, Akbar, Confucius, Mansa Musa, Suleiman, Stalin, Justinian, Muhammad, Karl Marx, John Locke, Otto von Bismarck.

  • Discussion: Spelling doesn't count, helpful to study Deng Xiaoping, Akbar the Great is more essential than Shah Jahan, tolerance is valued by the College Board, Confucianism's existence in China is a key point.

Round Two: Geography

  • Focus: Reviewing College Board's regions map.

  • Regions: East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Middle East, Europe, The Americas, Latin America, North Africa.

  • Note: Australia and Russia are sometimes clumped with the global North.

Region Matching

  • Task: Match numbers 1-5 with regions A-E and numbers 6-10 with regions I-V.

  • Entities and Concepts: Manchurians, Mongols, Caste System, Chinampas, Buddhism, Islam, Inca, Rise of Islam, Vikings

  • Region answers include: East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia, East Africa, West Africa and West Europe.

Round Three: Matching Powers with Regions

  • Task: Match powers with associated regions; Abassid Caliphate, Mali, Aztecs, Justinian, Portuguese, Song Dynasty, Mongols, Spanish, Tokugawa Shogunate, Ottoman Empire

  • Reminder: Some powers may be associated with more than one region.

  • College Board uses broader geographic terms rather than specific countries on the exam.

  • More regions indicated = more opportunities and flexibility for answers/supporting evidence.

Round Four: Art and Architecture

  • Task: Determine the country, religion, society, or people that created each piece of art and architecture.

  • Emphasize generalizing rather than knowing specifics.

Consolidation and Legitimizing

  • Consolidation involves bringing together, typically political power, often through creating bureaucracies, civil service exams, janissary corps, and sometimes conquest.

  • Legitimizing means to justify consolidation, often through faith, economic benefits, building projects, or public works.

  • Example: The Ottomans were originally founded by Osman the Great, a warrior fighting in the name of Allah, thus legitimizing his consolidation through faith. The Great Wall of China consolidated Chinese rule politically and militarily while legitimizing it through public works by hiring and paying people.

Round Five: Matching Dates to Events

  • Task: Match general time markers for event; focuses on broad understanding rather than rote memorization.

Round Six: Revolutionaries

  • Task: Identifying key revolutionaries and their actions.

Key to Understanding

  • The process is to: find the term on the page, give evidence of it, select the one that best defines the era, recognize where the emphasis should be placed.

Practice Prompts (1200-1450)

  • Possible Topics:

    • Belief Systems: Spread, causes, and consequences.

    • Disease: Spread, causes, and effects.

    • Political Organizations: Comparing feudalism and centralized bureaucracies (Byzantine, Islamic Empire, Song, Mali) with nomadic decentralized states (Mongols, Seljuqs).

    • Trade Networks: Comparing and analyzing.

  • Key Focus: Cause and effect (belief systems, disease) due to increasing networks of exchange

Practice Prompt (1450-1750)

  • Key terms to focus on include:

    • networks of exchange

    • Columbian exchange

    • Trade

    • Syncretic religions

Last tips

  • Know the key topics.

  • Focus on the region.

  • Trade makes the world all the more stronger.