AP world summer

AP World History — Unit 1 Study Notes

The Global Tapestry, c. 1200–1450

Based on the OER Project summer reading. Organized for both multiple-choice review and SAQ practice.

1. Foundational Course Concepts (will show up on MC and SAQs all year)

The Six Themes (used to analyze every society you study):

• Social (S) — family structure, community, relationships

• Political (P) — government, power, law

• Innovation (I) — technology, tools, science

• Culture (C) — religion, belief systems, art, values

• Economy ($) — production, trade, labor systems

• Environment (E) — interaction between humans and their surroundings

The "Two Pots of Porridge" idea (Trevor Getz): Comparing a 13th-century Song Dynasty woman and a modern Johannesburg man making similar breakfasts shows that some things are continuous across 800 years (porridge!) while almost everything else changed. This is a model for using the six themes to organize a comparison.

Three Historical Reasoning Processes (the skills AP tests you on):

1. Continuity and Change over Time (CCOT)

2. Causation

3. Comparison

The World-System(s) Debate:

• A world-system (hyphenated) = a group of states/institutions/networks connected by trade, migration, ideas, and shared environment. Ours became truly global around 1500 CE, when Afro-Eurasia and the Americas were definitively connected.

• The debate: Did several separate, smaller "world-systems" (plural, hyphenated) exist before 1500? Or was there always just one, gradually expanding "world system" (no hyphen, singular)?

• Janet Abu-Lughod argued for multiple overlapping regional trading circuits across 13th-century Eurasia (her map shows how goods like spices moved through several linked circuits to reach northwest Europe).

• This system was disrupted by the Black Death (1340s), which spread along the same trade routes and killed tens of millions — but it did not hit sub-Saharan Africa the same way, never reached the Americas at all, and even spared Poland.

Two key "lessons" framing the unit:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's The Danger of a Single Story — flattening history into one global narrative erases real, unique human experiences.

• Bob Bain's lesson — always test historical narratives against evidence.

2. Quick Timeline (great for MC chronology questions)

3. East Asia

China's dominance came more from cultural influence than military conquest.

• Tang Dynasty (618–907): expanded borders, cosmopolitan culture; broke apart in the 10th century.

• Song Dynasty (960–1279): centered in southern China (lost the north to the Jurchens in the 1100s); large population; broad, educated ruling class.

  • Civil service exams — a path to power based on merit/study, not just birth (though only open to men).

  • Zhu Xi (1130–1200) compiled the official Confucian canon used for exams; emphasized hierarchies (ruler/subject, husband/wife, father/son) mirroring the order of Heaven and Earth. Women's role was ideally domestic, though some girls learned to read and silk production by women was economically vital.

• Economic innovation:

  • Wet-field rice cultivation (labor-intensive transplanting, two harvests/year) helped population grow from ~50 million (8th c.) to ~100 million (12th c.).

  • Cash crops: sugar, tea, mulberry (silk), cotton.

  • Song government issued the world's first government paper money (1120s); block/movable printing spread texts.

  • Iron production grew 6x (9th–12th c.), mostly for military use; gunpowder (invented 9th c.) used in bombs, mines, fire arrows, then cannons.

  • Hangzhou grew from a rice village into the largest city in China (maybe the world) — became Song capital after 1132, reached ~1 million people, was religiously diverse (Buddhism, Confucianism, Nestorian Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Islam).

• Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368): Mongols conquered the Song; kept Mongols and Chinese administratively separate, though Chinese men served in the army/government; moved the capital to Dadu (Beijing).

• Ming Dynasty (1368–1644): founded by Taizu, a former penniless orphan turned general who defeated the Mongols.

China's influence on its neighbors:

• Vietnam: directly ruled by China under the Tang; overlords expelled the Chinese in the 11th century but kept Chinese cultural influence.

• Korea: Koryŏ Dynasty (935–1392) modeled its government/capital on China; conquered by the Mongols in the 1250s (remained nominally in charge but subordinate, with forced migrations); replaced by the Chosŏn Dynasty in 1392.

• Japan: avoided Mongol conquest (repelled invasions in 1274 and 1281 — typhoons + samurai).

  • Heian period (794–1185): dominated by the Fujiwara family; refined court culture; new phonetic script let some women write great poetry/memoirs.

  • Zen (Chan) Buddhism (discipline, master-obedience) and Pure Land Buddhism (devotion to Amitabha, popular with common people, blended with Shinto) both spread from China.

  • After civil war ended Fujiwara dominance, power decentralized under military shoguns; samurai warriors served aristocratic landowners.

4. South & Southeast Asia

Extremely diverse region — villages, cities, forest/mountain societies; some egalitarian, some hierarchical; many regional kingdoms, no single empire.

Political:

• Mongols failed to conquer Vietnam/Myanmar (heat/humidity) and northern India (defeated repeatedly by the Delhi Sultanate).

• Delhi Sultanate: founded 1206 by a Turkic general (following earlier Turkic conquests from Afghanistan); ruled ~300 years in the north; central/southern India stayed under competing Hindu kingdoms, including Rajput clans.

• Timur (Tamerlane, 1336–1405): Samarkand-based; attacked Persia, Russia, north India; empire collapsed soon after his death.

• Southeast Asia's "classical states" era (~900–1400):

  • Vietnam (Dai Viet): Tran Dynasty (1225–1400), Le Dynasty (1428–1788); Chinese-style bureaucracy but a distinct Vietnamese identity.

  • Pagan (Myanmar) and Angkor (Cambodia): strong armies, monumental building. Angkor Wat was built by Khmer rulers, originally dedicated to Vishnu, later converted into a Buddhist site.

• Local village councils (male heads of household) managed planting, irrigation, and shared land; women had more legal rights in Southeast Asia than South Asia.

Religion:

• Bhakti movement (Hinduism): personal devotion to a god (Krishna, Vishnu, Rama); downplayed social hierarchy.

• Buddhism spread without central authority, via monks and merchants. Nalanda (India) was the leading center of Buddhist learning — destroyed by a Muslim army in 1193, contributing to Buddhism's decline in India (Hinduism then flourished, especially in the unconquered south).

• Buddhism was "polycentric" (multiple centers), which spread it widely via pilgrimage. Theravada Buddhism (from Sri Lanka) became dominant in Southeast Asia by the 14th century.

• Islam spread via merchants and teachers; by 1200 Dar al-Islam stretched from West Africa to India. Rulers in the Malay world converted for religious, political, and commercial reasons, taking the title sultan. Intermarriage between Muslim traders and local women helped spread the faith. Blending with local practices (spirit worship, ancestor veneration, Hindu ceremony) was common.

• Purdah (seclusion of women) was practiced with varying strictness in South Asia (more among wealthy urban women); it was rare in Southeast Asia, where Muslim women worked and traveled publicly.

5. The World of Islam

Dar al-Islam = "House of Islam," regions where Muslims are the majority and rulers practice Islam. Began in the 7th century with Muhammad and Arab conquests; like Christianity and Buddhism, Islam was universalist/missionary.

• Umayyad (661–750) → Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258): empire stretched Atlantic to India; blended in Greek philosophy, Indian science, Chinese technology; often tolerated non-Muslims.

• Islamic Golden Age (through 13th c.): preserved Greek/Roman texts (we have Socrates and Plato today because of Arabic translations); Baghdad's House of Wisdom was a leading research/education center; Arabic numerals, algebra, and the concept of zero spread from Islamic scholarship. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (Persian) is credited with inventing trigonometry. Ibn Sina's Canon of Medicine (1025) was taught in European universities 600+ years later.

• Agricultural spread: new irrigation techniques; crops moved across the empire (sorghum from Africa; rice, cotton, sugarcane from India), transforming farming and diets across Afro-Eurasia.

• Political fragmentation (900–1258): Abbasid decline from invasions, revolts, and Sunni-Shia disputes; caliphs became puppet rulers after the 10th century.

• Turkic migrations (11th–12th c.): Turkic pastoralists converted to Islam and conquered parts of Dar al-Islam; the Seljuk Dynasty ruled a Persia-centered empire and became culturally Persianized.

• 1258: Mongols sack Baghdad, kill the last Abbasid caliph, destroy the House of Wisdom — but Mongol conquests also helped spread Islam further across their empire.

• Post-Mongol Turkic states: Timur's descendants founded the Mughal Empire in India; other new states — Ottoman (Anatolia), Safavid (Iran), Mamluk (Egypt) — would dominate well beyond 1450.

• Net effect, 1200–1450: political fragmentation, but continued cultural/religious expansion. Dar al-Islam nearly doubled in size between 1000–1500, reaching sub-Saharan Africa, the East African coast, India, and Southeast Asia.

Compare: Marco Polo vs. Ibn Battuta

• Marco Polo (Venetian Christian merchant, late 1200s): traveled across Asia, always a stranger, wrote an account full of inaccuracies/exaggerations.

• Ibn Battuta (Moroccan Muslim scholar, early 1300s): traveled from Mali to the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (possibly China); felt at home everywhere because of the shared Arabic language and Islamic culture of Dar al-Islam — he even worked as a judge thousands of miles from home.

6. The Mongols

• Mongol Empire (1206–1368): the largest contiguous land empire in history (~17% of world's landmass, ~25% of global population), stretching from Korea to Hungary.

• Failed invasions: Japan (x2 — typhoons + samurai), Mamluk Egypt, the Delhi Sultanate, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.

• Origins: the Mongols were semi-nomadic pastoralist tribes on the Eurasian steppe, low population, politically decentralized, minor players in Afro-Eurasian trade.

• "Motive, weapon, opportunity" for conquest:

  • Motive: a late-12th-century drought (climate change) shrank pasturelands, pushing tribes to raid agricultural neighbors.

  • Weapon: mastery of horse/cavalry warfare.

  • Opportunity/leadership: Genghis Khan (born Temujin) — overcame a hard early life to unite the steppe tribes by 1206.

• Four khanates (empire too big to rule as one):

  1. Khanate of the Great Khan (Mongolia/China → Yuan Dynasty, 1279)

  2. Chagatai Khanate (Central Asia)

  3. Ilkhanate (Persia)

  4. Golden Horde (northwest/Russia)

• Kublai Khan completed the conquest of Song China in 1279.

• Mongol rule's networks:

  • Secured the Silk Roads, lowering the cost/danger of overland trade (made it preferable to Indian Ocean routes).

  • Merchants gained higher status than before.

  • Religious tolerance made Eurasia a "religious melting pot."

  • Imported/forcibly relocated specialists (architects, astronomers, administrators) — Muslims held especially high status and were used as tax collectors in China.

  • Readily adopted the technology/science of conquered peoples.

• Pax Mongolica: a century of relative peace enabling trade and idea exchange across Eurasia — benefited Western Europe (luxury goods, new technology/navigation, possibly gunpowder transmission).

• Costs: brutal conquests, millions killed, cities and centers of learning destroyed (e.g., Baghdad, 1258), forced relocation of captured experts.

• Black Death spread via Mongol-secured trade routes, killing up to 50 million in Europe and helping weaken the khanates.

• End: Yuan Dynasty fell to the Ming in 1368; other khanates declined and were replaced by successor states.

7. Africa

Correcting a misconception: Africans did not live in one uniform "tribal" system. The reading identifies several distinct forms of governance:

• Lineage-based systems (elders related by ancestry/adoption)

• Sodalities (age-based brotherhoods/sisterhoods)

• Chieftaincy (centralized individual power)

• Kingdoms (bureaucracies, sometimes with Islamic/Christian scribes; succession often chosen from a royal family pool, not strict firstborn)

• City-states (trade-focused, merchant rulers)

• Confederations (alliances for collective security)

• Empires (a core state ruling others)

Swahili city-states (East African coast):

• Blended Bantu-speaking fishing/farming communities with Islam and Arabic script.

• Traded interior goods (rock quartz, ivory, later gold) with Arab/Indian merchants; focused on port cities, not large territories.

• Kings usually came from wealthy merchant families but had limited power — real power stayed with merchant communities. (Lamu had no king at all — just ruling merchant families.)

Great Zimbabwe (southern Africa):

• Bantu-speaking chieftaincies measured wealth in cattle; wealthy chiefs built "royal" lineages and gained followers through marriage alliances (wives held political roles representing their families).

• Great Zimbabwe (built by ancestors of Shona-speakers, possibly descended from Mapungubwe) dominated a gold-rich region; controlled gold exports to the Swahili city of Sofala, then onward to the Indian Ocean; used cattle loans to secure the loyalty of provincial chiefs.

Tyo and Kongo (Congo River Basin):

• Large states emerged (~1200+) due to (1) population growth needing dispute resolution (kings arose as judges — the regional word for "king" relates to "judge") and (2) growing local trade in cloth and metals.

• Tyo (~1200): the Teke people; power centered on a national shrine; a confederation of smaller kingdoms under one ruler.

• Kongo (14th century): unified by ruler Lukeni lua Nimi; dominated cloth production, taxed river trade, controlled the source of the rare nzimbu shell (used as currency). By ~1450, ruled an empire over neighboring states (Ndembu, Mbwila) — though power was tenuous, relying on subordinate sub-kings and local religious figures (kitomi).

8. Europe

"Europe" was still an emerging idea in 1200–1450, loosely defined by Catholicism, the manorial agricultural system, feudalism, and political fragmentation.

• Growth period (10th–14th c.): population, commerce, culture, and cities all expanded — part of a broader Afro-Eurasian trend tied to trade access.

• Climate: the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) (warm, stable, ~9th–early 14th c.) supported growth; the Little Ice Age (LIA) (cold, wet, unstable, from the 15th c.) coincided with crisis.

• 14th-century crisis: crop failures and cattle epidemics preceded the Black Death (bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis), which struck the Mediterranean then Europe in the late 1340s. Population fell by one-third to one-half between 1300–1400. Political instability followed (the Hundred Years' War in France; conflict in Italy, Germany, Spain, the eastern Mediterranean).

• Manorial system: the village — families, farmland, a church, common resources — was the basic economic/political/religious unit, usually controlled by a lord, knight, or religious order.

• Social structure: ~80–90% of Europeans were farmers, mostly not landowners.

  • Peasants: agricultural workers with legal restrictions and obligations to a lord (share harvest, use the lord's mill, restricted movement).

  • Serfs: the most impoverished, legally and physically bound to the land and lord.

• Feudalism: power was devolved to local elites (nobles, church officials, city councils, knights). A king granted a lord authority over a province in exchange for military support; the lord then sub-granted to knights/monasteries — creating a chain of mutual obligation.

• Fragmentation: central monarchs were often weak (the French king directly controlled only a few provinces near Paris); Germany split into hundreds of political units under a weak emperor.

• As local lords demanded more say, deliberative bodies emerged: Parliament (England), the Estates (France), the Cortes (Spain) — early steps toward shared power with the monarch.

9. The Americas

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy:

• Traditionally founded ~1200: the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk united after a history of conflict.

• Symbol: the "Great Tree of Peace" (a white pine, its five-needle bundle representing the five nations).

• Founding figures: Dekanawida (the peace-giver), Jigonhsasee, and the orator Hiawatha; the agreement was recorded on the Hiawatha wampum belt.

• "Haudenosaunee" = "People of the Longhouse," symbolizing unity; each nation held a symbolic position (Mohawk = eastern door, Onondaga = central council fire, Seneca = western door, etc.).

• Governed by a matriarchal hierarchy plus a men's council. The Tuscarora joined as a sixth nation around 1720. Remained the most powerful force in North America until European colonial expansion in the 1700s.

Shared traits across American societies: long-distance trade/conquest, close interaction with environment, polytheistic worship (often sun/earth/water deities), belief in cosmic cycles/apocalypse (notably the Aztec), and divination in decision-making.

Aztec (Mexica):

• Origin story: migrated from Aztlan seeking a sign (an eagle with a snake in its mouth, perched on a cactus); absorbed influences from the Toltecs (including the legend of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent who promised to return).

• Founded Tenochtitlan in 1325 on a lake island after seeing the prophesied sign.

• Built pyramids dedicated with human sacrifice; a 52-year calendar cycle predicted an apocalypse that had to be postponed with sacrificial blood.

• Practiced hydroponic (chinampa) farming; grew avocados.

• Waged war for captives (sacrifice) and tribute (food, weaving, feathered art, precious stones) rather than to culturally absorb conquered peoples.

• Kept detailed pictographic records (account books, calendars) — priests, administrators, and merchants all needed them.

• Long-distance merchant networks reached Panama (maybe Colombia) and possibly north to Texas — merchants also gathered military intelligence.

• Tlaxcala and Michoacán resisted conquest, possibly kept independent on purpose to supply future war captives.

• By the 15th century, Tenochtitlan's population surpassed any city in Europe.

Mayapan (Yucatán Maya):

• Most Classic Maya cities had collapsed by 1200. Toltec invaders arrived at Mayapan, bringing new gods (including Quetzalcoatl).

• Mayapan (with a plaza, pyramids, ball courts) became a major trading power (cotton, salt, Caribbean goods) and the political/cultural center of the Yucatecan Maya from 1250–1450.

• Maya achievements (math, calendar, astronomy, writing, art) continued with Toltec influence — the city was abandoned around 1450.

Inca:

• Empire established ~1100; origin legend centers on the sun god Inti and founders Manco Capac and Mama Oqllu, who traveled to found the capital, Cusco.

• The ruler, the Sapa Inca, was considered Inti's representative on Earth.

• Expansion by military conquest began ~1250: relocated conquered peoples, introduced colonists, required tribute (cotton, potatoes, maize, alpacas/llamas, pottery, tapestries, precious metals) and worship of Inca gods alongside local ones.

• Infrastructure: an extensive road network (rivaling Roman engineering); chasqui relay runners could cover Cusco-to-Quito (1,500 km) in about a week; quipu (knotted strings) served as a record-keeping system.

• Territory eventually spanned from Colombia to Argentina, Pacific coast to Amazon.

• Religion: the Inti Raymi festival (June 24) honored the sun; huacas (holy natural sites — rocks, streams, mountains) received offerings; shamans performed healing and prophecy (including via ground cactus), practices that survive in Andean culture today and remain significant to modern Peruvian identity.

10. Cross-Regional Comparisons (useful for SAQ/comparison prompts)

11. Practice SAQ Prompts

Standard AP SAQs usually ask you to identify/describe something specific, then explain it using evidence — often across two or three related sub-parts. Try these using the notes above (don't just copy the bullets — write full sentences that identify specific evidence and explain its significance):

1. Comparison: Identify ONE similarity and ONE difference between how political power was organized in Song Dynasty China and in feudal Europe, 1200–1450.

   • Evidence to draw on: civil service exams vs. inherited land grants; centralized emperor vs. weak kings; both had wealthy landholding elites who profited from peasant labor.

2. Causation: Explain ONE way the Mongol conquests caused change in trade networks across Afro-Eurasia, 1200–1450.

   • Evidence to draw on: Silk Road security, merchant status, spread of the Black Death, movement of specialists like astronomers.

3. Continuity: Explain ONE way the spread of Islam continued despite the political fragmentation of the Abbasid Caliphate after 900 CE.

   • Evidence to draw on: Turkic conversions, the Delhi Sultanate, Mongol tolerance/facilitation of Islam's spread, Dar al-Islam nearly doubling in size 1000–1500.

4. Comparison: Compare the role of religion in legitimizing political authority in TWO of the following: the Inca Empire, the Delhi Sultanate, Song China.

   • Evidence to draw on: Sapa Inca as Inti's representative; sultans ruling in the name of Islam while tolerating Hindu subjects; Confucian cosmic hierarchy justifying the emperor's rule.

5. Comparison: Identify ONE similarity and ONE difference in how state power was organized in the Kingdom of Kongo compared to feudal Europe.

   • Evidence to draw on: both relied on a hierarchy of sub-rulers with local autonomy; Kongo's kings relied on kitomi (religious figures) rather than a church hierarchy like Europe's.

6. Causation: Explain ONE way environmental factors shaped political or economic development in ONE American society (Aztec, Inca, or Haudenosaunee).

   • Evidence to draw on: Aztec chinampas (hydroponic farming) in the Valley of Mexico; the Inca road system adapting to Andean terrain; the Haudenosaunee's Great Tree of Peace ending regional conflict.