Course Outline by Periodization (from AP Central)

Course Outline by Periodization

(Foundations)  8000 B.C.E. – 600 C.E.

Major Developments

  1. Locating world history in the environment and time

A.     Environment

1.      Geography and climate: Interaction of geography and climate with the development of human society

2.      Demography: Major population changes resulting from human and environmental factors

B.     Time

1.      Periodization in early human history

2.      Nature and causes of changes associated with the time span

3.      Continuities and breaks within the time span

C.     Diverse Interpretations

1.      What are the issues involved in using "civilization" as an organizing principle in world history?

2.      What is the most common source of change: connection or diffusion versus independent invention?

  1. Developing agriculture and technology

A.     Agricultural, pastoral, and foraging societies, and their demographic characteristics (Include Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia.)

B.     Emergence of agriculture and technological change

C.     Nature of village settlements

D.     Impact of agriculture on the environment

E.      Introduction of key stages of metal use

  1. Basic features of early civilizations in different environments: culture, state, and social structure

A.     Mesopotamia

B.     Egypt

C.     Indus

D.     Shang

E.      Mesoamerica and Andean South America

(Students should be able to compare two of the early civilizations above.)

 

  1. Classical civilizations

A.     Major political developments in China, India, and the Mediterranean

B.     Social and gender structures

C.     Major trading patterns within and among Classical civilizations; contacts with adjacent regions

D.     Arts, sciences, and technology

 

  1. Major belief systems

A.     Basic features of major world belief systems prior to 600 C.E. and where each belief system applied by 600 C.E.

B.     Polytheism

C.     Hinduism

D.     Judaism

E.      Confucianism

F.      Daoism

G.     Buddhism

H.     Christianity

  1. Late Classical period (200 C.E.–600 C.E.)

A.     Collapse of empires (Han China, loss of western portion of the Roman Empire, Gupta)

B.     Movements of peoples (Huns, Germans)

C.     Interregional networks by 600 C.E.: Trade and religious diffusion

Major Comparisons and Snapshots

  • Comparisons of the major religious and philosophical systems including some underlying similarities in cementing a social hierarchy, e.g., Hinduism contrasted with Confucianism
  • Role of women in different belief systems -- Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, and Hinduism
  • Understanding of how and why the collapse of empire was more severe in western Europe than it was in the eastern Mediterranean or in China
  • Compare the caste system to other systems of social inequality devised by early and classical civilizations, including slavery
  • Compare societies and cultures that include cities with pastoral and nomadic societies
  • Compare the development of traditions and institutions in major civilizations, e.g., Indian, Chinese, and Greek
  • Describe interregional trading systems, e.g., the Indian Ocean trade

Examples of What You Need to Know

Below are examples of the types of information you are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things you are not expected to know for the multiple-choice section.

  • Nature of the Neolithic revolution, but not characteristics of previous stone ages, e.g., Paleolithic and Mesolithic
  • Economic and social results of the agricultural revolution, but not specific date of the introduction of agriculture to specific societies
  • Nature of patriarchal systems, but not changes in family structure within a single region
  • Nature of early civilizations, but not necessarily specific knowledge of more than two
  • Importance of the introduction of bronze and iron, but not specific inventions or implements
  • Political heritage of classical China (emperor, bureaucracy), but not specific knowledge of dynastic transitions, e.g., from Qin to Han
  • Greek approaches to science and philosophy, including Aristotle, but not details about other specific philosophers
  • Diffusion of major religious systems, but not the specific regional forms of Buddhism or Aryan or Nestorian Christianity

 

Time Period: 600 C.E.–1450

Major Developments

  1. Questions of Periodization
    1. Nature and causes of changes in the world history framework leading up to 600 C.E. – 1450 as a period
    2. Emergence of new empires and political systems
    3. Continuities and breaks within the period (e.g., the impact of the Mongols on international contacts and on specific societies)
  2. The Islamic world
    1. The rise and role of Dar al-Islam as a unifying cultural and economic force in Eurasia and Africa
    2. Islamic political structures, notably the caliphate
    3. Arts, sciences, and technologies
  3. Interregional networks and contacts
    1. Development and shifts in interregional trade, technology, and cultural exchange
    2. Trans-Sahara trade
    3. Indian Ocean trade
    4. Silk routes
    5. Missionary outreach of major religions
    6. Contacts between major religions, e.g., Islam and Buddhism, Christianity and Islam
    7. Impact of the Mongol empires
  4. China's internal and external expansion
    1. The importance of the Tang and Song economic revolutions and the initiatives of the early Ming dynasty
    2. Chinese influence on surrounding areas and its limits
  5. Developments in Europe
    1. Restructuring of European economic, social, and political institutions
    2. The division of Christendom into eastern and western Christian cultures
  6. Social, cultural, economic, and political patterns in the Amerindian world
    1. Maya
    2. Aztec
    3. Inca
  7. Demographic and environmental changes
    1. Impact of nomadic migrations on Afro-Eurasia and the Americas (e.g., Aztecs, Mongols, Turks, Vikings, and Arabs)
    2. Migration of agricultural peoples (e.g., Bantu migrations, European peoples to east/central Europe)
    3. Consequences of plague pandemics in the fourteenth century
    4. Growth and role of cities
  8. Diverse interpretations
    1. What are the issues involved in using cultural areas rather than states as units of analysis?
    2. What are the sources of change: nomadic migrations versus urban growth?
    3. Was there a world economic network in this period?
    4. Were there common patterns in the new opportunities available to and constraints placed on elite women in this period?

Major Comparisons and Snapshots

  • Japanese and European feudalism
  • Developments in political and social institutions in both eastern and western Europe
  • Compare the role and function of cities in major societies
  • Compare Islam and Christianity
  • Gender systems and changes, such as the impact of Islam
  • Aztec Empire and Inca Empire
  • Compare European and sub-Saharan African contacts with the Islamic world

Examples of What You Need to Know

Below are examples of the types of information you are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things you are not expected to know for the multiple-choice section.

  • Arab caliphate, but not the transition from Umayyad to 'Abbasid
  • Mamluks, but not Almohads
  • Feudalism, but not specific feudal monarchs such as Richard I
  • Manorialism, but not the three-field system
  • Crusading movement and its impact, but not specific crusades
  • Viking exploration, expansion, and impact, but not individual explorers
  • Mongol expansion and its impact, but not details of specific khanates
  • Papacy, but not particular popes
  • Indian Ocean trading patterns, but not Gujarati merchants

Time Period – 1450–1750

Major Developments

  1. Questions of Periodization
    1. Continuities and breaks, causes of changes from the previous period and within this period
  2. Changes in trade, technology, and global interactions
  3. Knowledge of major empires and other political units and social systems
    1. Ottoman, China, Portugal, Spain, Russia, France, England, Tokugawa, Mughal, characteristics of African empires in general but knowing one (Kongo, Benin, Oyo, or Songhay) as illustrative
    2. Gender and empire (including the role of women in households and in politics)
  4. Slave systems and slave trade
  5. Demographic and environmental changes: diseases, animals, new crops, and comparative population trends
  6. Cultural and intellectual developments
    1. Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment
    2. Comparative global causes and impacts of cultural change
    3. Changes and continuities in Confucianism
    4. Major developments and exchanges in the arts (e.g., Mughal)
  7. Diverse interpretations
    1. What are the debates about the timing and extent of European predominance in the world economy?
    2. How does the world economic system of this period compare with the world economic network of the previous period?

Major Comparisons and Snapshots

  • Imperial systems: European monarchy compared with a land-based Asian empire
  • Coercive labor systems: slavery and other coercive labor systems in the Americas
  • Comparative knowledge of empire (i.e., general empire building in Asia, Africa, and Europe)
  • Compare Russia's interaction with the West with the interaction of one of the following (Ottoman Empire, China, Tokugawa Japan, Mughal India) with the West

Examples of What You Need to Know

Below are examples of the types of information you are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things you are not expected to know for the multiple-choice section.

  • Neoconfucianism, but not specific Neoconfucianists
  • Importance of European exploration, but not individual explorers
  • Characteristics of European absolutism, but not specific rulers
  • Reformation, but not Anabaptism or Huguenots
  • Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, but not the Safavid Empire
  • Siege of Vienna (1688–89), but not the Thirty Years' War
  • Slave plantation systems, but not Jamaica's specific slave system
  • Institution of the harem, but not Hurrem Sultan

Time Period: 1750–1914

Major Developments

  1. Questions of Periodization
    1. Continuities and breaks, causes of changes from the previous period and within this period
  2. Changes in global commerce, communications, and technology
    1. Changes in patterns of world trade
    2. Industrial Revolution (transformative effects on and differential timing in different societies; mutual relation of industrial and scientific developments; commonalities)
  3. Demographic and environmental changes (migrations, end of the Atlantic slave trade, new birthrate patterns, food supply)
  4. Changes in social and gender structure (Industrial Revolution; commercial and demographic developments; emancipation of serfs/slaves; and tension between work patterns and ideas about gender)
  5. Political revolutions and independence movements; new political ideas
    1. Latin American independence movements
    2. Revolutions (United States, France, Haiti, Mexico, China)
    3. Rise of nationalism, nation-states, and movements of political reform
    4. Overlaps between nations and empires
    5. Rise of democracy and its limitations: reform; women; racism
  6. Rise of Western dominance (economic, political, social, cultural and artistic, patterns of expansion; imperialism and colonialism) and different cultural and political reactions (reform; resistance; rebellion; racism; nationalism)
    1. Impact of changing European ideologies on colonial administrations
  7. Diverse interpretations
    1. What are the debates over the utility of modernization theory as a framework for interpreting events in this period and the next?
    2. What are the debates about the causes of serf and slave emancipation in this period and how do these debates fit into broader comparisons of labor systems?
    3. What are the debates over the nature of women's roles in this period and how do these debates apply to industrialized areas and how do they apply in colonial societies?

Major Comparisons and Snapshots

  • Compare the causes and early phases of the industrial revolution in western Europe and Japan
  • Comparative revolutions (compare two of the following: Haitian, American, French, Mexican, and Chinese)
  • Compare reaction to foreign domination in: the Ottoman Empire, China, India, and Japan
  • Comparative nationalism
  • Compare forms of western intervention in Latin America and in Africa
  • Compare the roles and conditions of women in the upper/middle classes with peasantry/working class in western Europe

Examples of What You Need to Know

Below are examples of the types of information you are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things you are not expected to know for the multiple-choice section.

  • Women's emancipation movements, but not specific suffragists
  • The French Revolution of 1789, but not the Revolution of 1830
  • Meiji Restoration, but not Iranian Constitutional Revolution
  • Jacobins, but not Robespierre
  • Causes of Latin American independence movements, but not specific protagonists
  • Boxer Rebellion, but not the Crimean War
  • Suez Canal, but not the Erie Canal
  • Muhammad Ali, but not Isma'il
  • Marxism, but not Utopian socialism
  • Social Darwinism, but not Herbert Spencer

Time Period: 1914–Present

Major Developments

  1. Questions of Periodization

      1. Continuities and breaks, causes of changes from the previous period and within this period

  1. The World Wars, the Holocaust, the Cold War, nuclear weaponry, international organizations, and their impact on the global framework (globalization of diplomacy and conflict; global balance of power; reduction of European influence; the League of Nations, the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Nations, etc.)
  2. New patterns of nationalism (the interwar years; decolonization; racism, genocide; new nationalisms, including the breakup of the Soviet Union)
  3. Impact of major global economic developments (the Great Depression; technology; Pacific Rim; multinational corporations)
  4. New forces of revolution and other sources of political innovations
  5. Social reform and social revolution (changing gender roles; family structures; rise of feminism; peasant protest; international Marxism)
  6. Globalization of science, technology, and culture
    1. Developments in global cultures and regional reactions, including science and consumer culture
    2. Interactions between elite and popular culture and art
    3. Patterns of resistance including religious responses
  7. Demographic and environmental changes (migrations; changes in birthrates and death rates; new forms of urbanization; deforestation; green/environmental movements)
  8. Diverse interpretations
    1. Is cultural convergence or diversity the best model for understanding increased intercultural contact in the twentieth century?
    2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using units of analysis in the twentieth century, such as the nation, the world, the West, and the Third World?

Major Comparisons and Snapshots

  • Patterns and results of decolonization in Africa and India
  • Pick two revolutions (Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Iranian) and compare their effects on the roles of women
  • Compare the effects of the World Wars on areas outside of Europe
  • Compare legacies of colonialism and patterns of economic development in two of three areas (Africa, Asia, and Latin America)
  • The notion of "the West" and "the East" in the context of Cold War ideology
  • Compare nationalist ideologies and movements in contrasting European and colonial environments
  • Compare the different types of independence struggles
  • Compare the impacts of Western consumer society on two civilizations outside of Europe
  • Compare high tech warfare with guerrilla warfare
  • Different proposals (or models) for third world economic development and the social and political consequences

Examples of What You Need to Know

Below are examples of the types of information you are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things you are not expected to know for the multiple-choice section.

  • Causes of the World Wars, but not battles in the wars
  • Cultural and political transformations resulting from the wars, but not French political and cultural history
  • Fascism, but not Mussolini's internal policies
  • Feminism and gender relations, but not Simone de Beauvoir or Huda Shaarawi
  • The growth of international organizations, but not the history of the ILO
  • Colonial independence movements, but not the details of a particular struggle
  • The issue of genocide, but not Cambodia, Rwanda, or Kosovo
  • The internationalization of popular culture, but not the Beatles
  • Artistic Modernism, but not Dada