STUDENT COURSE GUIDES:

GEELA MARGO RAMOS, TERRY SAHADEO, AND SAMUEL SIMEON

geelamargo.ramos@gmail.com // theibprojectmhs@gmail.com

Welcome to AP World History. Here, I, Geela Margo Ramos, will be your student
guide to all things world history before the exam on May 17, 2018 (Thursday
Morning at 8am). Please remember that if you do not understand a certain topic, do
not hesitate to ask me through my email (shown above) or through the website. Along
with this, please understand you may not get an immediate response - response times
vary from 2 to 24 hours - since like you, I am also student with my own courses to
study. I wish you the best of luck as you take this journey to your success! (Sorry
about how cheesy that is)

How Many Units Are We Going Through?

I am basing my notes off of the AP World History Textbook, as well as other
references such as The Princeton Review Book, 5 Steps to a 5, AMSCO, and reliable
websites. All information will continuously be updated throughout the year.

Unit 1: Technical and Environmental Transformations, to 600 BCE

First Humans
First Farmers
First Civilizations
Unit 2: Organization of Human Societies, c. 600 BCE to c. 600 CE
Eurasian Empires
Eurasian Cultural Traditions
Eurasian Social Inequalities

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 Classical Era Variations
Unit 3: Regional and Transregional Interaction, c. 600 CE to c.
1450 [a.k.a. Age of Accelerating Connections, c. 500 CE - c. 1500)
Commerce and Culture
China and the World: East Asian Connections
European Christendom
Worlds of Islam
Pastoral Peoples on the Global Stage - The Mongol Moment
The Worlds of the 15th Century
Unit 4: Global Interactions, c. 1450 - c. 1750 [a.k.a. The Early
Modern World, c. 1450 - c. 1750]
Empires and Encounters
Global Commerce
Religion and Science
Unit 5: Industrialization and the Global Integration, c. 1750 to c.
1900 [a.k.a. Revolutions, Colonialism and Imperialism]
Atlantic Revolutions
Industrial Revolution
Internal Troubles, External Threats
Colonial Encounters
Unit 6: The Most Recent Century, c. 1914 - c. 2010 [a.k.a. European
Collapse and the Rise of the Global South]
Collapse and Recovery of Europe
Rise and Fall of World Communism
Independence in the Global South
Accelerating Global Interactions Since 1945

Under any circumstance are you not allowed to plagiarize, using the exact words from this guide, to
answer questions for any of your assignments (i.e. homework, tests, etc.). Plagiarism will not only cost
you your grade in the class but will result in being banned from participation in any activities hosted
by The IB Project.

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 There are a multitude of stories, or myths of origins, that seek to answer the
fundamentally human question: what happened in the beginning? These stories seek
to anchor particular societies in a larger context, providing their people with a sense of
place, purpose, and belonging. This is where religion first starts out and builds on. At
the same time, modern scholars also seek to puzzle out the beginning of the cosmos,
of the earth, of life, and of humankind. Yet, with this, we find the more common
belief, whereas the fields of science takeover and control what we choose to
understand these fields such as astronomy, physics, geology, and biology appearing
with the birth of the Scientific Revolution. Many people in the modern world have
tried hard to reconcile scientifically derived understandings of the beginning with
the meaning-based accounts contained in long-standing traditions, yet when focusing
on this, we also focus on the unfolding of all things human.
Lets start with the beginning of our species, which had occurred roughly in the last
250,000 years. The Paleolithic age an enormously long age of the simple ways of life,
gathering and hunting for food, which was the primary means of survival was where
we began, until the miracle of the Agricultural Revolution. The Neolithic Revolution.
What did this mean for us as a species? Well, we learned to farm, and with farming
and domestication of plants and animals, came more food, and with more food, came
more settled societies, and with the rise of farming village societies, introduced means
for pastoral communities that depended on following around herds of animals and
depended less on nomadism, and with more time for living came the development
of state- and city-based civilizations which led to the agrarian way of life that virtually
changed everything that we knew and understood.
Yes, thats a lot to take in, that a long time ago those things happened so we would
have empires such as Rome, China, Persia, China, Greece, and definitely China appear
during the classical era, but lets focus more on the key concepts of these
technological and environmental transformations, because from their origins in East
Africa, nomadic humans, who were able to slowly migrate across the earth, became
the focus of a revolutionary turning point just by dropping a seed on the ground.
Because of this, they learned to adapt their technology and cultures to new climate
regions, and form new and more complex social and economic systems. Because of
this, civilizations such as Mesopotamia (South West Asia), India (South Asia), China
(East Asia), Egypt (Southwest Asia/North Africa), Mesoamerica (Latin America), and
the Andes (still, Latin America) were able to develop in a variety of geographical and
environmental settings that allowed agriculture to flourish. Because of this, the first
states would emerge, and soon would be unified through laws, language, literature,

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religions, myths, and monumental art. All of this, from a matter of 10,000 BCE to 600
BCE: we were 9,400 years in the making.

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 Lets dig further well go 1,200 years more into detail. So like how all things
eventually do, the First Civilizations crumble proving that most things cannot
continue infinitely (except for change). These civilizations, in fact, were very fragile,
but hey, that was the first stretch we had to get through. Mesopotamia fell with inner
conflict between its states; Egypt fell to foreign invaders; the Indus Valley civilization
fell due to environmental problems and political collapse; China became fragmented
into warring states (inner conflict); Norte Chico faded away, and the Olmecs, well, the
Olmecs were just weird, seemingly abandoning their major cities as their civilization
style began to spread to neighboring peoples. Yet, this was not the time to back down!
No. Instead, new, enlarged urban-centered and state-based societies emerged to
replace these civilizations in the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East, India, China,
Mesoamerica, and the Andes. Furthermore, smaller expressions of civilization began
to take shape elsewhere, in Ethiopia and West Africa, in Japan and Indonesia, in
Vietnam and Cambodia. In short, the development of civilization was becoming a
global process (also known as globalization, this would be acknowledged as a
continuity that occurred throughout all 6 periods).
The 1,200 years between 600 BCE and 600 CE saw the rise of great empires that
became the core foundations of later civilizations in much of the world. The Roman
and Grecian and Persian in western Eurasia, the Maurya and Gupta in South Asia, the
Qin and Han in East Asia, the Maya in Mesoamerica, and the Moche in the Andes
provided security for merchants and several built roads so trade flourished, linking
people across regions. Goods and ideas flowed along land routes (Silk Roads
Eurasia/Trans-Saharan routes Africa) and across sea routes in the Mediterranean
and the Indian Ocean. Trade fostered the growth of great cities such as Rome and
Alexandria (Mediterranean), Changan (China), and Teotihuacan (Mesoamrica). This
growth was portrayed through the development and codification of religious and
cultural traditions that were shown through artistic expressions, including literature
and drama, architecture, and sculpture. There were many developments in Judaism
and Christianity in the Roman Empire, the evolution of Vedic beliefs in India to
Hinduism and the integration of the caste system, Buddhism, Confucianism, and
Daoism within China, and theories of philosophers based on logic and observation in
Greece.
Along with this, these empires grew so large that governing distant lands became
difficult and defending long borders became expensive. Trade provided pathways for
devastating diseases to move from one region to another. Population growth
increased demand for food, and the resulting expansion of agricultural land caused

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 soil erosion and deforestation. Prosperity produced intense concentrations of wealth,
eventually leading to their decline, collapse, and transformation into successor empires
or states, despite the advancements made towards imperial administration and social
and economic dimensions within their societies. Overall it was the renewal and
expansion of civilization that remains the leading story.
Keep in mind that during this period, there was no technological or economic
breakthrough occurred to create new kind of human societies as the Agricultural
Revolution had done earlier or as the Industrial Revolution would do in later
centuries. In fact, monarchs continued to rule most of the new civilizations, men
continued to dominate women, a sharp divide between the elite and everyone else
persisted almost everywhere, as did the practice of slavery. A noticeable change was
the rate of growth within this period and the growing size of the states or empires that
structured civilizations. The rise and fall of these empires, accompanied by generation
of important innovation in many spheres, mainly the cultural realm and the
emergence of far, more elaborate, widespread, and dense networks of communication
and exchange, also marked this time in history. All of this defined the Classical Era in
history.

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 After the severe disruption and collapse of the classical empires, understood as the
post classical or medieval era in history, the emergence of third-wave
civilizations is distinguished by the combination of new, old, and blended elements
due to the different trajectories of various regions of the world.
Large empires, often rooted in revivals of core and foundational cultures that had
developed in earlier history, appeared, including the Byzantine Empire (out of the
remains of the Roman Empire with its new capital as Constantinople), the city of
Kiev in Eastern Europe (based on a blending of Slavic and Scandinavian influences
and prosperous trade between the Baltic Sea in the north and the Black Sea in the
south, it formed Kievan Rus Ukraine and Russia), a united and revived China (in
which experienced great prosperity and innovation under the Tang and Song
dynasties), India (although divided, still experienced unity and prosperity), and the
Mongols (a group of Central Asia nomads that conquered lands from central Europe
to the Pacific Ocean the largest land empire in human history, in which trade
flourished greatly and new ideas and technology spread easily). Other new trade-based
empires appeared in Southeast Asia, and throughout southern Asian, parts of Africa,
and parts of Europe, followers of Islam (under the teachings of Muhammad) united
people, carrying their faith. They created centers of great intellectual achievement in
Baghdad and Spain. As for Africa, increased trade across the Sahara and along the east
coast (with smaller civilizations such as Swahili a string of thirty or more city-states -
arising) pulled Africa more deeply into global trade. Many new centers of civilization
such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam were strongly influenced by China, while Srivijaya
(Indonesian island of Sumatra) and the Angkor kingdom (present-day Cambodia)
drew on the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of India. In the Americas, the two regions
that had produced large regional empires in early periods did so again with the Aztecs
in Mesoamerica (creating a loose federation of cultural groups under their control)
and the Incas in the Andes (a united empire linked by extensive trade).

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 From roughly 1450 to 1750, we witness the emergence of the early modern world,
seen through the beginnings of genuine globalization, elements of distinctly modern
societies, and a growing European presence in world affairs. The voyage of
Christopher Columbus in 1492 that connected the Eastern and Western Hemispheres
set off dramatic changes around the world. Europeans and Africans carried to the
Americas plants such as sugar and rice as well as horses and other animals that
transformed indigenous cultures. Most important, Europeans brought germs of
diseases such as smallpox and measles that ravaged the native population. From the
Americas, Afro-Eurasia received nutritious new plants such as corn, tomatoes, and
potatoes that led to population growth (doubling between 1400 to 1800), which in
turn led to greater economic growth.
In this context of new global circulation of goods (Columbian Exchange), the
intensification of all existing regional trade networks (as well as the Atlantic Slave
Trade) brought prosperity to the merchants and governments in the trading regions of
the Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, Sahara, and overland Eurasia. And with
technological innovations such as the astrolabe and improved ship designs,
transoceanic trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia easier, enabling new links for
Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Neo Confucianism to spread and blend with other
existing beliefs and traditions (syncretism). Missionaries carried Christianity far
beyond Europe, allowing it to become a genuinely world religion, with a presence in
the Americas, China, Japan, the Philippines, and south-central Africa. As belief
systems spread, they often changed the relationships between men and women and
family structures.
The expansion of global trade reshaped relationships among classes. Coerced and
semi-coerced labor, including slavery in the Americas, serfdom in Russia and Japan,
and the hacienda system in Latin America, spread. In many urban areas, a growing
class of merchants and entrepreneurs emerged. The mixing of ethnic groups resulted
in groups such as mestizos, mulattoes, and creoles that had not been common in
earlier history.
The increase in trade resulted in new states and empires as well. In West and Central
Africa, trade-based states emerged. Along the coasts of Africa and South Asia,
Europeans established webs of trading posts that were the beginnings of maritime
empires. In the Americas, Europeans settled more widely, seizing more land. In
China, South Asia, the Middle East, and Russia, land-based empires expanded, with
the Russians marching across Siberia to the Pacific, China going deeper into Inner

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Asia, and the Ottoman Empire encompassing much of the Middle East, North Africa,
and southeastern Europe. Stronger and more cohesive states also emerged in various
places, incorporating many local societies into larger units that were both able and
willing to actively promote trade, manufacturing, and a common culture within their
borders (ex. France, the Dutch Republic, Russia, Morocco, the Mughal Empire,
Vietnam, Burma, Siam, and Japan). Their military power likewise soared as the
gunpowder revolution kicked in around the world.
These expanding connections among cultures and the increase in wealth created
changes in the arts. For example, Europe experienced the Renaissance, a rebirth of
interest in classical culture that resulted in impressive new styles in painting and
sculpture. Miniature paintings became a highly regarded art form in the Middle East
and South Asia. New forms of literature produced great writers, such as Shakespeare
and Cervantes in Europe, as well as new forms of expression, such as Kabuki Theater
in Japan. Overall, whereas these developments give some validity to the notion of an
early modern era, we face that it was still a continuing development of older agrarian
societies as patterns rooted in the past persisted in characterizing the direction of
departures and sprouts of modernity. Although Europeans were increasingly
prominent on the world stage, they certainly did not hold all of the leading roles in the
global drama that was yet to come...at least, not yet.

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 During the century and a half between 1750 and 1914, sometimes referred to as the
long nineteenth century, two new and related phenomena held center stage in the
global history of humankind and represent the major themes that describe of how
industrialization and global capitalism, imperialism and nation-state formation,
nationalism, revolution, and reform, and global migration played a major role in the
European moment in history. The first of these was the creation of a new kind of
human society, commonly called modern, which was the outgrowth of the
Scientific, French, and Industrial revolutions (other revolutions that were important in
this period were the Atlantic Revolutions: besides the French, included the North
American, Haitian, and Spanish American revolutions). Those societies within
Western Europe generated many of the ideas that have guided human behavior over
the past several centuries notions of progress, constitutional government, political
democracy, socialism, nationalism, feminism, and opposition to slavery. These ideas
allowed people around the world in the beginning of the 18th century to develop a
new sense of commonality based on language, religion, social customs, and territory,
and gave an opening to the global spread of European political and social thought and
the increasing number of rebellions (from discontent with imperial rule) that
stimulated new transnational ideologies and solidarities. Consequently, conflicts that
were being brought about due to this ended up breaking multi-ethnic empires
(Ottoman Empire and Austria Hungary) and others (such as those in Germany and
Italy) united people who shared a culture but were divided into different states.
The second theme involved the growing ability of these modern societies to exercise
enormous power and influence over the rest of humankind. In some places, this
occurred within growing European empires, such as those that governed India,
Southeast Asia, and Africa. It also took over lesser means, such as economic
penetration, military intervention, diplomatic pressure, and missionary activity,
towards states that remained officially independent, such as China, Japan, the
Ottoman Empire, and various countries in Latin America.
Addressing the Industrial Revolution, beginning mid-eighteenth century, people began
to build new and better machinery to replace human and animal power to perform
work. These developments caused manufacturing output to skyrocket and goods to
become more plentiful than ever before. Among the several factors that helped cause
the Industrial Revolution were increases in agricultural productivity, urbanization, the
accumulation of money for investments, and the specialization of labor. The process
began in Great Britain and spread throughout Europe and into the United States and
Japan. Products of industrialization (railroads, steamships, and telegraphs) expanded

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 global trade and communications networks, linking farmers, miners, manufacturers,
and customers around the world. Industrial countries established overseas colonies to
protect the access of their businesses to resources and markets, leading to rebellion in
some circumstances (United States and Haiti).
Disruptions caused by industrialization and political changes caused massive
migrations of people. Some moved voluntarily in search of work, including most
Europeans who moved to the Americas, Southern Africa, India, or Australia. Others,
such as indentured servants from India who went to Southern Africa, were semi
coerced. Some people were captured by force, such as the Africans who were seized
and taken to the Americas. The result of all this migration was greater ethnic diversity
around the world.
Overall, we encounter Eurocentrism at this point in history, whereas in this time
period Europeans were clearly the most powerful, most innovative, most prosperous,
most expansive, and most widely imitated people on the planet. However, we need to
remember that this occurred within an international context in which its global
dominance was not so easily achieved. European centrality led to peoples all over the
world making active use of the new ideologies formed to be adapted to local
circumstances of other societies, which gives reason to why Europe became such a
prominent, influential figure during the 1750s to 1900s.

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 Weve reached the last period. I would say congratulations, but were not done yet
entirely. To many historians, the last and most current/new era in the human journey
began in 1914 with the outbreak of World War 1. That terrible conflict, after all,
represented a fratricidal civil war within Western civilization, triggered the Russian
Revolution and the beginning of world communism, and stimulated many in the
colonial world to work for their own independence. The way it ended set the stage for
an even more terrible struggle in World War 2. Yet, both world wars played such an
important role in the first half of the century.
The political order of the world in 1900 was dominated by a small number of
countries in Europe, along with Russia, Japan, and the United States. Throughout the
twentieth century, these states fought one another for power and struggled to
maintain control of other lands. The result was a century of World War I and World
War II, frequent large wars, endless small wars, and four decades of tense ideological
conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. By the end of the century,
the old empires had collapsed, as most colonies had won their independence through
negotiation or war. It was obvious that this era of wars was stimulated by the
Europeans persistent inability to embody their civilization within a single state or
empire, as China had done long ago. The World Wars especially represented a further
stage of European rivalries around the globe that been going on for four centuries. As
a result, these land-based and transoceanic empires gave way to new forms of
transregional political organization. Along with this laid the disintegration of the
empires themselves (Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Russia, British, French, Japanese,
Soviet, etc.) and in their wake, the emergence of dozens of new nation-states.
However, what made this so distinguishable was in how the very idea of empire was
now rendered as illegitimate during this time due to emerging ideologies of anti-
imperialism and opposing views of the trend of conflict that seemed to define this
time in history.
On the other hand, there were also new conceptualizations of global economy,
society, and culture. Scientific research after 1900 revolutionized how people thought,
lived, and interacted with nature. Innovative theories reshaped human understanding
of everything from how the universe began to the unconscious forces influencing
individual behavior. Dramatic increases in agricultural productivity combined with
medical breakthroughs such as the development of antibiotics to fight infections
made people healthier and extended life, resulting in population explosion. At the
same time, new forms of birth control increased the control women had over their
lives. However, advances in technology and population growth intensified the human

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 impact on the planet, resulting in air pollution, water pollution, deforestation,
desertification, and global warming. In addition, improved military technology (tanks,
planes, and atomic weapons) increased wartime casualties.
With frequent wars, demographic shifts, and rapid economic changes, different
responses arose. Extensive global migrations occurred as people fled violence and
searched for economic opportunity. In the midst of all this upheaval, women were
winning the right to vote and were challenging traditional divisions between the roles
and opportunities for each gender. Governments in Europe, the United States, India,
and most countries increasingly influenced economic decisions. Communist
governments such as the Soviet Union and China experimented with total control
over the economy (whereas the Soviets eventually abandoned the effort and China
moved toward a more market-oriented economy).
The twentieth century featured the increasing role of transnationalism the global
reorganization of production in which the development of a product or service is split
between multiple locations around the world. From regional organizations (European
Union) to collections of countries (United Nation) to humanitarian groups (Red
Cross) to entertainment (Bollywood) to large corporations (Sony), people were
working together across national borders becoming increasingly interdependent in
facilitating the growth of institutions of global governance. More importantly, people
were working together in all aspects of life within the most recent century in response
to the accelerating global change and realignments that took place...

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