Themes Of World History AP World History highlights six overarching themes that should receive approximately equal attention throughout the course beginning with the Foundations section: 1) The dynamics of change and continuity across the world history periods covered in this course, and the causes and processes involved in major changes of these dynamics 2) Patterns and effects of interaction among societies and regions: trade, war, diplomacy, and international organizations 3) The effects of technology, economics and demography on people and the environment (population growth and decline, disease, labor systems, manufacturing, migrations, agriculture, weaponry) 4) Systems of social structure and gender structure (comparing major features within and among societies and assessing change and continuity) 5) Cultural, intellectual and religious developments, including interactions among and within societies 6) Changes in functions and structures of states and in attitudes toward states and political identities (political culture), including the emergence of the nation-state (types of political organization). "Why the Thematic Approach?" The themes serve throughout the course as unifying threads, helping students to put what is particular about each period or society into a larger framework. The themes also provide ways to make comparisons over time. The interaction of themes and periodization encourage cross-period questions such as "To what extent have civilizations maintained their cultural and political distinctiveness over the time periods the course covers"; "Compare the justification of social inequality in 1000 with that at the end of the twentieth century"; and "Select four turning points in world history since 1000 and explain why you so designated them." Units of Study and Periodization UNIT I: Foundations- 1000 C.E. What students are expected to know: Major Developments 1. Basic features of world geography Location of continents Location of oceans, seas, and major rivers Location of key political units prior to 1000 (Roman Empire at its height, 'Abbasid caliphate, Sudanic kingdoms of Ghana and Nubia, Chinese empire [Han and Tang dynasties], Byzantine Empire, Mayan civilization) 2. Definitions of basic economic systems Agricultural, pastoral, and foraging societies and their demographic characteristics Basic characteristics of economic structures including Technological patterns 3. Crises of late antiquity (third to eighth centuries) Movements of peoples (Huns, Germans, Arabs) Collapse of empires (Han China, loss of European portion of the Roman Empire) Emergence of new empires and political systems (Tang China, Arab caliphates, Byzantine Empire, early European and Japanese feudal systems) 4. Key cultural and social systems Basic features of major world belief systems prior to 1000 and where each belief system applied by 1000. Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Daoism, Hellenism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Polytheism Major developments in the arts and sciences Basic characteristics of social structures as they developed by 1000 The caste system The nature and location of major slave systems Confucian social hierarchy Patriarchal family structures and trends 5. Principal international connections that had developed between 700 and 1000 Missionary outreach (Buddhist, Christian, and Islamic) Leading international trading patterns (Middle Eastern, Chinese, East European, trans-Saharan) The role of nomadic groups in Central Asia The impact of Bantu migrations in Africa 6. Diverse interpretations What are the issues involved in using "civilization" as an organizing principle in world history? What is the most common source of change: connection or diffusion versus independent invention? 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; Christianity compared with Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism Trace and explain the diffusion of major religious and philosophical belief systems by 1000 C.E. Role of women in different belief systems Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Islam 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 Role of nomadic groups in the collapse of empires Compare the caste system to other systems of social inequality devised by early and classical civilizations, including slavery Compare early societies and cultures that include cities with those without cities (e.g., pastoral) Compare the development of political systems in major early civilizations, e.g., Indian compared with Chinese political traditions and institutions; caliphate with Roman Empire Know the location of the major political units and trade routes by ***1000 C.E. Compare international trading systems, e.g., the trans-Saharan trading system with the Silk Road trading system **Examples of the types of information students will be expected to know contrasted with examples of those things students will not be expected to know: Nature of early civilizations, but not the specific features of a particular river valley civilization Political heritage of classical China (emperor, bureaucracy), but not the transition from Qin to Han Greek approach to science, including Aristotle, but not Socrates or Plato Hellenistic philosophies, but not the specific philosophers Early European feudalism, but not Charlemagne Arab caliphate, but not the transition from Umayyad to Abbasid UNIT II: 10001450 C.E. What students are expected to know: Major Developments 1. Questions of periodization Nature and causes of changes in the world history framework leading up to 10001450 as a period Continuities and breaks within the period (e.g., the impact of the Mongols) 2. Interregional networks Development and shifts in an interregional network of trade, technology, cultural exchange, and communication 3. Nature of philosophy and knowledge 4. China's internal and external expansion The importance of the Song economic revolution Chinese influence on Japan and its limits 5. The Islamic world The role of Islam as a unifying cultural force in Eurasia and Africa; Islamic impact on the Sudanic kingdoms and East Africa; the Delhi Sultanate The impact of migrations and religious reform movements in expanding Islamic society The impact of Islam on the arts and sciences 6. Changes in Christianity Restructuring of European society, including the growth of central monarchies in the west Role of Arab thought in the twelfth-century "Renaissance" in the West The division of Christendom into Eastern and Western Christian cultures 7. Non-Islamic Africa Great Zimbabwe 8. Demographic and environmental changes Impact of the nomadic migrations on Afro-Eurasia (Mongols, Turks, and Arabs) Migration of agricultural peoples (e.g., European peoples to East/Central Europe) Consequences of plague pandemics in the 14th century 9. Amerindian civilizations Toltec and Mayan, Aztec, Inca 10. Diverse interpretations What are the issues involved in using cultural areas rather than states as units of analysis? What are the sources of change: nomadic migrations versus urban growth? Was there a world economic network in this period, and how does it compare with the world economic system that emerges in the next period? Major Comparisons and Snapshots Japanese and European feudalism Western Europe or one of the major European monarchies and one of the African empires Contrast the economic, social, cultural, and political role of cities such as Guangzhou (Canton), Samarkand, Timbuktu, Cairo, and Venice Gender systems and changes Aztec Empire and Inca Empire **Examples of the types of information students are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things students are not expected to know: Mamluks, but not Almohads Feudalism, but not specific feudal monarchs such as Richard I Crusading movement and its impact, but not specific crusades . Viking exploration, expansion, and impact, but not individual explorers Manorialism, but not the three-field system Mongol expansion, but not details of specific khanates Papacy, but not particular popes Indian Ocean traders, but not Gujarati merchants UNIT III: 14501750 C.E. What students are expected to know: Major Developments 1. Questions of periodization Continuities and breaks, causes of changes from the previous period and within this period 2. Change in global interactions, trade, and technology 3. Knowledge of major empires and other political units and social systems Aztec, Ottoman, Inca, Ming, Qing (Manchu), Portugal, Spain, Russia, France, England, Mongol, Tokugawa, Mughal, characteristics of African empires in general but knowing one (Kongo, Benin, Oyo, or Songhay) as illustrative Territorial and commercial aspects of the above Gender and empire (gender systems at the elite level, alliances, women and households in politics) Slave systems and slave trade 4. Demographic and environmental changes: diseases, animals, new crops, and comparative population trends 5. Cultural and intellectual developments Scientific Revolution The Enlightenment Comparative global causes and impacts of cultural . change Neoconfucianism Major developments and exchanges in the arts (e.g., Mughal) 6. Diverse interpretations What are the debates about the timing and extent of European predominance in the world economy? 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 the types of information students are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things students are not expected to know: 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 Safavid Empire Siege of Vienna (168889), but not the Thirty Years' War Slave plantation systems, but not Jamaica's specific slave system Institution of the harem, but not Hurrem Sultan UNIT IV: 17501914 C.E. What students are expected to know: Major Developments 1. Questions of periodization Continuities and breaks, causes of changes from the previous period and within this period 2. Changes in global commerce, communications, and technology Changes in patterns of world trade 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 Latin American independence movements Revolutions (United States, France, Haiti, Mexico, China) Rise of nationalism, nation-states, and movements of political reform Overlaps between nations and empires 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) 7. Diverse interpretations What are the debates over the utility of modernization theory as a framework for interpreting events in this period and the next? 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? 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 the types of information students are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things students are not expected to know: 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 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 UNIT V: 1914-Present C.E. What students are expected to know: Major Developments 1. Questions of periodization Continuities and breaks, causes of changes from the previous period and within this period 2. The World Wars, 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.) 3. New patterns of nationalism, especially outside of the West (the interwar years; de-colonization; racism, the Holocaust, genocide; new nationalisms, including the breakup of the Soviet Union) 4. Impact of major global economic developments (the Great Depression; technology; Pacific Islands; multinational corporations) 5. New forces of revolution and other sources of political innovations 6. Social reform and social revolution (changing gender roles; family structures; rise of feminism; peasant protest international Marxism) 7. Internationalization of culture and reactions Developments in global and regional cultures Interactions between elite and popular culture and art Global cultural forces and patterns of resistance (consumer culture; religious responses) 8. Demographic and environmental changes (migrations; changes in birthrates and death rates; new forms of urbanization; deforestation; green/environmental movements) 9. Diverse interpretations Is cultural convergence or diversity the best model for understanding increased intercultural contact in the twentieth century? 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 **Examples of the types of information students are expected to know contrasted with examples of those things students are not expected to know: 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 ILO (International Labor Organization) 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 |