Starting in the FALL of 2019, the College Board decided to split it’s AP World History course into two separate courses. This page is devoted to the second half: AP World History: MODERN. Basically, this is part two of World History starting circa (around) 1200 CE. The College Board describes it like this:
In AP World History: Modern, students investigate significant events, individuals, developments, and processes from 1200 to the present. Students develop and use the same skills, practices, and methods employed by historians: analyzing primary and secondary sources; developing historical arguments; making historical connections; and utilizing reasoning about comparison, causation, and continuity and change over time. The course provides six themes that students explore throughout the course in order to make connections among historical developments in different times and places: humans and the environment, cultural developments and interactions, governance, economic systems, social interactions and organization, and technology and innovation.
The College Board divides world history into four chronological periods. They are:
Period 1 - Regional and Interregional Interactions: Pre-1200 C.E. to 1450 (Unit 1 & Unit 2)
Period 2 - Global Interactions: 1450 to 1750 (Unit 3 & Unit 4)
Period 3 - Industrialization and Global Integration: 1750 to 1900 (Unit 5 & Unit 6)
Period 4 - Accelerating Global Change and Realignments: 1900 to the Present (Unit 7, Unit 8, and Unit 9)
Those time periods are then divided up into nine units as follows:
When we refer to thinking critically, we are referring to Historical Thinking Skills. History is not static, it is analyzed, debated, and discussed. So what skills will you need to know how to do in order to do this well?
1.) Developments and Processes: Identify and explain historical developments and processes.
2.) Sourcing and Situation: Analyze sourcing and situation of primary and secondary sources.
3.) Claims and Evidence in Sources: Analyze arguments in primary and secondary sources.
4.) Contextualization: Analyze the context of historical events, developments, or processes.
5.) Making Connections: Using historical reasoning processes (comparison, causation, continuity and change), analyze patterns and connections between and among historical developments and processes.
6.) Argumentation: Develop an argument.
When you are using those Historical Thinking Skills, you're doing a whole lot of thinking. One of the things we will work on in the course consistently are our ways of reasoning and processing a topic. There are three Reasoning Processes we will practice:
1.) Comparison: Examine the similarities and differences between different historical developments
2.) Causation: Examine the cause and effect relationship in the short and long term on how history played out.
3.) Continuity and Change: Examine the patterns of consistency and change throughout history.
There are two maps the College Board has produced that will serve as guidance for regions of the world. When they talk about these regions on the AP test, this is what they are referring to:
When we say that we are studying the Modern Era of World History we really mean it! David Christian explains the history of our world in approximately 18 minutes. For a frame of reference, human beings don't first appear until 12:35, in this telling of the world's big history.
"If you aren't taking action, you are being acted upon." Power is an overarching concept in this course. Check out this video to learn about what Power is, and how people throughout history obtain it.
Our course starts at 11:22, but everything before that is also great for context prior to the year 1200 CE.
Re-edited for the school setting, this quirky video outlines the history of the world and includes references to a lot of our curriculum.