Unit 1-5 Review Exam Study Guide
The unit review exam will consist of approximately 50-60 multiple choice questions. See the table below for an
approximate percentage breakdown of questions from each unit. FYI, the AP World exam is 55 questions in 55 minutes.
That’s about what you’ll have for this if we start on time.
Unit 1
10%
Unit 2
5%
Unit 3
15%
Unit 4
25%
Unit 5
45%
1. What sorts of tools did humans use during the Paleolithic Era?
2. What were some of the enduring “steppe traditions” that lasted in the Middle East, particularly in the Ottoman Empire,
after its conquest by the Mongols and Turks?
3. Summarize the general nature of agricultural societies vs. hunting, foraging, gathering ones.
4. How was Buddhism adopted and adapted by the lands it diffused to? Did it blend with other traditions to create new
syncretic ones (syncretism is the blending of cultural elements, often from different societies, to create brand new,
synthesized version of the original)?
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5. What are some of the reasons why Europeans were so dominant in the 19 and early 20 centuries?
6. What were the characteristics of the Mali Empire? Consider the political, economic, and religious realities of this West
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African empire in the 14 century.
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7. What method of semi-coerced labor found a resurgence in the 19 century? Where did most of the workers that
practiced this resurgent, semi-coerced labor come from?
8. What are the characteristic contributions we associate with the earliest “river civilizations”? What do we NOT
associate with them?
9. What closely related event was going on in Europe at the time of the Haitian Revolution that partly inspired it?
10. What trade route did the east African Swahili states rely on?
11. What are the major tenets (important stuff and principles) of Daoism? What sorts of things did the Daoists believe in?
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12. What’s the best explanation for why the Ottoman and Chinese lagged behind the west in the 18 and 19 century?
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13. What are some of the best examples of Western domination in the 18 and 19 century? Who most effectively
resisted this?
14. If the initial Industrial Revolution was focused on coal, textiles, and iron, then the so called “Second Industrial
Revolution” of the late 1800s was focused on what?
15. What happened to the internal economies of the imperial colonies?
16. What are the characteristics of Hinduism?
17. What was the impact of the spread of Mongol control on trade?
18. What were the factors that enabled European powers’ campaigns of imperialism?
19. What’s the connection between industrialization and imperialism?
20. What was similar and different about the French and American Revolutions?
21. What are the characteristics of an absolute monarch? What is not characteristic of them?
22. How would you compare the goals and outcome of the following revolutions (and independence movements):
American, French, Haitian, Russian, and South American?
23. How were pre-modern African societies organized socially and politically?
24. What’s a griot? Why were they necessary and so important in African societies?
25. How would you define nationalism? What are some of the factors that would cause somebody or a group of people to
feel “nationalistic”?
26. How did industrialization in Britain compare to industrialization in other places, specifically Russia and Japan.
27. What’s the essence of the concept of “manifest destiny”?
28. What were some of the trends that occurred as a result of industrialization in Europe? Break it down by different
categories (PERSIA).
29. What were the major characteristics and trends of the slave trade in the Americas?
30. Japan’s industrialization would be most similar to whose industrialization? Justify it.
31. How are Hinduism and Buddhism alike? What common pieces do they share?
32. What were Luther’s main concerns and arguments against the Catholic Church? How did the Catholics respond in
the years the start of the Reformation?
33. Why was the Qing Dynasty not very interested in Western goods?
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What were the factors in the successful industrialization of Japan?
What’s the nature of the conflict that exists between Sunni and Shiite Muslims?
How would you describe the chinampa system the Aztecs/Mexica used?
Looking at the various revolutions unfolding in the Age of Revolution, what model/example of revolution was most and
least favored by the Creole elites in Latin America?
What were the demographic trends associated with the Industrial Revolution?
Who were the early leaders (in terms of countries) and late comers to the “Age of Imperialism”?
What is Social Darwinism and how did imperialists use this?
What do Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism have in common?
In what ways were the civilizations of Mesoamerica more advanced than the ones of North America in the period
before 1000 CE?
What were the major commodities that the Chinese exported during the Qing Dynasty period (and many other
periods, too)? What sort of a trade balance did they have with the West/Europe as a result of this and why?
What are the major tenets or ideas of Confucianism?
What were the major ideas and techniques that came out of the Renaissance? What inspired it? Where did it
culturally and historically draw its inspiration from?
What were the major impacts of the Neolithic Revolution? How did it revolutionize society?
The colonization of South Africa was different than what happened in the rest of Africa. What other place in the world
most clearly reflected this sort colonization by Europeans where many of the cultural practices were easily
transplanted?
What was the common thread that tied together all of the revolutions and independence movements in North and
South America? What were they based off of?
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What were the major weaknesses associated with the Ottoman Empire in the 18 century?
What was the Monroe Doctrine?
How would you characterize the attitudes and actions of Tokugawa Japan and Qing China toward foreigners?
To what degree did the Silk Road have an impact on medieval Europe between 400-800 after the collapse of the
Roman Empire?
Why did the British want to sell opium in China? Did they get what they wanted out of this?
What was the larger impact of The Crusades on Western Europe?
What was the general impact of the wars of independence in Latin America? Was there big scale change or not?
What’s the chronological order for the cultural movements that transformed Europe from about 1400-1800? What tied
them all together?
Prior to industrialization, how would you characterize European colonization? Where did they go, what were they
after, etc.?
How did industrialization impact the nuclear family?
Despite the demographic catastrophes that resulted from the Columbian Exchange, what happened to the world’s
population? Why did it happen?
What were the keys to the Portuguese control of the early Atlantic slave trade?