AP World History Study Guide
This is a free study guide plus a 15-question practice test for AP World History: Modern. Read the unit-by-unit guide below, then test yourself on events, empires, trade networks, revolutions and the Cold War. The questions mix multiple choice, select all that apply and fill in the blank. Answer all 15, then check your score and read the explanation for every question.
Which Song dynasty practice did the most to support a bureaucracy chosen by merit rather than birth?
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All 15 questions at a glance
Prefer to read before you play? Every question in the sampler is listed below. Answers and explanations stay collapsed until you open them.
1. Which Song dynasty practice did the most to support a bureaucracy chosen by merit rather than birth?
- A. Hereditary command of the imperial army
- B. Selling government offices to wealthy merchants
- C. Civil service examinations based on Confucian texts
- D. Monastic examinations run by Buddhist orders
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. Civil service examinations based on Confucian texts
Song rulers expanded the civil service examinations and drew officials from a wider pool of educated men. Success depended on mastery of Confucian learning, which tied the bureaucracy to Confucian values. Aristocratic families still held advantages, but the exams made merit a real path into government.
2. What feature of the Indian Ocean basin helped make long-distance sea trade there regular and predictable?
- A. Seasonal monsoon winds that reverse direction
- B. A canal that joined it to the Mediterranean
- C. Year-round ice-free ports along every coast
- D. A single empire that controlled every harbor
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Seasonal monsoon winds that reverse direction
Monsoon winds blow one way for part of the year and the other way for the rest. Sailors could ride them out and back on a schedule, which tied East Africa, Arabia, India and Southeast Asia into one trading world. No single empire controlled the whole network.
3. Which factors helped the Black Death spread across Afro-Eurasia in the fourteenth century?
Select all that apply.
- A. Railroads that carried travelers between cities
- B. Crowded, growing towns where disease passed easily
- C. Fleas on rats that traveled with caravans and ships
- D. Printed pamphlets that spread the infection
- E. Trade routes under Mongol rule that linked distant regions
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Crowded, growing towns where disease passed easily, C. Fleas on rats that traveled with caravans and ships, E. Trade routes under Mongol rule that linked distant regions
Connected trade routes, fleas living on rats aboard ships and in caravans, and dense towns all helped the plague move quickly. Railroads and the printing press are anachronisms: the first would not exist for centuries, and printed pamphlets cannot carry a disease.
4. Complete the sentence.
The Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires are often called the _____ empires because cannons and firearms helped them conquer rivals and hold territory.
Options for blank 1: maritime, steppe, gunpowder, tributary
Show answer and explanation
Answer: gunpowder
Historians use gunpowder empires for states that combined firearms and artillery with strong central administration. The term is a shortcut, since each empire also relied on land taxes, large bureaucracies and legitimacy claims, not weapons alone.
5. The devshirme system in the Ottoman Empire is best described as:
- A. A tax paid only by Muslim merchants
- B. A treaty system with European trading companies
- C. The grant of land to nobles in return for cavalry
- D. The levy of boys from Christian villages for state and military service
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. The levy of boys from Christian villages for state and military service
Under devshirme, boys from Christian communities in the Balkans were taken, converted and trained. Some became Janissaries, the elite infantry, and some rose to high office. It gave the sultan servants whose loyalty went to him, not to a noble family.
6. Which labor system drew on an earlier Inca practice and forced Indigenous communities to supply workers for Spanish silver mines?
- A. Indentured servitude
- B. Mita
- C. Corvee in France
- D. The plantation lease
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Mita
The Spanish adapted the Inca mita, a rotating labor obligation, to staff mines such as Potosi. Workers faced dangerous conditions and the system added to population loss in the Andes. The silver it produced flowed across the Pacific and Atlantic, linking the world economy.
7. Which of these moved from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas as part of the Columbian Exchange?
Select all that apply.
- A. Smallpox
- B. Horses
- C. Potatoes
- D. Maize
- E. Wheat
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Smallpox, B. Horses, E. Wheat
Horses, smallpox and wheat crossed from Afro-Eurasia to the Americas. Potatoes and maize went the other way, and both became staple foods in Europe, Africa and Asia. Smallpox and other diseases killed a very large share of Indigenous peoples who had no earlier exposure.
8. Which Enlightenment idea most directly challenged the divine right of kings?
- A. Monarchs should tax only their own nobles
- B. Governments get their authority from the consent of the governed
- C. Faith is more reliable than reason
- D. Trade should be controlled by the state
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Governments get their authority from the consent of the governed
Thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau argued that political authority comes from the people, not from God. That idea shaped the American, French and Latin American revolutions. It also gave later reformers a language to demand rights.
9. What made the Haitian Revolution historically significant?
- A. It ended the Atlantic slave trade overnight
- B. It made France give up all its colonies
- C. It established a monarchy modeled on Britain
- D. It created the first independent state founded by formerly enslaved people
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. It created the first independent state founded by formerly enslaved people
Enslaved people in Saint-Domingue, led in part by Toussaint Louverture, defeated colonial and European forces and declared Haiti independent in 1804. It shook slaveholding societies across the Atlantic world. It did not end the slave trade at once, and Haiti paid a heavy price for independence.
10. Complete the sentence.
During the _____ Revolution, factories powered by steam spread first in _____ before reaching other parts of the world.
Options for blank 1: Industrial, Agricultural, Scientific, Neolithic
Options for blank 2: Brazil, Britain, Japan, Russia
Show answer and explanation
Answer: Industrial, Britain
Industrialization began in Britain in the late 1700s, helped by coal, iron, capital and a growing demand for textiles. It then spread to Western Europe, the United States and Japan. Factory work reshaped cities, families and global trade.
11. Complete the sentence.
In the 1800s, industrial states expanded overseas to gain raw materials and markets, a policy historians call _____.
Options for blank 1: imperialism, mercantilism, isolationism, feudalism
Show answer and explanation
Answer: imperialism
Industrial economies needed cotton, rubber, minerals and customers, and new technologies such as steamships and the telegraph made distant control easier. Mercantilism describes an earlier economic policy, and isolationism is the opposite of expansion.
12. After World War I, what did the mandate system do with former Ottoman territories in the Middle East?
- A. Placed them under British and French administration
- B. Returned them to the Ottoman sultan
- C. Granted all of them full independence
- D. Divided them between the United States and Japan
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Placed them under British and French administration
The League of Nations assigned mandates, and Britain and France took charge of places such as Iraq, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. The system claimed to prepare peoples for self-rule while keeping imperial control. Disputes over the borders it drew still shape politics there.
13. Which of these were proxy conflicts of the Cold War?
Select all that apply.
- A. The Crimean War
- B. The Korean War
- C. The Vietnam War
- D. The Soviet war in Afghanistan
- E. The Franco-Prussian War
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. The Korean War, C. The Vietnam War, D. The Soviet war in Afghanistan
In a proxy conflict, the superpowers backed opposing sides without fighting each other directly. Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan all fit. The Crimean War and the Franco-Prussian War were fought in the nineteenth century, long before the Cold War.
14. Which description best fits the Non-Aligned Movement?
- A. A military alliance led by the Soviet Union
- B. An economic union of European colonies
- C. Newly independent states that avoided formal alliance with either superpower
- D. A group of nations that sided with the United States
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. Newly independent states that avoided formal alliance with either superpower
Leaders from India, Egypt, Indonesia and Yugoslavia brought together states that wanted independence in foreign policy during the Cold War. The movement helped decolonizing nations speak with a shared voice, though its members often disagreed with each other.
15. The Green Revolution of the mid-twentieth century raised crop yields mainly through:
- A. Returning to fallow fields every other year
- B. Banning all machinery on farms
- C. Moving farming into cities
- D. High-yield seed varieties, fertilizers and irrigation
Show answer and explanation
Answer: D. High-yield seed varieties, fertilizers and irrigation
Scientists developed high-yield varieties of wheat and rice that paid off when paired with fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation. Food output rose sharply in places such as India and Mexico. The costs were water use, debt for small farmers and loss of crop diversity.
AP World History study guide: the nine units
AP World History: Modern covers c. 1200 CE to the present in nine units, and they are not weighted equally. Units 1 and 2, the Global Tapestry and Networks of Exchange, each make up 8 to 10 percent of the exam. Units 3 to 6 each make up 12 to 15 percent: Land-Based Empires, Transoceanic Interconnections, Revolutions, and Consequences of Industrialization. Units 7, 8 and 9, Global Conflict, Cold War and Decolonization, and Globalization, are back at 8 to 10 percent each. The four middle units carry about half the exam, so they deserve about half of your study time.
The course also runs on six themes that cut across every unit: humans and the environment, cultural developments and interactions, governance, economic systems, social interactions and organization, and technology and innovation. A good study guide is a grid with the units across the top and the themes down the side. In each cell, write one fact you could use as evidence. An empty cell is your next hour of studying.
What the exam asks and how to use this practice test
The exam has two sections. Section I is 55 multiple-choice questions in 55 minutes plus 3 short-answer questions in 40 minutes, together 60 percent of the score. Section II is one document-based question and one long essay, together 40 percent. The College Board has announced updates to the short-answer and long-essay questions starting with the May 2027 exam, so check the current Course and Exam Description for counts and timing before you plan your practice.
This practice test has 15 questions spread across the nine units. It also uses select all that apply and fill in the blank, which the real multiple choice does not, because recalling a term is harder than spotting it in a list. Take it in one sitting, read every explanation, and let a wrong answer point you at a unit, not just a fact. It does not practice the essays. For those, pick one source, write a claim, back it with two specific pieces of evidence, and say why the author, audience or purpose matters.
How StudyPDF builds a study guide and practice tests from your notes
Fifteen questions can show you which units are shaky. They cannot get you ready on their own, and a generic guide rarely matches what your teacher spent three weeks on.
StudyPDF works from your material instead. You upload your textbook chapter, class notes or the review packet your teacher posted, press New material, and StudyPDF builds a study guide and full practice tests from those exact pages. Every question is grounded in your material, and every explanation cites where the answer comes from. You do not have to upload anything to start: you can also just name a topic, like Unit 4 or the Columbian Exchange, and Bo sets it up with its key concepts, so you can build materials on it. Starting is free.
Written by the StudyPDF team. Last updated 2026-08-19.