Remember that the AP World History exam tests you on the depth of your knowledge, not just your ability to recall facts. While we have provided brief definitions here, you will need to know these terms in even more depth for the AP exam, including how terms connect to broader historical themes and understandings.
Revolutions and Independence Movements
Enlightenment: Post-Renaissance period in European history devoted to the study and exploration of new ideas in science, politics, the arts, and philosophy.
American Revolution: After American colonists served alongside the British in the French and Indian War, the Crown issued a series of taxes to recover the war debt. The colonists, angered that they were being taxed without representation, protested the taxes and began fighting for independence. Although the Revolutionary War itself lasted from 1775–1781, the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 was significant in that it laid the foundations for the first large-scale democracy since Ancient Greece.
French Revolution: Inspired by America’s victory in its own revolution, the “commoners” of eighteenth-century France sought to create a new political and social order free from royal control. The Third Estate, who vastly outnumbered the First and Second Estates (clergy and nobility, respectively), created the National Assembly and issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In response, the French faced war with the other European powers, in which they emerged victorious thanks to the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Maroon: Term for a nineteenth-century escaped slave in the Americas who settled in his or her own settlement away from plantations. They caused tensions with the colonial authorities. This term can also be used to describe their present-day descendants.
Haitian Revolution: Led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, this slave revolt lasted from 1791–1804, after which the former French colony of Saint-Domingue became the independent nation of Haiti, the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere and the world’s first black republic.
Latin American independence movements: Inspired by the success of the Haitian Revolution, these movements against Spanish colonial rule in Central and South America in the 1810s and 1820s led to the independence of every nation in those areas. Key leaders were Simon Bolívar, José de San Martín, and Bernardo O’Higgins.
Nationalism and the Nation State
Nationalism: As European empires began growing, the people in those empires began to see themselves as part of a group with common heritages, cultures, languages, and religions. This sense of national identity and pride fueled the expansion of empires and led to the unification of nations.
Industrialization
Adam Smith: English economist whose 1776 work The Wealth of Nations advocated a laissez-faire policy toward economics (minimal government interference), making him one of the fathers of modern capitalism.
Factory system: System of labor used in the Industrial Revolution. This involved rigorous mechanization and large numbers of unskilled workers to mass-produce goods that were once made skillfully by hand. In the nineteenth century, the use of interchangeable parts simplified assembly but made work repetitive.
Global division of labor: With the Industrial Revolution underway, the European powers began devoting themselves to large-scale manufacturing and transportation, requiring raw materials like cotton from India, rubber from Brazil, and metals from Central Africa. As a result, industrialized societies grew at the expense of less industrial societies, providing an impetus for imperialist conquests later in the nineteenth century.
Imperialism: As the nations of Europe began to industrialize in the nineteenth century, they needed sources of raw materials and markets for their goods. To prevent warfare among them, the European powers called the Berlin Conference in 1884 to divide the African continent into colonies and forge their new industrial empires. This has had significant effects, both positive and negative, on Africa ever since.
Second Industrial Revolution: In the late nineteenth century, revolutionary new methods of producing steel, chemicals, and electrical power changed society in Western Europe, Japan, and the United States by introducing new ways of working and living.
Railroads: With the invention of the steam-powered locomotive in England in the 1820s, a “transportation revolution” began in which mass-produced goods could be transported overland more quickly and inexpensively than ever before. By 1900, virtually every industrialized nation had a well-developed railroad system.
Reactions to Industrialization
Socialism: A utopian ideal in response to the poor conditions of factories and factory workers. In this radical form of society, the workers would run the economy in a self-sufficient manner and share everything equally, thereby overthrowing the moneyed classes.
Communism: An extreme form of socialism in which governments make economic decisions for the people. Envisioned by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848’s Communist Manifesto, this system advocated the overthrow of the bourgeoisie (capitalists) by the proletariat (workers).
Liberalism: As industry led to the growth of a middle class, philosophers and political scientists advocated systems of government based on constitutions, separation of powers, and natural rights. Based on the philosophies of the Enlightenment.
Reform
Tanzimât Movement: From 1839–1879, as the rest of the great empires were industrializing, the Ottoman Empire attempted this period of reform with a modernized infrastructure, a French legal code, and religious equality under the law.
First Opium War: Instigated in 1839 after Chinese customs officials refused British imports of Indian opium (due to the addictive effects it had on Chinese workers), these wars weakened the Qing Dynasty and opened up China to commercial domination by the West for the next century.
Second Opium War: Lasting from 1856–1860, this war resulted from the Western European desire to further weaken Chinese sovereignty over trade, to legalize the opium trade, and to expand the export of indentured workers whose situations closely resembled slavery.
Self-Strengthening Movement: An attempt by China, in the 1860s and 1870s, to modernize its military and economy under its own terms. Changes were minimal due to imperial resistance.
Taiping Rebellion: In the 1850s and 1860s, Chinese scholar Hong Xiuquan led a Christian-based revolutionary movement to reform China’s society. The violent reaction by the imperial court left China financially strained and caused the bloodiest civil war in world history.
Boxer Rebellion: In response to the growth of Western economic privilege in China, a secret society of Chinese, backed by the anti-Western Empress Cixi, attacked Western soldiers and workers in 1900. A Western coalition defeated the Boxers and undermined the legitimacy of the Qing Dynasty.
Meiji: After witnessing the arrival of American commodore Matthew Perry in Edo Bay (Tokyo Bay) in 1854 by steamship, young reform-minded Japanese sought to overthrow the isolationist Tokugawa shogunate. They were successful and in 1868 installed Emperor Meiji, who led Japan through a period of rapid, Western-guided industrialization.
Imperialism and Its Impact
Social Darwinism: Popular nineteenth-century theory used to justify the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer in industrial societies. It drew on evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin’s view of “survival of the fittest.”
Sepoy Mutiny of 1857: Fought in India between the British and the sepoys (Indian soldiers in British service) after rumors spread that the cartridges for their rifles were sealed in pork and beef tallow, thereby violating Hindu and Muslim religious taboos. The British victory strengthened the legitimacy of the Crown’s rule, and the British went so far as to declare Queen Victoria “Empress of India.”
Congo Free State: Established in 1885 by Belgium’s King Leopold II as his “Free State,” in reality, this Central African colony was a series of large rubber plantations worked by forced labor. Brutal weather and working conditions made this one of the most heinous examples of imperialist power. In the 1960s, it declared independence and became Zaire; now, it goes by the name Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Legacies of Imperialism
Indentured servants: As the nations of the Americas and the European colonies began to emancipate African slaves, this system of labor became much more prevalent. Poorer laborers came to the Americas, where they lived and worked for a small wage in exchange for a promise of several years of work.
Chinese Exclusion Act: Instituted in the United States in 1882, these acts severely limited Chinese immigration, which had been prevalent earlier in the century, as many Chinese came to California and other western states for the Gold Rush and to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
Emancipation
Emancipation of slaves: With the emergence of a new liberal political spirit came the idea that slavery was incompatible with Enlightenment ideals of freedom. As industry made field work and slavery less profitable, wage labor became more profitable, since it made sense to reward harder workers with higher wages. From the 1830s to the 1880s, every industrialized nation and their colonies gradually abolished slavery.
Feminism: As new economic systems emerged and more professional jobs emerged, women started pushing for political and economic rights, in a challenge to the Enlightenment’s conservative views of women.