Your FREE AP World History Flashcards 2026 – 200+ Cards

The Chinese belief that Heaven grants a just ruler the right to govern; disasters or defeat signal a dynasty has lost it.

Chinese dynasty (960-1279) known for prosperity, technological innovation, and a revived Confucian bureaucracy.

China's merit-based written exam, rooted in Confucianism, used to recruit government officials by knowledge rather than birth.

A revival of Confucian thought in Song China that blended ethics with Buddhist and Daoist ideas; reinforced social hierarchy.

The Confucian duty of respect and obedience children owe their parents and elders; a foundation of Chinese social order.

A fast-ripening, drought-resistant rice from Vietnam that boosted Chinese harvests and fueled population growth.

A vast Chinese inland waterway linking north and south, enabling internal trade and the movement of grain.

Literally 'the house of Islam' — the lands and peoples under Islamic rule, connected by faith, trade, and scholarship.

The Islamic empire (centered on Baghdad) that fragmented after 1200 as Turkic and Mongol powers rose.

A mystical form of Islam that, through traveling preachers, helped spread the faith across Afro-Eurasia.

A center of learning in Abbasid Baghdad where scholars preserved and advanced Greek, Persian, and Indian knowledge.

A series of Muslim dynasties (1206-1526) that ruled much of South Asia from Delhi.

A devotional Hindu movement emphasizing personal love for a deity, which cut across caste lines.

A Buddhist maritime kingdom on Sumatra that controlled the Strait of Malacca and Indian Ocean trade.

A powerful Hindu-Buddhist maritime empire based on Java (1293-1527).

A wealthy West African empire (c. 1235-1600s) built on the gold and salt trade; famed for its ruler Mansa Musa.

Ruler of Mali whose lavish 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca displayed and spread the empire's wealth.

A powerful southern African kingdom known for its massive stone-walled capital.

Trading city-states on East Africa's coast (e.g., Kilwa) that grew rich on Indian Ocean commerce and blended Bantu and Arab culture.

A powerful Mesoamerican empire (c. 1345-1521) centered on Tenochtitlan, organized around tribute and human sacrifice.

A vast Andean empire (c. 1438-1533) ruled from Cusco, knit together by roads and the mit'a labor system.

The Inca system of mandatory public labor service owed to the state.

The medieval European (and Japanese) system of land granted in exchange for military service and loyalty.

The economic side of European feudalism: self-sufficient manors worked by serfs bound to the land.

Overland trade routes linking China to the Mediterranean, carrying luxury goods, religions, technology, and disease.

The 'Mongol Peace' — the stability the Mongols imposed that protected trade routes and intensified Eurasian exchange.

The largest contiguous land empire in history, founded by Chinggis Khan, unifying much of Eurasia in the 1200s.

The founder and first Great Khan of the Mongol Empire (c. 1162-1227).

The four regional divisions into which the Mongol Empire split after Chinggis Khan's death.

Grandson of Chinggis Khan who conquered China and founded the Yuan dynasty.

The Mongol-ruled dynasty of China (1271-1368) established by Kublai Khan.

Roadside inns along trade routes where merchants and caravans rested, fostering commerce and exchange.

Monsoon-driven maritime trade linking East Africa, Arabia, India, Southeast Asia, and China; spread Islam.

Seasonal winds that reverse direction, enabling predictable round-trip sailing across the Indian Ocean.

An Arab and Indian sailing vessel with triangular (lateen) sails used in Indian Ocean trade.

Caravan trade across the Sahara linking West African gold and salt to North Africa; spread Islam.

The plague pandemic that spread along trade routes in the 1300s, killing a large share of Afro-Eurasia's population.

Merchant communities that settled far from home along trade routes, spreading their culture and religion.

A Venetian merchant whose accounts of travel to Yuan China increased European interest in Asia.

A Moroccan scholar whose decades of travel across Dar al-Islam left a famous record of the era's connections.

A triangular sail allowing ships to sail against the wind, improving Indian Ocean and later European navigation.

A navigation instrument, refined in the Islamic world, used to determine latitude by the stars.

A Chinese invention that spread westward along the trade routes, transforming warfare across Eurasia.

An innovation that made camels efficient pack animals, expanding trans-Saharan and overland trade.

A Chinese navigational invention that spread along trade routes and improved sea travel.

A commercial alliance of northern European trading towns that dominated Baltic and North Sea trade.

An early Chinese form of paper credit that facilitated long-distance trade.

Italian city-states that grew wealthy as gateways for Mediterranean and Asian trade.

The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires — large Islamic land-based states (c. 1450-1750) that expanded using cannons and muskets.

A Sunni Muslim land empire centered on Anatolia and the Balkans; took Constantinople in 1453.

The 1453 Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine capital, renamed Istanbul; ended the Byzantine Empire.

Elite Ottoman infantry, originally enslaved Christian boys converted to Islam, who used gunpowder weapons.

The Ottoman system of taking Christian boys for state and military service as Janissaries or administrators.

Ottoman sultan (r. 1520-1566) under whom the empire reached its height.

A Persian (Iranian) empire that enforced Shia Islam, fueling rivalry with the Sunni Ottomans.

Safavid ruler under whom the empire reached its cultural and political peak.

A Muslim-ruled empire over a Hindu-majority South Asia (1526-1857).

Mughal emperor known for religious tolerance and an efficient, centralized administration.

A marble mausoleum built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan; a symbol of imperial power and Islamic art.

Local Mughal tax officials who collected revenue, helping administer the empire.

The European belief that a monarch's authority comes directly from God, used to legitimize absolute rule.

A system in which a monarch holds total, centralized power (e.g., Louis XIV of France).

French 'Sun King' whose Palace of Versailles symbolized absolute monarchy.

Louis XIV's grand palace, built as propaganda for absolute royal power.

The Chinese dynasty (1368-1644) that restored Han Chinese rule after the Mongols.

The last Chinese dynasty (1644-1912), ruled by the Manchus.

The military government that unified and isolated Japan from 1603 to 1868.

A growing land empire expanding eastward across Siberia under tsars like Peter and Ivan.

The transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after 1492.

A small, maneuverable Portuguese ship that enabled long ocean voyages of exploration.

The explorer whose 1492 voyage, funded by Spain, opened sustained contact between Europe and the Americas.

The Portuguese explorer who first sailed around Africa to India (1498).

Led the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe (1519-1522).

The 1494 agreement dividing newly explored lands between Spain and Portugal.

An economic theory that national wealth comes from accumulating precious metals and a favorable balance of trade.

A business owned by shareholders who pool capital and share risk, used to fund colonization (e.g., the East India Companies).

A joint-stock company that came to dominate trade and rule in India.

A powerful joint-stock company that controlled much of the Indian Ocean spice trade.

A Spanish labor system granting colonists the right to demand labor and tribute from Indigenous people.

The Spanish colonial social hierarchy based on race and ancestry.

The forced transport of roughly twelve million enslaved Africans to the Americas (1500s-1800s) for plantation labor.

The brutal Atlantic crossing endured by enslaved Africans, in which many died.

The Atlantic trade network linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas in exchanges of goods and enslaved people.

A system of large-scale cash-crop farming (sugar, tobacco, cotton) reliant on coerced labor.

Crops grown for sale rather than subsistence — sugar, tobacco, and cotton drove the Atlantic economy.

A New World crop spread by the Columbian Exchange that boosted Old World populations.

An Old World disease that, via the Columbian Exchange, devastated Indigenous American populations.

Spanish conquerors (like Cortes and Pizarro) who toppled the Aztec and Inca empires.

The web of trade, migration, and exchange that connected the Atlantic world after 1492.

Reshaped global diets, populations, and economies; its diseases caused catastrophic Indigenous death.

Spanish ships that linked the Americas and Asia via the Philippines, trading silver for Asian goods.

An 18th-century movement emphasizing reason, natural rights, and the idea that government rests on the consent of the governed.

Enlightenment thinker who argued for natural rights (life, liberty, property) and consent of the governed.

Enlightenment thinker who developed the idea of the social contract and popular sovereignty.

Enlightenment thinker who advocated the separation of powers in government.

Rights (life, liberty, property) Enlightenment thinkers said all people are born with.

The idea that government's legitimacy comes from an agreement among the people it governs.

The wave of American, French, Haitian, and Latin American revolutions inspired by Enlightenment ideas.

The 1776 colonial revolt that won independence from Britain on natural-rights grounds.

The 1789 overthrow of the French monarchy under 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.'

The 1789 French statement of Enlightenment principles and individual rights.

The 1791-1804 revolution in which enslaved people overthrew French rule, creating the first nation led by formerly enslaved people.

The leading figure of the Haitian Revolution.

Early-1800s independence movements that freed Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

The 'Liberator' who led independence movements across northern South America.

The belief that a people sharing language, culture, or history should have their own nation-state.

The shift, beginning in Britain (~1750-1800), from hand production to mechanized factory manufacturing.

A coal-powered machine, improved by James Watt, that powered factories, trains, and ships.

A method of production concentrating workers and machines in one place, replacing home-based craft work.

An early machine that spun multiple threads at once, mechanizing textile production.

The consolidation of English farmland that pushed peasants off the land and toward industrial cities.

The movement to end slavery, energized by Enlightenment ideals of equality.

Home-based production of goods that preceded the factory system before industrialization.

The late-1800s surge of European empire-building in Africa and Asia, driven by industry's need for markets and raw materials.

The rapid European colonization of nearly all of Africa in the late 1800s.

The 1884-85 meeting where European powers divided Africa among themselves.

The misapplication of 'survival of the fittest' to justify imperialism and racial hierarchy.

The 1857 Indian uprising against the British East India Company that led to direct British Crown rule.

Mid-1800s conflicts in which Britain forced China to keep trade (including opium) open.

Regions where a foreign power held exclusive trading and political rights, as in China.

Japan's 1868 reform that rapidly industrialized and modernized the country to resist Western imperialism.

Karl Marx's critique of capitalism predicting a workers' revolution against the owning class.

Co-author of The Communist Manifesto and founder of modern communist theory.

An ideology favoring collective or government ownership of the means of production.

Worker organizations that formed to demand better wages, hours, and conditions in industrial society.

An economic system based on private ownership and market competition, dominant in industrial economies.

The 1871 creation of a unified German nation-state, led by Otto von Bismarck.

The 19th-century nationalist movement that united Italy into a single state.

The rapid growth of cities as industrialization drew workers from the countryside.

A new social class of professionals and business owners created by industrial capitalism.

Contract labor (often from India and China) that migrated to fill plantation work after slavery's decline.

Colonies where large numbers of Europeans permanently settled, displacing Indigenous peoples.

An 1869 canal linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas, vital to imperial trade and strategy.

The property-owning middle class; in Marxism, the class that owns the means of production.

In Marxism, the industrial working class that sells its labor.

A 1914-1918 global war among the great powers, sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The four long-term causes of World War I: Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism.

A war in which a nation mobilizes its entire population and economy for the war effort.

The deadly, static fighting of World War I from fortified trenches on the Western Front.

The Austro-Hungarian archduke whose 1914 assassination triggered World War I.

The 1919 treaty ending WWI that imposed harsh terms on Germany, sowing seeds of WWII.

The post-WWI international body meant to prevent war; weakened by the absence of the United States.

The 1917 revolution that overthrew the tsar and brought the communist Bolsheviks to power.

The Bolshevik leader of the Russian Revolution and founder of the Soviet Union.

The severe worldwide economic collapse of the 1930s that fueled the rise of fascism.

An authoritarian, ultranationalist ideology that rose in interwar Italy and Germany.

The Nazi dictator of Germany whose aggression launched World War II in Europe.

A 1939-1945 global war between the Allies and the Axis; the deadliest conflict in history.

The Nazi genocide of six million Jews and millions of others during World War II.

Japan's 1941 attack that brought the United States into World War II.

The nuclear weapons the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, ending World War II.

The Ottoman-era mass killing of Armenians during World War I.

The principle, promoted after WWI, that peoples should choose their own government.

The wartime direction of a nation's whole economy and society toward the war effort.

The international organization founded in 1945 to promote peace and cooperation after WWII.

World War II mobilized entire economies and civilian populations on an even larger scale than WWI.

The 1945-1991 rivalry between the US and the USSR, fought through proxy wars, an arms race, and ideology.

The US Cold War strategy to stop the spread of communism beyond where it already existed.

The ideological and physical divide separating Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe from the West.

The US program of economic aid to rebuild Western Europe and resist communism after WWII.

The Western military alliance formed in 1949 to counter Soviet power.

The Soviet-led military alliance of communist Eastern Europe.

The US pledge to support nations resisting communism.

A 1950-1953 Cold War proxy war that divided Korea at the 38th parallel.

A Cold War proxy conflict in which the US tried and failed to stop communist reunification of Vietnam.

The 1962 standoff over Soviet missiles in Cuba that brought the world close to nuclear war.

The doctrine that a full nuclear exchange would destroy both sides, deterring direct war.

The Cold War competition in spaceflight between the US and USSR.

The process by which Asian and African colonies gained independence, mostly after World War II.

The leader of India's nonviolent independence movement against British rule.

The 1947 end of British rule, accompanied by the partition into India and Pakistan.

The 1947 division of British India into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

South Africa's system of legalized racial segregation, ended in the 1990s.

The anti-apartheid leader who became South Africa's first Black president.

Mao Zedong's 1949 victory that established the People's Republic of China.

The communist leader who founded the People's Republic of China in 1949.

A bloc of nations that refused to side with either superpower during the Cold War.

The barrier dividing communist East and democratic West Berlin (1961-1989); its fall symbolized the Cold War's end.

The 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union that ended the Cold War.

Gorbachev's 1980s policies of openness and economic restructuring that helped end the USSR.

The increasing interconnection of the world's economies, cultures, technologies, and populations, especially after 1900.

The mid-20th-century spread of new seeds, fertilizers, and techniques that sharply increased global crop yields.

A company that operates in many countries, a key driver of economic globalization.

The reduction of tariffs and barriers to international trade, advanced by deals like NAFTA and the WTO.

An international body that regulates and promotes global trade.

The global computer network that revolutionized communication and accelerated globalization.

The use of standardized shipping containers that dramatically lowered the cost of global trade.

Long-term warming and disruption of Earth's climate, driven largely by industrial greenhouse-gas emissions.

The large-scale movement of people across borders for work, safety, or opportunity.

Globally spreading diseases (such as influenza and HIV/AIDS) made faster by modern travel.

A political and economic union of European states promoting integration and free movement.

New nations often inherited colonial borders that cut across ethnic lines, fueling later conflict.

The idea of universal rights, advanced by the UN's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UN's 1948 statement of fundamental rights for all people.

Late-20th-century movements that advanced women's political, economic, and social rights worldwide.

Movements asserting traditional religious values, often in reaction to globalization and secular change.

Private groups (NGOs) like the Red Cross that address global problems across borders.

The opening of economies (e.g., China and India after the 1980s) to markets and global trade.

An economy centered on information, technology, and services rather than manufacturing.

Protest movements opposing the inequality and corporate power associated with globalization.