Periodization AP World History Modern

A new syncretic religion, Sikhism, emerged in South Asia that blended elements of Islam and Hinduism.

The Chinese invade Vietnam, discover champa rice, and experience population increase.

Anti-colonial independence movements succeed, some through armed conflict (Algeria) and others negotiation (India).

Enlightenment ideas about liberty lead to independence and revolutions in the Americas and Europe.

The Mongols create the largest contiguous empire in history. Silk Road trade is revived.

Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta travel and interpret the world through their cultural lenses.

The Russian Empire emancipates serfs inspired by the Enlightenment and in order to create a new labor force.

Isma'il creates an Islamic gunpowder empire using Shi'ism as its source of legitimacy.

South Asia is partitioned into two states because of religious nationalism.

National identities first form out of common cultural, ethnic, linguistic or religious traits.

Groups such as the Marathas in South Asia and the Taiping in East Asia challenge Mughal and Qing imperial rule.

The Tanzimat Reform in the Ottoman empire provokes conservatives by secularizing education.

Japan is pulled out of its isolation, quickly industrializes and becomes an imperial power.

A slave revolt in the Caribbean creates a free Black republic.

The Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and British form maritime empires in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

European Christianity forms syncretic religious beliefs with indigenous Latin American faiths.

Ideologies such as Socialism and Communism first emerge to offer ideological alternatives to industrial capitalism.

Women's suffrage movements are successful in Europe and North America.

The global silver trade emerges.

Asian indentured servants replaced newly freed slaves on cash crop plantations in the Caribbean.

New racial classifications, such as creole, mestizo, and mulatto, first emerge in Latin America.

CIA-based coups in Guatemala and Iran deposed popularly-elected socialist leaders in favor of pro-Western dictators.

Using new technologies like the magnetic compass, Indian Ocean trade expanded, primarily driven by Muslim merchants.

Pro-democracy movements are successful in Eastern Europe but crushed in East Asia in the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Human population increases due to medical advances such as penicillin and polio vaccinations.

The Abbasid caliphate fragments as new Turkic sultanates emerge.

Hindu-Buddhist civilizations, such as Majapahit, thrive in Southeast Asia.

Exchange of crops, culture, animals, and pathogens begins between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas

Global power structure is dominated by a bi-polar struggle btwn opposing ideologies represented by the U.S. and the USSR

The Russian and Ottoman empires collapse.

Migration leads to cultural enclaves in urban areas, such as Chinatown in San Francisco, leading to legal discrimination

The Aztecs build a decentralized state based on tribute and an agricultural system of chinampas

A second wave of imperialism pushes Europeans to colonize Africa and much of Asia.

Afro-Eurasia experiences a population surge due to the transplanting of American crops.

Portugal creates a trading post empire in the Indian Ocean.