Labor & Class
This Chinese system required citizens to pass rigorous exams on Confucian texts to enter the bureaucracy, theoretically allowing for social mobility.
What is the Civil Service Exam?
What is the Mandate of Heaven?
This Chinese maritime invention allowed ships to sail into the wind, a technology later adopted by Europeans to cross the Atlantic.
What are Lateen Sails?
This 17th-century conflict, also known as Metacom's Rebellion, was the last major effort by the indigenous people of southern New England to drive out the English settlers.
What is King Philip's War?
When analyzing a map or a graph on the MCQ section, you should look for this specific element first to understand what the data is actually measuring before looking at the answer choices.
What is the Title/Legend (or Key)?
As the Industrial Revolution shifted production from the home to the factory, this 19th-century social ideal emerged among the middle class, stipulating that women should remain in the domestic sphere while men navigated the "public" world of business and politics.
What is the Cult of Domesticity?
This 16th-century religious movement used the newly invented printing press to challenge the corruption of the Catholic Church and the authority of the Pope.
What is the Protestant Reformation?
This 15th-century Portuguese ship design combined the square sails of Europe with the lateen sails of the Indian Ocean, creating a fast, highly maneuverable vessel capable of both coastal exploration and trans-oceanic voyages.
What is the Caravel?
The only successful slave revolt in history that resulted in the creation of an independent state in 1804 was led by this man.
To demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of a prompt about "Change," a student can identify this term for a significant element of the era that stayed the same despite the major shifts occurring.
What is continuity?
In the 19th century, following the abolition of slavery, the British and French Empires filled labor shortages by transporting millions of workers from India and China under this type of contract.
What is Indentured Servitude?
In the 16th century, the Safavid Empire distinguished itself from its Ottoman and Mughal neighbors by making this specific branch of Islam the official state religion, a move that still impacts Middle Eastern geopolitics today.
What is Shi'a Islam?
This 19th-century invention allowed the British to communicate with India in hours rather than months, drastically tightening imperial control.
What is the Telegraph?
This mid-19th century anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising in China was led by the "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists" and ultimately forced the Qing Dynasty to pay massive reparations to Western powers.
What is the Boxer Rebellion?
On the SAQ (Short Answer Question), you should avoid using vague pronouns like they or it and instead use these to ensure the grader knows exactly which historical actor or process you are referencing.
What are names/specific names?
In the wake of this event in the 14th century, the sudden shortage of labor allowed survivors of Western Europe to demand higher wages and led to the gradual breakdown of serfdom.
What is the Black Death/ Bubonic Plague/ Black Plague?
To manage a sprawling, multi-ethnic empire, this 15th-century Andean state practiced a form of "Religious Imperialism," forcing conquered peoples to worship the Sun God, Inti, while simultaneously hosting the captured idols of those conquered groups in the capital of Cusco to ensure their loyalty.
What is the Inca Empire?
This 17th-century Japanese policy restricted all foreign trade to a single island in Nagasaki harbor, primarily to limit the influence of Christianity.
What is Sakoku (or the Closed Country Policy)?
This 1857 uprising against the British East India Company was sparked by rumors that rifle cartridges were greased with animal fat, violating Hindu and Muslim taboos.
What is the Sepoy Mutiny (or the Great Rebellion of 1857)?
High-level writing involves looking at a historical development through multiple of these "lenses"—for example, explaining how the Crusades were not just a religious conflict, but also driven by economic desires for trade and political competition between monarchs.
What are themes?
In the 20th century, Mao Zedong shifted the focus of Marxist revolution away from the urban "proletariat" and toward this specific social class.
Who are the Peasantry/Peasant Farmers/Farmers?
This 18th-century intellectual concept argued that political sovereignty resided in the "General Will" of the people rather than in a divinely ordained monarch, a belief that transformed from a European salon debate into a global justification for the overthrow of the Bourbon, Romanov, and Qing dynasties.
What is Popular Sovereignty (or Social Contract Theory)?
In the late 19th century, this "extractive" technological strategy—exemplified by the Suez Canal and the transcontinental railroads—created a "hub-and-spoke" global economy where raw materials flowed from the colonized periphery to the industrial core, permanently altering the ecology and infrastructure of Asia and Africa.
What is Industrial Imperialism (or Infrastructure-Led Colonialism)?
Led by a woman named Yaa Asantewaa, this 1900 conflict represented the final major resistance of this West African empire against British annexation.
What is the War of the Golden Stool (or the Asante Rebellion)?
To earn the "Evidence Beyond the Documents" point, a student must not only name a specific piece of outside information but also perform this critical step: explaining exactly how that evidence supports, modifies, or qualifies their specific thesis statement.
What is Linking to Argument (or Establishing Relevance)?