AP World History: Modern — Unit 7: Global Conflict (c. 1900–present)
Practice questions, answers, and key terms for Unit 7, aligned to the College Board CED.
Exam weighting: Unit 7 is 8-10% of the AP World History: Modern exam.
What AP World History: Modern Unit 7 covers
The College Board Course and Exam Description breaks Unit 7 into 9 topics:
- 7.1 Shifting Power After 1900
- 7.2 Causes of World War I
- 7.3 Conducting World War I
- 7.4 Economy in the Interwar Period
- 7.5 Unresolved Tensions After WWI
- 7.6 Causes of World War II
- 7.7 Conducting World War II
- 7.8 Mass Atrocities
- 7.9 Causation in Global Conflict
AP World History: Modern Unit 7 practice questions
In 1900, Europe dominates the world. By 2000, every European empire is gone. The Ottoman, Russian, and Qing empires collapse. European colonial empires dissolve. What happened to the world order in just one century?
Empire → nation-state — the old imperial order gave way to nations. Internal weakness, nationalism, world wars, and anti-colonial resistance shattered centuries-old empires.
Three ancient empires — Ottoman, Russian, Qing — all collapse in the early 1900s. Each had TRIED to modernize (Tanzimat, Self-Strengthening, late reforms). Each failed. What do their collapses have in common?
Internal weakness plus external pressure, converging over decades. Failed reforms and ethnic tensions met world wars and nationalist movements — no single cause brought them down.
The Russian Empire collapses in 1917. But what replaces it isn't a democracy — it's the world's first communist state. A philosopher's theory from Unit 5 becomes a government. Whose ideas, and what state?
Karl Marx's ideas → Lenin's Bolshevik revolution → the Soviet Union. Russia went from autocratic empire to communist state, promising workers' control of the means of production. This would shape global politics for the rest of the century (Cold War, Unit 8).
Mexico in 1910: a dictator has ruled for 35 years. Wealthy elites own most of the land. Peasants have nothing. Workers have no rights. Multiple factions explode into revolution simultaneously — each wanting something different. What are they fighting for?
Land, votes, workers' rights, and ending dictatorship. The 1910-1920 revolution was messy because peasants, workers, and reformers each wanted different things.
M-A-I-N. Four letters, four causes, one world war. Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, Nationalism — each one is a loaded gun. Together they create a situation where ONE assassination triggers GLOBAL catastrophe. What are they, specifically?
Militarism = arms races (Britain vs. Germany naval buildup). Alliances = entangling treaties (Triple Entente vs. Triple Alliance). Imperialism = colonial competition creating rivalries. Nationalism = patriotic fervor making compromise impossible and war feel glorious.
A Serbian nationalist assassinates Austria-Hungary's Archduke Franz Ferdinand. A regional Balkan dispute. So HOW does this one shooting in Sarajevo drag Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire into a WORLD war within weeks?
The alliance system dragged six powers into war. Austria attacked Serbia, Russia mobilized, Germany declared war, France joined, Britain followed — dominoes.
WWI isn't just an army fighting an army. It's ENTIRE SOCIETIES mobilized for war — civilians drafted, factories converted, food rationed, colonial subjects recruited, propaganda everywhere. What term describes a war that consumes an entire nation?
Total war — entire societies mobilized, not just armies. Governments ran factories, rationed food, used propaganda, and drafted colonial subjects; every resource went to winning.
You need millions of citizens to work 14-hour factory shifts, ration their food, and send their sons to die in trenches — for YEARS. How do you keep them motivated when the reality is horrific?
Propaganda — messaging and nationalism to keep people fighting. Governments demonized the enemy and glorified sacrifice, and mobilized colonial subjects with promises mostly broken.
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Key terms in Unit 7
These 12 terms show up in the Unit 7 cards. Each one links to its definition in the AP World History: Modern key-term reference.
Drill all of Unit 7 with spaced repetition
Free Unit 1 on every AP course. Smart spaced repetition. No subscription.