AP World History: Modern — Unit 9: Globalization (c. 1900–present)
Practice questions, answers, and key terms for Unit 9, aligned to the College Board CED.
Exam weighting: Unit 9 is 8-10% of the AP World History: Modern exam.
What AP World History: Modern Unit 9 covers
The College Board Course and Exam Description breaks Unit 9 into 9 topics:
- 9.1 Advances in Technology and Exchange After 1900
- 9.2 Technological Advances and Limitations: Disease
- 9.3 Technology and the Environment
- 9.4 Economics in the Global Age
- 9.5 Calls for Reform and Responses
- 9.6 Globalized Culture
- 9.7 Resistance to Globalization
- 9.8 Institutions Developing in a Globalized World
- 9.9 Continuity and Change in a Globalized World
AP World History: Modern Unit 9 practice questions
For ALL of human history, distance was the enemy of communication. Then radio lets you talk across continents instantly. Cell phones make it personal and portable. The internet makes it global, free, and permanent. What problem did ALL of these solve?
Geographic distance — the ancient enemy every comms tech attacked. Each innovation, from Silk Road caravans to the internet, shrank the world further by erasing distance.
Air travel crosses oceans in hours instead of weeks. But the REAL unsung hero of globalization? A standardized metal box. It makes shipping SO cheap that a factory in China can sell goods in Iowa for less than a factory in Ohio. What is it?
The shipping container — standard boxes that made shipping cheap. Goods packed in a Chinese factory now reach American shelves quickly, making global supply chains possible.
In the 1960s, experts predict BILLIONS will starve as population outgrows food supply. Instead, new crop varieties + chemical fertilizers + irrigation techniques INCREASE food production faster than population grows. What's this agricultural revolution?
The Green Revolution — high-yield crops plus fertilizer. The predicted famine never happened, but the costs were real: pollution, chemical dependency, displaced small farmers.
Vaccines eliminate smallpox. Antibiotics cure infections that killed millions. Infant mortality plummets. The result? Global population EXPLODES from 1.6 billion (1900) to 8 billion (today). But living longer creates NEW health challenges. What are they?
Diseases of longevity — heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's. People now live long enough to develop them; medicine shifted which diseases matter rather than eliminating disease.
For most of human history, women had little control over whether or when they had children. Then effective birth control gives them a choice for the first time. Fertility rates DROP worldwide. Women pursue education and careers. Family structures shift. What just changed?
Everything changed — women could choose to have children. Smaller families, more women in the workforce, falling fertility — one of the century's biggest social shifts.
Petroleum powers your car, heats your house, and makes the plastics in everything you own. Nuclear power generates electricity without carbon emissions. Both raised human productivity enormously. But both come with terrifying risks. What are they?
Oil brings wars and pollution; nuclear brings meltdowns and bombs. Each energy source raised productivity enormously while creating new existential threats.
Medical science eliminates smallpox and controls polio — but malaria, TB, and cholera persist in the world's poorest regions. Meanwhile HIV/AIDS kills 36 million, and new epidemics (Ebola, influenza) keep emerging. How can medicine be so advanced yet disease so persistent?
Because medical progress is uneven across the world. Poverty diseases persist where clean water is scarce, new epidemics emerge, and longevity brings chronic illness.
In 1918, troop ships carry influenza across the Atlantic. The virus kills 50-100 million people — MORE than World War I. In 2020, air travel spreads COVID-19 worldwide in weeks. Same pattern, a century apart. What's the lesson?
What connects the world for trade also spreads disease. Ships carried the 1918 flu and air travel carried COVID worldwide — connectivity creates shared vulnerability.
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Key terms in Unit 9
These 12 terms show up in the Unit 9 cards. Each one links to its definition in the AP World History: Modern key-term reference.
Drill all of Unit 9 with spaced repetition
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