AP World History: Modern, AP exams, 8–10%

Unit 9: Globalization (c. 1900 to the present)

Unit 9 examines technological change, economic integration, and cultural exchange in the contemporary world, along with the resistance those processes generate. Environmental and public-health consequences of technology receive explicit attention. The unit is the natural endpoint for continuity and change essays covering the whole course.

Position: 9 of 9 units
Published weighting: 8–10% in the official framework
Topics covered: 6 topics in this guide

What is covered

Topics inside this unit.

These topics describe the scope students most often review for this part of AP World History: Modern. Treat them as a study checklist rather than an exhaustive list of what a single exam form can sample.

Advances in technology and exchange: Medical, agricultural, transportation, and communication technologies that reshaped daily life and global connection.
Technological limits and costs: Pandemic disease, pollution, resource depletion, and the environmental price of industrial growth.
Economics in the global age: Multinational corporations, free-trade agreements, market reforms, and the growth of knowledge economies.
Calls for reform and responses: Human-rights movements, environmental activism, and international responses to inequality and injustice.
Globalized culture and its critics: Global popular culture and consumer brands alongside religious and nationalist resistance to homogenization.
Institutions in a globalized world: The United Nations, international financial institutions, and nongovernmental organizations as global actors.

Study tips

How to practice Globalization.

Section-specific guidance that follows from how this material is usually tested.

Use this unit as the closing evidence in long-run essays rather than treating it as a stand-alone topic.
Balance benefits and costs of globalization; complexity points come from acknowledging both.
Review it in March or April instead of the final week, when time is scarcest.

Where this fits

Unit 9: Globalization (c. 1900 to the present) is 9 of 9 units in the AP World History: Modern guide, and it carries a published weighting of 8–10% in the official framework. Use the full guide to balance it against everything else you have to review.

Back to the AP World History: Modern guide Official exam information

Sample Globalization questions

Practice questions, not yet expert-reviewed

Original practice questions written to the published framework for this section. No expert has reviewed them, and they are not taken from any official exam. Try each one before you open the answer.

Question 1Foundational
Which international organization founded in 1945 was created to maintain peace and security and now includes nearly every recognized state?
1. AThe United Nations
2. BThe League of Nations
3. CThe North Atlantic Treaty Organization
4. DThe World Trade Organization
Show answer
Answer: A. The United Nations
The United Nations replaced the League with a Security Council able to authorize collective action and a wide network of agencies for health, refugees, and development. The League of Nations is the tempting distractor because it was the model, but it was created after World War I and dissolved in 1946.
Key insight: International institutions are actors in Unit 9, not background, and essays should treat them that way.
Question 2Foundational
Which mid-twentieth-century program spread high-yield seed varieties, chemical fertilizers, and irrigation to Mexico and South Asia and sharply raised grain harvests?
1. AThe Green Revolution
2. BThe Industrial Revolution
3. CCollectivization
4. DThe Columbian Exchange
Show answer
Answer: A. The Green Revolution
Plant breeding and intensive inputs raised wheat and rice yields enough to outpace population growth in several countries, though the methods required fertilizer, water, and capital that poorer farmers often could not obtain. Collectivization is the tempting distractor because it also reorganized agriculture, but it was a Soviet and Chinese policy of consolidating peasant farms under state control rather than a package of seed and input technology.
Key insight: Technological fixes solve one problem and create new dependencies, a pattern worth naming in Unit 9 essays.
Question 3Intermediate
Which kind of business enterprise, operating production and sales across many countries, became a defining institution of the late twentieth-century global economy?
1. AThe multinational corporation
2. BThe joint-stock chartered company
3. CThe craft guild
4. DThe agricultural cooperative
Show answer
Answer: A. The multinational corporation
Multinationals coordinated supply chains across borders, shifted production toward lower-cost regions, and gave some firms revenues larger than the economies of small states. The joint-stock chartered company is the tempting distractor because it was an earlier form of cross-border enterprise, but those companies were monopolies chartered by one state to trade in a designated region.
Key insight: Economic integration in this unit is driven by firms and agreements, not only by states.
Question 4Intermediate
Which 1987 international agreement committed states to phase out the chemicals that were depleting the ozone layer?
1. AThe Montreal Protocol
2. BThe Kyoto Protocol
3. CThe Paris Agreement
4. DThe Helsinki Accords
Show answer
Answer: A. The Montreal Protocol
The protocol restricted chlorofluorocarbons and related compounds and is frequently cited as the most effective environmental treaty in force. The Kyoto Protocol is the tempting distractor because it is a similar environmental agreement, but it was adopted in 1997 and addressed greenhouse gas emissions rather than ozone depletion.
Key insight: Environmental costs of industrial growth generated their own international politics after 1970.
Question 5Advanced
Which policy shift begun in China in 1978 under Deng Xiaoping introduced market incentives and foreign investment while preserving one-party rule?
1. AReform and opening up
2. BThe Great Leap Forward
3. CWar communism
4. DImport substitution industrialization
Show answer
Answer: A. Reform and opening up
Household farming replaced communes, special economic zones attracted foreign capital, and export manufacturing transformed China's place in the world economy without political liberalization. Import substitution industrialization is the tempting distractor because it was also a development strategy of the era, but it aimed to replace imports behind tariff walls rather than to compete in export markets.
Key insight: Market reform without political liberalization became one of the era's most consequential development models.

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Unit 9: Globalization (c. 1900 to the present)