AP World History: Unit 1 Overview (Circa 1200 to 1450)

🌏 The Concept of State

• Definition: A territory politically organized under a single government (e.g., the United States, Japan).

📚 Song Dynasty China

• Period: 960 - 1279
• Key Focus: How the Song Dynasty maintained and justified its rule.
• Methods of Rule:
  • Emphasis on Neo-Confucianism to promote societal harmony and hierarchy.
  • Expansion of the imperial bureaucracy through civil service examinations.
  • Social restrictions and legal rights for women, including foot binding and property laws.
• Economic Growth: Commercialization, porcelain and silk trade, introduction of Champa rice, and expansion of the Grand Canal.

🕌 Dar al-Islam

• Key Elements:
  • The rise of turkic Muslim empires as Arab Muslim empires declined.
  • Continuation of Sharia law and military-administered states.
  • Cultural and scientific innovations, including advancements in mathematics and preservation of Greek philosophical works.
• Expansion: Military conquests, merchant activities, and Sufi missionary work.

🐘 South and Southeast Asia

• Religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam shape societies.
  • Bhakti movement in Hinduism: Emphasis on devotion to a single god.
  • Islam: Becomes the religion of the elite with the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate.
• State Building Efforts:
  • Difficulty for the Delhi Sultanate to impose Muslim state on a predominantly Hindu population.
  • Formation of Hindu kingdoms in resistance to Muslim rule (e.g., Rajput Kingdom, Vijayanagara Empire).
  • Majapahit and Khmer empires highlight the diversity between sea- and land-based states.

🌎 Americas

• Aztec Empire: Founded in 1345, tribute states, human sacrifice.
• Inca Empire: Established in the early 1400s, highly centralized bureaucracy, mit'a labor system.
• Mississippian Culture: Agriculture-based with monumental burial mounds.

🌍 Africa

• Swahili Civilization: Trade-driven cities along the east African coast, influenced by Islam.
• West African Empires: Focused on trade and partly Islamized elite.
• Great Zimbabwe: Economic prosperity through trade and gold.
• Kingdom of Ethiopia: Christian state, hierarchical, flourished through trade.

🏰 Europe

• Belief Systems: Divide between Eastern Orthodox (Byzantine Empire) and Roman Catholicism.
• State Building:
  • Fragmented states with feudalism and manorialism at the core.
  • Transition towards centralized monarchies over time.

This unit emphasizes the diverse ways states operated and interacted, through political systems, economic policies, religious beliefs, and cultural practices, from 1200 to 1450.