AP World History Continuity & Change Over Time Practice Test

Question

Easy

Foundation • Question 1 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Song civil service expansion. A larger examination bureaucracy strengthened central administration while preserving Confucian elite ideals.

Which comparison best captures continuity and change in Song governance?

A. The Song ended centralized administration and transferred tax collection permanently to foreign merchants. B. The Song abolished Confucian education when it expanded the examination system. C. The Song expanded examination recruitment and the size of the civil bureaucracy while continuing to ground elite political authority in Confucian learning. D. The Song replaced civilian officials with hereditary warrior lords throughout the empire.

Answer 1

Easy

Foundation • Question 1 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Song civil service expansion. A larger examination bureaucracy strengthened central administration while preserving Confucian elite ideals.

Which comparison best captures continuity and change in Song governance?

A. The Song ended centralized administration and transferred tax collection permanently to foreign merchants. B. The Song abolished Confucian education when it expanded the examination system. C. The Song expanded examination recruitment and the size of the civil bureaucracy while continuing to ground elite political authority in Confucian learning. D. The Song replaced civilian officials with hereditary warrior lords throughout the empire.

Answer 2

Easy

Foundation • Question 2 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Mongol conquest and exchange. Conquest devastated some regions while Mongol rule also intensified movement across Eurasian networks.

Which statement best explains change and persistence under Mongol rule in Eurasia?

A. Mongol rulers intensified trans-Eurasian movement and protected many routes, while older regional commercial centers and merchant communities continued to operate. B. Mongol rulers replaced every conquered religion with a single compulsory faith. C. Mongol conquest restored the Roman road system as the main basis of Eurasian commerce. D. Mongol conquest ended all long-distance trade because merchants could no longer cross imperial borders.

Answer 3

Easy

Foundation • Question 3 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Indian Ocean monsoon trade. Predictable seasonal winds supported regular maritime commerce and merchant diasporas.

Which observation best demonstrates continuity within Indian Ocean commerce over time?

A. Caravan travel across Central Asia replaced maritime shipping after 1200. B. Steamships determined sailing schedules throughout the thirteenth century. C. European states eliminated Muslim, Hindu, and Southeast Asian merchants as soon as they entered the ocean. D. Merchants continued to organize voyages around monsoon wind cycles even as ports, commodities, and political patrons changed.

Answer 4

Easy

Foundation • Question 4 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Ottoman devshirme and Janissaries. Recruitment institutions helped the sultan build forces tied directly to central authority.

Which interpretation best describes the Ottoman military-administrative change associated with devshirme?

A. Janissaries were hereditary feudal knights whose estates made them independent of the sultan. B. Devshirme created centrally dependent military-administrative personnel while the dynasty continued to rule through a broader mix of provincial elites, religious authorities, and tax arrangements. C. The institution transferred Ottoman military command to Safavid religious leaders. D. Devshirme immediately eliminated all provincial intermediaries and local notables.

Answer 5

Easy

Foundation • Question 5 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Columbian Exchange disease. Old World pathogens caused catastrophic Indigenous population loss, reshaping labor and conquest.

Which before-and-after comparison best shows the demographic impact of the Columbian Exchange?

A. American epidemics ended coerced labor because colonial states abandoned demands for workers. B. Large Indigenous populations before sustained Afro-Eurasian contact were followed by catastrophic mortality from introduced diseases, while Indigenous communities nevertheless survived and adapted. C. Indigenous populations in the Americas remained demographically stable because Old World diseases had little effect. D. European populations collapsed because maize and potatoes reduced food supplies.

Answer 6

Easy

Foundation • Question 6 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Atlantic plantation slavery. Plantation demand for coerced labor expanded racialized hereditary slavery and Atlantic commerce.

Which claim best captures continuity and change in Atlantic labor after plantation expansion?

A. Plantation owners relied almost entirely on European guild apprentices. B. Plantations ended coerced labor by replacing it with universally free wage contracts. C. Atlantic slavery was identical to every earlier form of servitude in legal status and inheritance. D. Plantation growth expanded racialized hereditary chattel slavery on an unprecedented Atlantic scale, while coercive labor itself had older precedents in many societies.

Answer 7

Easy

Foundation • Question 7 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: American silver and China. American silver linked Spanish colonies, Manila, and Chinese markets through global exchange.

Which development best shows both change and continuity in China's participation in the global silver trade?

A. Ming tax reforms increased demand for silver and drew China more tightly into global flows, while Chinese markets and state fiscal needs continued to shape how foreign bullion was absorbed. B. Silver imports caused China to abandon all internal markets for barter. C. American silver ended Chinese demand for taxes and commercial exchange. D. The Manila trade made China a formal colony of Spain.

Answer 8

Easy

Foundation • Question 8 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Enlightenment political thought. Natural-rights and sovereignty arguments challenged inherited political authority.

Which thesis best qualifies the political impact of Enlightenment ideas?

A. Natural-rights arguments immediately replaced monarchy everywhere in Europe. B. Enlightenment writers had no political influence because most states remained monarchies. C. Ideas about rights and popular sovereignty supplied new languages for political challenge, even as monarchy, property restrictions, slavery, and unequal citizenship persisted in many places. D. Enlightenment thought restored medieval corporate privilege as the main basis of sovereignty.

Answer 9

Easy

Foundation • Question 9 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Haitian Revolution. Enslaved people transformed revolutionary rights claims into an antislavery independence struggle.

Which comparison best identifies change and persistence after the Haitian Revolution?

A. Independence destroyed slavery and colonial rule in Haiti, but the new state still faced plantation-era economic pressures, foreign isolation, and demands for export production. B. Independence eliminated all social and economic inequalities inherited from Saint-Domingue. C. Haitian independence preserved French slavery unchanged until the late nineteenth century. D. The revolution transferred Haiti directly to British colonial rule.

Answer 10

Easy

Foundation • Question 10 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: British industrialization. Coal, capital, labor, markets, and technological innovation combined to accelerate factory production.

Which evidence best demonstrates both industrial change and social continuity in Britain?

A. Coal use declined as Britain shifted back to wood as its principal industrial fuel. B. Industrialization returned most British workers permanently to self-sufficient farming. C. Factory production and steam power expanded output and urbanization, while class inequality and dependence on wage labor remained important features of society. D. Factories eliminated distinctions of wealth because machine production equalized incomes.

Answer 11

Medium

Application • Question 11 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Meiji industrialization. State-directed reform used industry, education, and military modernization to strengthen Japan.

Which statement best captures continuity and change during Meiji industrialization?

A. Industrialization ended Japanese imperial ambitions and reduced state military power. B. State-led modernization transformed military, education, taxation, and industry, while political authority remained concentrated in an elite rather than becoming fully democratic. C. Japan adopted industrial technologies and centralized institutions while preserving the Tokugawa domain system unchanged. D. The Meiji state rejected Western technology to protect samurai economic privileges.

Answer 12

Medium

Application • Question 12 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: New Imperialism. Industrial power, nationalism, strategic rivalry, and racial ideologies supported late nineteenth-century expansion.

Which interpretation best distinguishes New Imperialism from earlier expansion while recognizing continuity?

A. European expansion after 1870 ended competition among imperial states. B. New Imperialism was the first period in history when states sought resources abroad. C. Industrial powers stopped using military force and relied only on voluntary trade agreements. D. Late nineteenth-century empires used industrial weapons, steam transport, and new racial ideologies to intensify territorial conquest, while strategic rivalry and extraction remained longstanding imperial motives.

Answer 13

Medium

Application • Question 13 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Indian Rebellion of 1857. Military grievances interacted with wider resentment of East India Company rule.

Which outcome of the 1857 rebellion best illustrates change without total institutional rupture in India?

A. Britain ended imperial rule and restored full Mughal sovereignty. B. The rebellion abolished land-revenue collection across India. C. After 1857, Indian soldiers were excluded entirely from colonial military service. D. The British Crown replaced East India Company rule and reorganized the army, while colonial extraction and British political dominance continued.

Answer 14

Medium

Application • Question 14 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Cash-crop colonial economies. Colonial policies often redirected land and labor toward export commodities and external markets.

Which claim best describes continuity and change in colonial cash-crop economies?

A. Colonial railroads were designed mainly to isolate producers from ports. B. Colonial governments redirected more land and labor toward export commodities, while many producers still depended on older local farming knowledge and household labor arrangements. C. Cash-crop policies eliminated subsistence agriculture everywhere they were introduced. D. Export agriculture made colonies economically independent of world commodity prices.

Answer 15

Medium

Application • Question 15 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Indentured migration. Contract labor moved millions after slavery’s abolition while preserving coercive labor conditions.

Which comparison best explains labor change after Atlantic slavery was abolished?

A. Emancipation ended employer efforts to control labor mobility. B. Indentured workers were all European migrants with unrestricted political rights. C. Contract migration expanded as employers sought controlled labor after emancipation, changing legal status while preserving significant coercion through contracts, debt, and penal sanctions. D. Indenture recreated chattel slavery exactly, including permanent hereditary ownership of workers.

Answer 16

Medium

Application • Question 16 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: World War I mobilization. Industrial states mobilized soldiers, colonial resources, propaganda, and civilian economies for total war.

Which statement best demonstrates continuity and change in World War I mobilization?

A. Industrial states expanded conscription, propaganda, rationing, and economic direction on a new scale, while governments continued to depend on taxation, patriotic appeals, and imperial resources. B. Total war eliminated civilian participation in national economies. C. Colonial troops disappeared from European imperial armies during the war. D. Governments abandoned industrial production in favor of preindustrial craft workshops.

Answer 17

Medium

Application • Question 17 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Treaty of Versailles. The settlement redrew borders and imposed penalties while leaving major disputes unresolved.

Which continuity most clearly qualifies the claim that Versailles created a completely new international order?

A. The League possessed an independent army capable of enforcing every decision. B. The settlement created new states and the League of Nations, yet great-power interests, imperial mandates, and unresolved nationalist disputes continued to shape diplomacy. C. Versailles restored every prewar empire exactly as it had existed in 1914. D. The treaty eliminated imperial rule by granting immediate independence to all colonies.

Answer 18

Medium

Application • Question 18 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Great Depression. Financial crisis and collapsing trade undermined liberal governments and intensified political radicalization.

Which comparison best captures political change during the Great Depression?

A. Economic crisis increased state intervention and strengthened radical movements in many countries, while existing political institutions survived in some democracies such as Britain and the United States. B. Economic collapse ended political polarization because parties adopted the same policies. C. The Depression produced identical fascist governments in every industrial state. D. Governments universally responded by eliminating tariffs and expanding free trade.

Answer 19

Medium

Application • Question 19 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: World War II production. Industrial capacity, logistics, and access to resources strongly shaped the ability to sustain global warfare.

Which evidence best shows change and continuity in wartime production during World War II?

A. Industrial capacity became irrelevant once air power appeared. B. Women left industrial employment everywhere as soon as war began. C. Belligerents stopped relying on overseas resources because autarky was complete. D. States expanded centralized planning, mass production, and women's industrial employment, while victory still depended on older fundamentals such as access to labor, raw materials, transport, and finance.

Answer 20

Medium

Application • Question 20 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Holocaust. Racial ideology, war, bureaucracy, collaboration, and state coercion enabled systematic genocide.

Which interpretation best places the Holocaust within continuity and change over time?

A. The Holocaust was simply a continuation of medieval prejudice with no new institutions or wartime conditions. B. Nazi racial policy began only after Germany surrendered in 1945. C. Nazi genocide drew on older antisemitism and racial prejudice but transformed persecution through a modern state bureaucracy, wartime occupation, deportation systems, and industrialized mass murder. D. The genocide eliminated all resistance, rescue, and variation in local collaboration.

Answer 21

Medium

Application • Question 21 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Indian independence and partition. Anticolonial mobilization produced independence but also partition, displacement, and communal violence.

Which claim best captures change and persistence after Indian independence and partition?

A. Partition ended population movement and communal violence immediately. B. Both new states rejected every institution created under British rule. C. British colonial sovereignty ended in 1947, while administrative institutions, legal practices, and communal tensions inherited from the colonial era continued to influence India and Pakistan. D. Independence restored the Mughal Empire as the governing system of South Asia.

Answer 22

Medium

Application • Question 22 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Chinese Communist Revolution. War, rural mobilization, nationalism, and state weakness contributed to Communist victory in 1949.

Which statement best describes continuity and change after the Chinese Communist victory in 1949?

A. Communist victory restored Qing dynastic rule. B. The revolution ended centralized government and transferred sovereignty to foreign treaty ports. C. The Communist Party preserved landlord ownership unchanged across rural China. D. The new regime transformed landholding and political organization while continuing the long-standing goal of a strong centralized state capable of governing a vast territory.

Answer 23

Medium

Application • Question 23 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Korean War. Cold War rivalry intersected with Korean civil conflict and competing claims to national legitimacy.

Which comparison best shows continuity despite the Korean War's major destruction?

A. The conflict abolished the military alliances surrounding the peninsula. B. The 1953 armistice preserved the peninsula's division near the prewar boundary even after enormous military and demographic disruption. C. The war created a single unified Korean state under UN administration. D. China withdrew permanently from East Asian security affairs after 1950.

Answer 24

Medium

Application • Question 24 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Vietnamese decolonization. Anticolonial nationalism overlapped with communist organization and Cold War intervention.

Which claim best captures continuity and change in Vietnamese decolonization?

A. Vietnamese nationalists shifted from fighting French colonial rule to confronting a U.S.-backed South Vietnamese state, while the pursuit of national independence remained a central objective for communist-led forces. B. The conflict ended in 1954 with a permanently neutral and unified Vietnam. C. French colonial rule continued unchanged after the 1954 Geneva settlement. D. Cold War intervention eliminated Vietnamese nationalist goals.

Answer 25

Medium

Application • Question 25 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Non-Aligned Movement. New states sought diplomatic autonomy rather than simple attachment to either Cold War bloc.

Which development best demonstrates both change and continuity in the Non-Aligned Movement?

A. Newly independent states created new diplomatic forums outside formal Cold War alliances, while they continued to pursue traditional state interests such as sovereignty, security, and economic development. B. Nonalignment required members to avoid all contact with both superpowers. C. The movement abolished national sovereignty in favor of a single supranational government. D. Every member adopted identical socialist economic policies.

Answer 26

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 26 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Green Revolution. High-yield crops and inputs raised production but produced unequal and environmental effects.

Which comparison best captures the Green Revolution's mixed pattern of change and continuity?

A. The Green Revolution reduced cereal production because farmers abandoned wheat and rice. B. High-yield seeds, irrigation, and chemical inputs raised output in many regions, while unequal access to land, credit, and water allowed older rural inequalities to persist. C. New seed varieties eliminated the need for irrigation and fertilizer. D. Agricultural modernization ended land inequality in every participating country.

Answer 27

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 27 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Containerization. Standardized shipping lowered transport costs and helped reorganize global production networks.

Which evidence best shows both change and persistence after containerization?

A. Containerization ended long-distance maritime commerce in favor of air freight. B. The technology restored sail power as the cheapest means of global shipping. C. Standard containers sharply reduced loading costs and encouraged larger integrated supply chains, while maritime trade still depended on ports, shipping lanes, and strategic chokepoints. D. Containers made ports unnecessary because ships could unload directly into inland factories.

Answer 28

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 28 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Internet expansion. Digital networks accelerated communication, finance, culture, and political mobilization across borders.

Which thesis best qualifies claims that the internet created a complete break with earlier communication?

A. Internet access immediately eliminated censorship in authoritarian states. B. Digital communication ended the economic importance of corporations and governments. C. The internet made literacy irrelevant to participation in global information networks. D. Digital networks accelerated the speed and scale of communication, but states, firms, social hierarchies, and unequal access continued to shape who could produce and receive information.

Answer 29

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 29 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Structural adjustment. Debt crises led some states to adopt market reforms promoted by international financial institutions.

Which statement best captures change and continuity under structural-adjustment programs?

A. Structural adjustment eliminated foreign debt as soon as reforms were announced. B. International financial institutions required every borrower to nationalize foreign companies. C. Many indebted states reduced subsidies, privatized firms, or liberalized trade, while dependence on external credit and commodity markets often continued. D. Market reforms ended the influence of world commodity prices on developing economies.

Answer 30

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 30 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Global migration after 1945. Labor demand, conflict, family networks, and transportation linked migration to both opportunity and backlash.

Which comparison best shows continuity alongside change in post-1945 migration?

A. Jet travel and new labor markets accelerated movement across long distances, while migrants still relied heavily on family networks, diasporic communities, and remittances. B. Receiving states stopped regulating immigration after 1945. C. Modern transportation eliminated chain migration because travelers no longer needed social contacts. D. Postwar migration consisted entirely of refugees rather than workers or family migrants.

Answer 31

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 31 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Women’s rights movements. Activists challenged legal, political, educational, and workplace inequalities across diverse societies.

Which claim best describes continuity and change in women's-rights movements?

A. Legal suffrage immediately produced equal representation of women in every legislature. B. Women's movements after 1945 rejected education and employment as political issues. C. Reform eliminated differences in gender expectations across all societies. D. Campaigns won expanded voting, educational, and workplace rights in many societies, while gender inequalities in pay, political representation, and domestic expectations persisted.

Answer 32

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 32 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Anti-apartheid struggle. Domestic resistance and international pressure helped undermine South Africa’s racial state.

Which comparison best shows change and persistence after apartheid ended?

A. Democratic transition abolished South Africa's participation in the global economy. B. South Africa replaced legal racial rule with universal suffrage and constitutional democracy, while large racial inequalities in wealth, land, and opportunity remained. C. The 1994 election preserved white-only voting laws. D. The end of apartheid immediately equalized landownership and household wealth.

Answer 33

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 33 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Climate politics. Industrial growth created transnational environmental problems requiring cooperation among unequal states.

Which evidence best demonstrates continuity within changing global climate politics?

A. Climate treaties transferred all energy policy to a single world government. B. International agreements created new forums for emissions cooperation, while unequal historical responsibility, development priorities, and state sovereignty continued to complicate collective action. C. Industrialized and developing states entered negotiations with identical emissions histories and economic priorities. D. Environmental diplomacy ended national control over resource policy.

Answer 34

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 34 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: Global popular culture. Media industries spread cultural forms globally while local audiences adapted them to regional contexts.

Which claim best captures continuity and change in global popular culture?

A. Local producers disappeared because only foreign media could reach mass audiences. B. Global media eliminated local languages from popular culture. C. Mass media and streaming platforms accelerated worldwide circulation of music, film, and fashion, while local audiences continued to remix global forms through regional languages, tastes, and traditions. D. Cultural globalization caused identical entertainment preferences in every society.

Answer 35

Hard

Advanced reasoning • Question 35 of 35

Across a longer period, consider this development: United Nations. International institutions expanded forums for cooperation but remained constrained by state sovereignty and great-power interests.

Which continuity most clearly limits the claim that the United Nations replaced great-power politics?

A. The UN created new institutions for multilateral cooperation, but permanent Security Council vetoes preserved exceptional influence for major powers. B. Membership required countries to surrender their armed forces permanently. C. The organization ended rivalry among the United States, Soviet Union, and other major powers after 1945. D. The UN abolished sovereign states and replaced them with a world government.

AP World History Continuity & Change Over Time Practice Test