Unit 9: Globalization (1900–Present)
AP World History: 57 practice questions with detailed explanations.
Unit Study Guide
Executive Summary
After the Cold War, communications technology, trade agreements, and global institutions knit the world tighter than ever — while environmental strain, pandemics, and inequality posed global problems.
Technology and the global economy
Container shipping, the internet, and instant communication globalized production: supply chains span continents, and finance moves in milliseconds. The WTO (1995) and free-trade agreements (NAFTA) cut tariffs. Multinational corporations rival states in power.
Global culture and movements
Culture globalizes both ways — Hollywood and Bollywood, K-pop and hip-hop. Social movements globalize too: environmentalism (Paris Agreement, 2015), human rights (NGOs), women's movements, and indigenous rights all organize transnationally.
Diseases and demographics
COVID-19 (2020) demonstrated pandemic vulnerability in a connected world. Demographic trends diverge: aging populations in wealthy states, youthful ones elsewhere, migration between them.
Environmental change
Climate change from fossil fuels, deforestation, species loss, and plastic pollution are planetary in scale. Debates over responsibility split wealthy industrial states from developing ones.
Exam traps
Globalization has winners and losers — manufacturing workers in rich countries lost jobs while Asian workers gained them. The internet democratized information but also enabled surveillance and misinformation. Climate change is a continuity (industrialization's legacy) as much as a recent event. Global problems require global cooperation — but states still compete.