AP World Unit 1 Quiz
Questions: 16 · 10 minutes
1. A medieval European lord grants a vassal control of land in exchange for military service, while peasants work estates under local obligations. Which political pattern does this illustrate?
Centralized rule by scholar-officials
Decentralized feudal relationships and manorial organization
Administration through the Inca mit’a
Government by urban merchant republics across medieval Europe
2. A port community in Southeast Asia adopts Islam after sustained contact with foreign merchants and traveling teachers, while retaining some local customs. Which process best explains this change?
Conversion imposed uniformly by an Abbasid army
Migration of European Christian peasants into the region
Isolation from Indian Ocean commercial connections
Gradual diffusion through trade networks and Sufi activity
3. A traveler describes an exceptionally wealthy West African ruler distributing gold during a pilgrimage to Mecca. Which historical development does this account most clearly reveal?
Great Zimbabwe’s direct control of Mediterranean shipping
Mali’s connection to trans-Saharan trade and the wider Islamic world
Ethiopia’s dependence on the Silk Roads for gold production
Kongo’s early domination of Atlantic plantation commerce
4. Which description best captures Neo-Confucianism as it developed in Song China?
A rejection of Confucian social ethics in favor of Buddhist monasticism
A popular religion centered on loyalty to the Mongol khan
A legal code that made merchants the highest social class
A revival of Confucian ethics influenced by Buddhist and Daoist ideas
5. A Muslim sultan governs with his own army and tax system but invokes the caliph’s name in public worship. What broader pattern does this best illustrate?
Direct centralized control of every Muslim territory from Baghdad
The complete replacement of Islamic law by steppe customary law
Political fragmentation alongside continued use of shared Islamic legitimacy
The adoption of the Chinese examination system throughout the Islamic world
6. Which activity is most closely associated with Baghdad’s House of Wisdom?
Training European knights in mounted warfare
Creating the first Confucian civil service examinations
Organizing Atlantic voyages to the Americas
Translating and extending Greek, Persian, and Indian scholarship
7. A historian compares Song China, Mali, the Khmer Empire, and medieval European kingdoms during the Unit 1 period. Which state-building strategy appears across these otherwise different societies?
Replacing agriculture with pastoral nomadism
Selecting every official through written civil service examinations
Separating political authority completely from religious traditions
Using religious ideas or monumental institutions to reinforce political legitimacy
8. What was a major consequence of the adoption of Champa rice in China?
Faster-ripening harvests helped support population and urban growth
Chinese farming shifted mainly to cash crops for European markets
Urbanization declined as most artisans returned to subsistence farming
Millet disappeared completely from northern Chinese agriculture
9. A fourteenth-century southern Indian ruler sponsors large temples and uses Hindu religious traditions to strengthen opposition to northern Muslim states. Which state best fits this description?
The Majapahit Empire
The Delhi Sultanate
The Vijayanagara Empire
The Khmer Empire
10. An Inca administrator needs workers to build a mountain road and maintain state storehouses. Which institution would most directly supply the labor?
The mit’a labor system
The Mexica tribute system
The Chinese scholar-official class
The European guild system
11. A Mexica record lists quantities of cloth, cacao, feathers, and other goods owed by conquered cities. The record most directly reflects which feature of the Mexica Empire?
A bureaucracy based on Confucian examinations
The extraction of tribute from subject communities
The redistribution of land through the Inca mit’a system
Dependence on trans-Saharan caravan taxation
12. Imported ceramics and glassware found at Great Zimbabwe, together with evidence of local gold production, most strongly suggest that the city was connected to which network?
The Baltic Sea trading system through Scandinavia
The Pacific exchange system linking the Andes and Polynesia
Indian Ocean commerce through the Swahili Coast
The overland tribute network of the Mexica Empire
13. Which statement best characterizes the Delhi Sultanate?
It was a Hindu kingdom that ended Muslim political influence in northern India
It comprised Muslim-led dynasties ruling over a largely Hindu population
It unified all of South Asia through a Chinese-style examination bureaucracy
It was a Buddhist maritime federation centered on the Strait of Malacca
14. Archaeologists studying Angkor find extensive reservoirs and canals alongside monumental Hindu and Buddhist temples. What conclusion is best supported by this evidence?
Khmer rulers combined water management with religious monument building to support their state
Angkor depended primarily on mobile pastoralism and temporary capitals
Angkor was governed as a province of the Song Dynasty
Khmer political authority rested mainly on Atlantic maritime trade
15. A Song Dynasty official wants to encourage commerce across long distances while reducing merchants’ need to carry heavy strings of coins. Which development would best support that goal?
Expanding the use of paper money and financial credit
Restoring the equal-field land distribution system
Requiring merchants to pay entirely through labor service
Replacing domestic markets with tributary exchanges
16. A family in Song China invests heavily in educating a son in the Confucian classics because it hopes he will gain government status. Which institution makes that strategy reasonable?
The tributary system
The hereditary samurai order
The civil service examination system
The Buddhist monastic hierarchy