Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, Africa was home to a wide variety of communities, some of which formed states and others which found alternate methods of organizing. Swahili-speaking city states were designed to serve the needs of long-distance trade around the Indian Ocean. Large states like Great Zimbabwe and Kongo managed the production of goods from administrative centers. These societies were connected to each other by extensive networks of exchange.

This survey of central, eastern, and southern Africa will introduce you to two types of states that developed in this region and discuss how and why these states changed and developed over time. You will be able to use this information for comparison with other regions. It will also help you to establish background knowledge within the governance theme. You will use this knowledge when you look at networks and exchange in Unit 2.

Think about the following question as you read the article: To what extent does this article explain how and why states in Africa developed and changed over time? Write this question at the top of the Three Close Reads worksheet. You will be asked to respond to this question again after the third read in the Evaluating and Corroborating section of the worksheet.

Read 1—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. What are some different ways of organizing communities that Africans used in the period 1200-1450?
2. What group of people were particularly influential in the governing of Swahili city-states?
3. What kinds of factors helped individuals to elevate themselves to be chiefs and then kings in the southern African region that included Great Zimbabwe?
4. What kinds of factors helped individuals to elevate themselves to be chiefs and then kings in the Congo River region?
5. Tyo was a Confederation. Kongo was an empire. What was the difference? What were the similarities?

Read 3—Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. To what extent does this article explain how and why states in Africa developed and changed over time?
2. What factors stand out to you as particularly distinct and important in the way communities were organized in Africa in this period? How do these seem similar or different to other parts of the world you have studied for this period?

You have been introduced to the historical thinking practice of contextualization, and now you’ll deepen your understanding of this practice by considering the conditions that existed that allowed Mansa Musa to embark on a 3,000-mile journey in the fourteenth century. This will help you learn that context may not just be about the events of the historical time (a common misconception) but that context can involve other factors and underlying causes.

Causation, reading
You’ll use your causation skills to examine the time period in which Mansa Musa lived and traveled and determine what historical events or processes allowed for his wealth and his journey from Mali to Mecca. In addition, you’ll use your close-reading skills to pull out the necessary information from the video and primary source excerpt.

In this activity, you’ll watch the Crash Course World History video about Mansa Musa and read the primary source excerpt to pull out information about Mansa Musa and his travels. You’ll use this background information along with the event cards to complete the Contextualization Tool.

First, a thought experiment:

Imagine that you live in Los Angeles, California, and you want to take a once-in-a-lifetime road trip to Disney World in Florida. Oh, and along the way, you want to pick up your best friend, who lives in Chicago. So, what do you need to make road trip, which is more than 3,000 miles? You want to travel in style, so you buy a Tesla Model X SUV. In fact, you have so much style, you buy 80 of them just to haul your stuff. And you also have an entourage of 12,000 people to help you along the way! Expensive trip, right? No worries—you happen to be the richest person who ever lived, worth about $400,000,000,000. No, that’s not a typo: that’s FOUR HUNDRED BILLION dollars! If you were a country, you would be twenty-eighth in terms of GDP (gross domestic product) all by yourself. That would put you ahead of countries like Norway, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore. How’s that for some contextualization! We won’t even talk about the impact your spending spree had on Chicago—it was LEGENDARY! Fun to imagine, isn’t it? But the truth is, Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, made a trip just like this in the early fourteenth century. How was such a thing possible?

After reading through the paragraph above, your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Contextualization – Mansa Musa worksheet. Then, as a class you’ll watch Crash Course World History: Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa. As you watch the video, take brief notes on the life of Mansa Musa, including information about his reign, his faith, and his travels. Next, you’ll read the primary source excerpt that is included in the worksheet with your class. As you read or listen, think about the geographic and cultural factors that enabled Mansa Musa to embark on his journey.

Then, using your notes from the video and reading, you’ll work together in small groups to complete the Contextualization Tool (included in the Contextualization – Mansa Musa worksheet). First, write the date and location of the historical event, and then divide the event cards into two groups: broad and narrow context. You’ll share your broad and narrow contexts with the class by placing your event cards on the funnel on the board. Be sure to share your reasons for categorizing your event cards as broad or narrow context. You are allowed to move any event cards that you think were placed incorrectly by the prior group, but you must provide justification for doing that. After your group has moved any of the previous group’s event cards, you can place two of your event cards that are not already up on the funnel, and explain your reasoning to the class. Then, return to your group to answer the remaining questions on the tool.

Finally, you’ll have a class discussion about the geographic and cultural context that enabled Mansa Musa to embark on his journey.

Your teacher will collect your worksheets and use them to assess how your contextualization skills are progressing.

The west African region south of the Sahara is known as the Sahel. By 800 or 900 CE, kingdoms began to emerge in this region, which had until then featured relatively decentralized communities. By 1200, many of these states existed across the region. Within the Sahel, kingdoms competed, conducted diplomacy, and facilitated trade of goods and knowledge. This article outlines what these Sudanic states had in common (the Sahelian state model), while also introducing other (often overlooked) African states in existence across the continent at that time.

Earlier in this era, you learned about Afro-Eurasian trade and networks, and how network ties connected vast regions and spurred production of goods even after the fall of the Roman Empire and China’s Han Dynasty. This article zooms into a specific region, the west African Sahel, to provide evidence that will help you to respond to the Unit 1 Problem: “How was the process of state formation similar and different in various regions of the world from c. 1200 to 1450 CE?” Also, because west African states were unique, this evidence will help you evaluate the governance theme narrative for this era.

Think about the following question as you read the article: Describe the extent to which this article explains how and why states in Africa developed and changed over time. Write this question at the top of the Three Close Reads worksheet. You will be asked to respond to this question again after the third read in the Evaluating and Corroborating section of the worksheet.

Read 1—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Who was Mansa Musa, and why might he have had a problem with his portrayal in the first photo?
2. Examine the map shown in the article. What does it tell us about settlements of communities in the Sahel?
3. What is the Sahelian state model? What is its significance?
4. What is religious pluralism? How is it relevant to understanding west African communities?
5. What are some of the arguments for and against considering Mali an empire?

Read 3—Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. Describe the extent to which this article explains how and why states in Africa developed and changed over time.
2. Based on the evidence in this article, what was unique about the states of West Africa in this period, and what features did they share with states in other regions?
3. How does this article support, extend, or challenge your understanding of the “state” when viewed through the filter of the governance theme?

The growth of trade routes and exchange in Afro-Eurasia helped to stimulate the development of additional states in several parts of Africa. Many of these states were tied to Islamic trading networks, and they combined local political ideas with thoughts and technologies coming from other parts of the Islamic World. Some states, like Mali and the city-states of east Africa, had a huge impact on those growing trading networks.

This article supports your analysis of African states in the period from 1200 to 1450. Studying varieties of African political structures in this period can help us evaluate the theme of governance in this unit.

Think about the following question as you watch the video: To what extent does this video explain how systems of belief and their practices affected society in the period from c. 1200 to 1450? You will be asked to respond to this question again at the end of the video.

Preview—Skimming for Gist

As a reminder, open and skim the transcript, and read the questions before you watch the video.

Key Ideas—Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. John Green points out that most sub-Saharan African histories were preserved by oral tradition rather than written down. He also says there is a prejudice against oral tradition. What evidence does he use to argue that oral tradition is in fact important?
2. Who was Mansa Musa, and why was his hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) so significant?
3. What was Mali like when Mansa Musa ruled it, in terms of both politics and religion?
4. What kinds of states were built along the eastern coast of Africa at this time, and how were they linked?
5. For a long time, scholars incorrectly believed the Swahili city-states in east Africa must have been founded by Arabs, rather than local Africans. Why did they believe that, according to John Green?
6. What kinds of goods and other resources were traded through the Swahili city-states?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. To what extent does this video explain how systems of belief and their practices affected society in the period from c. 1200 to 1450?
2. Why do you think two different kinds of states formed in different African regions (large empires in the interior of west Africa and city-states along the coast of east Africa)?
3. How is Mansa Musa’s life evidence of a wider network connecting societies in multiple regions in this period?

Before the early fourteenth century, warm stable weather helped Europe’s population grow. Then the climate changed and Europe became colder and wetter. This created a crisis. The European social and political system—based on villages and manors—was an attempt to control land and large populations of peasants. Politically, power was based on a system of feudal obligations. Lords were quite powerful, and kings less so. After this period, a changing climate and other conditions would reshape this system.

This survey of communities in Europe will introduce you to the systems of manorialism and feudalism that were central to this region and this era. You will be able to use this information for comparison with other regions. It will also help you to establish background knowledge within the themes of governance and cultural developments and interactions. You will use this knowledge when you look at networks and exchange in Unit 2.

Think about the following question as you read the article: To what extent does this article explain the causes and consequences of political decentralization in Europe from c. 1200 to 1450? Write this question at the top of the Three Close Reads worksheet. You will be asked to respond to this question again after the third read in the Evaluating and Corroborating section of the worksheet.

Read 1—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. The author argues that Europe was “barely an idea” in this period, but that it was slowly becoming a reality. What sorts of things were widely shared among Europeans?
2. How did climate change in Europe during this era, and how did this affect Europeans?
3. What was the manorial system?
4. What was the feudal system, and what were its political implications?

Read 3—Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following questions:

1. To what extent does this article explain the causes and consequences of political decentralization in Europe from c. 1200 to 1450?
2. What seems different or especially important about how European communities were organized from 1200 to 1450? Do these factors seem similar or different to other parts of the world you have studied for this period?

You might be familiar with the phrase “separation of church and state.” Yet, historically, belief and government have usually worked together to organize communities. In the period from 1200 to 1450, belief systems provided ways of understanding the world, and states provided laws and distributed resources. Despite their different functions in theory, in practice, the lines between state and belief were often quite blurry. This article provides an overview of how states and religions have worked together and sometimes clashed across the diverse societies of Afro-Eurasia in this period.

By this point, you have been introduced to the idea of “the state.” This article is meant to deepen that understanding by introducing the role of belief in the ways that humans have organized their societies. Many of the world’s largest religions, like Buddhism and Islam, spread over vast distances, connecting diverse peoples and states. As such, this article provides evidence to help you understand how beliefs moved across networks and helped rulers establish control over their states.

Think about the following question as you read the article: How did belief systems impact society and the state from c. 1200 to 1450? Write this question at the top of the Three Close Reads worksheet. You will be asked to respond to this question again after the third read in the Evaluating and Corroborating section of the worksheet.

Read 1—Skimming for Gist

Fill out the Skimming for Gist section of the Three Close Reads worksheet as you complete your first close read. As a reminder, this should be a quick process!

Read 2—Understanding Content

For this reading, you should be looking for unfamiliar vocabulary words, the major claim and key supporting details, and analysis and evidence. By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. How does the author describe states and religion in the Islamic world?
2. How were Buddhism and Hinduism different?
3. Why did Buddhism and Daoism often prove troublesome for the Chinese state? What did the Song dynasty promote instead and why?
4. What are some ways that rulers and religious leaders cooperated and clashed in Christian Europe?
5. The Mongol Empire conquered people of many different religions across Eurasia? How did the Mongol state treat these conquered peoples?

Read 3—Evaluating and Corroborating

At the end of the third close read, respond to the following question:

1. How did belief systems impact society and the state from c. 1200 to 1450 CE?
2. It’s been a while since the fifteenth century, but religions still play a major role in our world today. Sometimes they’re involved in government, sometimes they are supposed to be separate. Can you think of any ways that the history in this article might have influenced the ways we think of religion in the twenty-first century?

3x5 note cards or cut up paper

Throughout the WHP AP course, you’ll encounter a variety of primary source collections that give you multiple chances to practice applying your sourcing skills. While the WHP AP course has a practice progression devoted entirely to sourcing, those activities are detailed and ask you to engage in thorough sourcing related to historical context, audience, purpose, point of view, and overall significance for a specific document. That kind of in-depth sourcing is a vital skill, but in certain situations, you’ll need to be able to source more quickly. To meet this need, you’ll use the WHP AP Quick-Sourcing Tool for the sourcing collections. The Quick Source Tool and the process for using it— specifically designed for unpacking document collections—is introduced here and will help you be successful on both the SAQ and DBQ portions of the AP^® World History: Modern exam.

This activity introduces you to the Quick-Sourcing Tool and the first sourcing collection in the course. You can use the same Quick Sourcing process any time you encounter a sourcing collection and want to quickly look at the set of sources in response to a prompt or question, as opposed to the deeper analysis you will do when using the HAPPY tool that is part of the sourcing progression.

First, take out or download Primary Sources—Belief Systems. Each collection has a guiding question that aligns to topics and themes found in the AP^® CED. You can find this question on the first page of each source in the collection. You’ll be doing the prewriting work needed to respond to the question, and you’ll use a tool to help you critically examine the sources in light of that goal. Download or take out the Quick-Sourcing Tool and read through the directions. The left side, Individual Sources, gives you a process for discovering what each individual document means and how it relates to the guiding question. The right side of the table, Sourcing Collection, has you thinking about the sourcing collection as a set, and has you consider how you might group or bucket each document as a strategy for supporting your claims with evidence.

Next, your teacher will model how to examine each of the documents in the sourcing collection. Take out note cards so you can record information about each source as you work through the tool. Then, look at the first document in the collection, and as a class, in Part 1 of the tool write a quick summary of the source in terms of how it relates to the guiding question. Then, move on to Part 2, which uses the first four letters of the acronym from the HAPPY tool. Note that you only have to respond to one of these four questions as part of your sourcing work to get a partial point on the AP^® World History: Modern exam. You should include the historical significance or “why” (the “Y” in “HAPPY”) for any of the four questions you choose to respond to. Finally, for Part 3, gather the evidence you found in each document and add it to your note card so you can include it in a response later without having to go back to the document. Once you’ve quickly analyzed each document, you’re ready to move to the Sourcing Collection side of the table. Look at your note cards and try to sort the cards into categories. There might be a group of documents that support the claim you want to make in your response, and there might be some that will help you consider counterclaims, for example. Try to find some groupings that help you respond to the question.

Once you’ve finished sourcing and grouping the documents, your teacher may have you answer the guiding question in small groups. Over time, this process will get faster and easier, and you likely won’t even need the tool anymore!

This collection brings together primary sources from Afro-Eurasia, which are largely focused on the themes of culture and beliefs, governance, and economic systems.

The AP^® World History: Modern CED suggests students develop their historical thinking skills in line with certain historical developments and themes. For Unit 1, we’ve compiled a number of primary source excerpts to help you develop these skills in relation to the content and themes covered in this unit, including Cultural Developments and Interactions, Governance, Social Interactions and Organization, and Economic Systems. This should help prepare you to be successful on the AP exam.

We recommend using the accompanying Quick Sourcing activity (above) to help you analyze these sources.

Make sure you have the Unit 1 Themes Notebook worksheet that you partially filled out earlier in the unit.

This is a continuation of the Themes Notebook activity that you started earlier in this unit. As part of WHP AP, you are asked to revisit the AP themes in order to maintain a connection to the core themes of the course. Because this is the second time you’re working with the themes questions, you’re asked to explain how your understanding of the unit’s themes has changed since you began the unit. Make sure you use evidence from this unit and sound reasoning in your answers.

Fill out the second table on your partially completed worksheet from earlier in Unit 1. Be prepared to talk about your ideas with your class.

At this point in school, you’ve had some experience writing essays and responses to test questions. However, the SAQs are likely a bit different from other short-answer questions you’ve been asked in the past. The main difference is that on the AP exam, although you are asked to give a short answer, you are also expected to provide more details in answering those questions than you have probably been asked to do in the past.

In this activity, you’ll start off by matching SAQ prompts to sample responses. Then, as a class, you’ll discuss and identify the elements of the ACE acronym in the responses. Finally, you’ll do a second round of matching and ACE identification so you can apply what you’ve just learned.

Take out the SAQ Practice – Unit 1 worksheet. Either as a whole class or in small groups, match the first set of SAQ prompts to their responses. Be prepared to review your answers with the class, along with some reasons these make strong SAQ responses.

One way to craft a solid response to an SAQ is to make sure each element of the ACE acronym is reflected in your response.

Review the ACE acronym:

• A – answer the prompt/make a claim
• C – cite evidence
• E – explain how the evidence supports the claim (often referred to as reasoning).

Along with your class, identify the claim, the evidence, and the explanation of how the evidence supports the claim and annotate each according to the directions on the worksheet. After you’ve gone through the first set of examples on the worksheet with your class, work to complete the second set of SAQs and responses on the worksheet. As always, be prepared to discuss your answers with your class.

Being able to write clearly and convincingly—to write well—helps us communicate our thinking and conclusions. Writing well will help you in many areas of life, such as preparing you to take the AP^® World History: Modern exam. Being a good general writer is a prerequisite for being a good historical writer. Your historical writing is assessed at the end of each unit in this course, either through a long essay question (LEQ) or a document-based question (DBQ). To help you become a better writer, we have a series of rubric-based writing activities in the course. The first of these activities will help ensure you have a solid grasp on what is expected of you when you write. Later in the writing progression, you’ll have opportunities to revise writing, which will give you a chance to practice different vital aspects of the writing process. Now, in this activity, you’ll become familiar with the writing rubrics that are based on those used for the AP^® World History: Modern exam as you begin your journey to become more skilled writers.

Reading
In this activity, you will review two sample essays and the rubrics used to evaluate these essays. Each of the writing progression activities will involve some reading, which likely won’t surprise you, since reading and writing are often considered two sides of the same coin.

Did you know that grammar can save lives? Take a look at these two images, and you’ll see why.

OK, these are silly, but they’re also a good reminder of why being able to write clearly is an important skill to develop. Throughout the course, you’re going to spend time focusing on your writing skills. No, this is not your English language arts class, but being a writer who can communicate well is a vital to being a historian. Most historians share their ideas through writing, and as student historians, you are asked to do the same. The next activity is a writing assignment, so it’s important that you understand what is expected of you when writing in this course.

Before you begin reviewing the rubrics and sample essays, think about the following and discuss each one with your class.

1. What is a claim?
2. What does a claim do in an essay?
3. What does it mean to contextualize in an essay?
4. What is evidence and how should it be used in an essay?
5. What does it mean to provide sourcing information in an essay?
6. How would you demonstrate historical reasoning in an essay?

Once you’ve covered these concepts, review the rubrics and sample essays. First, review each row of the WHP LEQ Writing Rubric and the sections of the sample LEQ essay that pertain to each row. As you review, think about how the author of the sample essay fulfills the criteria outlined in the rubric. You should know that these are exemplar essays that represent solid AP LEQ writing skills. Note that to score points on the AP^® World History: Modern exam, you must meet the criteria as laid out in the “Advanced” column of the rubric.

Then, do the same thing for the WHP DBQ Writing Rubric using the sample DBQ essay. There are different requirements for each type of essay. For the DBQ, AP requires that students use at least four of the seven documents as evidence to support the thesis/claim along with at least one outside piece of evidence in order to achieve a score of Advanced. Also, for at least two of those documents, you will have to provide source information including details about how the historical situation/context, audience, purpose, or point of view is relevant to the argument outlined in the essay. Don’t worry, there will be more writing activities that concentrate on these rows of the rubric, but it’s a good idea to become familiar with these requirements before you start writing.

• Have the Contextualization, CCOT, and Causation tools available (find all resources on the Student Resources page)

This assessment helps prepare you for the LEQ you will encounter on the AP^® World History: Modern exam. It also gives you an opportunity to develop your general research and writing skills. You will practice conducting research and using evidence to support written arguments, which will not only help you in this class, but most classes you take! Furthermore, you will write four more LEQ responses while taking this course, which will give you a chance to see how your skills are developing related to this particular type of research and writing.

Comparison, contextualization, sourcing, reading, writing
All LEQs require you to contextualize, research, and source documents, and of course as part of this, read and write.

Day 1

In this activity, you’re going to prepare to respond to an LEQ, or long essay question. To do this, you will conduct research and think about any relevant information you’ve learned so far in the course to help you form a response to the question. This particular LEQ asks you to respond to the following prompt: Develop an argument that evaluates the similarities and differences in the ways states were organized in different parts of the world from c. 1200 to 1450 CE. To make sure you’re clear on what the prompt is asking, take out the Question Parsing Tool. Work with your classmates to deconstruct the prompt. Once you have deconstructed the prompt, choose the relevant historical thinking tool to help you organize your research findings.

Now, it’s time for some research! You can use materials from the course and conduct further research online for additional evidence. As you gather evidence for your essay, write it on the tool you chose. Be prepared to share your findings with the class. Next, use the evidence you gathered to help you form a thesis statement that directly responds to the prompt. One common mistake students often make in responding to LEQs is not directly answering the prompt—so, in creating your thesis, make sure it’s relevant to what was asked of you!

Finally, it’s time to contextualize. Remember that ALL historical essays require you to contextualize. To refresh your memory: Contextualization is the process of placing a document, an event, a person, or process within its larger historical setting, and includes situating it in time, space, and sociocultural setting.

Contextualization will often come at the beginning of your essay, or at least in the first paragraph, either before or after your thesis statement. As needed, you can use the Contextualization Tool for this part of the process.

Day 2

This second day is your writing day. Feel free to use your tools and notes from any prewriting work you completed as you craft your essay response. Make sure you have a copy of the WHP LEQ Writing Rubric available to remind you of what’s important to include in your essay. And don’t forget to contextualize! In doing so, think of the entire time period, not just the time immediately preceding the historical event or process you are writing about. Your teacher will give you a time limit for completing your five- to six-paragraph essay responding to the LEQ.