AP World History

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2019

AP® World History
Free-Response Questions

© 2019 The College Board. College Board, Advanced Placement, AP, AP Central, and the acorn logo are
registered trademarks of the College Board. Visit the College Board on the web: collegeboard.org.

AP Central is the official online home for the AP Program: apcentral.collegeboard.org.

2019 AP® WORLD HISTORY FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

WORLD HISTORY

SECTION I, Part B

Time—40 minutes

Directions: Answer Question 1 and Question 2. Answer either Question 3 or Question 4.

Write your responses in the Section I, Part B: Short-Answer Response booklet. You must write your response to each
question on the lined page designated for that response. Each response is expected to fit within the space provided.

In your responses, be sure to address all parts of the questions you answer. Use complete sentences; an outline or
bulleted list alone is not acceptable. You may plan your answers in this exam booklet, but no credit will be given for
notes written in this booklet.

Use the passage below to answer all parts of the question that follows.

“Inner [and Central] Asia have long been seen as a zone of contact and transmission, a lengthy conveyor belt
on which commercial and cultural wares traveled between the major civilizations of Eurasia. The nomads had
an essential but largely unacknowledged role in this cultural traffic. While nomadic empires had as their
primary objective the control and exploitation of sedentary subjects, their secondary effect was the creation of
numerous opportunities for cross-cultural contact, comparison, and exchange.

Indeed, although nomads are normally included in the analysis of the political context of trans-Eurasian
exchange, they are typically left out of the cultural equation. Here the great sedentary civilizations are placed
at center stage, particularly when scientific and cultural transfers are under consideration. But, as we have
seen, pastoral nomads were the chief initiators, promoters, and agents of this exchange between East and
West [in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries].”

Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.

Thomas Allsen, historian, Culture and Conquest, 2001

1. a) Identify ONE specific historical example of a cultural exchange between nomads and non-nomads that

occurred in the period before 1450.

b) For the period 1450–1750 C.E., identify ONE development that changed the role that Central Asian nomads
played in cross-regional exchanges as described in the passage.

c) Explain ONE cross-cultural exchange that would challenge the assertion in the last sentence of the passage
concerning the nomads’ role in cross-regional exchanges before 1450.

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-2-© 2019 The College Board. Visit the College Board on the web: collegeboard.org. 2019 AP® WORLD HISTORY FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

Use the graph below to answer all parts of the question that follows.

LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH COMPARED TO GDP* PER CAPITA, 2005

Source: Adapted from Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (London: Earthscan, 2009), p. 56.

NOTE: Each dot represents a country; selected countries are identifed.

*a measurement of a country’s economic production in a given year

2. a) Identify ONE way that the data in the chart illustrate global economic differences between countries in the

late twentieth century.

b) Identify ONE similarity (other than GDP per capita) that might account for the low life expectancies of some
of the world’s countries, as displayed in the chart.

c) Explain ONE way in which longer life expectancies in some of the world’s countries, as displayed in the
chart, have led to new political, economic, or social problems.

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-3-© 2019 The College Board. Visit the College Board on the web: collegeboard.org. 2019 AP® WORLD HISTORY FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

.

Directions: Answer either Question 3 or Question 4.

Question 3 or 4

Answer all parts of the question that follows.

3. a) Identify ONE way in which subsistence patterns pre-dating the Neolithic Revolution continued among some

Eurasian societies in the period circa 10,000 B.C.E. to 3,000 B.C.E.

b) Identify ONE way in which the Neolithic Revolution changed Eurasian societies’ subsistence patterns in the
period circa 10,000 B.C.E. to 3,000 B.C.E.

c) Explain ONE way in which changes in Eurasian societies’ subsistence patterns altered their political or
social structures in the period circa 10,000 B.C.E. to 600 B.C.E.

Answer all parts of the question that follows.

4. a) Identify ONE economic change in the period 1750–1900 that led to the formation of new elites.

b) Explain ONE way that, despite economic change, traditional elites remained powerful in the period
1750–1900.

c) Explain ONE way in which the formation of new elites in the period 1750–1900 led to the emergence of new
ideologies.

END OF SECTION I

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-4-© 2019 The College Board. Visit the College Board on the web: collegeboard.org. 2019 AP® WORLD HISTORY FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

WORLD HISTORY

SECTION II

Total Time—1 hour and 40 minutes

Question 1 (Document-Based Question)

Suggested reading and writing time: 1 hour

It is suggested that you spend 15 minutes reading the documents and 45 minutes writing your response.
Note: You may begin writing your response before the reading period is over.

Directions: Question 1 is based on the accompanying documents. The documents have been edited for the purpose
of this exercise.

In your response you should do the following.
 Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or claim that establishes a line of reasoning.
 Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt.

 Use at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence (beyond that found in the documents) relevant to

Support an argument in response to the prompt using at least six documents.

an argument about the prompt.



For at least three documents, explain how or why the document’s point of view, purpose, historical situation,
and/or audience is relevant to an argument.

 Use evidence to corroborate, qualify, or modify an argument that addresses the prompt.

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-5-© 2019 The College Board. Visit the College Board on the web: collegeboard.org. 2019 AP® WORLD HISTORY FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

1. Evaluate the extent to which the Portuguese transformed maritime trade in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth

century.

Note: The map below shows some of the locations mentioned in the documents and is provided as a reference. The
map is NOT one of the seven documents. The documents begin on the next page.

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-6-© 2019 The College Board. Visit the College Board on the web: collegeboard.org. 2019 AP® WORLD HISTORY FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

Document 1

Source: Advice given in 1500 by the Muslim merchants of Calicut to the Hindu ruler of Calicut concerning
the arrival of the second Portuguese expedition to the city. Recorded in the History of the Discovery and
Conquest of India by the Portuguese by Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, a Portuguese historian, published in
1551.

Your Majesty: we are astonished that you should lower yourself by receiving these Portuguese enemies into
your kingdom, who seem to be pirates rather than merchants. We, your Muslim subjects, have always been
loyal to you and have brought valuable foreign merchandise to this country and have exported its native
products to increase your revenue greatly. You appear to forget all this, by receiving those newcomers into
your favor as if your own numerous and faithful subjects were incompetent for the purpose. In this you
dishonor yourself, and embolden these strangers to hold your power in contempt.

The true intent of the Portuguese in coming into these seas is to take possession of your city, and not to trade
for spices as they pretend. The place you have given them for a trading post, they will convert into a fort,
from where they will make war on you when you least expect it. We say these things to you out of good will
rather than out of any desire for profit; for if you do not listen to our advice, there are other cities on India’s
Malabar Coast from which we can conduct our trade in spices.

Document 2

Source: Duarte Barbosa, government official employed in a Portuguese trading-post on the Malabar Coast,
travel narrative published in Portugal in 1516.

The Muslims in Calicut are rich, and live well, and they used to control all the sea trade from that town.
Indeed, if the king of Portugal had not discovered India, Malabar would already have been in the hands of the
Muslims.

In addition to the local Muslims, there are also foreign Muslims in Calicut such as Arabs, Persians, and
Gujaratis. They are great merchants, sail to all parts of the world with their goods, and have their own
Muslim leader who rules over them and disciplines them as necessary, without the Hindu king of Calicut
meddling with them. And before the king of Portugal discovered the country, the Muslim traders were so
numerous and powerful in the city of Calicut that the Hindus did not dare to enter into disputes with them.

And after the king of Portugal made himself master there, and these Muslims saw that they could not defend
their position there, they began to leave Calicut, so that very few of them remain today.

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-7-© 2019 The College Board. Visit the College Board on the web: collegeboard.org. 2019 AP® WORLD HISTORY FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

Document 3

Source: Anonymous Portuguese court official’s letter of advice to King Sebastian of Portugal regarding a
proposal to conclude a peace treaty and establish free trade with the Ottoman Empire, mid-1560s.

If the Turks were allowed to travel freely to India, and establish their own trading-posts, and trade in
merchandise wherever they wished, Your Majesty’s own profits would suffer greatly. If that were to happen,
all of the business handled by our merchants would immediately fall to the Turks because their empire is
much closer to India. The duration of their voyages, their transportation costs, the risks they would face, and
the damage they would sustain to their ships and their merchandise would be less than half of that suffered by
our own ships.

Portugal’s state monopoly in pepper and other controlled spices would also be threatened by allowing the
Turks to establish trade in India. Even now, when they have not been able to openly compete against us, it is
known that they conduct trade in secret, carrying spices to Persia, Bengal, Southeast Asia, and China, and
especially to their own markets, despite our efforts to stop them.

Thus, if the Turks are allowed to operate freely, their ties with local Muslims would make them even better
informed and better organized than us, so that they could send as much pepper as they wanted by means of
the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and become masters of the lion’s share of the trade in spices.

Document 4

Source: Alauddin Riayat Syah al-Kahar, ruler of the Sultanate of Aceh, a Muslim state on the island of
Sumatra, Indonesia, letter to the Ottoman sultan Suleiman I, 1566.

It is our firm belief that if your Majesty better understood the circumstances of Aceh and our long struggle
against the miserable Portuguese infidels, your Imperial compassion would be awakened. As you know, the
pilgrim and merchant vessels from all the ports of Indonesia must pass through the Maldive Islands on their
way to Mecca and the Red Sea, and between all 24,000 Maldive Islands, there are just four channels where a
ship can pass safely. The infidel Portuguese wait around the entrances of these channels. When our ships
arrive there, the Portuguese stop and take possession of as many as they can. Any ship they cannot capture
they sink with cannon fire, either leaving the Muslims aboard to drown, or capturing and enslaving them.

The Portuguese have even dared attack Ottoman ships belonging to your Majesty. For example, in the year
1565, your officials came to Aceh and left for Istanbul loaded with pepper, silk, cinnamon, cloves, and other
products from Indonesia. Portuguese vessels intercepted the ship at the Maldives and sank it. Five hundred
Muslims drowned and the rest were enslaved.

So, we request that your Imperial Majesty grant us siege cannons and ask that you instruct the Ottoman
governors of Egypt and Aden to allow our representatives to come to your Majesty’s illustrious court and
obtain all the horses, armor, and other weapons that we will need for our defense against the Portuguese.

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-8-© 2019 The College Board. Visit the College Board on the web: collegeboard.org.