AP World History
Free resources that align with your AP World History curriculum
CFR Education offers a range of free resources that can supplement your AP World History curriculum. Browse articles, timelines, videos, and simulations covering developments that have shaped the world from c. 1750 to the present.
Skills students learn with CFR Education World History Resources:
- putting historical developments into context
- making connections between and among historical processes
- developing arguments through historical simulations
- evaluating and analyzing primary and secondary sources
Unit 5: Revolutions 1750-1900
What Is the Enlightenment and How Did It Transform Politics? Reading |
Explore how calls for liberty, equality, and individual rights caused revolutions around the world, from the American Revolution to the French and Haitian Revolutions. |
| Timeline | From the Silk Road and Christopher Columbus to the Ottoman Empire and the Revolutionary War, explore this history timeline covering major moments in global history before the twentieth century. |
| Video | As Great Britain’s Industrial Revolution and India’s Green Revolution have shown, technological innovation can drive extraordinary development. Explore how digital advancements are further driving progress today. |
| Reading | From the history of vaccines and medical quarantines to the origin of the World Health Organization, explore how innovations in global health increased human longevity and prepared the world for COVID-19. |
| Reading | Learn about the Industrial Revolution and how technological innovations from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continue to shape society today. |
Unit 6: Consequences of Industrialization 1750-1900
| Video | Explore how the United States has responded to migrants throughout history—from the Chinese Exclusion Act to DACA—and how immigration policy influences the society, economy, and politics of a country. |
| Reading | Explore how colonialism enriched empires and fundamentally reshaped countries such as India. |
| Timeline | From the Silk Road and Christopher Columbus to the Ottoman Empire and the Revolutionary War, explore this history timeline covering major moments in global history before the twentieth century. |
| Mini Simulation | How should the United States intervene against Spanish colonial rule in Cuba? Explore this historical simulation set in 1898. |
Unit 7: Global Conflict 1900-Present
| Reading | Bombs and bullets are not always required for countries to come into conflict. From Russia’s war in Ukraine to a U.S. trade war with China, explore the different ways countries come into tension. |
| Reading | From civil war to terrorist violence, explore the types, causes, and consequences of conflicts within countries that are increasingly threatening world order. |
| Reading | In this free resource on World War I, explore the causes and effects of the Great War to understand how the conflict shaped world history. |
| Reading | In this free resource on World War II, understand the causes of World War II and why these issues drove countries back to battle just two decades after World War I. |
| Video | Learn how balances and imbalances of power contributed to World Wars I and II in this historical video. |
| Reading | Learn how domestic expansion and three wars—the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II—transformed the United States’ standing in the world. |
| Reading | Explore the different ways Marx, Lenin, and Stalin interpreted communism and dive into the history of translating an ideology into policy. |
| Reading | Learn how the world’s nearly two hundred countries came to be, and whether the map is set in stone. |
| Timeline | Learn how two world wars and other major historical developments from the Spanish-American War to World War II reshaped global affairs in the first half of the twentieth century. |
Tanks, Sanctions, and Separatists: The Various Challenges to Sovereignty Reading |
A government’s authority within its borders gets challenged all the time. Here is how. |
| Reading | In this free resource, learn how Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler rose to power and the lessons their political journeys hold for today. |
| Reading | From World War II to Syria’s civil war, understand the deadly consequences of war and what that means about the changing nature of conflict. |
| Mini Simulation | How should the United States intervene against Spanish colonial rule in Cuba? Explore this historical simulation set in 1898. |
| Video | What is conflict? Explore the reasons why tensions, violence, and war break out and what the consequences are for the world in this video. |
| Mini Simulation | Should the United States take action against Germany? Explore this historical simulation set in 1917. |
Unit 8: Cold War and Decolonization 1900-Present
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| Video | Understand how the Marshall Plan, one of the first large foreign aid programs, helped Europe rebuild after World War II, but also served the foreign policy interests of the United States. |
| Reading | How is the military using AI? Killer robots have long been a fear and fascination of humankind. Explore how weapons that can locate, target, and kill without human involvement shape today’s conflicts and hold the potential to re-shape future conflicts. |
| Mini Simulation | How should the United States manage dismantling Ukraine's nuclear arsenal while safeguarding against renewed conflict in Europe? Explore this historical simulation set in 1993. |
| Reading | Learn how the world’s nearly two hundred countries came to be, and whether the map is set in stone. |
| Reading | The United States and the Soviet Union never directly clashed, but the Cold War was far from bloodless. From Cuba to Korea, explore the proxy wars these superpowers fueled in this historical resource. |
Tanks, Sanctions, and Separatists: The Various Challenges to Sovereignty Reading |
A government’s authority within its borders gets challenged all the time. Here is how. |
| Reading | How did North Korea and South Korea turn out so differently? Learn about the history of Korea after World War II and how economic policies shaped the region. |
| Reading | More than twenty years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, challenges remain for Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland long after the conflict ended. |
| Mini Simulation | Should the United States use arms control to reduce the threat of a new type of weapon? Explore this hypothetical simulation. |
| Timeline | What is NATO? Trace NATO’s history and learn how the organization’s mission has evolved over seventy-five years, from the end of World War II to Russia’s war in Ukraine. |
| Mini Simulation | How should the United States use deterrence to block threats against itself and its allies? Explore this hypothetical simulation. |
How Does History Inform the Chinese Communist Party’s Domestic and Foreign Policy Goals? Reading |
Learn how China’s transformation from a state of economic and political collapse to its rise as a global power shapes the motivations of its leaders today. |
| Mini Simulation | Should the United States support peacekeeping in a country filled with ethnic conflict? Explore this hypothetical simulation. |
How Did Mass Production and Mass Consumption Take Off After World War II? Reading |
Discover how consumer goods have become cheap and ubiquitous in the global era. |
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| Reading | From India and the Palestinian Territories to Vietnam and Sudan, learn how former colonies sought independence—and how the shadow of colonialism still affects many regions today. |
| Mini Simulation | How should a country under threat by a nuclear-armed power decide its future nuclear plans? Explore this hypothetical simulation. |
| Video | Learn how the world’s superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR), avoided nuclear war. |
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| Reading | Understand the challenges that will define our lifetime. |
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| Reading | For centuries, sub-Saharan Africa was home to prosperous empires that made groundbreaking advances in architecture, mathematics, and metalworking. |
Unit 9: Globalization 1900-present
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| Mini Simulation | How should the United States apply sanctions to influence a crisis abroad? Explore this hypothetical simulation. |
| Mini Simulation | Should the United States consider the use of solar geoengineering to combat climate change? Explore this simulation. |
| Mini Simulation | Should the United States take action to stop deforestation in the Amazon to combat climate change? Explore this simulation. |
| Mini Simulation | How should the United States leverage trade to respond when a rivalry between growing trade partners threatens regional stability? Explore this hypothetical simulation. |
| Mini Simulation | Should the United States launch a new Arctic policy in response to climate change and investments from countries like China and Russia in the region? Explore this simulation. |
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