ABSTRACT
After nearly a decade of teaching world history in various formats, I have noticed certain obvious trends. The recognition of and approach to teaching these trends has allowed many teachers to survive and thrive in the often-grueling schedule that accompanies Advanced Placement (AP) World History on the high school level. The founding fathers and mothers of this course gave considerable thought to the necessary and sometimes controversial divisions of the material, which covers more than 10,000 years of human history. The time period that I found most intriguing and that will be the topic of this chapter is the long nineteenth century: 1750–1914. As with all the time periods covered in AP World History, it is the teacher's understanding of the trends that define the era that allows for excellence in teaching and better student understanding. When forced to cover so much ground in a course such as this one, a class can easily get lost in all the achievements, empires, philosophies, and conflicts that arise. Encapsulating or, more correctly, defining an era properly—whether Renaissance Italy or Imperial Japan—gives the teacher and the students a better framework for understanding.
