CSCredit Sprint
Sign upStart free

Credit Sprint / Study guides / World History Unit 5

Credit Sprint's Guide to AP® World History, Unit 5: Revolutions, c. 1750 to c. 1900

AP® weight 12–15%

Enlightenment ideas and economic change led to revolutions in the Atlantic world. Nationalism reshaped Europe, and colonial peoples later challenged European power. The Age of Revolution left new states and new ideas of rights.

The Age of Revolution1776American1789French1804Haitian1810Latin America1848EuropeEnlightenment ideas inspire revolt

What you need to know

  • Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau argued for natural rights, separation of powers and popular sovereignty. These ideas inspired both political revolution and reform.
  • The American Revolution (1775–1783) created a republic. The French Revolution (1789) overthrew the monarchy, produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and moved through radical phases, including the Reign of Terror, before Napoleon seized power.
  • The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), led by Toussaint Louverture and Dessalines, was the only successful large-scale slave revolt and created the first Black republic.
  • Latin American independence movements, led by Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín, ended Spanish rule in most of the region by the 1820s, though creoles often kept power and social inequality remained.
  • Nationalism unified Italy and Germany in the nineteenth century, while it threatened multiethnic empires such as Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans.
  • The Ottoman, Qing and other states tried reform. The Tanzimat reforms modernized the Ottoman state. In China, the Taiping Rebellion and the Opium Wars exposed the weakness of the Qing, while Japan's Meiji Restoration industrialized quickly.

Exam traps

Watch forThe Haitian Revolution combined a slave rebellion with a fight against colonial rule. It is not just a copy of the French Revolution.
Watch forLatin American independence was led largely by creoles, so many social hierarchies stayed in place.
Watch forNationalism could unify states, as in Germany and Italy, and also break up empires. Read the question for which effect it describes.

Key terms

  • Enlightenment: An intellectual movement stressing reason, natural rights and skepticism of traditional authority.
  • John Locke: An Enlightenment thinker who argued that people have natural rights to life, liberty and property.
  • Montesquieu: An Enlightenment thinker who argued for the separation of powers in government.
  • Social contract: The idea that governments rest on an agreement between rulers and the governed.
  • Popular sovereignty: The principle that political authority comes from the people.
  • Declaration of the Rights of Man: A 1789 French document proclaiming liberty and equality for male citizens.
  • Reign of Terror: The radical phase of the French Revolution in which thousands were executed under the Committee of Public Safety.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte: The French general who took power in 1799, created the Napoleonic Code and spread revolutionary reforms.
  • Napoleonic Code: A French legal code that stressed equality before the law and influenced many other countries.
  • Haitian Revolution: The successful slave revolt in Saint-Domingue that created the independent republic of Haiti in 1804.
  • Toussaint Louverture: The former slave who led the early Haitian Revolution.
  • Simón Bolívar: A leader who helped free much of northern South America from Spain.
  • Creole elite: American-born people of European descent who led Latin American independence movements while keeping social privileges.
  • Nationalism: A belief that people with a shared language, culture or history should form their own state.
  • Otto von Bismarck: The Prussian leader who unified Germany through war and diplomacy by 1871.
  • Congress of Vienna: A meeting in 1814 and 1815 where European powers tried to restore stability after Napoleon.

Practice questions

Five of the 43 Unit 5 questions in Credit Sprint. Every choice is explained in the app.

1. Which Enlightenment idea most directly influenced the revolutions of the late 1700s?
  1. The divine right of kings to rule without limits
  2. Natural rights and the belief that governments rest on the consent of the governed
  3. The belief that society should be organized into fixed castes
  4. The mercantilist view that colonies exist to serve the mother country
Show answer

Natural rights and the belief that governments rest on the consent of the governed. Thinkers like Locke argued that people have rights to life, liberty and property, and that rulers who break that trust can be replaced.

2. What was the importance of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)?
  1. It created a colony ruled by Spain
  2. It led to the immediate abolition of slavery across the Americas
  3. It was the first successful large-scale slave revolt
  4. It ended the French Revolution
Show answer

It was the first successful large-scale slave revolt. Led by Toussaint Louverture and later Dessalines, enslaved people defeated French, Spanish and British forces and established Haiti.

3. After independence, most Latin American societies saw
  1. a restoration of Spanish colonial rule
  2. a rapid end to all social divisions
  3. continued inequality, with elites holding land
  4. immediate economic equality for Native peoples
Show answer

continued inequality, with elites holding land. Independence did not remove class and race hierarchies, and instability and caudillos often dominated politics.

4. Olympe de Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791) argued that
  1. women should be banned from all public life
  2. the monarchy should be restored
  3. women should have the same rights as men in the new French order
  4. France should avoid all religion
Show answer

women should have the same rights as men in the new French order. She criticized revolutionary leaders for excluding women from citizenship, and she was later executed during the Terror.

5. The Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire (1839-1876) tried to
  1. join the Russian empire
  2. modernize the army, law and education to strengthen the empire
  3. end all contact with Europe
  4. abolish the sultan immediately
Show answer

modernize the army, law and education to strengthen the empire. Reformers aimed to guarantee rights to all subjects and adopt European methods, but they met resistance and did not prevent decline.