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AP World History: The Modern Era, a free history course on Tomo

AP World History: The Modern Era

Travel through the last 800 years of human history to see how trade, empires, and revolutions connected the globe. Learn the major patterns that shaped our modern world from the Silk Road to the digital age.

Like Duolingo, but for AP World History: The Modern Era. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

24 levels across 4 sections, about 48 minutes end to end, roughly 10 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Global Tapestry and Trade, Empires and Oceans, Revolutions and Industry, and The Global Century. It starts from scratch.

24 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Wally the World-Traveler, the guide who teaches the AP World History: The Modern Era course
AP World History: The Modern Era
with Wally the World-Traveler
24
Levels
4
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in AP World History: The Modern Era

  • Merchants acted as cultural ambassadors
  • Religious conversion often followed trade hubs
  • Technological secrets traveled along the same paths as physical goods
  • The Mongol Empire provided unified political control over the Silk Road
  • Pax Mongolica reduced the threat of bandits and local tolls
  • Increased safety allowed for longer, more frequent merchant journeys
  • The cultural and religious spread along trade routes
  • The impact of the Mongol Empire on trade safety
  • The magnetic compass allowed for navigation in open water
  • Lateen sails allowed ships to sail into the wind (tacking)
  • Knowledge of Monsoon winds was essential for timing voyages
  • How maritime technology enabled Indian Ocean trade
  • The plague originated in Central/East Asia
  • Trade ships and caravans carried infected fleas and rats
  • Densely populated trade hubs were the first to be hit by the pandemic
  • The progression of the Black Death via trade networks
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives AP World History: The Modern Era the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

Ideas and Safety on the Silk Road

Where was a person in the 13th century most likely to encounter a new religion for the first time?

Get it right to open this lesson and 23 more in the app.

Course map

Where AP World History: The Modern Era takes you

  1. 1

    The Global Tapestry and Trade

    • Networks of Exchange
    • Power and Belief (1200-1450)
  2. 2

    Empires and Oceans

    • The Rise of Gunpowder Empires
    • The Great Atlantic Shift
  3. 3

    Revolutions and Industry

    • Enlightenment and Political Change
    • The Industrial Engine
  4. 4

    The Global Century

    • Global Conflict and Ideology
    • The Modern Connected World

4 sections · 8 units · 24 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Professor

AP World History: The Modern Era is taught in the The Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

Keep going

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