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Notice how the authors use contextualization to paint a full picture of the historical
situation they’ll be dealing with in their argument. This passage demonstrates three dif-
ferent types of context. The first sentence sets a chronological context by saying that the
Chinese had interacted with pastoralists on their periphery over the centuries leading up
to this time period. The second sentence sets the context across geography and culture
by comparing the Chinese knowledge of the pastoralists’ world in Central Asia, and what
they could provide to China, to the Europeans’ prior lack of knowledge of the New
World. The third and fourth sentences describe the immediate setting within which the
claim is situated. This is a good example of the moves you’ll need to make to be successful
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writing essays on the AP Exam.
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CONTEXTUALIZATION ON THE AP WORLD
HISTORY EXAM
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On the AP Exam, the historical thinking skill of contextualization will be tested in a
variety of ways. A Multiple-Choice Question may test your understanding of the con-
text behind historical events and processes. A Short-Answer Question may require you
to accurately explain how the historical context influenced a specific process or develop-
ment. In the Long Essay Question and Document-Based Question, you will need to use
contextualization as the basis of your intro paragraph, setting the stage for your claim by
contextualizing the event that the prompt is asking you to write about.

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BUILDING AP SKILLS
1. Activity: Identifying Contextualization. Read the opening and second para-
graph for the section “Colonies of Sugar” (page 217). What is the international and
regional context within which the authors are situating the development of “highly
productive sugar-producing colonies” in the New World?

2. Activity: Identifying Contextualization and Claims. Read the section “In the
Islamic Heartland: The Ottoman and Persian Safavid Empires,” which begins on
page 230. First, identify the claim in this section, and then explain what context the
authors provide, and how this context sets the stage for that claim.
3. Activity: Working with Contextualization. Look at the painting of Interracial
Marriage in Colonial Mexico and its caption on page 215. Create a contextualizing
statement for the claim below:
Despite the Iberian focus on “purity of blood,” the Iberian men who came to Central or
South America to work and gain riches increasingly married Indigenous women or women
of African descent.

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