AP European History Unit 1 Review Flashcards

Vocabulary terms covering the major historical concepts, thinkers, artistic innovations, political developments, and economic shifts from Unit 1 of AP European History.

Renaissance

A period meaning 'rebirth' marked by the resurrection of classical texts and ideas from ancient Greece and Rome that began in Italy.

Humanism

A Renaissance philosophy pioneered by figures like Petrarch that focused on the unlimited potential of human beings as an end in themselves.

Individualism

A Renaissance mode of thought that emphasized the triumph and capability of the individual.

Cicero

A Roman orator whose eloquent Latin compositions were championed by Petrarch as the model for the Latin language, particularly for his support of the Roman Republic.

Philology

The study of the history and development of languages, which Renaissance scholars used to analyze historical documents.

Lorenzo Valla

A Renaissance scholar who used philological analysis in 1440 to prove that an authoritative Roman Catholic Church document attributed to Emperor Constantine was a forgery.

Humanities

An educational curriculum introduced by Renaissance scholars based on classical texts, focusing on history, moral philosophy, and poetry.

Baldassari Castiglione

Author of The Courtier, a Renaissance handbook detailing how an educated young man should behave as a gentleman in courtly society.

Civic Humanism

The Renaissance application of humanist political thought asserting that educated men should be active and engaged in local public life and politics.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Author of The Prince, who argued that a ruler's primary function is to maintain power and political order at all costs, famously stating it is safer to be feared than loved.

Naturalism

An artistic movement in the Renaissance that emphasized realistic depiction of the world as it was, departing from the flat and symbolic styles of the Middle Ages.

Geometric Perspective

An artistic technique perfected during the Renaissance to create depth, proportion, and visual realism on flat surfaces.

Filippo Brunelleschi

The Renaissance architect who rebuilt the Church of San Lorenzo with classical Roman columns and arches and engineered the self-supporting stone dome on the Florence Cathedral.

Christian Humanism

A Northern Renaissance movement that synthesized classical humanist educational principles with scriptural authority to promote societal and religious reform.

Desiderius Erasmus

A Christian humanist who authored the satire In Praise of Folly, criticizing the corrupt practices of political institutions and religious hierarchies.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

A Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painter famous for naturalistic scenes depicting the lives of ordinary people, such as in The Peasant Wedding.

Johannes Gutenberg

A German metalsmith who perfected the movable type printing press in the 1440s and published the Gutenberg Bible in 1456.

Vernacular Literature

Literature written in the native spoken language of a region (such as German, English, or French) rather than Latin.

Treason Act

English legislation passed under Henry VIII that made refusing to recognize the Church of England as the state religion an offense punishable by death.

Act of Uniformity

An English law enacted under Elizabeth I mandating that all subjects attend an Anglican church once per week or pay a fine.

Reconquista

The military campaign completed in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella that expelled Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula and established Catholicism across Spain.

Concordat of Bologna (1516)

An agreement between King Francis I and Pope Leo X granting the Pope church revenue from France while giving the French monarch authority to appoint French Catholic leaders.

Peace of Augsburg (1555)

A treaty granting local rulers in the Holy Roman Empire the authority to decide whether their subjects would practice Catholicism or Lutheranism.

Mercantilism

The dominant economic system of early modern Europe asserting that global wealth is finite, measured in gold and silver, and maximized through state regulation and colonial expansion.

Favorable Balance of Trade

A key mercantilist goal requiring a country to export more goods than it imports in order to achieve a net inflow of gold and silver.

Jean Baptiste Colbert

The controller general of finance under French rule who implemented mercantilist policies to boost domestic manufacturing and expand French holdings in North America.

Caravel

A small, fast, highly navigable ocean vessel developed by the Spanish and Portuguese utilizing triangular latine sails.

Trading Post Empire

A network of coastal commercial outposts established to control trade routes without occupying vast inland territories, exemplified by Portugal along the African and Asian coasts.

Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)

An agreement mediated by Pope Alexander VI that drew an imaginary boundary dividing newly discovered territories in the Americas between Spain and Portugal.

Columbian Exchange

The global transfer of plants, animals, diseases, culture, and human populations between the Old World and the New World following European contact.

Encomienda System

A colonial Spanish labor system in which prominent settlers were granted land rights alongside the forced, unpaid labor of local indigenous inhabitants.

Requerimiento

A 1513 Spanish legal document asserting papal and royal authority to colonize the Americas and convert indigenous populations under threat of subjugation.

Middle Passage

The brutal forced transatlantic voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to plantation labor in the Americas.

Commercial Revolution

The dramatic expansion of global trade, banking, and market-based economies in early modern Europe that accelerated the rise of venture capitalism.

Double-entry Bookkeeping

A financial accounting innovation developed in Renaissance Europe requiring ledgers to maintain equal debits and credits to track high volumes of monetary transactions.

Joint-stock Company

A private financial structure where individual investors buy shares in a corporate venture to raise capital while sharing potential business risks and profits.

Price Revolution

A period of sustained inflation across 16th-century Europe caused by population growth, market demand, and the heavy influx of silver and gold from the Americas.

Enclosure Movement

The legal privatization and fencing off of common agricultural lands in England by commercial landowners, displacing rural peasant communities.

Urbanization

The large-scale movement of landless poor populations from rural agricultural areas into growing cities in search of wage labor.