AP European History Flashcards ALL UNITS

Flashcards covering the Renaissance through contempory Europe.

Italian Renaissance

The rebirth of interest in classical antiquity (Greco-Roman) that impacted education, culture, and art.

Florence

City-state that rose to cultural and economic prominence due to capitalism and modern banking techniques.

Francesco Petrarch

The father of humanism.

Humanism

Belief that human nature and achievements were worthy of admiration and contemplation.

Impact of Humanist Revival

The shift in education away from theological writings toward classical texts and new methods of scientific inquiry.

Civic Humanism

Encouraged scholars to read ancient Greco-Roman documents to become better citizens and encouraged democracy.

Individualism (Renaissance)

Stressed optimism and self-confidence in one’s own achievements and pursuit of knowledge.

Development of the Printing Press

Weakened the Catholic Church’s control over information and promoted secularism.

Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Asserted that humans were at the center of divine creation because of free will; banned by the Catholic Church.

Renaissance Art

Leaned toward naturalism, focusing less on religious themes.

Patronage

Wealthy and influential Italians who supported the arts.

The School of Athens

Raphael’s fresco of famous ancient philosophers.

Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince

Encouraged leaders to learn from the shrewd and ruthless tactics of Roman emperors.

Baldassare Castiglione's The Courtier

Became a manual of proper behavior and influenced the separate spheres model of gender inequality.

Northern Renaissance

Retained a more religious focus and human-centered naturalism.

Pieter Bruegel’s The Harvesters

Piece depicting men and women working in the fields.

Christian Humanism (Desiderius Erasmus)

Employed Renaissance learning in the service of religious reform.

Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille as "new monarchs"

Limited the power of the nobility and the clergy to centralize power.

Spanish Inquisition

The monarchs ordered Spain’s Jewish population to either convert to Catholicism (conversos) or leave the country

1492 Treaty of Tordesillas

Spain and Portugal agreed, through the Catholic Church, on who could claim which areas in the New World.

Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator

He funded and encouraged exploration and sponsored numerous West African expeditions.

Spanish Empire

It focused on colonization to control the natives who lived in discovered lands and extract wealth from them.

Christopher Columbus

Pioneered the Spanish domination of South America; Spain conquered the Aztec and Inca empires due to more advanced weaponry.

Columbian Exchange

It brought the deadly European disease of smallpox to the Americas, decimating indigenous Americans.

Atlantic slave trade

Where enslaved peoples were bought in Africa and sent to American plantations.

16th-century Europeans increasingly began to criticize the Catholic Church

They were angered by the corruption within the church, including simony, nepotism, pluralism/absenteeism, and the selling of indulgences.

Protestant leaders Martin Luther and John Calvin

They called for separation from the Catholic Church, bringing about the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Luther's beliefs

He believed that salvation is initiated by God, authority is rested in the Bible alone, and that the Church should not be hierarchical.

John Calvin's beliefs

He was a believer in predestination, the concept that God already decided who would be saved and who would be damned.

Peace of Augsburg

Each territory in the Holy Roman Empire would be able to decide whether it was Catholic or Protestant.

Counter-Reformation

In an attempt to purify its image and take back supporters, the Catholic Church launched its Catholic Reformation.

Pope Paul III’s Council of Trent

The Council addressed what reforms had to be made in the Church and laid a solid basis for the spiritual renewal of the Catholic Church.

Mannerism and baroque styles of art

Styles of art that were grand, emotional, and visually interesting Catholic propaganda.

Habsburg-Valois wars' impacts

The costs of the Habsburg-Valois wars forced the French to increase taxes and heavily borrow.

Concordat of Bologna

He agreed to recognize the supremacy of the papacy over a universal council, with the French crown gaining the right to appoint all French bishops.

Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572

A massacre where thousands of Protestants were killed by Catholic mobs.

Henry IV (Henry of Navarre) as a politique

Henry of Navarre realized that the only way to save France was to sacrifice religious principles for political necessity.

Queen Elizabeth I of England

England’s Protestant Queen; clashed with the Catholic King Philip II of Spain in 1588, destroying Spain’s Spanish Armada.

Bohemian Phase (1618-1625) of the Thirty Years’ War

It started with the defenestration of Prague in 1618, led by Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II.

Treaty of Lubeck in 1629

Holstein was restored to Christian, and gave the HRE back all of the German states that were secularized with the Peace of Augsburg.

Swedish Phase (1630-1635) of the Thirty Years’ War

France and Sweden signed an alliance, and France entered the war against the Habsburgs.

Treaty of Prague

It strengthened Habsburgs and weakened the German Princes.

French/International Phase (1635-1648) of the Thirty Years’ War

Cardinal Richelieu wanted to reclaim Alsace and weaken the power of Spain and its Habsburg king Philip IV.

Peace of Westphalia (1648)

France acquired Alsace, and both France and Sweden acquired nearby territory. The Dutch Republic and Switzerland were given independence from Spain.

Absolutism

Austria, Prussia, and Russia strengthened their national unities and state authorities.

Austria and Prussia

Increased monarchical powers by building large armies, increasing taxation, and suppressing representative institutions.

Peter the Great in Russia

Built up the state, expanded his territory, and Westernized Russia.

Henry IV

Defused religious tensions and rebuilt France’s economy after inheriting a France wrecked from religious wars, founding the Bourbon dynasty.

Edict of Nantes (1589)

Allowed Huguenots the right to worship in 150 traditionally Protestant towns throughout France.

Cardinal Richelieu

His most important goal was to secure French pre-eminence in European power politics, weakening the Habsburgs.

Cardinal Richelieu's policies

Policies designed to strengthen royal control; used intendants to do this.

The Fronde

It occurred in 1648-1653 as a result of Cardinal Jules Mazarin failing to meet the costs of the Thirty Years’ War.

Louis XIV

Based his authority on the concept that kings were God’s rulers on Earth and removed most of the nobles of the sword from power.

Louis XIV’s court of Versailles

The location of government where he made France’s noble families stay to jockey for power and favors.

Edict of Fountainbleu

Louis revoked king Henry IV’s Edict of Nantes with his own Edict in 1685, causing 200,000 Protestants to flee from France.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert

Louis’s controller general from 1665 to his death in 1683 who applied mercantilist policies to France.

Mercantilism

A system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state.

Peace of Utrecht's resolution to the War of Spanish Succession

Louis XIV's grandson was allowed to remain king of Spain on the understanding that the French and Spanish crowns would never be united.

Rococo

A fantastical noble-oriented style of art displayed in salons and at the palace of Versailles.

Stuart Absolutism leading to the English Civil War (1642-1651)

English citizens debating taxing authority, state religion, and sovereignty.

James I's beliefs

Believed in the divine right of kings and attempted to rule as an absolutist monarch; wanted religious uniformity.

Charles I's actions

Attempted to make England even more absolutist, trying to implement ship money without parliamentary approval.

1628 Petition of Right

Parliament responded with this in response to Charles’s abuse of power.

Cavaliers

Supported the king during the English Civil War.

Roundheads (including Oliver Cromwell)

Supported Parliament during the English Civil War.

the Protectorate

Charles I was beheaded in 1649 and Oliver Cromwell established this, a strict Puritanical military dictatorship.

Charles II

Issued the Declaration of Indulgence, the non-enforcement of laws against Catholics in England.

The Test Acts

Parliament, seeing that Charles was becoming a bit too tolerant, issued this, requiring all office holders to be Anglican.

James II

He was an open Papist (Catholic) and believed in absolutism and the divine right of kings; revoking the Test Acts and other laws Parliament passed.

William of Orange and Mary Stuart

They governed England in a joint monarchy and signed the English Bill of Rights, establishing the first constitutional monarchy.

Nicolaus Copernicus's heliocentrism

The Sun, rather than the Earth, was the center of the universe.

Industrious Revolution

That families in northwestern Europe focused on earning wages rather than producing goods for household consumption.

Thinkers of the Enlightenment

They believed in progress, freedom of thought and expression, education of the masses, liberty to all men, and individualism.

The philosophes

French philosophers who applied scientific reasoning to human nature.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Wrote The Social Contract, which argued for equal rights (excluding women and nonwhite races) and that government policy should reflect the general will of the people.

Montesquieu

Believed in separation of political powers in government and that there were only 3 types of government.

René Descartes

A champion of rationalism, a secular, critical way of thinking summarized by “I think, therefore I am.”

Voltaire

Believed in religious toleration and contempt for the power of the Catholic Church.

Diderot

He was the co-author of the Encyclopedia, the combined manifesto of the French philosophes.

John Locke

Wrote The Social Contract, which states that the government is created to protect its citizens’ natural rights of life, liberty, property; believed that the divine right of kings’ was illegitimate.

Thomas Hobbes

Wrote Leviathan to argue that only an absolutist government is able to save man from his natural state of savagery.

Marquis de Condorcet

Equal rights (including women and all races), constitutional government, liberal economy.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Proto-feminist and author of A Vindication on the Rights of Woman, which approached feminist ideas based on liberal theory.

Utilitarianism

The idea of Jeremy Bentham that social policies should promote the greatest good for the greatest number.

Neoclassical art

Return to Greco-Roman romanticization, such as in Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii.

Deism

The belief in a distant God but denial of organized religion, basing one’s belief on the light of reason.

The Enlightened despots

They were authoritarian leaders who used their political power according to the principles of the Enlightenment.

The War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748)

The war’s inconclusive end helped set the stage for the Seven Years’War.

The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)

It was mainly a colonial/global balance of power war.

Treaty of Paris of 1763

France gave all of its North American colonies to England, and the balance of power shifted toward Britain.

Liberal Phase (1789-1792) of the French Revolution

Established a constitutional monarchy, increased popular participation, nationalized the Catholic Church, and abolished hereditary privileges.

Financial crisis for the Ancien Regime

The royal family lived in the luxurious palace of Versailles and the First and Second Estates were exempt from taxation while the Third Estate starved.

Emmanuel Joseph Sièyes’s What is the Third Estate?

Describes the Third Estate's oppression pre-Revolution.

The Marquis de Lafayette writing the Declaration of the Rights of Man

Championed equality and other natural rights seen in the American Declaration of Independence.

Olympe de Gouges writing the Declaration of the Rights of Woman

Attacked Rousseau’s homemaker view of women.

The Fall of the Bastille

Demonstrating the Great Fear mentality of the French peasantry, was sparked by the starvation and economic concerns of the Third Estate.

Ratification of the First French Constitution in 1791

Gave all lawmaking power to the National Assembly.

The radical Jacobin republic after the execution of Louis XVI

Led by Maxamilien Robespierre, responded to opposition at home and war abroad by instituting the Reign of Terror, fixing prices and wages and pursuing a policy of de-Christianization.

Committee of Public Safety

Sought to impose republican unity across the nation, collaborating with the sans-culottes and creating a planned economy with egalitarian social overtones.

The Reign of Terror (1793 to 1794)

Was a weapon directed against all suspected of opposing the revolutionary government.