AP European History: Comprehensive Vocabulary Review

Essential vocabulary terms and historical definitions covering the major political, social, intellectual, and economic developments of AP European History from the Renaissance to the contemporary era.

Humanists

Renaissance intellectuals who studied classical Greek and Roman texts and culture, emphasizing human dignity, earthly life, and human potential rather than medieval scholasticism.

Petrarch

A 14th-century Italian poet and scholar known as the 'Father of Humanism' who recovered classical Latin manuscripts, popularized the writings of Cicero, and composed literature in the Italian vernacular.

Civic Humanist Culture

A Renaissance cultural ideal inspired by the Roman Republic and classical leaders like Cicero that encouraged educated citizens to actively participate in the political life and governance of their city-states.

Geometric Perspective

An artistic technique developed in the Renaissance that applied mathematical calculations to create an illusion of three-dimensional depth and spatial distance on a flat, two-dimensional surface.

Christian Humanists

Northern Renaissance thinkers, such as Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More, who combined classical learning with early Christian sources to advocate for moral reform within the Catholic Church.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 agreement brokered by Pope Alexander VI that divided the non-European world between Spain and Portugal along a north-south meridian through eastern South America.

Encomienda System

A Spanish colonial labor system under which Spanish landowners (encomenderos) were granted authority to extract forced labor and tribute from indigenous populations in exchange for food, shelter, and Christian instruction.

Columbian Exchange

The extensive transfer of plants, animals, diseases, and cultures between the Old World (Europe, Africa, and Asia) and the New World (the Americas) following the voyages of Christopher Columbus.

Price Revolution

A prolonged inflationary period in Western Europe from the late 15th to mid-17th centuries, driven by population growth and the massive influx of silver and gold imported from the Americas.

Enclosure Movement

A process in Britain where communal farmlands (the commons) and open-field strips were enclosed and consolidated into privately held commercial farms, increasing productivity while displacing landless peasants.

Joint-Stock Company

A business organization in which multiple investors purchase shares of stock to pool large amounts of commercial capital, sharing both corporate risks and profits through dividends.

Indulgence

A grant sold by the Catholic Church that remitted punishment for sins in purgatory, the sale of which prompted Martin Luther to compose his 95 Theses in 1517.

Sola Fide

The core theological doctrine of Martin Luther asserting that humans attain eternal salvation through faith alone in God's grace, rejecting the belief that good works earn salvation.

Predestination

The Calvinist theological doctrine stating that an all-knowing God has determined since the beginning of time who will be granted eternal salvation (the elect) and who will be damned.

Anabaptists

Radical Reformation Protestants who rejected infant baptism, advocated strict separation of church and state, refused to bear arms or swear secular oaths, and established secluded communities.

Peace of Augsburg

A 1555 settlement within the Holy Roman Empire establishing that individual princes could choose whether their territories would practice Lutheranism or Catholicism.

Edict of Nantes

A 1598 royal decree by French King Henry IV that maintained Catholicism as the official religion of France while granting French Calvinists (Huguenots) freedom of worship and political rights.

Council of Trent

A Catholic Church assembly held between 1545 and 1563 that reaffirmed traditional Catholic doctrines, the seven sacraments, and papal authority while introducing reforms to curb clerical abuses and simony.

Baroque

A 16th- and 17th-century artistic and architectural style characterized by dramatic lighting, emotional intensity, grand scale, and motion, heavily patronized by the Catholic Church and absolute monarchs.

Divine Right

The political doctrine claiming that a monarch's power is granted directly by God and that kings are answerable only to divine authority, not to assemblies, courts, or subjects.

Constitutional Monarchy

A form of government, established in England following the Glorious Revolution, in which the monarch's power is legally limited and shared with an elected parliament.

Peace of Westphalia

The 1648 series of treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War, dissolved the ideal of a unified Christian empire, weakened the Holy Roman Empire, and established the European balance of power system.

Mercantilism

An economic policy dominant from the 16th to 18th centuries based on the belief that global wealth is limited, requiring states to maximize exports, minimize imports, accumulate bullion, and exploit colonies.

Putting-Out System

Also called the cottage industry, a proto-industrial manufacturing system where merchant-capitalists delivered raw materials to rural workers to spin and weave into finished goods in their own homes.

Heliocentric Theory

The astronomical model published by Nicolaus Copernicus asserting that the sun, rather than Earth, is the center of the planetary system, challenging the classical Ptolemaic geocentric model.

Empiricism

An epistemology championed by Francis Bacon asserting that valid human knowledge must be derived from sensory observation, data collection, and inductive reasoning.

Tabula Rasa

John Locke's concept that the human mind is born as a 'blank slate' free of innate ideas, forming all understanding and morality through sensory experience and environmental influence.

Philosophes

The 18th-century French Enlightenment thinkers who applied reason, scientific principles, and critical inquiry to reform political, economic, and social institutions.

Deism

An Enlightenment religious philosophy holding that God created the universe and set it to run by natural laws, like a divine clockmaker, without intervening through miracles or revelations.

Laissez-Faire

An economic doctrine advocating that governments should eliminate regulations, trade barriers, and state monopolies to allow market forces and the 'invisible hand' of supply and demand to allocate resources.

Ancien Régime

The traditional feudal, political, and social order in France before 1789, characterized by absolute monarchy and unequal legal privileges granted to the clergy (First Estate) and nobility (Second Estate).

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

A 1789 manifesto adopted by France's National Assembly that proclaimed popular sovereignty, individual liberty, freedom of expression, and legal equality for all male citizens.

Reign of Terror

A phase of the French Revolution (1793–1794) led by Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety that used revolutionary tribunals and mass executions by guillotine to eliminate political rivals.

Napoleonic Code

A unified civil code enacted in France in 1804 that established male legal equality and secured property rights while eliminating feudalism, but sharply curtailed legal and financial independence for women.

Continental System

Napoleon's economic blockade designed to cripple Great Britain's economy by forbidding all European ports under French control from trading with British merchants.

Romanticism

A cultural and literary movement that emerged in the late 18th century as a reaction against Enlightenment rationalism, emphasizing human emotion, imagination, individuality, nature, and the sublime.

Proletariat

The class of modern industrial wage-earning laborers who do not own the means of production and sell their physical labor to capitalist factory owners.

Chartism

A 19th-century British working-class political movement based on the 1838 People's Charter, demanding universal male suffrage, secret ballots, and annual parliamentary elections.

Marxism

A socialist theory formulated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels arguing that historical progress is propelled by economic class struggle and predicting that the proletariat will overthrow capitalism to establish a classless society.

Realpolitik

A pragmatic approach to statecraft and diplomacy practiced by leaders such as Otto von Bismarck and Camillo di Cavour that prioritized practical power, national interest, and military action over ideological or ethical principles.

Social Darwinism

A 19th-century ideology popularized by Herbert Spencer that misapplied Charles Darwin's theories of biological evolution and 'survival of the fittest' to justify racial hierarchies, class divisions, and imperialism.

Berlin Conference

An 1884–1885 diplomatic meeting organized by Otto von Bismarck that laid down ground rules for European colonization and trade partition during the 'Scramble for Africa.'

Bolsheviks

A radical faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party led by Vladimir Lenin that seized power in Russia during the 1917 October Revolution and established a one-party communist state.

Weimar Republic

The German democratic government established in 1919 after World War I, which struggled with reparations, hyperinflation, and political instability until Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933.

Fascism

A totalitarian, right-wing political ideology characterized by dictatorial leadership, virulent nationalism, violent suppression of opposition, and state subordination of individual interests.

Collectivization

Joseph Stalin's economic policy in the Soviet Union that confiscated private farms and agricultural holdings to establish large state-managed collective farms, resulting in mass famine and the liquidation of the kulaks.

Nuremberg Laws

A set of antisemitic racial statutes enacted by Nazi Germany in 1935 that stripped German Jews of citizenship, civil liberties, and the right to marry non-Jewish Germans.

Marshall Plan

A U.S. economic initiative enacted in 1948 that provided $13 billion in rebuilding assistance to Western European nations to accelerate post-World War II recovery and prevent the expansion of communism.

Warsaw Pact

A mutual defense military alliance formed in 1955 by the Soviet Union and its Eastern European communist satellite states to counter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Glasnost

A policy of political 'openness' introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s that reduced state censorship, allowed public dissent, and permitted open critique of Soviet government failures.

Perestroika

The economic 'restructuring' campaign launched by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s that attempted to revitalize the stagnant Soviet planned economy by introducing limited private enterprise and decentralization.

European Union (EU)

An economic and political union of European nations established by the 1991 Maastricht Treaty that created a single internal market, facilitated free movement across borders, and established the euro currency.