European Civ Final

The Great Chain of Being

A hierarchical structure of all matter and life, depicting a strict religious and social hierarchy from God at the top down to nonliving things.

Absolutism

A political doctrine and practice where a single ruler holds supreme authority, typically over a nation, without being constitutionally responsible to the public.

Liberalism

A political philosophy advocating for individual freedoms, equality, and democratic governance, often opposing tyrannical rule.

Scientific Revolution

A period of significant advancements in scientific thought and practice from the 16th to the 18th centuries, emphasizing observation and empirical evidence.

Deism

A philosophical belief that posits God created the universe but does not intervene in its workings or human affairs.

Mercantilism

An economic theory emphasizing the importance of state power in economic policy, advocating for governmental regulation of a nation's economy for augmenting state power.

The Invisible Hand

A metaphor introduced by Adam Smith to describe the self-regulating nature of the marketplace, where individual self-interest leads to economic benefits for the whole society.

Industrial Revolution

A period of significant technological, socioeconomic, and cultural changes beginning in the late 18th century, characterized by the shift to industrial production.

Nationalism

A political ideology that emphasizes the interests and culture of a particular nation, advocating for political independence for that nation.

Marxism

A political and economic theory based on the ideas of Karl Marx, which argues for a classless society and collective ownership of the means of production.

How did famines affect the European population of the seventeenth century

The population was significantly reduced due to malnutrition and starvation.

How did the Peace of Westphalia mark a turning point in European history?

Large-scale armed conflicts over religious faith came to an end.

How did the Peace of Utrecht resolve the problem of succession to the Spanish throne?

Louis XIV of France’s grandson, Philip, was placed on the French throne with the agreement that the French and Spanish thrones would never be united.

The trivial rituals performed at the court of Versailles were important because they gave nobles

access to Louis XIV

Which statement describes a consequence of Prince Francis Rakoczy’s rebellion for Habsburg rule?

Hungary was never fully integrated into a centralized, absolutist Habsburg state

Both Frederick William of Prussia and Peter the Great of Russia exploited the peasants for their own gain by forcing them

into their respective armies.

Which was a social consequence of Peter the Great’s bureaucratic system?

People of non-noble origin were able to rise to high positions.

The English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes held that

the power of the ruler was absolute and prevented civil war

The primary cause of the 1688-1689 Glorious Revolution in England was

a fear that James II would establish Catholic absolutism

Why did the English government arrive at a crisis by 1640?

Charles I imposed unwelcome laws and reforms on the country.

Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate was ultimately a

military dictatorship

Which commonality could one find in both 1695 England and the Netherlands?1

A tolerant environment for Jews

What statement correctly characterizes the response of various religious perspectives to Nicolaus Copernicus’s hypothesis?

The Catholic Church largely overlooked his theory until declaring the hypothesis false in the seventeenth century, when Galileo popularized it.

How did the European governments respond to the new science?

They established academies of science to support and sometimes direct scientific research.

In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke claimed that

human development is determined by education and society

Which statement describes the core concept of the Enlightenment?

The methods of natural science should be used to examine all aspects of life.

Why did Scotland, outside of France, become a major center of Enlightenment thought, as exemplified by the contributions of Adam Smith and David Hume?

After the Act of Union, Scotland was freed from political crisis

Which aspect of society during the Enlightenment enabled elites in the Western world to justify the growth of slavery in the eighteenth century?

The emergence of scientific racism, which proposed a biological inferiority in races.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that

women were best suited to a passive role in social relations

After the development of the idea of “race”, Europeans increasingly defined themselves in relation to other peoples as

biologically superior as well as culturally superior

During the Enlightenment, most thinkers believed that

both European women and non-Europeans were inferior to European men

Why did Leopold II cancel his brother Joseph’s radical edicts in the early 1790s?

Leopold was attempting to restore order in Austria

The enlightened policies of Frederick the Great included

simplifying Prussia’s laws

Which change within the Jewish community accompanied the Haskalah Enlightenment movement?

Interactions between Jews and Christians increased, and rabbinic controls diminished

Which factor caused the pattern of late marriage in early modern Europe?

The tendency to waiting to marry until after economic independence

The underlying reason for the illegitimacy explosion of 1750-1850 was

social and economic transformations that made it harder for families and communities to supervise behavior

Many mothers in small towns and mid-sized cities sent their foundlings to hospitals in major cities like London and Paris because

hospitals in large cities had policies to accept all children

Which statement best describes the treatment of children in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries?

The disciplining of children was often severe in order to conquer the child’s will.

Why did sugar and tea become commonly consumed by all social classes in the eighteenth century?

There was a steady drop in prices owing to the expanded use of colonial slave labor.

Which of the following laws was one of the most bitterly resented by ordinary people?

Hunting wild game was illegal except for nobility and large landowners.

The dissolution of the Jesuit order in 1773 was a striking indication of the

Power of the state over the church

The religious revival movement known as Pietism

called for a warm, emotional religion that everyone could experience

Which of these did John Wesley believe?

All people should hear God’s word.

How did the evangelicals within the Church of England respond to the rise of Methodism?

They copied Methodism’s practices to appeal to more common people.

Edward Jenner received financial prizes from the British government for

discovering that cowpox could be used to vaccinate against smallpox

Why did surgeons in the eighteenth century face incredible difficulties?

Surgery was performed in utterly unsanitary conditions, which meant the simplest wound could become infected and lead to death.

In the eighteenth century, many liberal thinkers believed that representative institutions could defend the liberty and interests of the people. In terms of political practice, this meant that

voting for representatives would be restricted to men of property

How did America’s Constitutional Convention of 1787 deal with the discord between pro and antislavery delegates?

It compromised by stipulating that an enslaved person would count as three-fifths of a person for purposes of taxation and proportional representation in the House of Representatives.

Why was the Declaration of Independence so important to the American Revolution?

It universalized the traditional rights of English people and made them the rights of all mankind.

The the wake of the Great Fear in the summer of 1789, the National Assembly restored order by

abolishing all the old noble and church privileges

Who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1750) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), the latter a founding text of the feminist movement?

Mary Wollstonecraft

Why did the Directory continue French wars of conquest begun by early revolutionary governments?

The Directory understood that big, victorious armies kept men employed.

How did the reaction of kings and nobles in continental Europe to the French Revolution change over the Revolution’s first two years?

Initially pleased by the Revolution’s weakening of France, they came to feel threatened by its increasingly radical message.

By July 1794, how had the central government in Paris managed to reassert control over the provinces and gain momentum against the First Coalition?

It harnessed the explosive forces of a planned economy, revolutionary terror, and modern nationalism into a total war effort.

Which two fundamental principles of the First Revolution were incorporated into the Napoleonic Code?

The equality of all male citizens before the law and the absolute security of wealth and private property.

How did Napoleon consolidate his rule?

He appealed to disillusioned revolutionaries and members of the old nobility and offered them high posts in the expanding centralized state.

Why did the French commissioners sent by the newly elected National Convention to Saint-Domingue abolish slavery in 1793?

They were desperate to rally the rebels to the French cause against the Spanish and English forces on the island.

After the arrest and deportation of Toussaint L’Ouverture, how was the war of Hatian independence resolved?

Jean-Jacques Dessalines, L-Ouverture’s lieutenant, led the resistance to a crushing victory over the French and later declared Haitian independence.

Why were the young, generally unmarried women who worked for wages outside the home confined to certain “women’s jobs”?

The sexual division of labor replicated a long-standing pattern of gender segregation and inequality.

The tendency to hire family units in the early factories was

usually a response to the wishes of the families

The British Mines Act of 1842 and the various Factory Acts between 1802 and 1833 provide evidence that in the early and mid-nineteenth century

Parliament was sympathetic to the new industrial working class

In nineteenth-century Germany, Fritz Harkort sought

to match English achievements in machine production as quickly as possible, even at great, unprofitable expense.

How did iron become the basic building block of the British economy in the nineteenth century?

The spread of coke smelting and the development of steam-powered rolling mills increased production enormously and reduced the price of iron products.

Why were the cottage workers, accustomed to the putting-out system, reluctant to work in the new factories even when they received good wages?

In a factory, workers had to keep up with the machine and follow its relentless tempo.

Owing to the Industrial Revolution, living and working conditions for the poor

improved only after 1840

How did labor in British families change in the eighteenth century?

Family members shifted labor away from unpaid work for household consumption and toward work for wages.

In 1850, in which occupational area did the largest number of British people work?

Farming and agriculture

In the “separate spheres” pattern of gender relationships,

women generally stopped working outside of the home after the first child was born.

In the eighteenth century, railroad construction on the European continent

featured varying degrees of government involvement

How did industry grow in continental Europe?

Belgium led continental Europe in adopting British technology for production.