Renaissance, Reformation, Absolutism, and Revolutions Flashcards

Flashcards covering key terms, people, and events from the Renaissance through 20th-century global conflicts, focusing on European history.

What Greco-Roman concept was reborn during the Italian Renaissance, impacting education, culture, and art?

Classical antiquity

Which city-state rose to cultural and economic prominence due to capitalism and modern banking techniques during the Renaissance?

Florence

Who is considered the father of humanism?

Francesco Petrarch

What did humanists believe was worthy of admiration and contemplation?

Human nature and achievements, evident in the classics

What was the goal of a liberal arts educational curriculum according to humanists?

Producing individuals fit for civic leadership positions

How did the printing press weaken the Catholic Church's control over information?

It resulted in the mass production of classical texts, which promoted secularism.

Which of Pico della Mirandola's works asserted that humans were at the center of divine creation because of their free will?

Oration on the Dignity of Man

What was a key difference between Renaissance art and the art of previous centuries?

The Renaissance leaned toward naturalism as opposed to mainly religious subjects.

How did wealthy families like the Medici use art during the Renaissance?

To glorify their families and their cities.

Which of Raphael's famous frescoes included the philosophers Plato and Aristotle and reflected the Renaissance's inspiration from Greek and Roman philosophers?

The School of Athens

Which book encouraged leaders to learn from the ruthless tactics of Roman emperors?

The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli

Wrote The Courtier, which became a manual of proper behavior for upper-class men and women during the Renaissance?

Baldassare Castiglione

What did Christian humanism, embodied by Desiderius Erasmus, employ Renaissance learning for?

Religious reform

What did King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella agree to in return for the Pope's allowance of them to appoint church officials in Spain?

To make Catholicism the national religion of Spain

What was the Spanish Inquisition's main target?

Jews

What agreement divided the New World between Spain and Portugal?

The Treaty of Tordesillas (1492)

What deadly European disease significantly contributed to the success of Spanish colonization in the Americas?

Smallpox

Name the criticisms of the Catholic Church that led to the Protestant Reformation.

Simony, nepotism, pluralism/absenteeism, and the selling of indulgences.

Who were the main leaders of the Protestant Reformation?

Martin Luther and John Calvin

Which reformer believed in predestination, the concept that men cannot actively work to achieve salvation?

John Calvin

What agreement allowed each territory in the Holy Roman Empire to decide whether it was Catholic or Protestant?

The Peace of Augsburg (1555)

What was the Catholic Church's response to the Protestant Reformation called?

The Catholic Reformation (or Counter-Reformation)

What council addressed the reforms needed in the Catholic Church during the mid-16th century?

The Council of Trent

What two art styles were used as Catholic propaganda during the Catholic Reformation?

Mannerism and baroque

What was the Concordat of Bologna?

King Francis I agreed to recognize the supremacy of the papacy over a universal council. In return, the French crown gained the right to appoint all French bishops, which allowed for economic growth for the French crown.

Which massacre in 1572 saw thousands of Protestants killed by Catholic mobs?

The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Which 30 Years' War phase started with the defenestration of Prague in 1618?

The Bohemian Phase

Which treaty in 1648 concluded the Thirty Years' War?

The Peace of Westphalia

Which countries used deals with nobles to increase their monarchical powers, building large armies and increasing taxation?

Austria and Prussia

What was the Edict of Nantes (1589)?

It allowed Huguenots (French Protestants) the right to worship in 150 traditionally Protestant towns throughout France.

What did Cardinal Richelieu use to strengthen royal control in France?

Intendants

Why did the Fronde uprisings occur in France?

As a result of the failure of Cardinal Jules Mazarin to meet the costs of the Thirty Years’War

Where was Louis XIV's court located?

Versailles

What did Louis XIV evoke with his Edict of Fountainbleu in 1685?

The Edict of Nantes

What economic policies did Jean-Baptiste Colbert apply to France?

Mercantilist policies

What agreement allowed Louis's grandson Philip to remain king of Spain, but it was on the understanding that the French and Spanish crowns would never be united?

The Peace of Utrecht

What were the main issues debated by English citizens that led to the English Civil War?

Taxing authority, state religion, and sovereignty

What was ship money, which Charles I tried to implement?

A tax without parliamentary approval

Who supported the king and English Parliament during the English Civil War?

Cavaliers (King) and Roundheads (Parliament)

Who established The Protectorate?

Oliver Cromwell

Issuing the Declaration of Indulgence, what did Charles II not enforce?

Laws against Catholics in England

Which act did Parliament issue, seeing that Charles II was becoming too tolerant?

The Test Acts

Who was invited to rule alongside Mary Stuart and signed the English Bill of Rights?

William of Orange

What theory about the Sun did Nicolaus Copernicus develop?

Heliocentrism

His 3 laws of planetary motion mathematically proved Copernicus’s heliocentrism.

Johannes Kepler

Developed the law of inertia: motion, not rest, is the natural state of an object.

Galileo Galilei

The law of universal gravitation that all objects are to one another?

Isaac Newton

Thinkers of the Enlightenment believed in what?

Progress, freedom of thought and expression, education of the masses, liberty, and individualism.

Who wrote The Social Contract and argued for equal rights (excluding women and nonwhite races)?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Which Enlightenment thinker believed in the separation of powers in government?

Montesquieu

Who argued that government is created to protect its citizens’ natural rights of life, liberty, property?

John Locke

Equal rights, constitutional government, liberal economy (including women and all races) was advocated for by whom?

Marquis de Condorcet

Who believed that public policy should promote the “greatest good for the greatest number?”

Jeremy Bentham (utilitarianism)

Return-to-Greco-Roman romanticization art is know as __.

Neoclassical Art

The seized which Austrian territory during the War of Austrian Succession?

Frederick the Great of Prussia seized Silesia

What did France lose to England in the Treaty of Paris of 1763?

All of its North American colonies

Name the governing bodies during the Liberal and Radical phases of the French Revolution respectively.

National Assembly; National Convention and Committee of Public Safety

What was the question of Emmanuel Joseph Sièyes’s pamphlet “What is the Third Estate?”

Answer: Everything

Who wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man?

Marquis de Lafayette

List the Political Spectrum of the National Assembly (left to right).

Montagnards (socialist-leaning), sans-culottes (emerging middle class), Georges Danton’s Jacobins (liberal), Centrists, Girondists (center-right), Monarchiens (monarchist)

What was the Reign of Terror?

The period from 1793 to 1794 during which Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety tried and executed thousands suspected of treason, and a new revolutionary culture was imposed.

Robespierre was killed during what French Revolution Reaction?

Thermidorian Reaction

What Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew to gain power?

The Directory

What did Napoleon do in 1801 to restore French Catholic worship?

Concordat of 1801

Which system was meant to halt all trade between Britain and continental Europe?

The Continental System

Why did Napoleon fail in Russia?

The Russian army, the Russian winter, and starvation cut Napoleon’s army to pieces.

Which alliance defeated Napoleon?

Quadruple Alliance (Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria)

Which European leaders met in Austria in 1815 to re-establish order after Napoleon's defeat?

It wasn’t until after trying to seize power once again in 1815 that he was finally stopped for good. Major European leaders met in Austria in 1815 to re-establish order and undo the French Revolution after Napoleon’s defeat.

Who defended tradition and inherited privilege as the basic foundation of human society?

Metternich

The German Confederation had its states outlaw liberal political organizations, police universities and newspapers, and establish spies with the ?

Karlsbad Decrees

Which revolt In Russia was utterly crushed by troops loyal to Tsar Nicholas I in 1825?

Decembrist Revolt

During the Industrial Revolution, what were the natural resources of England?

Coal and Water

A stage of industrial development in which rural workers used hand tools in their homes to manufacture goods on a large scale for sale in a market is know as what?

Cottage Industry

Triggering protests by urban laborers, high tariffs on imported grain were placed in 1815 due to what British law?

Corn Laws

Factory Act of 1833 limited the work day of women and children in what time of era?

Industrial Revolution

What theory did Charles Darwin publish in 1859 in his Origin of Species?

Theory of Evolution

Whose Social Darwinism gained adherents among nationalists and imperialists?

Herbert Spencer

Which Frenchman was the father of vaccination?

Louis Pasteur

He applied social-scientific analysis to economic problems, like Adam Smith, though he pushed these liberal ideas in radical directions.

Karl Marx

Power sources during the Second Industrial Revolution were ___.

Petroleum and Electricity

Designed by the British royal family for the Great Exhibition industrial fair, identify the structure that was made entirely of glass and iron?

Crystal Palace

Which event France led to Louis Philippe accepting the Constitutional Charter of 1814?

French Revolution of 1830

Revolutions occurred in Austria and Prussia but did no occur in .

Britain and Russia

Where did the revolution in the Austrian Empire begin?

Hungary

Prussian troops had already crushed popular movements across the German Confederation; Friedrich Wilhelm had reasserted his _.?

Royal Authority

An Italian author who wrote The Duties of Man, claiming that the history and traditions were of divine purposes, was whom??

Giuseppe Mazzini

Revolting against the emphasis on rationality and order, placing value on emotion, intuition, and nature, which artistic Era was opposite to the Enlightenment?

Romanticism

He advocated for a “division of labor.”

Adam Smith

Mussolini can be best affiliated with what ideology?

Fascism

What was one reason why Napoleon III enjoyed French Populairty?

Because of the bourgeoisie’s fear of socialism’s influence in the 1848 Revolution.

After his illegal dismissal of the highly conservative legislature, what did Louis Napoleon proclaim?

The Second French Empire

Russia was defeated during what war, establishing that economic updates needed to occur?

Crimean War

Due losing Northern Italy and being defeated by pressure in the 1866, which empire had to reform?

Austrian Empire

Cavour supported what ruler’s Italian Unification?

Victor Emmanuel II

Victor Emmanuel II’s Prussia employed _ as priminister.

Otto von Bismark

After losing in Franco Pression, who was the leader of National Assembly?

Adolphe Thiers

Europeans exploited nonwhite countries and racism with what justification?

Social Darwinism

In the 1884 Berlin Conference, 10 Western powers came together to meet standards for ?

Occupation of Africa

Militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism are associated with the beginning of what war

First World War

Gavrilo Princip did what?

The Serbian nationalist group the Black Hand to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife during their trip to Bosnia.