AP Euro Chronology

14th-15th Century

  • 1348-1351: Black Death
  • 1415: Council of Constance burns Jan Hus, ends Great Schism
  • c.1440: Gutenberg's Printing Press
  • 1453: Fall of Constantinople to Turks; Hundred Years' War ends
  • 1455-1485: War of the Roses
  • 1492: Columbus sails to Americas; Reconquista by Ferdinand and Isabella

16th Century

  • 1513: Machiavelli's The Prince
  • 1517: Martin Luther posts Ninety-Five Theses
  • 1519: Cortés conquers Aztecs
  • 1519-1556: Reign of HRE Charles V
  • 1522: Magellan’s crew circumnavigates the world
  • 1534: Act of Supremacy
  • 1536: Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion
  • 1540: Loyola founds the Jesuits
  • 1543: Copernicus' On the Revolution of the Heavenly Orbs; Vesalius’ On the Fabric of the Human Body
  • 1545: Council of Trent begins Counter-Reformation
  • 1555: Peace of Augsburg
  • 1558-1603: Reign of Elizabeth I
  • 1566-1648: Eighty Years' War
  • 1572: St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre
  • 1588: Spanish Armada destroyed
  • 1598: Edict of Nantes

17th Century

  • 1600/1602: British and Dutch East India Companies founded
  • 1609: Bank of Amsterdam; Galileo’s Telescope
  • 1618-1648: The Thirty Years’ War
  • 1642-1651: English Civil Wars
  • 1643-1715: Reign of Louis XIV
  • 1648: Peace of Westphalia
  • 1649: Execution of Charles I
  • 1651: Navigation Act; Hobbes' Leviathan
  • 1660: Stuart Restoration in England
  • 1685: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
  • 1687: Newton's Principia Mathematica
  • 1688: Glorious Revolution
  • 1689: Locke's Two Treatises on Government; English Bill of Rights

18th Century

  • 1701-1714: War of the Spanish Succession
  • 1713: Treaty of Utrecht
  • 1720: South Sea and Mississippi Company bubbles burst
  • 1740-1748: War of the Austrian Succession
  • 1756-1763: The Seven Years’ War
  • 1762: Rousseau’s On the Social Contract
  • 1763: Voltaire’s Treatise on Toleration
  • 1772: Diderot's Encyclopedia
  • 1776: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations; American Revolution
  • 1789-1799: French Revolution
  • 1792: Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women

19th Century

  • 1804-1815: Napoleonic Empire
  • 1814-1815: Congress of Vienna
  • 1814-1848: Age of Metternich/Concert of Europe
  • 1832: British Parliamentary Reform Act
  • 1833: Slavery abolished in British Empire
  • 1848: Revolutions across Europe; Marx’s Communist Manifesto
  • 1859: Darwin's On the Origin of Species
  • 1861: Emancipation of Russian serfs
  • 1870-1871: Italian and German Unifications; Darwin’s Descent of Man
  • 1884-1885: Berlin Conference - “Scramble for Africa”

20th Century

  • 1900: Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams
  • 1905: Bloody Sunday – 1905 Russian Revolution
  • 1914: Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated – WWI begins
  • 1915: Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity
  • 1917: Russian Revolution
  • 1918: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk; WWI armistice
  • 1919: Treaty of Versailles
  • 1922: Mussolini establishes fascist state; Russia becomes USSR
  • 1928: Stalin’s First Five-year Plan
  • 1929: Stock Market Crash – The Great Depression begins
  • 1933: Hitler comes to power in Germany
  • 1936: Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
  • 1936-1939: Spanish Civil War
  • 1939: Germany invades Poland beginning WWII
  • 1945: World War II ends; UN founded
  • 1947: Truman Doctrine
  • 1949: NATO founded
  • 1956: Hungarian Uprising
  • 1961: Berlin Wall built
  • 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis
  • 1968: “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia; Student Revolts worldwide
  • 1989: Fall of Berlin Wall
  • 1991: End of the USSR
  • 1992: Maastricht Treaty creates European Union
  • 1999: Euro currency introduced

Major Date Ranges

  • 1350s-1550s: Southern and Northern Renaissances
  • 1517-1648: Protestant Reformation and Religious Wars
  • 1500s-1600s: Scientific Revolution
  • 1545-1648: Counter-Reformation
  • 1700s: Enlightenment
  • 1750s-1850s: Industrial Revolution
  • 1815-1848: Age of Metternich/Concert of Europe
  • 1871-1914: La Belle Époque, Second Industrial Revolution
  • 1914-1918: WWI
  • 1939-1945: WWII
  • 1946-1991: Cold War

Maps to be Familiar With

  • Habsburg Empire of Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire, 1519-1556
  • Map of religious denominations after the Reformation, c. 1545
  • Map of Europe at the Peace of Westphalia, 1648
  • Map of Europe at the Treaty of Utrecht and Rastadt, 1713-1714
  • Partitions of Poland, 1772, 1793, 1795
  • Expansion of Russia, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
  • Napoleonic Europe, 1804-1814
  • Europe after the Congress of Vienna, 1815
  • Europe after the Unifications of Germany and Italy, 1871
  • British and French Empires, Imperial Africa and Asia, 1895-1914
  • Europe after the Treaty of Versailles, 1919
  • Europe after World War II, 1945
  • Decolonization in Africa and Asia, 1945-1975
  • Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, 1991