AP European History Notes

Renaissance and Exploration

  • Italian Renaissance: Rebirth of interest in classical antiquity (Greco-Roman).
  • Humanism:
    • Admiring human nature and achievements.
    • Liberal arts education focusing on history, philosophy, and literature.
    • Civic humanism encouraged better citizenship.
    • Individualism stressed optimism and self-confidence.
  • Printing Press: Mass production of texts, weakening the Catholic Church’s control.
  • Pico della Mirandola: Humans at the center due to free will.
  • Renaissance Art: Naturalism over religious themes.
  • Patronage: Wealthy families (e.g., Medici) supported the arts to glorify themselves and their cities.
  • Raphael’s School of Athens: Reflected inspiration from Greek and Roman philosophers.
  • Machiavelli’s The Prince: Encouraged leaders to be shrewd and ruthless.
  • Castiglione’s The Courtier: Manual of proper behavior for upper class.
  • Northern Renaissance: More religious focus, human-centered naturalism.
  • Christian Humanism: Employed Renaissance learning for religious reform, Erasmus.
  • Spanish Inquisition: Ferdinand and Isabella centralized power by targeting Jews, forcing conversion or expulsion.
  • Columbian Exchange:
    • Treaty of Tordesillas (1492): Spain and Portugal divided New World claims.
    • Deadly diseases (smallpox) decimated indigenous populations.
    • Shift to importing African slaves for plantation labor: Atlantic slave trade.

Age of Reformation

  • Criticism of Catholic Church: Corruption (simony, nepotism, indulgences).
  • Martin Luther:
    • Salvation initiated by God.
    • Authority rested in Bible alone.
    • Against hierarchical clerical institution.
  • John Calvin: Predestination.
  • Peace of Augsburg (1555): Each territory could choose Catholic or Protestant.

Catholic Reformation

  • Catholic Reformation: Internal reforms to remove corrupt policies.
  • Council of Trent: Addressed reforms needed in the Church.
  • Art: Mannerism and Baroque styles used as Catholic propaganda.

War of the Three Henrys

  • Religious violence between Catholics and Protestants in France.
  • Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (1572): Thousands of Protestants killed.
  • Henry IV: Sacrificed religious principles (Huguenot faith) for political necessity; reigned as a politique.
  • Other Politiques: Queen Elizabeth I (England). King Phillip II (Spain)

The Thirty Years’ War

  • Bohemian Phase: Defenestration of Prague (1618).
  • Danish Phase: Christian IV defeated, Edict of Restitution.
  • Swedish Phase: France joined against Habsburgs, Treaty of Prague (1635).
  • French/International Phase: Cardinal Richelieu weakened Spain.
  • Peace of Westphalia (1648):
    • France and Sweden acquired territory.
    • Dutch Republic and Switzerland gained independence.
    • German princes gained independence from HRE.
    • Edict of Restitution renounced, Calvinists included in Peace of Augsburg.

Absolutism and Constitutionalism

  • Absolutism: Austria, Prussia, and Russia strengthened state authority.
  • French Absolutism:
    • Henry IV: Edict of Nantes, Bourbon dynasty.
    • Cardinal Richelieu: Strengthened royal control.
    • The Fronde: Nobles protesting Mazarin's policies.
    • Louis XIV: "Sun King," Versailles, revoked Edict of Nantes, mercantilism (Colbert).
    • War of Spanish Succession: Ended with Peace of Utrecht, Bourbon grandson remained king of Spain but could never unite with France.

English Constitutionalism

  • Stuart Absolutism: Led to the English Civil War.
  • James I: Believed in the divine right of kings.
  • Charles I: Attempted ship money tax without parliamentary approval.
  • English Civil War: Cavaliers (King) vs. Roundheads (Parliament).
  • Oliver Cromwell: Established the Protectorate (Puritanical military dictatorship).
  • Charles II: Declaration of Indulgence, Treaty of Dover.
  • James II: Open Catholic, absolutist beliefs.
  • Glorious Revolution: William and Mary signed the English Bill of Rights, creating a constitutional monarchy.

Scientific Revolution

  • Copernicus: Heliocentrism. Destroyed the basic idea of Aristotelian physics, which had a geocentric model with perfect heavenly bodies.
  • Kepler: Laws of planetary motion.
  • Galileo: Law of inertia.
  • Newton: Law of universal gravitation.

Enlightenment

  • Values: Progress, freedom of thought, education, liberty, individualism.
  • Philosophes: Applied scientific reasoning to human nature.
  • Key Thinkers:
    • Rousseau: Social Contract, equal rights (excluding women/non-whites).
    • Montesquieu: Separation of powers.
    • Descartes: Rationalism, "I think, therefore I am."
    • Voltaire: Religious toleration.
    • Locke: Natural rights (life, liberty, property).
    • Hobbes: Absolutist government.
    • The Scientific Method: Combination of deductive and inductive reasoning.
  • 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, advocated for women’s education.
  • Secularism: Separation of government and religion.
  • Neoclassical Art: Return to Greco-Roman romanticization.
  • Deism: Belief in a distant God, denial of organized religion.

Enlightened Despotism

  • Authoritarian leaders using Enlightenment principles.
  • Frederick the Great (Prussia): Religious toleration, non-noblemen in government.
  • A friend of French philosophe Voltaire, Frederick was also the first “servant of the state.”
  • Joseph II (Holy Roman Emperor): Tolerant.
  • Catherine the Great (Russia): Expanded territory, championed arts.

French Revolution

  • Liberal Phase (1789-1792):
    • Causes: Financial crisis, inequality between estates.
    • National Assembly: Tennis Court Oath, Declaration of the Rights of Man.
    • Fall of the Bastille: Sparked by starvation and economic concerns of the Third Estate.
    • First French Constitution (1791): Lawmaking power to National Assembly.
  • Radical Phase (1793-1794):
    • Louis XVI executed.
    • Robspierre’s Reign of Terror.
    • Committee of Public Safety held dictatorial power to defend the Revolution.
  • Directory Phase (1795-1799):
    • Thermidorian Reaction: Execution of Robespierre, loosening of economic controls.
  • Napoleonic Phase (1799-1815):
    • Napoleon overthrew the Directory.
    • Grand Empire: Abolished serfdom and used patriotic propaganda.
    • Napoleonic Code: Equality before law, security of property.
    • Continental System: Embargo on trade with Britain.
    • Invasion of Russia (1812): Military disaster.

Congress of Vienna

  • Quadruple Alliance (Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria) defeated Napoleon.
  • Goal: Restore order and undo French Revolution.
  • Metternich: Austrian foreign minister, conservative.
  • Holy Alliance: Symbol of repression.
  • Decembrist Revolt (Russia): Crushed by Tsar Nicholas I.

Industrial Revolution

  • Started in England: Natural resources, liberal constitution.
  • Cottage Industry: Rural workers used hand tools.
  • Inventions: Seed drill, spinning jenny, water frame, steam engine.
  • Corn Laws: High tariffs, triggered protests.
  • Combination Acts: Outlawed unions.
  • Evolved Sexual Division of Labor: Husbands wage-earners, wives homemakers.
  • New social groups and intensified long-standing conflicts between capital and labor.

Intellectual Developments in the 1800s

  • Darwin: Evolution, natural selection.
  • Spencer: Social Darwinism.
  • Pasteur: Germ theory.
  • Marx: Class struggle.
  • Second Industrial Revolution: Automated factory work, petroleum and electricity, steel.
  • Weber: Bleak light on urban industrial society.

1848 Revolution in France

  • Bourgeoisie Merchants, opposition deputies, and liberal intellectuals united as a group of opponents against the king
  • Provisional republic was proclaimed.

Revolution in the Austrian Empire

  • Nationalistic Hungarians demanded national autonomy, the full civil liberties, and the universal suffrage.

Revolutions in Prussia

  • Liberals sought to transform absolutist Prussia into a constitutional monarchy.

Political Philosophies in the 1800s

  • conservatism: aristocracy/landowner gentry, tradition, privilege, institutions.
  • Liberalism: bourgeoisie/middle class, limit Church and state power, laissez-faire capitalism, economic freedom.
  • Socialism: working classes, justice, equality between classes, fairness, cooperation, collectivization.
  • Republicanism: universal democratic voting rights (for males), radical equality for all, democracy, violent upheaval.

Second French Empire (1852-1870)

  • The Second French Empire was founded by Louis Napoleon (later crowned Napoleon III) after winning the presidential election in 1852

Crimean War (1853-1856)

  • Fought between over Russian desires to expand into Ottoman territory and concluded in Russian defeat by France, Britain, and the Ottomans.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918)

  • After being defeated by Prussia, Austria agreed to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise and established the dual-monarchy

Italian Unification (1870)

  • Italy was reorganized into a patchwork of states at the 1914 Congress of Vienna
  • The struggle for Italian unification under Victor Emmanuel II was supported by Count Camillo Benso di Cavour

German Unification (1871)

  • Kaiser Wilhelm I employed Otto von Bismarck as Prussian prime minister in 1871.
  • the Franco-Prussian War united Northern and Southern Germany

The Third French Republic

  • The Franco-Prussian war forced France to surrender Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871, and the patriotic Parisians proclaimed the Paris Commune
  • The National Assembly under Thiers legalized trade unions, and between 1879 and 1886 a series of laws greatly broadened the state system of public, tax-supported schools and established free compulsory elementary education for both girls and boys

New Imperialism in Africa and Asia

  • In the 1884 Berlin Conference, 10 major Western powers (including the United States) set standards for Western occupation of Africa
  • European nationalism and racism justified these exploits.
  • Social Darwinism applied Charles Darwin’s concept of survival of the fittest to race
  • Technological Gap between the West and non-Western regions was in place.

WWI - Causes

  • The First World War was caused by militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism.
  • Gavrilo Princip from the Serbian nationalist group the Black Hand to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife during their trip to Bosnia

WWI - Allied Powers

  • England, France, and Russia

WWI - Central Powers

  • Germany, Austria, Italy (Central Powers)

Total War

  • National leaders aggressively intervened in society and the economy to keep the war going.
  • The 1918 Armistice failed to bring a true end to the fighting. It wasn’t until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles that the war could officially be declared over.

Treaty of Versailles (1919)

  • The Treaty of Versailles was a part of a larger series of treaties known as the Peace of Paris
  • Women’s Rights Advancements After World War I
  • Women on the home front took up industrial jobs while men were on the front line

The Russian Revolutions

  • First Russian Revolution (1905): Constitutional Monarchy
  • February/October Revolutions (1917): Constitutional Republic/Bolshevik Regime

Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Science in the Early 1900s

  • Impressionism blossomed in Paris in the 1870s.
  • Notable Pieces: Impression, Sunrise; Woman with a Parasol; and Luncheon on the Grass.

Post-Impressionism

  • Utilized color and emotion.
  • Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Dadaism rose.

The Great Depression

  • Beginning in 1929, caused a massive economic downturn caused by the United States’s stock market crash
  • It struck the entire world

Weimar Republic

  • Made its first reparations payment in 1921, but didn’t pay the following year due to rapid inflation, political assassinations, and pure hostility and arrogance
  • Hitler proclaimed a “national socialist revolution” in his Beer Hall Putsch

Totalitarianism

  • Communism: left-wing totalitarianism (total control over citizen life), classless society
  • Fascism: right-wing totalitarianism (total control over citizen life), nationalism, militarism, glorification of the state, hierarchy of classes Nazi.

Nazism

  • The Great Depression damaged Germany for longer than it did the other powers.
  • Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party,

Appeasement

  • Under the policy of appeasement, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and the French agreed that Germany should take over the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, as it contained many ethnic Germans

Allied Powers

  • Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union joined together in a military pact

Post WWII

  • The United States’s Marshall Plan in 1948 was designed to fund the post-WWII “economic miracle” in Europe.
  • Winston Churchill proclaimed that an “Iron Curtain” had divided Europe into the East Bloc, which was Communist, and the West Bloc, which was capitalist.

Cold War

  • The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established in 1949.
  • After Stalin died in the 1950s was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev
  • Willy Brandt in West Germany became the first Social Democratic West German chancellor. His Ostpolitik was part of a general relaxation of East-West tensions, called détente, that began in the early 1970s.

Communism Downfall

  • Poland’s Solidarity inspired other separaratist movements in the Balkan peninsula, and Hungary and Czechoslovakia (Velvet Revolution) drifted toward open elections.
  • Boris Yeltsin, declared Russia independent, withdrew from the Soviet Union

Globalization

  • After the fall of Communism and the Iron Curtain, European states were able to lead the way to globalization.
  • The Maastricht Treaty of 1991 formed the standards for the European Union
  • Nearly every country in the world is apart of the World Trade Organization. The WTO is one of the most powerful supranational financial institutions.