AP European History Notes 1815-Present

AP European History Notes: 1815-Present

Congress of Vienna (1815)

  • Restore Bourbon Monarchy in France (Louis XVIII).
  • Restore Spanish Monarchy.
  • Repress Enlightenment ideals.
  • Redraw the map of Europe.
  • End of the Holy Roman Empire, beginning of the German Confederation.
  • Concert of Europe established to maintain a balance of power.

Industrial Revolution

  • Two Phases: Early (1750-1850) and Late (1850-1914).
  • Causes:
    • Rise of merchants and banking investors.
    • Cottage Industries (1500-1700s).
    • Capitalism replaces Mercantilism.
    • Population Increase (Columbian Exchange).
    • Access to resources (Coal, Iron, Timber).
    • Internal waterways.
    • Navy.
    • Internal peace and stability.
    • Fluid societies.
  • Early Industry Inventions (1750-1850):
    • Spinning Jenny and Water Frame.
    • Iron Steam Engine (James Watt 1770s).
    • Railroads.
    • Coal.
    • Electric Telegraph.
  • Later Industry Inventions (1850-1914):
    • Railroads.
    • Steam Ships.
    • Submarine Telegraph cables.
    • Steel.
    • Chemicals.
    • Electricity.
    • Airplanes (1903).
  • Effects:
    • Massive population boom.
    • Urbanization.
    • Poor working conditions.
    • Child labor.
    • Low wages.
    • Creation of the Middle Class.
    • Separation of the nuclear family.
    • Luddites rejected industry.

Age of Ideologies (18th and 19th Century)

  • Conservatism:
    • Tradition and monarchy provide stability.
    • Maintain aristocracy and a powerful Church.
    • Edmund Burke, Thomas Hobbes.
  • Liberalism:
    • Government should promote individual liberty.
    • Emphasized individual's natural rights.
    • Constitutions.
    • John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Mary Wollstonecraft.
  • Capitalism:
    • Private profit seeking.
    • Private property.
    • Lack of government involvement (Laissez Faire).
    • Adam Smith.
  • Socialism:
    • Government redistributes wealth.
    • Collective over individual.
    • Robert Owen.
  • Communism:
    • Class struggle (Bourgeoisie vs Proletariat).
    • Revolution is inevitable.
    • Elimination of class distinctions.
    • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (The Communist Manifesto 1848).
    • "Religion is the opiate of the people."
    • "Workers of the world unite!"
  • Anarchism:
    • All property is theft, government is the enemy.
    • Pierre Joseph Proudhon.
  • Romanticism:
    • Reaction to Enlightenment and Industry; focused on emotion and imagination.
    • Lord Byron, The Shelleys, Wordsworth.
  • Nationalism:
    • People bound by common language, race, history, religion, etc.
  • Social Darwinism:
    • Survival of the fittest in society.
    • Herbert Spencer.

19th Century Revolutions and Political Developments

  • Revolutions in France and Europe due to conservatism.
  • 1830 Revolution in France due to Charles X's oppression.
  • Hungry Forties (1840s), e.g., Irish Potato Famine.
  • Decembrist Revolt in Russia (1825).
  • 1848 Revolutions across Europe.
  • 19th Century French History:
    • 1791-1792: Constitutional Monarchy.
    • 1792-1804: First Republic.
    • 1804-1815: First Empire (Napoleon I).
    • 1815-1848: Bourbon Restoration.
    • 1848-1852: Second Republic.
    • 1852-1870: Second Empire (Napoleon III).
    • 1870-1940: Third Republic.

New Imperialism

  • Scramble for Africa.
  • Motives: industrial resources.
  • Rudyard Kipling’s "White Man’s Burden".
  • Belgian King Leopold in the Congo.
  • Suez Canal (1875): Britain takes Egypt.
  • Berlin Conference (1884-1885).
  • British Raj: British East India Company, Sepoy Rebellion (1857).
  • China: Opium Wars (1839-1842), Treaty of Nanking.
  • Japan: Meiji Restoration.
  • Crimean War: Russia vs. Ottoman Empire (aided by Britain, France).

Social Changes

  • Increased role and opportunities for women (factory jobs, suffrage). Emmeline Pankhurst.
  • Increased access to education.
  • Temperance movement.
  • Victorian Age, Separate Spheres.
  • Anti-Semitism: Pogroms in Russia, Dreyfus Affair in France.
  • Zionism (Theodore Herzl).

Age of National Unification

  • Unification of Italy:
    • Camillo di Cavour (Piedmont Sardinia).
    • Guiseppe Garibaldi and his “Red Shirts".
    • 1870 Italy united under constitutional monarchy (Victor Emmanuel I).
  • Unification of Germany:
    • Otto Von Bismarck (Prussia).
    • Realpolitik.
    • Kulturkampf.
    • Zollverein.
    • Franco-Prussian War (1870).

Developments in Sciences

  • Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, Charles Darwin

WWI (1914-1918)

  • Causes:
    • Nationalism.
    • Imperialism.
    • Militarism.
    • Alliance System (Triple Entente vs. Triple Alliance).
    • Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
  • Effects:
    • Treaty of Versailles (War Guilt Clause, reparations).
    • Creation of Weimar Republic.
    • League of Nations.
    • End of Age of Monarchy.
    • Influenza (1918-1919).
    • The Russian Revolution (1917).

Russian Revolution (1917)

  • February Revolution: Alexander Kerensky, Provisional Government (Mensheviks).
  • October Revolution: Lenin and Bolsheviks.
  • Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
  • Russian Civil War (1917-1921): Reds vs. Whites.
  • Lenin’s New Economic Policy.

Inter-War Period

  • Stalinist Russia: Five-Year Plans, collectivization, Kulaks.
  • The Great Depression: credit, banking system failure, tariffs.
  • Rise of Fascism: Mussolini, Hitler. Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
  • Appeasement.
    • Germany signs the Axis Alliance with Italy and Japan.
    • Signs the non-aggression pact with the USSR
  • The Holocaust: Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, ghettos, concentration camps, Final Solution.

The Cold War

  • NATO (1949) vs. Warsaw Pact (1955).
  • Truman Doctrine (containment) vs. Soviet expansion.
  • Proxy wars and direct conflict.
    • Non-Aligned Movement.
  • 1960s: High point of tension.
  • 1970s: Détente.
  • 1989: Berlin Wall falls.
  • 1991: USSR falls.
  • Pope John Paul II
  • Ronald Reagan
  • Mikhail Gorbachev
  • Glasnost and perestroika

Post-Cold War

  • Breaking up of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
  • Genocide in the Balkans ("Ethnic cleansing", Slobodan Milosevic).
  • Dictatorship in Romania (Nicolae Ceaușescu).

Globalization

  • Increased interconnectedness.
  • Globalized economies (EU).
  • Globalized militaries (NATO).
  • Globalized governments (UN).
  • Communication/Transportation advancements.
  • Terrorism and the Middle East.
  • Struggle between Liberalism and Conservatism in Europe in the 2000s.