AP European History

By jaksdjfkaljsdf
  • Period: 1337 to 1453

    Hundred Years War

  • Period: 1347 to 1451

    The Black Death

  • Period: 1350 to 1527

    Italian Renaissance

    • Revival in classical literature
    • Secularism and individualism
    • Humanist revival of Greek and Roman texts challenged the institutional power of universities and the Catholic Church
    • Shift in education of theological writings to classical texts
    • Civic humanism
    • Rulers and popes concerned with enhancing their prestige commissioned paintings based on classical styles, "naturalism", and geometric perspective
  • Period: 1378 to 1417

    Crisis in the Papacy/Great Western Schism

  • 1450

    Printing Press

    • Dissemination of ideas
    • Helped spread Renaissance beyond Italy
    • Growth of vernacular literature, which would eventually contribute to the growth of national cultures
  • Period: 1450 to 1580

    Northern Renaissance/High Renaissance/Christian Humanism

    • Christian Humanism (more religious focus)
    • Human centered nationalism (individuals and everyday life as appropriate for artistic representation)
    • Renaissance learning in the service of religious reform
    • Erasmus
  • Period: 1450 to

    New Monarchies

    • Monarchs and princes (like Henry VIII and Elizabeth I) initiated religious reform from the top down
    • Centralized modern state: monopolies on tax collection, military force, dispensing justice, determining the state's religion
    • Rise in power of commercial and political groups
    • Political fragmentation in Renaissance Italy led to development of secular state
  • Period: 1450 to

    Age of Exploration

    • Gold, spices, and luxury goods for enhancing power
    • Rise of mercantilism
    • Desire to spread Christianity (sometimes used as justification to subjugate indigenous civilizations)
    • Technological advancements
    • Led to France, England, and Netherlands later establishing colonies in 17th century
    • Competition for trade led to rivalries among European powers in 17th and 18th century
  • Period: 1450 to

    Period 1

  • 1469

    Ferdinand of Aragon & Isabella of Castille are married, unifying Spain

  • 1492

    Columbus arrives in the New World

  • 1492

    Start of Columbian Exchange

    • Expansion of slave trade
    • Shift in economic power from Mediterranean states to Atlantic
    • Destruction of indigenous civilizations
  • 1494

    Treaty of Tordesillas

  • Period: 1500 to

    Mercantilism

  • 1513

    Machiavelli writes The Prince

  • 1517

    Martin Luther posts his Ninety-Five Theses

  • Period: 1517 to

    Protestant Reformation

  • Period: 1520 to

    Mannerism

    • Move away from naturalistic style of High Renaissance by adding stylistic elements
    • Did not strive to perfect the human form
    • Employed, distortion, drama, and illusion
    • Monarchies, city-states, and the church commissioned these works as a means of promoting their own stature and power
  • 1521

    Diet of Worms/Luther exiled

  • 1525

    German Peasants' War

  • 1534

    Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy

  • 1536

    John Calvin publishes his Institutes of the Christian Religion

  • 1540

    Jesuits are founded

  • 1543

    Copernicus publishes On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres on his deathbed

  • Period: 1545 to

    Catholic Reformation

    • Exemplified by the Jesuit Order and Council of Trent
    • Revived the church but cemented division within Christianity
  • Period: 1545 to 1563

    Council of Trent

  • Period: 1550 to

    Commercial Revolution

    • Innovations in banking and finance promoted growth of urban financial centers & money economy
    • Commercialization of agriculture
    • New economic elites
    • Banking became more commonplace after the Catholic Church adopted more relaxed stance on lending money w/ interest
    • Establishment of federal banks
    • Evolved into a money-based economy, sowing the seeds of capitalism
    • Joint-Stock Companies were early examples of corporations
    • Began delaying marriage & childbearing: improve economic condition
  • 1555

    Peace of Augsburg

  • 1559

    Elizabethan Religious Settlement

  • Period: 1562 to

    French Wars of Religion

    • Issues of religious reform --> conflicts between the monarchy & nobility
    • Habsburg rulers confronted an expanded Ottoman Empire while attempting unsuccessfully to restore Catholic unity across Europe
    • States exploited religious conflicts to promote political & economic interests
    • Edict of Nantes: religious pluralism to maintain domestic peace
  • 1572

    St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

  • Period: 1575 to

    Dutch Golden Age

    The Dutch Republic, established by a Protestant revolt against the Habsburg monarchy, developed an oligarchy of urban gentry and rural landholders to promote trade and protect traditional rights
  • Period: 1580 to

    Peak of Witch Hunts

  • Spanish Armada

  • Edict of Nantes

    • Result of French Wars of Religion
    • Allowed religious pluralism in order to maintain domestic peace

  • Around the Start of the Slave Trade

    Response to establishment of plantation economy in Americas and demographic catastrophes among indigenous civilizations
  • Period: to

    Scientific Revolution

    • Copernicus, Galileo, Newton
    • Heliocentric
    • Body as an integrated system
    • Inductive and deductive reasoning
    • However, alchemy and astrology continued to appeal to elites and some natural philosophers
  • Period: to

    Agricultural Revolution

    • Raised productivity and increased supply of food and other agricultural products
    • Importation and transplantation of agricultural products from the Americas
    • Labor & trade in commodities increasingly freed from traditional restrictions imposed by governments & corporate entities
    • Putting out system/cottage industry expanded
    • Development of market economy --> new financial practices & institutions
    • Market economy that provided for foundation for its global role
  • Period: to

    Baroque Art

    • Associated w/ Catholic/Counter Reformation and French absolutist rule
    • Attempts to evoke emotion and show grandeur/awe of Catholic Church
    • Employed distortion, drama, and illusion in their work
    • Monarchies, city-states, and the church commissioned these works as a means of promoting their own stature and power
  • Period: to

    Consumer Revolution

    Shaped by a new concern for privacy, encouraged the purchase of new goods for homes, and created new venues for leisure activities

  • Elizabeth I of England dies, ending the Tudor Dynasty

  • James I becomes King of England, beginning the Stuart Dynasty

  • Galileo publishes The Starry Messenger

  • Period: to

    Thirty Years' War

    • Habsburg rulers confronted an expanded Ottoman Empire while attempting unsuccessfully to restore Catholic unity across Europe
    • States exploited religious conflicts to promote political & economic interests
    • Religious pluralism to maintain domestic peace
    • Peace of Westphalia marked end of universal Christendom and accelerated decline of HRE by granting princes, bishops, and other local leaders control over religion

  • Parliament passes the Petition of Right

  • Period: to

    "Personal Rule" under Charles I without Parliament

  • Period: to

    English Civil War

    • Conflict between monarchy, Parliament, and other elites over respective roles in political structure
    • Exemplified competition for power among monarchs and competing groups
    • Outcome protected rights of gentry and aristocracy from absolutism through assertions of the rights of Parliament
  • Period: to

    Louis XIV is King of France

  • Peace of Westphalia

    • Peace of Westphalia marked end of universal Christendom and accelerated decline of HRE by granting princes, bishops, and other local leaders control over religion
    • Following the Peace of Westphalia, religion declined in importance as a cause for warfare among European states; the concept of the balance of power played an important role in structuring diplomatic and military objectives
  • Period: to

    Period 2

    • New concept of secular sovereign state --> new political institutions
    • Power struggle between monarchs and corporate and minority language groups
    • Absolutism vs. Constitutionalism
    • Rediscovery of works & observation of natural world --> Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment
    • Increased emphasis on reason (challenged by revival of expression of emotions)
    • French Revolution
    • Growth of worldwide economic network
    • Revolution, war, and rebellion ---> mass politics & nationalism

  • Charles I of England is executed

  • Thomas Hobbes writes Leviathan

  • English Monarchy is restored with Charles II

  • Period: to

    Peter the Great is Tsar of Russia

  • Glorious Revolution

    • Outcome protected rights of gentry and aristocracy from absolutism through assertions of the rights of Parliament Resulted in English Bill of Rights
    • Parliamentary sovereignty

  • English Bill of Rights

  • John Locke writes his Two Treatises of Government

  • Period: to

    Enlightenment

    • Voltaire, Diderot, Locke, Rousseau
    • Application of Scientific Revolution to society and human institutions
    • New political models based on concept of natural rights & social contract
    • Despite principles of equality, some intellectuals like Rousseau denied women equal rights in political life
    • Salons
    • Adam Smith's challenge of mercantilism --> free trade & market
    • Deism, skepticism, atheism
    • Empiricism, human reason, rationalism, classical sources of knowledge
  • Period: to

    Enlightenment Monarchies

    • In the 18th century, a number of states in eastern and central Europe experimented with enlightened absolutism
    • By 1800, most governments in western and central Europe had extended toleration to Christian minorities and, in some states, civil equality to Jews
  • Period: to

    Frederick the Great is King of Prussia

  • Period: to

    Rococo

    • Almost exclusively a French movement
    • Incredibly ornate, detail oriented, delicate, light, and indulgent

  • Montesquieu writes the Spirit of the Laws

  • Seven Years' War

    Rivalry between Britain and France resulted in world wars fought both in Europe and in the colonies, with Britain supplanting France as the greatest European power.
  • Period: to

    Neoclassicism

    • Art movement that increasingly reflected the outlook and values of commercial/bourgeois society
    • Imposed Enlightenment ideals on art
    • Left out women
    • Also an architecture movement that expressed Enlightenment ideals of citizenship and political participation
  • Period: to

    First Industrial Revolution in Britain

  • Rousseau writes The Social Contract

  • Period: to

    Catherine the Great is Empress of Russia

  • Partitions of Poland

    The inability of the Polish monarchy to consolidate its authority over the nobility led to Poland's partition by Prussia, Russia, and Austria, and its disappearance from the map of Europe

  • Adam Smith writes The Wealth of Nations

  • Immanuel Kant writes Critique of Pure Reason

  • Period: to

    French Revolution: Liberal Phase

    The first, or liberal, phase of the French Revolution established a constitutional monarchy, increased popular participation, nationalized the Catholic Church, and abolished hereditary privileges
  • Period: to

    French Revolution

    • Long-term social & political causes and Enlightenment ideas, worsened by short-term fiscal & economic crises
    • Revolutionary armies, raised by mass conscription, sought to bring changes to rest of Europe
    • Women enthusiastically participated in early phases of the revolution; but while there were brief improvements in the legal status of women, citizenship in republic was soon restricted to men
    • Inspired Toussaint L'Ouverture's slave revolt
    • Some condemned violence & disregard for authority
  • Period: to

    French Revolution: Radical Phase

  • Louis XVI is executed

  • Period: to

    Reign of Terror

    After the execution of Louis XVI, the radical Jacobin republic led by Robespierre responded to opposition at home and war abroad by instituting the Reign of Terror, fixing prices and wages, and pursuing a policy of de-Christianization.
  • Period: to

    French Revolution: Conservative Phase

  • Napoleon Stages a Coup D'etat

  • Period: to

    French Revolution: Napoleonic Phase

    • As first consul and emperor, Napoleon undertook a number of enduring domestic reforms while often curtailing some rights and manipulating popular impulses behind a facade of representative institutions
    • Napoleon's new military tactics allowed him to exert direct or direct control over much of European continent, spreading ideals of French Revolution across Europe
    • Napoleon's expanding empire created nationalist responses throughout Europe
  • Period: to

    Conservatism, Liberalism, Romanticism, Nationalism, Socialism, Feminism, and New Imperialism

  • Period: to

    Napoleonic Wars

  • Toussaint L'Ouverture stages a slave revolt and establishes Haiti

    French revolutionary ideals inspired a slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which became the independent nation of Haiti in 1804
  • Period: to

    Romanticism

    • Rousseau questioned exclusive reliance on reason & emphasized role of emotions in moral improvement of self & society
    • Romanticism emerged as challenge to Enlightenment rationality and Neoclassicism
    • Consistent w/ Romantic Movement, religious revival occurred in Europe and included notable movements such as Methodism, founded by John Wesley
    • Revolution, war, and rebellion demonstrated the emotional power of mass politics & nationalism
    • Responded to Industrial and political rev.
  • Period: to

    Continental System

    Continental System, in the Napoleonic wars, the blockade designed by Napoleon to paralyze Great Britain through the destruction of British commerce. The decrees of Berlin (November 21, 1806) and Milan (December 17, 1807) proclaimed a blockade: neutrals and French allies were not to trade with the British.

  • Napoleon invades Russia

  • Period: to

    Congress of Vienna

    • After the defeat of Napoleon by a coalition of European powers, the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) attempted to restore the balance of power in Europe and contain the danger of revolutionary or nationalistic upheavals in the future
    • Begins Age of Metternich

  • Battle of Waterloo

  • Corn Laws

  • Period: to

    Age of Metternich

    Metternich was able to maintain relative peace in Europe through his balance-of-power concept.
  • Period: to

    Period 3

    • IR from Great Britain --> continent
    • Lives shaped by industrialization (new classes, urbanization, family)
    • Political rev. & complications --> ideological, gov't, & coll. responses
    • Struggle w/ international stability in age of nationalism & rev. (breakdown of COE/balance of power)
    • Industrial & tech developments --> Euro global control
    • Objectivity & science vs. subjectivity & individual expression
    • Following revolutions of 1848, Europe turned toward a realist and materialist worldview
  • Period: to

    Nationalism

    • Encouraged loyalty to nation (romantic idealism, liberal reform political unification, racialism w/ a concomitant anti-Semitism, chauvinism justifying national aggrandizement)
    • Jews became socially & politically acculturated, but Zionism (Jewish nationalism), developed as response to anti-Semitism
    • New generation of cons. leaders (Napoleon III, Cavour, Bismarck) - popular nationalism to create/strengthen state
    • DM of Austria-Hungary: attempt to stabilize state by shaping national unity
  • Period: to

    New Imperialism

    • Driven by econ., pol., and cultural motivations
    • National rivalries
    • Raw materials & markets
    • Claims of cultural & racial superiority
    • Devel. of advanced weaponry
    • Communication & transp. technologies
    • Advances in med.
    • Created resistance to foreign control
    • Diplomatic tensions & straining of alliances
    • Imperial encounters w/ non-Europeans influenced styles & subjects of artists & writers, provoked debate over colonies
    • Nationalist movements & modernizing local economies & societies

  • Decembrist Revolt (Russia)

  • July Monarchy (France)

  • Reform Act of 1832

    In 1832, Parliament passed a law that changed the British electoral system. It was known as the Great Reform Act, which basically gave the vote to middle class men, leaving working men disappointed.

  • Greek Revolution

  • Period: to

    Chartists

  • Period: to

    Ottoman Tanzimat Reforms

  • Period: to

    Irish Potato Famine

  • Corn Laws repealed

  • Marx and Engels write the Communist Manifesto

  • Revolutions of 1848

  • Period: to

    Italian Unification

    Cavour's diplomatic strategies, combined with the popular Garibaldi's military campaigns, led to the unification of Italy
  • Period: to

    Second Industrial Revolution

  • Napoleon III declares himself Emperor

  • Period: to

    Crimean War

    Demonstrated the weakness of Ottoman Empire and contributed to breakdown of Concert of Europe, thereby creating the conditions in which Italy and Germany could be unified after centuries of fragmentation

  • Camillo di Cavour forms a military alliance with Napoleon III

  • Piedmont provokes war with Austria

  • Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species

    Charles Darwin provided a scientific and material account of biological change and development of human beings as a species, and inadvertently, a justification for racialist theories that became known as Social Darwinism

  • Garibaldi conquers Southern Italy

  • Alexander II emancipated Russian serfs

  • Schleswig Wars

  • Austro-Prussian War

  • Ausgleich of 1867 establishes the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary

  • Period: to

    Franco-Prussian War

  • German Empire is established

    • Bismarck used Realpolitik, employing diplomacy, industrialized warfare, weaponry, and manipulation of democratic mechanisms to unify Germany
    • After 1871, Bismarck attempted to maintain the balance of power through a complex system of alliances directed at isolating France
    • Bismarck's dismissal in 1890 eventually led to a system of mutually antagonistic alliances and heightened international tensions
  • Period: to

    La Belle Epoque

  • Period: to

    Berlin Conference divides up Africa

  • Dreyfus Affair

  • Period: to

    Russo-Japanese War

  • Period: to

    Period 4

    • Total war & political instability --> polarized state order in Cold War & efforts at transnational union
    • WWI: losses for victors & vanquished
    • Conflict goals of peace negotiators - political idealism - punish Germany - settlement that satisfied few
    • Interwar: fascism, nationalism, racism, failure of appeasement - WWII
    • Stress of economic collapse & total war - democracy, communism, or fascism?
    • Challenge to objective knowledge, reason, religion
    • Improve standard of living
  • Period: to

    World War I

    • Nationalist tensions in Balkans - Great Powers into series of crises - WWI
    • Nationalism, military plans, alliances, imperial comp. - regional dispute in Balkans to WWI
    • New tech - diff. military strategies - trench warfare - huge troop losses
    • Mil. stalemate, nat. mobilization, total war --> protest & insurrection & revolutions changed int. BoP
    • Spread to non-Euro cont. - global - rel. w/ world
    • US emerges as world power
    • Overthrow of Euro empires
    • Huge losses for victors & vanquished

  • Treaty of Brest-Livosk

  • Russian Revolution

  • Period: to

    Russian Civil War

    • Create reg. based on Marxist-Leninist theory
    • WWI cont. long term prob of political stagn., social inequality, incomplete indus., food & land distr. - new supp. for rev. change
    • Mil. & worker insurrections aided by revived Sov. undermined Provisional Gov't & set stage 4 Lenin's Bol. Revolution & est. of communist state
    • Bol. takeover --> civil war, comm. forces vs OPs (aided by foreign powers)
    • New Economic Policy: impr. econ. performance, compromise communist princ. & employed free-market

  • Armistice Declared

  • Period: to

    Interwar Period

    • French and British fears of another war, American isolationism, and deep distrust between Western democratic, capitalist nations and the authoritarian, communist Soviet Union allowed fascist states to rearm and expand their territory
    • Fascism, extreme nationalism, racist ideologies, and failure of appeasement resulted in catastrophe of WWII, presenting a grave challenge to European civilization

  • Treaty of Versailles

    • Conflicting goals of negotiators - desire to punish Ger. - settlement that satisfied few
    • Wilsonian idealism: clashed w/ postwar realities
    • Democratic successor states emerged from former empires but succumbed to crises
    • League of Nations: created prevent future wars, weakened from nonparticipation of US, Germany, Soviet Union; distribute Ger. & Otto. possessions to France & GB
    • Vers. settlement hindered German Weimar Republic's ability to establish stable legitimate pol. & econ. system

  • Women gain suffrage in most of Western Europe

  • Period: to

    League of Nations

    • Created to prevent future wars
    • Weakened bc of nonparticipation of major powers (US, Germany, Soviet Union)
    • Its provisions on assignment of guilt & reparations for war hindered German Weimar Republic’s ability to est. stable & legitimate political & econ. system
    • Distributed former Ger. & Otto. possessions to France & GB through mandate system --> alter imperial balance of power & create strategic interest in Middle E. & its oil

  • Lenin institutes his NEP

  • Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic

  • France occupies the Ruhr Valley in response to Germany failing to pay reparations

  • Beer Hall Putsch

  • Dawes Plan

  • Lenin dies, Stalin comes to power in the USSR

    • Stalin undertook centralized program of rapid economic modernization, often w/ severe repercussions for the population
    • Came at high price, including liquidation of kulaks (land-owning peasantry) and other perceived enemies of the state, devastating famine in the Ukraine, purges of political rivals, and ultimately, the creation of an oppressive political system

  • Hitler publishes Mein Kampf

  • Great Depression begins

    • Caused by weaknesses in int. trade, monetary theories & practices, WWI debt, nationalistic tariff policies, overproduction, depreciated currencies, disrupted trade patterns, speculation
    • Undermined W. European democ. & caused radical pol. responses throughout Europe
    • Depended on post-WWI American investment capital → 1929 stock market crash → US cut off capital flows to Europe
    • W. democracies failed to overcome GD and weakened by extremist movements

  • Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany

  • Period: to

    Holodomor in Ukraine

  • Fire in the Reichstag

  • Enabling Act

  • Period: to

    Holocaust

    • Fueled by racism & anti-Semitism, Nazi Germany—w/ cooperation of some of other Axis powers and collaborationist governments—sought to establish a "new racial order" in Europe, which culminated w/ the Holocaust
    • WWII decimated a generation of Russian & German men; virtually destroyed European Jewry; resulted in murder of millions in other groups targeted by Nazis including Roma, homosexuals, people with disabilities, etc; forced large-scale migrations; undermined prewar class hierarchies

  • Nuremberg Laws against Jews

  • Spanish Civil War Begins

    Franco's alliance w/ Italian & German fascists in the Spanish Civil War—in which the Western democracies did not intervene—represented a testing ground for WWII and resulted in authoritarian rule in Spain from 1936 to mid-1970s

  • Anschluss of Austria

  • Annexation of the Sudetenland

  • Kristallnacht

  • Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact

  • Hitler invades Poland

  • Pact of Steel between Hitler and Mussolini

  • Period: to

    World War II

    • Germany Blitzkrieg warfare in Europe + Japan's attacks in Asia and the Pacific --> Axis powers' early victories
    • American and British industrial, sci, & tech power, cooperative military efforts under strong leadership of individuals like Winston Churchill, resistance of civilians, and the all-out military commitment of the USSR contributed critically to the Allied victories
    • Military tech made possible industrialized warfare, genocide, nuclear proliferation, & risk of global nuclear war

  • Rise of Existentialism and Postmodernism

    Existentialism: an interpretation of human existence in the world that stresses its concreteness and its problematic character Postmodernism: a late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any notion of “art.”.
  • Period: to

    Decolonization Efforts

  • Period: to

    Cold War

    • Despite the United Nations, tensions between USSR --> Iron Curtain
    • Global - proxy wars in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean
    • Arms race (threat of nuclear war) United States exerted a strong military, political, and economic influence in Western Europe, leading to the creation of world trade monetary and trade systems and geopolitical alliances, including NATO

  • Marshall Plan

    Marshall Plan funds from US financed an extensive reconstruction of industry & infrastructure and stimulated an extended period of growth in Western and Central Europe, often referred to as an "economic miracle," which increased the economic and cultural importance of consumerism

  • NATO is formed

    Military/defensive alliance
    - United States exerted a strong military, political, and economic influence in Western Europe, leading to the creation of world trade monetary and trade systems and geopolitical alliances, including NATO

  • Warsaw Pact is formed

    Military/defensive alliance
    - Countries east of Iron Curtain came under military, political, and econ. domination of Soviet Union within Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) & Warsaw Pact
    - Cent. & E. European nations within Soviet bloc followed econ. model based on central planning, extensive social welfare, specialized production among bloc members - brought with it restr. of ind. rights & freedoms, suppression of dissent, constraint of emigration for people within Soviet block
  • Period: to

    Nikita Khruschev is leader of the USSR

    His de-Stalinization policies failed to meet their economic goals within the Soviet Union; combined with reactions to existing limitations on individual rights, this prompted revolts in Eastern Europe, which ended with a reimposition of Soviet rule and repressive totalitarian regimes
  • Period: to

    Berlin Wall

  • Cuban Missile Crisis

  • Period: to

    Leonid Brezhnev is leader of the USSR

  • Student Revolts

    Intellectuals and youth reacted against perceived bourgeois materialism and decadence, most significantly w/ revolts of 1968

  • Detente between the US and the USSR

  • Dissolution of the USSR

    • After economic stagnation, Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost, designed to make Soviet system more flexible, failed to stave off collapse of Soviet Union and the end of its hegemonic control over Eastern and Central European satellites
    • Collapse of USSR ended Cold War and led to establishment of capitalist economies throughout Eastern Europe. Germany was reunited, Czechs & Slovaks parted, Yugoslavia dissolved, EU was enlarged through admission of former Eastern bloc countries

  • EU is formed

    • Euro states began to set aside nationalist rivalries in favor of economic and political integration, forming a series of transnational unions that grew in size and scope over 2nd half of 20th century
    • Economic alliance known as European Coal and Steel Community) means to spur postwar econ. recovery) developed into European Economic Community, and then European Union
    • Euro experienced increasing economic and political integration and efforts to establish a shared European identity