AP European History
College Board AP European History deck covering political, intellectual, economic, social, and cultural developments in Europe from c. 1450 to the present. Aligns with all nine units of the official CED.
Ämne: Historia · Nivå: Gymnasium (16–19) · 451 kort
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- The Italian Renaissance (c. 1350-1550) was a cultural and intellectual revival rooted in the rediscovery of Greco-Roman classical texts, beginning in the wealthy city-states of northern Italy.
- Petrarch (1304-1374), called the 'father of humanism,' praised classical Latin literature and criticized medieval scholasticism, helping launch the Italian Renaissance.
- Humanism was the dominant Renaissance intellectual movement: study of classical texts (Latin and Greek) to cultivate civic virtue, eloquence, and human potential in this life rather than only the afterlife.
- Civic humanism, championed by Florentines like Leonardo Bruni, argued that the educated person should serve the republic actively in politics, law, and public life.
- The Medici family ruled Florence from the 15th to 18th centuries as bankers and de facto princes; Cosimo and Lorenzo 'the Magnificent' were leading Renaissance patrons of art and learning.
- The Italian city-states (Florence, Venice, Milan, Genoa, the Papal States, Naples) were politically fragmented but commercially wealthy, financing Renaissance culture through Mediterranean trade.
- Niccolò Machiavelli's 'The Prince' (1513) argued that rulers should act pragmatically — 'it is better to be feared than loved' — separating political effectiveness from Christian morality.
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) combined art and empirical science: painter of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, anatomist, engineer, and prolific notebook-keeper.
- Michelangelo (1475-1564) sculpted the David (1504) and the Pietà, and painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-1512) under papal patronage from Julius II.
- Renaissance art innovations included linear perspective (Brunelleschi, Alberti), chiaroscuro (light/shadow), naturalistic anatomy, and oil paint adopted from Flanders.
- Raphael (1483-1520) painted The School of Athens in the Vatican (1509-1511), depicting Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers as a visual program of humanist learning.
- Castiglione's 'The Book of the Courtier' (1528) defined the ideal Renaissance gentleman: educated in classics, skilled in arms, music, and manners, fluent in conversation.
- The Northern Renaissance (c. 1450-1600) blended humanism with Christian piety; key figures: Erasmus, Thomas More, Albrecht Dürer, and Jan van Eyck.
- Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), 'prince of Christian humanists,' wrote 'In Praise of Folly' (1511) satirizing Church corruption and produced a critical Greek New Testament (1516).
- Thomas More's 'Utopia' (1516) imagined an ideal society without private property, critiquing English enclosures and political corruption. More was later executed by Henry VIII.
- Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was the leading Northern Renaissance artist, famous for engravings, woodcuts, and detailed self-portraits that combined Italian techniques with Northern realism.
- Johannes Gutenberg's movable-type printing press (c. 1450, Mainz) made books vastly cheaper and standardized, accelerating literacy, vernacular literature, and the spread of Reformation ideas.
- The Gutenberg Bible (1455) was the first major book printed with movable type in Europe; by 1500 over 20 million printed books circulated.
- The Age of Exploration (c. 1450-1600) was driven by 'God, gold, and glory': desire for Asian trade routes, missionary zeal, royal prestige, and competition between Portugal and Spain.
- Portugal led 15th-century Atlantic exploration under Prince Henry the Navigator; Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope (1488) and Vasco da Gama reached India (1498).
- Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, reached the Americas in 1492. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divided the non-European world between Spain and Portugal along a meridian west of the Azores.
- The Columbian Exchange transferred plants, animals, diseases, and people between the Old and New Worlds: maize, potatoes, tomatoes, and tobacco to Europe; horses, wheat, sugar, and smallpox to the Americas.
- Old World diseases (smallpox, measles, influenza) killed an estimated 50-90% of the Indigenous American population during the 16th century, the worst demographic catastrophe in human history.
- The encomienda system granted Spanish conquistadors the labor of Indigenous people in exchange for nominal protection and Christianization; it functioned as forced labor and drove population collapse.
- The Atlantic slave trade transported roughly 12.5 million enslaved Africans to the Americas (1500-1866), with Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands as the principal carriers.
- The triangular trade circulated European manufactures to Africa, enslaved Africans to American plantations, and sugar, tobacco, and cotton back to Europe.
- American silver from Potosí (Bolivia) and Mexico flooded into Europe in the 16th century, causing the 'price revolution' — sustained inflation that benefited debtors and hurt fixed-income groups.
- Joint-stock companies, like the Dutch East India Company (VOC, 1602) and English East India Company (1600), pooled investor capital and limited liability, financing overseas trade and colonization.
- The Protestant Reformation began on October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther reportedly posted his 95 Theses challenging indulgences on the door of Wittenberg's Castle Church.
- Martin Luther (1483-1546) taught justification by faith alone (sola fide), scripture alone (sola scriptura), and the priesthood of all believers, rejecting most sacraments and papal authority.
- Indulgences — papal certificates remitting punishment for sin — were aggressively sold by Johann Tetzel in the 1510s to finance St. Peter's Basilica, triggering Luther's protest.
- Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor 1519-1556) summoned Luther to the Diet of Worms (1521); Luther refused to recant ('Here I stand') and was declared an outlaw but sheltered by Frederick of Saxony.
- Luther's German translation of the New Testament (1522) and full Bible (1534) made scripture accessible to lay readers and helped standardize the German language.
- The German Peasants' War (1524-1525) saw 100,000+ peasants demand serfdom's end, citing Luther's ideas. Luther condemned the revolt; it was crushed, weakening the Reformation's social radicalism.
- The Peace of Augsburg (1555) ended Lutheran-Catholic warfare in the Holy Roman Empire under the principle 'cuius regio, eius religio' — each prince chose the religion of his territory.
- Huldrych Zwingli led the Reformation in Zürich (from 1519), rejecting Catholic ritual more sharply than Luther; the Marburg Colloquy (1529) failed to reconcile their views on the Eucharist.
- John Calvin (1509-1564), French reformer in Geneva, taught predestination — God elects the saved — in 'Institutes of the Christian Religion' (1536); Geneva became a model Protestant city.
- Calvinism spread to France (Huguenots), the Netherlands (Dutch Reformed), Scotland (Presbyterians under John Knox), and parts of England (Puritans), often where local rulers resisted Habsburg control.
- Anabaptists (the 'radical Reformation') rejected infant baptism, advocated adult believers' baptism, separation of church and state, and pacifism; persecuted by Catholics and mainline Protestants alike.
- Henry VIII broke from Rome in the 1530s after the pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon; the Act of Supremacy (1534) made the monarch head of the Church of England.
- Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603) cemented Anglicanism via the Elizabethan Settlement (1559): Protestant doctrine, episcopal hierarchy retained, moderate liturgy — a 'middle way' (via media).
- The Catholic Counter-Reformation responded to Protestantism through the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Jesuit order, the Roman Inquisition, and the Index of Prohibited Books.
- The Council of Trent reaffirmed traditional doctrines: seven sacraments, Latin Vulgate Bible, justification by faith and works, transubstantiation; it also reformed clerical training and abuses.
- Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1540; organized like an army under the pope, the Jesuits ran schools, missions in Asia/Americas, and led Counter-Reformation education.
- The French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) pitted Catholics against Huguenots; the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572) killed thousands of Protestants in Paris.
- Henry IV of Navarre, a Protestant, converted to Catholicism ('Paris is worth a Mass') and issued the Edict of Nantes (1598) granting French Huguenots limited religious toleration and fortified towns.
- The Dutch Revolt (1568-1648) saw the Calvinist Netherlands break away from Catholic Habsburg Spain; the northern provinces (United Provinces) gained de facto independence by 1609.
- The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) began as a religious conflict in the Holy Roman Empire (Bohemian revolt, Defenestration of Prague) and grew into a continental power struggle.
- The Thirty Years' War devastated German lands — estimated 20-40% population loss in affected areas — and Catholic France ultimately fought on the Protestant side to weaken the Habsburgs.
- The Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended the Thirty Years' War, recognized Dutch and Swiss independence, weakened the Holy Roman Emperor, and established the principle of state sovereignty in international relations.