AP European History cheat sheet

Renaissance humanism revived classical Greek and Latin texts; Petrarch is called the first humanist.

Northern Renaissance emphasized Christian reform (Erasmus's Praise of Folly, 1509) more than Italian civic humanism.

Printing press with movable type (Gutenberg, c. 1450) lowered book costs and sped the spread of Reformation ideas.

Italian city-states (Florence, Venice, Milan) financed art through patronage; the Medici banked in Florence.

Portugal pioneered Atlantic exploration: Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; da Gama reached India in 1498.

Columbian Exchange moved crops, livestock, and diseases between hemispheres; smallpox devastated Native American populations.

Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divided non-European lands between Spain and Portugal along a meridian.

New monarchies centralized power by controlling taxation, standing armies, and the church within their realms.

Luther's 95 Theses (1517) attacked indulgences; sola fide and sola scriptura became core Protestant doctrines.

Peace of Augsburg (1555) allowed each prince to choose Lutheranism or Catholicism within the Holy Roman Empire.

Calvinism stressed predestination and spread to Scotland (Knox), France (Huguenots), and the Netherlands.

Council of Trent (1545-1563) reaffirmed Catholic doctrine and reformed clergy training and abuses.

Society of Jesus (Jesuits), founded 1540 by Loyola, ran schools and missions supporting the Counter-Reformation.

Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy (1534) made the English monarch head of the Church of England.

Edict of Nantes (1598) granted French Huguenots limited toleration; revoked by Louis XIV in 1685.

Wars of Religion ended in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), recognizing sovereign territorial states.

Absolutism holds the monarch derives power from God (divine right) and answers to no earthly authority.

Louis XIV's Versailles court and intendants centralized France; Colbert promoted mercantilism.

English constitutionalism rested on Magna Carta, common law, and Parliament's control of taxation.

English Civil War (1642-1651) ended with Charles I executed (1649) and the Cromwellian Commonwealth.

Glorious Revolution (1688) and Bill of Rights (1689) established parliamentary supremacy and limited monarchy.

Dutch Republic and Britain developed commercial empires through joint-stock companies and public debt.

Frederick William, the Great Elector, built Brandenburg-Prussia's army and bureaucracy; Frederick II later expanded.

Peter the Great of Russia westernized elites and built St. Petersburg to gain Baltic access.

Copernican heliocentrism (1543) displaced Earth from the center; Kepler added elliptical orbits.

Galileo used the telescope and defended heliocentrism; Newton's Principia (1687) unified motion under gravity.

Bacon advocated inductive method; Descartes used deductive doubt and 'cogito ergo sum'.

Locke's Two Treatises (1689) argued natural rights to life, liberty, and property and government by consent.

Hobbes's Leviathan (1651) justified strong sovereign authority to escape the state of nature.

Enlightenment philosophes championed reason, toleration, and progress; Diderot's Encyclopédie spread these ideas.

Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748) proposed separation of powers; Rousseau's Social Contract stressed general will.

Enlightened absolutists (Frederick II, Joseph II, Catherine II) adopted some reforms while retaining autocratic power.

French fiscal crisis, bad harvests, and Enlightenment critique led Louis XVI to convene the Estates-General in 1789.

Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly; Tennis Court Oath (June 1789) pledged a constitution.

Storming of the Bastille (14 July 1789) and the Declaration of the Rights of Man followed.

Reign of Terror (1793-1794) under Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety executed thousands by guillotine.

Napoleon's Napoleonic Code (1804) codified equality before law and property rights while restricting women.

Continental System tried to blockade British trade; failed invasion of Russia (1812) shattered the Grande Armee.

Congress of Vienna (1815) restored balance of power, legitimized dynasties, and created a conservative order.

Enclosure and agricultural change pushed rural population toward cities and wage labor.

Britain industrialized first due to coal, capital, colonies, and agricultural surplus labor.

Steam engine improvements by Watt (1769) powered factories, mines, and later railways.

Factory system concentrated workers and separated home from workplace; child labor was widespread.

Railways (Stockton-Darlington 1825, Liverpool-Manchester 1830) cut transport costs and integrated markets.

Malthus warned population outgrows food; Ricardo argued wages settle at subsistence (iron law of wages).

Factory Acts from 1833 limited child labor and hours; Chartism demanded universal male suffrage.

Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto (1848) framed history as class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

Second Industrial Revolution (steel, chemicals, electricity) shifted leadership toward Germany and the United States.

Congress of Vienna's conservatism was challenged by liberalism, nationalism, and socialism.

Revolutions of 1848 spread across Europe but largely failed to create lasting liberal regimes.

Italian unification (Risorgimento) achieved via Cavour, Garibaldi, and the Kingdom of Sardinia by 1870.

German unification (1871) followed Bismarck's 'blood and iron' policy and the Franco-Prussian War.

Bismarck's Kulturkampf targeted Catholic influence; his welfare laws preempted socialism.

Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) advanced evolution by natural selection; Social Darwinism misapplied it.

Realism and later Impressionism rejected Romantic idealism in art and literature.

Suffrage expanded steadily; women's suffrage movements gained force in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

WWI's immediate trigger was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1914); alliance systems widened it.

Trench warfare and total war mobilized economies and civilian populations on an unprecedented scale.

Treaty of Versailles (1919) imposed reparations and territorial losses on Germany, fueling resentment.

Russian Revolution (1917) brought Bolsheviks to power under Lenin; USSR formed in 1922.

Stalin's Five-Year Plans and collectivization forced rapid industrialization and caused famine.

Fascist regimes (Mussolini, Hitler) combined authoritarian rule, nationalism, and anti-communism.

Nazi ideology and the Holocaust resulted in the systematic murder of six million Jews.

WWII ended in Europe 1945; atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the Pacific war.

Cold War divided Europe; Truman Doctrine (1947) and Marshall Plan (1948) contained communism.

Berlin Blockade and Airlift (1948-49) preceded the creation of NATO (1949) and Warsaw Pact (1955).

European integration began with the ECSC (1951) and evolved into the EEC (1957) and EU (Maastricht, 1992).

Decolonization after 1945 created new states; immigration reshaped European societies.

Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989; Berlin Wall fell in November 1989 and the USSR dissolved in 1991.

Post-war welfare states expanded social services; stagflation in the 1970s challenged Keynesian policies.

Yugoslav wars of the 1990s produced ethnic conflict and international intervention.

EU expansion and the euro (1999) deepened integration while raising debates over sovereignty and migration.