AP European History flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Humanism

Renaissance intellectual movement that studied classical Greek and Roman texts to cultivate civic virtue and eloquence, emphasizing human potential rather than purely religious concerns.

Printing press

Movable-type innovation associated with Gutenberg around 1450 that made books cheaper and enabled rapid circulation of Reformation and humanist ideas across Europe.

Columbian Exchange

Transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after 1492, transforming diets while devastating Native populations with smallpox.

Treaty of Tordesillas

1494 agreement between Spain and Portugal dividing newly discovered non-European lands along a meridian, giving Portugal Brazil and Spain most of the Americas.

Ninety-Five Theses

1517 list by Martin Luther attacking indulgences and church abuses, marking the start of the Protestant Reformation and spreading quickly through printing.

Predestination

Calvinist doctrine that God has eternally chosen who will be saved, encouraging discipline and missionary activity among followers of John Calvin.

Peace of Augsburg

1555 settlement allowing each prince in the Holy Roman Empire to choose Lutheranism or Catholicism for his territory, temporarily ending religious warfare.

Council of Trent

1545-1563 Catholic reform council that reaffirmed core doctrine and corrected clerical abuses, launching the Counter-Reformation and standardizing Catholic practice.

Divine right

Absolutist doctrine that a monarch rules by God's will and is accountable only to God, used to justify centralized royal authority.

Glorious Revolution

1688 replacement of James II by William and Mary, followed by the Bill of Rights in 1689, which established parliamentary supremacy and limited monarchy in England.

Versailles

Louis XIV's palace outside Paris, which housed a court that controlled nobles and projected French royal power and absolutist grandeur.

Peace of Westphalia

1648 treaties ending the Thirty Years' War, recognizing sovereign territorial states and settling religious disputes in the Holy Roman Empire.

Heliocentrism

Model placing the Sun at the center of the solar system, advanced by Copernicus in 1543 and supported by Galileo and Kepler despite church opposition.

Newton's Principia

1687 work presenting laws of motion and universal gravitation, unifying terrestrial and celestial physics and becoming the model for scientific explanation.

Social contract

Political theory that legitimate authority derives from an agreement among people, developed differently by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.

General will

Rousseau's concept of the collective will of citizens aimed at the common good, which he argued should guide sovereign decision-making.

Reign of Terror

1793-1794 period of the French Revolution when the Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre executed thousands of suspected counterrevolutionaries by guillotine.

Napoleonic Code

1804 French civil code that affirmed equality before the law and property rights while reinforcing male authority over family matters.

Congress of Vienna

1814-1815 meeting that restored dynasties, redrew European borders, and established a conservative balance of power after Napoleon's defeat.

Estates-General

French representative assembly of clergy, nobility, and commoners, convened in 1789 amid a fiscal crisis and transforming into the National Assembly.

Enclosure movement

Consolidation of common farmland into private holdings in Britain, raising agricultural output while displacing rural laborers toward cities.

Factory system

Production concentrated in centralized workplaces using powered machinery, separating work from home and creating new labor discipline and urban growth.

Communist Manifesto

1848 pamphlet by Marx and Engels arguing that class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat would lead to a socialist revolution.

Malthusian theory

Thomas Malthus's argument that population grows faster than food supply, implying checks like famine and disease limit growth.

Risorgimento

Nineteenth-century Italian movement led by figures such as Cavour and Garibaldi that achieved national unification by 1870 under the Kingdom of Sardinia.

Bismarck's Realpolitik

Pragmatic power politics pursued by Otto von Bismarck, using war and diplomacy to unify Germany in 1871 and isolate France afterward.

Natural selection

Darwin's mechanism of evolution whereby inherited traits aiding survival and reproduction become more common in populations over generations.

Kulturkampf

Bismarck's 1870s campaign against Catholic church influence in Germany, which largely failed and was later softened.

Treaty of Versailles

1919 settlement ending World War I with Germany, imposing reparations, territorial losses, and military limits that fueled later resentment.

Total war

Conflict mobilizing entire societies and economies, including civilians and industrial production, as seen in both world wars of the twentieth century.

Holocaust

Systematic Nazi genocide during World War II that murdered about six million Jews along with Roma, disabled people, and other targeted groups.

Marshall Plan

1948 US program of economic aid to rebuild Western Europe, aimed at containing communism and fostering postwar recovery and cooperation.