CLEP Western Civilization II cheat sheet

Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended the Thirty Years' War, recognized the sovereignty of German princes, confirmed Calvinism, and is conventionally treated as the origin of the modern state system.

Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) built Versailles as a tool of control: nobles were drawn to court and away from provincial power bases; intendants, not nobles, administered provinces.

Colbert's mercantilism: state-subsidized manufactures, tariffs, and the French East India Company; goal was a favorable balance of trade and bullion inflow.

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) expelled Huguenots, weakening the French economy and strengthening rival states that received them.

Habsburg Austria was a composite monarchy: the Pragmatic Sanction (1713) aimed to secure Maria Theresa's inheritance of the diverse Habsburg lands.

Prussia under the Great Elector and Frederick William I built a standing army and an efficient bureaucracy; junkers were integrated into the officer corps in exchange for serfdom's preservation.

English constitutionalism: Petition of Right (1628), Habeas Corpus Act (1679), and Bill of Rights (1689) limited royal power after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

The English Bill of Rights established parliamentary control of taxation, free elections, and no standing army in peacetime without consent; John Locke's Two Treatises (1690) supplied its theoretical defense.

Russia's Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) westernized the army and administration, founded St. Petersburg (1703), and won Baltic access through the Great Northern War against Sweden.

Treaty of Utrecht (1713) ended the War of the Spanish Succession: France and Spain were kept separate, Britain gained Gibraltar, Minorca, and the asiento (slave-trade contract).

The War of Jenkins' Ear (1739) merged into the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), settled by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which restored most conquests.

The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was fought in Europe, North America, India, and at sea; the Treaty of Paris (1763) ceded Canada and eastern North America to Britain and gave Louisiana to Spain.

Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 reversed alliances: Austria allied with France, and Prussia with Britain, breaking the older Bourbon–Habsburg alignment.

In India, the British East India Company's victory at Plassey (1757) established British political dominance in Bengal after the fall of French influence.

The Atlantic triangular trade carried manufactured goods to Africa, enslaved people to the Americas, and sugar, tobacco, and cotton to Europe; the asiento was a prized concession.

Enlightened absolutism: Frederick II of Prussia, Joseph II of Austria, and Catherine II of Russia adopted reforms in law, education, and religion while preserving monarchical power.

Catherine the Great's partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795) erased Poland from the map; the partitions are a case study in great-power diplomacy at the expense of a weaker state.

Population growth, improved agriculture, and commercial expansion in the 18th century raised demand for colonial goods and intensified imperial rivalry.

Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), proposed a heliocentric model that displaced Earth from the center of the cosmos.

Kepler's laws (1609, 1619) established elliptical planetary orbits; Galileo's telescopic observations (1610) supported heliocentrism and led to his trial in 1633.

Newton's Principia (1687) unified terrestrial and celestial motion through universal gravitation and the laws of motion; it became the model of a mathematized natural philosophy.

Bacon advocated inductive method and experiment; Descartes championed deductive rationalism and the mind–body dualism; their approaches framed later scientific debate.

The Enlightenment drew on Locke's empiricism and tabula rasa; Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748) argued for separation of powers and influenced constitutional design.

Rousseau's Social Contract (1762) grounded legitimacy in the general will; Voltaire championed religious toleration and criticized the Catholic Church and absolutism.

Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1751–1772) disseminated Enlightenment thought across Europe despite censorship.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) argued for division of labor, free markets, and limited state intervention, displacing mercantilist assumptions.

Enlightened despotism and the public sphere (salons, coffeehouses, journals) spread reform ideas; censorship and state control of the press remained common.

The Estates-General (1789) turned into the National Assembly after the Third Estate's Tennis Court Oath; the Bastille fell on 14 July 1789.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) asserted liberty, equality before the law, and popular sovereignty; the August Decrees abolished feudal privileges.

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) subordinated the Church to the state; the 1791 Constitution created a constitutional monarchy, ended in 1792 when the monarchy fell.

The Convention (1792–1795) proclaimed the republic, executed Louis XVI (January 1793), and conducted the Terror under the Committee of Public Safety, dominated by Robespierre until Thermidor (1794).

The Directory (1795–1799) was overthrown by Napoleon's coup of 18 Brumaire (November 1799), which established the Consulate.

Napoleon's Civil Code (1804) codified equality before the law, property rights, and secular marriage, but restricted women's legal status.

The Continental System (1806) tried to exclude British goods from Europe; it failed and contributed to Napoleon's overextension.

The Russian campaign of 1812 destroyed the Grande Armée; the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig (1813) and Waterloo (1815) ended Napoleon's rule.

The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) restored a balance of power, created the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and established the German Confederation under Austrian leadership.

The Industrial Revolution began in Britain with coal, iron, and textiles; the steam engine (Watt, 1769) and the factory system concentrated production.

Agricultural enclosure, population growth, colonial markets, and capital from trade provided preconditions for industrialization.

Railways (Stockton–Darlington 1825, Liverpool–Manchester 1830) cut transport costs and integrated markets; the telegraph followed later.

The Factory Act of 1833 and the Mines Act of 1842 regulated child and female labor; the Ten Hours Act (1847) limited the working day for women and children.

Malthus argued population outruns food supply; Ricardo's law of comparative advantage supported free trade; the Corn Laws were repealed in 1846.

The Chartists (1838–1848) demanded universal male suffrage, secret ballot, and annual parliaments; their petitions were rejected but their program was later enacted.

Luddism (1811–1816) was machine-breaking by skilled workers protesting wage cuts and deskilling, not simple technophobia.

Socialist responses: Owen's cooperative experiments, the Communist Manifesto (1848) by Marx and Engels, and later trade unionism.

Urbanization, cholera, and overcrowding prompted sanitary reform; Edwin Chadwick's 1842 sanitary report and the Public Health Act (1848) are landmarks.

The Concert of Europe (Congress System) used congresses at Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach, and Verona to suppress revolution; the Holy Alliance (1815) united Russia, Austria, and Prussia.

Metternich's Carlsbad Decrees (1819) censored the German press and universities; the Karlsbad system suppressed liberal and nationalist agitation.

The Greek revolt (1821–1830) won independence from the Ottoman Empire with great-power support; the Treaty of London (1830) recognized Greece.

The July Revolution of 1830 in France replaced Charles X with Louis-Philippe; it inspired revolts in Belgium (1830), Poland, and Italy.

The Reform Act of 1832 in Britain redistributed seats and extended the franchise to the middle class; it did not introduce universal suffrage.

The revolutions of 1848 spread across France, the German states, Austria, Italy, and Hungary; the Frankfurt Parliament (1848–1849) failed to unify Germany.

Romanticism emphasized emotion, individualism, and nature: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Goethe, and the painters Delacroix and Friedrich.

Nationalism in this period was cultural and liberal, associated with Mazzini's Young Italy and the German Burschenschaften; later it became more state-centered.

Conservatism (Burke, Metternich), liberalism (constitutional government, free trade), and nationalism were the three dominant political currents.

Italian unification: Cavour's diplomacy and the 1859 war with Austria, Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand (1860), and the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy (1861); Rome was added in 1870.

German unification: Bismarck's Realpolitik used the Danish War (1864), Austro-Prussian War (1866), and Franco-Prussian War (1870–71); the German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles in 1871.

The North German Confederation (1867) and the Prussian-dominated Reichstag constitution gave the chancellor power over the emperor's ministers but preserved universal male suffrage.

The Berlin Conference (1884–1885) set rules for the Scramble for Africa; by 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent.

Imperial motives included raw materials, markets, strategic bases, national prestige, and Social Darwinist and missionary ideology; the 'white man's burden' justified rule.

The Triple Alliance (1882) linked Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy; the Triple Entente (1907) linked Britain, France, and Russia, creating two rival blocs.

The Balkan crises (annexation of Bosnia 1908, Balkan Wars 1912–1913) heightened Austro-Russian rivalry; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (28 June 1914) triggered the July Crisis.

The Second Industrial Revolution (steel, chemicals, electricity) and the rise of mass politics and socialist parties (SPD, Second International) transformed European society.

The Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906) exposed antisemitism and divided France between republican and reactionary camps.

The July Crisis led to war after Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia; the Schlieffen Plan's failure at the Marne (1914) produced trench stalemate on the Western Front.

Total war: conscription, rationing, state direction of industry, and propaganda; the Russian Revolution (1917) followed military collapse and food shortages.

US entry (1917) after unrestricted submarine warfare tipped the balance; the armistice was signed on 11 November 1918.

The Treaty of Versailles (1919) imposed reparations, territorial losses, the War Guilt clause (Article 231), and limits on the German military; the League of Nations was created.

The Russian Revolution: February 1917 overthrew the tsar; the Bolsheviks under Lenin seized power in October 1917 and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918).

The Weimar Republic faced hyperinflation (1923), the Ruhr occupation, and the Great Depression after 1929; the Reichstag fire (1933) preceded the Enabling Act.

Stalin's Five-Year Plans and collectivization (from 1928) transformed the Soviet economy at enormous human cost, including the Ukrainian famine of 1932–33.

Fascism in Italy: Mussolini's March on Rome (1922) and the Lateran Treaty (1929); Nazism's rise drew on economic crisis, nationalism, and antisemitism.

Appeasement: the Munich Agreement (1938) ceded the Sudetenland; the Nazi-Soviet Pact (August 1939) cleared the way for the invasion of Poland.

Blitzkrieg tactics brought rapid German victories in 1939–1941; the Battle of Britain (1940) was the first major defeat of the Luftwaffe.

Operation Barbarossa (June 1941) opened the Eastern Front; the battles of Stalingrad (1942–43) and Kursk (1943) turned the tide.

The Holocaust: the Wannsee Conference (1942) coordinated the 'Final Solution'; six million Jews and millions of others were murdered.

D-Day (6 June 1944) opened the Western Front; Germany surrendered in May 1945; atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

Postwar settlements: Yalta and Potsdam divided Germany and Europe; the United Nations was founded in 1945; the Nuremberg trials established individual accountability for crimes against humanity.

The Cold War: Truman Doctrine (1947), Marshall Plan (1948), NATO (1949), Warsaw Pact (1955), and the Berlin Blockade and airlift (1948–49).

Decolonization: Indian independence (1947), the Suez Crisis (1956), and African independence in the 1960s; the Non-Aligned Movement (1961) offered a third path.

European integration: European Coal and Steel Community (1951), Treaties of Rome (1957), and the EEC; the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the USSR dissolved in 1991.

Détente and its limits: SALT I (1972), the Helsinki Accords (1975), and renewed tension after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979).

The Marshall Plan (1948–1951) channeled US aid to Western Europe and required coordination, which helped create the OEEC and later the EEC.

The European Coal and Steel Community (1951) pooled coal and steel under the Schuman Plan; the Treaties of Rome (1957) created the EEC and Euratom.

The Single European Act (1986) set the 1992 deadline for a single market; the Maastricht Treaty (1992) created the European Union and the euro.

The euro was introduced as accounting currency in 1999 and as cash in 2002; the European Central Bank was established in Frankfurt.

The welfare state expanded after 1945 (Beveridge Report 1942, NHS 1948); the postwar boom ended with the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979.

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe (1989) and the dissolution of the USSR (1991) reshaped the European order; Germany reunified in 1990.

EU enlargement: 2004 admitted ten states, including Poland and the Baltic states; the Lisbon Treaty (2009) reformed institutions and created a permanent EU president.

Contemporary issues: Brexit (UK referendum 2016, withdrawal 2020), the eurozone debt crisis (2010–2012), migration pressures, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Decolonization and its legacies shaped immigration, trade, and foreign policy; the Commonwealth and Francophonie are institutional remnants of empire.