AP^® European History Flashcards

Gutenberg (c. 1450) enabled mass production of books: ~20 million printed by 1500.

Effects:

• Standardized vernacular languages.
• Spread humanism rapidly.
• Accelerated the Reformation (Luther's 95 Theses reached all Germany in weeks).
• Enabled the Scientific Revolution by sharing experimental results.
• Gradually broke the Church monopoly on information.
• Created the possibility of mass literacy.

Italian: more secular in emphasis (though much of its art stayed religious), classical, focused on individual achievement, civic life, artistic perfection (Da Vinci, Michelangelo). Major patrons: wealthy merchant families and Church. Northern: more religious, emphasized Christian reform, biblical scholarship, ethics (Erasmus, More). Spread later via printing. Art: Flemish oil painting, more detail, religious subjects (van Eyck, Dürer, Bosch, Bruegel).

A massive inflow of silver from Spanish American mines (Potosí, Bolivia; Mexico) expanded the money supply while a growing population pushed up demand for food. Prices roughly quadrupled over the century; historians debate how much each cause mattered.

• Winners: merchants, debtors (paying back in cheaper money), peasants selling crops.
• Losers: nobles on fixed rents, wage-earners (wages lagged prices).

Restructured European wealth distribution.

Immediate: sale of indulgences (Tetzel's campaign for St. Peter's Basilica); Luther's 95 Theses (1517).

Underlying:

• Church abuses (simony, pluralism, absenteeism, worldly Renaissance popes).
• Christian humanist critiques (Erasmus).
• Printing press for rapid spread.
• Rising national identities resenting Roman tax flows.
• Earlier reformers (Wycliffe, Hus).

• Luther: skeptical of state involvement in true religion but accepted protection from German princes; "two-kingdoms" theology separated spiritual and temporal authority.
• Calvin: in Geneva, church and city government worked closely together (often called a theocracy, though Calvin held no civil office); the consistory enforced moral discipline.

Calvinism was more activist in politics: French Huguenots, Dutch rebels, and English Puritans all justified resistance.

• Confirmed the Peace of Augsburg and added Calvinism as a recognized faith.
• Recognized the independence of the Dutch Republic (from Spain) and the Swiss Confederation (from the Holy Roman Empire).
• Made German princes near-sovereign within the Holy Roman Empire (further weakened the HRE).
• Strengthened the sovereign-state principle: each state has supreme authority within its borders, with non-interference in others' internal affairs.

Often called the foundation of the modern state system (the "Westphalian order"), though historians debate how much the treaties themselves created it.

Versailles was not just a palace but a system of noble control. Louis XIV required high nobles to live at court, attending elaborate daily rituals around his bedchamber and dining. While at Versailles, they could not rebel from their home provinces; their political power decayed. Court favor became more valuable than provincial influence.

Result: a domesticated nobility and centralized royal authority.

Parliamentary leaders invited William of Orange (Dutch ruler, Mary II's husband) to take the throne; James II fled to France without significant fighting. No major battles in England (some skirmishes; Ireland later saw bloody fighting). A smooth transition compared to the 1640s Civil War. "Glorious" became standard Whig terminology; in fact, William used military force, so "bloodless" overstates it.

Catherine corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot, summoned a commission to draft a new legal code, and condemned torture in her Instruction (Nakaz, 1767). But her power depended on the noble class. The Pugachev Rebellion (1773–1775) was a massive Cossack and serf uprising; Catherine ferociously suppressed it and afterward strengthened noble privileges, including control over serfs, in the 1785 Charter of the Nobility. Enlightenment reforms collided with Russia's social structure based on serfdom: she chose stability over reform.

Medieval (Ptolemaic/Aristotelian) cosmology placed Earth at the center, with celestial spheres rotating around it; this fit Christian theology centering humans in creation. Copernicus put the Sun at the center, demoting Earth to one of several planets. This demoted humanity's cosmic position and undermined the literal-textual authority of ancient and biblical cosmology. Initially controversial; because it kept circular orbits, it was no more accurate than Ptolemy's system until Kepler introduced elliptical orbits.

Voltaire: skeptical wit; satirized clerical intolerance and aristocratic privilege; favored gradual reform led by enlightened monarchs; suspicious of mob rule. "Candide" (1759). Rousseau: emotional and radical; "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains"; general will of the people legitimizes government; private property is the origin of inequality. Voltaire was Enlightenment's rational satirist; Rousseau its passionate democrat and proto-Romantic. They disliked each other personally.

In "Wealth of Nations" (1776), individuals pursuing self-interest in competitive free markets are led "as if by an invisible hand" to promote overall social benefit. Smith argued against mercantilism (state economic intervention) and advocated free trade and division of labor. Foundational to classical liberalism and modern economics, and to later free-trade movements.

• Fiscal crisis: debts from wars (especially the American Revolution, 1778-1783); by 1789, interest on the debt consumed about half of royal spending.
• Noble obstruction of tax-reform attempts in the 1780s.
• Economic hardship: poor 1788 harvest; high bread prices in 1789.
• Estates-General (May 1789), called to fix finances, became unmanageable when the Third Estate refused to vote by estate.

Long-term: Enlightenment ideas plus Old Regime inequality.

• Foreign war (declared April 1792 against Austria, joined by Prussia) and military defeats.
• Economic hardship: bread prices and urban poverty.
• Fear of internal enemies (refractory clergy, returning émigré nobles, the allegedly treasonous king after the Flight to Varennes).
• Rise of the sans-culottes: the Parisian working class became politically organized.

The storming of the Tuileries (Aug 10, 1792) ended the monarchy; the National Convention then proclaimed a republic.

It codified French civil law on Enlightenment principles:

• Equality before the law (regardless of birth).
• A secular state (no religious courts).
• Strong property rights.
• Freedom of contract.
• Abolished feudal privileges.

But it also restored paternal authority within the family and limited women's legal rights (wives were subordinate to husbands). Separately, Napoleon reinstated slavery in the French colonies in 1802. The most enduring Napoleonic legacy: it spread to Italy, Spain, Germany, the Low Countries, and Latin America, and is the basis for many modern civil-law systems.

• Abundant coal and iron.
• Capital accumulation from Atlantic trade, slavery, and agriculture.
• Stable government with property rights (post-1688).
• Free internal market (no internal tariffs).
• Agricultural Revolution (enclosures, crop rotation) freed labor and a food surplus.
• Culture of innovation (Royal Society, applied science).
• Colonial markets and raw materials (cotton from India and the US).
• Good transport (rivers, canals, ports).

• Earlier (cottage / putting-out system): a merchant provided raw materials to peasants working at home, who produced cloth and goods at their own pace.
• Factory system: workers gathered in centralized buildings, working set hours with machines under supervision.

It required new work discipline (punctuality, sustained concentration, machine-paced rhythm) alien to agricultural and craft traditions. Foundation of industrial capitalism.

• Classical liberalism (Smith, Ricardo, Mill): free markets, individual liberty, private property, minimal government, free trade, laissez-faire. Economic freedom maximizes welfare via the "invisible hand."
• Marxism: capitalism is inherently exploitative; private property is the source of class oppression; workers create value but the bourgeoisie capture it; capitalism is doomed by its contradictions; revolution will replace it with classless communism.

Marx cast liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie and his own theory as the critique from the working class.

• Liberal-nationalist-social splits: middle-class liberals were frightened by working-class radicalism (June Days in Paris), and liberals seeking a constitution split from nationalists seeking unification.
• Military power of conservative monarchies (Austria, Russia) stayed intact.
• Satisfied peasants: serfdom abolition (Austria) left peasants unwilling to support urban revolutionaries further.
• Frankfurt Assembly: its liberal nationalism was rejected by Frederick William IV.

Conservatism reasserted itself by 1849-1850.

• Cavour (Italy): a diplomatic strategist. Allied with France (Plombières) to defeat Austria, then used plebiscites and Garibaldi's campaigns to expand Piedmont. Italy was unified by Piedmont.
• Bismarck (Germany): a military strategist and diplomatic master. Three wars: Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), France (1870-71). Excluded Austria from German affairs and unified a small Germany under Prussian dominance.

Both used realpolitik and both succeeded by 1871.

• Economic: raw materials (rubber, cotton, diamonds, oil, palm oil); captive markets; investment outlets.
• Political: national prestige; military strategy (naval coaling stations, geopolitical position); inter-European rivalry.
• Ideological: the "civilizing mission" (Kipling's "White Man's Burden"); social Darwinism; racial pseudo-scientific hierarchies.
• Missionary: the spread of Christianity.

Different powers emphasized different motives, but all played a role.

• Militarism: arms race (especially the Anglo-German naval race), large armies, war planning.
• Alliances: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) vs the Triple Entente (France, Russia, Britain) turned a local Balkan crisis into a continental and then world war.
• Imperialism: colonial rivalry (Moroccan crises 1905, 1911).
• Nationalism: Pan-Slavism (Russia-Serbia), Pan-Germanism, French revanche over Alsace-Lorraine, and Balkan nationalisms.

• War Guilt Clause and reparations humiliated Germans and fueled resentment.
• "Stab in the back" myth: many Germans blamed defeat on Jews and socialists, not the military.
• Economic instability (hyperinflation 1923; Great Depression hit hard).
• Weimar Republic weak and unpopular; associated with national humiliation.
• Territorial terms (the Polish Corridor, Danzig as a free city, the demilitarized Rhineland) became targets of Hitler's revisionist agenda.

Many historians see Versailles as one of several conditions, alongside the Great Depression, that made the Nazi rise possible.

The Nazi Party (NSDAP) had grown in elections through the Great Depression, becoming the largest party in the Reichstag by 1932. President Hindenburg, advised by conservatives who thought they could control Hitler, appointed him chancellor on January 30, 1933. After the Reichstag Fire (Feb 27) was blamed on Communists, Hitler issued an emergency decree suspending civil liberties. The Enabling Act (March 1933, passed by an intimidated Reichstag) gave him dictatorial powers for 4 years (renewed). When Hindenburg died (Aug 1934), Hitler merged the chancellor and president offices into "Führer."

A British (Chamberlain) and French (Daladier) policy from 1936-1939 of conceding to Hitler's demands to avoid war. Examples: no response to Rhineland remilitarization (1936); accepted the Anschluss with Austria (1938); the Munich Agreement gave away the Sudetenland (Sept 1938). Chamberlain claimed "peace for our time."

It failed because Hitler's aims were unlimited (Lebensraum in the East), not specific grievances; concessions encouraged more demands; and Hitler violated Munich by taking the rest of Czechoslovakia (March 1939). "Munich" became synonymous with disastrous concessions to dictators.

The European Recovery Program (1948-1952). The US provided ~$13 billion in economic aid (~$150B today) to rebuild Western European economies after WWII. It was open to the Eastern bloc, but Stalin refused (it would have integrated his satellites with the West).

Results: revived Western European economies, tied them to the US, reduced communist appeal, and established US economic leadership. A major Cold War success for the West.

• 1951 ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community): France, West Germany, Italy, and Benelux pool coal and steel, designed to prevent another European war by binding economies.
• 1957 Treaty of Rome → EEC (European Economic Community): customs union and common market.
• 1973: UK, Ireland, and Denmark join.
• 1986 Single European Act: created the single market.
• 1992 Maastricht Treaty → European Union: deeper integration, path to a common currency.
• 1999/2002: the Euro launched.

• European powers weakened economically and militarily by WWII.
• Nationalist movements in colonies gained strength (many colonial soldiers served in WWII).
• The US and USSR were both anti-colonial (each for its own reasons).
• Moral delegitimation of European racial supremacy after the Holocaust.
• The economic burden of maintaining empires.

Specific events: India/Pakistan (1947), Indonesia (1949), Vietnam (1954), Suez (1956), Algeria (1962), most of Africa (1957-65). Within 25 years, Europe lost its overseas empires.

A wave of mostly peaceful revolutions (the "annus mirabilis"):

• Poland: Solidarity won partially free elections (June); first non-communist Polish government in 40 years.
• Hungary (May): opened its border with Austria; the first hole in the Iron Curtain.
• East Germany (October-November): mass protests; the Berlin Wall fell November 9.
• Czechoslovakia (November): the "Velvet Revolution"; Havel became president.
• Romania (December): more violent; Ceaușescu and his wife executed.
• Bulgaria: Communist leadership replaced peacefully.

Within months, communist rule ended across the bloc. Germany reunified October 3, 1990.