Must-know sheet

European History must-know sheet

The dates, treaties, wars, thinkers, documents and turning points you should know cold for AP European History, organized by time period. The real exam doesn't give you any reference sheet, so everything here has to come from memory.

Timeline, c. 1450–1648: Renaissance, exploration and Reformation

Units 1, 2

1347–1351: Black Death: Plague killed roughly a third to a half of Europe's people. Labor shortages raised wages and weakened serfdom in the west, setting the stage for the period.
1378–1417: Great Schism: Two, then three, rival popes claimed power at once until the Council of Constance ended the split. It badly hurt the papacy's prestige before the Reformation.
c. 1450: Gutenberg's printing press: Movable type in Mainz made books cheap and fast to produce (the Gutenberg Bible, c. 1455). Printing spread humanism, vernacular languages and, later, Luther's ideas.
1453: Fall of Constantinople; end of the Hundred Years' War: The Ottoman Turks took the Byzantine capital, and Greek scholars brought ancient texts west. The same year England lost nearly all its French lands, ending the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453).
1492: Columbus, Granada and the expulsion of Jews from Spain: Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain, expelled Spain's Jews and funded Columbus's voyage to the Caribbean.
1494: Treaty of Tordesillas: Spain and Portugal split newly found lands along a line through the Atlantic; Portugal's side later gave it Brazil. The same year France invaded Italy, starting the Italian Wars (1494–1559).
1498: Vasco da Gama reaches India: The Portuguese sailed around Africa to India, opening an all-sea route to Asian spices that bypassed Venice and the Ottomans.
1513: Machiavelli writes The Prince: Published in 1532. It judges rulers by results, not Christian morals: better to be feared than loved if you can't be both.
1516: Concordat of Bologna: The pope let the French king choose France's bishops and abbots, so France stayed Catholic while its king controlled the Church in France.
1517: Luther's Ninety-Five Theses: Martin Luther attacked the sale of indulgences in Wittenberg. Printed copies spread across Germany within weeks, starting the Protestant Reformation.
1519–1521: Cortés conquers the Aztecs: Spanish conquistadors, helped by Indigenous allies and smallpox, took Tenochtitlan. Pizarro then conquered the Inca (from 1532), and Potosí's silver mine opened in 1545.
1521: Diet of Worms: Luther refused to take back his writings before Emperor Charles V and was declared an outlaw, but Frederick the Wise of Saxony protected him.
1524–1525: German Peasants' War: Peasants used Luther's ideas to demand an end to serfdom; Luther sided with the princes, who crushed the revolt. Lutheranism became a religion backed by princes.
1534: Act of Supremacy: Parliament made Henry VIII head of the Church of England after the pope refused to annul his marriage. Henry then closed the monasteries and took their lands (1536–1541).
1534–1540: Jesuits founded: Ignatius of Loyola founded the Society of Jesus (papal approval 1540). Jesuits ran schools, served as missionaries worldwide and won back parts of Poland and southern Germany for Catholicism.
1536–1541: Calvin's Institutes and Geneva: John Calvin published the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) and from 1541 made Geneva a model Protestant city ruled by strict church discipline.
1545–1563: Council of Trent: The Catholic Church reaffirmed its teachings (seven sacraments, faith plus good works, Scripture plus tradition) and fixed abuses, for example by requiring seminaries to train priests.
1555: Peace of Augsburg: Each German prince could choose Lutheranism or Catholicism for his lands. Calvinism was left out, which caused trouble later.
1558–1603: Elizabeth I rules England: Her 1559 religious settlement made England moderately Protestant. England defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588.
1562–1598: French Wars of Religion: Catholics and Calvinist Huguenots fought for decades, including the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572). The Edict of Nantes (1598) ended the wars.
1568–1648: Dutch Revolt: The Protestant northern Netherlands rebelled against Philip II of Spain and formed the Dutch Republic. Spain recognized its independence in 1648.
1571: Battle of Lepanto: A Catholic fleet led by Spain and Venice beat the Ottoman navy, checking Ottoman power in the western Mediterranean.
1588: Spanish Armada defeated: Philip II's invasion fleet against Protestant England was beaten by English ships and storms. It marked the start of Spain's slow decline as a naval power.
1598: Edict of Nantes: Henry IV, a former Huguenot who became Catholic, gave Huguenots freedom of worship in set places and fortified towns, while France stayed officially Catholic.
1600–1602: English and Dutch East India Companies: The English East India Company (1600) and the Dutch VOC (1602) were joint-stock companies that pooled investors' money to trade in Asia, challenging Portugal.
1609: Bank of Amsterdam: A public exchange bank that made Amsterdam the center of European finance.
1618–1648: Thirty Years' War: Began with the Defenestration of Prague, when Bohemian Protestants threw imperial officials out a window. It grew from a religious war into a political war for power in Europe and devastated the German lands.
1648: Peace of Westphalia: Ended the Thirty Years' War and the Dutch Revolt. It marks the end of the era of religious wars and the start of a system of sovereign states.

Timeline, c. 1648–1815: state building, Enlightenment and revolution

Units 3, 4, 5

1543–1687: Scientific Revolution: From Copernicus's sun-centered model (1543) to Newton's Principia (1687), thinkers replaced ancient authorities with observation, experiment and math.
1642–1651: English Civil Wars: Charles I fought Parliament over taxes, religion and royal power. Parliament's side (Roundheads) beat the royalists (Cavaliers).
1648–1653: The Fronde: Revolts by French nobles and Paris against royal taxes and power during young Louis XIV's childhood. They taught him to keep nobles under watch.
1649: Charles I executed: England became a republic (the Commonwealth). Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 to 1658.
1660: Restoration: Parliament invited Charles II back, restoring the monarchy and the Church of England.
1661: Louis XIV begins personal rule: After Cardinal Mazarin died, Louis ruled without a chief minister. He moved his court to Versailles in 1682.
1683: Ottoman siege of Vienna fails: A Habsburg and Polish army broke the siege, ending the Ottoman push into central Europe. In the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), Austria gained most of Hungary.
1685: Edict of Nantes revoked: Louis XIV outlawed Protestantism in France. Some 150,000 to 200,000 Huguenots fled, taking skills and money to Protestant states like the Dutch Republic, England and Prussia.
1687: Newton's Principia: Newton's laws of motion and universal gravitation explained both the heavens and Earth with the same math, the high point of the Scientific Revolution.
1688–1689: Glorious Revolution and English Bill of Rights: Parliament replaced Catholic James II with William and Mary, then passed the Bill of Rights (1689). England became a constitutional monarchy.
1694: Bank of England: Let the British government borrow cheaply, backed by Parliament, which helped pay for its wars.
1700–1721: Great Northern War: Peter the Great beat Sweden (Battle of Poltava, 1709) and won land on the Baltic, making Russia a major power. He founded St. Petersburg in 1703.
1701–1714: War of the Spanish Succession: A coalition fought Louis XIV to stop France and Spain from uniting under one Bourbon ruler. It ended with the Treaty of Utrecht (1713).
1740–1748: War of the Austrian Succession: Frederick the Great of Prussia seized Silesia from the new Habsburg ruler Maria Theresa and kept it.
1751–1772: Diderot's Encyclopédie: A many-volume collection of knowledge that spread Enlightenment ideas and criticism of the Church and of privilege.
1756–1763: Seven Years' War: A world war: Britain and Prussia against France, Austria and Russia. Britain won Canada and the upper hand in India (Treaty of Paris, 1763), and Prussia kept Silesia.
1762: Rousseau's The Social Contract: Argued that legitimate government rests on the 'general will' of the people.
1772, 1793, 1795: Partitions of Poland: Russia, Prussia and Austria took land in 1772; Russia and Prussia took more in 1793; all three split the rest in 1795, and Poland disappeared from the map.
1773–1775: Pugachev's Rebellion: A huge peasant and Cossack revolt in Russia. Catherine the Great crushed it and then tightened serfdom.
1776: Wealth of Nations; American Declaration of Independence: Adam Smith argued for free markets over mercantilism. The American Revolution followed, and France's help to the Americans deepened French debt.
May–June 1789: Estates-General and Tennis Court Oath: Bankrupt Louis XVI called the Estates-General for the first time since 1614. The Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly and swore not to break up until France had a constitution.
July–August 1789: Bastille, end of feudal privileges, Rights of Man: Parisians stormed the Bastille on July 14. On August 4 the Assembly ended noble and Church privileges, and on August 26 it issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
1790–1791: Civil Constitution of the Clergy; constitutional monarchy: The state took over the Catholic Church and made priests swear loyalty, splitting France. The 1791 constitution limited the king, who had just tried to flee (flight to Varennes).
1791–1804: Haitian Revolution: Enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue rose up, led at first by Toussaint Louverture, and won independence as Haiti in 1804.
1792–1793: Republic and execution of Louis XVI: France went to war with Austria and Prussia (April 1792), ended the monarchy (September 1792) and executed the king (January 1793).
1793–1794: Reign of Terror: Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety used the guillotine against 'enemies of the Revolution' and raised a mass army (levée en masse). Robespierre was executed in July 1794 (the Thermidorian Reaction).
1795–1799: The Directory: A weak, corrupt government of five directors that relied on the army, which opened the door for Napoleon.
1799: Napoleon's coup: Napoleon overthrew the Directory and became First Consul. He crowned himself emperor in 1804.
1801–1804: Concordat and Napoleonic Code: The Concordat (1801) made peace with the Catholic Church. The Civil Code (1804) made men equal before the law and protected property, but put wives under their husbands' authority.
1805–1808: Trafalgar, Austerlitz and the Peninsular War: Britain's navy under Nelson destroyed the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar (1805), ending any threat of invasion, while Napoleon crushed Austria and Russia at Austerlitz (1805). From 1808 Spanish guerrillas, helped by Britain, fought a draining war against French rule.
1806: End of the Holy Roman Empire; Continental System: Napoleon forced the end of the Holy Roman Empire and, with the Berlin Decree, banned trade between Europe and Britain.
1812: Invasion of Russia: Napoleon led about 600,000 troops into Russia; most never returned. It was the turning point toward his defeat.
1814–1815: Congress of Vienna and Waterloo: Napoleon abdicated in 1814, returned for the Hundred Days and lost at Waterloo in June 1815. The Congress of Vienna redrew the map of Europe.

Timeline, c. 1815–1914: industry, ideologies, nations and empires

Units 6, 7

Late 1700s–1830s: Industrial Revolution in Britain: Coal, iron, capital, cheap labor and inventions like Watt's improved steam engine (1769, sold from 1776) moved textile work from homes into factories.
1815: Concert of Europe and Holy Alliance: The great powers agreed to meet and keep order. Russia, Austria and Prussia formed the Holy Alliance to defend monarchy and Christianity.
1819: Carlsbad Decrees: Metternich had the German states censor the press and watch universities to crush liberal and nationalist students.
1821–1830: Greek War of Independence: Greeks revolted against the Ottoman Empire; Britain, France and Russia helped, and Greece won independence. Romantics like Lord Byron backed the cause.
1825: Decembrist Revolt: Russian army officers demanding a constitution were crushed by Nicholas I, who then ruled as a strict conservative.
1830: July Revolution and Belgian revolt: Parisians replaced Charles X with the more liberal Louis-Philippe. Belgium broke away from the Netherlands (independence recognized in 1839).
1832: Great Reform Act: Gave the vote to more middle-class men and gave seats to growing industrial cities in Britain. Most working men still could not vote.
1833: Factory Act; abolition of slavery in the British Empire: Banned children under 9 from textile mills, limited hours for older children and created factory inspectors. The same year Britain abolished slavery in its empire (effective 1834).
1834: Zollverein: A customs union among most German states, led by Prussia, that ended internal tariffs and later helped Prussia lead German unification.
1838–1848: Chartism: British working men petitioned for the People's Charter, including the vote for all men and a secret ballot. Parliament rejected it, but most demands were later adopted.
1845–1849: Irish Potato Famine: Potato blight killed about a million people and drove about a million more to emigrate. British aid was slow and limited.
1846: Corn Laws repealed: Britain ended tariffs on imported grain, a win for free trade and for industrialists over landowners.
1848: Revolutions of 1848; Communist Manifesto: Revolts swept France, the German states, the Austrian Empire and Italy. Most were crushed within a year, but France became a republic again and Austria ended serfdom; the Frankfurt Parliament failed to unite Germany.
1851: Great Exhibition in London: The Crystal Palace show displayed Britain's industrial lead to the world.
1852: Napoleon III becomes emperor: Louis-Napoleon, elected president in 1848, made himself emperor of the Second Empire (1852–1870) with popular votes behind him.
1853–1856: Crimean War: Britain, France, Piedmont-Sardinia and the Ottomans beat Russia. It helped break up the Concert of Europe, left Austria without Russian support and pushed Russia to reform.
1859: Darwin's On the Origin of Species: Introduced evolution by natural selection, which challenged religious views of creation and was misused as Social Darwinism.
1861: Kingdom of Italy; emancipation of Russian serfs: Victor Emmanuel II became king of a mostly united Italy (Venetia added 1866, Rome 1870). Alexander II freed Russia's serfs, though they had to pay for land through their village communes.
1864–1871: Wars of German unification: Prussia beat Denmark (1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870–1871). The German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles in January 1871.
1867: Dual Monarchy (Austria-Hungary): The Compromise (Ausgleich) gave Hungary its own government under the Habsburg ruler, to calm Hungarian nationalism.
1871: Paris Commune: Radical Parisians set up their own government after France's defeat; French troops crushed it, killing thousands.
c. 1870–1914: Second Industrial Revolution: Steel, chemicals, electricity and the internal combustion engine. Germany caught up with Britain and passed it in some industries.
1878: Congress of Berlin: The great powers redrew the Balkans after a Russian–Ottoman war, limiting Russia's gains and leaving Balkan nationalists unhappy.
1882: Triple Alliance: Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy allied (building on the 1879 Dual Alliance) as Bismarck worked to keep France isolated.
1884–1885: Berlin Conference: European powers set rules for claiming African land without consulting Africans, speeding the scramble for Africa.
1890: Bismarck dismissed: Kaiser Wilhelm II let the alliance with Russia lapse; Russia allied with France (1894), creating a two-front threat to Germany.
1894–1906: Dreyfus Affair: A Jewish French army officer was falsely convicted of spying. The case exposed anti-Semitism and split France; it moved Theodor Herzl to launch political Zionism (1896–1897).
1898: Fashoda Crisis: Britain and France nearly fought over Sudan; France backed down, and the two later became partners.
1904–1907: Entente Cordiale and Triple Entente: Britain settled colonial disputes with France (1904) and Russia (1907), forming the Triple Entente against the Triple Alliance.
1905: Russian Revolution of 1905: After Bloody Sunday and defeat by Japan, Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, promising civil rights and an elected Duma, but kept most of his power.
1905 and 1911: Moroccan Crises: Germany challenged French control of Morocco and failed both times, which pushed Britain and France closer together.
1908: Bosnian Crisis: Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, angering Serbia and Russia.
1912–1913: Balkan Wars: Balkan states pushed the Ottomans almost out of Europe, then fought each other; Serbia grew stronger and bolder.

Timeline, 1914–1945: world wars, revolution and dictatorship

Unit 8

June 28, 1914: Franz Ferdinand assassinated: A Bosnian Serb nationalist killed the Austrian heir in Sarajevo. Alliances and war plans turned a Balkan crisis into a world war by early August.
1914: Schlieffen Plan stopped at the Marne: Germany went through neutral Belgium (bringing Britain in) to knock out France quickly. The First Battle of the Marne (September) stopped it, and trench warfare followed.
1915: Gallipoli; Armenian Genocide; Italy joins the Allies: The Allied landing at Gallipoli against the Ottomans failed. The Ottoman government began the mass killing of roughly a million or more Armenians. Italy joined the Allies (May) after secret promises of Austrian land.
1916: Verdun and the Somme: Two of the bloodiest battles of the war, with hundreds of thousands of casualties each and almost no ground gained.
1917: Russian Revolutions; U.S. enters the war: The February Revolution ended the tsar's rule, leaving a Provisional Government that kept fighting; the October Revolution brought Lenin's Bolsheviks to power. Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare helped bring the U.S. in (April).
March 1918: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: Bolshevik Russia left the war, giving up huge western lands (Poland, the Baltic region, Finland and Ukraine) that fell under German control.
November 11, 1918: Armistice: Germany agreed to stop fighting and became a republic (the Weimar Republic). By 1922 the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires had all collapsed.
1918–1921: Russian Civil War: Lenin's Reds beat the Whites, who had foreign help, using the Cheka secret police and War Communism.
1919: Treaty of Versailles: Germany had to accept blame for the war, pay reparations, give up land and colonies and limit its army. The League of Nations began in 1920.
1921: New Economic Policy (NEP): Lenin allowed small private trade and farming for profit to revive the ruined Soviet economy. The USSR was formed in 1922.
1922: Mussolini's March on Rome: The king named Mussolini prime minister; he made Italy a one-party fascist state by 1926.
1923: Hyperinflation and Ruhr occupation: France occupied Germany's industrial Ruhr over missed reparations, and German money became nearly worthless. The Dawes Plan (1924) used American loans to stabilize things.
1928: Stalin's first Five-Year Plan: Stalin forced fast industrialization and, from 1929, collectivized farms. The famine of 1932–1933 killed millions, especially in Ukraine (the Holodomor).
1929: Wall Street crash: American loans dried up and the Great Depression spread across Europe, boosting extremist parties.
1933: Hitler becomes chancellor: Appointed in January; the Enabling Act (March) let him make laws without the Reichstag, and Germany became a one-party state.
1935: Nuremberg Laws; Italy invades Ethiopia: Germany stripped Jews of citizenship. The League's weak response to Italy's invasion showed it could not stop aggression.
1936: Rhineland remilitarized; Spanish Civil War begins: Hitler broke the Versailles treaty unopposed. In Spain (1936–1939), Franco's Nationalists won with German and Italian help while Britain and France stayed out.
1936–1938: Great Purge: Stalin's show trials and secret-police terror killed hundreds of thousands and sent many more to the gulag labor camps.
1938: Anschluss, Munich Agreement, Kristallnacht: Germany annexed Austria (March) and took the Sudetenland with British and French approval at Munich (September), the height of appeasement. On Kristallnacht (November) Nazis attacked Jewish homes, shops and synagogues across Germany.
1939: Nazi-Soviet Pact; invasion of Poland: Hitler and Stalin agreed not to fight and secretly split Poland and eastern Europe (August 23). Germany invaded Poland on September 1, and Britain and France declared war on September 3.
1940: Fall of France; Battle of Britain: Blitzkrieg defeated France in about six weeks. Britain, led by Churchill, held off German air attacks.
1941: Operation Barbarossa; Pearl Harbor: Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June; Japan's attack in December brought the U.S. into the war.
1941–1945: The Holocaust: Nazi Germany murdered about six million Jews, first in mass shootings in the occupied East and then in death camps such as Auschwitz. Roma, disabled people, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and other Slavic civilians, gay men and political opponents were also persecuted and killed.
January 1942: Wannsee Conference: Nazi officials coordinated the 'Final Solution,' the plan to murder all of Europe's Jews in death camps.
1942–1943: Stalingrad: A German army was destroyed at Stalingrad, the turning point on the Eastern Front.
June 6, 1944: D-Day: Allied forces landed in Normandy, opening a western front in France.
1945: Yalta, Germany's surrender, Potsdam, atomic bombs: The Allies planned the postwar order at Yalta (February) and Potsdam (summer). Germany surrendered in May; atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August led to Japan's surrender.

Timeline, 1945–present: Cold War and contemporary Europe

Unit 9

1945: United Nations founded: Created to keep peace and promote cooperation, with the U.S., USSR, Britain, France and China as permanent Security Council members.
1946: Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech: Warned that the Soviet Union had split Europe into a free West and a Soviet-controlled East.
1947: Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan announced: The U.S. promised to help countries resist communism (containment), and offered aid to rebuild Europe. Marshall aid flowed from 1948 to 1952.
1947: Independence of India and Pakistan: Britain's largest colony won independence, but partition along religious lines brought mass violence and migration.
1948: Britain's National Health Service: Free health care for all, a centerpiece of the postwar welfare state.
1948–1949: Berlin Blockade and Airlift: The USSR cut off West Berlin by land; the U.S. and Britain flew in supplies for almost a year until Stalin gave up.
1949: NATO; two Germanys; COMECON: Western states formed the NATO alliance. Germany split into West Germany and East Germany, and the USSR set up COMECON for the Eastern bloc's economies.
1951: European Coal and Steel Community: Proposed by Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, it had six countries (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) pool coal and steel, the first step toward the EU.
1953: Stalin dies: A struggle for power followed; Khrushchev came out on top.
1954–1962: Algerian War: A brutal war of independence against France, which also toppled France's Fourth Republic and brought de Gaulle back (1958). Algeria won independence in 1962.
1955: Warsaw Pact: The Soviet bloc's military alliance, formed after West Germany joined NATO.
1956: Secret Speech, Hungarian Revolution, Suez Crisis: Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes (de-Stalinization). Soviet tanks crushed Hungary's revolt, and U.S. pressure forced Britain and France out of Egypt, showing their reduced power.
1957: Treaty of Rome: The six ECSC countries created the European Economic Community (Common Market).
1960: 'Year of Africa': Seventeen African colonies, most of them French, became independent, including the Belgian Congo.
1961: Berlin Wall built: East Germany walled off West Berlin to stop people fleeing to the West.
1962: Cuban Missile Crisis; Second Vatican Council opens: The superpowers came close to nuclear war. Vatican II (1962–1965) modernized the Catholic Church, for example allowing Mass in local languages.
1968: Prague Spring and student protests: Warsaw Pact troops crushed Czechoslovakia's reforms, and the Brezhnev Doctrine claimed a right to intervene in any socialist state. Students and workers protested across the West, especially in Paris in May.
1970s: Détente and stagflation: Superpower tension eased (Helsinki Accords, 1975). Oil shocks (1973, 1979) brought slow growth with high inflation and strained welfare states.
1979: Thatcher becomes prime minister: She cut state spending, sold state-owned industries and fought the unions in Britain (1979–1990).
1980: Solidarity founded: Polish workers led by Lech Wałęsa formed the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc.
1985: Gorbachev takes power: He began glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). The Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) exposed Soviet secrecy and failures.
1989: Revolutions of 1989: Poland's Solidarity won partly free elections, the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, and communist governments fell across Eastern Europe, mostly peacefully (Romania's was violent).
1990–1991: German reunification; USSR dissolves: Germany reunified in October 1990 under Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The Soviet Union broke into 15 countries in December 1991.
1991–2001: Wars in the former Yugoslavia: Yugoslavia broke apart in wars marked by ethnic cleansing, including the Srebrenica genocide (1995) and the Kosovo War (1998–1999).
1993: Maastricht Treaty takes effect; Czechoslovakia splits: The European Union was created (treaty signed 1992), with a plan for a common currency. Czechoslovakia split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
1999–2002: The euro: The euro launched in 1999 and replaced national bills and coins in 2002 in most EU countries.
2004: EU expands east: Ten countries joined, including eight former communist states such as Poland and Hungary.
2008–2015: Financial crisis, eurozone debt crisis and refugee arrivals: After the 2008 crash, Greece and other eurozone members needed bailouts tied to deep spending cuts. In 2015 more than a million asylum seekers, many fleeing Syria's civil war, reached the EU. Both fed Euroskeptic and anti-immigrant parties.
2016–2020: Brexit: British voters chose to leave the EU in 2016, and the UK left in January 2020.

Key treaties and settlements

Units 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Treaty of Tordesillas (1494): Spain and Portugal divided the non-European world along a line in the Atlantic, with the pope's backing. Other powers ignored it.
Concordat of Bologna (1516): The pope gave the French king the right to name bishops. French kings had little reason to break with Rome.
Peace of Augsburg (1555): Ended war between Charles V and the Lutheran princes. Each prince chose Lutheranism or Catholicism for his lands ('whose realm, his religion'); Calvinism was excluded.
Edict of Nantes (1598): Gave Huguenots limited toleration in France: worship in set places and their own fortified towns. Louis XIV revoked it in 1685.
Peace of Westphalia (1648): Ended the Thirty Years' War. Princes in the Holy Roman Empire could choose Catholicism, Lutheranism or Calvinism; Dutch and Swiss independence were recognized; France and Sweden gained land; the emperor and the Habsburgs were weakened.
Treaty of Utrecht (1713): With related treaties in 1714, ended the War of the Spanish Succession. Louis XIV's grandson kept Spain, but France and Spain could never unite; Britain gained Gibraltar and the asiento (the right to sell enslaved Africans in Spanish America); Austria gained the Spanish Netherlands and lands in Italy.
Treaty of Paris (1763): Ended the Seven Years' War. France lost Canada and its lands east of the Mississippi to Britain and was pushed aside in India, making Britain the leading colonial power.
Concordat of 1801: Napoleon recognized Catholicism as the religion of most French people; the state paid priests and named bishops, and the Church accepted the loss of its lands.
Congress of Vienna (1814–1815): Led by Metternich, the victors restored 'legitimate' monarchs like the Bourbons, ringed France with stronger states, created a German Confederation of 39 states and aimed for a balance of power. It kept major wars away for decades but ignored nationalism and liberalism.
Compromise of 1867 (Ausgleich): Created Austria-Hungary: two governments sharing one Habsburg monarch, army and foreign policy. Other groups, like Czechs and South Slavs, gained nothing.
Treaty of Frankfurt (1871): Ended the Franco-Prussian War. France lost Alsace-Lorraine and paid a large indemnity, leaving lasting French bitterness.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918): Bolshevik Russia left World War I, giving up Poland, the Baltic lands, Finland and Ukraine. It was cancelled after Germany lost.
Treaty of Versailles (1919): Article 231 (the 'war guilt clause') blamed Germany; Germany paid reparations, lost Alsace-Lorraine, its colonies and land to Poland, was limited to a 100,000-man army and had to keep the Rhineland demilitarized. Germans saw it as a dictated peace.
Other Paris peace treaties (1919–1920): Separate treaties broke up Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. New states included Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and Britain and France took Ottoman Arab lands as League of Nations mandates.
Locarno Treaties (1925): Germany accepted its western borders with France and Belgium and then joined the League (1926), a high point of 1920s hope.
Munich Agreement (1938): Britain (Chamberlain) and France let Germany take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia without Czech consent. Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (1939): Germany and the USSR promised not to attack each other and secretly divided Poland, the Baltic states and other lands. It freed Hitler to invade Poland.
Yalta and Potsdam Conferences (1945): The Allied leaders agreed to divide Germany and Berlin into occupation zones, punish Nazi leaders and move Poland's borders west. Stalin's promise of free elections in Eastern Europe was broken.
Treaty of Rome (1957): Created the European Economic Community, a common market that removed tariffs among its six members by 1968.
Helsinki Accords (1975): East and West accepted Europe's postwar borders, and the Soviet bloc promised to respect human rights, a promise dissidents then held it to.
Maastricht Treaty (1992): Turned the European Community into the European Union, created EU citizenship and set the path to the euro.
Dayton Agreement (1995): Ended the Bosnian War and split Bosnia into two self-governing parts under one state.
Good Friday Agreement (1998): Largely ended 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland by creating a power-sharing government of unionists and nationalists.

Major wars and conflicts: causes and results

Units 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Italian Wars (1494–1559): France and the Habsburgs fought over Italy. They showed Italy's weakness (Machiavelli's worry) and spread Renaissance ideas north.
French Wars of Religion (1562–1598): Catholics (led by the Guise family) fought Huguenots. Ended when Henry IV became Catholic and issued the Edict of Nantes; politiques like him put peace and order above religious unity.
Thirty Years' War (1618–1648): Began as a Protestant revolt in Bohemia, then drew in Denmark, Sweden (Gustavus Adolphus) and Catholic France, which backed Protestants against the Habsburgs for political reasons (Richelieu's raison d'état). Some German regions lost a third or more of their people.
English Civil Wars (1642–1651): Caused by fights over taxes without Parliament's consent, Charles I's religious policies and divine right. Ended with Charles's execution and Cromwell's rule.
Wars of Louis XIV (1667–1714): Louis's wars for territory and dynasty led other states to form coalitions against him. They drained France's treasury.
Seven Years' War (1756–1763): Started after the 'Diplomatic Revolution' of 1756, when Austria allied with France and Britain with Prussia. Britain's win made it the top colonial power but left it in debt, which led to taxing the American colonies.
French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815): Revolutionary France fought coalitions of monarchies; mass armies and nationalism made war bigger. Napoleon's conquests spread legal equality and the Code but also stirred nationalism against France in Spain, Prussia and Russia.
Crimean War (1853–1856): Russia's push against the Ottomans brought in Britain and France. Russia's loss showed its backwardness, leading to Alexander II's reforms, and it helped break up the Concert of Europe.
Wars of Italian unification (1859–1870): Piedmont, with French help, beat Austria in 1859 and gained Lombardy; Garibaldi took Sicily and Naples in 1860; Venetia (1866) and Rome (1870) were added later.
Wars of German unification (1864–1871): Bismarck provoked short wars with Denmark (1864), Austria (1866, pushing Austria out of German affairs) and France (1870–1871, using the edited Ems Dispatch). Result: a Prussian-led German Empire and a resentful France.
World War I (1914–1918): Long causes: militarism, alliances, imperialism and nationalism (MAIN); the trigger was the assassination in Sarajevo. It was a total war of trenches, new weapons and home-front mobilization, and it destroyed four empires.
Russian Civil War (1918–1921): Bolshevik Reds against anti-communist Whites and foreign troops. The Reds won with discipline and terror, and the Soviet Union was founded in 1922.
Spanish Civil War (1936–1939): Franco's Nationalists, aided by Hitler and Mussolini, beat the Republic, aided by the USSR and international volunteers. The German bombing of Guernica (1937) previewed World War II.
World War II (1939–1945): Causes: Versailles resentment, the Depression, fascist expansion and appeasement. More than 60 million people died, most of them civilians, and the war ended with Europe divided and the U.S. and USSR as superpowers.
The Cold War (1947–1991): A rivalry between the U.S. and USSR fought with alliances, an arms race, propaganda, spies and proxy wars like Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, but never direct war in Europe.
Wars of decolonization (1945–1975): France fought and lost in Indochina (Dien Bien Phu, 1954) and Algeria (1954–1962); Britain fought in Kenya; Portugal held its African colonies until 1974–1975.
Yugoslav Wars (1991–2001): After communism fell, nationalist leaders like Serbia's Slobodan Milošević fueled ethnic wars. NATO bombing helped end the fighting in Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999).

Thinkers and writers, c. 1450–1815

Units 1, 2, 4, 5

Petrarch (1300s): Often called the father of humanism; he hunted for ancient Latin texts and wrote in Italian as well as Latin.
Lorenzo Valla (1440): Used close study of language to prove the Donation of Constantine, a document behind papal claims to power, was a forgery.
Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486): Argued humans can choose to shape their own nature, a classic statement of humanist belief in human potential.
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513): Advice to rulers based on how politics really works: keep power by any effective means. Secular and practical rather than religious.
Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1528): Described the ideal Renaissance gentleman (educated, skilled, graceful) and court lady.
Desiderius Erasmus, In Praise of Folly (1511): A Christian humanist who mocked Church corruption and urged a simple, inner faith based on the Bible. He stayed Catholic.
Thomas More, Utopia (1516): Imagined an ideal society to criticize European greed and inequality. More was executed for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church.
Martin Luther: Taught salvation by faith alone, Scripture alone as authority and the priesthood of all believers. Translated the Bible into German.
John Calvin: Taught predestination and God's total power, and ran Geneva under strict moral rules. His followers included Huguenots, Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians and the Dutch Reformed.
Huldrych Zwingli and the Anabaptists: Zwingli led a separate reform in Zurich and split with Luther over communion (1529). Anabaptists baptized only adults who chose faith and wanted church kept apart from the state; Catholics and Protestants alike persecuted them, especially after radicals seized Münster (1534–1535).
Ignatius of Loyola: Founder of the Jesuits, who stressed obedience to the pope, education and missionary work.
Jean Bodin (1576): Argued that every state needs one sovereign power that makes the law, an early theory behind absolutism.
Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1580): Wrote skeptical, personal essays questioning certainty and religious violence after the French Wars of Religion.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1543): Proposed a heliocentric (sun-centered) universe, challenging the geocentric model of Aristotle and Ptolemy.
Andreas Vesalius (1543): Dissected human bodies and published accurate anatomy, correcting Galen's errors.
Johannes Kepler (1609–1619): Used Tycho Brahe's careful observations to show planets move in ellipses, with math laws describing their motion.
Galileo Galilei: Used the telescope to see Jupiter's moons and the moon's craters, supporting Copernicus. The Inquisition tried him in 1633 and forced him to recant.
Francis Bacon (1620): Pushed empiricism and inductive reasoning: gather data through observation and experiment, then form general rules.
René Descartes (1637): Pushed rationalism and deductive reasoning from basic truths ('I think, therefore I am'); separated mind from matter.
William Harvey (1628): Showed that the heart pumps blood around the body in a circuit, challenging Galen.
Isaac Newton (1687): Laws of motion and universal gravitation explained the universe as an orderly machine following natural laws, inspiring the Enlightenment.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651): After the English Civil War, argued life without government is 'nasty, brutish, and short,' so people give power to a strong sovereign.
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689): People have natural rights to life, liberty and property; government rests on consent and can be overthrown if it violates them. He also said the mind starts as a 'blank slate' shaped by experience.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748): Called for separation of powers with checks and balances, admiring Britain's government.
Voltaire: Philosophe who attacked religious intolerance and Church power ('crush the infamous thing'), praised English liberty and wrote Candide (1759). A deist.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762): Government should follow the general will; people are good by nature but corrupted by society. Also wrote Emile on education and wanted women kept in the home.
Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie (1751–1772): Edited a huge collection of knowledge that spread reason and quietly criticized Church and state. Enlightenment ideas also spread through salons hosted by elite women such as Madame Geoffrin, coffeehouses and cheap print.
Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments (1764): Opposed torture and the death penalty; punishment should prevent crime, not take revenge.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776): Free markets guided by self-interest (the 'invisible hand') create wealth better than mercantilist government control. Built on the French physiocrats' laissez-faire ideas.
Immanuel Kant (1784): Defined Enlightenment as daring to think for yourself: 'Dare to know.'
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792): Argued women seem less rational only because they are denied education, and deserve the same rights.
Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791): Rewrote the Rights of Man to include women; she was executed during the Terror.
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790): Warned that tearing down traditions would bring chaos and tyranny; a founding text of conservatism.

Thinkers and ideologies, c. 1815–present

Units 6, 7, 8, 9

Conservatism (Burke, Joseph de Maistre, Metternich): Defended monarchy, the Church, aristocracy and slow, traditional change after the French Revolution.
Classical liberalism: Wanted individual rights, constitutions, free markets, free press and limited government; most early liberals backed voting only for property owners.
Nationalism (Herder, Mazzini): The belief that people who share language, culture and history should have their own state. Mazzini's Young Italy (1831) linked it to liberal republics; later it was used by conservatives like Bismarck and turned aggressive.
Thomas Malthus (1798): Warned that population grows faster than food, so poverty and famine are unavoidable unless births are checked.
David Ricardo (1817): Argued that wages tend to sink to survival level (an idea later called the 'iron law of wages'), which was used as an argument against helping workers.
Jeremy Bentham, utilitarianism: Laws should be judged by whether they bring the greatest good for the greatest number.
John Stuart Mill: On Liberty (1859) defended free speech and individual freedom; The Subjection of Women (1869) called for women's equality, including the vote.
Utopian socialism (Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Saint-Simon): Believed cooperative model communities could replace competition; Owen ran a model mill town at New Lanark.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848): History is a struggle between classes; the proletariat will overthrow the bourgeoisie in revolution, leading to a classless communist society.
Anarchism (Proudhon, Bakunin): Rejected the state entirely; Proudhon wrote 'property is theft.'
Revisionism (Eduard Bernstein, 1899): Argued socialists could win through elections and reforms instead of revolution. Germany's SPD officially rejected it but largely followed it in practice.
Rerum Novarum (1891): Pope Leo XIII's letter defended private property but backed fair wages and workers' unions, rejecting both socialism and unregulated capitalism.
Auguste Comte, positivism: Only knowledge proven by science is real; society can be studied scientifically.
Charles Darwin (1859): Species evolve through natural selection. Herbert Spencer twisted the idea into Social Darwinism ('survival of the fittest'), used to justify imperialism, racism and eugenics.
Theodor Herzl: Responding to anti-Semitism, especially the Dreyfus Affair, wrote The Jewish State (1896) and organized the first Zionist Congress (1897).
Friedrich Nietzsche: Declared 'God is dead,' attacked Christian morality and middle-class values and praised the will to power, adding to the era's anxiety and irrationalism.
Sigmund Freud: Argued hidden, unconscious drives shape human behavior (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900), undermining faith in human reason.
Max Planck and Albert Einstein: Planck's quantum theory (1900) and Einstein's relativity (1905) showed Newton's physics was incomplete and made the universe seem less certain.
Critics of imperialism (J. A. Hobson, Lenin): Hobson (1902) said empire served a few investors, not the nation; Lenin (1917) called imperialism the highest stage of capitalism.
Rudyard Kipling, 'The White Man's Burden' (1899): A poem urging imperial rule as a duty to 'civilize' other peoples, reflecting racist justifications for empire.
Leninism: A small, disciplined party of professional revolutionaries should lead the workers to revolution, even in a mostly peasant country like Russia.
Fascism and totalitarianism: Fascism glorified the nation, war and one leader, and rejected democracy, liberalism and communism. Totalitarian states (Nazi Germany, Stalin's USSR) tried to control every part of life through terror and propaganda.
John Maynard Keynes (1936): Argued governments should spend, even running deficits, to fight depressions. His ideas shaped the postwar welfare state.
Werner Heisenberg (1927): His uncertainty principle said some things cannot be measured exactly at the same time, adding to the sense of an uncertain world.
Existentialism (Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus): Life has no built-in meaning, so people must create meaning through their own choices; popular after World War II.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949): 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman': gender roles are shaped by society. Inspired second-wave feminism.
Christian democracy and the welfare state: Postwar center-right parties (Adenauer in West Germany) and center-left parties both built systems of health care, pensions and benefits paid for by taxes.
Neoliberalism (Thatcher): From the late 1970s, a push to shrink government, privatize industries, cut taxes and weaken unions.
Postmodernism: A late-1900s doubt that any single big explanation of truth or history is reliable.

Key documents and laws

Units 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Ninety-Five Theses (1517): Luther's attack on indulgences; the start of the Reformation.
Act of Supremacy (1534): Made the English king 'Supreme Head' of the Church of England, breaking with Rome.
Decrees of the Council of Trent (1545–1563): Defined Catholic teaching against Protestant ideas and ordered reforms in training and discipline of clergy.
Index of Prohibited Books (1559): The Church's list of banned books, a tool of the Catholic Reformation.
Petition of Right (1628): Parliament told Charles I he could not tax without its consent or jail people without cause. He agreed, then ignored it.
English Bill of Rights (1689): The monarch could not suspend laws, raise taxes or keep an army in peacetime without Parliament's consent; it called for free elections, frequent Parliaments and free speech in Parliament. The Toleration Act (1689) allowed worship to most Protestant dissenters.
Sieyès, What Is the Third Estate? (1789): Pamphlet arguing the Third Estate was 'everything' (the nation itself) but had been 'nothing' in politics.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789): Natural rights of liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression; sovereignty belongs to the nation; men are equal before the law.
Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790): Made priests state employees elected by citizens and required a loyalty oath; the pope condemned it and Catholics split.
Napoleonic Code (1804): Equality before the law for men, protection of property, an end to feudal privileges and a secular civil law (civil marriage and divorce), but women and children placed under the male head of household. Spread across conquered Europe.
Carlsbad Decrees (1819): Censorship and surveillance of universities in the German Confederation.
Great Reform Act (1832): Expanded British voting to more middle-class men. Later acts in 1867 and 1884 added working men; women over 30 got the vote in 1918 and equal terms in 1928.
Factory Act (1833) and Mines Act (1842): Limited child labor in textile mills and banned women, girls and young boys from working underground in mines.
People's Charter (1838): The Chartists' six demands, including votes for all men, a secret ballot and pay for members of Parliament.
Communist Manifesto (1848): 'Workers of the world, unite!' Called for revolution by the proletariat.
Emancipation Edict (1861): Freed Russia's serfs, but they had to pay for land over decades through the village commune (mir).
October Manifesto (1905): Nicholas II promised civil liberties and an elected Duma to end the 1905 revolution.
Balfour Declaration (1917): Britain backed a 'national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine, which clashed with promises made to Arabs.
Fourteen Points (1918): Wilson's peace plan: open diplomacy, free seas, free trade, arms reduction, self-determination for nations and a League of Nations.
Enabling Act (1933): Let Hitler's cabinet make laws without the Reichstag, ending democracy in Germany.
Nuremberg Laws (1935): Took citizenship from German Jews and banned marriages between Jews and other Germans.
Beveridge Report (1942): British plan to defeat 'want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness,' the blueprint for the welfare state.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948): UN statement of basic rights for all people, a response to the horrors of World War II.
Khrushchev's Secret Speech (1956): Denounced Stalin's cult of personality and purges, starting de-Stalinization and encouraging revolts in Poland and Hungary.
Brezhnev Doctrine (1968): Claimed the Soviet bloc could intervene in any socialist country whose communism was threatened. Gorbachev abandoned it in 1989.

Rulers, leaders and state builders

Units 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

New monarchs (late 1400s–1500s): Henry VII of England, Louis XI of France, and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain centralized power: direct taxes, royal armies and courts (like England's Star Chamber), and control over religion (the Spanish Inquisition).
Henry VIII (r. 1509–1547) and Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603): Henry broke with Rome to end his marriage and gain Church wealth. Elizabeth set a moderate Protestant middle way, beat the Armada and backed overseas ventures.
Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor 1519–1556): Ruled Spain, the Netherlands, much of Italy and the Americas and was emperor over the German lands; fought France, the Ottomans and the Lutheran princes, and gave up in 1556, splitting his lands between Spain and Austria.
Philip II of Spain (r. 1556–1598): Champion of Catholicism with American silver behind him; won at Lepanto but lost the northern Netherlands and the Armada, and went bankrupt several times.
Henry IV of France (r. 1589–1610): A politique: converted to Catholicism to win Paris and issued the Edict of Nantes.
Cardinal Richelieu (chief minister 1624–1642): Built royal power in France: crushed Huguenot political power, sent out intendants and backed Protestants abroad against the Habsburgs.
Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715): The model absolute monarch ('the Sun King'): ruled from Versailles, kept nobles busy at court, used intendants and Colbert's mercantilism, revoked the Edict of Nantes and fought costly wars.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert: Louis XIV's finance minister; mercantilism in practice: tariffs, state-backed industries, roads and canals, and colonies.
Oliver Cromwell (Lord Protector 1653–1658): Led Parliament's New Model Army to victory, then ruled England as a Puritan military leader; brutally conquered Ireland.
William and Mary (from 1689): Accepted the throne on Parliament's terms in the Glorious Revolution, making England a constitutional monarchy.
Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725): Westernized Russia: modern army and navy, nobles shaved and dressed Western-style, the Table of Ranks tied rank to state service, and a new capital at St. Petersburg.
The Hohenzollerns of Prussia: The Great Elector (r. 1640–1688) and Frederick William I (r. 1713–1740) built a strong army and bureaucracy with the support of the Junker nobles.
Frederick the Great of Prussia (r. 1740–1786): Enlightened absolutist: 'first servant of the state,' religious toleration, legal reform; also seized Silesia and joined the first partition of Poland.
Maria Theresa (r. 1740–1780) and Joseph II (r. 1780–1790): Maria Theresa held the Habsburg lands together and centralized them. Joseph II granted religious toleration (including Jews) and abolished serfdom, but many reforms were undone after he died.
Catherine the Great of Russia (r. 1762–1796): Wrote to philosophes and talked reform, but after Pugachev's Rebellion gave nobles more power over serfs; expanded Russia into Poland and the Black Sea.
Louis XVI (r. 1774–1792): Inherited huge debts; calling the Estates-General in 1789 started the Revolution. Executed in January 1793.
Maximilien Robespierre: Jacobin leader of the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror; aimed at a 'Republic of Virtue.' Executed in 1794.
Napoleon Bonaparte (First Consul 1799, emperor 1804–1814/1815): Kept some revolutionary gains (legal equality for men, careers open to talent) while ending political freedom; conquered much of Europe before defeat.
Klemens von Metternich (Austrian foreign minister, later chancellor, 1809–1848): Architect of the Congress of Vienna and the conservative order; fell in the revolutions of 1848.
Napoleon III (r. 1852–1870): Authoritarian emperor who used nationalism and popular votes, rebuilt Paris with Haussmann and helped Italian unification; captured in the Franco-Prussian War.
Camillo di Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi: Cavour, Piedmont's prime minister, used Realpolitik and French help against Austria. Garibaldi's Red Shirts conquered southern Italy and handed it to King Victor Emmanuel II.
Otto von Bismarck (German chancellor 1871–1890): Unified Germany through 'blood and iron' and Realpolitik. At home he fought the Catholic Church (Kulturkampf) and socialists, but also created the first state social insurance (1880s).
Alexander II of Russia (r. 1855–1881): Freed the serfs (1861) and reformed courts, local government and the army; assassinated by revolutionaries.
Wilhelm II of Germany (r. 1888–1918): Dropped Bismarck, built a navy to rival Britain's and pursued 'world policy' (Weltpolitik), raising tensions before 1914.
Nicholas II of Russia (r. 1894–1917): Last tsar; resisted reform, lost a war to Japan and then lost the throne in 1917.
Vladimir Lenin: Led the Bolsheviks to power in 1917 with 'Peace, Land, Bread,' won the civil war and allowed the NEP.
Joseph Stalin: Ruled the USSR from the late 1920s to 1953: Five-Year Plans, collectivization, purges and the gulag; led the USSR to victory in World War II and took control of Eastern Europe.
Benito Mussolini (Italy 1922–1943): First fascist dictator; made peace with the pope (Lateran Accords, 1929) and invaded Ethiopia.
Adolf Hitler (Germany 1933–1945): Nazi dictator; rearmed Germany, expanded by force and organized the Holocaust.
Francisco Franco (Spain 1939–1975): Won the Spanish Civil War and ruled as a conservative, Catholic dictator until his death.
Winston Churchill: British prime minister in World War II who refused to make peace with Hitler; later named the 'Iron Curtain.'
Charles de Gaulle: Led the Free French in World War II and founded the Fifth Republic (1958); ended the Algerian War and kept France independent of U.S. leadership.
Konrad Adenauer (West Germany 1949–1963): Christian Democrat chancellor who tied West Germany to the West, NATO and European integration during its 'economic miracle.'
Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev: Khrushchev began de-Stalinization but crushed Hungary (1956) and backed building the Berlin Wall (1961). Brezhnev crushed the Prague Spring (1968) and presided over economic stagnation.
Margaret Thatcher (Britain 1979–1990): First woman prime minister of Britain; privatized industries and cut back the welfare state and union power.
Mikhail Gorbachev (USSR 1985–1991): Glasnost and perestroika; let Eastern Europe go in 1989 and presided over the end of the Soviet Union.
Lech Wałęsa and Václav Havel: Wałęsa led Poland's Solidarity union and became president; Havel, a dissident playwright, led Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution (1989).

Art and culture movements, in order

Units 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9

Italian Renaissance art (1400s–early 1500s): Realism, linear perspective, classical subjects and the human body, paid for by patrons like the Medici and popes. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael.
Northern Renaissance art: Detailed realism, religious themes and everyday life. Albrecht Dürer, Jan van Eyck, Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Mannerism (c. 1520–1600): Stretched, twisted figures and odd colors to stir emotion. El Greco.
Baroque (c. 1600–1750): Drama, motion, strong light and grandeur, used by the Catholic Reformation and absolute monarchs to inspire awe. Bernini, Rubens, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi; Versailles.
Dutch Golden Age painting (1600s): Realistic portraits, group scenes and everyday life for middle-class buyers in a Protestant republic. Rembrandt, Vermeer.
Rococo (early to mid 1700s): Light, playful, decorative art of aristocratic leisure. Fragonard's The Swing.
Neoclassicism (late 1700s–early 1800s): Copied Greek and Roman forms to celebrate virtue, duty and the state; linked to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. David's Oath of the Horatii (1784).
Romanticism (c. 1790s–1840s): Emotion, nature, imagination, the sublime, the past and national folk culture, against Enlightenment reason. Wordsworth, Goethe, Caspar David Friedrich, Delacroix, Beethoven, the Brothers Grimm.
Realism (after 1848): Showed ordinary people and social problems as they really were. Courbet in painting; Dickens and Zola in writing.
Impressionism (from the 1870s): Captured passing moments of light and color, often in modern city and leisure scenes. Monet, Renoir.
Post-Impressionism (1880s–1900s): Bolder, more personal use of color and form. Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin.
Expressionism and Cubism (c. 1890s–1914): Expressionists showed inner feelings and anxiety (Munch's The Scream). Picasso and Braque's Cubism broke objects into geometric shapes from several angles.
Futurism (from 1909): Italian movement that celebrated speed, machines, violence and war; some members later backed fascism.
Dada and Surrealism (1916 onward): Dada mocked art and reason after World War I's slaughter. Surrealism (Dalí) drew on Freud to paint dreams and the unconscious.
Bauhaus (1919–1933): German design school that stripped buildings and objects to simple, useful forms; closed by the Nazis.
Postwar culture (after 1945): Existentialism, Americanization and consumer culture, the 1968 student revolts, and postmodernism. The Catholic Church modernized at Vatican II (1962–1965).

Economic and social turning points

Units 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Columbian Exchange: Crops, animals and diseases crossed the Atlantic: potatoes and maize fed Europe's population growth, horses and cattle went to the Americas, and smallpox and other new diseases killed most of the Indigenous population.
Atlantic slave trade and triangular trade: About 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, mostly to work on sugar plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean; many died on the Middle Passage.
Price revolution (1500s–1600s): Population growth and American silver pushed prices up faster than wages, hurting wage earners and landowners on fixed rents and helping merchants.
Commercial Revolution: Joint-stock companies, banks, double-entry bookkeeping and insurance helped trade grow; the economic center moved from the Mediterranean to Atlantic ports like Antwerp, Amsterdam and London.
East–west split in farming: In western Europe peasants became freer tenants or wage workers, while in eastern Europe (Poland, Prussia, Russia) lords bound peasants tighter as serfs to grow grain for export.
European marriage pattern: In northwestern Europe people married late (mid to late 20s) and lived in nuclear families, which kept birth rates lower.
Witch hunts (peak c. 1560–1660): Tens of thousands of people, most of them poor older women, were executed for witchcraft, especially in the German lands, amid religious conflict, war and economic strain.
Mercantilism: The belief that a nation grows rich by exporting more than it imports and building up gold, with colonies supplying raw materials and buying finished goods.
Putting-out system (cottage industry): Merchants gave raw materials to rural families to spin and weave at home, then sold the products, a step between farming and factories.
Agricultural Revolution (1600s–1700s): Dutch and then English farmers used crop rotation with turnips and clover, the seed drill and enclosure of common lands. More food meant population growth, while many small farmers lost land and moved to cities.
Consumer revolution (1700s): Ordinary Europeans bought more sugar, coffee, tea, tobacco and cotton cloth, tying daily life to slavery and empire.
Industrial Revolution (from the late 1700s): Machines (spinning jenny, water frame, power loom) and steam power moved work into factories. Britain led thanks to coal and iron, capital, colonies and markets, and few internal trade barriers.
Railroads (from 1830): The Liverpool–Manchester line (1830) began the railway age, linking markets and helping industry spread to Belgium, France and Germany.
Urbanization and public health: Crowded cities brought cholera, pollution and slums; reformers like Edwin Chadwick pushed for sewers and clean water, and Haussmann rebuilt Paris.
New social classes: Industry created a property-owning middle class (bourgeoisie) with ideals of 'separate spheres' and a wage-earning working class (proletariat) that formed unions and socialist parties.
New Imperialism (c. 1870–1914): Motives: raw materials, markets and investment, national prestige, Christian missions and racist 'civilizing' ideas like Social Darwinism. Tools: steamships, railroads, the telegraph, quinine against malaria and the Maxim machine gun. Abuses such as forced labor in Leopold II's Congo Free State drew protest.
Total war and the home front (1914–1945): Governments drafted millions, ran economies, rationed food and used propaganda; women filled factory and office jobs, which helped win them the vote in many countries.
Great Depression (1929–1930s): Mass unemployment discredited democracies and boosted fascist and communist parties; Scandinavian states and France's Popular Front tried government programs.
Postwar boom and welfare state (1945–1973): Marshall aid and European cooperation fueled fast growth (West Germany's 'economic miracle'), consumer culture and welfare states covering people 'from cradle to grave.'
Guest workers and immigration (from the 1950s): Workers from southern Europe, Turkey, North Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia filled labor shortages; many stayed, and anti-immigrant parties like France's National Front grew.
Globalization and the green movement: Faster communication, multinational firms and American culture linked Europe to the world; Green parties (West Germany's Greens, 1980) criticized waste and pushed sustainability.
Women's rights over time: From the querelle des femmes and Wollstonecraft, to suffrage campaigns (Pankhursts), to the vote after World War I in many countries (France not until 1944), to second-wave feminism and the birth control pill in the 1960s.

Exam-day essentials

Units 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Four time periods: 1450–1648 (Units 1–2), 1648–1815 (Units 3–5), 1815–1914 (Units 6–7), 1914–present (Units 8–9). Every unit is weighted 10–15% of the multiple-choice section.
Exam format: 55 multiple-choice questions (40%), 3 short-answer questions (20%), 1 document-based question (25%) and 1 long essay (15%), 3 hours 15 minutes in all. There is no reference sheet and no calculator.
Short-answer questions (3 points each): Starting May 2027 every SAQ has a source: a secondary text, a primary text and a non-text source like a map, chart or image. Answer each part directly with a specific example.
DBQ (7 points): Thesis (1), context (1), evidence from the documents (up to 2: 1 for describing the content of three documents, 2 for using four to support an argument), evidence beyond the documents (1), sourcing for at least two documents (1) and complex understanding (1).
Long essay (6 points): Thesis (1), context (1), specific evidence that supports your argument (up to 2) and reasoning plus complex understanding (up to 2). Starting May 2027 there is one required prompt.
Sourcing a document: HIPP: Explain how the Historical situation, Intended audience, Purpose or Point of view shapes what the source says, not just what it says.
Reasoning skills: Causation (what caused what, and how), comparison (similarities and differences, and why), and continuity and change over time (what changed, what stayed the same, and why).
Contextualization: Describe the broader developments before or during the time of the prompt in a few sentences, then connect them directly to the question.