Welcome to A.P. European History!

  Hello, and welcome to my AP European History blog.    For those of you who do not know me, I have been a history teacher for seven years, and have taught the AP European History course four times, beginning with the 2006-2007 school year, and, most recently, this past academic year.

I look forward to your comments, questions, and suggestions.  My e-mail address is mhmshistory@gmail.com.  Please feel free to share your thoughts.

The study of architecture is an important component of the course.  Above:  Malbork Castle, Poland (formerly Prussia), built by Teutonic Knights; finished in the early fifteenth century; rebuilt after World War II bombing.
THE COURSE:  A chronological note.

  Advanced Placement European History, taught at the high school level, is a survey course that covers early modern and modern European history.  Although, in general terms, the time period covered is book-ended by units covering the Renaissance and the end of the Cold War, the College Board presents the course as covering "1450-present."  This, of course, is not to be taken literally.  Nothing of major importance happened in 1450.  If we were to choose a key year in the fifteenth century which most impacted future European (and world) history, it would be 1453, the year in which Constantinople was captured by the Ottoman Empire.  This event would not only have immediate cultural, political, and economic consequences, but would lead to the exploration of the "New World" later in the century.  As for the "present," you can be sure that the bailout of Greece and Spain by eurozone finance ministers earlier this year will not be on the final exam.  Perhaps the last years of consequence for AP Euro students, based on recent exam questions, are:  1991 (dissolution of the Soviet Union); 1993 (enforcement of the Maastricht Treaty, the origin of the modern European Union); or 1995 (the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia). 

  
Europe, 1400 ( © 2010 Christos Nussli, www euratlas.com )
 
Europe, 2000 ( © 2010 Christos Nussli, www euratlas.com )

  Even if what I just described seems clear, complications arise.  When did the "Renaissance" begin?   Certainly before 1450.  Dante Alighieri, the Florentine writer who used the vernacular Italian language (rather than Latin, the lingua franca of the Middle Ages), died in 1321.  Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), known as the "Father of Humanism," died in 1374.  And Giotto, whose style of painting "[redirected] the arts away from medieval stylization to Renaissance naturalism" (Emmerson, 2005), died in 1337.  Yet one could not understand the Renaissance without studying the work of these three men.  Therefore, although the AP European History course begins in 1450, or with the "Renaissance," we must have a firm grasp on cultural, political, and economic developments of the Middle Ages in order to begin a study of early modern Europe.

(Giotto, above left, painted by Paolo Ucello, second from left; I will discuss both artists later this month)

THE COURSE:  Key Themes. 

From your first day in AP European History, you should be familiar with the list of themes below, which I copied from the official AP Programcourse web site.  Always consider these three (six) components as you study for each unit test.  Mastering the "big picture" in the terms below will be invaluable at exam time, especially for FRQ questions:

1. Intellectual and Cultural History

·         Changes in religious thought and institutions

·         Secularization of learning and culture

·         Scientific and technological developments and their consequences

·         Major trends in literature and the arts

·         Intellectual and cultural developments and their relationship to social values and

·         political events

·         Developments in social, economic, and political thought, including ideologies

·         characterized as “-isms,” such as socialism, liberalism, nationalism

·         Developments in literacy, education, and communication

·         The diffusion of new intellectual concepts among different social groups

·         Changes in elite and popular culture, such as the development of new attitudes

·         toward religion, the family, work, and ritual

·         Impact of global expansion on European culture

2. Political and Diplomatic History

·         The rise and functioning of the modern state in its various forms

·         Relations between Europe and other parts of the world: colonialism, imperialism,

·         decolonization, and global interdependence

·         The evolution of political elites and the development of political parties, ideologies,

·         and other forms of mass politics

·         The extension and limitation of rights and liberties (personal, civic, economic, and

·         political); majority and minority political persecutions

·         The growth and changing forms of nationalism

·         Forms of political protest, reform, and revolution

·         Relationship between domestic and foreign policies

·         Efforts to restrain conflict: treaties, balance-of-power diplomacy, and international

·         organizations

·         War and civil conflict: origins, developments, technology, and their

·         Consequences

3. Social and Economic History

·         The character of and changes in agricultural production and organization

·         The role of urbanization in transforming cultural values and social relationships

·         The shift in social structures from hierarchical orders to modern social classes:

·         the changing distribution of wealth and poverty

·         The influence of sanitation and health care practices on society; food supply, diet,

·         famine, disease, and their impact

·         The development of commercial practices, patterns of mass production and

·         consumption, and their economic and social impact

·         Changing definitions of and attitudes toward social groups, classes, races, and

·         ethnicities within and outside Europe

·         The origins, development, and consequences of industrialization

·         Changes in the demographic structure and reproductive patterns of Europeans:

·         causes and consequences

·         Gender roles and their influence on work, social structure, family structure, and

·         interest group formation

·         The growth of competition and interdependence in national and world markets

·         Private and state roles in economic activity

  Finally, a note on what some of you may see as an insurmountable task, often phrased as, "How can I possibly learn all of this stuff in detail?"  I would say that you should enjoy each unit as its own subject of study at first, and, as the course progresses, consider what you have just learned in the wider context of the material covered since the beginning of the course.  You will not need to cram six hundred years of history in one week of study before the exam.  Rather, new topics will seem strangely familiar to you as time passes, since, as the cliche has it, "history repeats itself."  The beauty of the FRQ essay questions lies in this concept.  Comparing and contrasting events and ideas from different time periods is perhaps the crucial analytical approach any historian can take.  Therefore, always look back through your notes before starting a new unit.  Chances are, there will be traces of what you have just learned, and you will have the satisfaction of reaching that "Ah-ha!" moment when you recognize a new discovery, the refutation of a previous theory, changes in economic systems, religious conflict, and the many great developments throughout European history over the centuries.

  In my next posting, I will comment on William Manchester's introduction to A World Lit Only by Fire, and the transition from the late medieval to the early Renaissance periods.