A History of Western Society Since 1300 for the AP® Course

About the Authors

About the AP® Edition Contributors

Maps, Figures, and Tables

Special Features

Acknowledgements

How to Get the Most from This Program

AP® Historical Thinking Skills and Reasoning Processes: A Primer

 

Period 1: From Renaissance to Early Modern, ca. 1450–ca. 1648

11 The Later Middle Ages 1300–1450

How did climate change shape the late Middle Ages?

How did the plague affect European society?

What were the causes, course, and consequences of the Hundred Years’ War?

Why did the church come under increasing criticism?

What explains the social unrest of the late Middle Ages?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Viewpoints Italian and English Views of the Plague

Evaluating Visual Evidence Dance of Death

Evaluating Written Evidence The Trial of Joan of Arc

Individuals in Society Meister Eckhart

Thinking Like a Historian Popular Revolts in the Late Middle Ages

 

12 European Society in the Age of the Renaissance 1350–1550

How did political and economic developments in Italy shape the Renaissance?

What new ideas were associated with the Renaissance?

How did art reflect new Renaissance ideals?

What were the key social hierarchies in Renaissance Europe?

How did nation-states develop in this period?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Viewpoints Venice Versus Florence

Individuals in Society Leonardo da Vinci

Thinking Like a Historian Humanist Learning

Evaluating Written Evidence Thomas More, Utopia

Evaluating Visual Evidence A Gold Coin of Ferdinand and Isabella

 

13 Reformations and Religious Wars 1500–1600

What were the central ideas of the reformers, and why were they appealing to different social groups?

How did the political situation in Germany shape the course of the Reformation?

How did Protestant ideas and institutions spread beyond German-speaking lands?

What reforms did the Catholic Church make, and how did it respond to Protestant reform movements?

What were the causes and consequences of religious violence, including riots, wars, and witch-hunts?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence Martin Luther, On Christian Liberty

Evaluating Visual Evidence Lucas Cranach’s The True Church and the False Church, ca. 1546

Individuals in Society Anna Jansz of Rotterdam

Thinking Like a Historian Social Discipline in the Reformation

Viewpoints Catholic and Calvinist Churches

 

14 European Exploration and Conquest 1450–1650

What was the Afro-Eurasian trading world before Columbus?

How and why did Europeans undertake ambitious voyages of expansion?

What was the impact of European conquest on the New World?

How did Europe and the world change after Columbus?

How did expansion change European attitudes and beliefs?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence Columbus Describes His First Voyage

Thinking Like a Historian Who Was Doña Marina?

Individuals in Society Catarina de San Juan

Viewpoints Aztec and Spanish Views on Christian Conversion in New Spain

Evaluating Visual Evidence Depictions of Africans in European Portraiture

 

Period 2: Early Modern Transformations, ca. 1648 – ca. 1815

15 Absolutism and Constitutionalism ca. 1589–1725

What made the seventeenth century an "age of crisis" and achievement?

Why did France rise and Spain fall during the late seventeenth century?

What explains the rise of absolutism in Prussia and Austria?

What were the distinctive features of Russian and Ottoman absolutism?

Why and how did the constitutional state triumph in the Dutch Republic and England?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Thinking Like a Historian What Was Absolutism?

Evaluating Written Evidence Peter the Great and Foreign Experts

Individuals in Society Hürrem

Viewpoints Stuart Claims to Absolutism and the Parliamentary Response

Evaluating Visual Evidence Gonzales Coques, The Young Scholar and His Wife, 1640

 

16 Toward a New Worldview 1540–1789

What revolutionary discoveries were made in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?

What intellectual and social changes occurred as a result of the Scientific Revolution?

How did the Enlightenment emerge, and what were major currents of Enlightenment thought?

How did the Enlightenment change social ideas and practices?

What impact did new ways of thinking have on politics?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence Galileo Galilei, The Sidereal Messenger

Evaluating Visual Evidence Andreas Vesalius, Frontispiece to On the Structure of the Human Body

Thinking Like a Historian The Enlightenment Debate on Religious Tolerance

Viewpoints Rousseau and Wollstonecraft Debate Women’s Equality

Individuals in Society Moses Mendelssohn and the Jewish Enlightenment

 

17 The Expansion of Europe 1650–1800

How did European agriculture change between 1650 and 1800?

Why did the European population rise dramatically in the eighteenth century?

How and why did rural industry intensify in the eighteenth century?

What important changes occurred in economic thought and practice in the eighteenth century?

What role did colonial markets play in Europe’s development?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence Arthur Young on the Benefits of Enclosure

Thinking Like a Historian Rural Industry: Progress or Exploitation?

Viewpoints Opposing Views on Guilds and Economic Regulation

Evaluating Visual Evidence Mixed Races

Individuals in Society Rebecca Protten

 

18 Life in the Era of Expansion 1650–1800

How did marriage and family life change in the eighteenth century?

What was life like for children, and how did attitudes toward childhood evolve?

How did increasing literacy and new patterns of consumption affect people’s lives?

What role did religion play in eighteenth-century society?

How did the practice of medicine evolve in the eighteenth century?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence A Day in the Life of Paris

Individuals in Society Rose Bertin, "Minister of Fashion"

Thinking Like a Historian A New Subjectivity

Evaluating Visual Evidence Hogarth’s Satirical View of the Church

Viewpoints The Case for and Against Female Midwives

 

19 Revolutions in Politics 1775–1815

What were the factors behind the revolutions of the late eighteenth century?

Why and how did American colonists forge a new, independent nation?

How did the events of 1789 result in a constitutional monarchy in France?

Why and how did the French Revolution take a radical turn?

How did Napoleon Bonaparte create a French empire, and why did it fail?

How did slave revolt on colonial Saint-Domingue lead to the independent nation of Haiti?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence Abigail Adams, "Remember the Ladies"

Thinking Like a Historian The Rights of Which Men?

Viewpoints Contrasting Visions of the Sans-Culottes

Evaluating Visual Evidence Francisco Goya, The Third of May 1808

Individuals in Society Toussaint L’Ouverture

 

Period 3: The Long Nineteenth Century ca. 1815 – ca. 1914

20 The Revolution in Energy and Industry ca. 1780–1850

Why and how did the Industrial Revolution emerge in Britain?

How did countries outside Britain respond to the challenge of industrialization?

How did work and daily life evolve during the Industrial Revolution?

What were the social consequences of industrialization?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Individuals in Society Samuel Crompton

Evaluating Visual Evidence Rain, Steam, and Speed —the Great Western Railway

Viewpoints The Experience of Child Labor

Evaluating Written Evidence Advice for Middle-Class Women

Thinking Like a Historian Making the Industrialized Worker

 

21 Ideologies and Upheavals 1815–1850

How was peace restored and maintained after the Napoleonic Wars?

What new ideologies emerged to challenge conservatism?

What were the characteristics of the Romantic movement?

How did reforms and revolutions challenge conservatism after 1815?

What were the main causes and consequences of the revolutions of 1848?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

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AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence The Karlsbad Decrees: Conservative Reaction in the German Confederation

Thinking Like a Historian The Republican Spirit in 1848

Individuals in Society Mary Shelley

Evaluating Visual Evidence Casper David Friedrich, Two Men Contemplating the Moon, 1820

Viewpoints Picturing Revolutionary Violence in 1848

 

22 Life in the Emerging Urban Society 1840–1914

What were the main changes in urban life in the nineteenth century?

How did class and gender reinforce social difference in the nineteenth century?

How did urbanization affect family life and gender roles?

What were the most important changes in science and culture?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence First Impressions of the World’s Biggest City

Evaluating Visual Evidence Apartment Living in Paris

Individuals in Society Franziska Tiburtius

Thinking Like a Historian The Promise of Electricity

Viewpoints Émile Zola and Naturalism/Realism in Western Literature

 

23 The Age of Nationalism 1850–1914

What were the main features of the authoritarian nation-state built by Napoleon III?

How were strong nation-states forged in Italy, Germany, and the United States?

How did Russian and Ottoman leaders modernize their states and societies?

How did the relationship between government and the governed change after 1871?

What were the costs and benefits of nationalism for ordinary people?

How and why did revolutionary Marxism evolve in the late nineteenth century?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Visual Evidence The Proclamation of the German Empire, January 1871

Evaluating Written Evidence Eyewitness Account of Bloody Sunday

Thinking Like a Historian How to Build a Nation

Individuals in Society Theodor Herzl

Viewpoints Marxist Revisionism

 

24 The West and the World 1815–1914

What were the global consequences of European industrialization?

How was massive migration an integral part of Western expansion?

How did the New Imperialism change Western colonialism?

How did non-Westerners respond to Western expansion?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence Nativism in the United States

Evaluating Visual Evidence European Imperialism at Its Worst

Individuals in Society Cecil Rhodes

Viewpoints The White Man’s Versus the Brown Man’s Burden

Thinking Like a Historian Women and Empire

 

Period 4: The Twentieth Century and Beyond, ca. 1914 to the Present

25 War and Revolution 1914–1919

What caused the outbreak of the First World War?

How did the First World War differ from previous wars?

In what ways did the war transform life on the home front?

Why did world war lead to a successful Communist revolution in Russia?

What were the benefits and costs of the postwar peace settlement?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Visual Evidence Trench Warfare on the Western Front

Individuals in Society Vera Brittain

Viewpoints Wartime Propaganda Posters

Evaluating Written Evidence Peace, Land, and Bread for the Russian People

Thinking Like a Historian The Partition of the Ottoman Empire and the Mandate System

 

26 Opportunity and Crisis in the Age of Modernity 1880–1940

How did intellectual developments reflect the ambiguities of modernity?

How did modernism revolutionize Western culture?

How did consumer society change everyday life?

What obstacles to lasting peace did European leaders face?

What were the causes and consequences of the Great Depression?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence Friedrich Nietzsche Pronounces the Death of God

Individuals in Society Sigmund Freud

Evaluating Visual Evidence Modern Design for Everyday Use

Viewpoints The Modern Girl: Image or Reality?

Thinking Like a Historian The Radio Age

 

27 Dictatorships and the Second World War 1919–1945

What were the most important characteristics of Communist and Fascist ideologies?

How did Stalinism transform state and society in the Soviet Union?

What kind of government did Mussolini establish in Italy?

What policies did Nazi Germany pursue, and why did they appeal to ordinary Germans?

What explains the success and then defeat of Germany and Japan during World War II?

LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence Famine and Recovery on a Soviet Collective Farm in the Ukraine

Thinking Like a Historian Normalizing Eugenics and "Racial Hygiene" in Nazi Germany

Evaluating Visual Evidence Nazi Propaganda and Consumer Goods

Viewpoints Oratory and Ideology in World War II

Individuals in Society Primo Levi

 

28 Cold War Conflict and Consensus 1945–1965

Why was World War II followed so quickly by the Cold War?

What were the sources of postwar recovery and stability in western Europe?

What was the pattern of postwar development in the Soviet bloc?

How did decolonization proceed in the Cold War era?

What were the key changes in social relations in postwar Europe?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Viewpoints Cold War Propaganda

Evaluating Written Evidence De-Stalinization and Khrushchev’s "Secret Speech"

Thinking Like a Historian Violence and the Algerian War

Individuals in Society Armando Rodrigues

Evaluating Visual Evidence Postwar Youth Subcultures

 

29 Challenging the Postwar Order 1960–1991

Why did the postwar consensus of the 1950s break down?

What were the consequences of economic stagnation in the 1970s?

What led to the decline of "developed socialism" in the East Bloc?

What were the causes and consequences of the 1989 revolutions in the East Bloc?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence Human Rights Under the Helsinki Accords

Evaluating Visual Evidence The "May Events" in Paris, 1968

Individuals in Society Margaret Thatcher

Thinking Like a Historian The New Environmentalism

Viewpoints "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall"

 

30 Life in an Age of Globalization 1990 to the Present

How did life change in Russia and the former East Bloc countries after 1989?

How did globalization affect European life and society?

How is growing ethnic diversity changing contemporary Europe?

What challenges will Europeans face in the coming decades?

LOOKING BACK / LOOKING AHEAD

REVIEW & EXPLORE

AP® Exam Practice

Evaluating Written Evidence President Putin on Global Security

Viewpoints Debating the Impact of Social Media and the Internet

Individuals in Society Edward Snowden

Thinking Like a Historian The Conservative Reaction to Immigration and Islamist Terrorism

Evaluating Visual Evidence The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Germany

 

AP® Practice Exam

Glossary/Glosario

Index

Timeline A History of Western Society: A Brief Overview