Advanced Placement European History
Syllabus
Course Description
The curriculum of this comprehensive European History course is based on the Core
Curriculum, Power Standards and Learner Goals as dictated by the Kentucky Department
of Education. Extensive writing, analysis of text and non-text sources, in-class and
individual note-taking skills, and an ability to read quickly with comprehension and
retention is needed. The primary focus of this course is the transition of a regionally
divisive world to the interconnected global society of today. Additionally, other elements
of society will be looked at such as trends in: culture, religion, government, economics
and other elements as needed.
Course Objectives/Learner Targets
(to reflect Kentucky Core Content)
Students will:
1. Understand the democratic principles of justice, equality, responsibility and
freedom and apply them to real-life situations.
2. Accurately describe various forms of government and analyze issues that
relate to the rights and responsibilities of citizens.
3. Observe, analyze, and interpret human behaviors, social groupings and
institutions to better understand people and the relationships among
individuals and among groups.
4. Understand economic principles of current and past European History.
5. Recognize and understand the relationship between people and geography.
6. Understand, analyze, and interpret historical events, conditions, trends and
issues to develop historical perspective.
7. Use, interpret and apply data from primary and secondary sources.
8. Use historical data to support an argument or position.
9. Work in group settings to produce projects
.
Course Texts and Readings:
Main Texts
Kagan, Donald, Ozement, Steven and Turner, Frank. The Western Heritage since
1300. (Boston, Prentice Hall, 2010)
Supplemental Texts
Elizabeth Ellis and Paul Burke. World History: The Modern Era. (Boston, Prentice
Hall, 2007).
Margaret King. Western Civilization: A Social and Cultural History. (Upper Saddle
NJ, Prentice Hall, 2000)
Howard Spodek. The World’s History. (Upper Saddle NJ, Prentice Hall, 2001).
John P. McKay et al. A History of Western Society. (Boston, Houghton Mifflin,
1999).
John Merriman. A History of Modern Europe. (New York, Norton, 2004).
Lynn Hunt et al. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures. (Boston,
Bedford/St. Martins, 2005).
Richard Bulliet et al. The Modern Era (Boston, Prentice Hall, 2007).
Mark Kishlansky et al. Civilization in the West (New York, Longman, 2001).
Patricia Ebrey et al. East Asia: A Cultural, Social and Political History (Boston,
Houghton Mifflin, 2006).
Cheryl Martin et al. Latin America and Its People. (New York, Pearson, 2008).
Marilyn Stokstad. Art: A Brief History. (Upper Saddle NJ, Prentice Hall, 2007).
Ernst Breisach. Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern. (Chicago, University
of Chicago Press, 1983).
Various Readings from:
Alfred Andrea The Human Record (Boston, Houghton-Mifflin, 2005)
Kevin Reilly Reading in World Civilizations (New York, St. Martins, 1995)
Eugene Weber The Western Tradition (Lexington, Mass., DC Heath, 1995)
Richard Tarnas The Passion of the Western Mind (New York, Ballantine, 1991)
Merry Wiesner et al. Discovering the Global Past (Boston, Houghton-Mifflin,
2002)
World History Series
Rise of Christianity
Course Purpose:
The purpose of this course is two-fold:
a. To provide you with the skills and information that will allow you to meet high
school graduation requirements, and
b. To prepare you to successfully complete the Advanced Placement European
History Course and exam at RCSHS.
Organization:
This class will be taught as a primarily sophomore-level class, will utilize general
high school level/College Level materials but will have college-level expectations of
students. This means students will share responsibility for learning through in-class work
and outside readings, projects and reports. You will not be able to succeed in this class
by merely reading, listening to lectures, and feeding back information on a test. You will
be expected to learn to think, not just memorize.
A variety of teaching and learning strategies will be used, including but not
limited to: lecture-discussion, group and individual work, projects, presentations,
reading, writing, tests and other activities.
The course will be divided into Four units/eight sub units, generally
corresponding to the Kagan text in the following manner:
Unit I
Part A
Part B
Unit II
Part A
Part B
Unit III
Part A
Part B
Unit IV
Part A
Part B
Europe in Transition
Renaissance and Reformation
1600’s and 1700’s
Enlightenment and Revolution
Enlightenment to Napoleon
Conservative Order, Reform and Social Contract
Toward the Modern Age
Nation States to European Supremacy
Imperialism to World War I
Global Conflict, Cold War and New Directions
World War II
Cold War and Modern History
Within the given time-Periods, the subject matter will be loosely categorized into
political, economic, social and foreign affairs/intellectual history. As can be told by the
unit time-periods, the chronological approach will be the guiding force in the
organization of the course. However, within the chronological presentation of materials,
there will be times when a thematic approach may be utilized, particularly in relation to
such topics as:
 Religions
 Art
o Students will have the opportunity to study several pieces of art
throughout the class. Among the periods we will look at are but
are not limited to:
 Renaissance


 Baroque
 Rococo
 Neo-Classic
 Romantic
 Impressionism
 Realism
 Naturalism
 Cubism
Various Literature Case Studies
Various in-class Simulations
An attempt will be made to provide students with a syllabus for each of the eight
units.
Each syllabus will contain:
 Unit
 Readings
 Unit Outline
 Essential Questions
 Major Assignments and Assessments
However, the syllabus will not necessarily limit the content or conduct of the
class. Adjustments can and will be made depending on the needs of the class.
You will be required to take notes during class discussions, lectures, from reading
assignments and from presentations by class members and others. These notes will make
up the major portion of your notebook requirements, but more importantly will form the
basis for review for Exams.
Tests will consist of multiple-choice questions, open response questions and
document based questions (DBQ). On occasion, you will be required to interpret maps,
charts, graphs and political cartoons. Open response and DBQ’s must be written in blue
or black ink. There will be both chapter and unit exams. Unit exams will deal with all
material assigned during study of a unit (text and non-text). Unit exams will usually
consist of both multiple choice and essay questions. Chapter tests will be multiple choice
and short answer, numbering generally from 30-40 questions.
According to school policy, there will be two semester final exams. One at the
end of the first semester (approx. first week of Novemeber) will cover all material from
the first semester and the last (approx. last week of February) will cover all material from
the second semester. There will be no comprehensive exam.
Practically all units will have a regular assortment of reading excerpts, map work,
artistic analysis, historiography, quizzes and practice DBQ’s. It can be assumed that
these will be general assignments and thus not listed under the Major Assignments and
Assessments section.
Teaching Strategies
When using primary sources for analysis, students will be using a Primary Source
Analysis Worksheet developed with the assistance of and based on the Fred Brown
model. It includes the following: Document Title, Author, Date of Document, Historical
Era, Identification of Thesis, Identification of the purpose/agenda, Evaluation of the
document’s point of view and Identification of the audience for which the document was
created.
Many times a year, students will be instructed in and take part in grading
activities with DBQ’s and FRQ’s. We will be analyzing the 9-point scoring guides and
students will then be given a chance to critique each other’s work on the DBQ/FRQ’s.
They will identify Thesis Statements, main points and various other writing points.
Afterward, there will be class debriefing.
Students will be analyzing art work from different periods on a consistent basis.
They will be shown various works of art and expected to note the major differences in
style and substance of the several periods as outlined in the organization section above.
Using specific pieces of art students will generally be using an art analysis worksheet that
follows these basis lines: What do you see (a literal view of the work with listing), What
do you think you see (add in your emotional take on the work), What hints do you find
(are there any historical clues in the work that give you an idea of the background), What
questions do you have (what would you need to have answered to make a decision on the
work’s purpose) and What do you have (make a decision about what you are looking at,
purpose, audience, statement, etc.).
Historiography will be addressed regularly in class. Students will be reading
additional text from Breisach’s Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern work.
This will help to understand the changing nature of historical interpretation during the
passing of eras. Focus will of course be on the periods starting in the Renaissance and
continuing forward. Historians looked at in the various readings will range from Bede to
Burckhardt, Hegel to Marx and Boorstin to Zinn.
Additionally, the class will utilize various methods of lecture, power points,
documents, documentary films and secondary source readings to supplement learning.
Course Outline
Unit I
Europe in Transition 1300-1750
Part A
Renaissance and Reformation
Part B
1600’s and 1700’s
Readings:
Kagan- chapters 9-16
Breisach- Chapter 11-13
Two Turning Points the Renaissance and the Reformation
The Continuing Modification of Traditional Historiography
The Eighteenth Century Quest for a New Historiography
Primary source readings: Second Isaiah, Homer, Plato, Juvenal, Mark, Christine de Pisan,
Montaigne, Zwingli, Theodore Beza, Louis XIV, Peter the Great, Margaret Cavendish,
Galileo, Priscilla Wakefield etc.
Unit Outline:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
Introduction: The West Before 1300
The Late Middle Ages: Social and Political Breakdown
a. The Black Death
b. The Hundred Years War and the Rise of National Sentiment
c. Ecclesiastical Breakdown and Revival
d. Medieval Russia
Renaissance and Discovery
a. The Renaissance in Italy
b. Italy’s Political Decline
i. Renaissance Art
1. Giotto
2. Raphael-School of Athens
3. Michelangelo- Sistine Chapel, Pieta,
David
4. Donatello-David
5. Durer- Self Portrait at 28, Melincolia
6. Da Vinci-Vitruvian Man, Mona Lisa, Last Supper
c. Revival of Monarchy in Northern Europe
d. The Northern Renaissance
e. Voyages of Discovery and the New Empires in the West and East
Age of Reformation
a. Society and Religion
b. Martin Luther and German Reformation to 1525
c. The Reformation Elsewhere
d. Political Consolidation of the Lutheran Reformation
e. The English Reformation to 1553
f. Catholic Reform and Counter-Reformation
g. The Social Significance of the Reformation in Western Europe
h. Family Life in Early Modern Europe
i. Literary Imagination in Transition
The Age of Religious Wars
a. Renewed Religious Struggle
b. The French Wars of Religion
c. Imperial Spain and Philip II
d. England and Spain
e. The Thirty Years War
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
European State Consolidation in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
a. The Netherlands: Golden Age to Decline
b. Two Models of European Political Development
c. Constitutional Crisis and Settlement in Stuart England
d. Rise of Absolute monarchy in France
e. Central and Eastern Europe
f. Russia Enters the European Political Arena
g. The Ottoman Empire
New Directions in Thought and Culture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries
a. The Scientific Revolution
b. Philosophy Responds to Changing Science
c. The New Institutions of Expanding Natural Knowledge
d. Women in the World of Scientific Revolution
e. The New Science and Religious Faith
f. Continuing Superstition
g. Baroque Art
i. Caravaggio- The Incredulity of St. Thomas, Conversion of St.
Paul, David with the Head of Goliath, The Calling of St.
Matthew
ii. Louis LaNain- Peasant Family in an Interior
iii. Bernini-St. Peter’s Basilica, St. Teresa of Avila
iv. Rubens- Judgment of Paris, Head of Medusa, The Last Supper
Society and Economy under the Old Regime in the Eighteenth Century
a. Major Features of Life in the Old Regime
b. The Aristocracy
c. The Land and Its Tillers
d. Family Structures and the Family Economy
e. The Revolution in Agriculture
f. The Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century
g. The Growth of Cities
h. The Jewish Population: the Age of the Ghetto
The Transatlantic Economy, Trade Wars and Colonial Rebellion
a. Periods of European Overseas Development
b. Mercantile Empires
c. The Spanish Colonial System
d. Black African Slavery, the Plantation System, and the Atlantic
Economy
e. Mid-Eighteenth-Century Wars
f. The American Revolution and Europe
Major Assignments and Assessments:
1. DBQ selection: students may have a DBQ from the following topic.










Religion and Geography
The Reformation
Patterns of Trade 1000-1450
Middle Ages
Peasants Revolts in German States
Responses to the “Poor” 1450-1700
The Concept of the Nobility in France 16th Century to 18th Century
Various assumptions about children in early modern Europe
Political, social and religious factors in scientists work in the 16th/17th Centuries
The Pilgrimage of Grace
2) Unit Exam and Quizzes
Unit II
Enlightenment and Revolution 1700-1850
Part A
Enlightenment to Napoleon
Part B
Conservative Order, Reform and Social Contract
Readings:
Kagan: Chapters 17-21
Primary Source Readings: Voltaire, Adam Smith, Diderot, Rousseau, Mary
Wollstonecraft, Burke, Napoleon, Madame de Stael, Hegel, Marx and Engel, etc.
Breisach- Chapters 13-15
The Eighteenth Century Quest for a New Historiography
Three National Responses
Historians as Interpreters of Progress and Nation
Unit Outline:
I.
The Age of Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Thought
a. Formative Influences on the Enlightenment
b. The Philosophes
c. The Enlightenment and Religion
d. The Enlightenment and Society
e. Political Thought of the Philosophes
f. Women in the Thought and Practice of the Enlightenment
g. Rococo and Neoclassical Styles in Eighteenth-Century Art
i. Boucher- Leda and the Swan, Portrait of Mde. De Pompadour,
A Summer Pastoral, The Birth of Venus
ii. Tiepolo- interior of the Imperial Hall
iii. Watteau- Embarkation for Cythera
iv. Fragonard- The Reader, The Swing
v. David- The Oath of the Horatii
h. Enlightened Absolutism
II.
III.
IV.
V.
The French Revolution
a. The Crisis of the French Monarchy
b. The Revolution of 1789
c. The Reconstruction of France
d. The End of Monarchy: A Second Revolution
e. Europe at War with the Revolution
f. The Reign of Terror
g. The Thermidorian Reaction
The Age of Napoleon and the Triumph of Romanticism
a. The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
b. The Consulate in France
c. Napoleon’s Empire
d. European Response to the Empire
e. The Congress of Vienna and the European Settlement
f. The Romantic Question
g. Romantic Questioning of the Supremacy of Reason
h. Romantic Literature
i. Romantic Art
i. Constable-Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadow
ii. Delacroix- Liberty Leading the People, Death of Sardanapalus
j. Religion in the Romantic Period
k. Romantic Views of Nationalism and History
The Conservative Order and the Challenges of the Reform
a. The Challenges of Nationalism and Liberalism
b. Conservative Governments: The domestic Political Order
c. The Conservative International Order
d. The Wars of Independence in Latin America
e. The Conservative Order Shaken in Europe
Economic Advance and Social Unrest
a. Toward an Industrial Society
b. The Labor Force
c. Family Structures and the Industrial Revolution
d. Women in the Early Industrial Revolution
e. Problems of Crime and Order
f. Classical Economics
g. Early Socialism
h. 1848: Year of Revolutions
Major Assignments and Assessments:
DBQ selections: students may have a DBQ from the following topic
 Literacy and Education in the 16 to 19th Century
 French Revolution
 Industrial Revolution in England
 Role of Science and Empiricism in 19th Century Europe
 Adoption of new calendar in revolutionary France
Unit Exam and Quizzes
Unit III
Toward the Modern Age 1850-1939
Part A
Nation States to European Supremacy
Part B
Imperialism to World War I
Readings:
Kagan: Chapters 22-26
Primary Source Readings: Zola, Emmeline Pankhurst, Pope Leo XIII, H.S. Chamberlain,
Herzl, Virginia Woolf, T.B. Macaulay, Churchill, Bismarck, Lenin, etc.
Breisach-Chapters 16-19
Historians as Interpreters of Progress and Nation II
A First Prefatory note to Modern Historiography
History and the Quest for a Uniform Scheme
The Discovery of Economic Dynastics
Unit Outline:
I.
II.
III.
The Age of Nation-States
a. The Crimean War
b. Reforms of the Ottoman Empire
c. Italian Unification
d. German Unification
e. France: From Liberal Empire to the Third Republic
f. The Habsburg Empire
g. Russia: Emancipation and Revolutionary Stirrings
h. Great Britain: Toward Democracy
The Building of European Supremacy: Society and Politics to World War
I
a. Population Trends and Migration
b. The Second Industrial Revolution
c. The Middle Class in Ascendancy
d. Late-Nineteenth-Century Urban Life
e. Varieties of Late-Nineteenth-Century Women’s Experiences
f. Jewish Emancipation
g. Labor, Socialism and Politics to World War I
The Birth of Modern European Thought
a. The New Reading Public
b. Science at Midcentury
c. Christianity and the Church under Siege
d. Toward a Twentieth Century Frame of Mind
i. The Coming of Modern Art
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
IV.
V.
Manet-A Bar at the Folies-Bergere
Monet- Haystack, Water Lilies
Pissaro-Boulevard Montmartre at Night
Renoir-Le Moulin de la Galette
Degas-several of his ballet dancers, Woman Combing
her hair, Women Ironing
6. Seurat-A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande
Jatte
7. Cezanne- Pyramid of Skulls, The Lake at Annecy
8. Van Gogh-Self Portrait (1887), Starry Night
9. Gauguin- On the Beach 1891
10. Picasso-Guernica, The Old Guitarist
11. Braque- Violin and Palette
e. Women and Modern Thought
The Age of Western Imperialism
a. The Close of the Age of Early Modern Colonization
b. The Age of British Imperial Dominance
c. India- The Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire
d. The “New Imperialism” 1870-1914
e. Motives for the New Imperialism
f. The Partition of Africa
g. Russian Expansion in Mainland Asia
h. Western Powers in Asia
i. Tools of Imperialism
j. The Missionary Factor
k. Science and Imperialism
Alliances, War and a Troubled Peace
a. Emergence of the German Empire and the Alliance Systems
b. World War I
c. The Russian Revolution
d. The End of World War I
e. The Settlement of Paris
Major Assignments and Assessments:
1)
DBQ selections: students will be given a DBQ from the following topics:
 19th and 20th Century Socialism
 Imperialism
 Role of Treaties and Alliances in WWI
 Italian Unification
 Weimar Republic in the years 1918-1933
 European acquisition of African Colonies 1880-1914
 Organized Sports in Europe 1860-1940
 Natural identity in Alsace-Lorraine during the period 1870-1919
 Concept of “Civil Peace” in Germany 1914-1918
2) Unit Exam and Quizzes
Unit IV
Global Conflict, Cold War and New Directions 1939-2008
Part A
World War II
Part B
Cold War and Modern Era
Readings:
Kagan: Chapters 27-30
Primary Source Readings: Keynes, Mussolini, Hitler, Khrushchev, Gandhi, Putin,
Simone De Beauvoir, Sartre, Pope Benedict XVI
Breisach- Chapters 20-23
Historians Encounter the Masses
The Problem of World History
A Second Prefatory Note to Modern Historiography
Questions of Historical Truth- The Theoretical Discussion
Unit Outline:
I.
II.
III.
The Interwar Years: The Challenge of Dictators and Depression
a. After Versailles: Demands for Revision and Enforcement
b. Toward the Great Depression in Europe
c. The Soviet Experiment
d. The Fascist Experiment in Italy
e. German Democracy and Dictatorship
f. Trials of the Successor States in Europe
World War II
a. Again the Road to War
b. World War II
c. Racism and the Holocaust
d. The Domestic Fronts
e. Preparations for Peace
The Cold War Era, Decolonization and Emergence of a New Europe
a. The Emergence of the Cold War
b. The Khrushchev Era in the Soviet Union
c. Later Cold War Confrontations
d. The Brezhnev Era
e. Decolonization: The European Retreat from Empire
f. The Turmoil of French Decolonization
g. The Collapse of European Communism
h. The Collapse of Yugoslavia and Civil War
i. Putin and the Resurgence of Russia
j. The Rise of Radical Political Islamism
k. A Transformed West
IV.
The West at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century
a. The Twentieth-Century Movement of Peoples
b. Toward a Welfare State Society
c. New Patterns in Work and the Expectations of Women
d. Transformation in Knowledge and Culture
e. Art Since World War II
f. The Christian Heritage
g. Late-Twentieth-Century Technology: The Arrival of the Computer
h. The Challenges of European Unification
i. New American Leadership and Financial Crisis
Major Assignments and Assessments:
1)
DBQ selections: students will be given a DBQ from the following topics:
 The causes and responses to the 1968 crisis in France
 Western Europe unity 1946-1989
 The Vichy Regime 1940-1944
2) Unit Exam and quizzes