Kate Todhunter
History Department
Rm. 122
ktodhunter@northampton-k12.us
Advanced Placement European History
Course Information and Syllabus
2010 - 2011
Description: Throughout this course we will examine the development of European
History from 1450 to the present. There will be a strong emphasis placed on A.P. test
preparation including free response essays, document based questions, and multiple
choice tests. Although our approach will be largely chronological, we will also analyze
the history thematically (political/military, socio-economic, and cultural/intellectual).
This is a rigorous academic course taught at a fast pace. All students are expected to take
the exam in May.
Texts:
The Western Heritage, AP Edition
Donald Kagan
Pearson Prentice Hall
A History of the Modern World, 8th ed.
RR Palmer and Joel Colton
McGraw Hill Publishers
Summer Reading:
A World Lit Only by Fire
William Manchester
Little, Brown and Co., 1992
General Course Skills:
Document Based Questions (including creation of own DBQs on topic of choice)
Free Response Questions
Primary Source Analysis
Art and Music Analysis
Historical Film and Documentary Reviews and Analysis
Thematic Analysis (Political, Socio-Economic, Cultural/Intellectual)
Historical Documentary Film Making
Historiography
European Geography
Analysis of European Current Events
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Course Overview and Course Units
Unit I: The Upheaval in Christendom (1300 – 1560)
Key Concepts and Themes:
 European Geography
 14th century disasters and their socio-political consequences/impacts
 The Italian Renaissance: origins, events and impacts
 Medici family
 New attitudes of the Renaissance and reason for their rise
 Renaissance ideals and Humanism
 Key philosophers and artists of the Renaissance
 Distinctions between Northern and Italian Renaissance
 Rise of New Monarchies in France, England, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire
 The Protestant Reformation: origins, events, new faiths, and impacts
 The Catholic/Counter Reformation: origins, events, Council of Trent, and impacts
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 9, 10, 11
 DBQ on The Black Death
 Quiz on current map of Europe
 A World Lit Only By Fire in-class essay
 Reading from A History of Money: Knights of Commerce (J. Weatherford)
 Primary Source Analysis: Erasmus, Machiavelli, Mirandola, de Pisan,
Renaissance Art slides, Martin Luther
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance”
(PBS), “Six Wives of Henry VIII” (PBS)
 FRQ on Legacies of Renaissance Humanism
 Unit Test including FRQ
Unit II: Economic Renewal and Wars of Religion (1560 – 1648)
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Motives for and impacts of Age of Exploration
 The Commercial Revolution
 Price Revolution
 Mercantilism
 Changing social structures and education
 Philip II and Catholic Spain
 Revolt of the Netherlands
 Spain’s decline: origins and impacts
 The disintegration and reconstruction of France
 French Religious Wars: origins, events and impacts
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The Disintegration of Germany and the Thirty Years War
Great Witch Hunt
Treaty of Westphalia
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 12
 Readings: Weatherford, Landes, Diamond
 Primary Source Analysis: Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Bach, Baroque,
early folktales
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Guns, Germs and Steel” (PBS), “The Virgin
Queen” (PBS), “Queen Margot” (France)
 Unit Test including FRQ
Unit III: The Establishment of West-European Leadership
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Balance of Power
 Golden Age of the Dutch Republic
 Britain’s Puritan Revolution and the rise of Parliament
 The Stuarts and Restoration
 The Glorious Revolution: origins and impacts
 France under Louis XIV: events and impacts
 Absolutism
 Wars of Louis XIV: events and impacts
 Peace of Utrecht
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 13, Palmer chapter 4
 Primary Source Analysis: Baruch Spinoza, Dutch Masters (Vermeer, Rembrandt),
James I, English Bill of Rights, Duc de St. Simon
 DBQ on Dutch Republic
 Unit Test including FRQ
Unit IV: The Transformation of Eastern Europe
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Aging Empires (Holy Roman Empire, Republic of Poland, Ottoman Empire)
 Formation of Austrian Monarchy
 Formation of Prussia
 The “Westernizing” of Russia
 The Partitions of Poland
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Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan, Palmer chapter 5
 Group Poster/PowerPoint Presentation of New States
 Primary Source Analysis: Stenka Razin
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Peter the Great” (PBS)
Unit V: Age of Genius
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Scientific Revolution: origins, key scientists, impacts
 Bacon, Descartes and the Scientific Method
 Impacts of Newton
 Rise of Skepticism
 Political Theory and the School of Natural Law: Locke and Hobbes
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 14, Palmer chapter 7
 Primary Source Analysis: Descartes, Galileo, Locke, Hobbes
 DBQ on attitudes towards women scientists
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance”
(PBS), “NOVA: Newton’s Dark Secrets” (PBS)
 Unit Test including FRQ
Unit VI: The Enlightenment
Key Concepts and Themes:
 The Philosophes
 Causes and impacts of the Enlightenment
 Enlightened Despotism of France, Austria, Prussia and Russia
 British Reform Movement
 Rise and influence of Salon society
 The “Reading Revolution”
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 17, Palmer chapter 8
 Primary Source Analysis: Kant, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Mozart, Mary
Wollstonecraft
 Enlightened Despot group presentations
 Salon seating chart activity and debate
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Catherine the Great” (PBS), “Amadeus” (USA)
 Unit Test including FRQ
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Unit VII: The French Revolution
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Background, causes and impacts
 The First and Second Revolutions
 The War with Europe and “International” Revolution
 Robespierre and the Reign of Terror
 The Directory
 The Consulate
 Role of class and gender in the Revolution
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 18, Palmer chapter 9
 Primary Source Analysis: Arthur Young and l’ancien regime, Abbe Sieyes,
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, Olympe de Gouges, La
Marseillaise, Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke, Marat
 FRQ on socio-economic impacts of the French Revolution
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Ridicule” (France), “The French Revolution”
(History Channel)
 Unit Test including FRQ
Unit VIII: Napoleonic Europe
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte: causes and impacts
 Formation of the French Imperial system
 The Grand Empire and spread of the Revolution
 The Continental System
 National Movements in Germany, Spain and Italy
 Congress of Vienna
 Neoclassicism
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 19, Palmer chapter 10
 Primary Source Analysis: Jacques Louis David, Napoleonic Code
 Napoleonic Europe map activity
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Napoleon” (PBS)
 FRQ on Napoleon as enlightened despot, dictator or son of the Revolution
 Unit Test including FRQ
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Unit IX: Reaction versus Progress and the Industrial Revolution (1815 – 1848)
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Major causes and impacts of industrialization
 Industrial Revolution in Britain: origins and impacts
 Romanticism
 Liberalism
 Nationalism
 Socialism
 Feminism
 Reactions and Conservatism: impacts of Metternich
 Rise of the Bourgeoisie
 Irish Potato Famine
 Abolition of Slavery
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapters 20 and 21, Palmer chapter 11
 Primary Source Analysis: Beethoven and key Romantics, John Stuart Mill,
Brothers Grimm
 “Letters to the Editor” Essay on political “isms”
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Germinal” (France)
 Unit Test including FRQ
Unit X: Revolutions of 1848 and Impacts (1848 – 1870)
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Causes of 1848 revolutions
 Events in France (Louis Philippe through Louis Napoleon Bonaparte)
 Events in Austrian Empire
 Events in Germany (failures at unification, Frankfurt Assembly)
 Realism (politics, art, literature)
 Rise of Socialism (Owen to Marx)
Assignments and Assessments:
 Palmer chapter 12
 Primary Source Analysis: Marx’s journalistic writings on France, Communist
Manifesto, Comte, Emile Zola, Realism art slides
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “The Horseman on the Roof” (France)
 Unit Quiz
 Mid-term Exam (AP Released Exam 1999)
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Unit XI: European Civilization and the Rise of the Nation States (1859 – 1871)
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Nationalism and rise of the Nation State
 Crimean War: origins and impacts
 Cavour and the Unification of Italy
 Bismarck and the Founding of the German Empire
 The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary
 The Liberalization of Tsarist Russia under Alexander II
 Demography and 19th century population trends
 Second Industrial Revolution and rise of the world market
 Advances in Democracy under the Third French Republic, Great Britain and
Bismarck’s Germany
 Rise of Labor Unions and Socialism
 19th century advances in science
 England’s Queen Victoria and the Victorian Era
 Life in the newly urbanized society
 19th century changes in social class
 Jewish Emancipation and the Dreyfus Affair
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 22, Palmer chapters 13 and 14
 Nation State Documentary Projects (Austria-Hungary, Russia, Germany and Italy)
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “1900 House” (PBS)
 Reading: The History of Money: The Gold Bug (J. Weatherford)
 DBQ on Russian Peasantry
 Primary Source Analysis: Tzar Alexander’s Act of Emancipation, Darwin’s
Origin of Species, Huxley’s Social Darwinism, Nietzsche, Syllabus of Errors,
Post-Impressionism art slides
 Unit Test including FRQ
Unit XII: Imperialism
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Nature and causes of the new imperialism
 Rise of European Empire and world supremacy
 Impacts of Empire upon Europeans
 Russo-Japanese War
Assignments and Assessments:
 Palmer chapter 15
 Primary Source Analysis: Kipling’s White Man’s Burden, The Secret of
England’s Greatness, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
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Documentary/Film Analysis: “This Magnificent African Cake” (B. Davidson),
“Guns, Germs and Steel” (PBS)
Unit XIII: World War I
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Role of alliances and other causes of the first World War
 Major military campaigns of the war and armed stalemate
 Concept of Total War
 Armenian Genocide
 Home Front experiences
 Collapse of Russia and U.S. intervention
 Collapse of Austrian and German empires
 Economic and social impacts of the war
 1919’s Peace of Paris
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 25, Palmer chapter 16
 Pre and Post-War geography of Europe
 Primary Source Analysis: Otto Dix and Expressionism, photos and writings from
the War, The Treaty of Versailles
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “The Great War” (PBS), “The Armenian Genocide”
(PBS),
 Unit Test including FRQ
Unit XIII: The Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Background and causes of the Revolution
 The Revolution of 1905
 Leninism
 The Events of the Revolutions of 1917
 The Creation of the Soviet Union
 Stalin’s Five-Year Plans, Collectivization, Purges and Totalitarianism
 International Communism
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 26, Palmer chapter 17
 Reading: Harvest of Sorrow (Conquest)
 Primary Source Analysis: Bloody Sunday, Lenin’s Cult of Personality (speeches,
photographs), Mandelstam, Kollontai
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Rasputin” (A&E Biography), “The Great War”
(PBS), “Burnt By the Sun” (Russia)
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Unit Test including FRQ
Unit XIV: The Age of Anxiety and the Interwar Period
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Advances in Democracy and Locarno
 Weimar Republic
 Ataturk and rise of secularism in Turkey
 The Great Depression
 Mussolini and Italian Fascism
 Germany’s Third Reich, Nazism and Hitler
 Totalitarianism
 Existentialism (philosophy, art, literature and culture)
 Surrealism
 Spanish Civil War
 Women’s Suffrage Movement
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 27, Palmer chapters 18 and 19
 Primary Source Analysis: Valery, Stravinsky, Hyperinflation in Weimar,
Guernica, Mussolini, Goebbels, Nuremberg Laws, Nazi propaganda
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “The Century”
 FRQ on Women’s Suffrage Movement and Political Feminism
Unit XV: World War II
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Weakness of Democracy
 Events leading up to War (Versailles through invasion of Poland)
 Policy of Appeasement
 Opening stages of the War and Axis triumphs, Blitzkrieg and the Battle of Britain
 Nazi-Soviet Pact
 The Holocaust
 Western-Soviet Victory
 Stalingrad
 Aftermath of War and impacts
 Foundations of Peace (Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam)
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 28, Palmer chapter 20
 Primary Source Analysis: Dr. Seuss political cartoons, Vonnegut’s
Slaughterhouse Five
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Genocide” (BBC World at War Series),
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Historical Film Review on Holocaust/World War II
Field Trip: Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center and survivor visit
Unit Test including FRQ
Unit XVI: The Cold War and European Culture (1945 - 1985)
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Origins of the Cold war
 Truman Doctrine
 United Nations
 NATO
 Warsaw Pact
 Korean War
 Marshall Plan
 Rise of Christian Democrats
 Treaty of Rome and the Common Market
 European Union
 Soviet efforts at Reform (Khrushchev through Brezhnev)
 Soviet domination of Eastern Europe
 Soviet-American Relations (1955 – 1975)
 Policy of Détente
 Global Economy
 Policy of Deterrence
 Nuclear Arms Race
 Irish Home Rule (postwar)
 Second Wave of Women’s Rights Movement
 Counter and Youth Culture
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 29, Palmer chapters 21 and 23
 Reading packets on Cold War, Irish history, women’s movement and youth
culture
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Bloody Sunday” (Ireland)
 Primary Source Analysis: W. Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech
Unit XVII: Europe after the Cold War (1989 – 1995)
Key Concepts and Themes:
 Crisis in the Soviet Union
 Gorbachev, Perestroika and Glasnost
 Eastern European Revolutions of 1989
 Collapse of Communism
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Boris Yeltsin’s CIS
Post-Communism transitions (rise of market economies, nationalism,
immigration)
German Reunification
Dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian War
Assignments and Assessments:
 Kagan chapter 30, Palmer chapter 24
 Documentary/Film Analysis: “Good Bye, Lenin” (Germany) or “No Man’s Land”
(Yugoslavia)
 Unit Test (1945 – 1995) including FRQ
 Final DBQ Project
A.P. Modern European History Exam Review
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