AP Euro Unit 1 Test
Study Guide
Directions: Please refer to notes, the scanned online textbook chapters, primary source
documents, and online power points to identify the key people, places, events, concepts, and
ideas. I will collect this study guide for a grade on Monday when you take the exam.
Chapter 2 Summary:
Beginning in Italy, the Renaissance (or “rebirth”) was an era that rediscovered the culture
of ancient Greece and Rome. It was also a time of recovery from the fourteenth century. In
comparison with medieval society, the Renaissance had a more secular and individualistic ethos,
but might best have been seen as evolutionary in its urban and commercial continuity from the
High Middle Ages. In the North Sea, the Hanseatic League competed with merchants from the
Mediterranean, where the Venetians had a commercial empire. In Florence, profits from the
woolen industry were invested in banking.
The aristocracy remained the ruling class, its ideals explicated in Castiglione’s The Book
of the Courtier. Peasants were still the vast majority, but serfdom and manorialism were dying
out. An important minority were the inhabitants of towns and cities, with merchants and bankers
at the apex and the unskilled workers at the bottom. The father or husband as a dictator
dominated the extended family, and marriages were arranged for social and economic advantage.
Wives were much younger than their husbands, with their primary function being to bear
children; the mortality rate in childbirth and for infants and young children remained high.
Italy was dominated by five major states: the duchy of Milan, Florence, Venice, the Papal
States, and the kingdom of Naples. There were also other city-states that were centers of culture
and where women played vital roles. At the end of the fifteenth century, Spain and France
invaded the divided peninsula. The exemplar of the new statecraft was Niccolo Machiavelli,
whose The Prince described the methods of gaining and holding political power: moral concerns
are irrelevant, for the ends justify the means.
There was an increased emphasis upon the human. Among the influential humanists was
Petrarch in his advocacy of classical Latin writers. Civic humanism posited that the ideal citizen
was not only an intellectual but also a patriot, actively serving the state, and humanist education
was to produce individuals of virtue and wisdom. The printing press was perfected, multiplying
the availability of books. In art, the aim was to imitate nature by the use of realistic perspective.
Masaccio, Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael combined natural realism
with Platonic idealism. The artisan might become a great artist, and thus transform his social and
economic status.
It was the era of the “new monarchies.” In France, Louis XI, the Spider, established a
centralized state. England’s Henry VII limited the private armies of the aristocracy, raised taxes,
and left a more powerful monarchy. In Spain, Isabella and Ferdinand created a professional army
and enforced religious uniformity by the conversion and expulsion of Jews and Muslims. The
Holy Roman Empire remained weak, but the Habsburg emperors created a strong state of their
own through numerous marriages. There were no “new monarchies” in Eastern Europe, but
Russia’s Ivan III ended Mongol control. Lastly, in 1453 the Ottoman Turks captured
Constantinople.
The church was besieged by problems. John Wycliffe and John Huss condemned the
papacy for corruption, its temporal concerns, and demanded the Bible in the vernacular. The
popes reflected their era, and their secular involvements overshadowed their spiritual
responsibilities. Some preferred war and politics to prayers and piety, and others ignored their
vows of celibacy, ambitiously advancing their families over the needs of the faithful. Most were
great patrons of the arts, but religious concerns ranked behind the pleasure of this life.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were an era of Western global expansion. Among
the motives, economies ranked first, followed by religion and adventure or fame, or, as the text
quotes, “Gold, glory, and gold.” It occurred when it did because of the emergence of centralized
monarchies, sufficient wealth to finance such endeavors, and new technologies such as better
maps and charts, more seaworthy ships, the compass and astrolabe, and knowledge of Atlantic
winds.
The first to venture forth were Portugal and Spain. Portuguese ships were exploring and
trading along Africa’s west coast by the mid-fifteenth century, bringing back slaves and gold.
Southern Africa was rounded in 1488, and India was reached in 1498, followed by the Malay
Peninsula and the Spice Islands (Indonesia). The Portuguese empire was one of trade; its
population was too small to establish large colonies, but Spain had greater resources. Seeking the
same Asian goal as Portugal, the Italian Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, reached the
Caribbean West Indies in 1492, believing it was part of Asia. It was not, and the new found land
(to him) became known as the New World or America, after Amerigo Vespucci, an early
geographer. Spanish conquistadors arrived on the mainland of Mesoamerica in 1519. Aztec
resistance was quickly overcome thanks to assistance from other native states, gunpowder and
horses, and European diseases such as smallpox; for which the native population had no
immunity. In South America, the Incas were conquered by the 1530s. The natives became
Spanish subjects, but were often exploited by Spanish settlers. Two viceroys (vice kings) ruled in
Mexico City and Lima, Peru; Catholic missionaries under the control of the Spanish crown
brought Christianity, including cathedrals, schools, and the inquisition, to the native population.
Although originally less priced than gold and spies, slaves became a major object of
trade, and by the nineteenth century ten million African slaves had been shipped to America.
Slavery was common in Africa, and the African terminus of trade was in the hands of the
Africans, but the insatiable demand for slaves led to increased warfare on the unfortunate
continent. It was not until the late 1700s that slavery came under criticism in Europe.
The Dutch expelled Portugal from the Spice Islands by 1600, and in India, the British
East India Company controlled the Mughal Empire by the mid-1700s. Trade with China was
limited, its rulers believing the West offered nothing that China needed, and Japan gave only the
Dutch even minimal trading rights. In the New World, the Dutch, French, and the British also
established colonies. Eventually British North America consisted of thirteen colonies. France
established an empire in Canada, but its French population remained small.
In Europe, a commercial revolution led to integrated markets. Joint-stock trading
companies, and banking and stock exchange facilities. Mercantilist theory posited that a nation
should acquire as much gold and silver as possible, there must be a favorable balance of trade, or
more exports than imports, and the state would provide subsidies to manufactures, grant
monopolies to traders, build roads and canals, and impose high tariffs to limit imports.
The impact of European expansion was mixed. In the Americas, the native culture was
largely destroyed and a new multiracial society evolved. That was less true in British America,
which became mainly European in population and culture. The Columbian exchange saw
Europeans bringing horses, cattle, sugarcane, wheat, as well as disease and gunpowder to the
New World and adopting the potato, maize (corn), and chocolate in turn. Native cultures were
least affected in Asia, particularly Japan and China. Missionaries, mostly Catholic, were mainly
successful in the New World, and within Europe, imperial rivalries could lead to war.
Key topics, people, places, ideas & Concepts: (give a brief description of each)
Black Death
Conciliar Movement
Hundred Year’s War
Great Russians, White Russians, Little
Joan of Arc
Pope Innocent III
Pope Urban IV
Pope Boniface VIII
Unam Sactum
Babylonian Captivity
Pope John XXII
John Wycliffe
John Huss
Lollards & Hussites
Great Schism
Pope Urban VI
Pope Alexander V
Russians
Boyars
Genghis Khan
Treaty of Lodi
Cosimo de Medici
Lorenzo the Magnificent
The Visconti Family & Sforza Family
League of Venice
Venice
Merchant oligarchy
Humanism
Baldassare Castiglione Book of the Courtier
Platonic Academy
Francesco Petrarch
Motive for Exploration
Dante Alighieri the Divine Comedy
Portuguese and Spanish Empires
The Decameron by Govani Boccaccio
Slave Trade
Linear perspective
Columbian Exchange
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Mercantilism
Leonardo da Vinci
Commercial Capitalism
Raphael
Big topics to understand:
Brothers of the Common life (Northern
The Family Structure and life of Women
Renaissance)
during the Renaissance
Johann Guttenburg—Printing Press
Difference between Italian and Northern
Desiderius Erasmus
Thomas Moore, Utopia
Christopher Columbus
Amerigo Vespucci
Ferdinand Magellan
Henry the Navigator
Renaissance
Structure and Function of Italian States
Birth of politics with Machiavelli
Impact of the Printing Press
The Renaissance Papacy
Essay topics
Write an essay that:
• Has a relevant thesis.
• Addresses all parts of the question.
• Supports thesis with specific evidence.
• Is well organized
Analyze the educational and social opportunities and/or limitations for upper and merchant class women in
Renaissance society.
Analyze the influence of humanism on the visual arts in the Italian Renaissance. Use at
least THREE specific works to support your analysis.
Using examples from at least two different states, analyze the key features of the “new
monarchies” and the factors responsible for their rise in the period 1450 to 1550.
Analyze the effects of the Columbian exchange (the interchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old
World and the New World) on the population and economy of Europe in the period 1550 to 1700