Diplomacy Review

AP Lang and Comp testing wiped out a scheduled review of diplomatic history, although Jack was undaunted and started a brainstorming review document organized by century.  Students interested in big picture review might add the most salient alliances, treaties, wars, and themes to the document.  Diplomatic as a historical category refers to relationships between sovereigns and/or states, often taking the aforementioned forms.  This history, obviously, affects and was affected by the development of nation-states over the past 500 years of European History.  So, skimming through highlights of diplomatic history will also bring some political developments to the surface. Check out the key maps in the presentation below; the interposed images are of change agents.  See if you can make the connections between the images and the maps.

 

Other than discussions of imperialism, diplomatically themed FRQ are less popular than the other five subcategories of AP European History (i.e. political, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural).  Here's an example where diplomatic content was probably the difference between scores of 4 and 6:

Considering the period 1933 to 1945, analyze the diplomatic, economic, and military reasons for Germany's defeat in the Second World War.

What would diplomatic content look like in a quality response to this prompt?

Postwar Europe

Soviet cartoon criticizing the Marshall Plan

An excited band of scholars met after school today to discuss postwar Europe.  One student attached the cartoon at left, which depicts American postwar assistance to Western Europe as a form of imperialism, to our brainstorming review document.  Check it out and add more ideas.  The cartoon brings together key points from the first two columns.  The Cold War between the US and the USSR was a major factor in postwar Europe.  Europe was divided into East and West, while countries in both blocs forged closer ties.  After the fall of communism, 1989-91, the liberal West has expanded to included former communist states.  Today, the European Union contains three countries--Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--that were once part of the Soviet Union; and, all of the former Warsaw Pact member states, except the Soviet Union, are now a part of the NATO.

Most of Europe faced substantial rebuilding after WWII, but the Western, capitalist countries eventually began a long economic expansion that reshaped their societies and brought France, West Germany, Italy, and the Low Countries closer together.  This expansion continued the urbanization and the growth of the middle class that are megatrends in European history since 1450.  This growing changing economy presented more opportunities for women who had entered the paid workforce in large numbers during the world wars. This, combined with an assertive feminism, created the conditions for the legal and social equality of women.  Expanding educational opportunities in both eastern and western Europe were another factor in the growth of managerial, clerical, and technical careers on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Gandhi spinning thread. Photo by Margaret Bourke White, 1946.

Students nailed several aspects of decolonization--the process by which former colonies became independent states--following World War II.  In some cases this was violent, such as anti-French wars in Indochina and Algeria.  The primary example of nonviolent anti-colonial movement was Gandhi's (and others) campaign for Indian independence, although this was marked by Muslim-Hindu violence that accompanied the creation of Pakistan.  John Green's crash course on the decolonization, embedded at the bottom of the review page, summarizes the factors responsible for the end of European empires: World War II, which exhausted resources and drained imperialism of moral legitimacy; and, nationalist movements in former colonies.  The results were scores of new nation states, many with problematic borders and immigration from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean into Europe as former colonial subjects sought economic opportunity.

The postwar period is three chapters, instead of two, in the more recent issues of McKay, and reviewing students should follow the developments above to the twenty-first century.  There is often a postwar FRQ, and if not there will be multiple choice questions.  How might you approach one of the following, all from the last two years?

• Analyze various factors that contributed to the process of decolonization in the period 1914 to 1975.
• Analyze the factors that led to the expansion of women’s participation in the paid workforce in Europe over the course of the twentieth century. 
•  Analyze the factors that led to the expansion of the welfare state in Western Europe in the mid-twentieth century. 

Feel free to discuss in comments.

French Revolution

View the whole presentation here

A merry band of typing history scholars filled the French Revolution review document with information today after school in S109.  This major event has so many well-documented events, names, and developments associated with it that even more could be added.  The eager learners also put the events in order for the last four columns!  Despite what some have heard, historians don't usually blame a random, twenty-first century American teenager for the twenty-six years of revolution and war.  They do, however, often divide the Revolution into three phases followed by the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Revolutionary calendar, topped with Liberty

One important theme that did not emerge in today's discussion was the types of social and political change pursued in the radical revolution.  Radical means more than violent.  There was violence in all of the phases of the revolution, although the Reign of Terror was a key aspect of the radical phase.  The radicals also attempted to fundamentally alter French society with De-Christianization, republican government, price controls, and total war against Austria and Prussia. Under Robespierre the National Convention ended slavery in the French colonies.  The earlier moderate revolution had instituted liberal changes to France.  The National Assembly ended noble privileges, restrained the King and the church, protected property rights and individual rights, and enfranchised propertied men.  Free-response questions on the French Revolution and Napoleonic period often ask students to analyze revolutionary action or participation in specific ways.  For instance, in 2012 many students wrote on this question:

Analyze various ways in which government policies during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era contributed to a greater sense of French national identity in the period 1789 to 1815.

Answering this question well requires students to apply examples that relate to the emerging notion of national identity.  Which examples could be used to answer this question?  How would you analyze them?

Chronology

At review sessions I keep hearing myself describe certain dates as very important or useful to know. In the past I have had classes collaboratively create lists of the most important dates. Here is a list of mine:

c.1450

1492
1517
1555
1618-1648
1688/9
1776
1789
1815
1848
1914
1917
1939
1945
1968
1989


These 16 dates are heavily weighted toward political and diplomatic history. Use your sense of the century sheets to identify big themes and developments in the other categories in particular centuries. What makes these key dates? What other dates might you add? What long term developments or time periods belong in your chronological scheme of European History since 1450?  Post thoughts in comments.

Early Modern Eastern Europe

A fistful of lively learners rocked our last review session solely devoted to the early modern Europe.  After school tomorrow we will return to the French Revolution, pivot event between early and just plain modern.  So early modern is generally speaking the 15th through 18th centuries.  Review today focused on eastern Europe, especially the rise of the Russian Empire from Ivan the Terrible (r. 1533-1584) through Peter the Great (r. 1689-1725) to Catherine the Great (r. 1762-1796).  Here is a quick primer, including the origins of Russian culture before our course begins:


I also did a screencast on this.  Russia expanded greatly under Ivan, Peter, and Catherine, all of whom increased the power of the state and the military.

Although Catherine the Great, played by Becca Timo at our Salon, is considered an Enlightened monarch, she did not end serfdom in the Russian Empire.  Noble land owners gained authority over their peasants during and after the time of Ivan the Terrible.  Tsars controlled the nobility and the nobility controlled their serfs.  Early modern Eastern Europe was socially and economically dominated by noble land owners, and a prominent merchant class did not develop.  This lack of a modernizing bourgeoisie made much of Eastern Europe different than Western Europe.

Catherine did reform the law, by creating a legal code, and supported education, the arts, and the Encyclopedia.  Like other Russian Tsars, however, she was unwilling to take the side of the serfs against the nobles, whose support she needed to stay in power.  This was especially true after the Pugachev Rebellion, a massive peasant uprising that started along the Volga River, and the French Revolution, to which we will turn our attention tomorrow after school.

DBQ Camp!

I am live blogging this morning's DBQ camp, where six happy campers are digging into the 2000 DBQ on rituals and festivals.  A few documents, including the Brueghel painting below, discuss Shrove Tuesday (aka Fat Tuesday), the last day of Carnival (aka Mardi Gras) before lent which was a time of austerity.  Lots of merrymaking.  Brueghel, as a painter, however, may be exaggerating the level of mayhem in order to make his painting more interesting.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Battle Between Carnival and Lent, 1559

See what I did there?  Sourcing analysis!  That's what the scholars in 109 are doing, too.  I have this and other practice DBQs.  I recommend doing one or two, or at least outlining, before the test.  Remember the blue sheet? Give it a look when you practice.

Absolutism, especially the French kind

Cold winters of the late 16th-century continued into the 17th.
Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow,  1565

AP Euro review over the past week has been criss-crossing the the 17th century, generally a rough time: destructive wars, growth of serfdom in eastern Europe, and bad weather.  Amidst this several monarchs increased their power. In review we have mentioned but not discussed the growth of absolutism, especially in France during the 1600s.  French Kings, especially Louis XIV, strove become the absolute rulers of their countries.  While they never achieved this ideal, the power of central governments and the state did expand in many places, even in constitutional England.  In absolute monarchies--France, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire--this meant more power in the hands of the monarch.  Places where this concentration of power did not happen, such as Poland, were often overpowered by stronger states.

To review you might view the short video below on Louis XIV.  There is also a short quiz on a few of these topics.  Enjoy!