Running out of time before AP European History? Units 3–5 (1648–1848) are the highest-priority content for last-minute cramming — they appear on more FRQ prompts than any other era.
Non-Negotiable Concepts
- Absolutism: Louis XIV's divine right model vs constitutional limitations in England (Glorious Revolution, 1688)
- Enlightenment thinkers: Locke (natural rights, consent), Voltaire (religious tolerance), Rousseau (general will), Wollstonecraft (women's rights), Montesquieu (separation of powers)
- French Revolution stages: Estates-General → National Assembly → Radical Phase (Committee of Public Safety, Reign of Terror) → Directory → Napoleon
- Napoleon: Napoleonic Code, Continental System, nationalism spreading through conquest, Congress of Vienna (1815) and its conservative reaction
- Industrial Revolution: Why Britain first (coal + iron geography, enclosures, capital markets), spread to Continent, social effects (urbanization, class conflict)
- Nationalism and 1848: Revolutions fail but push reforms; German and Italian unification (Bismarck/Garibaldi/Cavour) 1860s–1871
- WWI causes: M-A-I-N (militarism, alliances, imperialism, nationalism); Schlieffen Plan; trench warfare stalemate
- Interwar period: Weimar Republic, hyperinflation, rise of fascism (how economic despair + nationalist humiliation creates totalitarian movements)
DBQ Sourcing — The Point Most Students Drop
Use HAPP for each document: Historical Context, Audience, Purpose, Point of View. You need to source at least 3 of the 7 documents. For Point of View, explain how the author's background shapes the argument — not just that "he was a king so he would support monarchy."
LEQ Thesis Formula
State a claim + give your line of reasoning: "The French Revolution transformed European politics primarily by spreading nationalist ideology that destabilized the conservative order established at Vienna in 1815, though its immediate legal reforms proved more durable than its short-lived republican government."
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