AP®︎ European History: Unit 1 Flashcards

European intellectual and cultural movement that revived classical learning and promoted humanism, naturalism, individual achievement, and reform, beginning in Italy and spreading north of the Alps

Independent republics, duchies, and principalities such as Florence, Venice, and Milan whose commercial wealth, political rivalry, and patronage fostered the Renaissance

Renaissance educational and scholarly movement based on recovering and studying classical Greek and Roman texts to cultivate eloquence, judgment, morality, and public effectiveness

The humanist curriculum of grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy

Renewed study of Greek and Roman texts in their original languages as models for education, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and art

The “father of humanism,” who recovered Latin manuscripts, promoted classical literary style, and helped establish the humanist revival while remaining Christian

Humanist study of a text's language, manuscripts, and historical context to determine its origin, meaning, and most authentic form

Increased attention to worldly affairs and explanations not based exclusively on theology, without necessarily rejecting Christianity

Renaissance emphasis on an individual's distinctive abilities, achievements, reputation, personality, and capacity for self-development

Application of classical learning to active citizenship, public service, political participation, defense of liberty, and service to the state

Machiavelli’s term for a ruler’s capacity to act decisively, adapt to circumstances, and shape political outcomes

Florentine diplomat who used classical history and contemporary observation to analyze how states acquire power, preserve order, and survive conflict

Machiavelli's 1513 analysis of how rulers gain and preserve states, judging deception, coercion, and other actions by their political effectiveness

Florentine banking dynasty that converted wealth into political influence and patronage of humanists, artists, architects, and philosophers

Financial and political support through which rulers, popes, governments, guilds, and wealthy families commissioned culture to display devotion, status, and authority

Artistic effort to depict bodies, faces, emotion, movement, light, objects, and physical space in convincing lifelike ways

Mathematical technique for creating depth in which receding parallel lines converge at a vanishing point on the viewer's horizon line

Florentine architect associated with the early systematic development of linear perspective and the revival of classical proportions, rounded arches, columns, and ordered spaces

Florentine Renaissance sculptor who revived classical freestanding sculpture, contrapposto, naturalistic anatomy, and the nude, most famously in his bronze David

Renaissance artist and investigator whose studies of anatomy, mechanics, engineering, and nature joined artistic naturalism with close observation

High Renaissance sculptor, painter, and architect known for monumental, idealized, anatomically powerful human figures in civic and papal commissions

High Renaissance painter known for balanced compositions, idealized naturalism, perspective, and Vatican frescoes such as The School of Athens

Vatican fresco depicting ancient thinkers in classical architecture, with balanced naturalistic figures and perspective centered on Plato and Aristotle

Late-fifteenth- and sixteenth-century adaptation of Renaissance humanism and naturalism north of the Alps, marked by Christian reform, moral improvement, and attention to ordinary life

Application of Renaissance learning and textual scholarship to Christianity to promote educated faith, moral renewal, and reform of the Church

Dutch Christian humanist who used classical learning, satire, education, and biblical philology to seek moral reform within the Catholic Church

Erasmus’s 1511 satire exposing vanity, superstition, clerical worldliness, and hypocrisy in order to encourage Christian reform

English Christian humanist who used classical learning and moral criticism, most notably in Utopia, to question European social and political institutions

Thomas More’s 1516 dialogue about an ambiguous imaginary society that criticizes European greed, inequality, punishment, warfare, and political corruption

Flemish painter renowned for highly detailed naturalism, luminous color, religious symbolism, and sophisticated use of oil paint

German artist who combined Italian perspective, proportion, and anatomy with northern detail, landscape, individuality, and Christian imagery, especially in prints

Northern artist who made peasant labor, festivals, village customs, seasonal landscapes, and biblical scenes in contemporary settings subjects of serious art

Mainz printer who developed a commercially practical European movable-type printing system in the 1450s

Mechanical and organizational system that reproduced many substantially identical pages quickly and lowered the cost per copy for large print runs

Reusable individual metal characters arranged to form pages, then redistributed for later printing

Literature written in ordinary regional languages rather than Latin, expanding readership and helping standardize national languages

Late-fifteenth- and early-sixteenth-century monarchies that increased crown control over taxation, armed force, justice, administration, and religion, laying foundations for centralized modern states

Supreme political authority within a defined territory; a sovereign state claims final authority against independent nobles, churches, cities, assemblies, and foreign powers

First Tudor king, who strengthened the English crown by restricting noble retainers, using royal justice and financial penalties, and cooperating with gentry and local officials

Tudor royal court derived from the king’s council that used juryless procedures to punish powerful offenders and curb aristocratic independence

French new monarch who used diplomacy, war, patronage, and administrative pressure to weaken rival princes and expand Valois royal authority

Their 1469 marriage created a dynastic union that strengthened royal administration, military power, and Catholic conformity while leaving Castile and Aragon institutionally separate

Centuries of Christian expansion against Muslim-ruled states in Iberia, ending with Spain’s conquest of Granada in 1492

Royal-controlled tribunal authorized in 1478 to investigate alleged heresy, initially among conversos, and enforce Catholic religious conformity

Tudor king who used Parliament to sever England from Rome and establish crown supremacy over the English church after the pope refused his annulment

Tudor queen whose 1559 religious settlement restored royal supremacy and required outward conformity to standardized Church of England worship

Series of conflicts beginning in 1494 in which France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and Italian states fought for control of the politically fragmented Italian peninsula

A light, maneuverable Portuguese ship with a shallow draft and lateen or mixed sails, suited to Atlantic and coastal exploration

A triangular fore-and-aft sail that allowed ships to sail closer to the wind and tack

A magnetized needle that indicated north and south, allowing sailors to maintain headings across open water

A weighted circular instrument used to estimate latitude from the angle of the sun or a star above the horizon

Nautical charts showing coastlines, ports, hazards, distances, and rhumb lines representing compass bearings

A vertical rudder at a ship’s rear that improved steering, stability, and maneuverability

Portuguese prince who sponsored expeditions, mapmaking, and maritime activity along Africa’s coast but rarely sailed himself

Portuguese navigator who rounded southern Africa in 1488, proving that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were connected by sea

Portuguese navigator who reached India by sailing around Africa in 1498, opening a direct European maritime route to the Indian Ocean

Navigator sponsored by Spain who sailed west seeking Asia in 1492 but reached the Caribbean, initiating sustained Spanish expansion in the Americas

Portuguese navigator who led the 1519 Spanish expedition that found a westward route to Asia and, after his death, completed the first circumnavigation under Elcano

1494 agreement dividing overseas claims between Spain west of a north-south line and Portugal east of it, placing Brazil in Portugal’s zone

Policies treating commerce and colonies as sources of state power through regulated trade, monopolies, exports, precious metals, and limits on imports

Spanish conquerors who used military technology, Indigenous alliances, and royal authorization to overthrow American empires and claim territory and wealth for Spain

Spanish conquistador who allied with enemies of the Aztecs and conquered the Aztec Empire between 1519 and 1521

Spanish conquistador who exploited civil conflict, captured Atahualpa, and conquered the Inca Empire in the 1530s

Spanish colonial system granting colonists claims to Indigenous tribute and labor in return for supposed protection and Christianization, often resulting in coercion and abuse

Spanish Dominican friar who condemned colonial violence and Indigenous enslavement and urged the Crown to protect Indigenous Americans

1550–1551 Spanish debate in which Las Casas defended Indigenous humanity and rights against Sepúlveda’s arguments that conquest and forced subordination were justified

Portugal’s network of fortified ports and trading posts intended to control strategic sea-lanes and commerce around Africa and across the Indian Ocean

Territorial empire across the Americas, Caribbean, and Philippines whose silver and trade helped make Spain Europe’s dominant 16th-century monarchy

Dutch chartered company founded in 1602 that traded, negotiated treaties, built forts, maintained armed forces, and waged war in Asia

An English joint-stock company chartered in 1600 that pooled private capital for long-distance trade under state-granted monopoly privileges

Large-scale transfer of plants, animals, diseases, people, and cultural practices between the Americas and Europe, Africa, and Asia after 1492

Commercial network linking European shipping and finance, African captives, and American plantation production and commodities

The gradual expansion of European commerce, finance, monetary exchange, private investment, and market-oriented agriculture from about 1450 to 1648

Simplified Atlantic circuit exchanging European goods in Africa, carrying captives to the Americas, and shipping colonial commodities to Europe

Commercial system centered on large estates producing export cash crops with a controlled labor force, especially enslaved Africans

Forced transportation and enslavement of Africans in the Americas, expanded as plantation labor demand grew and Indigenous populations were devastated

Forced Atlantic voyage carrying enslaved Africans from Africa to the Americas under crowded, violent, and deadly conditions

Catastrophic Indigenous population decline from disease, warfare, displacement, and forced labor, encouraging colonizers to import enslaved Africans

The sustained, uneven rise in European prices during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, driven chiefly by population recovery and American silver

Gold or silver valued by weight, especially precious metal accumulated by states and merchants as wealth and monetary reserves

Economic activity organized around private investment, profit, markets, credit, and the accumulation of capital

An economy in which rents, wages, taxes, debts, and purchases are increasingly valued and paid in money rather than barter or labor alone

Accounting that records each transaction as corresponding debit and credit entries, helping merchants track errors, assets, liabilities, and profits

An enterprise in which multiple investors pooled capital and divided potential profits and losses through shares

Farming primarily to meet a household’s needs and obligations, with only a modest surplus sold in markets

A northern European system dividing land among autumn grain, a spring crop, and fallow, with those uses rotating among the fields each year

A Mediterranean system in which cultivation and fallow alternated between two portions of the arable land

The reorganization of farming toward specialized production for regional or international markets rather than primarily household subsistence

The consolidation of scattered strips and common lands into separately controlled holdings, often restricting peasants’ customary access

Rural production system in which merchants supplied raw materials to households that made goods for wages before returning them for finishing and sale

Urban organization of masters in a trade that regulated training, production, prices, quality, and admission through apprentice and journeyman stages

Peasants with personal freedom and relatively secure landholding or tenancy who paid rents rather than owing extensive compulsory labor services

The early modern reinforcement of eastern European serfdom as nobles restricted peasant mobility and expanded compulsory labor on export-oriented estates

A period of generally cooler and less stable conditions that shortened growing seasons and contributed to poor harvests, famine, and economic insecurity

The western and northwestern European tendency toward late marriage and frequent nonmarriage, delaying childbearing and restraining population growth