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AP European History

AP European History

High School

Social Studies

Course Description:

In AP European History, students investigate significant events, individuals, developments, and processes from approximately 1450 to the present. Students develop and use the same skills, practices, and methods employed by historians: analyzing primary and secondary sources; developing historical arguments; making historical connections; and utilizing reasoning about comparison, causation, and continuity and change over time. The course also provides seven themes that students explore throughout the course in order to make connections among historical developments in different times and places: interaction of Europe and the world, economic and commercial development, cultural and intellectual development, states and other institutions of power, social organization and development, national and European identity, and technological and scientific innovations.

Semester 1

Unit 1: Renaissance and Exploration
Unit 2: Age of Reformation
Unit 3: Absolutism and Constitutionalism
Unit 4: Scientific, Philosophical, and Political Developments
Unit 5: Conflict, Crisis, and Reaction in the Late 18th Century

Semester 2

Note: if the following section is blank the course is 1 semester long

Unit 6: Industrialization and Its Effects
Unit 7: 19th-Century Perspectives and Political Developments
Unit 8: 20th-Century Global Conflicts
Unit 9: Cold War and Contemporary Europe

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