Cracking the AP World History Exam, 2014 Edition by Princeton Review

Author:Princeton Review [Review, The Princeton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-94627-0
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2013-09-24T00:00:00+00:00

Now for a few of the details.

Religious Divisions Around 1550

In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg was intended to bring an end to the constant conflicts between Catholics and Protestants that engulfed the region during the Reformation and counter-reformation. The peace didn’t last. The Thirty Years’ War began in 1618 when the Protestant territories in Bohemia (which was under the rule of the Catholic Hapsburg clan) challenged the authority of the Holy Roman Catholic emperor, a situation that frequently arose prior to the Peace of Augsburg. This time, though, the conflict grew bigger than anything before it, and developed into a huge religious war, as well as a major political war. Everyone seemed to want a piece of the action, including other countries, like France (under Richelieu), Denmark, and Sweden. Although this grew into a war between major European powers, actual fighting stayed within the German empire, which meant that after 30 years of fighting, many parts of Germany were left depopulated and devastated. Some estimates suggest that the Holy Roman Empire lost one-third of its population during these 30 years, some 7 million people.

When the Peace of Westphalia was negotiated in 1648, the independence of small German states was affirmed, and Prussia became the strongest of them. The Holy Roman Empire was left barely limping along. Its territories had been reduced and its emperor, along with the Hapsburg family, was much less powerful. Somehow the Holy Roman Empire survived in name until 1806, but it hardly had any power after Westphalia.

The biggest beneficiary of the war was France. It became the most powerful country in Europe during the seventeenth century under Louis XIV, although, as you already read, by the eighteenth century it was weakened after the country overspent and overplayed its hand, particularly during the War of Spanish Succession. The other war beneficiary was Prussia, the German city-state centered in Berlin, which also controlled parts of Poland. Prussia eventually rose to dominate the German territories, unifying them into the powerful country of Germany, but you’ll read about that in the next chapter.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.