AP European History › Unit 1
Starting around 1450, Italian humanists revived classical learning, and the printing press carried new ideas north. Unit 1 also covers the New Monarchies, voyages of exploration, the Columbian Exchange, the Atlantic slave trade, and the Commercial Revolution. Exam questions ask you to analyze primary and secondary sources and explain causes, often in short-answer form. Students tend to treat the Renaissance as a sudden break with the Middle Ages. Many also describe exploration vaguely instead of naming specific causes, such as competition for trade, religious zeal, and new navigation technology.
These are taken from the Regular set, with the answer and explanation shown.
"How they will rage against me, and if opportunity is afforded how eagerly and how quickly they will drag me to punishment! For I am writing against not only the dead, but the living also, not this man or that, but a host, not merely private individuals, but the authorities..."
"...it is not true either that a copy of the Donation is found in the Decretum [of Gratian], or that it was taken from the History of Sylvester; for it is not found in it or in any history, and it is comprised of contradictions, impossibilities, stupidities, barbarisms and absurdities."
Translated by Christopher B. Coleman (Yale University Press, 1922). Text: Hanover Historical Texts Project
1. Valla's service at the court of Alfonso of Aragon is most relevant for understanding which aspect of the Discourse?
Answer: D. Alfonso was fighting the pope over Naples, so an attack on the pope's claim to rule lands helped Valla's patron. Valla expected the authorities to "rage against" him, and a king's protection let him take the risk. Valla was Catholic, and Protestantism began only in 1517.
Common trap: Students pick the Protestant option because Valla attacks the pope. But Valla died in 1457, about 60 years before Luther.
"We have in our time Ferdinand of Aragon, the present King of Spain... In the beginning of his reign he attacked Granada, and this enterprise was the foundation of his dominions... he held the minds of the barons of Castile occupied in thinking of the war and not anticipating any innovations; thus they did not perceive that by these means he was acquiring power and authority over them. He was able with the money of the Church and of the people to sustain his armies...
Further, always using religion as a plea, so as to undertake greater schemes, he devoted himself with pious cruelty to driving out and clearing his kingdom of the Moors..."
Translated by W. K. Marriott (1908). Text: Marxists Internet Archive
2. According to Machiavelli, Ferdinand used the war against Granada chiefly to
Answer: D. Machiavelli says the war kept "the minds of the barons" busy, so "they did not perceive" the king gaining power over them. Taming the nobility was a key goal of the New Monarchs. Granada, the last Muslim state in Spain, fell in 1492.
Common trap: The barons choice is the opposite of Machiavelli's point. The war strengthened the king at the nobles' expense.
"...of Three Millions of Persons, which lived in Hispaniola itself, there is at present but the inconsiderable remnant of scarce Three Hundred. Nay the Isle of Cuba... lies now uncultivated, like a Desert, and entombed in its own Ruins..."
"Now the ultimate end and scope that incited the Spaniards to endeavor the Extirpation and Desolation of this People, was Gold only... they treated them (I speak of things which I was an Eye Witness of, without the least fallacy) not as Beasts... but as the most abject dung and filth of the Earth..."
Seventeenth-century English translation, as reprinted from Project Gutenberg. Text: The American Yawp Reader
3. As the caption notes, Las Casas's account was soon translated and printed in the Netherlands and England. Spain's rivals there most likely used it to
Answer: C. Dutch and English Protestants, who were fighting Spain, used Las Casas to paint the Spanish as cruel. Historians call this image the "Black Legend." It helped justify raids on Spanish ships and new rival colonies.
Common trap: Students forget that a translation can have a different audience and purpose than the original.