Essay questions that have appeared on the AP exam:

1. Compare and contrast how two of the following states attempted to hold together their empires in the period 1850-1914: Austria-Hungary, Russia, Ottoman Empire
2. Analyze the ways in which the theories of Freud and Darwin challenged traditional European ways of thinking about religion, morality, and human behavior in the period 1850-1950.
3. Analyze artistic and literary responses to industrialization over the course of the 19th century.
4. Analyze the effects of nationalism on the Austrian Empire in the period 1815 to 1914.
5. Analyze the major factors responsible for the rise of [UGH!] anti-Semitism in 19th-century Europe.
6. European women’s lives changed in the course of the 19th century politically, economically, and socially. Identify and explain the reasons for those changes.Analyze the ways in which two of the following groups challenged British liberalism between 1880 and 1914: Feminists, Irish nationalists, Socialists.
7. Analyze the problems and opportunities associated with the rapid urbanization of western Europe in the 19th century.
8. Referring to specific individuals or works, discuss the ways in which two of the following expressed the concept of nationalism in the 19th century: artists, composers, writers.
9. To what extent did the structure of Russian government and society affect its economic development in the 18th and 19th centuries.
10. “In the second half of the 19th century, most European governments were conservative.” To what extent is this an accurate statement? Use specific examples from at least two countries.

Europeans proved immensely productive on all fronts throughout the 19th century, ultimately challenging traditional assumptions about how the universe works. Controversies concerning ‘race’ and evolution emerged, and philosophy generally became more pessimistic. In literature, Realism and Naturalism predominated, while Impressionism and post-Impressionism produced a revolution in the visual arts.

Time Line

• 1836 the first Daguerreotype camera invented; will fundamentally change visual arts [Crimean War first war to be photographed]
• 1830-48 Auguste Comte, founder of positivism,  publishes The Course of Positive Philosophy
• 1838 Charles Dickens publishes Oliver Twist
• 1848 William Makepeace Thackeray publishes Vanity Fair (he also wrote The Luck of Barry Lyndon in 1844)
• 1853 A. Gobineau publishes ‘Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races’ – est the idea of a master race!
• 1857 Gustave Flaubert publishes Madam Bovary
• 1859 Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species
• 1860s Herbert Spencer publishes Synthetic Philosophy
• 1861 Ivan Turgenev publishes Fathers and Sons
• 1865 Leo Tolstoy publishes War and Peace
• 1866 Feodor Dostoyevsky publishes Crime and Punishment
• 1872 Friedrich Nietzsche publishes The Birth of Tragedy
• 1874 first Impressionist exhibition in Paris
• 1879 Henrik Ibsen (Norwegian), ‘the father of prose drama’ and modernism, publishes A Doll’s House
• 1895 Roentgen discovers X-rays
• 1898 Marie Curie (Poland) discovers radium; she is first person to win two Nobel Prizes, in physics and chemistry
• 1900 Max Planck (Germany) explains quantum theory
• 1905 Albert Einstein proposes theory of relativity

Darwin and Evolution

Developments in the study of biology had a powerful impact upon the thinking of the 19th and 20th centuries. Charles Darwin famously contended that all existing forms of life evolved from earlier forms, and that life involves a constant struggle for existence. Favorable characteristics (that allow for survival) are passed along genetically to subsequent generations. In 1871, Darwin published The Descent of Man, in which he applied his concept to man.

The Cult of Science

Advocates for Darwin’s biological concepts launched attacks upon traditional religion. Science appeared to be well on the way of revealing the secrets of the universe and was

Religion

Methods of analytical scholarship were applied to the Bible. In his 2 vol. Life of Christ, David Friedrich Strauss (German) rejected the divinity of Jesus. Others, such as Ernest Renan, rejected miracles and the resurrection altogether.

While increasing skepticism with regard to religion is part of the 19th century, so too is heightened religiosity by many in the educated/ruling classes (a change from the Enlightenment).Romanticism prompted some to return to more traditional and ceremonial forms (the Oxford Movement in the UK), and Liberalism and Imperialism prompted the Christian mission movement (Muscular Christianity).  Three talismans of European power in the late 19th century were the railway, the rifle, and the Bible.

Generally, liberal Protestants accepted Modernism and modified their religious ideas accordingly. Judaism similarly witnessed a split between conservatives and liberals; Reform Judaism emerged as a form of Jewish Modernism. The Catholic Church also fought against the rising tide of liberalism (and had been a major obstacle to the early liberals’ attempts at unifying Italy). In 1870, the First Vatican Council strengthened the position of the pope by proclaiming the dogma of papal infallibility; this means that the pope speaks free of doctrinal error when he speaks in his official capacity (ex cathedra) – it doesn’t mean that if the pope announces sunny weather that it won’t rain.

Race

Theories of ‘race’ accompanied biological arguments throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries (reaching a horrific peak in 1930s-40s Germany). ‘Racial inferiority’ became a way of explaining why some regions and peoples failed to develop advanced technologies and justifying European imperialism.

New Physics

In the late 19th century, physicists began to question the mechanistic laws revealed by Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th. Enlightenment philosophs viewed the universe as a beautifully harmonious machine (the clock analogy) that operates in accordance with natural laws. Scientists in the 19th century revived atomic theory — Dmitri Mendeleyev (Russia) devised a periodic chart showing atomic weights of all known elements and predicted the existence of three unknown elements; by 1886, all three had been identified. During the 1890s, physicists Joseph Thomson (Britain) and Hendrik Lorentz (Netherlands) independently demonstrated that atoms are composed of particles which Lorentz named electrons.

The work of William Roentgen (Germany)  and the Curies (Poland) in radioactivity led to Max Planck (Germany) setting out in 1900 his quantum theory, which overturned traditional notions of physics. In 1905 Albert Einstein (Germany) proposed his theory of relativity, rejecting Newton’s belief that space, time, and motion are absolutes. The implication of quantum theory and Einstein’s relativity is that objective observation can not, in fact, reveal with certainly the ultimate secrets of nature – a strut to modernist angst and post-modern relativism. New Physics also undermined the cult of science, as scientists were forced to acknowledge that they did not possess absolute knowledge, and had to speak of probability rather than of certainty.  As historian of science Jacob Bronowski writes:

One achievement of physics in the 20th century has been to prove that an exact picture of the material world is unattainable…. There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility. That is the human condition; and that is what quantum physics says. I mean that literally.

Philosophy and Psychology

Literature and the Arts