This book provides wide-ranging examples of the historical thinking and themes that appear throughout the revised Advanced Placement (AP) curriculum in European History. It begins with a concise summary of modern Europe’s ancient and medieval origins, but all subsequent chapters focus on both western and eastern European developments during the four eras of the AP course: 1450–1648, 1648–1815, 1815–1914, and 1914 to the present. The discussion of each era incorporates political, economic, social, and cultural history, thereby introducing readers to the main thematic approaches to modern historical knowledge. The new AP course emphasizes the analytical and interpretive skills of historical thinking, so this book (and its supporting web-based materials) is especially useful for students who need to acquire such skills while they are also gaining new knowledge of important historical events and transformations.

The essential skills of historical thinking, as summarized in the AP curriculum, include the ability to analyze historical causation, periodization, and the interactions of change and continuity across time. Such forms of chronological, historical thinking are also connected to the ability to develop synthetic interpretations of diverse historical cultures, construct historical arguments with specific examples or evidence, and compare the similarities or differences of conflicts and events in various historical eras. These multiple aspects and layers of analytical historical thought shape every section of this book. Although the chapters focus on different historical periods, societies, and changes, they all develop analytical, comparative, and synthetic arguments. The narrative uses these methods of historical writing to explain and analyze major historical transitions such as the Italian Renaissance, Protestant Reformation, European encounters with other cultures, Enlightenment philosophies, modern wars and political upheavals, agricultural and industrial revolutions, and complex conflicts between European social classes.

The descriptions of major historical changes also exemplify contemporary methods of historical thought by explaining how the convergence of deep structural patterns and influential public events carried European societies into the modern era and spread European political, economic, and cultural practices throughout the modern world. Each chapter examines the ways in which notable public figures, social groups, cultural movements, and national governments responded to evolving political and economic contexts. The synthetic accounts of major events discuss broad historical questions and cross-cultural themes, but they also refer to specific examples to explain how social and political upheavals arise from both particular and general causes.

As noted earlier in the discussion of the new feature, “Historical Interpretations and Debates,” readers will be able to evaluate contrasting interpretations that historians have proposed to explain the meaning or significance of notable conflicts and cultural transitions.

Such interpretations provide additional perspectives on the themes of this book and suggest how both primary and secondary historical sources convey cultural assumptions and points of view. A History of Europe in the Modern World, in short, uses analytical narratives, visual images, and exemplary historical debates to facilitate the comparative, critical-minded thinking that has become increasingly important in the curriculum and examinations of AP European History.

This book also provides detailed information on the thematic subjects in the revised AP European history course. There are, for example, recurring discussions of Europe’s interactions with non-European cultures, the evolving systems of social and governmental power, the changing conceptions of science and human knowledge, the entangled identities of individuals and the social-cultural communities in which they live, and the constantly developing cycles of economic prosperity, poverty, and transnational commerce. The new title suggests the book’s frequent discussion of Europe’s political, social, and cultural involvements with other regions of the world—from the earliest European conquests in the Americas to the rise of new empires in the nineteenth century and the anticolonial movements after 1945. The analysis of these cross-cultural encounters and conflicts repeatedly emphasizes that European exchanges with non-European peoples deeply affected European governments, wars, commerce, cultures, and collective identities.

The history of Europe’s evolving place in the world is thus linked to other key themes in AP courses on modern European history: revolutionary transitions from monarchical regimes to democratic nation-states, the emergence of global trade, the intellectual history of Enlightenment rationalism and its Romantic or neo-Romantic critics, the development of industrial technologies and the social critiques they provoked, and the changing assumptions about individual rights in modern social and legal systems. All of these themes (and many others) receive analytical attention that connects wider patterns to specific examples in each historical era. Students can therefore expand their historical thinking skills as they draw on this book to interpret different events and as they draw on the suggestions for further reading and other helpful supplements that are available through McGraw-Hill’s Online Learning Center (www.mheonline.com/palmerAP11) and in the well-organized ONboard interactive modules that help prepare students for success in AP European History.

Teachers who have used earlier editions of this book to help students prepare for AP European History examinations will find that this latest edition continues to provide the coherent fusion of historical knowledge and analysis that has contributed to student success in the past. At the same time, this new version of the book has been revised to help guide readers toward the historical thinking, thematic subjects, and conceptual frameworks that will create the essential foundation for high achieving students in the new curriculum and examinations.