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AP European History: Summer Assignment

Welcome to AP Euro! The following material is necessary to complete for all AP Euro students. These assignments will be due on the first day of class for points. I am so excited that you have signed up for the course this fall! ☺

1. Sign up for the google classroom to submit future assignments: rtvscto

2. Read the background reading on the . Complete the question assignment based on the reading. You will be graded on accuracy. (attached) I’ve also included some videos linked to help you understand some of the concepts in the medieval world to check out.

3. Evaluate The Communist Manifesto using Point of View Analysis and complete the essay assignment on the primary source using your knowledge of history and evidence from the text.

Link to eText: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61

4. Geography/Map Activity: Learn the contemporary European map to familiarize yourself with the countries that you will be learning about this year and why their locations are important to their history (aka Russia’s constant need for a warm water port!) There will be a quiz on it during the first week of school.

Here are some nifty games to help you! http://www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/euroquiz.html http://www.ilike2learn.com/ilike2learn/europe.html

5. Enjoy the rest of your summer! Rest up and get ready for a great year in AP Euro! If you have any questions, please feel free to email me over the summer ([email protected]), as I will be checking emails periodically. Medieval Background Reading Questions

1. Why did trade and travel decline after the fall of ?

2. Define feudalism and describe the characteristics of its organization. Who benefitted the most from this system?

3. What was the impact of the on European life?

4. Who fought in the Hundred Years War? Why did this conflict begin?

5. How did people in Western Europe contract the plague?

6. What were the long-term effects of the Black Plague?

7. What was the importance of the Church and the Christian religion on the lives of Europeans in the Middle Ages?

8. Describe the events of the Great Schism. How did it lead to the Church’s decline?

9. How was education, learning and knowledge preserved during the “Dark Ages”?

10. Why and in what ways did kings and central governments grow stronger at the end of the Middle Ages? Pre-Renaissance History Summary MEDIEVAL EUROPE: FROM THE FALL OF ROME TO THE RENAISSANCE

A BACKGROUND READING LINKING CLASSICAL TO MODERN TIMES

1. The Fall of Rome

From approximately 200 B.C. to 476 A.D., the "civilized" areas of Europe and the Near East were dominated, ruled, and imprinted with a lasting influence from the Roman Empire. At its greatest extent, the Roman Empire stretched east to include Greece, Turkey, Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia; it stretched south to encompass Africa north of the Sahara from Egypt to the Atlantic; and, it stretched north and west in Europe with its frontiers on the Danube and the Rhine and included Great Britain south of and Hadrian's Wall. This great empire crumbled for a variety of reasons including: internal political corruption; economic and social difficulties arising from ruling such a vast territory; the high cost of warfare to maintain the empire; labor surplus problems largely caused by slavery; overindulgence by the citizenry; and immorality, indolence, and reduced production causing heavy public welfare expenses. Religious and ethnic strife caused division of the people of Rome from within while Germanic tribes invaded the Empire from the North and East. The fall of Rome actually occurred gradually over a period of many years, but is usually set at 476 A.D., the year a German chieftain, Odoacer, seized the city and proclaimed himself emperor.

Although the Western Roman Empire and the government in Rome itself fell, the Empire lived on in the East. The Emperor Diocletian (reigned, 284-305) divided and reformed the Empire during his reign to increase administrative efficiency. The Emperor Constantine (reigned, 324-337) had erected a new capital on the site of the Greek city of Byzantium, which controlled the passage from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, calling it Constantinople. Theodosius I (r. 378-395) was the last emperor to actually rule both portions of the Empire. The Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire contained more diverse nationalities than the West. The dominant language of the Byzantine Empire was Greek rather than and it featured a much stronger influence from Hellenistic, Semitic, and Persian cultures. The Byzantine Empire contained most of the Roman Empire's rich commercial centers including Alexandria, Athens, and Damascus, as well as Constantinople. While Rome and the western Empire fell, the Byzantine Empire survived at Constantinople (the modern city of Istanbul) until 1453 when it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks. Only then did the city cease to be the cultural and economic center of Byzantine rule in the East.

During the centuries of Roman rule, all of the civilized European world was united under a single government. (The Romans called everyone who was not a Roman a barbarian.) When Rome fell, that union also vanished: For centuries there was no unity and there were no nations as we know them today. As the many nomadic Germanic tribes from northern Europe moved across the continent during this period, sometimes called the "Dark Ages", what political organization did exist in Europe was based on the tribal organization of these peoples. Only a few of these tribes were of much lasting importance. The Angles and Saxons established their rule and culture in Great Britain (hence the name "Angleland") and the Franks (as in "France") dominated northern and western Europe. The Vandals are remembered for their especially destructive behavior, and the word Gothic (from the Goths) was later used to describe these tribes collectively.

Charlemagne (French for Charles the Great) was King of the Franks from 768-814 and was able to unite most of Western Europe into the Frankish Kingdom which lasted from 800-860. On Christmas Day, 800 A.D., after restoring Leo III (reigned, 795-816) in Rome from which he had been driven by invaders, Charlemagne (reigned, 768-814) was crowned by the Pope as "Emperor of the Romans". From that point until it was dissolved in 1806 by Napoleon, this Frankish Kingdom was known as the Holy Roman Empire.

At this time in history, without modern communication methods and with travel more difficult and hazardous than ever, it was difficult even for good rulers to maintain strict control over wide-spread lands. Thus, governing rested mainly in the hands of the local nobility. When Charlemagne died, his empire passed to his son, Louis I, "the Pious" (reigned, 814-840), who in turn divided the empire among his three sons in the Treaty of Verdun in 843 A.D. These sections roughly became the main divisions of Western Europe we find today: France, Germany and the middle kingdom of northern . However, Charlemagne's grandsons, the rulers of these three kingdoms were less than competent. Between their poor rule and the continuing invasions of Europe by Muslims, Slavs, Magyars and Vikings (or Norsemen), Charlemagne's empire was lost except in name and tradition.

2. Feudalism

After the breakup of Charlemagne's empire, European political organization was characterized by weak kings and strong nobles or lords who ruled their estates rather independently. This kind of political organization is known as feudalism. Feudalism was also a social and economic organization based on a series of reciprocal relationships. The king in theory owned the land which he granted to lords who in return would give service, usually in the form of military aid, to the king. Each of these lords was part of the nobility and therefore above the level of true labor. The actual farming and other necessary labor on the land were performed by serfs who were bound to the land and actually transferred from one landlord to another with its . They produced the necessities of the estate. In return, they received protection by the nobles and a share of the produce of the land. The serf was not a slave in the true legal sense, for a class of slaves, usually non-Christian prisoners, did exist. A small class of free men also existed having won their freedom for themselves and their descendants for service to some past lord. They usually performed the special skills of craftsmen, artisans, and merchants and were the beginning of a middle class.

During the Middle Ages, warfare was almost constant between lords who fought for power, land, or wealth. Probably hardest hit by this near-constant warfare were the serfs whose homes and fields were often the scenes of battles and suffered the damages. Indeed, the very slave-like status of the serf was due to his need for protection from this warfare. Feudal manors provided both political and social organization, as mentioned above. They also were individual economic units, nearly self-sufficient due to medieval warfare, the difficulties of travel, and the resultant lack of trade. The feudal estate featured a manor-home, usually a fortified castle surrounded by protective walls, belonging to the lord, surrounded by fields, herds and villages where serfs lived and worked. The serfs by their labor provided everything needed on the estate.

An important economic characteristic of the period was the decline in travel, communication and trade. Under the Roman Empire, there had been a great amount of trade between the widespread areas of the Empire. Legions patrolled the roads and the roads linked the provinces. After the fall of Rome, with no government to supply protection or to keep the roads and bridges repaired, travel became difficult and dangerous. This danger, coupled with ignorance and lack of desire to change the situation by the powerful lords, whose manors required little trade, led to the decline in travel and trade.

One reason for the being designated as the Dark Ages is that education and learning also declined. People were busy with their roles in life. There was no government to sponsor education. Because of the lack of trade and travel, contact with the scholars of the ancient world was lost. However, while civilization in Europe declined, learning and discovery was progressing in Asia and the Middle East. Europeans were about to rediscover the wealth and more advanced civilizations of Asia. 3. The Crusades Feudal Europe was a self-perpetuating society for almost a millennium. The lack of learning and education and the lack of travel and trade tended to keep society as it was. Even if new ideas, products, and methods were discovered, they were not widely introduced. More than any other factor, it was a series of religious wars known as the Crusades that were responsible for bringing Europe out of the Dark Ages into the high Middle Ages and eventually the Modern Age. These wars were fought by northern European Christian lords and kings who were responding to a call from Pope Urban II (reigned, 1088-1099) to drive the Muslims from the Holy Land in Palestine after the Turks began to restrict religious pilgrimages and persecute Christians in the Middle East. The threat from invading tribes had lessened along with the opportunity to gain new lands. Also, the Pope promised to all who fought in these religious wars. Many of these lords went to the Middle East to fight for God and glory. The Crusades went on over a period of time beginning in 1095 and lasting for over 300 years. They were militarily unsuccessful, and many of the soldiers seemed more interested in looting and fortune hunting. Also, the native Muslims proved a formidable foe. However, the Crusades were a turning point in the history and development of Europe. The Crusades brought tremendous economic, social, and political changes to Europe. First, trade was gradually re-established. During the Crusades, soldiers brought back many of the products of the East including spices and textiles. As Europeans became more and more accustomed to having these luxuries, they began to expand their trade. With increasing trade, there came a need for new products to sell and people to carry on these transactions. Therefore, a whole new class in society was created: the merchants and craftsmen of the middle class. Cities also began to grow as centers of population and trade. , Genoa, and Pisa in Italy became great port cities as the trade between the Middle East and Western Europe passed through them. Italy thus became the gateway to Europe in the late Middle Ages. Neither the independently wealthy cities nor the growing, newly wealthy, but non-noble, middle class fit into the political or social structure of feudalism. Land had been the only real source of wealth in the Middle Ages. However, the expanding use of money for trade made land ownership less important, as land does not bring wealth unless it produces a surplus for sale. Thus, the feudal system was breaking down and would eventually be replaced. The only question was what way of life would arise to take the place of this long-entrenched system. Feudalism had dominated Europe politically, socially and economically since the return of order after the fall of Rome.

4. Hundred Years' War

The 100 Years’ War (1337-1453) extended over the reigns of five English and five French kings who fought for control of France. This struggle between England and France actually consisted of a succession of wars broken by truces and treaties. The war had several contributing causes. Efforts of the French kings to control the English-held province of Guyenne in southwest France angered the English. The French supported the Scots against England, and the French attempted to control Flanders and the English wool trade there. English and French sailors and fishermen quarreled over rights in the English Channel. The war began in 1337. That year, King Philip VI of France declared he would take over Guyenne, and King Edward III of England, whose mother was the sister of three French kings, claimed the French throne. In the fighting that followed, the English won most of the battles. But the French won the war. English resources were about a third as great as those of the French. Several events hindered the course of the war. These events included peasant rebellions; pillaging in France by unemployed soldiers; outbreaks of plague, now known as the , which struck both countries; and a peasants' revolt in England in 1381. The war weakened the powers of the nobility and strengthened centralized government in both countries. The war also marked the decline of feudalism, the rise of French unity, the development of new military tactics, and the growth of English sea power. English archers and infantry won the war's greatest victory in the Battle of Crecy (1346). The English also won the Battle of Poitiers (1356). The Treaty of Bretigny in 1360 began a brief period of peace. But Henry V of England renewed the fighting and emerged triumphant at the Battle of Agincourt (1415). The Treaty of Troyes in 1420 made Henry V heir to the French crown. After Henry V died in 1422, the French disputed the English claim to the throne, and war flared. By 1428, the English had swept through northern France and laid siege to Orleans. Joan of Arc led a French army and ended the siege in 1429. She became a prisoner of the English, who later burned her to death. The French continued to win battles. By 1453, England had lost all its territory on the continent of Europe, except Calais. The French took Calais in 1558.

5. The Black Death

The pandemic of bubonic plague that swept across Europe between 1347 and 1353 is known today as the Black Death, though contemporaries called it the "Great Pestilence," and the disease itself was generally known as peste. During these years, plague affected the lives of all Europeans, and killed nearly half of them. Its impact was enormous, not only because of the tremendous loss of life, but because of the pessimism, fear, suspicion, and even persecution of Jews (who were blamed for the disease) that followed. In the long term, the Black Death may have increased economic opportunities and promoted a higher standard of living for those who survived. Its rapid spread gave rise to the medical theory of contagion. This scientific observation, in fact, is one reason that the epidemic is often cited as a turning point from the medieval era to the Renaissance.

Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is usually a disease of rats, not of man. Named for Alexander Yersin, the nineteenth-century scientist who first isolated it, the bacillus is found naturally in rodent populations, among which a small number of cases at any given time is common. Occasionally, however, the disease becomes endemic, killing off large numbers of rats. When this happens, the rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopis, which normally feeds on rodent hosts, turns to people instead. Their bite transmits the plague from infected rat to man. In medieval times, plague was most often carried by the common black rat, Rattus rattus, which lived among the populace, feeding on grain stores and other foodstuffs. Some historians argue that the human flea, Pulex irritans, may also have played a significant role in transmitting the disease, as it will feed on any available blood source, moving indiscriminately between rats and humans. Symptoms of plague develop quickly after infection. In man, the disease takes one of three forms: bubonic (involving the lymphatic system), pneumonic (centered in the respiratory system), and septicemic (involving the blood-stream).

The best-known symptom of bubonic plague were buboes—hard, extremely painful, swollen lymph nodes—which filled with blood and pus, turned black, and often burst, giving the disease its common name. The buboes were accompanied by a high fever, headache, chills, body aches, and sensitivity to light. At least half the people who contracted this form of the plague died. Those who suffered from pneumonic plague usually had no buboes, but their lungs filled with fluid and blood, and they too endured raging fevers, sweats, and pain. Almost no one survived infection with this form, and unlike bubonic plague, pneumonic plague could be transmitted directly from one person to another. The septicemic form of the disease, which occurred when the bacillus invaded the blood stream, often killed its victims so quickly that symptoms rarely even had time to develop.

Impact The plague wreaked enormous and long-lasting consequences. After the initial pandemic, known as the Black Death, it remained an active health threat for over 500 years. (The last pandemic started in Asia in 1894; by the time it ended in 1908, over 6 million people had died.) In the centuries that followed, port cities were most often affected, but all areas faced at least some risk. Subsequent epidemics prompted many negative but predictable reactions, including fear, blame, suspicion, and isolation.

Firsthand accounts of the Black Death refer repeatedly to the social breakdown that occurred as people tried to protect themselves, neglecting traditional ties and obligations to friends, neighbors, and even children and family. Plague victims and their families were isolated, sometimes even walled up inside their houses and left to die. It is clear that contemporaries were profoundly fearful, not only of the disease itself, but of the changes it produced in morality, beliefs, and social relations.

The people of the time believed that one or more factors had caused the plague, particularly divine punishment for mankind's sin. Many communities prayed, made pilgrimages, and held ritual processions in attempts to appeal for God's mercy. Patron of plague victims emerged, the first being the ancient martyr Sebastian; later Saint Roch, himself a victim of the disease, was canonized. An extreme religious group, the flagellants, roamed the cities and towns of Central Europe holding public confessions and performing displays of piety in which they used whips, known as flagella to scourge themselves.

The most extreme response to the terror of the plague was the scapegoating of Jews, who were rumored to have poisoned communal wells to spread disease. This produced a hysterical campaign of ferocious violence against Jewish communities, many of which were entirely destroyed in mass executions.

An important result of the Black Death was the development of a crude theory of contagion. Until the advent of germ theory in the nineteenth century, disease was believed to result from an imbalance of the four basic humors within the body (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile or choler). The humoral theory held that just as the world was composed of four basic elements (earth, air, fire, water), the human body was composed of four constituents, called humors, which were maintained in individual proportions in each body. Since disease was thought to result from humoral imbalance, there was little thought that one person could "give" disease to another.

When plague began to spread in the mid-fourteenth century, observation and experience seemed to point to a form of contagion. The disease spread quickly within households, often taking entire families. Those in closest contact to the sick, such as caretakers, clergy, and medical professionals were frequently the next to fall ill, seemingly because of their simple proximity to the disease. Thus, a belief in the transmissibility of plague developed long before a formal medical theory was proposed. It was not until 1546 that the Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro (c. 1478-1553) argued that illness could be spread directly from person to person via "seeds" that could travel short distances or become embedded in textiles for longer trips.

This belief in contagion reinforced people's natural tendency to flee in the face of in impending epidemic, but it also gave weight to municipal responses that emphasized exclusion and isolation. By the late fourteenth century, the Italian town of Ragusa required arriving ships to wait at sea for a period of 40 days in order to confirm the health of the crew. Thus the quarantine (from the Italian quaranti giorni, or 40 days) was born. In subsequent decades, cities and towns began to restrict entry in times when plague threatened, often requiring health "passports" for admittance. Once plague broke out within cities, they employed a practice of isolation, building plague hospitals, called lazarettos, outside the city walls and placing those diagnosed with the disease in them, using force if necessary. While certainly a rational response to contagion, it did little to prevent the movement of rats and their fleas, which continued to roam the city freely. If any good can be said to have come from the Black Death, it's that those who survived were able to improve their place in society afterward. The tremendous loss of population created much economic opportunity, and many scholars believe that it hastened the end of serfdom by making labor both scarce and valuable. The plague's most surprising result, however, was the intellectual and artistic flowering of the Renaissance, which followed quickly on its heels. The intellectuals who emerged as the first generation of Renaissance humanists, such as Frances Petrarch (1304-1377), were survivors of the Black Death; their successors continued to strive and achieve despite the constant threat of plague.

6. The Church of the Middle Ages

The Roman was the only center of knowledge during the Middle Ages and learning was mostly religion-centered. True scholarship lived on in the monasteries where devout had withdrawn from the corruption and violence of the outside medieval world. There they preserved the ancient writings of the advanced civilizations of Greece and Rome. This treasure trove of knowledge from the Classical Age awaited its discovery by people in the future who cared more for these achievements. The dominant philosophy of the late Middle Ages was best articulated by St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) and known as . Although Aquinas' scholasticism attempted to reconcile all new knowledge with accepted Christian dogma, it ran into many problems. Learning emerged from the Dark Ages and the long conflict between science and religion was about to begin. Under scholasticism, if reason and religious dogma clashed, reason must always give way because religious knowledge was considered to be without error. In fact, nearly everything in feudal Europe seemed to be religiously centered. Religion and the after-life became the focal point of thought and living. The influence of religion can also clearly be seen in the art, architecture, literature, and music of the time. Perhaps because life was so hard on earth, the peasants endured it concentrating on and longing for their reward in the afterlife.

The Roman Catholic Church remained the only stable and unifying institution left over from the old Roman days and therefore came to dominate the lifestyle of the feudal era. The late-medieval church was vast and complex, the single largest and most diverse political institution of the Renaissance. In theory, the church's governmental structure was a pyramid in which the papacy sat at the top. The pope and his officialdom at Rome supervised the activities of scores of and throughout Europe, who, in turn, oversaw thousands of priests and their parishes. Numerous religious orders of monks, , and scattered throughout Europe often stood outside the structure of the provinces of the church known as diocese. Over the centuries, these orders had amassed significant wealth, and many enjoyed exemptions from the control of Europe's bishops and archbishops. Most owed allegiance to their order, which the papacy ultimately supervised; that tie could be tenuous when hundreds of miles separated an abbey or a monastery from the church's capital. The administrative complexities of the Roman Church may have been considerable, but so were the numerous roles the institution fulfilled in society. In the spiritual realm, the church provided a necessary link between God and humankind by virtue of its performance of the sacraments and rituals. For the orthodox, there was no salvation outside the church. In the political realm, the institution was an international force that jealously maintained its power against the encroachment of kings and princes. And locally, the church performed numerous practical functions in society. It administered an effective and sophisticated judicial system to which, in theory, all Europeans could bring cases. As Europe's largest landholder, it was a financial powerhouse, levying taxes and collecting revenues that were the envy of many princes. Its monasteries and convents produced rich storehouses of agricultural goods that were sometimes sold on the urban market; many of these institutions ran breweries and distilleries that could compete more successfully against private concerns because of the church's widespread exemption from local taxation. And finally, religious orders like the and the were important breeders of sheep and livestock who influenced the international market in wool.

Anticlericalism Its worldly wealth and power, though, subjected the church to criticism. A general anticlerical spirit, motivated by the hatred of the clergy's special rights and privileges, grew as well. The corruptions people identified—sexual immorality among the clergy, the holding of multiple offices by clerics, and the selling of dispensations from church law, to name just a few—had long existed.

The Papacy at Avignon For most of the fourteenth century both the possibilities and limitations of papal power were brilliantly displayed, not in Rome, but in the city of Avignon, just inside the southern borders of France. The period in which the papacy ruled from Avignon lasted from 1309 until 1378 and was known even in the fourteenth century as the "Babylonian Captivity," a phrase that likened the papacy's relationship to France with Israel's bondage in Babylon. During this period the cost of papal government steadily rose. To create sufficient revenue to meet their expenses, the moved to centralize their administration of the church and to identify new sources of revenue. The papacy, for instance, reclaimed its rights of reservation, that is, the power to appoint clerics to key offices in the church. While vacant, the income from these offices flowed to the popes, and the papacy began to levy fees on those who wished to be appointed to them. To manage this system, a large bureaucracy developed in Avignon, and bribes became commonplace. For these reasons, Avignon became synonymous in the minds of Europe's rulers with corruption. Such feelings produced measures like the Statutes of Provisors (1351) in England, an act of Parliament that prohibited the pope from appointing non-English subjects to church offices. At Avignon, the church's dependence on revenues from the sale of grew, too. All these innovations in papal finance and government caused a decline in papal prestige and a growing distaste for the rising flow of wealth into the church's coffers.

The Great Schism These problems paled in comparison to the dilemmas that arose after the papacy's return to Rome in 1378. Soon after he re-established papal government in the city, Pope Gregory XI died, and the elected an Italian to assume the office as Urban VI. Within months, Urban's attacks on the worldliness and corruption of the church's cardinals had alienated many, and a faction of the college met to depose him. In his place they elected Cardinal Robert of Geneva who took the name Clement VII. Urban, for his part, refused to resign, and instead he excommunicated the rebel cardinals and their pope. He created a number of new, mostly Italian cardinals to replace them. Clement VII now refused to step down, and he left Rome for Avignon, where he and the majority of the original College of Cardinals set up a rival papal court. For almost forty years this Great Schism prevailed in the European church, with international politics determining which pope a specific nation recognized. England, Ireland, parts of Germany, and most of Italy remained loyal to the pope at Rome, while France, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Scotland recognized Avignon. The resulting confusion eroded the notion of the church as the sacred instrument of God on earth. Instead more and more people saw the church as a human institution. The schism thus helped to create an audience for the teachings of figures like John Wycliffe in England and John Huss in Bohemia, both of whom attacked the wealth and secular power of the church and instead insisted that Rome would do better to concentrate on its spiritual mission.

In 1409, representatives of both papal governments and church from throughout Europe met in the Italian city of Pisa to consider ways of healing the breach in the church. After deliberating, the council decided that both papal governments were invalid and it called for the resignations of the Avignon and Roman popes. When neither would resign, it declared them and elected a new pope, Alexander V. For a time both Avignon and Rome held out against the new Pisan pope, and factions throughout Europe supported each of the three papal governments. Thus the , which had been called to heal the breach, inadvertently worsened the crisis for a time. In 1413, a second council convened at Constance in Germany. There church officials successfully obtained resignations from the Pisan and Roman popes, and deposed the Avignon pope when he refused to resign. They elected Martin V to serve as the indisputable leader of the church, who now enjoyed loyalty from all parts of the church.

7. Conclusion: Middle Ages to Renaissance

The increasing wealth, wider travel, and a greater knowledge of the outside world -- led to a new philosophy and outlook on life. Whereas during the Middle Ages, the Church provided the main source of inspiration, now there was a new interest in and concentration on man himself and the world in which he lived. This new age we call the Renaissance, the rebirth of the human spirit. We find this changing outlook on life reflected in the art, the architecture, the literature, the music, a new interest in learning and scientific discovery, the rediscovered curiosity about the world bringing exploration and discovery, and in new political ideas. This new philosophy which was human-centered and emphasized human reason was called humanism and dominated the period of the Renaissance.

This new age brought many lasting changes to Europe. Most of the changes, however, did not come quickly or easily. For many centuries, much of the history of Europe would feature a clash between the old traditions of the Middle Ages and the new ways of the so-called modern world.

Reading adapted from the following sources:

APEC Summer Reading Article A Background Reading Linking Classical to Modern Times

The 100 Years’ War: Allmand, C. T. "Hundred Years' War." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2010. Web. 12 Aug. 2010.

The Black Death: Science and Its Times. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 2: 700 to 1449. Detroit: Gale, 2001. p129-132.

The Roman Catholic Church: World Eras. Ed. Norman J. Wilson. Vol. 1: European Renaissance and , 1350-1600. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. p391-394. The Communist Manifesto

Background Info: The Industrial Revolution was a “marker event,” an event that changed the course of history in the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution first occurred in Britain in the textile or clothing industry. Britain possessed natural resources necessary for industrialization (coal and iron), good ports, new technological inventions, and capital or wealth to invest in new industries. During the Industrial Revolution, machines and factories replaced goods made at home and by hand. With the Industrial Revolution, changes in production and the structuring of society occurred such as increased production of goods and urbanization or movement to cities. As workers moved to cities to work in factories, they often worked long hours in dangerous conditions and were frequently exploited or mistreated while their bosses and managers grew wealthier. In this atmosphere of great change, some individuals began to question the working and living conditions of workers. Reformers, individuals wanting new laws to protect workers, and revolutionaries, individuals advocating revolution and radical change, debated the best ways to improve the lives of workers. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were two radicals who advocated revolution. Indeed The Communist Manifesto, written by Marx and Engels in 1848, was a call to revolution. Written in response to the poor working conditions of the early Industrial Revolution, Marx and Engels envisioned a new society, a society where wealthy industrialists, what Marx and Engels called the bourgeoisie, were overthrown by the workers or proletariat. The Communist Manifesto was and remains a primary source that greatly impacted the course of history as it was adapted to the creation of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century.

Point of View Analysis: Fill in the chart provided with appropriate information based on information provided about the authors and using online resources.

Who wrote the primary source? Year?

What was the social class background of the author? How did their experiences influence their perspective of the event?

What historical events were occurring when the source was written? How would this influence the perspective of the event? Why did the authors write this source? What was the purpose?

Who was the intended audience?

Essay Assignment: Answer ONE of the following prompts in an analytical essay. Your response should be 3-4 pages double spaced, size 12 font (Times New Roman) and MLA format. Proper citations and quotations from the text should be used.

1. What is Marx's theory of history? Use this theory to explain the decline and fall of the feudal era. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this theory?

2. What is Marx’s vision for the future of society and what is his ideal Communist society? How does this vision compare with “communist” societies that arose in the twentieth century? (ie Soviet Union, China, etc)