Free AP® European History Practice Test (2026)

Question 1

The Peace of Augsburg (1555) settled the religious wars inside the Holy Roman Empire mainly by

Accepted Answer

letting each prince choose either Lutheranism or Catholicism for his own territory

Answer

granting full legal toleration to Calvinists and Anabaptists

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making Lutheranism the official religion of the whole empire

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requiring every prince to submit religious disputes to the pope

Question 2

A fifteenth-century Florentine scholar urges young men to study Cicero, Livy and Virgil so that they will become eloquent, virtuous citizens able to serve their city. This advice best reflects which intellectual movement?

Accepted Answer

Civic humanism

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Medieval scholasticism

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The Protestant principle of scripture alone

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The empirical method of the Scientific Revolution

Question 3

Which factor best explains why Great Britain was the first country to industrialize?

Accepted Answer

Large coal and iron deposits close to navigable rivers and seaports

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A large serf population that landowners could move into factories

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Strict guild rules that set prices and limited competition

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A central government that owned most of the textile mills

Question 4

A seventeenth-century English philosopher argued that people form governments to protect their lives, liberties and estates, and that a ruler who violates these rights may rightfully be resisted. Which thinker held these views?

Accepted Answer

John Locke

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Thomas Hobbes

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Jean Bodin

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Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet

Question 5

Which was a result of the Glorious Revolution and the English Bill of Rights of 1689?

Accepted Answer

The monarch could no longer raise taxes or keep a standing army in peacetime without Parliament's consent.

Answer

William and Mary ruled as absolute monarchs answerable only to God.

Answer

The monarchy was abolished and England became a republic.

Answer

Catholicism was restored as England's official religion.

Question 6

Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) is best known because it

Accepted Answer

made Germany and its allies responsible for the war's losses, the basis for reparations

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divided Germany into four Allied occupation zones

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created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

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restored the Habsburg monarchy in Austria

Question 7

The Committee of Public Safety, which led France in 1793–1794, is best known for

Accepted Answer

using revolutionary tribunals and mass executions to defend the Republic against enemies at home and abroad

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restoring the Bourbon monarchy after the fall of Napoleon

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drafting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

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negotiating the Concordat with the papacy

Question 8

In 1862, Otto von Bismarck told Prussian lawmakers that the great questions of the day would be decided not by speeches and majority votes but by iron and blood. His approach to German unification is best described as

Accepted Answer

Realpolitik

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liberal constitutionalism

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utopian socialism

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Pan-Slavism

Question 9

East Germany built the Berlin Wall in 1961 mainly to

Accepted Answer

stop East Germans from escaping to the West through West Berlin

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enforce the Soviet blockade of the land routes into West Berlin

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mark the border between the two German states agreed at Yalta

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separate the British sector of Berlin from the French sector

Question 10

A major economic effect of the large flow of American silver into Europe in the 1500s was

Accepted Answer

a long period of rising prices known as the Price Revolution

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a long, steady fall in the prices of food and goods

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the end of the Spanish crown's debts and bankruptcies

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the collapse of trade between Europe and Asia

Question 11

Louis XIV strengthened royal power in France mainly by

Accepted Answer

keeping leading nobles at court in Versailles and governing the provinces through royal intendants

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calling the Estates-General every year to approve new taxes

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issuing the Edict of Nantes to protect the Huguenots

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handing control of provincial government to the great nobles

Question 12

Galileo's telescope observations of the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus were important because they

Accepted Answer

supported the sun-centered model and undermined the old idea of perfect, unchanging heavens

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proved that the planets move in elliptical orbits

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confirmed Ptolemy's model of an Earth-centered universe

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established the law of universal gravitation

Question 13

In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels argued that

Accepted Answer

history is driven by class struggle, and the working class would overthrow the bourgeoisie

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workers and factory owners share interests that free markets would bring into harmony

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small model communities could replace capitalism peacefully by setting a moral example

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all religious faiths should be united into a single state church

Question 14

Which was a decision of the Council of Trent (1545–1563)?

Accepted Answer

The seven sacraments and the authority of Church tradition were reaffirmed, and seminaries were ordered to train priests.

Answer

Priests were allowed to marry.

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Salvation was declared to come through faith alone.

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Latin was replaced by local languages in the Mass.

Question 15

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), Metternich and the other leaders aimed above all to

Accepted Answer

restore a balance of power and legitimate monarchies so as to prevent new revolutions and French expansion

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spread the principles of the French Revolution across Europe

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unite the German states into a single nation-state

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break up France into several small republics

Question 16

Lenin's New Economic Policy (1921) in Soviet Russia

Accepted Answer

let peasants sell surplus grain and allowed small private businesses, while the state kept banks, heavy industry and foreign trade

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forced peasants onto large collective farms

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launched the first Five-Year Plan for heavy industry

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banned all private buying and selling

Question 17

Compared with Enlightenment thinkers, Romantic writers and artists of the early 1800s tended to stress

Accepted Answer

emotion, intuition, nature and the individual imagination

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reason as the only reliable guide to truth

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classical rules of balance and restraint in art

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the universe as a regular, clocklike machine

Question 18

In The Prince (1513), Niccolò Machiavelli advised that a ruler

Accepted Answer

should be ready to act immorally when needed to keep the state secure, and is safer feared than loved if he cannot be both

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should always keep his word, since honesty is the true source of power

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rules by divine right and answers only to God

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should share power with an elected assembly of citizens

Question 19

Rulers such as Frederick II of Prussia and Joseph II of Austria are called enlightened absolutists because they

Accepted Answer

adopted some Enlightenment reforms, such as religious toleration and legal reform, while keeping absolute power

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handed sovereignty over to elected parliaments

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rejected Enlightenment ideas as a threat to their power

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let the philosophes write constitutions for their states

Question 20

Which was one of Peter the Great's reforms in Russia?

Accepted Answer

Building a new capital on the Baltic and remaking the army and navy on Western models

Answer

Freeing the serfs from bondage to the landowners

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Granting a written constitution and an elected parliament called the Duma

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Making Roman Catholicism the official religion

Question 21

Which nineteenth-century development most directly reduced deaths from cholera and other diseases in crowded industrial cities?

Accepted Answer

Building sewers and clean water supplies once dirty water was linked to disease

Answer

An end to the movement of rural people into cities

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Laws banning adults from working in factories

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The abandonment of the germ theory of disease

Question 22

Which problem most directly led Louis XVI to call the Estates-General in 1789?

Accepted Answer

The royal government's near-bankruptcy, made worse by war debts, including aid to the American Revolution

Answer

A Prussian army marching on Paris

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A demand from the pope that France reform its Church

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Napoleon Bonaparte's seizure of power

Question 23

The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885

Accepted Answer

set rules for European claims to African territory, speeding up the partition of Africa

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ended the Franco-Prussian War

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made Prussia the leader of a unified Germany

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formed an alliance between Germany and Britain against France

Question 24

In 1517 a German friar wrote a list of theses arguing that buying a paper pardon could not free a soul from purgatory and that sincere repentance mattered more. His main target was

Accepted Answer

the sale of indulgences

Answer

the decrees of the Council of Trent

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the Peace of Augsburg

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Henry VIII's request to end his marriage

Question 25

Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in the late 1980s

Accepted Answer

aimed to reform the Soviet system but helped speed its collapse

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were meant to tighten Soviet military control over Eastern Europe

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brought back Stalin's centrally planned command economy

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made the Soviet Union a founding member of the European Union

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