(^30) › STEP 3. Develop Strategies for Success
Introduction
On the AP European History Exam, you will answer three short-answer questions and have
40 minutes to respond. Some of the questions may be accompanied by a visual stimulus. The
first two questions will deal with the period between 1600 and 2001. For the third question,
you will choose between one covering periods 1-2 and one covering periods 3-4. See p. 52.Putting Your Knowledge and Historical Thinking Skills to Use
The short-answer questions test two things: your knowledge of European history and your
historical thinking skills. Recall that the three main categories of historical thinking skills
are reasoning chronologically, putting information in context, and arguing from evidence.
The short-answer questions do not require you to make an argument from evidence, so that
means that you will answer the question by using your knowledge, reasoning chronologi-
cally, and contextualizing. Let’s look at an example to see how that would work.
Question 1: Using your knowledge of European history, answer parts A and B below.
A) Briefly explain two significant consequences of the development of market-based agricul-
ture in the eighteenth century.
B) Briefly explain how the traditional population and productivity cycles of Western Europe
were broken in the eighteenth century.Begin by making sure you know what the question is asking. In the short-answer
questions, that will be straightforward. In the example above, you are to briefly explain
two related events: the development of market-based agriculture and the breaking of the
population and productivity cycles. Organize your thoughts by locating the two events
chronologically, thereby activating your knowledge of the appropriate era and events.
These eighteenth-century developments are covered in Chapter 14 of this text: “Economic
Change and the Expansion of the State.”
A good answer to the short-answer questions is typically one paragraph, or, in the case
of a question that asks for two things, two short paragraphs. So what you need is a topic
sentence that answers the question and four or five more sentences that support and illus-
trate your assertions.Part A of the Short-Answer Question
Here again is part A of the question, followed by an example of a good response:
A) Briefly explain two significant consequences of the development of market-based agricul-
ture in the eighteenth century.
Topic sentence (an assertion that answers the question): Two significant consequences of the
development of market-based agriculture in the eighteenth century were the advent of the
enclosure movement and a wave of technical innovation that increased production.
Body of paragraph 1 (supports and illustrates the first assertion of the topic sentence): The
shift to cash crops that characterized market-based agriculture in the eighteenth century cre-
ated a demand for larger amounts of high-profit crops. Accordingly, traditional land-owning
elites abandoned their feudal obligations to the peasantry and adopted the attitude of the
merchant class. Specifically, they instituted a process known as “enclosure,” in which hedges,
fences, and walls were built to deny the peasantry access to the commons, which were now
converted to fields for cash crops. Later, the landowners extended enclosure into other arable
lands, breaking traditional feudal agreements and gradually transforming much of the peas-
antry into wage labor.STRATEGYTIPTIP05_Bartolini_Ch05_029-032.indd 30 25/04/18 2:21 PM