AP European History Warm Ups

1. AP European History Warm Ups February 24 – 28

2. “Considering that we are born with this condition, that is, that we can become whatever we choose to become, we need to understand that we must take earnest care about this, so that it will never be said to our disadvantage that we were born to a privileged position but failed to realize it and became animals and senseless beats. Instead, the saying of Asaph the prophet should be said of us, ‘You are all angels of the most high.’ Above all, we should not make that freedom of choice God gave us into something harmful, for it was intended to be our intended to be our advantage. Let a holy ambition enter into our souls; let us not be content with mediocrity, but rather strive after the highest and expend all our strength in achieving it.” - Pico Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man Identify the historical movement with which Miranda is most often associated. How does his point of view affect the meaning of the document?

3. “Article I: The National Assembly completely abolishes the feudal regime. It decrees that among the rights and dues that are feudal, as well as rental, those which derive from...personal servitude...shall be abolished without compensation...” From what document is the excerpt above taken? Identify the authors’ point of view? How does it affect the interpretation?

4. Thus, in our attempts to improve, by legislation, the condition of the poor, we have not only multiplied the number, but reduced them to a state of degradation before unknown. By our poor laws and our charities, we have pauperized, and almost ruined the country. In our commerce and manufactures also, the effects of legislation have been equally mischievous. [W]e have constantly been driving capital from productive into unproductive channels, encouraging the smuggler, checking our commerce, and stunting our manufactures; and our efforts to procure to the operatives a fair remuneration for their labour, has always ended in a reduction of their wages, or in depriving them altogether of employment… What is the author’s purpose in writing? What can you infer about his point of view and how it affects the interpretation of the document?

5. “The history of all hitherto existing society is class struggle. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes....The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions oppression, new forms of struggle in place of old ones.” Identify the authors and the work from which the document is taken. Explain how their point of view affects the interpretation of the document.