Demography - AP European History

The Bubonic Plague ravaged the population of Europe between 1347-1352. Although precise statistics are not available, many estimates allege that the disease may have killed up to 1/3 of the population of Europe.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. He was assassinated on June 28, 1914.

Throughout the 1840s, a potato blight ravaged all of the potato crops throughout Europe, causing a devastating reduction in overall potato yields. Ireland, which for a variety of reasons had become dependent on the cheap crop, was by far the hardest hit land in Europe, a fact compounded by British policies that ignored the problem. From 1845 to 1850, roughly one million Irish people died from disease and hunger due to what became known as the Great Famine, while a further one million left the island to immigrate to America and Great Britain.

As a result of its location at the head of the Adriatic Sea and utilization of its waterways, Venice developed into a naval and commercial power during the eleventh century. The flourishing city developed into a centerpiece of the trade between Western Europe and the rest of the world.

The principal aims of Stalin's five-year plans were to develop a strong industrial economy centered on steel production, develop a powerful state army, increase agricultural production, and create a more socialist society. The development of artistic and literary talents was not one of the primary aims. In fact, Soviet art and literature became highly political during this era and was heavily influenced by propaganda.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed in Paris on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914.

In 1653, Oliver Cromwell was declared Lord Protector of a united Commonwealth of England, ushering in the period known as "the Protectorate."

The Bastille was a medieval fortress in Paris, France. Its storming on July 14, 1789 is commemorated by the French with a public holiday, known as Bastille Day.

In 1801, the five most populous cities in Britain were London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Bristol. Although it later joined the list of five most populous cities, Sheffield was not one of Britain's ten most populous in 1801.

Belgium was not one of the Axis powers in the Second World War, but rather one of the Allied nations. Germany, Italy, Romania, and Hungary were all Axis nations.

The time period in question concerns the British Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, which led to a marked increase in Europe’s population in a relatively short period of time. Because the British Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions began in England and spread initially around Western Europe, the population growth was particularly dramatic in this part of the continent at first.

The French nobility of this time period had been dramatically weakened by the cost of fighting a long series of wars against the English. The finances of many members of the aristocracy were completely exhausted, so as the French kings consolidated power and centralized authority, they began to include the bourgeoise in the political process for the first time. The French rulers did this to keep power out of the hands of the nobility and also to raise funds from the bourgeoise, but the inclusion of the middle class in the affairs of government would have profound implications for the development of French political society.

The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) was fought by most of the powers of Europe at the time, but the vast majority of the actual fighting was done on German territory. The war featured horrific battles, deliberate massacres and genocides, famine, disease, and rampant destruction for three decades. By the time the Peace of Westphalia brought the conflict to an end, the population and economy of the German territories were devastated. The population fell by over a third, and by some historians estimates Germany did not recover until the twentieth century.

The relevant fact to know here is that the seventeenth century coincided with the Golden Age of French history: the reign of the Sun King Louis XIV. The French population at this time was close to twenty million, more than twice as much as England, Sweden, and the Netherlands and comfortably more than Spain. Roughly a quarter of Europe’s population lived in France during the seventeenth century.

The nineteenth century coincides with the Industrial Revolution, when the urban centers of Northern and Western Europe were exploding with productivity and relative opportunity. Vast numbers of people migrated from their longstanding homes in the rural countryside to urban areas and cities like London, Hamburg, Manchester, Glasgow, and Rotterdam.

The population of Europe grew dramatically during the Baby Boomer generation (generally thought to last from 1946 to 1965) that followed the end of World War Two; however, declining birth rates caused by the increasing availability of contraception and women entering the workforce in vast numbers have meant that Europe’s population has stagnated recently and in some places begun falling. Over the period of time from 1950 to 2000, the population of Europe grew slightly, but now appears to be beginning to decline.

England was a relatively small and insignificant island nation at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, in the middle of the sixteenth century. Dwarfed by Spain's colonial and continental power and massively eclipsed in population and wealth by France, the English population was a little less than four million, at a time when Spain’s population approached ten million and France’s exceeded fifteen million. England would dramatically grow in significance over the next two hundred years.

At their height, the Huguenots represented approximately ten percent of the French population. The Huguenots were French Calvinists and were routinely persecuted by the state, which was rigidly Catholic. The Huguenots' great influence came from the fact that they were disproportionately drawn from the ranks of the aristocracy and the burgeoning middle class.

The population of Europe accelerated spectacularly in the eighteenth century in what is commonly referred to as the Agricultural Revolution, and sometimes called the British Agricultural Revolution to distinguish it from the much earlier Mesopotamian Agricultural Revolution. The introduction of foods from the New World improved nutrition, as did advances in agricultural science and biology. The abandonment of the “open field” system, which was replaced by the “enclosure” system, made agricultural work far more efficient. In addition, the almost complete eradication of the plague meant that far fewer people were dying of disease. All of the listed answer choices contributed to population growth in the eighteenth century, except for better sanitation in hospitals. This advancement would have to wait until the nineteenth century and the work of reformers like Edwin Chadwick and Florence Nightingale.

Answering this question really requires you to understand which Estate represents which social grouping, as once you know this information, the correct answer should be fairly obvious. The First Estate was the clergy and other religious leaders who probably accounted for no more than one percent of the population; the Second Estate was the nobility, who could not have ever been more than five percent of the population; and the Third Estate was essentially everyone else (peasants, bourgeoise, urban workers, etc.), so the Third Estate was by far the largest of three groups. The Fourth Estate is a term sometimes used to describe the media; the Fifth Estate does not exist.