AP EUROPEAN HISTORY EXAM SAMPLE QUESTIONS

Document-Based Question Suggested reading and writing time: 55 minutes

It is suggested that you spend 15 minutes reading the documents and 40 minutes writing your response.

Note: You may begin writing your response before the reading period is over.

Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying Documents. The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.

In your response you should do the following.

Å Thesis: Present a thesis that makes a historically defensible claim and responds to all parts of the question. The thesis must consist of one or more sentences located in one place, either in the introduction or the conclusion.

Å Argument Development: Develop and support a cohesive argument that recognizes and accounts for historical complexity by explicitly illustrating relationships among historical evidence such as contradiction, corroboration, and/or qualification.

Å Use of the Documents: Utilize the content of at least six of the documents to support the stated thesis or a relevant argument.

Å Sourcing the Documents: Explain the significance of the author’s point of view, author’s purpose, historical context, and/or audience for at least four documents.

Å Contextualization: Situate the argument by explaining the broader historical events, developments, or processes immediately relevant to the question.

Å Outside Evidence: Provide an example or additional piece of specific evidence beyond those found in the documents to support or qualify the argument.

Å Synthesis: Extend the argument by explaining the connections between the argument and ONE of the following.

i A development in a different historical period, situation, era, or geographical area.

i A course theme and/or approach to history that is not the focus of the essay (such as political, economic, social, cultural, or intellectual history).

i A different discipline or field of inquiry (such as economics, government and politics, art history, or anthropology).

Question. Evaluate the extent to which the demographic changes from c. 1500 to c. 1700 altered family life.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS 1

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AP EUROPEAN HISTORY EXAM

Document 1

Source: Population changes and net wheat yields in England, 1450–1800.

Population Net wheat yields

20

15

10

5

3

1450 1500 1550 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800

Document 2

Source: Index of Real Wages* in England, 1550–1800.

60

50

Index

of real w

ages

40

1600 1700Year

1800

Index of Real Wages in England, 1550–1800

*Real wages refers to wages adjusted for inflation, reflecting the true purchasing power of income relative to prices.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS 2

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SAMPLE QUESTIONS

AP EUROPEAN HISTORY EXAM SAMPLE QUESTIONS

Document 3

Source: Proportion of women never married in England, 1550–1800.

20

15

10

Proportion

nev

er m

arried

0

1600 1700 Y ear

1800

Proportion of Women Never Married in England, 1550–1800

Document 4

Source: English Puritan ministers John Dod and Robert Cleaver, A Godly Form of Household Government: for the Ordering of Private Families, According to the Direction of God’s Word, published in 1598.

The husband’s duty is, first, to love his wife as his own flesh. Then to govern her in all duties that properly concern the state of marriage. The wife’s duty is in all reverence and humility, to submit and subject herself to her husband in all such duties as properly belong to marriage, to obey his commandments in all things which he may command by the authority of a husband. If she be not subject to her husband, to let him rule all household affairs things will go backward, the house will come to ruin, for God will not bless where his ordinance is not obeyed. It is allowable, that she may in a modest way speak her mind, and a wise husband will not disdain to hear her advice, and follow it also, if it be good. The duty of the husband is to get goods; and of the wife, to gather them together and save them. The duty of the husband is to travel abroad to seek living; and the wife’s duty is to keep the house. The duty of the husband is to deal with many men; and of the wife’s to talk with few. Now where the husband and wife neglect these duties, we may call it a hell.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS 3

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AP EUROPEAN HISTORY EXAM

Document 5

Source: “Act to Prevent the Destroying and Murdering of Bastard* Children,” passed by the Parliament of England, 1624.

Whereas many lewd women that have been delivered of bastard children, to avoid their shame, and to escape punishment, do secretly bury or conceal the death, of their children, and often, if the child is found dead, the said women do allege, that the said child was born dead. For the preventing therefore of this great mischief, if any Woman, [give birth to a child] which by the laws of this Realm be a bastard, and that she endeavor privately either by drowning or secret burial thereof, [to be rid of the child], be it enacted in every such case the mother so offending shall suffer death as in the case of murder, except such mother can prove by one witness that the child was born dead.

*Bastard children are children born outside of marriage

Document 6

Source: An Act for the Better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom, passed by the English Parliament, 1662.

Whereas the Necessity, Number, and continual increase of the Poor, not only within the cities of London and Westminster, but also through the whole Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales, is very great and exceeding burdensome. Presently, poor People are not restrained from going from one Parish to another, and to settle themselves in those Parishes where there is the largest Commons to build Cottages, and the most Woods for them to burn and destroy, and when they have consumed it, then to another Parish, and at last become Rogues and Vagabonds. Be it enacted that from henceforth there be, one or more Work-houses, within the Cities of London and Westminster, and that it is lawful to apprehend any Rogues, Vagrants, or idle and disorderly Persons and to cause them to be kept and set to work in the several and respective Work-houses; and it is lawful to identify idle and disorderly Persons and Sturdy Beggars to be transported to the English Plantations beyond the Seas, there to be disposed in the usual way of Servants, for a term not exceeding seven Years.

Document 7

Source: The Ladies defense, an extended poem by Lady Mary Lee Chudleigh, published in London, 1701, as a response to a 1699 published marriage sermon that portrayed women as subservient to their husbands.

Tis hard we should be by the men despised, Yet kept from knowing what would make us prized; Debarred from knowledge, banished from the schools, And with the utmost industry bred as fools Then we are told we are incapable of wit, And only for the meanest drudgeries fit; Made slaves to serve men’s luxury and pride, And with innumerable hardships tried. Till pitying heaven release us from our pain, Kind-heaven, to whom alone we dare complain.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS 4

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SAMPLE QUESTIONS