Two competing answers to the same question: who holds ultimate political power? Louis XIV's absolutist France and the divine-right monarchies of Austria, Prussia, and Russia versus England's parliamentary alternative — from civil war to the Glorious Revolution.
Six ways to master Unit 3 — pick whichever fits how you like to study.
Six topics from the College Board CED, in order.
Unit 3 examines two competing models for organizing political power that emerged from the chaos of Europe's 17th-century wars. In France, Louis XIV built the model of absolutism — centralizing authority in the monarch, using Versailles and Baroque art as tools of political theater, and pursuing religious uniformity through the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Similar absolutist projects unfolded in Habsburg Austria, Hohenzollern Prussia, and Romanov Russia, where Peter the Great forcibly westernized his state to compete with the rest of Europe.
England took a different path. The English Civil War, the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's Commonwealth, and finally the bloodless Glorious Revolution of 1688 established a constitutional alternative: a monarchy bound by law and answerable to Parliament, codified in the English Bill of Rights. This unit is roughly 10–15% of the AP European History exam, and its central tension — unchecked royal power versus representative limits on that power — shaped the rest of early modern European politics.
The College Board ties Unit 3 to four of its course-wide themes: