19th-Century Perspectives and Political Developments
From Romantic poets rejecting Enlightenment reason to Bismarck's blood-and-iron diplomacy — how nationalism, liberalism, and conservatism collided in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and how Italy and Germany emerged as unified nation-states by the century's end.
Seven topics from the College Board CED, in order.
Topic 7.1
Conservatism, Liberalism & Nationalism
Conservatives sought to restore traditional order after Napoleon, while liberals championed constitutional government and nationalists pursued political unity along ethnic and cultural lines.
Topic 7.2
Romanticism
Writers, artists, and composers like Goethe, Wordsworth, and Beethoven rejected Enlightenment rationalism in favor of emotion, nature, and individual expression.
Topic 7.3
The Revolutions of 1830 and 1848
Waves of liberal and nationalist uprisings swept across Europe demanding constitutional government and national unity — and were largely, if temporarily, suppressed.
Topic 7.4
Italian Unification
Cavour's diplomacy and Garibaldi's military campaigns combined to unify the Italian peninsula into a single kingdom by 1871.
Topic 7.5
German Unification & Realpolitik
Otto von Bismarck used realpolitik and three calculated wars, including the Franco-Prussian War, to unify Germany under Prussian leadership and Kaiser Wilhelm I.
Topic 7.6
Mass Politics, Suffrage & Women's Rights
Expanding political participation, early feminist and suffrage movements, and the Dreyfus Affair revealed growing tensions over who could fully belong to the modern nation.
Topic 7.7
Darwin, Science & Realism
Darwin's theory of evolution reshaped intellectual life and fed Social Darwinism, while Realist and Naturalist artists and writers reacted against Romantic idealism.
About Unit 7
Unit 7 traces how the ideological struggle between conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism reshaped European politics in the century after Napoleon's defeat. While conservatives at the Congress of Vienna tried to restore the old order, liberals demanded constitutions and individual rights, and nationalists across the continent pushed for political unity along cultural and linguistic lines. In the arts and intellectual life, Romanticism emerged as a powerful reaction against Enlightenment rationalism and industrial society, with figures like Goethe, Wordsworth, and Beethoven privileging emotion, nature, and the individual over cold reason.
These tensions exploded in the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, liberal and nationalist uprisings that swept much of Europe before being suppressed — but whose ideals endured. Nationalism achieved its most dramatic victories in the unification of Italy, led by Cavour's diplomacy and Garibaldi's military campaigns, and Germany, engineered through Bismarck's hard-nosed realpolitik and three wars that culminated in the Franco-Prussian War and the proclamation of the Second Reich under Kaiser Wilhelm I. Meanwhile, expanding suffrage, early feminist movements, and incidents like the Dreyfus Affair revealed deepening tensions over political participation, gender, and anti-Semitism, even as Darwin's theory of evolution — and its distortion into Social Darwinism — reshaped science and culture, and Realist and Naturalist artists reacted against Romantic idealism. This unit is roughly 8–12% of the AP European History exam.
The College Board ties Unit 7 to four of its course-wide themes:
NEM
Nationalism became a dominant force driving both unification movements and political fragmentation across 19th-century Europe
CID
Romanticism rejected Enlightenment rationalism in favor of emotion, individualism, and nature
SP
Realpolitik replaced idealistic nationalism with pragmatic power politics in achieving German unification
SOC
Expanding political participation and suffrage movements challenged traditional social and gender hierarchies