CLEP 
Western Civilization II
College · CLEP Western Civilization II · Certificate available
584 lessons 5.2h runtime 19 units 1,023 links between lessons Test yourself · 19 quizzes, a mid exam, and a final
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Begin with Unit 1: Absolutism in France: Richelieu to Louis XIV. It sets the foundation for everything that follows.
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Unit 1: Absolutism in France: Richelieu to Louis XIV 20 lessons, 1 lecture part
Lecture: Watch · 32:56
- 0001 What the Exam Means by Western Civilization II, 1648 to the Present
- 0002 Absolutism: From First Among Equals to a King Above the Nobles
- 0003 Richelieu, 1628 to 1642: Intendants and the Taille
- 0004 Raison d'État: A Cardinal Backs Protestants and Turks
- 0005 Mazarin and the Fronde, 1648 to 1653
- 0006 Louis XIV, 1643 to 1715: The Sun King as Propagandist
- 0007 Versailles: Palace, Ritual, and the Open Court as Instruments of Rule
- 0008 What Versailles Cost: Sixty Percent of Revenue
- 0009 Colbert: Doubling Revenue Without New Taxes
- 0010 Academies, the Dictionary, and French as the Language of Diplomacy
- 0011 The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685
- 0012 Louis's Wars, 1680 to 1715, and Utrecht, 1713
- 0013 Bankrupt in 1715: Sold Titles, New Taxes, Trampled Peasants
- 0014 Governments Up 400 Percent: The Theory and the Cost of Absolutism
- 0015 Divine Right: Bossuet's Version, Beside the Anchor's
- 0016 Who Paid: Peasants, Serfs, the Robot, and Codified Nobility
- 0017 Sequencing France, 1610 to 1715 worked example
- 0018 Classifying an Absolutist Instrument: Intendant, Tax, Ritual, Academy, Army worked example
- 0019 Reading Bossuet on Divine Right: What the Passage Assumes worked example
- 0020 How Louis XIV Made France the Model of Europe and Bankrupted It review
Unit 2: Constitutionalism: The Dutch Republic and the English Revolution 22 lessons, 1 lecture part
Lecture: Watch · 32:42
- 0101 England in 1600: A Backwater With a Divided Church
- 0102 A Poor Crown: Parliament's Purse and the Gentry
- 0103 James I, 1603: Two Kingdoms, One King, and the Royal Prerogative
- 0104 Charles I: Forced Loans, the Petition of Right, Eleven Years Without Parliament
- 0105 Scotland's Liturgy, the Long Parliament, the Grand Remonstrance
- 0106 Civil War From 1642: Roundheads, Cavaliers, and the New Model Army
- 0107 A King Executed, 1649
- 0108 Levellers, Diggers, and Two Thousand Pamphlets
- 0109 The Protectorate, Ireland, and the Restoration, 1660
- 0110 Charles II, Whigs and Tories, and the Exclusion Crisis
- 0111 James II, a Catholic Heir, and William of Orange, 1688
- 0112 The Bill of Rights and Europe's First Constitutional Monarchy
- 0113 After 1688: Parliament Governs, and the Bank of England, 1694
- 0114 Britain in the Eighteenth Century: Hanovers, Parliament, Voltaire's Model
- 0115 The Dutch Republic: The United Provinces, the States General, the Stadholder
- 0116 William III, 1672: The Dutch War and a Stadholder Who Became a King
- 0117 The Dutch Golden Age: Middlemen, Bankers, Toleration, and the End of Dominance
- 0118 Sequencing the English Revolution, 1603 to 1689 worked example
- 0119 Reading the Bill of Rights, 1689 worked example
- 0120 Absolutism and Constitutionalism Compared: France and England on Five Features worked example
- 0121 Classifying an English Faction: Puritan, High Church, Leveller, Whig, Tory worked example
- 0122 Why Absolutism Failed in England and the State Grew Stronger review
Unit 3: Prussia, Austria, and the Westernization of Russia 24 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0201 Imitating Louis: Palaces, Taxes, Officials, Compromises
- 0202 Brandenburg-Prussia: Scattered Lands and the Great Compromise of 1653
- 0203 The Prussian Tax-and-War Office: An Efficient State Built From the Army
- 0204 King in Prussia, 1701, and an Army With a Country
- 0205 Austria: Diverse Domains, Bohemia's Robot, Hungary's Resistance
- 0206 The Ottoman Frontier: Vienna 1683 and an Empire on Three Continents
- 0207 Habsburg Austria After Westphalia, and Maria Theresa
- 0208 Spain: The Absolutism That Failed
- 0209 From Kiev to Muscovy: Orthodoxy, the Mongol Yoke, Ivan III and Ivan IV
- 0210 The Time of Troubles and the First Romanov, 1613
- 0211 Serfdom by Law, 1649: Too Much Land, Too Few Peasants
- 0212 Peter the Great, 1682 to 1725: A Tsar Disguised as a Workman
- 0213 Westernizing the Nobility: Beards, Dress, Schooling Abroad, Service
- 0214 Conscription, Two-Thirds of Revenue to the Army, and St. Petersburg, 1703
- 0215 The Table of Ranks, 1722: A Service Nobility
- 0216 Charles XII and the Great Northern War, 1700 to 1721
- 0217 Russia After Peter: Six Times Larger, a European Power
- 0218 Catherine the Great: Banks, Settlers, Crimea, Poland, a First Look
- 0219 Sequencing the Eastern Monarchies, 1613 to 1740 worked example
- 0220 Reading the Table of Ranks: What the Exam's Answer Assumes worked example
- 0221 Prussia, Austria, and Russia Compared: Nobles, Peasants, Army, Crown worked example
- 0222 Reading a Map of the Holy Roman Empire in 1789: Habsburg, Prussian, Polish worked example
- 0223 Classifying a Reform: Westernization, Militarization, Serfdom, Compromise worked example
- 0224 Three Absolutisms Built on Serfdom: Prussia, Austria, Russia review
Unit 4: Trade Empires, the Great Powers, and the Society of Orders 30 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0301 Nobles of the Sword, Nobles of the Robe, and Despised Merchants
- 0302 Mercantilism and Early Capitalism: A Fixed Pie or a Growing One
- 0303 From Gold to Commodities: Sugar, Tobacco, Coffee, Spices
- 0304 Where Europe Could Expand, and Where It Could Not
- 0305 Monopolies That Ran Only to Europe
- 0306 The VOC, 1602: The First Corporation
- 0307 Thirty Percent Dividends, Half of Europe's Ships, the Cape, and Japan
- 0308 Tulip Mania: The Speculative Mindset
- 0309 Britain Imitates the Dutch: The Treasury of 1667 and the Navigation Acts
- 0310 Three Dutch Wars, New York, Jamaica, Florida
- 0311 Sugar: The Colonial Product and the Plantation
- 0312 The Atlantic Slave Trade: The Triangle and the Middle Passage
- 0313 Twelve to Fifteen Million: The Database's Count
- 0314 Racial Slavery: The Anchor's Claim, Attributed
- 0315 The East India Company: Factories, Plassey, Bengal
- 0316 North America: Tobacco, Furs, Puritans
- 0317 Spain's, Portugal's, and Russia's Empires
- 0318 The Three Estates and Noble Privilege
- 0319 Peasants West, Serfs East, and the Enclosure of the Commons
- 0320 The Bourgeoisie: A Class That Did Not Fit
- 0321 The Five Great Powers
- 0322 Europe After Utrecht: The Austrian Succession and the Pragmatic Sanction
- 0323 Population Rises in the Eighteenth Century
- 0324 The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763: Canada and India Lost
- 0325 The American Revolution as a Great-Power War
- 0326 Sequencing the Commercial Wars, 1602 to 1783 worked example
- 0327 Reading a Map of the Triangle Trade worked example
- 0328 Mercantilist or Capitalist: Who Profits, and What the State Protects worked example
- 0329 Classifying an Order: First, Second, Third, and Where the Bourgeoisie Sits worked example
- 0330 How Commerce Reordered Power, 1648 to 1763 review
Unit 5: The Scientific View of the World 30 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0401 Natural Philosophy: Describing a Truth Already Known
- 0402 Humanism's Child: Induction, Deduction, and Mathematics as a Divine Language
- 0403 Magic and Science Together: Newton the Alchemist
- 0404 Bacon's Method: Hypothesis, Disproof, Repetition
- 0405 Ptolemy's Spheres and Why Geocentrism Fit Theology
- 0406 Copernicus, 1543: The Sun at the Center
- 0407 Brahe's Data and Kepler's Sun-Centered Proof
- 0408 Galileo's Telescope and The Starry Messenger, 1610
- 0409 The Dialogue, the Trial of 1633, and Galileo's Physics
- 0410 Newton's Principia, 1687: One Law for Planets and Pebbles
- 0411 Newton's Other Work, and the Man
- 0412 Galen's Humors, Vesalius, and Harvey
- 0413 Microscopes, Bacteria, and No Theory of Contagion
- 0414 Women in the Republic of Science: Merian, the Lavoisiers, du Châtelet
- 0415 Poulain de la Barre, and How the New Science Reinforced Stereotypes
- 0416 Why the Center Moved Northwest: Weaker Churches, Not Kinder Faiths
- 0417 The Royal Society and the Académie: State-Funded, Useful Science
- 0418 The Republic of Science: Journals, Correspondence, Shoulders of Giants
- 0419 From Latin to the Vernaculars
- 0420 The Mechanical Universe and Deism
- 0421 Descartes: Doubt, "I Think, Therefore I Am", and a Non-Meddling God
- 0422 Spinoza's Materialism and Pascal's Wager
- 0423 Hobbes: Leviathan and the Contract for Order
- 0424 Locke: Revocable Sovereignty, Toleration, and the Blank Slate
- 0425 Sorting Scientists by Field: Who Preceded Newton worked example
- 0426 Sequencing the Scientific Revolution, 1543 to 1687 worked example
- 0427 Classifying a Method: Inductive, Deductive, Deist, Materialist worked example
- 0428 Reading Locke on the Mind as White Paper worked example
- 0429 Hobbes and Locke Compared: Nature, Contract, Sovereign, Revolt worked example
- 0430 From Describing the World to Discovering It: What the Revolution Changed review
Unit 6: The Enlightenment and Enlightened Despotism 34 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0501 Kant's Question: What Is Enlightenment?
- 0502 1688 to 1789: Reason Applied to Everything, and What We Owe It
- 0503 Superstition, Deism, and Tyranny: What the Philosophes Rejected
- 0504 Newton as Cause: Laws of Nature, Laws of Human Nature
- 0505 The Reading Public, the Novel, and the Vernaculars
- 0506 Coffee Houses and Salons: Women as Moderators
- 0507 The Republic of Letters, From Philosophes to a Glassworker
- 0508 Locke: Revocable Sovereignty and the Blank Slate
- 0509 Montesquieu and the Separation of Powers
- 0510 Voltaire: Wit Against Injustice, and His Ambiguities
- 0511 Émilie du Châtelet: Newton in French
- 0512 The Encyclopedia, 1751: Diderot, d'Alembert, and Pirated Chapters
- 0513 Hume: Against Miracles, and Against the Common People
- 0514 Adam Smith: The Wealth of Nations and the Invisible Hand
- 0515 Rousseau: The General Will and the Contrarian Enlightenment
- 0516 Censorship, Pseudonyms, and the Muted Politics of the Philosophes
- 0517 Beccaria, 1764: Crime, Punishment, and the End of Torture
- 0518 Human Rights, Abolition, and the Women Left Out: Wollstonecraft, 1792
- 0519 The Radical Enlightenment: Freemasons, Smugglers, Pirated Books
- 0520 Enlightened Despotism: Efficiency Without Surrendering Power
- 0521 Frederick the Great: Voltaire's Host, Serfs Freed on Royal Land, Exams for Office
- 0522 Maria Theresa and Joseph II: Reform From Vienna
- 0523 Catherine the Great: Correspondent of Philosophes, Ruler of Serfs
- 0524 The Smolny Institute, the Limits of Enlightened Rule, and What the Despots Did Not Do
- 0525 The Partitions of Poland, 1772, 1793, 1795
- 0526 Why Poland Could Be Partitioned
- 0527 Why the Enlightenment Was Disruptive Despite Its Elites
- 0528 Classifying a Philosophe by Position: Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Smith worked example
- 0529 Sequencing the Enlightenment, 1687 to 1789 worked example
- 0530 Reading Kant's "What Is Enlightenment?" worked example
- 0531 Reading Wollstonecraft: The Position the Exam Expects worked example
- 0532 Classifying an Enlightened Reform: Serfdom, Torture, Toleration, Exams, Schools worked example
- 0533 Reading a Map of the Partitions of Poland worked example
- 0534 Reason Against the Society of Orders: How the Enlightenment Undermined What It Did Not Attack review
Unit 7: The French Revolution 34 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0601 Five Years That Changed Everything: What the Revolution Was
- 0602 A Century of War, Sixty Percent to Interest, and a Tax System That Could Not Reach the Wealth
- 0603 Two Hundred Thousand Nobles and a Third of the Land
- 0604 The American War: The Victory That Bankrupted France
- 0605 Louis XVI, the Notables, and the Estates General Revived
- 0606 The Election of 1789, the Cahiers, and the Price of Bread
- 0607 By Estate or by Head: Sieyès and the Third Estate
- 0608 The National Assembly and the Tennis Court Oath, June 20, 1789
- 0609 The Bastille, July 14
- 0610 Lafayette, the National Guard, and the Great Fear
- 0611 August 4: Feudal Privilege Abolished
- 0612 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, August 26
- 0613 Church Lands Seized, Titles Abolished, Liberty Equality Fraternity
- 0614 Equality's Momentum: Protestants 1789, Jews 1791
- 0615 Equality Denied: Women, de Gouges, and Wollstonecraft
- 0616 St. Domingue: A Slave Revolt Forces Abolition, 1791 to 1794
- 0617 The October Days and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy
- 0618 Varennes, June 1791: The King's Prestige Destroyed
- 0619 The Constitution of 1791 and the Preemptive War of 1792
- 0620 Girondins, Jacobins, and Sans-Culottes
- 0621 September 1792: The Republic and Universal Manhood Suffrage
- 0622 January 1793: The King Executed
- 0623 The Committee of Public Safety and the Levée en Masse
- 0624 Robespierre and the Guillotine
- 0625 The Metric System, the Revolutionary Calendar, and De-Christianization
- 0626 The Terror by the Numbers
- 0627 The Vendée
- 0628 Thermidor, July 1794, and the Directory
- 0629 Sequencing the Revolution, 1787 to 1795 worked example
- 0630 Reading the Declaration of the Rights of Man worked example
- 0631 Classifying a Revolutionary Measure: Liberal, Radical, Thermidorian worked example
- 0632 Reading Sieyès: What the Third Estate Is worked example
- 0633 Causes of the Revolution: Sorting Financial, Social, Intellectual, and Contingent worked example
- 0634 From Bankruptcy to Terror: How the Revolution Radicalized review
Unit 8: Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna 30 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0701 Napoleon: Man of the Revolution, Megalomaniac
- 0702 1795 to 1797: Paris, Italy, Egypt, and a Legend
- 0703 Brumaire 1799: The Consulate, Consul for Life, Emperor 1804
- 0704 Total War Paid by Loot: A Million Soldiers by 1812
- 0705 Trafalgar, October 1805: Britain Beyond Reach
- 0706 Austerlitz and Jena: Austria, Russia, and Prussia Beaten, 1805 to 1806
- 0707 1806: The Holy Roman Empire Dissolved, the Confederation of the Rhine
- 0708 Tilsit, 1807: An Empire From Belgium to Rome, 44 Million People
- 0709 Why He Won: Logistics, Corps, Conscription, and a Meritocratic Officer Corps
- 0710 The Bank of France, 1800, and the Civil Code, 1804
- 0711 What French Rule Brought the Conquered: Codes, Customs, Serfdom Abolished
- 0712 The Concordat, 1801, and the Lycée
- 0713 Efficiency as Principle, Obedience as Demand: Censorship and Women Under the Code
- 0714 The Continental System and Why It Failed
- 0715 The Spanish Ulcer, 1808: Guerrilla War
- 0716 1810: A Habsburg Bride and an Excommunication
- 0717 Russia, 1812: Six Hundred Thousand March
- 0718 Borodino, Moscow Burned, and the Retreat
- 0719 Leipzig, Abdication, and Elba, 1813 to 1814
- 0720 The Hundred Days and Waterloo, June 1815
- 0721 St. Helena, the Myth, and What Napoleon Left
- 0722 Nationalism as Reaction: Spain, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Britain
- 0723 The Congress of Vienna, 1814 to 1815: Who Sat and What They Wanted
- 0724 Vienna's Map: Restorations, Rewards, and Indifference to Nations
- 0725 The Balance of Power and the Holy Alliance
- 0726 Wartburg 1817 and the Reaction: Nationalism Policed
- 0727 Sequencing Napoleon, 1795 to 1815 worked example
- 0728 Classifying a Napoleonic Measure: Revolutionary, Authoritarian, or Both worked example
- 0729 Reading a Map of Europe After Vienna, 1815 worked example
- 0730 Why Napoleon Fell: Spain, Russia, Britain, and a Man Who Could Not Stop review
Unit 9: The Industrial Revolution 34 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0801 Why Europe? The Anchor's Answer Is Energy, Not Culture
- 0802 A Revolution That Took a Century: 1750, 1830, 1860 to 1914
- 0803 The Agricultural Revolution: Rotation, Tools, Enclosure
- 0804 Population, Calories, and a Surplus of Hands
- 0805 Coal: Why Britain Burned It and Where It Lay
- 0806 Watt's Engine: From Pumping Mines to Turning Wheels
- 0807 Textiles First: The Power Loom, the Mule, and Slave-Grown Cotton
- 0808 Capital, Free Trade, Fair Taxes, and Elites Who Did Not Sneer
- 0809 Why the Continent Lagged: Belgium First, France Slow, the Zollverein 1834
- 0810 The Eden Treaty and the Tidal Wave of British Cloth
- 0811 Railways: Manchester to Liverpool, 1830, and Time Zones
- 0812 Telegraph, Steamship, Roads, and Canals
- 0813 Manchester: 20,000 to 400,000
- 0814 Cellars, Soot, Slag, and a Miner Dead by Forty
- 0815 The Corn Laws, 1815, and Wages at Subsistence
- 0816 Satanic Mills: Blake, Dickens, and Deskilled Artisans
- 0817 Cotton's Other End: Slavery in the American South
- 0818 Class as Condition: Workers, Industrialists, the Middle Class, and the Petty Bourgeoisie
- 0819 Peterloo, 1819, and the Luddites
- 0820 Factory Act 1833, Mines Act 1842, Ten Hours 1847
- 0821 Women's Work: Lower Wages and a Second Shift
- 0822 Domestic Service: The Largest Sector, Invisible to Economists
- 0823 The Middle-Class Home: Servants, Sentimentality, Idleness Feared
- 0824 Working Men, Alcohol, and Temperance
- 0825 Closer Together: Holidays, Newspapers, Standard Languages, and Capitals
- 0826 Food From Everywhere: Tea, Coffee, Sheep Ranches, Fish and Chips
- 0827 The Reform Act of 1832
- 0828 Chartism and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, 1846
- 0829 Trade Unions: From the Combination Act to Legalization, 1871
- 0830 Sequencing Industrialization, 1750 to 1871 worked example
- 0831 Classifying a Cause: Resource, Capital, Politics, Culture worked example
- 0832 Reading Factory Testimony: What the Witness Assumes worked example
- 0833 Classifying a Reform: Franchise, Tariff, Labor, Union worked example
- 0834 From Coal to Class: How Industry Remade Britain First review
Unit 10: Political Developments, 1815 to 1848 36 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 0901 After Napoleon: A Thousand-Year Order Shaken in a Generation
- 0902 Conservatism: De Maistre, Original Sin, and Peace, Tradition, Stability
- 0903 Burke: The Constitution Is Not Arithmetic
- 0904 Gobineau: Hierarchy in the Language of Science
- 0905 Four Ideologies, Three Against One
- 0906 Romanticism: Awe, Nature, and the Artist as Genius
- 0907 The Folk Movement: The Grimms and Invented Traditions
- 0908 Nationalism: The State Should Match a People
- 0909 The French Revolution as Model, and Nationalism as Reaction
- 0910 Wartburg 1817, Carlsbad 1819, and Young Italy 1831
- 0911 Who Is "the People"? Nationalism's Unanswered Question
- 0912 Liberalism: Equality Before the Law, and Rights as Universal
- 0913 Constitutional Monarchy With a Property Franchise
- 0914 Socialism: A Word Coined Against Individualism, 1834
- 0915 Utopian Socialism: Saint-Simon, Owen, Fourier
- 0916 Why 1848 Made Socialism Militant
- 0917 Blanc's State Socialism and the Anarchists Proudhon and Bakunin
- 0918 Marx: Class Struggle, Bourgeoisie, Proletariat, and the Means of Production
- 0919 Overproduction, Crisis, Revolution: Marx's Mechanism
- 0920 Marx After 1848: Capital Without a Tactical Guide
- 0921 The Bourgeoisie and the Nobility: Money and Titles Blur
- 0922 Spain 1820 and the Holy Alliance's First Intervention
- 0923 The Decembrists, 1825, and Nicholas I's Third Section
- 0924 Greek Independence and the Sick Man of Europe
- 0925 July 1830: Charles X Falls, the Citizen King, and Belgium
- 0926 Britain Reforms Instead: 1832, 1833, 1834, 1846
- 0927 February 1848: The Second Republic and Universal Manhood Suffrage
- 0928 Vienna, Prague, Budapest: The Habsburg Empire Near Collapse
- 0929 Frankfurt: Eight Hundred Delegates and the Smaller-German Answer
- 0930 The June Days and Louis Napoleon
- 0931 Why 1848 Failed, and What It Changed Anyway
- 0932 Classifying an Ideology: Conservative, Liberal, Nationalist, Socialist worked example
- 0933 Reading Burke's Reflections worked example
- 0934 Reading the Communist Manifesto worked example
- 0935 Sequencing 1815 to 1852 worked example
- 0936 Three Against One: How the Ideologies Fought and Who Won by 1852 review
Unit 11: Politics and Diplomacy, 1850 to 1900 40 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1001 After 1848: Conservatives Take Up Nationalism
- 1002 Italy in 1850: Austria, the Two Sicilies, the Papal States, and Three Percent
- 1003 Piedmont-Sardinia, Vittorio Emanuele II, and Cavour the Architect
- 1004 The Crimean War Breaks the Vienna System, 1854 to 1856
- 1005 Cavour's Bargain With Napoleon III and the War of 1859
- 1006 Garibaldi and the Thousand, 1860
- 1007 Cavour Heads Garibaldi Off: Italy in Six Months
- 1008 Venetia 1866, Rome 1870
- 1009 The South as Loser: Tariffs, Brigands, and the Bandit Wars
- 1010 Italy in 1861: Twenty-Two Million People, Half a Million Voters
- 1011 Bismarck: Realpolitik, Iron and Blood
- 1012 Prussia Against Austria, 1866: Why Bismarck Did Not March on Vienna
- 1013 The Spanish Throne, the Leaked Memo, and War With France, 1870
- 1014 Sedan, Versailles, and the German Empire, 1871
- 1015 The Empire's Constitution, Alsace-Lorraine, and Revanche
- 1016 Austria-Hungary: The Compromise of 1867
- 1017 Nationalities Under the Dual Monarchy
- 1018 Alexander I and Nicholas I: Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality
- 1019 The Intelligentsia: Novelists Under a Secret Police
- 1020 Alexander II Emancipates the Serfs, 1861, With a Catch
- 1021 Narodniks and the People's Will: A Tsar Assassinated, 1881
- 1022 Alexander III, Reaction, and the Impasse Before 1905
- 1023 The Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905
- 1024 Lenin's Context: Marx Plus Russian Terrorism
- 1025 The Third Republic and the Paris Commune, 1871
- 1026 Boulanger, and a Republic That Survived Its Enemies
- 1027 The Dreyfus Affair
- 1028 The First International, 1864, and Mass Socialist Parties
- 1029 The Kulturkampf: Bismarck Against Catholics, 1873
- 1030 The Anti-Socialist Laws of 1878 and the First Welfare State
- 1031 The SPD Legalized, 1890: Kautsky Against Bernstein
- 1032 Bismarck's Alliances: Three Emperors, Dual, Triple, Reinsurance
- 1033 After Bismarck: The Franco-Russian Alliance, 1894
- 1034 Diplomacy Without the Concert: Why 1871 to 1900 Was an Armed Peace
- 1035 Sequencing the Unifications, 1852 to 1871 worked example
- 1036 Reading a Map of Unified Italy and Germany worked example
- 1037 Cavour and Bismarck Compared: Aim, Method, Ally, Result worked example
- 1038 Reading "Iron and Blood": What Bismarck Assumes worked example
- 1039 Reading a Map of the Alliance Blocs, 1882 to 1907 worked example
- 1040 How Conservatives Built Nations and Broke the Balance of Power review
Unit 12: Economy, Culture, and Imperialism, 1850 to 1914: Society and Thought 28 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1101 Victorianism: Security, Shame, and Virtue Tied to Wealth
- 1102 Fear of the Working Class, Degeneration, and the Beast Beneath: Dracula and Jekyll
- 1103 Separate Spheres: Men and Women as Opposites
- 1104 Sewers, Anesthesia, and the Cult of Cleanliness
- 1105 Pasteur: Germs, Pasteurization, Vaccines
- 1106 Lyell's Deep Time and Darwin's Origin of Species, 1859
- 1107 Why Darwin Shocked; The Descent of Man, 1871, and Mendel Rediscovered, 1900
- 1108 Social Darwinism: Spencer, Survival of the Fittest, and Race Made Biological
- 1109 The "Unfit" and Eugenics
- 1110 Durkheim, Weber, Ranke: The Social Sciences Founded
- 1111 Freud and the Unconscious: Thought at the Century's Turn
- 1112 Mass Literacy, Ferry's Schools, Cheap Paper, and Yellow Journalism That Made Politics
- 1113 Purchasing Power Up 165 Percent: Consumerism and the Bon Marché
- 1114 Population, the Demographic Transition, and the Great Migration
- 1115 The Second Industrial Revolution: Steel, Electricity, Chemicals, the Telephone
- 1116 Realism and Impressionism
- 1117 The Arts at the Fin de Siècle
- 1118 What Women Could Not Do in 1850, and First-Wave Feminism Defined
- 1119 The Vote: 1867, "Feminist" 1890, Finland and Norway First
- 1120 Weapons of Self-Defense: Property, Earnings, Divorce, and Josephine Butler
- 1121 The Suffragettes: Deeds, Force-Feeding, and the Derby of 1913
- 1122 Anti-Semitism: From Medieval Exclusion to Race by Blood
- 1123 Marr, the Protocols, Dreyfus, and Zionism
- 1124 Classifying a Claim: Science, Social Science, Pseudo-Science worked example
- 1125 Sequencing Science and Culture, 1848 to 1913 worked example
- 1126 Reading Darwin's Introduction worked example
- 1127 Classifying a Feminist Demand: Suffrage, Property, Person, Marriage worked example
- 1128 Confidence and Fear: What Mass Society Believed About Itself review
Unit 13: Imperialism, 1850 to 1914 28 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1201 The New Imperialism: Eighty Percent of the Globe, and a Perfect Storm
- 1202 The Civilizing Mission and Leopold's Obsession
- 1203 Telegraphs and Quinine: Distance and Disease Conquered
- 1204 Gunboats, Breech-Loaders, and the Maxim Gun
- 1205 Raw Materials, Mines, and the Fear of America
- 1206 The Sun Never Set: A Quarter of the Globe, the Company's India, and Opium
- 1207 The Opium War: The Nemesis, Hong Kong, the Treaty Ports
- 1208 The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857
- 1209 The Raj: Direct Rule, Exams, and a Glass Ceiling
- 1210 Africa in 1850, and the Scramble: Ten Percent to Ninety
- 1211 The Berlin Conference, 1884: No Africans Present
- 1212 Leopold's Congo Free State: Rubber, Hostages, Hands, and 1908
- 1213 The Herero and Nama, 1904 to 1905
- 1214 Fashoda, Rhodes, the Boer War, Suez, and Egypt
- 1215 Plunder Economies, and Borders Drawn
- 1216 Did Empire Pay? Bankrupt Companies and Banquets
- 1217 The Sick Man of Europe: Russia, the Crimea, and the Eastern Question
- 1218 Janissaries Destroyed, the Capitulations, the Tanzimat, and the Constitution of 1876
- 1219 Abdülhamid II, the Balkans Lost, and the Young Turks
- 1220 The Armenian Genocide, 1915
- 1221 Qajar Persia: The Great Game and the Constitution of 1905
- 1222 Ethiopia: Adwa, 1896
- 1223 Japan: Perry, Meiji, and Victory Over Russia, 1905
- 1224 The Boxers and China Carved
- 1225 Sequencing Imperialism, 1840 to 1908 worked example
- 1226 Reading a Map of Africa in 1914 worked example
- 1227 Reading Kipling and Hobson Against Each Other worked example
- 1228 Why Europe Took the World in a Generation, and What It Cost review
Unit 14: The First World War and Its Settlement 36 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1301 The Great Powers: A Fragile Balance and Forty Years Without a War
- 1302 Imperial Rivalry, the Naval Race, and Nationalism Turned Hostile
- 1303 The Alliance Blocs, Million-Man Armies, and the General Staffs' Ultimatums
- 1304 Serbia's Piedmont Ambition and the Bosnian Problem
- 1305 The Black Hand and Sarajevo, June 1914
- 1306 The July Crisis: Ultimatum, Blank Check, and the Alliances Activate
- 1307 Central Powers Against the Entente; "Over by Christmas" and the Socialists' Vote
- 1308 The Schlieffen Plan
- 1309 Belgium: Neutrality Violated, Civilians Massacred, Britain In
- 1310 The Marne and Tannenberg: The Plan Fails on Both Fronts
- 1311 Trench Warfare Invented, and the Christmas Truce
- 1312 Going Over the Top: Defense Beats Offense, Mud, Gas
- 1313 Verdun and the Somme, 1916
- 1314 Attrition: Casualties as Progress
- 1315 The Mobile East, and Gallipoli, 1915
- 1316 Mesopotamia and the Arab Revolt
- 1317 Jutland and the Blockade
- 1318 U-Boats, the Lusitania, Zimmermann: The United States Enters, April 1917
- 1319 Why America Mattered: Industry and Fresh Men
- 1320 Women's War Work and the Vote That Followed
- 1321 The Home Fronts: Rationing, Munitions, Total Commitment
- 1322 The Spring Offensive of 1918 and the Collapse
- 1323 November 1918: Armistice, Abdication, the Stab-in-the-Back Myth
- 1324 Twenty Million Dead, and Shell Shock
- 1325 Three Empires Fall
- 1326 Wilson's Fourteen Points
- 1327 Versailles and the Successor States: Alsace-Lorraine, Reparations, War Guilt, the New Map
- 1328 The Mandates, and Atatürk's Turkey
- 1329 The League of Nations: Weak, and Without America
- 1330 A Peace That Settled Nothing
- 1331 Sequencing the War, 1914 to 1919 worked example
- 1332 Reading a Map of the Fronts worked example
- 1333 Classifying a Cause: Alliance, Imperialism, Nationalism, Plans, Opinion worked example
- 1334 Reading the Fourteen Points Against Versailles worked example
- 1335 Reading a Casualty Table worked example
- 1336 Why 1914 Happened and Why 1919 Failed review
Unit 15: The Russian Revolution and Europe in the 1920s 34 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1401 Nicholas II: The Last Autocrat
- 1402 The Russo-Japanese War and Bloody Sunday, 1905
- 1403 The Revolution of 1905: The Duma, Unions, and a Freer Press
- 1404 Rasputin, and the War Breaks the Tsarist State
- 1405 Bakunin Plus Marx: Lenin's Vanguard Party
- 1406 February 1917: Women's Day, the Army Joins, the Tsar Abdicates
- 1407 Dual Power: The Provisional Government, the Soviets, and "Peace, Land, and Bread"
- 1408 October 1917, and the Constituent Assembly Dispersed
- 1409 Brest-Litovsk
- 1410 Reds Against Whites: Civil War, Intervention, Ten Million Dead
- 1411 The USSR Founded; Poland, Finland, the Baltics Free
- 1412 War Communism to the New Economic Policy
- 1413 Lenin Dies, 1924: Stalin's Secretaryship Defeats Trotsky
- 1414 Socialism in One Country: The Great Turn and Collectivization
- 1415 The Famine of 1932 to 1933, and the Five-Year Plans
- 1416 The Purges, the NKVD, and the Gulag
- 1417 Recognition and Rank: The USSR by 1939
- 1418 Locarno, Dawes, Kellogg-Briand: The Spirit of the Twenties
- 1419 After the War: Kings Gone, Democracy Disappointing
- 1420 Modernism: Rejecting Authority, Art for Art's Sake
- 1421 Futurism and Marinetti's Manifesto, 1909
- 1422 Cubism, Expressionism, Klimt, Schiele
- 1423 Stravinsky's Rite and Schoenberg's Twelve Tones
- 1424 Woolf, Proust, Kafka, Joyce: The Inner Life
- 1425 Freud: The Darwin of the Mind, Hysteria, the Talking Cure
- 1426 Id, Ego, Superego
- 1427 Freud on Politics, and Freud on Women
- 1428 What the War Changed for Women: The New Woman and the Reversal
- 1429 Suffrage Won Across the 1920s
- 1430 Sequencing Russia, 1904 to 1924 worked example
- 1431 Reading Lenin: The Vanguard worked example
- 1432 Comparing February and October worked example
- 1433 Classifying a Modernist Work: Futurist, Cubist, Expressionist, Stream of Consciousness worked example
- 1434 From Autocracy to Command Economy: What the Revolution Built review
Unit 16: The Depression, Fascism, and the Road to War 32 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1501 The Debt Triangle, and October 24, 1929
- 1502 Austerity, Keynes, and the Gold Standard
- 1503 Disappointment: Why a Bitter Peace and a Depression Fed Extremism
- 1504 Fascism Defined: State, Hierarchy, the Mythic Nation, the Fasces
- 1505 Fascism and Communism: Dying for the Nation, Not the Class
- 1506 Italy in 1919: A Mutilated Victory and a Red Scare
- 1507 The Blackshirts and the March on Rome, 1922
- 1508 Il Duce: Democracy Destroyed From Within, Spectacle, Corporatism
- 1509 The Fascist State's Limits: Trains, Sycophants, and an Army Unready in 1939
- 1510 Weimar: Liberalism's Constitution, the Stab-in-the-Back Lie, and an Army of 100,000
- 1511 Thirty-Two Parties, the Ruhr, Hyperinflation, and Stabilization, 1923 to 1924
- 1512 Hitler Before Politics: Vienna, the War, Munich
- 1513 The NSDAP, the SA, the Beer Hall Putsch, and Mein Kampf
- 1514 Why the Nazis Grew: Depression and Disenchantment With Weak Liberalism
- 1515 Nazi Racial Ideology: Creators, Preservers, Destroyers
- 1516 2.6 to 37 Percent, and the Chancellorship, January 1933
- 1517 The Reichstag Fire, the Enabling Act, and One Party by July 1933
- 1518 Working Towards the Führer: Volksgemeinschaft, Youth, Mothers
- 1519 Sterilization, the Nuremberg Laws, the First Camps
- 1520 The SS, the Gestapo, and the Night of the Long Knives
- 1521 Spain's Old Order, Primo de Rivera, and the Republic of 1931
- 1522 Popular Front Against Franco, 1936
- 1523 A War of Reprisals: Volunteers, Non-Intervention, Guernica
- 1524 Franco's Spain, 1939 to 1975
- 1525 Versailles Dismantled: Rearmament, the Rhineland, Ethiopia
- 1526 Appeasement Defined, and Defended
- 1527 The Anschluss and Munich, 1938
- 1528 Czechoslovakia Occupied, and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939
- 1529 Sequencing Italy and Germany, 1919 to 1934 worked example
- 1530 Reading the Weimar Election Chart worked example
- 1531 Comparing Mussolini's and Hitler's Seizures of Power worked example
- 1532 Why Democracies Fell: Disenchantment, Depression, and the Men Who Used Them review
Unit 17: The Second World War and the Holocaust 32 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1601 A War of Aggression: Causes, Sides, and Sixty Million Dead
- 1602 Poland, September 1939: Blitzkrieg and the Lessons of 1918
- 1603 The Phony War, the Maginot Line, and May 1940 Through the Ardennes
- 1604 Dunkirk, the Fall of France, and Vichy
- 1605 The Battle of Britain: Radar, Factories, Churchill
- 1606 Lend-Lease, the Tripartite Pact, Pearl Harbor, and the Mediterranean Detour
- 1607 Barbarossa, June 22, 1941: Stalin's Blindness and the Soviet Colossus
- 1608 The Advance Halts: Partisans, Winter, and Factories Moved East
- 1609 The Home Fronts: Annihilation, Bombing, Rationing, Rosie, and Slavery in the Reich
- 1610 1942 Turns: Rommel, Midway, El Alamein, Torch
- 1611 Stalingrad, Kursk, and the Soviet Share
- 1612 Italy Changes Sides, and the Resistance
- 1613 D-Day to V-E Day
- 1614 Tokyo, Okinawa, Hiroshima, Nagasaki
- 1615 Tehran, Bretton Woods, Yalta
- 1616 Potsdam, the Zones, and the United Nations
- 1617 The Aftermath: Displaced Millions, the Expulsions, Two Traumas
- 1618 Genocide, the Holocaust, and Six Million
- 1619 The Other Victims: Romani, Homosexuals, Slavs
- 1620 The Nuremberg Laws, Aryanization, and Kristallnacht
- 1621 Madagascar to the Ghettos: Poland's Three Million, 1939 to 1941
- 1622 The Einsatzgruppen: The Holocaust by Bullets
- 1623 Gas Vans, Zyklon B, and Wannsee
- 1624 Extermination Camps: The Peak of 1942 to 1943, and Treblinka
- 1625 Auschwitz: The Exception Built to Last
- 1626 Revolts, the Ghetto Uprising, Hungary 1944, Death Marches, Liberation
- 1627 Nuremberg, Hilberg, Eichmann, Denial, Memory
- 1628 Sequencing the War, 1939 to 1945 worked example
- 1629 Classifying a Turning Point: Britain, Midway, Stalingrad, Kursk worked example
- 1630 Sequencing the Holocaust, 1935 to 1945 worked example
- 1631 Classifying a Site: Ghetto, Concentration Camp, Extermination Camp worked example
- 1632 Total War and Industrial Murder: What 1939 to 1945 Did to the West's Self-Image review
Unit 18: Europe Since 1945: Cold War, Decolonization, Integration 36 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1701 Two Superpowers, a Divided Continent, and the Marshall Plan
- 1702 Social Democracy, the Welfare State, and the Center's Parties
- 1703 Les Trente Glorieuses: Boom, Baby Boom, Consumers, DNA, Vatican II
- 1704 Truman, Containment, the Iron Curtain, and Tito's Exception
- 1705 Berlin Divided: Four Sectors, the Blockade, the Airlift
- 1706 Two Germanies, NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and Korea
- 1707 Khrushchev: The Secret Speech, the Thaw, Hungary 1956
- 1708 Sputnik and the Wall, 1957 to 1961
- 1709 Cuba: Bay of Pigs, Thirteen Days, the Hotline
- 1710 Brezhnev, Stagnation, and the Prague Spring
- 1711 Vietnam: From Dien Bien Phu to Saigon
- 1712 Détente, Helsinki, and Why the Soviet System Failed
- 1713 Suez, 1956: The End of British and French Independence of Action
- 1714 Why Empire Could Not Survive: India and Partition, 1947
- 1715 Palestine: Balfour, the Mandate, Israel 1948
- 1716 Iran 1953, Ghana 1957: Two Roads Out of Empire
- 1717 Kenya and South Africa
- 1718 Algeria, 1954 to 1962: The FLN, Torture, de Gaulle
- 1719 Bandung, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Empire Strikes Back
- 1720 Schuman, the ECSC, and the EEC, 1957
- 1721 Britain Joins, and the Community Becomes the Union, 1973 to 1993
- 1722 Schengen, the Euro, Enlargement, Strains, and Brexit
- 1723 The Oil Shock of 1973 and Thatcher
- 1724 The Left Without Marx, and the Far Right Reborn
- 1725 Gorbachev, Glasnost, Perestroika, Solidarity
- 1726 1989 to 1991: The Wall Falls, Germany Reunites, the USSR Ends; Russia's 1990s and the Yugoslav Wars
- 1727 Existentialism: Condemned to Be Free, Bad Faith, Authenticity
- 1728 Postmodernism and Pop Art: Foucault, Derrida, Warhol
- 1729 The Youth Movement, the New Left, and May 1968
- 1730 Beauvoir's Second Sex, and What Postwar Women Faced
- 1731 Second-Wave Feminism: Law, Culture, and the Pill
- 1732 Sequencing the Cold War, 1946 to 1968 worked example
- 1733 Reading the Berlin Map worked example
- 1734 Sequencing Decolonization, 1947 to 1963 worked example
- 1735 Sequencing Integration, 1951 to 2002 worked example
- 1736 From Ruins to Union: Europe's Second Half-Century review
Unit 19: Capstone: The Exam, the Bands, and the Sample Questions 24 lessons, 2 lecture parts
- 1801 How the Exam Is Built: Twelve Bands, About 120 Questions, 90 Minutes
- 1802 The Anchor, the Witnesses, and the Primary Layer: Where Every Entry Came From
- 1803 Band 1 in One Entry: Absolutism and Constitutionalism, 1648 to 1715
- 1804 Band 2 in One Entry: Empire and Economic Expansion
- 1805 Band 3 in One Entry: The Scientific View
- 1806 Band 4 in One Entry: The Enlightenment
- 1807 Band 5 in One Entry: Revolution and Napoleon
- 1808 Band 6 in One Entry: The Industrial Revolution
- 1809 Band 7 in One Entry: 1815 to 1848
- 1810 Band 8 in One Entry: Nationalism and Diplomacy, 1850 to 1914
- 1811 Band 9 in One Entry: Economy, Culture, Imperialism, 1850 to 1914
- 1812 Band 10 in One Entry: The Great War and the Russian Revolution
- 1813 Band 11 in One Entry: Between the Wars
- 1814 Band 12 in One Entry: The Second World War and Contemporary Europe
- 1815 Drill 1: The Ottoman Empire at Its Height worked example
- 1816 Drill 2: The Table of Ranks worked example
- 1817 Drill 3: Wollstonecraft's Position worked example
- 1818 Drill 4: Whose Work Newton Culminated worked example
- 1819 Drill 5: Why the Nazis Rose worked example
- 1820 Drill 6: Reading the Berlin Map worked example
- 1821 Drill 7: Whose Viewpoint the Quotation Represents worked example
- 1822 Drill 8: What the Quotation Means for Knowledge worked example
- 1823 Twelve Periods, One Exam: The Threads That Run 1648 to the Present review
- 1824 What This Course Could Not Source: The Disclosure Entry (W-2) review
Who this subject is for
- Students preparing for the CLEP Western Civilization II exam
- History and humanities students
- Education majors
- Adult learners finishing a degree
- Homeschool students
- Anyone who wants modern European history in order
Why Western Civilization II matters
The period from the mid-1600s to the present explains the modern state, industry and the world wars. It prepares you for:
- Modern European history
- International relations
- Political science
- Economics
Time to complete
- of lessons (584, measured)
- 5.2 h
- of lectures (36)
- 14.6 h
- learning hours on the certificate, with quizzes and the final
- 27 h
Times are measured from the recordings and the exam time limits. Go at your own pace; nothing expires.
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