2021 AP European History DBQ (Sample Essay)

The topic of this year's AP Euro DBQ threw us all for a loop, as the setting wasn't even in Europe! The 2021 DBQ required students to evaluate whether or not liberalism was the guiding principle of British imperialism in India.

Click here to view the 2021 AP Euro DBQ prompt and documents.

Although the topic was unexpected, the 2021 DBQ was actually quite accessible to AP Euro students - at least, for students who understand European concepts of liberalism (which are quite different than the current American understanding as someone who is generally left of center and tends to support the Democratic Party).

Click here to download the AP Euro DBQ Rubric.

Given that most of the points on the AP Euro DBQ Rubric are dependent on analytically using the documents as evidence, a student can get full credit knowing absolutely nothing about British India, in particular. In my sample response, I used Darwinism and Social Darwinism to illustrate the illiberal relationship between the British and their colonized subjects.

Click here to download a sample
​full-credit essay.

my apwh dbq: tell us about colonialism in india baby

me: ok fine, whatever i hate you but it’s fine that’s fair

my ap euro dbq: hey bb tell us about colonialism in india pic.twitter.com/4w3zu2Rlbg

— jess (@Jessica53773427) May 7, 2021

A few days after the 2021 free-response questions were released, I solved the 2021 DBQ within the one-hour time limit. I found that while the topic was not equally easy to argue from both sides, it was very easy to craft an argument against liberalism in British India while also making a counter-argument that liberalism was present in British India to an extent. Although this did not occur to me during the first pass, there is a way to create an argument for liberalism being the driving influence of British governance in India if one would take the critical newspaper articles and point out how they show a lack of censorship.