In a pandemic year in which most APUSH classes were running behind content-wise, nobody expected the DBQ to be from the post-WWII era! But then, that's exactly what the AP US History Test Development Committee did this year! The 2021 APUSH DBQ topic addressed the social consequences of the prosperity that followed World War II, with a timeframe between 1940 and 1970.

You may find my APUSH DBQ rubric helpful while taking a look at this sample essay, as each of these points is specifically targeted in the sample essay.

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.

The French Revolution is one of the most important events in modern European history, setting the stage for the spread of popular government not only in Europe, but also onto every inhabited continent. While the French Revolution could be explained in an infinite number of ways, I am highlighting five causes in this post.

Napoleon ruled in the autocratic style of an absolute monarch. Although legislative bodies existed in France during Napoleon’s reign, they had little real power, having been stripped of it by the Constitution of Year XII (1804). If the principle of representative government was the cornerstone of the French Revolution, Napoleon definitely did not advance its values.

While Napoleon’s autocratic rule violated the principle of representative government, there is no doubt that Napoleon enjoyed the support of the majority of the French people and considered himself an agent acting on their behalf. The Constitution of Year XII, which elevated Napoleon from First Consul to Emperor, was ratified by the French people in a plebiscite, or national referendum, with over 99 percent of voters voting in favor of Napoleon becoming emperor and claiming the powers that came with it. Additionally, he claimed the title of “Emperor of the French,” rather than “Emperor of France,” in recognition that his power came from the French people rather than by divine right. Although the people were not directly involved in governing through elected representatives, Napoleon gave a nod to the principle of popular sovereignty under the social contract and used his power to deliver popular reforms, such as the Concordat of 1801, re-establishing the Catholic Church as the “majority religion” of the French people.

The Napoleonic Code established a uniform system of laws that applied equally to everyone in the French nation. There were no aristocratic privileges (e.g., tax exemptions for an entire class of people) of the sort that had existed under the Old Regime. This new system of laws recognized the people of France as a nation rather than a collection of three estates.

Some exceptions to equality under the law existed under the Napoleonic Code, such as it being more difficult for women to sue for divorce than men (she only had grounds if her husband brought his mistress into the family home, thereby embarrassing her) and the re-establishment of slavery in the French colonies. However, it should be noted that under the Old Regime, legal divorce did not exist in France, at all, and Britain did not have a similar law until 1857.

Under Napoleon’s leadership, France made great strides toward equality of opportunity. He expanded access to education, creating lycées that provided a free secondary education to students who could pass the entrance exams. This expanded access to education created unprecedented opportunities for young people from common backgrounds to enter the civil service, the officer corps of the military, or the Catholic hierarchy. Under Napoleon, promotions in the military and civil service were based on merit, rather than social status or noble birth.

If the French Revolution was chiefly about promoting liberal values of free speech, press, and religion, Napoleon would get mixed reviews. His government employed censors , who screened literature and newspapers for offensive content and criticism of the government. However, while the Concordat of 1801 re-established the Catholic Church as the “majority religion” of France, it stopped short of declaring it as the state religion. Napoleon allowed full religious toleration during his reign and even granted Protestant ministers similar subsidies as he gave to Catholic priests. Napoleon’s rule has often been compared to that of the Enlightened Absolutists, as several of his reforms can be seen as implementing liberalism from above.

The Old Regime was made up of the three estates. The laws and the administration of justice varied from region to region. The people of France were bound together only as subjects loyal to the King of France. The Revolution sought to create a French nation that consistently French across regions and did not differentiate legally between members of social classes.

Napoleon advanced the idea of French nationalism by creating a single law code for all of France that established equality under the law, his continued use of the revolutionary Tricolor flag, the restoration of the Catholic Church as the official “majority religion,” and proclaiming himself as the Emperor of the French (People).

​In the schools established by Napoleon, French was the only language of instruction. This spread the French language to parts of France where it had not been spoken or understood under the Old Regime. French was also established as the only language of the legal system.

Napoleon also presided over the peak of France’s national greatness and military power. The French people loved him for this, eagerly rallying around the emperor of their own choosing after his escape from his first exile in Elba. During the Hundred Days, Napoleon re-established himself as the Emperor of the French until he was deposed again after being defeated at Waterloo by the foreign military forces of the Seventh Coalition.

Perhaps, the greatest defense that Napoleon could make that he did not undermine the values of the French Revolution was that he personified these values with his own extraordinary life. Napoleon was born to a minor noble family in Corsica (an island off the coast of France that is technically French, but not “seen” as French).

Under the Old Regime, Napoleon would have risen only to the middling officer ranks but would never have been placed in command of an army. Napoleon’s journey from being born to minor provincial nobility to becoming the Emperor of France is, in and of itself, one of the great stories of the French Revolution and its upending of the Old Regime and its system of aristocratic privilege.

When is the 2021 AP European History exam? This year, it's a complicated question, as the exam will be administered three times in early May, late May, and early June.

The first exam administration, which will occur on May 7 at 12 PM local time, will be in the traditional paper/pencil format. The second and third exam administrations, which will occur on May 19 and June 2, at 12 PM EDT, will be administered in a digital format. The digital exams will be administered both in proctored settings at schools and also at home in circumstances permitted by the College Board.

The first administration of the AP Euro exam will be in the traditional paper/pencil format and will include all of the standard elements of a traditional exam (multiple choice, short answer, DBQ, and LEQ). It will be offered at schools in a traditional setting with standard proctoring and test security protocols.

Click here to learn more about Marco Learning's Student Support prep courses for the 2021 AP Euro exam!

The second and third administrations of the AP Euro exam will be administered in a digital format, which will be offered both in proctored settings at schools and at home (the setting will be determined by your school's AP coordinator). Due to test security concerns, the digital exam WILL NOT include a Long Essay Question (LEQ), which will be replaced by two additional Short-Answer Questions (SAQs). The multiple choice and Document-Based Question (DBQ) will appear in the same format as the standard exam, but the SAQ section will be slightly different. 

More information on AP exam dates is available on the College Board's website. All information here is current as of the date of posting and is subject to change.

The controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act, by repealing the Missouri Compromise and applying popular sovereignty in territories that had been previously closed to slavery, created a mad rush to settle the Kansas Territory. Antislavery settlers arrived from as far away as New England, while proslavery settlers augmented their numbers with Missouri residents who crossed the border in order to vote in territorial elections. This timeline follows the saga of "Bleeding Kansas" from its origins to its conclusion.

The Missouri Compromise closed all territory north of the 36°30′ parallel to slavery within the Louisiana Purchase. The territories that would later be organized as Kansas and Nebraska were north of the 36°30′ parallel, so the understanding reached in 1820 was that this territory would be closed to slavery.

As part of the Compromise of 1850, the New Mexico and Utah Territories were both organized in the Mexican Cession on the principle of popular sovereignty, with Congress leaving the settlement of the slavery question to the settlers, themselves. California is admitted into the Union as a free state. This was the first de facto application of popular sovereignty because the settlers in California drafted and submitted a free-state constitution on their own, without having previously been organized as a federal territory.

​Proslavery settlers drafted the Lecompton Constitution, which would have established Kansas as a slave state. In spite of support from President Buchanan, the Lecompton Constitution was blocked by the free-state majority in the House of Representatives.

​After the secession of the Deep South created a free-state majority in the United States Senate, Kansas was finally admitted into the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861.

One of the major themes of the AP® US History course is migration and settlement. In order to help students prepare for the APUSH exam, I have created a two page review sheet with notes on immigration and internal migrations from the pre-colonial period to the present.

​Around 15,000 years ago, small human populations from Siberia migrated across the Bering Land Bridge. Over thousands of years, these groups spread across North America and developed into several distinct language and culture groups.

European colonizers settled in different regions in North America, with the Spanish settling in the American Southwest and Florida, the French in the Great Lakes region and Louisiana, the Dutch in present-day New York, and the English on the Eastern Seaboard. Of these colonizers, only the English sent large numbers of settlers.

​During this period, over 300,000 African slaves were brought to North America via the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic.

​European settlers during the early national period came primarily from Northwestern Europe (England, Scotland, Germany, and Scandinavia). These settlers were overwhelmingly Protestant.
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After American independence, 300,000 more African slaves were brought to the United States before Congress ended the African slave trade in 1808.

In the 1820s, thousands of Anglo-American settlers, mostly from the South, began settling in Texas, which was part of Mexico. In the 1830s, conflicts between these settlers and the Mexican government resulted in Texas declaring its independence in 1836.
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The 1830 Indian Removal Act resulted in the (often forced) relocation of around 60,000 Native Americans from the South to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Thousands died on what became known as the Trail of Tears.

During the 1840s, the height of Manifest Destiny, thousands of American pioneers ventured to the American West on the Oregon, Mormon, and California Trails. The 1849 Gold Rush made California a popular destination for Americans hoping to strike it rich.

The Gold Rush also attracted Chinese immigrants, who settled in San Francisco and prospected for gold. In the 1860s, Chinese made up the bulk of the workforce that constructed the Central Pacific Railroad.

NATIVISM: The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which banned further immigration from China, was the first law passed in the United States to limit immigration. A 1907 “Gentleman’s Agreement” between the United States and Japan limited Japanese immigration without the United States passing a law.

In the 1890s, as the United States was in the midst of unprecedented industrialization and urbanization, “New Immigrants” arrived in droves from Southern and Eastern Europe (e.g., Italy, Poland, Greece, and Russia). In addition to Italian and Polish Catholics, this represented the first large wave of Jewish and Orthodox Christian immigrants. 

NATIVISM: The New Immigrants did not get a particularly warm welcome in the United States because they did not tend to speak English, came from countries with little to no experience with republican institutions, and often lacked education and job skills.

Progressive reformers worked to culturally assimilate the New Immigrants into an American “melting pot.” The settlement house movement, led by people like Jane Addams (of the Hull House), sought to give immigrants job and language skills. Public education became more focused on citizenship and acquainting new immigrants with the American way of life.

The (First) Red Scare, which followed the Bolshevik Revolution, was a panic about immigration rooted in fear that immigrants would start a communist revolution in the United States. The Palmer Raids resulted in the deportation of hundreds of immigrants who held radical political views.

The Great Migration of African Americans from the South began during World War I, as black men sought jobs in Northern cities and eventually brought their families with them. Unfortunately, many of those trying to escape racism in the South found it in the North in the form of brutal race riots in Chicago and other cities.

NATIVISM MEETS RACISM: The (Second) Ku Klux Klan reached its peak membership in the mid-1920s, inspired by the silent film, Birth of a Nation, which glamorized the activities of the (First) Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan was as nativist as it was racist, promoting an idea of America that was white, native, and Protestant (WASP).

Congress passed Immigration Quota Acts during the 1920s, which laid the foundation for a system of controlled immigration. Quotas, based on national origins, gave preference to immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.

The Sacco and Vanzetti Trial was a polarizing event in the 1920s. When Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty of a murder and armed robbery, Italian-Americans cried foul, claiming that the guilty verdict was based on the defendants’ national origins and anarchist politics.

In the decades following WWII, there was a sustained internal migration to the warm climates of the sun belt (from the Carolinas to California) because of the availability of air conditioning and cheaper (and often less regulated) labor.

In the 1960s, national origins quotas were modified in order to encourage more immigration from the developing world - especially from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East - and eliminating preferences for white immigrants.

The 1965 act also gave preference to educated immigrants who possessed specialized job skills (e.g., doctors, chemists), immigrants who already had relatives in the United States, and refugees.

The Immigration Act of 1990 lifted restrictions against homosexual immigrants, who had been classified among “sexual deviants” in the 1965 Immigration Act.