We've talked about a lot of revolutions in 19th Century Europe, and today we're moving on to a less warlike revolution, the Industrial Revolution. You'll learn about the development of steam power and mechanization, and the labor and...

During our last several episodes, Europe and the European-controlled world have been in crisis. Wars, disease, climate changes, and shifts in religious and political power threw the European world into turmoil. People were looking for a...

European exploration had a lot of side effects. When the Old World and the New World began to interact, people, wealth, food, animals, and disease began to flow in both directions. In the New World, countless millions were killed by...

European exploration had a lot of side effects. When the Old World and the New World began to interact, people, wealth, food, animals, and disease began to flow in both directions. In the New World, countless millions were killed by...

The Protestant Reformation didn't exactly begin with Martin Luther, and it didn't end with him either. Reformers and monarchs changed the ways that religious and state power were organized throughout the 16th and early 17th centuries....

We've been talking a lot about kings, and queens, and wars, and religious upheaval for most of this series, but let's take a moment to zoom out, and look at the ways that individuals' lives were changing in the time span we've covered so...

While the English were falling apart a little, with their civil war and their restoration and their succession problems, the Dutch were getting their act together. They were throwing off the yoke of the Spanish Empire, uniting their...

The end of the Napoleonic Wars left the great powers of Europe shaken. Judging from the destruction that had been wrought across the continent, it seemed to the powers that be that the Enlightenment had liberated the people, and led to...

Sometimes, friendship isn't forever. At the conclusion of World War II, the old structures of power were a shambles. The traditional European powers were greatly weakened by years of total war and widespread destruction. The USSR was...

The European Renaissance may have started in Florence, but it pretty quickly moved out of Italy and spread the art, architecture, literature, and humanism across Europe to places like France, Spain, England, and the Low Countries....

We've been talking a lot about kings, and queens, and wars, and religious upheaval for most of this series, but let's take a moment to zoom out, and look at the ways that individuals' lives were changing in the time span we've covered so...

While the focus has been on Western Europe so far, there has also been a lot going on in Eastern Europe, which we'll be looking at today. The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, The Ottoman Empire, and Russia were all competing at the...

In 1789, the French Monarchy's habit of supporting democratic popular revolutions in North America backfired. Today, we're talking about the French Revolution. Across the world, people were rising up to throw off monarchies, and Louis...

When the Protestant Reformation broke out in Western Europe, the Catholic Church got the message, at least a little bit. Pope Paul III called a council to look into reforming some aspects of the Catholic Church and try to stem the tide...

You may have noticed that the internet is terrible at religious discourse. Well, this is not a new phenomenon. In the early 16th century, the Roman Catholic church dominated Christianity in Europe, and the institution was starting to...

Between 1840 and 1914, an estimated 40 million people left Europe. This is one of the most significant migrations in human history. So, who was leaving Europe? And why? Crash Course is on Patreon! You can support us directly by signing...

So, "modern" is kind of a loaded term, but today we're going to talk about modern life in Europe, as it looked around the time the 19th century turned into the 20th. We'll look at what life was like in the rapidly growing urban centers...

We try not to get into too much great man history here at Crash Course, but we have to admit: Napoleon Bonaparte is a pretty big deal. Join us as we track the rise, further rise, fall, rise, fall, mortal fall, and posthumous rise of...

In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, protests and unrest continued continued across Europe, and the Soviet Union was having increasing trouble holding its sphere of influence together. Today you'll learn about the labor strikes of...

In 1848, Europe experienced a wave of revolutions. Last week we covered some of the reform movements that presaged these uprisings. This week, we're learning about what the people wanted from the revolutions, who was involved, and how...

There was a lot of bad stuff going on in Europe in the 17th century. We've seen wars, plagues, and unrest of all types. But, there is some good news. Huge advances were underway in the scientific community in Europe at this time. In this...

Much has been written about what exactly caused World War I. As befits a true global war, the reality is that there isn't a single cause. There aren't even three causes. There are a vast array of causes. Today we'll get into just a few...

The 17th Century in Europe was pretty rough in a lot of ways. The Thirty Years War involved a lot of countries, and a lot of battles, and it was terrible for everyone involved, as wars have aa historical tendency to be. At the same time,...

In eastern Europe, in the 17th century a couple of "great powers" were coming into their own. The vast empire of Russia was modernizing under Peter the Great, and the relatively tiny state of Prussia was evolving as well. Russia (and...