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hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh- hhhhhhhhhhhhh This chapter is both a goldmine and a minefield for world history. It can be a goldmine because it is full of fascinating stories, people, ideas and events with which students and teachers will have some degree of familiarity. It can be a minefield, however, because in the big picture of a thematic AP world history course, it is not necessary to go into all the minute details of the Reformation, the English Civil War, or even the Enlightenment. The main theme of the Reformation is the implosion of the Catholic Church into many smaller Protestant sects and the end of idea that western Europe could be united as “Christendom” under the power of the papacy. The Reformation (1517-1550) of ideas was followed by a devastating century of religious wars and revolts (1550-1650), all of which started from religious reasons, but soon morphed into the more basic political wars of conquest. For world history purposes, the zeal that was inflamed by the Reformation and the religious wars sent missionaries to Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. Political centralization transformed Europe from a backwater collection of feudal states to a patchwork of formidably powerful nation-states in this era with the creation of centralized, absolutist governments as well as decentralized republics. Absolutist, hereditary monarchical rulers of France and Spain, and to a certain extent Russia, centralized their militaries, legal codes, tax-collecting agencies, and their bureaucracies. They were able to launch into major explorations (once the religious wars were over). England went through the same centralization (or de-feudalization) first by fighting the English Civil War, and then by turning to constitutionalism, which limited the power of the government by distributing it among a wider, male, hereditary or monetary elite. The Dutch adopted a constitutional republican form of government once they wrested