Our European history is going to start around 1500 with the Renaissance, but believe it or not, that is not the actual beginning of history in the continent. So, today, we're going to teach you the broad outlines of the so-called Middle Ages, and look at events like the Black Plague, the Hundred Years War, and the Western Schism of the Catholic Church that set the stage for the history of modern Europe.

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?

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 of Europe, how developments in communication and information distribution influenced the way people saw their leaders and their neighbors, and how women began making strides toward equality in this era.

Europe was in transition politically and culturally at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, we're looking at the dawn of modern science, and the rise of Modernism in the arts, especially in music, dance, and visual arts. We'll look at changes in music and dance with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and explore the groundbreaking visual art of the Impressionists.

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.

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 looking to expand its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, and at the same time, the United States was assisting with the rebuilding of Western Europe (with some hegemonic strings attached). As two nuclear-armed superpowers emerged, the world entered the Cold War.

At the end of World War II, the nations of Europe were a shambles. Today we'll learn about how the various countries and blocs approached the problem of rebuilding their infrastructure and helping their residents recover. You'll learn about the Marshall plan and the various treaties that led to the modern day European Union.

In which John Green looks at Europe's attempts to recover from the devastation of World War I and forge a lasting peace. The peace did not last. Today we're talking about the economic cultural recovery of the 1920s, and the economic depression of the 1930s, and the fragile state of Europe after the Great War. We'll also look at the rise of fascism via the auspices of populist leaders like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, and we'll set the stage for the war to come.

The post-World War II decades in Europe are sometimes called the Thirty Glorious Years. As those years wore on, tensions between East and West grew, and economic growth slowed or was unevenly distributed across Europe, protests and dissent arose across the continent.

In the aftermath of the revolutions and upheaval in 18th and early 19th century Europe, there was a hunger for reform across the continent. Reformers like Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and Auguste Comte proposed radical new ideas, and at the same time, regular people began to stand up and ask for greater equality, and a louder voice in how they were governed. Results were mixed, but a lot of the ideas that emerged during this time are still echoing in our world today.

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. Jean Calvin in France and Switzerland, the Tudors in England, and the Hugenots in France also made major contributions to the Reformation.

In the decades following World War II, life changed in many ways, and a fair number of those changes were for the better. Many of those improvements were driven by advances in science and technology, in fields like biology, communication, energy production, space exploration, and especially medicine.

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 many of those goals were accomplished. We'll look at revolutions in the Austrian Empire, Hungary, Italy, the German States, and the region formerly known as Poland.

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 Tsar Peter) reformed many aspects of Russian governance, realigning them toward the way things were done in western Europe. In Prussia, efficiency of institutions became a thing, and Prussia turned into "a large army with a small state attached."

World War I was very hard on the Russian Empire. So hard, in fact, that it led to the end of the Russian Empire. As the global conflict ground on, Tsar Nicholas II faced increasing unrest at home. Today we'll learn about the Revolutions of 1917, the rise of Lenin, Trotsky, and the Bolsheviks, and the Reussian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union.

World War I was a total war for millions of people in Europe. Many men were enlisted in the fighting, but the war work had implications for the daily lives of a huge number of Europeans. Women entered the workforce in huge numbers, and for a lot of people, the battles raged through their towns, cities, and even their homes.

In addition to learning about the homefronts of the war, we're going to look at how the war ended, and how the Paris Peace Conference and the treaties that resulted did little to heal the societal wounds of the war, and in many ways set the stage for the next big war.

At the end of our journey through modern European history, we're taking an episode to look back at how the practice of history developed and what the aim and goals and purpose of history have been. We'll also take time to consider how we should approach history research and writing going forward.

Europe's system of alliances and centuries-old tensions erupted into war in August of 1914. This week on Crash Course Euro, we're talking about the military history of World War I, and taking a look at the broad strokes of how the war unfolded. We'll take you from the guns of August through gruesome battles like Verdun and the Somme, and follow the thread all the way through to the Armistice in 1918. It didn't turn out to be the War to End All Wars, sadly, but there is a lot to learn from it.

Our look at World War II continues with a closer examination of just how the war impacted soldiers in the field, and the people at home. For many of the combatants, the homefront and the warfront were one and the same. The war disrupted life for millions upon millions of people. You'll learn about the different experiences of the populations of various combatant states.