Eastern European Elites: Teaching about Aristocrats in the AP Curriculum

Abstract

FREE RESPONSE QUESTION (FRQ) #5 in the 2002 AP European history exam read as follows: In what ways and to what extent did absolutism affect the power and status of the European nobility in the period 1650 to 1750. Use examples from at least 2 countries. I am sorry to report that the students who selected FRQ #5 did not shine. A question aimed at encouraging a comparative approach and which focused on a period during which aristocracies receive the maximum attention in textbooks produced mostly inadequate responses. Beyond some floundering around in the corridors and anterooms of Versailles, the majority of students had little or no idea where to go next. A few ventured off to St. Petersburg, but most of those skated on thin ice. Peter the Great's reforms were remembered as a packaged unit. Students had trouble disaggregating issues relating to the nobility from other events and topics. The Table of Ranks, for example, was often jumbled together with reforms relating to religion and technology. Few students addressed the problem that confronted both Louis XIV and Tsar Peter in finding ways to get the nobility to subscribe to their agendas. The monarchs needed the services of their landed elites but at the same time did not want to weaken the royal prerogative. Beyond France and Russia, student knowledge proved even more fragile and fragmentary. The other Eastern European states,