Continuity and Changes
Amidst Global Conflict
Explore how total war, ideological struggle, and shifting alliances reshaped European societies while enduring structures persisted across the 20th century.
What Are Continuity and Change?
Continuity refers to elements of a society: institutions, beliefs, social hierarchies, or cultural practices that persist across a period despite disruptive events. Change refers to transformations: new political orders, shifting economic systems, or altered social norms that emerge from those same events.
Why This Skill Matters
The AP European History exam frequently asks you to identify and explain what persisted and what was transformed by a given historical development. This skill is tested in Short-Answer Questions (SAQs), Long-Essay Questions (LEQs), and Document-Based Questions (DBQs).
The Age of Global Conflict: 1914-1945
This era saw the collapse of empires, the rise of totalitarian ideologies, unprecedented destruction, and the emergence of new international orders. Yet beneath these convulsions, certain structures: class hierarchies, colonial systems, gender norms: proved remarkably durable.
The Analytical Framework
Key Categories of Analysis
Continuity vs. Change: The Distinction
| Continuity | Change | |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Elements that persist across time | Elements that are transformed |
| Signal Words | remained, persisted, endured, maintained | shifted, emerged, collapsed, transformed |
| Example | Class hierarchies survived WWI | Empires dissolved into nation-states |
| Trap | Assuming surface stability = deep stability | Assuming all change is revolutionary |
How to Apply This Skill
Example 1: WWI and Political Order
Example 2: Total War and Society
Example 3: The Interwar Crisis
WWII: Deepening the Analysis
World War II intensified the patterns established during WWI. The scale of destruction was greater, the ideological stakes higher, and the consequences more far-reaching. Yet once again, the analysis requires identifying both dimensions.
The Cold War Division
Decolonization: Change with Continuity
After 1945, European colonial empires rapidly dissolved. Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal lost their overseas territories within three decades. Yet the relationship between Europe and the formerly colonized world was not simply severed.
Common Mistakes
Summary: Continuity and Change, 1914-1945+
| Category | Key Changes | Key Continuities |
|---|---|---|
| Political | Empires collapsed; totalitarian regimes rose and fell; Cold War division | Nation-state model; colonial systems (until 1960s); bureaucratic governance |
| Economic | War economies; welfare states; planned economies in the East | Capitalism in the West; industrial production; class-based labor |
| Social | Women's suffrage; mass displacement; genocide | Patriarchal norms; rural traditions; religious institutions |
| Cultural | Modernism; existentialism; propaganda states | National identities; Christianity; classical education |
Question 1 of 5
Which of the following best represents a continuity in European history from 1914 to 1945?
Question 2 of 5
Historian A: "The two world wars fundamentally transformed European society. The old aristocratic order was swept away, replaced by mass democracies and totalitarian states. Nothing remained of the pre-1914 world."
Historian B: "While the political map was redrawn, deeper social structures proved remarkably resilient. Class hierarchies, gender norms, and religious institutions survived both conflicts largely intact, adapting to new circumstances rather than being destroyed."
Which historian's argument better reflects the AP skill of analyzing continuity and change?
Question 3 of 5
Women's wartime labor during both world wars is best described as an example of:
Question 4 of 5
Which PESC category saw the most dramatic change in Europe between 1914 and 1945?
Question 5 of 5
Document: "The mandates granted to Britain and France by the League of Nations after 1919 placed former Ottoman territories under European administration. While framed as a temporary trusteeship to prepare these regions for self-governance, the mandate system closely resembled traditional colonial rule in its economic extraction and political control."
This document best supports which of the following arguments about continuity and change after WWI?