Why did Europeans believe in progress, and how did new science and thought both confirm and unsettle that faith?
Topic 7.5 The Age of Progress and Modernity: the later 19th-century faith in science, reason, and progress, the advances that fed it, and the new ideas (from germ theory to Freud) that confirmed and then challenged it.
A focused answer to AP European History Topic 7.5, on the Age of Progress and modernity: the later 19th-century confidence in science, reason, and improvement, the medical and scientific advances (germ theory, evolution) that supported it, and the unsettling new ideas (relativity, Freud, irrationalism) that began to challenge it.
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What this topic is asking
Topic 7.5 asks you to explain the Age of Progress and modernity: the later 19th-century faith in science, reason, and improvement, the advances that fed it, and the new ideas that began to unsettle it. The College Board wants you to see both the confidence of the period and the cracks that appeared by 1900.
The faith in progress
The advances that fed it
The cracks in the confidence
But the same age that celebrated reason began to doubt it.
Why it mattered
The Age of Progress captures the confident face of the later 19th century, the optimism of science, reform, and empire, while modernity reveals the doubts gathering beneath it. This tension shapes the era's culture and arts (Topic 7.8), where realism and confident objectivity gave way to subjectivity and experiment. The faith in progress also helped justify the New Imperialism (Topic 7.6), and its collapse in the trenches of the First World War (Unit 8) would shatter the optimism of the whole century.
Try this
Q1. Why is the later 19th century called the Age of Progress? [Recall]
- Cue. Because educated Europeans were confident that science, reason, and industry, backed by advances like germ theory and rising living standards, were steadily improving the world.
Q2. Explain how new ideas began to unsettle the faith in progress by 1900. [Short explanation]
- Cue. Freud argued that human behavior was driven by unconscious, irrational forces, challenging faith in reason, while discoveries in physics like radioactivity suggested the universe was less certain and knowable than Newton's clockwork had implied.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of College Board exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
AP 2018 (style)3 marksBriefly describe ONE reason Europeans believed in progress. Briefly explain ONE scientific advance that supported that belief. Briefly explain ONE idea that began to unsettle it.Show worked answer →
A Short Answer Question (SAQ), 3 points, one per task.
A. Describe: industrial wealth, technology, science, and rising living standards seemed to show steady improvement.
B. Advance that supported progress: germ theory and improved medicine, or evolution, or new industrial technologies.
C. Idea that unsettled it: the irrationalism of thinkers like Freud, or relativity and uncertainty in physics, suggested the mind and the universe were less rational and knowable than supposed.
Markers want a reason for faith in progress, a supporting advance, and an unsettling idea.
AP 2021 (style)6 marksEvaluate the extent to which the later 19th century was an age of confidence in progress.Show worked answer →
A Long Essay Question (LEQ), scored on the 6-point continuity-and-change rubric.
Thesis (1): "The later 19th century was largely an age of confidence in science, reason, and progress, but by its end new ideas in psychology and physics had begun to unsettle that faith."
Contextualization (1): industrialization and the scientific advances of the period.
Evidence (2): germ theory and medical advances, evolution, and technological progress; the irrationalism of Freud and the uncertainty of new physics.
Analysis (2): weigh the dominant optimism against the rising doubts, then add complexity by showing the two coexisted by 1900.
Related dot points
- Topic 7.4 Darwinism and Social Darwinism: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and how it was applied, as Social Darwinism, to justify competition, inequality, racism, and imperialism.
A focused answer to AP European History Topic 7.4, on Darwinism and Social Darwinism: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, its impact on science and religion, and how Social Darwinists misapplied survival of the fittest to society to justify economic inequality, racism, nationalism, and imperialism.
- Topic 6.3 Second-Wave Industrialization and Its Effects: the new technologies and industries (steel, electricity, chemicals, the internal combustion engine) of the period c. 1870 to c. 1914 and how they deepened economic and social change.
A focused answer to AP European History Topic 6.3, on the Second Industrial Revolution (c. 1870 to 1914): new technologies such as Bessemer steel, electricity, chemicals, and the internal combustion engine, the rise of mass production and big business, and the economic and social effects of this deeper phase of industrialization.
- Topic 7.8 19th-Century Culture and Arts: the movement from Romanticism through Realism to Impressionism and early Modernism, and what these styles reveal about a changing European outlook.
A focused answer to AP European History Topic 7.8, on 19th-century culture and the arts: the shift from Romanticism to Realism, the rise of Impressionism and early Modernism, and how these artistic movements reflected industrial society, the faith in progress, and the growing turn toward subjectivity.
- Topic 7.6 New Imperialism: Motivations and Methods: the economic, political, and ideological motives for the late 19th-century scramble for empire, and the technologies and methods that made rapid conquest possible.
A focused answer to AP European History Topic 7.6, on the New Imperialism: the economic, political, nationalist, and ideological motives that drove the late 19th-century scramble for Africa and Asia, and the technologies and methods (steamships, the Maxim gun, quinine, the Berlin Conference) that made rapid European conquest possible.
- Topic 4.2 The Scientific Revolution: heliocentrism, the new physics of Newton, the scientific method, and the shift from ancient authority to observation, experiment, and mathematics.
A focused answer to AP European History Topic 4.2, covering the Scientific Revolution: the shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism (Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler), Newton's laws, the scientific method (Bacon's empiricism and Descartes' rationalism), and the new view of a rational, knowable universe.
Sources & how we know this
- AP European History Course and Exam Description — College Board (2020)