A - E
Absolutism - Form of government where one body, usually the monarch, controls the right to make war, tax, judge, and coin money. The term was often used to refer to the state monarchies in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Europe.
Acid rain - Precipitation laced with heavy doses of sulfur, mainly from coal-fired plants.
African National Congress (ANC) - Multiracial organization founded in 1912 in an effort to end all racial discrimination in South Africa.
Afrikaners - Descendants of the original Dutch settlers of South Africa; formerly referred to as Boers.
Akbarnamah - Mughal intellectual Abulfazl’s Book of Akbar, which attempted to reconcile the traditional Sufi interest in the inner life within the worldly context of a great empire.
Allies - Term used to identify those states that fought against Germany in World War I and World War II.
American Railway Union - Workers’ union that initiated the Pullman Strike of 1894, which led to violence and ended in the leaders’ arrest.
Amnesty International - Non-governmental organization formed to defend “prisoners of conscience”—those detained for their beliefs, color, sex, ethnic origin, language, or religion.
Anarchism - Political belief that society should be a free association of its members, not bound by government, laws, or the police.
Anti-Federalists - Critics of the U.S. Constitution who sought to defend the people against the power of the federal government and insisted on a bill of rights to protect individual liberties from government intrusion.
Apartheid - Racial segregation policy of the Afrikaner-dominated South African government. Legislated in 1948 by the Afrikaner National Party, it had existed in South Africa for many years.
Asante state - Located in present-day Ghana, this state was founded by the Asantes at the end of the seventeenth century. It grew in power in the next century because of its access to gold and its involvement in the slave trade.
Asiatic Society - Cultural organization founded by British Orientalists who lauded native culture but still believed in colonial rule.
Atlantic system - New system of trade and expansion that linked Europe, Africa, and the Americas. It emerged in the wake of European voyages across the Atlantic Ocean.
Austro-Hungarian empire - Dual monarchy established by the Habsburg family in 1867; it collapsed at the end of World War I.
Authoritarianism - Centralized and dictatorial form of government, proclaimed by its adherents to be superior to parliamentary democracy and especially effective at mobilizing the masses. This idea became prominent across the world during the 1930s.
Baby boom (1950s) - Post-World War II upswing in U.S. birth rates; it reversed a century of decline.
Baghdad Pact (1955) - Middle Eastern military alliance between countries friendly with America who were also willing to align themselves with the Western countries against the Soviet Union.
Balam Na - Stone temple and place of pilgrimage for the Mayan people of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.
Balfour Declaration - Letter dated November 2, 1917, by Lord Arthur J. Balfour, British Foreign Secretary, that promised a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.
Battle of Adwa (1896) - Battle in which the Ethiopians defeated Italian colonial forces; it inspired many of Africa’s later national leaders.
Battle of Wounded Knee (1890) - Bloody massacre of Sioux Ghost Dancers by U.S. armed forces.
Bay of Pigs (1961) - Unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles, supported by the U.S. government. The rebels intended to incite an insurrection in Cuba and overthrow the Communist regime of Fidel Castro.
Bedouin tribe - Nomadic pastoralists in the deserts of the Middle East.
Beer Hall Putsch (1923) - Nazi invasion of a meeting of Bavarian leaders in a Munich beer hall attempting to force support for its cause; Adolf Hitler was imprisoned for a year after the incident.
Beghards (1500s) - Eccentric European group whose members claimed to be in a state of grace that allowed them to do as they pleased—from adultery, free love, and nudity to murder; also called Brethren of Free Speech.
Berlin Airlift - (1948) Supply of vital necessities to West Berlin by air transport primarily under U.S. auspices. It was initiated in response to a land and water blockade of the city that had been instituted by the Soviet Union in the hope that the Allies would be forced to abandon West Berlin.
Berlin Wall - Wall built by the Communists in Berlin to prevent citizens of East Germany from fleeing to West Germany between 1961 and 1989.
Bhakti Hinduism - Popular form of Hinduism that first emerged in the seventh century. The religion stresses devotion (bhakti) to God and uses vernacular languages (not Sanskrit) spoken by the common people.
Big man - Leader of the extended household communities that formed village settlements in African rain forests.
Big whites - French plantation owners in Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) who created one of the wealthiest and most ostentatious slave societies.
Bilad al-Sudan - Arabic for “the land of the blacks,” it consisted of the land lying south of the Sahara desert.
Bilharzia - Water-borne illness that debilitates those it infects. It was widespread in Egypt, where it infected those peasants who worked in the irrigation canals.
Bill of Rights - The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution; it was ratified in 1791.
Black Death - Great epidemic of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe, East Asia, and North Africa in the fourteenth century, killing large numbers, including perhaps as many as one-third of the European population.
Black Jacobins - Nickname for the rebels in Saint Domingue, including Toussaint L’Ouverture, a former slave who led the slaves of this French colony in the world’s largest and most successful slave insurrection.
Black Panthers - Radical African-American group; they advocated black separatism and pan-Africanism.
Black shirts - Fascist troops of Mussolini’s regime; the squads received money from Italian landowners to attack socialist leaders.
Black Tuesday (October 24, 1929) - Historic day when the United States’ stock market crashed, plunging the U.S. and international trading systems into crisis and leading the world into the “Great Depression.”
Blitzkrieg - “Lightning war” in which the Germans used tanks followed by motorized infantryman to overwhelm opposing armies during World War II.
Bolsheviks - Former members of the Russian Social Democratic Party who advocated the destruction of capitalist political and economic institutions and started the Russian Revolution. In 1918 the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Russian Communist Party.
Bourgeoisie - The middle class. In Europe, they sought to be recognized not by birth or title, but by capital and property.
Boxer Protocol - Written agreement between the victors of the Boxer Uprising and the Qing Empire in 1901 that placed Western troops in Beijing and required the regime to pay exorbitant damages for foreign life and property.
Boxer Uprising (1899-1900) - Chinese peasant movement that opposed foreign influence, especially that of Christian missionaries; it was finally put down after the Boxers were defeated by a foreign army comprised mostly of Japanese, Russian, British, French, and American men.
Brahmans - Priestly caste in India.
British Commonwealth of Nations - Formed in 1926, the Commonwealth conferred “dominion status” on Britain’s white settler colonies in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Brown shirts - Troops of young German men who dedicated themselves to the Nazi cause by holding street marches, mass rallies, and confrontations, and by engaging in beatings of Jews and anyone who opposed the Nazis.
Bubonic plague - Acute infectious disease caused by a bacterium that is transmitted to humans by fleas from infected rats. It ravaged Europe and parts of Asia in the fourteenth century. Sometimes referred to as the “black death.”
Buddhism - One of China’s major religions, it extolled the life and teachings of the Indian ascetic Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 B.C.E.).
Caliphs - Rulers of the Islamic community and political successors to Muhammad.
Calaveras - Allegorical skeleton drawings designed by the Mexican printmaker and artist José Guadalupe Posada. The works drew on popular themes of betrayal, death, and festivity.
Candomblé - Yoruba-based religion in northern Brazil; it interwove African practices and beliefs with Christianity.
Caravans - Companies of men who transported and traded goods along overland routes in North Africa and central Asia; large caravans consisted of 600-1,000 camels and as many as 400 men.
Caravansarais - Inns constructed along major trade routes that accommodated large numbers of traders, their animals, and their wares.
Caravel - Sailing vessel suited for nosing in and out of estuaries and navigating in waters with unpredictable currents and winds.
Carrack - Ship used on open bodies of water, such as the Mediterranean.
Caste system - Hierarchical system of organizing people and distributing labor.
Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901) - Conflict between Mayan Indians and the Mexican state over Indian autonomy and legal equality, which finally resulted in the Mexican takeover of the Yucatan peninsula.
Catholicism - Religion headed by the pope; worship is centered in the gospel of Jesus Christ and the sacraments.
Caudillos - South American local military chieftains.
Celali revolts (1595-1610) - Peasant and artisan uprisings against the Ottoman state.
Central Powers - Defined in World War I as Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Chan Santa Cruz - Separate Mayan community formed as part of a crusade for spiritual salvation and the complete cultural separation of the Mayan Indians; meaning “little holy cross.”
Chapatis - Flat, unleavened bread made in India.
Chartism (1834-1848) - Mass democratic movement to pass the Peoples’ Charter in Britain, granting male suffrage, secret ballot, equal electoral districts, and annual Parliaments, and absolving the requirement of property ownership for members of the Parliament.
Chernobyl (1986) - Site in the Soviet Union of the worst-ever meltdown of a nuclear reactor.
Chinampas - Floating gardens used by Aztecs in the 1300s and 1400s to grow crops.
Chinoiserie - Chinese silks, teas, tableware jewelry and paper, which were popular among European consumers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Church of England - The established form of Christianity in England dating from the sixteenth century.
Civil Rights Act (1964) - U.S. legislation that banned segregation in public facilities, outlawed racial discrimination in employment, and marked an important step in correcting legal inequality.
Civil War (1861-1865) - Conflict between the northern and southern states of America; this struggle led to the abolition of slavery in the United States.
Clandestine presses - Small printing operations that published proscribed texts in the early modern era, especially in Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Cohong - Chinese merchant guild that traded with Europeans under the Qing dynasty.
Cold war (1945-1990) - Ideological conflict in which the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe opposed the United States and Western Europe.
Colons - French settler population in Algeria.
Communist Manifesto - Pamphlet published by Marx and Engels in 1848 at a time when political revolutions were sweeping through Europe. It called on the workers of all nations to unite in overthrowing capitalism.
Compromise of 1867 - Agreement between the Habsburgs and the peoples living in Hungarian parts of the empire that the Habsburg state would be officially known as the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Concession areas - Territories, usually ports where Chinese emperors allowed European merchants to trade and European people to settle.
Confucianism - The ethics, beliefs, and practices stipulated by the Chinese philosopher Kong Qiu, or Confucius (551-479 B.C.E.).
Congo Independent State - Large colonial state in Africa created by Leopold II, king of Belgium, during the 1880s, and ruled by him alone. After rumors of mass slaughter and enslavement, the Belgian parliament took the land and formed a Belgian colony.
Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) - International conference to reorganize Europe after the downfall of Napoleon. European monarchies agreed to respect each other’s borders and to cooperate in guarding against future revolutions and war.
Conquistadors - Spanish military leaders who led the conquest of the New World in the sixteenth century.
Constantinople - Former capital of the Byzantine Empire, renamed Istanbul after its conquest by the Ottomans in 1453.
Constitutional Convention (1787) - Meeting to formulate the Constitution of the United States of America.
Contra rebels - Opponents of the Sandinistas; they were armed and financed by the United States and other anti-Communist countries (1980).
Conversos - Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity in the Iberian peninsula and the New World.
Corn Laws - Laws that imposed tariffs on grain imported to Great Britain, intended to protect British farming interests. The Corn Laws were abolished in 1846 as part a British movement in favor of free trade.
Counter-Reformation - Movement to counter the spread of the Reformation; initiated by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1545.
Coup d’état - Overthrow of established state by a group of conspirators, usually from the military.
Creoles - Persons of full-blooded European descent who were born in the Americas.
Crimean War (1864-1856) - War waged by Russia against Great Britain and France. Spurred by Russia’s encroachment on Ottoman territories, the conflict revealed Russia’s military weakness when Russian forces fell to British and French troops.
Crusades (1096 to 1291) - Series of wars undertaken to free Jerusalem from Muslim control.
Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) - Diplomatic standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union that was provoked by the Soviet Union’s attempt to base nuclear missiles in Cuba; it took the world closer to a nuclear war than ever before or since.
Daimyo - Ruling lords who commanded private armies in pre-Meiji Japan.
Dar al-Islam - Arabic for “the House of Islam,” it describes a sense of common identity
D-Day (June 6, 1944) - Day of the Allied invasion of Normandy under General Dwight Eisenhower to liberate Western Europe from German occupation.
Decembrists - Russian army officers who were influenced by events in France and formed secret societies that espoused liberal governance. They were put down by Nicholas I in December 1825.
Declaration of Independence - Historic U.S. document stating the theory of government on which America was founded.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789) - French charter of liberties formulated by the National Assembly that marked the end of dynastic and aristocratic rule. The seventeen articles later became the preamble to the new constitution, which the Assembly finished in 1791.
Devshirme - System of taking non-Muslim children in place of taxes in order to educate them in Ottoman Muslim ways and prepare them for service in the sultan’s bureaucracy.
Dhimmis - Followers of religions, other than Islam, that were permitted by Ottoman law: Armenian Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, and Jews.
Dien Bien Phu (1954) - Defining battle in the war between French colonialists and the Viet Minh that secured North Vietnam for Ho Chi Minh and his army and left the south to form its own government to be supported by France and the United States.
Din-I-llahi - “House of worship” in which the Mughal emperor Akbar engaged in religious debate with Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Parsi, and Christian theologians.
Directory - Temporary military committee that took over the affairs of the state of France in 1795 from the radicals and held control until the coup of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Dominion in the British Commonwealth - Canadian promise to keep up their fealty to the British crown, even after their independence in 1867. Later applied to Australia and New Zealand.
Duma - The Russian parliament.
Dutch East India Company (1600-1858) - British charter company created to outperform Portuguese and Spanish traders in the Far East; in the eighteenth century the company became, in effect, the ruler of a large part of India.
Dutch learning - Broad term for European teachings that were strictly regulated by the shoguns inside Japan.
Earth Summit (1992) - Meeting in Rio de Janeiro between many of the world’s governments in an effort to address international environmental problems.
Eastern Front - Battlefront between Berlin and Moscow during World War I and World War II.
Edict of Nantes (1598) - Edict issued by Henry IV to end the French Wars of Religion. The edict declared France a Catholic country, but tolerated some Protestant worship.
Eiffel Tower - Completed in 1889 for the Paris Exposition, this steel monument was twice the height of any other building at the time.
Eight-legged essay - Highly structured essay form with eight parts, required on Chinese civil service examinations.
Ekpe - Powerful slave trade institution that organized the supply and purchase of slaves inland from the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa.
Enabling Act (1933) - Emergency act passed by the Reichstag (German parliament) that helped transform Hitler from Germany’s chancellor, or prime minister, into a dictator, following the suspicious burning of the Reichstag building and a suspension of civil liberties.
Encomenderos - Commanders of the labor services of the colonized peoples in Spanish America.
Encomiendas - Grants from European Spanish governors to control the labor services of colonized people.
Endeavor - Ship of Captain James Cook, whose widely celebrated voyages to the South Pacific at the end of the eighteenth century supplied Europe with information about the plants, birds, landscapes, and people of this uncharted territory.
Engels, Friedrich (1820-1895) - German social and political philosopher who collaborated with Karl Marx on many publications, including The Communist Manifesto.
English Navigation Act of 1651 - Act stipulating that only English ships could carry goods between the mother country and its colonies.
Enlightenment - Intellectual movement stressing natural laws and classifications in nature, in eighteenth-century Europe.
Estates-General - French quasi-parliamentary body called in 1789 to deal with the financial problems that afflicted France at the time. It had not met since 1614.
Eurasia - The combined area of Europe and Asia.
European Union (EU) - International body that was organized after the carnage of World War II as an attempt at reconciliation between Germany and the rest of Europe. It initially aimed to forge closer industrial cooperation. Eventually, through various treaties, many European states relinquished some of their sovereignty, and the cooperation became a full-fledged union with a single currency, the euro, and with a somewhat less powerful common European parliament.
Examination system - Examinations that were open to most males and used to recruit officials and bureaucrats in imperial China.
Exclusion Act of 1882 - U.S. congressional act prohibiting nearly all immigration from China to the United States; this act was fueled by animosity toward Chinese workers in the American West.
Ezo - Present-day Hokkaido, Japan’s fourth main island.
F - J
Fascists - Radical right-wing group of the disaffected that formed around Mussolini in 1919 and a few years later came to power in Rome.
Fatehpur Sikri - Mughal emperor Akbar’s temporary capital near Agra.
February Revolution (1917) - The first of two uprisings of the Russian Revolution, which led to the end of the Romanov dynasty.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) - Created in 1933 to guarantee all bank deposits up to $5,000 as part of the New Deal in the United States.
Federal Republic of Germany (1949-1990) - Country formed of the areas occupied by the Allies after World War II. Also known as West Germany, this country experienced rapid demilitarization, democratization, and integration into the world economy.
Federal Reserve Act (1913) - U.S. legislation that created a series of boards to monitor the supply and demand of the nation’s money.
Federalists - Supporters of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which was written to replace the Articles of Confederation.
Feudalism - System of governance whereby landowners governed the people who lived on their land.
Fiefdoms - Medieval economic and political units.
First World War - A total war from August 1914 to November 1918, involving the mass armies of Britain, France, and Russia (the Allies) against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman empire (the Central Powers). Italy joined the Allies in 1915, and the United States joined them in 1917, helping tip the balance in favor of the Allies, who also drew upon the populations and material of their colonial possessions. Also known as the Great War.
Five-Year Plan - Soviet effort launched under Stalin in 1928 to replace the market with a state-owned and state-managed economy, to promote rapid economic development over a five-year period of time and thereby “catch and overtake” the leading capitalist countries. The First Five-Year Plan was followed by the Second Five-Year Plan (19331937), and so on, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Flagellants - European social group that came into existence during the bubonic plague in the fourteenth century; they believed that the plague was the wrath of God.
Fluitschips - Dutch shipping vessels that could carry heavy bulky cargo with relatively small crews.
Forbidden City - The palace city of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Force Publique - Colonial army used to maintain order in the Belgian Congo; during the early stages of King Leopold’s rule, it was responsible for bullying local communities.
Free Officers Movement - Secret organization of Egyptian junior military officers who came to power in a coup d’état in 1952, forced King Faruq to abdicate, and consolidated their own control through dissolving the parliament, banning opposing parties, and rewriting the constitution.
Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) - Algerian anti-colonial, nationalist party that waged an eight-year war against French troops, beginning in 1854, that forced nearly all of the 1,000,000 colonists to leave.
Fulani - Muslim group in West Africa that carried out religious revolts at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries in an effort to return to the pure Islam of the past.
Fur trade - The trading of animal pelts (especially beaver skins) by Indians for European goods in North America.
Gandhi, Mohandhas (1869-1948) - Indian leader who led a nonviolent struggle for independence from Britain.
Garrisons - Military bases inside cities, they were often used for political purposes, such as protecting the rulers and putting down domestic revolt or enforcing colonial rule.
Gauchos - Argentine, Brazilian, and Uruguayan cowboys who wanted a decentralized federation, with autonomy for their provinces, and respect for their way of life.
Gdansk shipyard - Site of mass strikes in Poland that led to the formation of the first independent trade union, Solidarity, in the Communist bloc in1980.
Geneva Peace Conference (1954) - International conference to restore peace in Korea and Indochina. The chief participants were the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam, the Viet Minh party, Laos, and Cambodia. The conference resulted in the division of North and South Vietnam.
German Democratic Republic - Nation founded from the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany after World War II; also known as East Germany.
German Social Democratic Party - Founded in 1875, it was the most powerful Socialist party in Europe before 1917.
Ghost Dance - American Indian ritual performed in the hope of restoring the world to pre-colonial conditions.
Girondins - Liberal revolutionary group that supported the creation of a constitutional monarchy during the early stages of the French Revolution.
Gold Coast - Name that European mariners and merchants gave to that part of West Africa from which gold was exported. This area was conquered by the British in the nineteenth century and became the British colony of the Gold Coast.
Grand Canal - World’s longest man-made waterway, located in China and extended in the thirteenth century.
“Greased cartridge” controversy - Controversy spawned by the rumor that cow and pig fat had been used to grease the shotguns of the sepoys in the British army in India. Believing that this was a British attempt to defile their religion and speed their conversion to Christianity, the sepoys mutinied against their British officers.
Great Depression - Period following the U.S. stock market crash on October 29, 1929.
Great divide - Refers to the division between the economically developed nations in the world and the less developed nations.
“Great Game” - Competition over areas such as Turkistan, Persia (present-day Iran), and Afghanistan. The British (in India) and the Russians believed they had to take over these areas to prevent their enemies from expansion.
Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere - Term used by the Japanese during the 1930s and 1940s to refer to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, Burma, and other states that they seized during their run for expansion.
Great League of Peace and Power - Iroquois Indian alliance of North America, which united previously warring communities.
Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) - Plan devised by Mao Zedong to achieve rapid agricultural and industrial growth in China. The plan failed miserably and more than 20 million people perished.
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) - Mass mobilization of urban Chinese youth inaugurated by Mao Zedong in an attempt to reinvigorate the Chinese revolution and to prevent the development of a bureaucratized Soviet style of communism; with this movement, Mao turned against his longtime associates in the Communist Party.
Great Trek - Afrikaner migration to the interiors of Africa after the British abolished slavery in the empire in 1833.
Great War (1914-1918) - World War I.
Greenbacks - Members of the American political party of the late nineteenth century that worked to advance the interest of farmers by promoting cheap money.
Group Areas Act (1950) - Divided South Africa into separate racial and tribal areas and required Africans to live in their own separate communities, including their “homelands.”
Guerillas - Portuguese and Spanish peasant bands who resisted the revolutionary and expansion efforts of Napoleon; after the French word guerre.
Guest workers - Migrants looking for temporary employment abroad.
Gulag - Administrative name for the vast system of forced labor camps under the Soviet regime; it originated in a small monastery near the Arctic Circle and spread throughout the Soviet Union and to other Soviet-style socialist countries. Penal labor was required of both ordinary criminals (rapists, murderers, thieves) and those accused of political crimes (counterrevolution, anti-Soviet agitation).
Gulf War (1991) - Armed conflict between Iraq and a coalition of thirty-two nations, including the United States, Britain, Egypt, France, and Saudi Arabia. It originated with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, which it had long claimed, on August 2, 1990.
Gunpowder empires - Muslim empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and the Mughals that employed cannonry and gunpowder to advance their military causes.
Guomindang - Nationalist party of China, founded just before World War I by Sun Yat Sen and later led by Chiang Kai-shek.
Habsburg empire - Ruling house of Austria, which once ruled both Spain and Central Europe but came to settle in lands along the Danube River, it played a prominent role in European affairs for many centuries. In 1867, the Habsburg empire was reorganized into the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, and in 1918 it collapsed.
Hadith - Sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad and his early converts. Used to guide the behavior of Muslim peoples.
Hagia Sophia - The largest house of worship in all of Christendom, located in Constantinople and turned into a Muslim house of worship when Constantinople fell to Ottoman forces in 1453.
Hajj - The pilgrimage to Mecca; an obligation for Muslims.
Harem - Secluded women’s quarters in Muslim households.
“Harlem Renaissance” - Cultural movement in the 1920s that was based in Harlem, a part of New York City where a large African-American population resided. The movement gave voice to black novelists, poets, painters, and musicians, many of whom used their art to protest racial subordination; also referred to as the “New Negro Movement.”
“Haussmannization” - The redevelopment and beautification of urban centers; named after the city planner who “modernized” mid-nineteenth-century Paris.
Hijra - Tradition of Islam, whereby one withdraws from one’s community to create another, more holy, one. The practice is based on the Prophet Muhammad’s withdrawal from the city of Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E.
Hindu revivalism - Movement to reconfigure traditional Hinduism to be less diverse and more amenable to producing a narrowed version of Indian tradition.
Hiroshima - Japanese port struck by an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945.
Holy Russia - Name applied to Muscovy and then to the Russian empire by Slavic Eastern Orthodox clerics who were appalled by the Muslim conquest in 1453 of Constantinople (the capital of Byzantium and of Eastern Christianity), and who were hopeful that Russia would become the new protector of the faith.
Home charges - Fees India was forced to pay to Britain as its colonial master; these fees included interest on railroad loans, salaries to colonial officers, and the maintenance of imperial troops outside India.
Homo caudatus - “Tailed man,” believed by some European Enlightenment thinkers to be an early species of mankind.
Homo sapiens - Term defined by Linnaeus in 1737 and commonly used to refer to human beings. During the Enlightenment, many thinkers believed that the human species was divided into five subgroups, or races, identified by a combination of physical characteristics, including skin pigmentation and social qualities.
Huguenots - French Protestants who endured severe persecution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Hundred Days’ Reform (1898) - Abortive modernizing reform program of the Qing government of China.
Il Duce - Term designating the fascist Italian leader, Benito Mussolini.
Il-khanate - Mongol-founded dynasty in thirteenth-century Persia.
Imam - Muslim religious leader and also a politico-religious descendant of Ali; believed by some to have a special relationship with Allah.
Indian Institutes of Technology (ITT) - Originally designed as engineering schools to expand knowledge and to modernize India, ITTs produced a whole generation of pioneering computer engineers, many of whom relocated to the United States.
Indian National Congress - Formed in 1885, this political party was deeply committed to constitutional methods, industrialization, and cultural nationalism.
Indian National Muslim League - Founded in 1906, it was dedicated to the advancement of the political interests of Muslims in India.
Indulgences - Church-sponsored fund-raising mechanism that gave certification that one’s sins had been forgiven in return for money.
Inquisition - Tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church that aimed to enforce religious orthodoxy and conformity on the adherents of Catholicism during the Protestant Reformation period.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) - International agency founded in 1944 to help restore financial order in Europe and the rest of the world, to revive international trade, and to support financial concerns of Third World governments.
Invisible hand - described in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, the idea that the operations of a free market would produce economic efficiency and economic benefits for all.
Iron Curtain - Term popularized by Winston Churchill after World War II to refer to a division, or an iron curtain, that divided Western Europe under American influence from Eastern Europe under the domination of the Soviet Union.
Jacobins - Radical French political group that came into existence during the French Revolution and executed the French king and sought to remake French culture.
Jacquerie (1358) - French peasant revolt in defiance of feudal restrictions.
Jagat Seths - Enormous trading and banking empire in eastern India.
Janissaries - Corps of infantry soldiers recruited as children from the Christian provinces of the Ottoman Empire and brought up with intense loyalty to the Ottoman state and its sultan. The Ottoman sultan used these forces to clip local autonomy and to serve as his personal bodyguards.
Jati - Social groups as defined by Hinduism’s caste system.
Jesuit - Religious order founded by Ignatius Loyola to counter the inroads of the Protestant Reformation; the Jesuits were active in politics, education, and missionary work.
Jihad - To engage in struggle, if need be, holy war toward the advancement of the cause of Islam.
Jih-pen - Chinese for Japan.
“Jim Crow” Laws - Laws that codified racial segregation and inequality in the southern part of the United States after the Civil War.
Jizya - Special tax that non-Muslims were obligated to pay to their Islamic rulers in return for which they were given security of life and property and granted cultural autonomy.
Jong - large oceangoing vessels, built by Southeast Asians, which plied the regional trade routes from the fifteenth century to the early sixteenth century.
K - O
Kabuki - Theater performance that combined song, dance, and skillful staging to dramatize conflicts between duty and passion in Tokogawa, Japan.
Kamikaze - Japanese for “divine winds” or typhoons, which saved their island from a Mongol attack.
Kanun - Highly detailed system of Ottoman administrative law that jurists developed to deal with matters not treated in the religious law of Islam.
Keynesian Revolution - Post-Depression economic ideas developed by the British economist, John Maynard Keynes, wherein the state took a greater role in managing the economy, stimulating it by increasing the money supply and creating jobs.
KGB - Soviet political police and spy agency, first formed as the Cheka not long after the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. Grew to more than 750,000 operatives with military rank by the 1980s.
Khanate - Major political unit of the vast Mongol empire. There were four Khanates, including the Yuan empire in China, forged by Chinggis Khan’s grandson Kubilai.
Kikuyu people - Kenya’s largest ethnic group; organizers of a revolt against the British in the 1950s in favor of independence.
Kingdom of Awadh - One of the most prized lands for annexation, the Kingdom of Awadh was the fertile, opulent, and traditional vestige of Mughal rule in India.
Kizilbash - Mystical, Turkish-speaking tribesmen who facilitated the Safavid rise to power.
Koprulu reforms - Named after two grand viziers who revitalized the Ottoman empire through administrative and budget trimming, and rebuilding of the military in the seventeenth century.
Kremlin - Once synonymous with the Soviet government, it refers to Moscow’s walled city center.
Kshatriyas - Warriors within the caste system of Hinduism.
Ku Klux Klan - Racist organization that first emerged in the U.S. South after the Civil War and then gained national strength as an anti-modernist movement during the 1920s.
Kulaks - Originally a pejorative used to designate better-off peasants, it was used in the late 1920s and early 1930s to refer to any peasant, rich or poor, perceived as an opponent of the Soviet regime. Russian for “fist.”
Labour Party - Founded in Britain in 1900, this party represented workers and was based on socialist principles.
League of Nations - International organization founded after World War I to solve international disputes through arbitration; it was dissolved in 1946 and transferred its assets to the United Nations.
Lenin, Nikolai (1870-1924) - Leader of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the first leader of the Soviet Union.
Liberalism - Political and social theory that advocates representative government, free trade, and freedom of speech and religion.
Lithograph - Art form that involves putting writing or design on stone and producing printed impressions.
Long March (1934-1935) - Trek over 10,000 kilometers by Mao Zedong and his Communist followers to establish a new base of operations.
Lord - Privileged landowner who exercised authority over the people who lived on his land.
Lost generation - Refers to the 17 million former members of the Red Guard and other Chinese youth who were denied education from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s as part of the Chinese government’s attempt to forestall political disruptions.
Louisiana Purchase (1803) - American purchase of French territory from Napoleon, including much of the present-day United States between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains.
Luftwaffe - German air force.
Maastricht Treaty (1991) - Treaty that formed the European Union, a fully integrated trading and financial bloc with its own bureaucracy and elected representatives.
Madrassas - Higher schools of Muslim education that taught law, religious sciences, the Quran, and the regular sciences.
Mahdi - The “chosen one” in Islam whose appearance was supposed to foretell the end of the world and the final day of reckoning for all people.
Maji-Maji Revolt (early 1900s) - Swahili insurrection against German colonialists, that was inspired by the belief that those who were anointed with specially blessed water (maji) would be immune from bullets. It resulted in 200,000-300,000 African deaths.
Manaus Opera House - Brazilian opera house built in the interior of Brazil in a lucrative rubber-growing area at the turn of the twentieth century.
Manchukuo - Japanese puppet state in Manchuria in the 1930s.
Mandate of heaven - Insistence that the ruling family of China belonged in power as a calling from above. The ruler could potentially lose the mandate if he did not properly discharge his duties.
Manifest Destiny - Belief that it was God’s will for the American people to expand their territory and political processes across the North American continent.
Maroon community - Sanctuary for runaway slaves in the Americas.
Marshall Plan - Economic aid package given to Europe after World War II in hopes of a rapid period of reconstruction and economic gain, securing them from a Communist takeover.
Marx, Karl (1818-1883) - German philosopher and economist who created Marxism and believed that a revolution of the working classes would overthrow the capitalist order and create a classless society
Mau-Mau Revolt (1952-1957) - Uprising orchestrated by a Kenyan secret guerilla movement, this conflict forced the British to grant independence to the black majority in Kenya.
Maxim gun - European weaponry that was capable of firing many bullets per second; it was used against Africans in the conquest of the continent.
Mayans - Native American peoples whose widespread and culturally and politically sophisticated empire encompassed lands in present-day Mexico and Guatemala. The empire was flourishing when the Spanish arrived at the end of the fifteenth century.
McCarthyism - Campaign by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy in the late 1940s and early 1950s to uncover closet Communists, particularly in the State Department and in Hollywood.
Meat Inspection Act (1906) - Provided for government supervision of meatpacking operations; it was part of a broader “Progressive” reform movement dedicated to correcting the negative consequences of urbanization and industrialization in the United States.
Mecca - Major commercial city of the Arabian Peninsula in the sixth century C.E. at which time the founder of Islam, Muhammad, was born and achieved prominence. From the earliest days of the spread of Islam, the city became the chief religious pilgrimage for Muslims.
Meiji empire - Empire created under the leadership of Mutsuhito, emperor of Japan from 1868 until 1912. During the Meiji period Japan became a world industrial and naval power.
Meiji Restoration - The reign of the Meiji Emperor, which was characterized by a new nationalist identity, economic advances, and political transformation.
Mercantilism - Belief that a country’s wealth and power was based on a favorable balance of trade (more exports and imports) and the accumulation of precious metals.
Mercosur - Free trade pact between governments of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
Mestizos - Mixed-blood offspring of Spanish settlers and Indian natives.
Métis - Mixed-blood offspring of French settlers and native Indians.
Mexican Revolution (1910) - Conflict fueled by the unequal distribution of land and by disgruntled workers; it erupted when political elites split over the succession of General Porfirio Díaz after decades of his rule. The fight lasted over ten years and cost Mexico one million lives, but resulted in a widespread reform and a new constitution.
Mfecane - African political revolts in the first half of the nineteenth century that resulted from the expansion methods of King Shaka of the Zulu people.
Millets - Minority religious communities of the Ottoman empire.
Minaret - Slender tower within a mosque from which people were called to prayer.
Minbar - Pulpit inside a mosque from which Muslim religious speakers broadcast their message to the faithful.
Mission civilisatrice - Term French colonizers employed to refer to France’s form of “rationalized” colonial rule, which attempted to bring “civilization” to the “uncivilized.”
Model T - First automobile, manufactured by the Ford Motor Company of Henry Ford, to be priced reasonably enough to be sold to the masses.
Modernity - Refers to the various ways in which the peoples of the world thought that they could become modern, enjoying high standards of living and living in stable polities, usually nation-states.
Mosque - Place of worship for the people of Islam.
Muckrakers - Journalists who aimed to expose political and commercial corruption in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century America.
Muftis - Experts on Muslim religious law.
Muhammad (570-632 C.E.) - The founder of Islam, he claimed to be the prophet whom God (Allah) had chosen for his final revelation to mankind.
Muhammad Ali - Ruler of Egypt between 1805 and1848, he initiated a set of modernizing reforms that sought to make Egypt competitive with the great powers.
Mullahs - Religious leaders in Iran who led a movement of opposition against the shah and denounced the depravity of American materialism and secularism.
Multinational corporations - Corporations based in many different countries that have global investment, trading, and distribution goals.
Muslim Brotherhood - Egyptian organization founded in 1938 by Hassan al-Banna. It attacked liberal democracy as a façade for middle-class, business, and landowning interests and fought for a return to a purified form of Islam.
Muslim League - National Muslim party of India.
Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945) - Italian dictator and founder of the fascist movement in Italy.
Muwahhidin - A term meaning “unitarians”; these were followers of the Wahhabi Movement that emerged in the Arabian peninsula in the eighteenth century.
Nagasaki - Second Japanese city to be hit by an atomic bomb near the end of World War II.
Napoleonic Code - Legal code drafted by Napoleon in 1804, it distilled different legal traditions to create one uniform law. The code confirmed the abolition of feudal privileges of all kinds and set the conditions for exercising property rights.
National Assembly of France - Governing body of France that succeeded the Estates-General in 1789 during the French Revolution. It was composed of, and defined by, the delegates of the Third Estate.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) - Founded in 1910, this U.S. civil rights organization was dedicated to ending inequality and segregation for black Americans.
National Recovery Administration (NRA) - New Deal agency created in 1933 to prepare codes of fair administration and to plan for public works. It was later declared unconstitutional.
National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) - Organization dedicated to winning workers over from socialism to nationalism; the first Nazi Party platform combined nationalism with anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism.
Native learning - Japanese movement to promote nativist intellectual traditions and the celebration of Japanese texts.
Native paramountcy - British form of “rationalized” colonial rule, which attempted to bring “civilization” to the “uncivilized” by proclaiming that when the interests of European settlers in Africa clashed with those of the African population, the latter should take precedence.
Natural rights - Belief that emerged in eighteenth-century Western Europe and North America that rights fundamental to human nature were discernible to reason and should be affirmed in man-made law.
Negritude - Statement of the virtues of the black identity and the validation of African culture and African past, even in a westernizing world. This idea was shaped by African and African-American intellectuals like Senegal’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor.
New Deal - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s package of government reforms that were enacted during the 1930s to provide jobs for the unemployed, social welfare programs for the poor, and security to the financial markets.
New Economic Policy - Enacted decrees of the Bolsheviks between 1921 and 1927 that grudgingly sanctioned private trade and private property.
“New Negro Movement” - Cultural movement in the 1920s that gave voice to black novelists, poets, painters, and musicians, many of whom used their art to protest racial subordination; also referred to as the “Harlem Renaissance.”
Nō drama - Masked theater favored by Japanese bureaucrats and regional lords during the Tokogawa period.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - Term used to refer to private organizations like the Red Cross that play a large role in international affairs.
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - Treaty negotiated in the early 1990s to promote free trade between Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - International organization set up in 1949 to provide for the defense of Western European countries and the United States from the perceived Soviet threat.
Northwest passage - Long-sought marine passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Oceania - Collective name for the lands of the Central and Southern Pacific Ocean.
Open Door Policy - As European imperial powers carved out spheres of trade in late-nineteenth-century China, American leaders worried that the United States would be excluded from trade with China. To prevent this, American Secretary of State John Hay proposed this policy, which would give all foreign nations equal access to trade with China.
Opium War - (1839-1842) War fought between the British and Qing China to protect British trade in opium; resulted in the ceding of Hong Kong to the British.
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) - International association established in 1960 to coordinate price and supply policies of oil-producing states.
Orientalists - Western scholars who specialized in the study of the East.
P - T
Pacific War (1879-1883) - War between Chile and the alliance of Bolivia and Peru.
Pan-Germanism - Movement to encourage German-speaking peoples to think of themselves as members of a German race, with their identities fixed by blood and “race” rather than defined by state boundaries.
Pan-Islamism - Movement to overcome the political and religious differences within the Islamic world, including the divide between the Sunni and Shiite Muslims in order to make a common cause against the West.
Pan-Slavism - Movement to unite all Slavs (Czech, Polish, Serbian, and Ukrainian) against their Austrian, German, and Ottoman overlords.
Pansophia - Ideal republic of inquisitive Christians united in the search for knowledge of nature as a means of loving God.
Papal - Of, relating to, or issued by a pope.
Patria - French, meaning “fatherland.”
Pawns - Humans sent temporarily or permanently into slavery in exchange for payments.
Pax Mongolica - Term that refers to the political and especially the commercial stability that the vast Mongol empire provided for the travelers and merchants of Eurasia during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Peace Preservation Act (1925) - Act instituted in Japan that specified up to ten years hard labor for any member of an organization advocating a basic change in the political system or the abolition of private property.
Pearl Harbor - American naval base in Hawaii on which the Japanese launched a surprise attack on December 7, 1941, bringing the United States into World War II.
Peninsular War (1808-1814) - Conflict in which the Portuguese and Spanish populations supported by the British resisted the French invasion under Napoleon of the Iberian Peninsula.
Peninsulars - Spaniards who although born in Spain, resided in the Spanish colonial territories. They regarded themselves as superior to Spaniards born in the colonies (Creoles).
Peoples’ Charter - Between 1839 and 1842 over 3 million British signed this document calling for universal suffrage for adult males, the secret ballot, electoral districts, and annual parliamentary elections.
Peterloo Massacre (1819) - The killing of 11 and wounding of 460 following a peaceful demonstration for political reform by workers in Manchester, England.
Phalanx - Utopian-like communities, designed by Charles Fourier, where 1500 to 1600 people and 810 personality types would create an economic system free of middlemen and full of comforts and rewards that would make working enjoyable.
Pochteca - Archaic term for merchants of the Mexicos.
Polyglot communities - Societies composed of diverse linguistic and ethnic groups.
Populists - Members of a political movement that supported U.S. farmers in late nineteenth-century America. The term is often used generically to refer to political groups who appeal to the mass of the population.
Potato famine (1840s) - Severe famine in Ireland that led to the rise of radical political movements and the migration of large numbers of Irish to the United States.
Prague Spring (1968) - Program of liberalization under a new Communist party in Czechoslovakia that strived to create a democratic and pluralist socialism.
Predestinarian - Belief found in many sixteenth and seventeenth-century Protestant groups that God had foreordained the lives of individuals, including their bad and good deeds.
Primitivism - Movement in Western art forms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that used the so-called primitive art forms of Africa, Oceania, and pre-Columbian America to inspire a break with the established art world, including the immensely popular Impressionist school of painting.
Progressive Era - U.S. reform movement in the early twentieth century that aimed to eliminate political corruption, improve working conditions, and regulate the power of large industrial and financial enterprises.
Prophet‘s Town - Indian village that was burned to the ground by American forces in the early part of the nineteenth century while under the leadership of Tenskwatawa.
Protestantism - Division of Christianity that emerged in sixteenth-century Western Europe at the time of the Reformation. It focused on individual spiritual needs and struck down the social authority of the papacy and the Catholic clergy.
Pullman Strike (1894) - American Railway Union worker’s strike spawned by wage cuts and firings.
Puppet states - Governments that have little power in the international arena and follow the dictates of their more powerful neighbors or patrons.
Puritans - Seventeenth-century reform group of the Church of England; also known as dissenters or nonconformists.
Qadiriyya - Sufi order that facilitated the spread of Islam into West Africa.
Qadis - Judges in the Ottoman Empire.
Quetzalcoatl - Ancient deity and legendary ruler of Native American peoples living in Mexico.
Quran (often spelled Koran) - Islam’s holy book comprised of Allah’s revelations.
Radicals - Widely-used term in nineteenth-century Europe that referred to those individuals and political organizations that favored the total reconfiguration of Europe’s old state system.
Raj - Referred to the British crown’s administration of India following the ending of the East India Company’s rule after the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
Ramadan - Ninth month of the Muslim year, during which all Muslims must fast during daylight hours.
Rape of Nanjing - Attack against the Chinese wherein the Japanese slaughtered at least 100,000 civilians and raped thousands of women in the capital between December 1937 and February 1938.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) (1925) - Campaign to organize Hindus as a militant, modern community in India; translated in English as “National Volunteer Organization.”
Rebellion of 1857 - Indian rebellion against the English East India Company to bring religious purification, an egalitarian society, and local and communal solidarity without the interference of British rule.
Red Guards - Chinese students who were the shock troopers in the early phases of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in 1966-1968.
Red Lanterns - Female supporters of the Chinese Boxers who rebelled against foreign intrusions in China at the turn of the twentieth century. Most were teenage girls and unmarried women and dressed entirely in red garments.
Red Turbans - Diverse religious movement in China during the fourteenth century that spread the belief that the world was drawing to an end as Mongol rule was collapsing.
Reds - The Bolsheviks.
Reformation - Religious and political movement in sixteenth-century Europe that led to the breakaway of Protestant groups from the Catholic Church.
Reich - German empire composed of Denmark, Austria, and parts of western France.
Reichstag - The German parliament.
Reign of Terror - Campaign that took place at the height of the French Revolution in the early 1790s and used violence, including systematic executions of opponents of the Revolution, to purge France of its enemies and to extend the Revolution beyond its borders; radicals executed as many as 40,000 persons who were judged enemies of the state.
Renaissance - Term meaning “rebirth” that historians use to characterize the expanded cultural production of European nations between 1430 and 1550. Emphasized a break from the church-centered medieval world and a new concept of man as the center of the world.
Restoration period (1815-1848) - European movement after the defeat of Napoleon to restore Europe to its pre-French revolutionary status and to prevent radical movements from occurring.
Roving bandits - Large bands of dispossessed and marginalized peasants who vented their anger at tax collectors in the waning years of the Ming dynasty.
Russification - Programs designed to assimilate people of over 146 dialects into the Russian empire.
S.S. (Schutzstaffel) - Hitler’s security police force.
Salt March (1930) - A 240-mile trek to the sea, led by Gandhi, to gather salt for free, thus breaking the British colonial monopoly on salt.
Samurai - Japanese warriors who made up the private armies of Japanese daimyos.
Sandinista coalition - Left-leaning Nicaraguan coalition of the 1970s and 1980s.
Santeria - African-based religion, blended with Christian influences, that was first practiced by slaves in Cuba.
Sati - Hindu practice wherein a woman was burned to death on the pyre of her dead husband.
Satyagraha - Moral and political philosophy of nonviolent resistance developed by Indian National Congress leader Gandhi.
“Scramble for Africa” - European rush to colonize parts of Africa at the end of the nineteenth century.
SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) - Military alliance created among pro-American, anti-Communist states in Southeast Asia in 1954.
Second World - Term invented during the cold war to refer to the Communist countries, as opposed to the West (or First World) and the former colonies (or Third World).
Second World War - Worldwide war that began in September 1939 in Europe, and even earlier in Asia, and pitted Britain, the United States, and especially the Soviet Union (the Allies) against Nazi Germany and Japan (the Axis).
Self-Strengthening Movement - Movement in which reformist Chinese bureaucrats attempted to adopt Western elements of learning and technological skill in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Sepoys - Hindu and Muslim recruits of the East India Company’s military force.
Serfs - Peasants who farmed the land and paid fees to be protected and governed by lords under a system of rule called feudalism.
Seven Years‘ War (1756-1763) - Worldwide war that ended when Prussia defeated Austria, establishing itself as a European power, and when Britain gained control of India and many of France’s colonies through the Treaty of Paris. It is known as the French and Indian War in the United States.
Shah - Traditional title of Persian rulers.
Shamisen - Three-stringed instrument, often played by skillful Japanese geisha.
Shanghai School - Style of painting characterized by an emphasis on spontaneous brushwork, subjective feelings, and the incorporation of Western influences into classical Chinese pieces.
Sharia - Laws of Islam that regulate the spiritual and secular actions of Muslims.
Sharpeville Massacre (1960) - Massacre in which sixty-nine black Africans were killed when police fired upon a rally against the recently passed laws requiring non-white South Africans to carry identity papers.
Shawnees - Native American tribe that inhabited the Ohio valley during the eighteenth century.
Shays‘s Rebellion (1786) - Uprising of armed farmers when the Massachusetts state government refused to offer them economic relief.
Shiism - One of the two main branches of Islam. Shiites recognize Ali, the fourth caliph, and his descendants as rightful rulers of the Islamic world; practiced in the Safavid empire.
Shinto - Japan’s official religion that promoted the state and the emperor’s divinity; meaning “the way of the gods.”
Shogun - Archaic term for the military ruler of Japan.
Shudras - Peasants and laborers in Hinduism’s caste system.
Silicon Valley - Valley between California’s San Francisco and San Jose, known for its innovative computer and high-technology industry.
Silver Islands - Term used by European merchants in the sixteenth century to refer to Japan, because of its substantial trade in silver with China.
Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) - Conflict over the control of Korea in which China was forced to cede the province of Taiwan to Japan.
Sipahi - Urdu for soldier.
Social Darwinism - Belief that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was applicable to human societies and justified the right of the ruling classes or countries to dominate the weak.
Social Security Act (1935) - New Deal act that instituted old-age pensions and insurance for the unemployed.
Socialism - Political ideology that calls for a classless society with collective ownership of all property.
Solidarity - The Communist bloc’s first independent trade union, it was established in Poland at the Gdansk shipyard.
South African War (1899-1902) - Often called the Boer War, this conflict between the British and Dutch colonists of South Africa resulted in bringing two Afrikaner Republics under the control of the British.
Soviet bloc - International alliance that included the East European countries of the Warsaw Pact as well as the Soviet Union, but also came to include Cuba.
Spanish-American War (1898) - War between the United States and Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It ended with a treaty in which the United States took over the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico; Cuba won partial independence.
St. Bartholomew‘s Day Massacre - Massacre of French Protestants by Catholic crowds in 1572.
Stalin, Joseph (1879-1953) - Leader of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union; sought to create “socialism in one country.”
Strategic Defense Initiative (“Stars Wars”) - Master plan, initiated by Ronald Reagan, that envisions the deployment of satellites and space missiles to insulate the United States from incoming nuclear bombs.
Suez Canal - Built in 1869 across the Isthmus of Suez to connect the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea and to lower the costs of international trade.
Sufi brotherhoods - Mystics within Islam who were responsible for the expansion of Islam into many regions of the world.
Sufism - Emotional and mystical form of Islam that appealed to the common people.
Sultan - An Islamic political leader. In the Ottoman empire, the sultan combined a warrior ethos with an unwavering devotion to Islam.
Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925) - Chinese revolutionary and founder of the Nationalist Party in China.
Sunni - Orthodox Islam, as opposed to the Shiite Islam.
Supranational organizations - International organizations such as NGOs, the World Bank, and the IMF.
Survival of the fittest - Charles Darwin’s belief that as animal populations grew and resources became scarce, this condition created a struggle for existence, the outcome of which was that only the “fittest” survived.
Swadeshi Movement - Voluntary organizations in India that championed the creation of indigenous manufacturing enterprises and schools of nationalist thought, in order to gain autonomy from Britain.
Syndicalism - Organization of workplace associations that included unskilled labor.
Tabula rasa - Term used by John Locke to describes man’s mind before he had begun to acquire ideas as a result of experience; French for “clean slate.”
Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace) - Religious sect established by the Chinese prophet Hong Xiuquan in the middle of the nineteenth century. The group struggled to “restore” the heavenly kingdom, imagined as a just and egalitarian order.
Taiping Rebellion - Chinese rebellion against the Manchu leaders, led by Hong Xiuquan.
Taj Mahal - Royal palace of the Mughal empire, built by Shah Jahan in the seventeenth century as homage to his wife.
Talking cures - Psychological practice developed by Sigmund Freud whereby the symptoms of neurotic and traumatized patients would decrease after periods of thoughtful discussion.
Tanzimat - The reorganization period of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-nineteenth century; modernizing reforms affected the military, trade, foreign relations, and civilian life.
Tappers - Rubber workers in Brazil, mostly either Indian or mixed-blood people.
Tarascans - Mesoamerican society of the 1400s; rivals to and sometimes subjects of the Aztecs.
Tatish - Ruler of Chan Santa Cruz during the Mexican Caste War; meaning “father.”
Tekkes - Schools that taught devotional strategies and the religious knowledge for students to enter Sufi orders and become masters of the brotherhood.
Third Estate - The French people minus members of the clergy and the aristocracy; this term was popularized in the late eighteenth century and used to exalt the power of the bourgeoisie during the French Revolution.
Third Reich - The German state from 1933 to 1945 under Adolf Hitler.
Third World - Nations of the world, mostly in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, that were not highly industrialized like nations of the First World or tied to the Soviet Bloc (the Second World).
Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) - Beginning as a conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Germany, it escalated into a general European war fought against the unity and power of the Holy Roman Empire.
Tiananmen Square - Largest public square in the world and site of the pro-democracy movement in 1989 that resulted in the killing of as many as 1,000 protesters by the Chinese army.
Tiers monde - French intellectuals coined this term meaning “Third World” to describe the efforts of countries seeking a “third way” between Soviet communism and Western capitalism.
Tlaxcalans - A Mesoamerican society of the 1400s; these people were enemies of the powerful Aztec empire.
Tokugawa Shogunate - Founded in 1603, this hereditary military administration ruled Japan while keeping the emperor as a figurehead; it was toppled in 1868 by reformers who felt that Japan should adopt, not reject, Western influences.
Topkapi Palace - Political headquarters of the Ottoman empire, it was located in Istanbul.
Total war - All-out war involving civilian populations as well as military forces, often used in reference to World War II.
Trans-Siberian Railroad - Railroad built through very difficult terrain between 1891 and 1903, and subsequently expanded; it created an overland bridge for the movement of troops, peasant settlers, and commodities between Europe and the Pacific.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) - Separate peace between imperial Germany and the new Bolshevik regime in Russia. The treaty acknowledged the German victory on the Eastern Front and withdrew Russia from the war.
Treaty of Nanjing (1842) - Treaty between China and Britain following the Opium War; it called for indemnities, the opening of new ports, and the cession of Hong Kong to the British.
Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) - Treaty in which the pope decreed that the non-European world would be divided into spheres of trade and missionization between Spain and Portugal.
Tripartite Pact (1940) - A pact that stated that the countries of Germany, Italy, and Japan would act together in all future military ventures.
Triple Entente - Alliance developed before World War I that eventually included Britain, France, and Russia.
Truman Doctrine (1947) - Declaration promising U.S. economic and military intervention, whenever and wherever needed, for the sake of preventing further Communist expansion.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission - Quasi-judicial body established after the overthrow of the apartheid system in South Africa and the election of Nelson Mandela as the country’s first black president in 1994. The commission was to take evidence about the crimes committed during the apartheid years. Those who showed remorse for their actions could appeal for clemency. The South African leaders believed that an airing of the grievances from this period would promote racial harmony and reconciliation.
Tsar - Russian translation, similar to the German kaiser, for the Roman title “caesar” (emperor), a title claimed by the rulers of medieval Muscovy and then the Russian empire.
U - Z
Uitlanders - British populations living in Afrikaner Republics; they were denied voting rights and subject to other forms of discrimination in the late nineteenth century; meaning “outsiders.”
Ulama - Scholarly class among Muslim people.
Umma - Arabic for “the community of the faithful,” it describes a sense of common identity among Muslims.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) - United Nations declaration that laid out the rights to which all human beings were entitled.
Upanishads - Classic Hindu spiritual texts.
Utopian socialism - The most visionary of all Restoration-era movements, Utopian socialists, like Charles Fourier, dreamt of transforming states, workplaces, and human relations and proposed actual plans to do so.
Vaishyas - Merchants and artisans in the Hindu caste system.
Varna - Caste system established by the Vedas in 600 B.C.E.
Versailles Conference (1919) - Peace conference between the victors of World War I to decide the future; resulted in the Treaty of Versailles, which forced Germany to pay reparations and to give up its colonies to the victors.
Viet Cong - Vietnamese Communist group that was committed to overthrowing the government of South Vietnam and reunifying North and South Vietnam.
Viet Minh - Group founded in 1941 by Ho Chi Minh to oppose the Japanese occupation of Indochina, it later fought the French colonial forces for independence. Also known as the Vietnamese Independent League.
Viziers - Bureaucrats of the Ottoman empire.
Vodun - Slaves and free blacks in the colony of Saint Domingue practiced this mixed religion of African and Christian customs.
Voting Rights Act (1965) - Law that granted universal suffrage in the United States.
Wafd - Nationalist party that sprang into existence during a rebellion in Egypt in 1919 and held power sporadically after Egypt was granted a modicum of independence from Britain in 1922.
Wahhabi Movement - Early-eighteenth-century reform movement organized by Muhammad Ibn abd al-Wahhab, who preached the absolute oneness of Allah and a return to the pure Islam of Muhammad.
War of 1812 - Conflict between Britain and the United States arising from U.S. grievances over oppressive British maritime practices in the Napoleonic Wars.
“War on Poverty” - President Lyndon Johnson’s push for an increased range of social programs and increased spending on social security, health, education, and assistance for the disabled.
Warsaw Pact (1955-1991) - Military alliance between the U.S.S.R. and other Communist states that was established as a response to the creation of the NATO alliance.
Weimar Republic (1919-1933) - Constitutional Republic of Germany that was subverted by Hitler soon after he became chancellor.
Western Front - Military front that stretched from the English Channel through Belgium and France to the Alps during World War I.
White Lotus Rebellion - Series of uprisings in northern China (1790-1800s) inspired by mystical beliefs in folk Buddhism and, at times, the idea of restoring the Ming dynasty.
White Wolf - Popular myth depicted this mysterious militia leader as a Chinese Robin Hood with the mission to rid the country of the injustices of Yuan Shikai’s government in the early years of the new Chinese Republic in the 1910s.
Whites - Refers to the “counterrevolutionaries” of the Bolshevik Revolution (19181921) who fought the Bolsheviks (the “Reds”); included former supporters of the tsar, Social Democrats, and large independent peasant armies.
Wokou - Supposedly Japanese pirates, many of these thieves were actually Chinese subjects of the Ming dynasty.
Works Progress Administration (WPA) - New Deal program instituted in 1935 that put nearly 3 million people to work building roads, bridges, airports, and post offices.
World Bank - International agency established in 1944 to provide economic assistance to wartorn and poor countries. Its formal title is the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Yalta Accords - Meeting between President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and Premier Stalin that occurred in the Crimea in the middle of 1945 to make preparations for the postwar order.
“Yellow press” - Newspapers that sought a mass circulation by featuring sensationalist reporting that appealed to the masses.
Young Egypt - Anti-liberal, fascist group that gained a large following in Egypt during the 1930s.
Young Italy - Nationalist organization, made up of young students and intellectuals, devoted to the unification and renewal of the state.
Yuan Mongols - Mongol rulers of China who were overthrown by the Ming dynasty in 1368.
Zaibatsu - Large-scale, family-owned corporations in Japan consisting of factories, import-export business, and banks that dominated the Japanese economy up until 1945.
Zamindars - Archaic tax system of the Mughal empire where decentralized lords collected tribute for the emperor.
Zapatistas - Group of indigenous rebels that rose up against the Mexican government in 1994 and drew inspiration from an earlier Mexican rebel, Emiliano Zapata.
Zhongguo - Term originating in the ancient period and subsequently used to emphasize the central cultural and geographical location of China in the world. Meaning, “Middle Kingdom.”
Zionism - Political movement advocating the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Zulus - African tribe that, under Shaka, created a ruthless warrior state in southern Africa in the early 1800s.