Cumulative Lexicon (AP World History - Dr. Carpenter)

René Descartes (1596-1650): "Cogito Ergo Sum"

"I think, therefore I am"; the philosophical proposition by a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who was one of the most notable intellectual figures of the Dutch Golden Age (regarded as one of the founders of modern philosophy)

Sufism

"Islamic mysticism" that desired ihsan (perfection of worship), a personal union with God: divine love through intuition rather than through rational deduction and study of the Sharia; followed an ascetic routine (denial of physical desire to gain a spiritual goal), dedicating themselves to fasting, prayer, meditation on the Quran, and the avoidance of sin

fait accompli

"a done deal" (or an accomplished deed)

Categorical Imperative

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it become a universal law" (Immanuel Kant)

non sequitur

"it does not follow" (i.e. when you're making an argument and do a huge jump to a conclusion; "that's so random")

Blitzkrieg

"lightning war;" used by Hitler in WWII to defeat France and Poland; relies on short, fast, and powerful attacks

New Economic Policy

Lenin's policy that allowed some private ownership and limited foreign investment to revitalize the Soviet economy

philosophe

public intellectuals of the Enlightenment who applied reason to the study of many areas of learning (including philosophy, history, science, politics, and economics)

quipus

recording devices made from strings historically used by cultures in Andean South America, including the Inca (also used by many other cultures such as the ancient Chinese and native Hawaiians but such practices should not be confused with the quipu, which refers only to the Andean device)

sati

The custom among the higher castes of Hinduism of a widow throwing herself on the burning funeral pyre of her husband.

deduction

a process of reasoning involving moving from a general rule to a specific example

Charlemagne

also known as Karl and Charles the Great; a medieval emperor who ruled much of Western Europe from 768 to 814; became King of the Franks and was the first emperor to rule from western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, founding the Carolingian Empire, the first phase of the Holy Roman Empire

John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1920)

as part of the British delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I, the author had detailed knowledge of the debates about reparations which were demanded of Germany; he believed the demands on defeated Germany were too harsh and he resigned his government position and wrote this book explaining his reasons

ancestor worship

associated with China, the idea than ancestors can affect one's current life through their relations with the gods

geocentric

astronomical models in which the planets revolve around the Earth

heliocentric

astronomical models in which the planets revolve around the Sun

irredentism

any political or popular movement that seeks to claim or reclaim and occupy a land that the movement's members consider to be a "lost" (or "unredeemed") territory from their nation's past

civilization

city, from Latin civitas

"black earth"

coal (its first recorded use was in China around 4000 BCE)

hegemony

complete dominance of one region over another

Constantinople

arguably the most important city in world history; founded by Constantine (the first Christian Roman emperor) and renamed Istanbul in 1453

Sargon of Akkad

around 2350 BC, he conquered Sumer and unified it into Akkad, creating the first empire

Say's Law

also called the law of markets, the classical-economics law claiming that the production of a product creates demand for another product by providing something of value which can be exchanged for that other product (so production is the source of demand)

Middle Kingdom

refers to China (because the people believed that their land stood between heaven and earth)

Hellenic

refers to Greece itself prior to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE

Semitic

refers to a family of languages (the most prominent of which is Arabic)

"Scramble for Africa"

the rapid partitioning (gobbling up) of Africa by European nations until 1919, at which point only 2 independent nations existed (Liberia and Ethiopia) (fueled by desire for valuable resources, the quest for national prestige, tensions between pairs of European powers, religious missionary zeal, and internal African native politics)

Sharia

the religious law of Islam, particularly derived from the Quran and Hadith

Catholic Reformation (Counter Reformation)

the religious reform movement within the Roman Catholic Church that occurred in response to the Protestant Reformation; it reaffirmed Catholic beliefs and promoted education

Neo-Confucianism

the resurgence of Confucianism and the influence of Confucian scholars that rose during the Tang and became prominent during the Song and Ming dynasties; a unification of Taoist and/or Buddhist metaphysics with Confucian pragmatism

Vedas

the sacred texts of the Aryans and oldest scriptures in Hinduism

Mycenaean Civilization

the second Greek civilization, located on the mainland; they probably fought the Trojan War and used the language "Linear B" (which has been deciphered)

Jamestown

the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, located in the Colony of Virginia; established originally by the Virginia Company of London

Armenian Genocide (1915-1917)

the first use of the word "genocide"; occurred when a Christian ethnic group in the Ottoman Empire were suspected of being disloyal (defecting to Russia) and were massacred during World War I (1.5 million died)

League of Nations

the first worldwide intergovernmental organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace; it was founded on 10 January 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War; in 1919, Woodrow Wilson was to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the league; the US never actually joined it; and it was succeeded by the UN after WWII

Vulgate

the principal Latin version of the Bible, prepared mainly by St. Jerome in the late 4th century, and (as revised in 1592) adopted as the official text for the Roman Catholic Church; it was affirmed as the Church's official Bible at the Council of Trent

Factor

an agent with trade privileges in early Russia

Gathas

17 Avestan hymns believed to have been composed by Zarathusthra (Zoroaster) himself; they form the core of the Zoroastrian liturgy

"Year of Revolutions"

1848 (a series of political upheavals throughout Europe)

knight

(in the Middle Ages) a man who served his sovereign or lord as a mounted soldier in armor; often a vassal who served as an elite fighter; the embodiment of chivalry

Royal Road

1600-mile road connecting Western Persia to parts of its eastern end; another unifying aspect of the empire

May Fourth Movement

1919 protest in China against the Treaty of Versailles and foreign influence

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)

Became the founding basis of free-market economies; comprised of five books that, by reflecting on what makes nations wealthy, span topics as broad as the division of labor, productivity, and free markets

Tiananmen Square

Beijing site of a 1989 student protest in favor of democracy; the Chinese military killed large numbers of protestors

Bodhisattvas

Buddhist holy men who accumulated spiritual merits during their lifetime; Buddhists prayed to them in order to receive some of their holiness

Guomindang

China's Nationalist political party founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1912 and based on democratic principles; in 1925, the party was taken over by Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek), who made it into a more authoritarian party

Code Napoléon (1804)

Complete codification of laws that standardized French law under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte

Fidel Castro

Cuban socialist leader who overthrew a dictator in 1959 and established a Marxist socialist state in Cuba (born in 1927)

"Gift of the Nile"

Egypt

pharaohs

Egyptian god-kings; literally "the guy who lives in the big house"

Ma'at

Egyptian term describing the divine power held by their Pharaoh that gave him legitimacy to rule and was supposed to tresure prosperity

Puritans

English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries, who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and needed to become more protestant

Schlieffen Plan

Germany's plan to simultaneously conquer France and Russia at the beginning of WWII (1914); it called for first fighting France and then bringing all the troops across Germany to fight Russia, but it turned into a disaster when they tried to send troops through Belgium, violating the country's neutrality and bringing Britain into the fight against Germany

Louis XIV, aka. "The Sun King"

King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715; in the age of absolutism in Europe, his France was a leader in the growing centralization of power

Hellenistic

Meaning "Greek-like," the period of Alexander and his generals' rule (primarily after Alexander's death in 323 BCE), in which the cultures of Greece and the Middle-East were blended together. Stoicism (people should use reason to live virtuous lives and help others) was the dominant school of thought, and their achievements included: Euclidean geometry; the Pythagorean theorem; studies of human anatomy and physiology by Galen; and the calculation of the circumference of the earth by Eratosthenes (though Ptolemy falsely claimed that the Earth was at the universe's center)

Third Rome

Moscow (the Russian claim to be successor state to Roman and Byzantine empires; based in part on continuity of Orthodox church in Russia following fall of Constantinople in 1453)

pogrom

Organized violence against Jews in Tzarist Russia

Atlantic Powers

Portugal, Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands (because they had easy access to the term's eponymous ocean, they took the lead during the Age of Exploration)

Woodrow Wilson

President during WWI; negotiated the Treaty of Versailles and envisioned the Fourteen Points and League of Nations (he'd been governor of New Jersey and president of Princeton)

boyars

Russian noblemen who were very conservative and didn't like change; when Peter the Great turned West and looked to make Russia more European, he had to defeat the power of the boyars (e.g. he thought that noblemen should be shaven because that's how they were in France, so he'd shave those who didn't want to be himself)

Kulaks

Russian peasants who prospered under Lenin's New Economic Policy but were later horribly persecuted by Stalin

Afrikaners

South Africans who are descended from the Dutch who settled in South Africa in the seventeenth century; sometimes called "Boers"

sepoys

South Asian soldiers who served in the British army in India

Alexander the Great

Stepped in after his father's death to conquer weakened Greek poleis, ushering in the Hellenistic Era; by his death at 33, he'd also conquered Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Persia (he married a Persian woman to unite their cultures, encouraging his general to as well). His generals divided up his territory at his death but maintained a power balance.

Ashoka the Great (269-232 BCE)

The most prominent Mauryan ruler, grandson of Chandragupta, expanding the empire to the entire subcontinent except the southern tip. Originally a brutal conqueror, he converted to Buddhism and embraced nonviolence, also constructing extensive roads for trade. Upon his death, India divided into states once again.

Abbasid Caliphate

The successors to the Umayyad Caliphate who treated Muslim converts equally (supported by the Shi'ites and later receptive to the Sunni as well), with their capital located in Baghdad. They increased trade between the western Mediterranean and China, preserved ancient Greek/Roman/Persian learning, transported "Arabic" numerals; refined algebra, geometry, and trigonometry; improved the astrolabe and mapped the stars; studied human anatomy; produced detailed maps; had population and education centers in Cairo, Baghdad, and Córdoba; introduced new poetry and architecture; and began Sufi missionary work (downfall because of high taxes and lack of addressing successor question)

Dutch Learning

Western learning embraced by some Japanese in the eighteenth century

Rape of Nanking (1937-8)

an episode of mass murder and mass rape committed by Imperial Japanese troops during the second Sino-Japanese War

barter

a "cashless" economic system based on the exchanges of goods

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762): "general will"

a 1762 book in which the author theorized about the best way to establish a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society; it argued against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate — he asserts that only the people, who are sovereign, have that all-powerful right

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

a 1899 book in which the author introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and discusses what would later become the theory of the Oedipus complex; widely regarded as one of his most significant works

Potsdam Conference (1945)

a 1945 meeting of the leaders of Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union in which it was agreed that the Soviet Union would be given control of eastern Europe and that Germany would be divided into zones of occupation

Truman Doctrine

a 1947 statement by U.S. President Truman that pledged aid to any nation resisting communism

Realism

a 19th century artistic movement in which writers and painters sought to show life as it is rather than life as it should be as a rejection of Romanticism

Panama Canal (1914)

a 51-mile waterway cutting across its namesake Isthmus and connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; by using it, trade routes can avoid the perilous Cape Horn route (originally attempted by the French but completed by the US and now operated by Panama)

Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902)

a British businessman, mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896; an ardent believer in British imperialism, he and his British South Africa Company founded the southern African territory of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia); he thought that the Anglo-Saxon race was the "first race in the world," which led him to characterize the native people as barbarians; he is seen as an architect of apartheid

RMS Lusitania (1915)

a British passenger ocean liner that was sunk on 7 May 1915 by a German U-boat 11 miles off the southern coast of Ireland after they suspected it to be hiding banned munitions, killing nearly 2,000 passengers; this event led to public outrage, particularly in the US, which in turn helped shift public opinion in favor of the Entente Powers and against Germany and popularized entry into the stalemated war

Pol Pot

a Cambodian revolutionary and politician who governed Cambodia as the leader of the Khmer Rouge (his government forcibly relocated the urban population to the countryside to work on collective farms; those who opposed were killed, and adding in those who died of famine gives us the Cambodian genocide)

Augusto Pinochet

a Chilean military dictator who came to power through a coup against the previous democratically-elected ruler, which was backed by the CIA

kowtow

a Chinese custom of knelling so low that one's head touches the ground as a sign of respect or submission; the highest sign of reverence in East Asian culture (traditionally preformed before the Emperor of China)

scholar gentry

a Chinese elite class who held status through passing the Imperial exams and preserved wealth by owning land; their power eclipsed that of the aristocrats during the Song dynasty

Zheng He

a Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat, fleet admiral, and court eunuch during the early Ming dynasty who commanded expeditionary treasure voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, Western Asia, and East Africa from 1405 to 1433 (Zheng He, born Ma He)

Alibaba

a Chinese multinational conglomerate holding company specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology; it had the world's highest IPO

Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jiesh)i

a Chinese nationalist politician, revolutionary and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975

Sun Yat-sen

a Chinese philosopher, physician, and politician, who served as the first president of the Republic of China and the first leader of the Kuomintang

Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

a conservative German statesman who masterminded the unification of Germany in 1871 and served as its first chancellor until 1890, in which capacity he dominated European affairs for two decades

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)

a Danish nobleman, astronomer, and writer known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical observations; most of his observations were more accurate than the best available observations at the time

Erasmus (1466-1536)

a Dutchman who's known as "prince of the humanist;" though a Catholic and remained so, he was a central Protestant figure; he was the first person to become famous through the printing press by publishing an annotated Greek New Testament

Charles Martel

a Frankish statesman and military leader who, as Duke and Prince of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, was the de facto ruler of Francia from 718 until his death; he centralized the Frankish government, reestablished them as the undisputed rulers of Gaul, won the Battle of Tours (stopping the spread of Islam) and was the grandfather of Charlemagne

Louis Pasteur (1822-1895)

a French biologist, microbiologist and chemist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization; not until him did we really understand germ theory

Maximilien Robespierre

a French lawyer and politician who was apart of the Jacobins and one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution; he was an outspoken advocate for the citizens without a voice, for their unrestricted admission to the National Guard, to public offices, and for the right to carry arms in self-defense

John Calvin

a French theologian, pastor, and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation; he founded an eponymous branch that includes the doctrines of predestination and the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation of the human soul from death and eternal damnation

Joseph Stalin

a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet politician who led the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until 1953 as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Premier; despite initially governing the Soviet Union as part of a collective leadership, he eventually consolidated power to become the country's de facto dictator by the 1930s; he was ideologically committed to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism (he formalised these ideas as Marxism-Leninism)

Lebensraum

a German concept that comprises policies and practices of settler colonialism which proliferated there from the 1890s to the 1940s; first popularized around 1901, it became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I; the most extreme form of this ideology was supported by Nazi Germany until the end of World War II

Johannes Gutenberg

a German who reinvented movable type, reprinting the Vulgate Bible in 1455

Reichstag

a German word generally meaning parliament; also, the eponymous building that was (arguably) set on fire by the Nazis and used to pass the namesake Fire Decree, which led to the establishment of Nazi Germany

Majapahit Empire

a Hindu empire and thalassocracy in Southeast Asia based on the island of Java (part of modern-day Indonesia) that existed from 1293 to circa 1527; it was one of the last major Hindu empires of the region and is considered to be one of the greatest and most powerful empires in the history of Indonesia and Southeast Asia, one that is sometimes seen as the precedent for Indonesia's modern boundaries

Khmer Empire

a Hindu-Buddhist empire in Southeast Asia and the predecessor of modern Cambodia; the empire, which grew out of the former kingdoms of Funan and Chenla, at times ruled over and/or vassalized most of mainland Southeast Asia and parts of Southern China, stretching from the tip of the Indochinese Peninsula northward to modern Yunnan province, China, and from Vietnam westward to Myanmar

Toyota

a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota, Aichi, Japan; the world's 10th-largest company by revenue

casus belli

a Latin expression meaning "an act or event that provokes or is used to justify war"; it involves direct offenses or threats against the nation declaring the war

sui generis

a Latin phrase that means "of its/his/her/their own kind, in a class by itself", therefore "unique"

Golden Horde

a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century by Batu Khan; it was based in the northwest sector of the Mongol Empire (now southern Russia) and quickly adopted both the Turkic language and Islam (also called Ulug Ulus, the Kipchak Khanate, or the Ulus of Jochi)

Mongols

a Mongolic ethnic group native to Mongolia and to China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

Ibn Battuta

a Moroccan Muslim traveller who travelled more than any human being up to that time, covering 75,000 miles by walking, riding camels/donkeys, and taking ships; also, he wrote a book summarizing his travels

Chaco

a National Historic Park in New Mexico home to many pueblos; it was a major center of culture for the Ancestral Puebloans and today preserves one of the most important pre-Columbian cultural and historical areas in the United States

"Final Solution"

a Nazi plan for the genocide of Jews during World War II; the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent; this policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the killing of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe

Nicolaus Copernicus

a Polish Renaissance-era mathematician and astronomer known for formulating the heliocentric model of the universe

Hagia Sophia

a massive church constructed in Constantinople by Justinian, also called the Church of the Holy Wisdom

Vasco da Gama

a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea, linking Europe and Asia, connecting the Atlantic and Indian oceans and the West and East, and in turn opening the way for an age of global imperialism and for the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire in Asia (this allowed them to avoid the dangerous Mediterranean and Arabian Peninsula; also, the distances in the outward and return voyages made this expedition the longest ocean voyage ever until then)

Bartholomew Diaz

a Portuguese explorer who sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, the first European to do so (setting up the route from Europe to Asia later on)

Ferdinand Magellan

a Portuguese sailor who, sailing under the Spanish flag, led the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe (though he died before completing it)

Mikhail Gorbachev

a Russian and formerly Soviet politician; the eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, he was the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991

Duma

a Russian assembly with advisory or legislative functions by Tsar Nicholas II in 1905 after the revolt of people against him demanding for the elected assembly (when he didn't like it he'd just dissolve it and make a new one)

Vladimir Lenin

a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist; served as head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924; under his administration, Russia (and then the wider Soviet Union) became a one-party communist state governed by the Russian Communist Party; ideologically a communist, he developed an eponymous variant of Marxism

Nelson Mandela

a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, political leader, and philanthropist who served as the country's president from 1994 to 1999; he was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election; ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997

Leon Trotsky

a Soviet revolutionary, Marxist theorist, and politician; he joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, immediately becoming a leader within the Communist Party, and would go on to become one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution; he was eventually exiled for opposing Stalin and was later assassinated by him

Nikita Khrushchev

a Soviet statesman who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War; he was responsible for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy

General Francisco Franco

a Spanish leader who came to power by leading a military rebellion in 1936 against the constitutionally-elected government, leading to the horrible Spanish Civil War; he'd go on to rule as dictator until 1975 and modernized the country

peninsulares

a Spanish-born Spaniard residing in the New World or the Spanish East Indies; the highest social class

Chola Kingdom (Southern India)

a Tamil dynasty of southern India and one of the longest-ruling dynasties in the world's history; it took over Srivijaya and had a naval fleet that was the zenith of ancient Indian sea power; they pioneered a centralized form of government and established a disciplined bureaucracy

Tamerlane (Timur)

a Turco-Mongol Persianate conqueror who founded a namesake Empire in and around modern-day Iran and Central Asia; as an undefeated commander, he is widely regarded to be one of the greatest military leaders and tacticians in history and is also considered as a great patron of art and architecture

Marshall Plan

a US plan to support the recovery and reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II

Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

a United States federal law that prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers; building on the 1875 Page Act, which banned Chinese women from immigrating to the United States, it was the first law implemented to prevent all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating (signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882)

Marco Polo

a Venitian trader who visited and worked at the court of Kublai Khan; when he got back, he wrote a book that was very popular and inspired others to travel there (there's also an argument that he never actually travelled there and just got his information from his uncles)

Tito

a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and statesman, usually seen as a benevolent dictator; during World War II, he was the leader of the Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in occupied Europe

oracle bones

a ancient Chinese tradition in which a divinator scratches a message into a shell or bone, which is then heated and cracks; the person reads the cracks to divine something

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651)

a book in which the author argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign; it's regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory (he wrote that civil war could only be avoided by strong, undivided government)

Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)

a book that is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States; in it, the author challenged the widely shared belief in the 1950s that "fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949—the housewife-mother."

epistemology

a branch of philosophy involving the nature of knowledge itself, its justification, and the rationality of belief (it seeks to answer questions like "what does it mean to say that we know something?" and "how do we know that we know?")

bureaucracy

a branch of the administration that deals with paperwork and administration (appointed, not elected)

joint-stock companies

a business entity in which shares of the company's stock can be bought and sold by shareholders (so if it goes bankrupt you only lose so much); it was important during the age of mercantilism and would be used by European powers during colonization (also, it became the vehicle by which England finally settled the Western Hemisphere and was used to fund the East India Company/Dutch East India Company)

archipelago

a chain of islands

Magna Carta (1215)

a charter of rights agreed to by King John of England on 15 June 1215 to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons; established that everyone was subject to the law, even monarchs

Danzig

a city on the Baltic coast of northern Poland; during the interwar period, it lay in a disputed region between Poland and Germany, which became known as the Polish Corridor; the city's ambiguous political status was exploited, furthering tension between the two countries, which would ultimately culminate in the Invasion of Poland and the first clash of the Second World War just outside the city limits

polis (poleis)

a city-state; the basis of Greek political organization, consisting of a city and the surrounding countryside, both under the rule of one government

Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of the Genji (1008 CE)

a classic work of Japanese literature written by a noblewoman and lady-in-waiting in the early years of the 11th century; sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be considered a classic

Hausa Kingdoms

a collection of states started by an eponymous people, situated between the Niger River and Lake Chad; it took shape as a political and cultural region during the first millennium CE as a result of the westward expansion of the namesake people, who had a common language, laws, and customs; its largest city-state became the base for the trans-Saharan trade in salt, cloth, leather, and grain

Hanseatic League

a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Northwestern and Central Europe

Uncle Sam

a common national personification of the U.S. federal government or the country in general that, according to legend, came into use during the War of 1812

Franco-Prussian War (1870-1)

a conflict that was caused by Prussian ambitions to extend German unification and French fears of the shift in the European balance of power that would result if the Prussians succeeded; once the war had begun, Otto von Bismarck used it to help unify Germany and create the German Empire (it also annexed Alsace-Lorraine from France)

Yugoslavia

a country in Southeastern and Central Europe for most of the 20th century; it came into existence after World War I in 1918 by the merger former Austria-Hungarian states with the Kingdom of Serbia and constituted the first union of the South Slavic people as a sovereign state, following centuries in which the region had been part of the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary; Partisan leader Tito remained president until his death

Ethiopia

a country in the Horn of Africa; along with Libera, one of the only two nations to preserve its independence during the Scramble for Africa; some of the oldest skeletal evidence for anatomically modern humans has been found there

Women's Liberation Movement (WLM)

a coverall term for 2nd-wave feminism

Taiping Rebellion (1850-64)

a massive rebellion or civil war that was waged in China from 1850 to 1864 between the established Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Hakka-led namesake Heavenly Kingdom; it was a Qing victory and led to the Kingdom's fall

dichotomy

a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different

Fourteen Points (1918)

a document commissioned by Woodrow Wilson, it was published and designed to appeal to Germany and compel them to surrender; its last item was the establishment of the League of Nations

Declaration of Sentiments (1848)

a document signed in 1848 by 68 women and 32 men (100 out of some 300 attendees) at the first women's rights convention to be organized by women (which is now known as the Seneca Falls Convention); its principal author was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who modeled it upon the United States Declaration of Independence (she was a key organizer of the convention along with Lucretia Coffin Mott, and Martha Coffin Wright)

Simón Bolívar, The Jamaica Letter (1815)

a document written in Jamaica in 1815; a response to a letter from Henry Cullen, in which the author explained his thoughts about the social and political situation of the Spanish America at the time, the power of the Spanish Empire, and the possible future of the new nations that would be created after its collapse

Srivijaya

a dominant thalassocratic Indonesian empire based on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, which influenced much of Southeast Asia; it was an important center for the expansion of Buddhism from the 8th to the 12th century AD (the rise of this empire was parallel to the end of the Malay sea-faring period)

Green Revolution

a dramatic post-WWII raising of crop yields through the use of fertilizers (etc) in 3rd-world countries

"ethnic cleansing"

a euphemism for the terrorizing of a minority group so as to get them to leave an area (first used in the 1990s during the breakup of Yugoslavia)

Hundred-Days' Reform (1898)

a failed 103-day national, cultural, political, and educational reform movement from 11 June to 22 September 1898 in late Qing dynasty China undertaken by the Guangxu Emperor, but abruptly stopped when the Empress Dowager (his aunt) perpetrated a coup

National Socialism (Nazi Party)

a far-right political party that emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany; initially, its political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, but in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes; the party aimed to unite "racially desirable" Germans, while excluding those deemed either to be political dissidents, physically or intellectually inferior, or of a foreign race; the party sought to strengthen the "Aryan master race" through racial purity and eugenics, broad social welfare programs, and a collective subordination of individual rights, which could be sacrificed for the good of the state on behalf of the people (to protect the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis sought to exterminate Jews, Romani, Poles and most other Slavs, along with the physically and mentally handicapped; also, they disenfranchised and segregated homosexuals, Africans, Jehovah's Witnesses and political opponents; this reached its climax when the party-controlled German state set in motion the Final Solution and Holocaust)

Fascism (fasces)

a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy, which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe; its first movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European countries

corvée

a form of unpaid, unfree labour, which is intermittent in nature and which lasts limited periods of time: typically only a certain number of days' work each year; a form of it, statute labor is imposed by a state for the purposes of public works; it represents a form of levy (taxation); unlike other forms of levy, such as a tithe, a corvée does not require the population to have land, crops or cash, and was thus favored in historical economies in which barter was more common than cash transactions or circulating money was in short supply

Non-Aligned Movement

a forum of 120 developing world states that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc, drawing on the Bandung Conference principles (after the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of states worldwide)

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

a foundational document of international human rights law; has been referred to as humanity's Magna Carta by Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights that was responsible for the drafting of the document

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)

a founding text in economic sociology, in which the author argues that the Protestant work ethic led large numbers of people to engage in the development of enterprises and accumulation of wealth for investment, leading to the unplanned emergence of modern capitalism

Negritude

a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating "Black consciousness" across Africa and its diaspora

encomienda

a grant by the Spanish Crown to a conquistador in the Americas giving the right to demand tribute and forced labor from the Indian inhabitants of a specific area

caravans

a group of people and pack animals traveling together in an overland convoy, often on a trade expedition; in historical times, caravans connecting East Asia and Europe often carried luxurious and lucrative goods (such as silks or jewelry)

Indo-European

a group of people that spoke similar languages that went on to spread quite far

Prussia

a historically prominent German state that originated in 1525 with a duchy centered on a namesake region on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea

Crystal Palace (1851)

a huge glass-and-iron structure built to house the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park (London), which was the world's first industrial fair; it provided the British the chance to show off their industrial success (that year, Britain outproduced the entire world in coal, iron, and manufactured goods)

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789)

a human civil rights document from the French Revolution set by France's National Constituent Assembly in 1789 and drafted by the Abbé Sieyès and the Marquis de Lafayette, in consultation with Thomas Jefferson; influenced by "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal, pertaining to human nature itself; it became the basis for a nation of free individuals protected equally by the law (and was part of the corpus that inspired the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Atlantic Charter

a joint declaration issued by the US and Britain during World War II (1939-45) in August 1941 that set out a vision for the postwar world; in January 1942, a group of 26 Allied nations pledged their support for it

Justices of the Peace

a judicial officer of a lower or puisne court, elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace; they dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions

minarets

a kind of tower attached to mosques used as a visual focal point and for the Muslim call to prayer (adhan)

Kush

a kingdom south of Egypt that independently developed iron smelting, adapted hieroglyphics, and later conquered Egypt itself around 750 BCE (falling to Axum around 300 CE)

"Sick Man of Europe"

a label given to a European country experiencing a time of economic difficulty or impoverishment; first used in the mid-19th century to describe the Ottoman Empire

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

the 1918 treaty ending World War I between Germany and the Soviet Union

English Bill of Rights (1689)

a landmark Act in the constitutional law of England that sets out certain basic civil rights and clarifies who would be next to inherit the Crown; it lays down limits on the powers of the monarch and sets out the rights of Parliament (including the requirement for regular parliaments, free elections, and freedom of speech in Parliament) and certain rights of individuals (including the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and reestablished the right of Protestants to have arms for their defense within the rule of law); it was based on John Locke's ideas and was a model for the US Bill of Rights (and UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

The U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1965

a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting; signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson (considered by the U.S. Department of Justice to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country)

lingua franca

a language spoken between different people who both have different native tongues

Tenochtitlan

a large Mexica city-state in what is now the center of Mexico City; it was built on an island in what was then Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico and was the capital of the expanding Aztec Empire in the 15th century until it was captured by the Spanish in 1521

Zaibatsu

a large industrial organization created in Japan during the industrialization of the late nineteenth century

House of Wisdom

a major Abbasid intellectual center and library located in Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age

Teotihuacan: "city of the gods"

a major ancient Mesoamerica city and example of grand urban culture (located 40 miles northeast of present-day Mexico City; not to be confused with Tenochtitlan, which came about 1000 years later)

Sepoy Rebellion (1857)

a major, but ultimately unsuccessful, uprising in India in 1857-58 against the rule of the British East India Company; it began as a mutiny in the garrison town of Meerut, erupting into more rebellions throughout central India, leading to the formal end of the Mughal Empire and the end of Company rule in India and transfer of rule to the British Crown (it was also called the Indian Rebellion)

Holodomor

a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians; part of the wider Soviet famine of 1932-33; during it, millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation

Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)

a massive sociopolitial movement in China launched by Mao Zedong, intending to purge all capitalist and traditionalist elements from their communist society; it paralyzed China's economy and political system, leading to between 500,000-2,000,000 deaths (upon the heels of the failed Great Leap Forward, which killed 30 million more)

Yalta Conference

a meeting of the leaders of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States in 1945; the Soviet Union agreed to enter the war against Japan in exchange for influence in the Eastern European states; and it also made plans for the establishment of a new international organization

suffragettes

a member of militant women's organisations in the early 20th century who (under the banner "Votes for Women") fought for the right to vote in public elections; refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU); when by 1903 women in Britain had not been enfranchised, it was decided that women had to "do the work ourselves"; the suffragettes then heckled politicians, tried to storm parliament, were attacked and sexually assaulted during battles with the police, chained themselves to railings, smashed windows, set fire to postboxes and empty buildings, set bombs in order to damage churches and property, and faced anger and ridicule in the media; when imprisoned they went on hunger strike, to which the government responded by force-feeding them (the death of one suffragette, Emily Davison, when she ran in front of the king's horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby, made headlines around the world)

induction

a method of reasoning involving moving from a specific instance to an inferred generality

Hungarian Revolution (1956)

a nationwide revolution against the country's People's Republic government and its Soviet-imposed policies; initially sparked by student protests, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the Red Army drove Nazi Germany from its territory at the end of World War II in Europe

Sikhism

a monotheistic religion that originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent around the end of the 15th century; one of the youngest of the major world religions and the world's fifth-largest organized religion; its religious leaders are called gurus

Glorious Revolution (1688)

a mostly nonviolent coup that resulted in the first constitutional monarchy and replacement of James II/VII as ruler of England, Scotland, and Ireland by his daughter Mary II and nephew (and Mary's husband) William III of Orange

Mississippians (Mound Builders)

a mound-building Native American civilization that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 to 1600, varying regionally; it was composed of a series of urban settlements and satellite villages (suburbs) linked together by loose trading networks

Balkans

a mountainous region of southeastern Europe; a very volatile area in which World War I broke out

Holy Roman Empire

a multi-ethnic complex of territories and predecessor to modern Germany in Western and Central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars; it began either with the coronation of Charlemagne or Otto I as Emperor and was very decentralized; it was dissolved following the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine by Napoleon I

fresco

a mural painted on a wet plaster wall

Reggae

a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s; also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora

mercantilism

a national economic policy under which exports are maximized and imports minimized (historically leading to war and colonialism)

John Bull

a national personification of the United Kingdom in general and England in particular

Ural Mountains

a north-south mountain range that forms the border between European and Asian Russia, into which Russia expanded under Ivan III and IV (into western Siberia)

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899)

a novel about imperialism in the Belgian Congo in which a man becomes corrupted by the power over the native's he's been granted; its truth led to an international outcry

Versailles

a palace that was the principal royal residence of France from 1682, under Louis XIV, until the start of the French Revolution in 1789, under Louis XVI; also the namesake location of the France-US-British-German treaty that ended WWII

sternpost rudder

a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, or aircraft; the world's oldest known depiction of one can be seen on a pottery model of a Chinese junk dating from the 1st century AD during the Han Dynasty around the Warring States period

Theodore Herzl, The Jewish State (1896)

a pamphlet in which the author envisioned the founding of a future independent Jewish state during the 20th century and argued that the best way to avoid antisemitism in Europe was to create this independent Jewish state (it encouraged Jews to purchase land in Palestine, although the possibility of a Jewish state in Argentina is also considered); it is considered one of the most important texts of early Zionism

Treaty of Nanjing (Nanking) (1842)

a peace treaty which ended the First Opium War (1839-1842) between the United Kingdom and China; the first of what the Chinese later called the unequal treaties; as part of its terms, China ceded Hong Kong to the British

Songhai

a people, language, and empire in western Sudan in West Africa; at its height in the sixteenth century, the Muslim empire stretched from the Atlantic to the land of the Hausa and was a major player in the trans-Saharan trade; and by taking advantage of its increasing weakness, it surpassed the Mali Empire in area, wealth, and power

Tulip Period (1718-30)

a period in Ottoman history from the Treaty of Passarowitz on 21 July 1718 to the Patrona Halil Revolt on 28 September 1730; this was a relatively peaceful period, during which the Ottoman Empire began to orient itself towards Europe

Warring States Period (475-221 BC)

a period in which China broke up into seven warring states that fought among themselves (eventually ended by the rise of the Qin dynasty)

Bronze Age Collapse (ca. 1200 BCE)

a period of chaos around the Mediterranean Sea around 1200 BCE; Egypt survived but was severely weakened, early Greek civilization entered a dark age, and the iron age eventually followed

"Little Ice Age"

a period of global cooling that occurred between the 13th and 19th centuries; likely caused by a number of factors, including unusual solar activity and volcanic eruptions

Self-Strengthening Movement (1861-1895)

a period of institutional reforms initiated in China during the late Qing dynasty following the military disasters of the Opium Wars against the British Empire and the vast internal devastation of the Taiping and other concurrent rebellions

Prague Spring (1968)

a period of political liberalization and mass protest in Czechoslovakia as a Communist state after World War II; it ended when the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact members invaded to suppress it

Hinduism

a religion that evolved in India from the Aryan people, notable for its rigorous caste system and lack of any individual founder

Tanzimat Reforms (1839-1871)

a period of reform in the Ottoman Empire; on November 3, 1839, the Sultan issued the Edict of Gülhane; in it, the Sultan stated that he wished "to bring the benefits of a good administration to the provinces of the Ottoman Empire through new institutions"; they sought to emancipate the empire's non-Muslim subjects and more thoroughly integrate non-Turks into Ottoman society by enhancing their civil liberties and granting them equality throughout the empire (in the midst of being forced to recognize the supremacy of Western power, the Ottoman elite intellectuals attempted to bring reconciliation between the West and the East within the framework of Islam)

vassal

a person in medieval feudal Europe with a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch, which in turn often included military support by knights in exchange for certain privileges, usually including land held as a tenant or fief

Mestizos

a person of mixed Native American and Spanish ancestry

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

a philosophical essay by an English philosopher; it applies the author's ethical system of utilitarianism to society and state; in it, he suggests standards for the relationship between authority and liberty, emphasizes the importance of individuality (which he considers prerequisite to the higher pleasures), and asserts that democratic ideals may result in the tyranny of the majority

Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (1620)

a philosophical work in which the author details a new system of logic he believes to be superior to the old ways of syllogism: finding the essence of a thing was a simple process of reduction and the use of inductive reasoning

"Cuius regio, eius religio" ("whose realm, his religion")

a phrase that means that the religion of the ruler was to dictate the religion of those ruled; it marked a major development in the collective (if not individual) freedom of religion within Western civilization (at the time most thought religious diversity weakened nations); agreed upon by the rulers of the German-speaking states and the Holy Roman Emperor (Charles V) at the Peace of Augsburg

"The White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands"

a poem written by British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling in which he urged the U.S. to take up the "burden" of empire, as had Britain and other European nations (published in the February 1899 issue of McClure's Magazine, it coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control; Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was "rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view," but not everyone was as favorably impressed as Roosevelt; the racialized notion of the "White Man's burden" became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase)

irredentism

a policy of advocating the restoration to a country of any territory formerly belonging to it

laissez-faire

a policy or attitude of letting things take their own course, without interfering (also: the abstention of government from interfering with free markets)

liberalism

a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law; it began during the Age of Enlightenment; John Locke is considered to be its founder (its proponents generally support limited government, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), capitalism (free markets), democracy, secularism, gender equality, racial equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion)

Divine Right of Kings

a political and religious doctrine of royal and political legitimacy; stems from a specific metaphysical framework in which the king is pre-selected prior to their birth (as in an heir); it asserts that a monarch is subject to no earthly authority, deriving the right to rule directly from a divine authority, like the monotheist will of God (the monarch is thus not subject to the will of his people, the aristocracy, or any other estate of the realm; it implies that only the divine authority can judge an unjust monarch and that any attempt to depose, dethrone or restrict their powers runs contrary to the will of the divine and may constitute a sacrilegious act)

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (1992)

a political book of philosophy which proposes that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy (after the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union) humanity had reached the end of ideological evolution

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

a political pamphlet written by an Irish statesman and one of the best-known intellectual attacks against the French Revolution, it is a defining tract of modern conservatism as well as an important contribution to international theory

Abbé Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? (1789)

a political pamphlet written in January 1789, shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution; the pamphlet is organized around three hypothetical questions and the author's responses: What is the Third Estate? Everything; What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing; What does it desire to be? To become something...

Muslim League (1906)

a political party established in 1906 in the British Indian Empire whose strong advocacy for the establishment of a separate Muslim-majority nation-state, Pakistan, successfully led to the partition of British India in 1947 by the British Empire

Indian National Congress (1885)

a political party in India with widespread roots and the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa; the party of Mahatma Gandhi and leader of India to independence from Britain

Young Turks (1908)

a political reform movement in the early 20th century that favored the replacement of the Ottoman Empire's absolute monarchy with a constitutional government; they led a rebellion against the absolute rule of Sultan Abdul Hamid II in the 1908 namesake Revolution

Viceroyalty

a political unit ruled by a viceroy that was the basis of organization of the Spanish colonies

entrepôt

a port, city, or trading post where merchandise may be imported, stored or traded, usually to be exported again; these commercial cities spawned due to the growth of long-distance trade

shamanism

a practice that involves someone reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with what they believe to be a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world (having access to, and influence in, the world of good and evil spirits)

Balfour Declaration (1917)

a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population; it greatly increased popular support for Zionism within Jewish communities worldwide and is considered a principal cause of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Champa rice

a quick-maturing, drought resistant rice that can allow two harvests; originally introduced into Champa from Vietnam, then gifted to China (during the Song dynasty), who distributed it to their pesants

Manchuria

a region of northeast China, historically the home of the Manchus, rulers of China from 1644 to 1912; includes part of Inner Mongolia and the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning

Huguenots

a religious group of French Calvinists; as they gathered traction, Catholic hostility grew, leading to the French Wars of Religion; eventually, they were persecuted by Louis XIV (by contrast, the Protestant populations of eastern France, in Alsace, Moselle, and Montbéliard were mainly German Lutherans)

Jesuits (Society of Jesus)

a religious order of the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome that was founded by Ignatius of Loyola with the approval of Pope Paul III in 1540

Perestroika

a restructuring of the Soviet economy during the 1980s to allow some local decision making and the lessening of central planning

Risorgimento

a resurgence of Italian nationalism in the 19th century (before its beginning in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna, Italy was comprised of fragmented different states; by its end in 1871, Rome was established as the unified state's capital)

caravanserai

a roadside inn where travelers (caravaners) could rest and recover from the day's journey; they supported the flow of commerce, information, and people across the network of trade routes covering Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe, most notably the Silk, Royal, and Grand Trunk Roads (for the latter, especially in the Mughal Empire)

Cape of Good Hope

a rocky headland located on South Africa's Atlantic coast, but not actually the southernmost tip of Africa

Great Zimbabwe

a ruined city in its namesake present-day country whose many stone structures were built between the 11th-15th centuries, when it was a trading center and the capital of the Kingdom (its edifices were erected by the Shona people)

satraps

a ruler of one of 20 Persian provinces who held the authority of the emperor in their territory (created because the empire was so big)

Zen Buddhism

a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in India to China during the Tang dynasty, spreading to Vietnam, Korea, and Japan; emphasizes rigorous self-control, meditation-practice, insight into the nature of things

Cubism

a school of art, originating during the first decade of the 20th century, in which persons and objects are represented by geometric forms; it has been considered the most influential art movement of the century (pioneered by Picasso and others)

Luddites

a secret oath-based organization of English textile workers in the 19th century which destroyed textile machinery as a form of protest; it was protesting against the use of machinery in a "fraudulent and deceitful manner" to get around standard labour practices and feared that machines would replace their role in the industry; over time, however, the term has come to mean one opposed to industrialization, automation, computerization, or new technologies in general

Gulags

a system of forced labor camps established during Joseph Stalin's long reign as dictator of the Soviet Union

Social Darwinism

a series of beliefs that applied the biological concept of evolution and "survival of the fittest" to society and economic systems, under which the "strong" should see an increase and wealth and the "weak" a decrease in one (emerged in the 1870s; largely discredited by the end of WWII)

Fronde

a series of civil wars in France between 1648 and 1653, occurring in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War, which had begun in 1635; in them, King Louis XIV confronted the combined opposition of the princes, the nobility, the law courts, and most of the French people, and yet won out in the end; it started when the government of France issued seven fiscal edicts, six of which were to increase taxation, after which the parliament pushed back and questioned the constitutionality of the King's actions; it represented the final attempt of the French nobility to do battle with the king, and they were humiliated; in the long-term, it served to strengthen royal authority, but weakened the economy; also, it facilitated the emergence of absolute monarchy

Glasnost

the 1985 policy of Mikhail Gorbachev that allowed openness of expression of ideas and transparency in the Soviet Union

Voltaire, Letters on the English (1734)

a series of essays written based on the author's experiences living in England between; it was published first in English in 1733 and then in French the following year, where it was seen as an attack on the French system of government and was rapidly suppressed

Iranian Revolution

a series of events in 1978-9 that involved the overthrow of the United States-backed Shah of Iran and the replacement of his government with an Islamic republic under the Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, a leader of one of the factions in the revolt (also known as the Islamic Revolution or the 1979 Revolution)

The New Deal (1933-9)

a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States that responded to needs for relief, reform, and recovery from the Great Depression (including the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA), and the Social Security Administration (SSA))

Crusades

a series of religious wars sanctioned by the Latin/Catholic Church in the medieval period aimed at recovering the Holy Land from the Muslims in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries, the first of which was preached by Pope Urban II in support of the Byzantine Empire's conflict with the Turks

Peace of Westphalia (1648)

a series of treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War and European Wars of Religion (perhaps the basis of the modern international system of sovereignty)

White Australia Policy

a set of historical policies that aimed to forbid people of non-European ethnic origin, especially Asians (primarily Chinese) and Pacific Islanders from immigrating to Australia

patriarchy

a society in which older men have the most power

meritocracy

a society in which the most talented people can rise as high as they can within the system

agrarian

a society that depends on agriculture

bourgeoisie

a sociologically-defined social class referring to people with a certain cultural and financial capital belonging to the middle or upper middle class: the upper (haute), middle (moyenne), and petty (petite); in Marxist philosophy, it is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society

Czechoslovakia

a sovereign state in Central Europe that existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until its dissolution into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993; from 1948 to 1990, it was part of the Soviet Eastern Bloc

thalassocracy

a state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea, or a seaborne empire

Liberation Theology

a synthesis of Christian theology and socio-economic analyses, sometimes based in far-left politics, particularly Marxism, that emphasizes "social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples" and liberation from social, political, and economic oppression as an anticipation of ultimate salvation

feudal

a system that develops when the central authority is weak and its area breaks down into individual components

jizya

a tax that non-Muslims (e.g. Jews and Christians) had to pay when residing in Dar al-Islam in order to practice their religion

Alsace-Lorraine

a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed it from France following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War

Polish Corridor

a territory that provided the Second Republic of Poland with access to the Baltic Sea, thus dividing the bulk of Germany from the province of East Prussia (the Free City of Danzig (now the Polish city of Gdańsk) was separate from both Poland and Germany)

conquistadors

adventurers who took part in conquest of the Americas (e.g. Cortes and Pizarro)

Peace of Augsburg (1555)

a treaty between Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and the Schmalkaldic League that ended the religious struggle between the two groups and made the legal division of Christianity permanent within the Holy Roman Empire; however, it's also credited as ending much Christian unity around Europe (also, Calvinism wasn't allowed)

junks

a type of ancient Chinese sailing ship still in use today that were used as early as the 2nd century AD and developed rapidly during the Song dynasty; the term covers many kinds of boats (ocean-going, cargo-carrying, pleasure boats, houseboats), but all use fully battened sails (the junk rig); also, Zheng He used what were possibly the largest ever built for his expeditions (his 1405 expedition had over 30,000 sailors and over 300 ships at its height)

intendants

a usually-public official in the namesake centralizing administrative system developed in France; when Louis XIV increased their role, the local authorities got annoyed (the nobility considered themselves equals to the king, but this was a sort of assertion of dominance), which contributed to the Fronde

Defenestration of Prague (1618)

a violent incident in 1618 that saw three Catholic officials thrown from a top-floor window of Prague Castle by an angry mob of Bohemian Protestant activists; the imperial emissaries escaped uninjured, but the events of 23 May 1618 proved to be the catalyst (casus belli) for the bloodiest war in European history until World War I of the early twentieth century, the Thirty Years' War

Bartolomé de las Casas

after being a conquistador, he spoke out against the terrible treatment of Amerindian people; he influenced the king of Spain to intervene (at least nominally)

Korean War (1950-1953)

a war between North Korea and South Korea and a proxy war between the United States and USSR (it never technically stopped, but the fighting did)

Spanish Civil War (1936-9)

a war in which the Second Spanish Republic fought against a revolt by the Nationalists (monarchists, conservatives and Catholics) eventually led by General Francisco Franco as the military's head; it was, at the time, variously viewed as class struggle, a war of religion, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, and between fascism and communism; it has been frequently called the "dress rehearsal" for World War II

Manifest Destiny

a widely held belief in the 19th century United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America, with 3 basic themes: the special virtues of the American people and their institutions, the mission of the United States to redeem and remake the west in the image of agrarian America, and an irresistible destiny to accomplish this essential duty

Pax Romana (27 BCE-180 CE)

about 200 years when the Mediterranean world was peaceful

Bolshevik

after forming their own party in 1912, they took power in Russia in November 1917, overthrowing the liberal Provisional Government, and became the only ruling party in the subsequent Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (they considered themselves the leaders of the revolutionary working class of Russia)

Kellogg-Briand Pact

agreement signed in 1928 in which nations agreed not to pose the threat of war against one another

material culture

all the material things in our lives

bronze

alloy of copper and tin

Legalism

also called Fajia, one of Sima Tan's six classical schools of thought in Chinese philosophy that focuses on realist policies that consolidate the wealth and power of the state with the goal of achieving order, security, and stability (harsh punishments; rewards for blindly following rules)

Aztecs

also called Mexica, a Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521; they spoke Nahuatl and were organized into city-states (their namesake Empire was comprised of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan); they had a high level of material culture and made remarkable architectural and artistic accomplishments

Al-Andalus

also called Muslim Spain, a medieval Muslim kingdom that occupied much of the Iberian Peninsula from 711 CE until the collapse of the Spanish Umayyad dynasty in the early 11th century

Augustus Caesar

also called Octavian, the grandnephew of Julius Caesar who ushered in the Pax Romana in 27 BCE, during which: public works and stadiums were constructed, common coinage and language (Latin) promoted unity, and Jesus was born (also, the most lasting Roman aspect was/is their law system)

Byzantine Empire

also called the Eastern Roman Empire and centered in Constantinople, it survived the fall/fragmentation of the Western Roman Empire up until being conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453; it was initially formed by Constantine I and oriented towards Greek (not Latin) culture and Eastern Orthodox Christainity

Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1867)

also called the Edo Bakufu, the last feudal Japanese military government; it came to an end after the Boshin War, which led to the Meiji Restoration (though it oversaw the longest period of peace and stability in Japan's history for over 260 years)

Achaemenid Empire

also called the First Persian Empire, it was founded in Iran by Cyrus the Great and was larger than any predecessor and noted for its successful unification (infrastructure projects, the Farsi language, bureaucracy, and a large army); it was eventually conquered by Alexander the Great

Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

also known as the October Crisis of 1962, the Caribbean Crisis , or the Missile Scare; a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by the American discovery of Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba; it is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)

an 1848 political pamphlet by the German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and one of the world's most influential political documents; it presents an analytical approach to the class struggle and the conflicts of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production, rather than a prediction of communism's potential future forms

Twitter

an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages

Coca-Cola

an American multinational corporation, and manufacturer, retailer, and marketer of nonalcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups

eBay

an American multinational e-commerce corporation based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website

Mesa Verde

an American national park located in Colorado; it protects some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites in the United States; its people survived using a combination of hunting, gathering, and subsistence farming of crops such as corn, beans, and squash; they also built the mesa's first pueblos sometime after 650, and by the end of the 12th century, they began to construct the massive cliff dwellings for which the park is best known (by 1285 they'd abandoned it)

Ronald Reagan

an American politician who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981-1989 and became a highly influential voice of modern conservatism; before becoming president, he was a Hollywood actor and union leader and served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975

Facebook

an American social media and technology company based in Menlo Park, California; founded by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates

Mamluks

an Arabic designation for slaves, used to refer to non-muslim slave soldiers and Muslim rulers of slave origin; their most enduring realm was the knightly military caste in Egypt in the Middle Ages; later, factions seized the sultanate centered on Egypt and Syria, controlling it as their namesake Sultanate

Margery Kemp

an English Christian mystic known for writing through dictation a book considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language; it chronicles her domestic tribulations, her extensive pilgrimages to holy sites in Europe and the Holy Land, as well as her mystical conversations with God (she is honored in the Anglican Communion, but was never made a Catholic saint)

Sir Isaac Newton

an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author who formulated the laws of motion, helped develop calculus, built the first practical reflecting telescope, made the first calculation of the speed of sound, among many other achievements

John Locke (1632-1704)

an English philosopher, physician, and Enlightenment thinker known for his contributions to social contract theory, the empiricist theory of tabula rasa, the idea of property rights, and his lasting secondhand impact on the Declaration of Independence

John Wycliffe

an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, priest, and a seminary professor at the University of Oxford who became an influential dissident within the Roman Catholic priesthood during the 14th century and is considered an important predecessor to Protestantism; he attacked the clergy's privileged status and advocated for the Bible to be translated into the vernacular (his followers were Lollards)

East India Company

an English/British company formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region; it took over parts of the Indian subcontinent and colonized parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong; ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India (the British Raj)

Aryans

an Indo-European people who left Iran and migrated into India around 1500 BC and laid the foundations of Indian culture and Hinduism, introducing castes and degenerating the natives

Ayatollah Khomeini

an Iranian revolutionary, politician, and cleric

Mayans ("Greeks of the Americas")

an advanced civilization in Mesoamerica, known for its language and writing system, art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system; located on and to the south of the Yucutan Peninsula in present-day Mexico

Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526)

an Islamic empire based in an eponymous city that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for 320 years (1206-1526); it led the synthesis of Islamic and Indian culture, triggered the decline of Buddhism in India, was one of few to repel a Mongol attack, and enthroned a female leader Razia Sultana; ruled by the Mamluk, Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid, and Lodi dynasties and eventually conquered by the Mughal Empire

caliphate

an Islamic state led by a caliph, historically as a trans-national empire

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610)

an Italian Jesuit priest and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China missions; his 1602 map of the world in Chinese characters introduced the findings of European exploration to East Asia

Galileo (1564-1642)

an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer who was the first to systematically use a telescope; he learned that Venus has phases, sun spots move, and Jupiter has moons; also, he noticed that the moon was very similar to Earth (refuting the common "quintessence" idea)

Age Grade

an age group into which children were placed in Bantu societies of early sub-Saharan Africa; children within the age grade were given responsibilities and privileges suitable for their age and in this manner were prepared for adult responsibilities

Christopher Columbus

an Italian explorer and colonizer who, funded by the Spanish crown, completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that opened the New World for conquest and permanent European colonization of the Americas; he intended to find and develop a westward route to the Far East, but instead discovered a route to the Americas (his expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for centuries)

John Cabot

an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is the earliest known European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse visits to Vinlandin the eleventh century

Sprezzatura

an Italian word that first appears in Baldassare Castiglione's 1528 The Book of the Courtier, where it is defined by the author as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it"

Seljuk Turks

an Oghuz Turk Sunni Muslim dynasty who established their namesake Empire and the Sultanate of Rum and were the target of the First Crusade; after arriving in Persia, they gradually adopted their culture and language (the Empire conquered most of Anatolia from the Byzantine Empire but were eventually invaded by the Mongols, who divvied it into emirates, from which rose the Ottoman Empire)

Chinese Civil Service

an administration system open to all young men within the Chinese government that was originally based on standardized Imperial examinations, which in turn tested one's Confucian thinking and originated during the Han dynasty but became the only path to office during the Tang dynasty

World Bank

an agency of the United Nations that offers loans to countries to promote trade and economic development

Triple Alliance

an agreement between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy that was formed on 20 May 1882 and renewed periodically until it expired in 1915 during World War I; Italy then declared itself neutral and went on to join its rivals (each member promised mutual support in the event of an attack by any other great power; it provided that Germany and Austria-Hungary were to assist Italy if it was attacked by France without provocation; in turn, Italy would assist Germany if attacked by France; in the event of a war between Austria-Hungary and Russia, Italy promised to remain neutral)

Munich Conference (1938)

an agreement by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy that provided cession of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Germany; most of Europe celebrated the agreement, because it seemed to prevent the war threatened by Adolf Hitler (he announced it was his last territorial claim in Europe)

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (1995)

an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994, and superseded the 1988

Platt Amendment (1901)

an amendment added to Cuba's constitution by the Cuba government after pressure from the United States; it provided that Cuba would make no treaties that compromised its independence or granted concessions to other countries without U.S. approval and set the path for its dominance over Cuba (the amendment was abrogated in 1934)

Chang'an

an ancient capital of more than ten dynasties in Chinese history, today known as Xi'an; it means "Perpetual Peace" in Classical Chinese since it was a capital that was repeatedly used by new Chinese rulers; also, in the northern vicinity of the modern Xi'an, Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty held his imperial court (and constructed his massive mausoleum guarded by the famed Terracotta Army)

Timbuktu

an ancient city in Mali just off the Niger River that flourished from trade in salt, gold, ivory, and slaves; during its Golden Age, the book trade and the campuses of the Sankore Madrasah (an Islamic university) established it as a scholarly center

Beringia

an ancient land bridge connecting present-day Asia to Alaska, over which the earliest Americans are believed to have migrated from Asia into the Americas

Toltecs

an archaeological Mesoamerican culture that dominated a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico in the early post-classic period of Mesoamerican chronology; the later Aztec culture saw them as their intellectual and cultural predecessors and described their culture as the epitome of civilization

Zamindars

an aristocrat in the Indian subcontinent; held enormous tracts of land and control over their peasants; constituted the ruling class in the Mughal Empire (means land owner in Farsi)

Pop Art

an art movement that emerged in the United Kingdom and the United States during the mid- to late-1950s; it presented a challenge to traditions of fine art by including imagery from popular and mass culture (such as advertising, comic books and mundane mass-produced cultural objects)

Suez Canal (1869)

an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through its namesake Isthmus and constructed by its also-namesake Canal Company; owned by the UK and France until 1956, when Egypt nationalized it

Dadaism/Dada

an artistic movement in modern art that started around World War I; its purpose was to ridicule the meaninglessness of the modern world; its peak was 1916 to 1922, and it influenced surrealism, pop art, and punk rock (it went against the standards of society)

impressionism

an artistic movement whose works depict either modern life or landscapes without trying to convey any moral or religious message; they use bright colors (many of which had only recently become available) and not the earthy tones that the traditional art establishment, critics and the public expected; they use unblended and visible brush strokes; finally, they were often painted quickly and outdoors

Romanticism

an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century; it was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical; partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, Age of Enlightenment, and scientific rationalization of nature

Harappan

an early civilization along the Indus river, eponymously named after one of its cities

Sukhothai kingdom

an early kingdom in north central Thailand; it began from a revolt against the ruling Khmer Empire; traditional Thai historians considered the foundation of the kingdom as the beginning of their nation

Dutch East India Company

an early megacorporation that ended up ruling Indonesia; was essentially the first corporation (all other corporations are modeled after it); originally formed to trade with Mughal Empire

Great Leap Forward (1958-62)

an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China from 1958 to 1962; led by Chairman Mao Zedong and aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization; led to social and economic disaster, but these failures were hidden by widespread exaggeration and deceitful reports; large internal resources were diverted to use on expensive new industrial operations, which, in turn, failed to produce much, and deprived the agricultural sector of urgently needed resources; a significant result was a drastic decline in food output, which caused tens of millions of deaths in the Great Chinese Famine

astrolabes

an elaborate inclinometer once used by astronomers and navigators to measure the altitude above the horizon of a celestial body (day or night); can be used to identify stars or planets, to determine local latitude given local time (and vice versa), to survey, or to triangulate; used in classical antiquity, the Islamic Golden Age, the European Middle Ages, and the Age of Discovery; finally, it helped develop early astronomy and enabled determine latitude on land or calm seas (the mariner's astrolabe was developed for rough seas)

Vijayanagara Empire

an empire based in the Deccan Plateau region in South India; it rose to prominence as a culmination of attempts by the southern powers to ward off Islamic invasions by the end of the 13th century; it created an epoch in South Indian history that transcended regionalism by promoting Hinduism as a unifying factor

Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum: On Capital and Labor (1891)

an encyclical and open letter that supported the rights of labor to form unions and rejected socialism and unrestricted capitalism bur affirmed the right to private property; seen as a foundational text of modern Catholic social teaching

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)

an environmental science book documenting the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides; in it, the author accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly; the book spurred a reversal in the United States' national pesticide policy, led to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses, and helped to inspire an environmental movement that led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency

manor (manorialism)

an estate in land which includes the right to hold a manorial court, consisting of a lord's demesne and lands rented to tenants; also, an organizing principle of rural economies which vested legal and economic power in a Lord of the Manor who was supported by his land holdings and the obligatory contributions of the peasant population and his manorial court (usually through labor)

Roosevelt Corollary (1904)

an extension of the Monroe Doctrine stating that the United States has the right to protect its economic interests in South and Central America by using military force and will intervene in conflicts between them and European countries to enforce legitimate claims of the European powers, rather than having the Europeans press their claims directly; the US would be the "police of the western hemisphere"

nationalism

an ideology and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people) especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland

Quetzalcoatl

an important Aztec god (insert more here)

Solidarity (1980)

an independent trade union movement in Poland that developed into a mass campaign for political change and inspired popular opposition to communist regimes across eastern Europe during the 1980s; led to the end of communism in Poland

chivalry

an informal, varying code of conduct associated with medieval-Christain knighthood emphasizing combined a warrior ethos, knightly piety, and courtly manners, all combining to establish a notion of honour and nobility

euphemism

an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant

Enlightenment

an intellectual age/movement that dominated European philosophy during the 18th century based on reason as the primary source of knowledge and ideals like liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state; some consider to have been started by the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687)

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949)

an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries; the organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949 and constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its independent member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external part (headquartered in Belgium)

United Nations

an intergovernmental organization responsible for maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international cooperation, and being a center for harmonizing the actions of nations; it was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future wars, succeeding the ineffective League of Nations; 50 governments met in San Francisco for a conference to found it; it's the largest, most familiar, most internationally represented and most powerful intergovernmental organization in the world and is headquartered on international territory in New York City

World Trade Organization

an international organization begun in 1995 to promote and organize world trade

Weimar Republic (1919-33)

an unofficial historical designation for the German state from 1918 to 1933; its official name remained "Deutsches Reich"

Code of Hammurabi

ancient code of law put together by Hammurabi in Babylon consisting of 282 laws in 1750 BCE

pyramids

ancient structures built as tombs for the country's Pharaohs and their consorts

Spice Islands

another name for the Maluku Islands or the Moluccas; islands home to nutmeg, mace, and cloves that comprise two provinces of Indonesia which were once claimed by the Philippines and later by the Dutch (though now independent)

Boxer Rebellion (1900)

anti-Christain, anti-foreign, and anti-imperialist peasant uprising that attempted to drive all foreigners from China; initiated by the Militia United in Righteousness and named because many of its members practiced Chinese martial arts; its background included severe drought and disruption from the growth of foreign influence; opposed by the Eight Nation Alliance of America, Austro-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia

"Socialism of Fools"

anti-Semitism

Nuremberg Laws (1935)

antisemitic and racist laws in Nazi Germany that were enacted by the Reichstag at a special meeting convened during the annual (namesake-city-based) Rally of the Nazi Party; its two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households, and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens — the remainder were classed as state subjects without any citizenship rights

Rajput kingdoms

any of about 12 million landowners organized in patrilineal clans and located mainly in central and northern India; they regard themselves as descendants or members of the Kshatriya; these kingdoms that they formed were among the main obstacles to the complete Muslim domination of Hindu India

Margaret Thatcher (aka "the Iron Lady")

became the first female chief executive of a modern nation when she was ushered in as the British Prime Minister in 1979; very conservative and a great friend of Regan's

hunter-gatherers

before farming

Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906)

began in December 1894 when Captain Alfred Dreyfus (a 35-year-old Alsatian French artillery officer of Jewish descent) was convicted of treason; he was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris

sexagesimal

describes a numerical system based on 60; lives on today in time measurements

Purges

beginning in the 1930s, Joseph Stalin's policy of exiling or killing millions of his opponents or those he considered potential opponents in the Soviet Union

Industrial Revolution

begun in Britain/the UK; the second major shift in the way humans live

animism

belief that plants and animals contain spirits and should be worshipped accordingly

Renaissance

between the 14th-15th centuries, a philosophical movement originating in Florence and based upon humanism and a rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy

tabula rasa

blank slate

Hadith

books containing the sayings of Muhammad, compiled after his death; ranking only second to the Quran in Islamic importance

Genghis Khan

born Temüjin, the founder and first Khagan of the Mongol Empire who came to power by uniting many Northeast Asian nomadic tribes and beginning the brutal Mongol Invasions (under which were many large-scale massacres of local populations); also, he brought the Silk Road under one ruler and practiced meritocracy and religious tolerance

Ninety-five Theses (1517)

by Martin Luther, they were pinned to a door of a German church and triggered the Protestant Reformation; also, they mostly have to do with the buying and selling of indulgences

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859)

considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology, it introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection and presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution (the author included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation)

didactic

designed to teach a moral lesson

diaspora

dispersal of people from homeland

Levant

eastern shoreline of the Mediterranean sea

janissaries

elite infantry units that formed the Ottoman Sultan's household troops, bodyguards and the first modern standing army in Europe, beginning as an elite corps of slaves made up of kidnapped young Christian boys who were converted to Islam

Armistice (11 November 1918)

ended fighting on/at land, sea, and air between the Allies and Germany (previous ones had been signed with Bulgaria, the Ottomans, and Austria-Hungary; prolonged thrice until the Treaty of Versailles

Keynesianism

eponymously named after the great twentieth-century economist (first name John), a very influential theory that says the government should increase demand to boost growth; its adherents believe consumer demand is the primary driving force in an economy; as a result, it supports expansionary fiscal policy; its main tools are government spending on infrastructure, unemployment benefits, and education (a drawback is that overdoing such policies increases inflation; also, "priming the pump" is a common metaphor for the action taken to stimulate an economy, usually during a recessionary period, through government spending and interest rate and tax reductions)

Bretton Woods Conference (1944)

established a sort of "new world financial order," creating the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)

Provisional Government

established immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire in March; its intention was the organization of elections; it lasted approximately eight months and ceased to exist when the Bolsheviks gained power after the October Revolution

"trading post empires"

first built by Portuguese mariners, empires meant to control trade routes by forcing merchant vessels to pay duties at fortified trading sites; by the mid-16th century, Portuguese merchants had over 50 such locations between West Africa and East Asia

cuneiform

first form of writing (developed in Sumer)

Song Dynasty (960-1279)

following the Tang dynasty, it ended the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period; and they were the world's first to use paper banknotes, use gunpowder, navigate north using a compass, and were the first dynasty to establish a permanent navy; also, they expanded the civil service system, grew early-ripening rice that led to a population increase, and presided over a flourishing of technology, science, philosophy, mathematics, and engineering; it was eventually conquered by Kublai Khan, who set up the Yuan dynasty

Code of Justinian

formally called the Corpus Juris Civilis, a complete codification of Roman law ordered by the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I between 529-534 CE that consisted of three parts: the Code, Digest/Pandects, and Institutes; originally written in Latin, it was adapted into Greek to form the Basilika and went on to be the foundation of Western legal tradition

Warsaw Pact (1955)

formally known as the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, a collective defence treaty signed between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics of Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955; during the Cold War, it was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional economic organization for the socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe; it was created in reaction to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955 per the London and Paris Conferences of 1954, but it is also considered to have been motivated by Soviet desires to maintain control over military forces in Central and Eastern Europe

Russo-Japanese War (1904-5)

fought between Russia and Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea ending in a complete victory by Japan, a huge surprise that signaled their rapid rise and dominance over Russia that put them on par with other European powers

Boer War (1899-1902)

fought between the British Empire and two states (whose name is given to the war) over the Empire's influence in South Africa; the states used guerrilla warfare to the great chagrin of the British, though the latter eventually was victorious; the war was embarrassing for Britain (they were the largest superpower), and its use of concentration camps and the ensuing rampant disease led to a negative shift in public opinion of Britain

Daoism

founded by Laozi, a philosophy that developed during the 5th century BCE teaching the concept of yin (male/assertive) and yang (female/submissive) and that understanding comes from following the natural life force "The Way" (also taught that education/politics were unnecessary as the universe would balance all things in time)

Greek Dark Age

from 1200-750 BCE, in which the Greeks forgot how to read and write (so their history from then is "dark"); its end was marked by Homer's writing of the Iliad and Odyssey

Northwest Passage

from the European and northern Atlantic point of view, the sea route to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago; for centuries, European explorers sought a navigable passage as a possible trade route to Asia

Mandate of Heaven

gave the Chinese emperor legitimacy; when times turned hard, it was thought to have been "revoked" and given to the next emperor

19th Amendment (1920)

gave women the right to vote

anthropomorphic

giving things human characteristics to non-human things

Four Modernizations

goals first set forth by Deng Xiaoping to strengthen the fields of agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology in China; were adopted as a means of rejuvenating China's economy in 1977, following the death of Mao Zedong, and later were among the defining features of Deng Xiaoping's tenure as head of the party

diety

god

theocracy

government based on religion

Phoenicians

great seafarers from Lebanon who sailed all the way to Cornwall, harnessing their tin to produce bronze; they were the first to use the North Star for navigation and invented the 22-letter alphabet (which was expanded upon by the Greeks to 26 letters, then harnessed by Homer to write his epics)

"Chinese Snow"

gunpowder

Sinhala dynasties

had its origins in the Aryan peoples' migration to Sri Lanka; they ruled it until 1815, when upheaval in the royal court from European influence led to its end

Wannsee Conference (1942)

held in a suburb of Berlin, a secret meeting of top Nazis, who planned the Holocaust and "final solution," formalizing the process that had already been occurring

Council of Trent (1545-63)

held in northern Italy, an embodiment of the Catholic Church's Counter-Reformation; it condemned heresies by Reformation leaders, made the Vulgate the official example of the Biblical canon, issued the Roman Catechism and the Tridentine Creed, and led to the codification of the Tridentine Mass, which was predominant for 400 more years (it was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church)

Gregor Mendel (1822-1884): "Father of Modern Genetics"

his innovative experiments showed that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, subsequently becoming the foundation of modern genetics and leading to the study of heredity

psychoanalysis

id/ego/super

tyrant

in Ancient Greece, someone who gained power illegally

nirvana

in Buddhism, the ultimate goal of enlightenment or union with the divine essence, achieved by a series of reincarnations

filial piety

in Confucianism, a series of obligations based on respect and duty to one's parents and ancestors

reincarnation

in Hinduism and Buddhism, the process by which a soul is reborn continuously until it achieves perfect understanding

Karma

in Hinduism and Buddhism, the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences (it arguably reinforced the caste system: by serving your caste well and not objecting to it, one would thus be reincarnated into a higher caste)

Brahman

in Hinduism, the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe; the final cause of all that exists (the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes)

Bhakti

in Indian religions, "emotional devotionalism" particularly to a personal god or to spiritual ideas also refers to a movement, pioneered by Alvars and Nayanars, that developed around the gods Vishnu (Vaishnavism), Brahma (Brahmanism), Shiva (Shaivism) and Devi (Shaktism) in the second half of the 1st millennium CE; inspired many popular texts and saint-poets in India and has influenced interactions between Christianity and Hinduism in the modern era

Bandung Conference (1955)

in Indonesia, nations that had recently become independent from European powers met to discuss how to exist in a bipolar world with two superpowers — the US and the Soviet Union - and they agreed to be nonaligned with either

Absolutism

in government, it refers to absolute monarchy or autocracy (one person should hold all power); the former was essentially brought to an end by the French Revolution

guilds

in the Middle Ages, an association of merchants/artisans who controlled different professions; they were very restrictive of their fields and worked to decrease competition (they were opposed by Adam Smith)

Timars

in the Ottoman Empire, plot of land granted to the Janissaries and other kuls (slaves) of the sultan; given as compensation for annual military service, for which they received no pay (kind of a feudal system)

indulgences

in the teaching of the Catholic Church, "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins"; in the Middle Ages, they were abused and commercialized, one of the chief disagreements between the Church and Martin Luther (and other Protestant theologians)

Camp David Accords (1978)

in which Jimmy Carter brought the prime minister of Israel and president of Egypt to Maryland and they negotiated a peace, with Egypt recognizing Israel's border

proletariat

is the class of wage-earners in an economic society whose only possession of significant material value is their labor-power (how much work they can do); the Marxist theory considers the proletariat to be oppressed by capitalism and the wage system

Edict of Milan

issued by Constantine in 313 CE that extended tolerance to and legalized Christianity

A posteriori

knowledge acquired after experience

A priori

knowledge acquired before experience

latifundia

large farming estates that developed in ancient Rome after its economic decline forced smaller landowners to sell to the estates' owners; their self-sufficiency in turn decreased the necessity of a strong authority (like the emperor)

Kwame Nkrumah

leader of Ghana (previously the British Gold Coast), the first independent sub-Saharan country

Ho Chi Minh

leader of North Vietnam during most of the Vietnam War

empiricism

learning through observation

Silk Roads

major trade routes that ran east-west (from China to the rest of East Asia, through Central Asia, and into Europe)

Mita system

mandatory public service in the Inca Empire from ages 15 to 50; effectively paying taxes with labor; helped construct their massive highway network and other public infrastructue

Atman

meaning inner self, spirit, or soul, the first principle (axiom) of Hindu philosophy; it is the "true" self of an individual beyond identification with phenomena, the essence of an individual; Hindus believe it to be in every being; in order to attain moksha, one must realize that their true self is identical with the transcendent self (Brahman)

Magna Graecia

means "Great Greece," coined by the Romans; the areas in coastal southern Italy where many Greek colonies were established, bringing with them Hellenistic civilization (now Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily)

kamikaze

means "divine wind" or "spirit wind;" originally, the term referred to the typhoons that twice destroyed invading Mongolian ships, saving the Japanese; later, it refers Japanese military aviators who initiated suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in towards the end of WWII, designed to destroy warships more effectively than possible with conventional air attacks; about 3,800 kamikaze pilots died during the war, and more than 7,000 naval personnel were killed by kamikaze attacks

Atatürk

means "father of the Turks;" the honorary surname granted to Mustafa Kemal, who was a Turkish field marshal and founder of the Republic of Turkey; he undertook sweeping progressive reforms, which modernized Turkey into a secular, industrial nation; he resisted the mainland Turkey's partition by the Allied powers in the Turkish War of Independence

caliph

means "successor" from Arab "calipha"; the successor to Muhammad and religious leader of Islam

Congress of Vienna (1815)

meeting that followed the end of the 23-year Napoleonic Wars after France's defeat, with a goal of establishing long-term peace in Europe by resizing and balancing nations; it formed the framework for European international politics until World War I

Vaishyas

merchants and landowners; third in the caste system (thighs)

Second Industrial Revolution

mostly in the US and Germany, a phase of rapid industrialization powered by electricity and internal combustion and Diesel engines, plus steel, telegraphs, railroads, and telephones (c. 1870)

chattel

moveable property

Zionism

movement of the Jewish people that espouses the re-establishment of and support for a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel (roughly corresponding to Canaan, the Holy Land, or the region of Palestine); its modern version emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national revival movement, both in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and as a response to Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment; soon after this, most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire

pastoralism

moving with animals

Battle of Tours (732 CE)

near Poitiers, France, the Franks (and Bulgarians) defeated the Spanish Moors/Umayyad Caliphate's army under the leadership of Charles Martel, laying the foundation of the Carolingian Empire and halting the Muslim advance from the Iberian Peninsula into Western Europe, preserving Christanity

Mesoamerica

now called Central America, located between the Rio Grande and Panama (part of North America)

Alliance for Progress

program of economic aid for Latin America in exchange for a pledge to establish democratic institutions; part of U.S. President Kennedy's international program

Hegira

occurred in 622 CE, when Muhammad was forced to leave Mecca and went to Medina; there, he opened the first mosque

bicameral

of a legislative body, having two branches or chambers (the US's Legislative Branch is built upon such a system)

Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (August 1939)

officially known as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow

gender

once a grammatical term; now illustrates differential roles between men and women

Samarkand

once one of the greatest cities of Central Asia, located in southeastern Uzbekistan; the capital of the Sogdian satrapy during the Achaemenid Empire, then taken by Alexander in 329 BC, ruled by Iranian and Turkic rulers until its conquering by the Mongols under Genghis Khan in 1220; later, it became an Islamic center for scholarly study and the capital of the Timurid Empire

French Revolution (1789-99)

one of the 3 revolutions that founded the modern world

Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

one of the first feminist works of philosiphy, published during the Enlightenment

Assyrian Empire

one of the largest empires created in the 1st millennium BCE (1000-1 BCE); it was a very militaristic iron age empire created along the Fertile Crescent that spoke a Semetic language, and they were notorious for their cruelty, using terror to expand

Peter the Great

one of, if not the, most important tzar of Russia, ruling from 1682-1725; he expanded Russia into a major European power and laid the groundwork for their navy and led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernised and based on the Enlightenment; also, he founded St. Petersburg

griots

oral storytellers who preserved tradition in early Bantu cultures lacking a written language

scribe

professional writer

hubris

overweening pride

Anatolia

peninsula in the Mediterranean with early civilizations

nomadic

people before civilization on move

Creoles

people of Spanish decent born in the Americas

Shudras

pesants; fourth/lowest in the caste system (feet)

chinampas

platforms of twisted vines and mud that served the Aztecs as floating gardens and extended their agricultural land

Monroe Doctrine (1823)

policy issued by the United States in which it declared that the Western Hemisphere was off limits to colonization by other powers

Daimyos

powerful Japanese feudal lords who ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings; subordinate to the Shogun (until their decline in the early Meiji period)

realpolitik

practical politics based on the actual needs of a country rather than ideology

de jure

practices that are legally recognised, regardless whether the practice exists in reality

de facto

practices that exist in reality, even though they are not officially recognized by law

Brahmins

priests and intellectuals; first in the caste system (mouth)

Eastern Question

refers to the strategic competition and political considerations of the European Great Powers in light of the political and economic instability in the Ottoman Empire from the late 18th to early 20th centuries threatened to undermine the fragile balance of power system

ziggurats

religious sites and parts of temple complexes built by the Sumerians and others in Mesopotamia

oligarchy

rule by the few (usually wealthy)

Lugals

rulers in city-states of Sumer, most of whom gained power through military success; literally means "big man"

Constantine

ruling between 306 and 367 CE, he was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity and extremely influential in introducing the Edict of Milan; in addition, he restructured Roman government (separating civil and military branches) and renamed Byzantium to Constantinople, which became the capital of the later Eastern Roman Empire

monsoons

seasonally-shifting wind patterns that lead to drastic shifts in precipitation (most prominent are the West African and Asia-Australian ones)

Zimmerman Telegram (1917)

sent by the German foreign minister to Mexico, it urged them to conquer territories lost to the US, therefore keeping the US busy and away from intervening in WWI (and after the Germans won WWI, they'd go help Mexico); intercepted by Britain, who waited a while, then publicized it, leading to a huge shift in public opinion in the US on entering the war (especially among Irish- and German-Americans)

dhows

ships encountered by the caravels in the Indian Ocean; they have one or more masts with settee or sometimes lateen sails, used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region and either invented by the Arabs or Indians; with long, thin hulls (they're very beautiful)

Muhammad Ali

the Ottoman governor of Egypt from 1805 to 1848l; at the height of his rule, he controlled Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt, Sudan and (briefly) parts of Arabia and the Levant; though not a modern nationalist, he is regarded as the founder of modern Egypt; also, he attempted to modernize Egypt by instituting dramatic reforms in the military, economic and cultural spheres and initiated a violent purge of the Mamluks, ending their rule

caravels

slender, highly maneuverable long-hulled vessels developed by the Portuguese and also used by the Castilians; lateen sails gave it speed and the capacity for sailing windward (into the wind); built to explore the West African coast and into the Atlantic and also key to development of Portuguese trade empire in Asia

artisan

someone who makes things with their hands

regent

someone who rules for someone else when the true heir is too young or sick (etc) to rule

artifact

something made by human hands

nominal

something that exists in name only (but not in truth or reality)

seminal

something that's highly influential

Berlin Conference (1884-5)

sometimes called the Congo Conference, it was among European nations and concerned how to divvy up Africa (held without consulting Africans since they were thought to be inferior); it was organized by Otto von Bismarck and essentially led to the Scramble for Africa (coincided with Germany's sudden emergence as a colonial power)

cultural diffusion

spread of culture

Napoleon Bonaparte

started the Napoleonic wars

demography

study of human populations

jati

subcastes in the Hindu caste system

dowry

sum of money that a women must give the husband to be married

Justinian the Great (527-565)

the "greatest" Byzantine emperor, who sought to reunite the two halves of the Roman Empire by reconquering the western portion

Lex Talionis

the "law of retaliation;" under it, punishment should replicate the crime

Mansa Musa

the 10th ruler of Mali during a time when it might have been the largest gold producer, his extravagant pilgrimage through Egypt to Mecca established the empire's reputation for wealth in the Mediterranean world

Treaty of Tordesillas

the 1494 treaty in which the Pope divided unexplored territories between Spain and Portugal

syncretism

the blending of religions

Winston S. Churchill

the British Prime Minister during World War II who became politically and personally close to President Roosevelt

Deng Xiaoping

the Chinese leader who emerged when Mao died (ending the Cultural Revolution), leading the Four Modernizations and setting China on track to become a superpower

Bollywood

the Indian Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai; a portmanteau of "Bombay" and "Hollywood"

Hittites

the Indo-Europeans who went westward and created an empire along the Fertile Crescent; they treated women quite well/decently, developed a form of writing, and introduced iron for the first time, disappearing during the Bronze Age Collapse

Apartheid

the South African policy of separation of the races

Ottoman Turks

the Turkish-speaking people of the the Ottoman Empire, founded by Osman I, who blocked all land routes to Europe by conquering Constantinople in 1453; it was replaced by the Republic of Turkey after World War I

charisma

the ability to draw other people to oneself

decolonization

the action or process of a state withdrawing from a former colony, leaving it independent; begun post-WWII

Hausa

the ancestral language of an eponymous people, now a lingua franca and mostly spoken in Niger and Nigeria; it's a Chadic language (a branch of the Afroasiatic language family)

Anschluss (1938)

the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938; part of Hitler's attempts to violate the Treaty of Versailles (German word meaning connection)

aesthetics

the appreciation and study of beauty

Pericles

the aristocrat who led Athenian democracy to its height from 443-429 BCE, in addition to their achievements in science, philosophy, and the arts

polytheism

the belief in or worship of more than one god

simony

the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges, for example pardons or benefices (widespread in the Catholic Church in the 9th and 10th centuries)

Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687)

the capstone work of the Scientific Revolution, stating the author's laws of motion, and forming the foundation of classical mechanics: his law of universal gravitation and a derivation of Kepler's laws of planetary motion (Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica)

fief

the central element of feudalism, consisting of heritable property or rights granted by a lord to a vassal in return for feudal allegiance and service

Operation Barbarossa

the code name for the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, which started on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II; it put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goal of conquering the western Soviet Union so as to repopulate it with Germans

Analects

the collected writings associated with Confucianism (as collected by his students)

pantheon

the collection of gods worshipped by a people

Ummah

the community of all Muslims

foot binding

the custom of applying tight binding to the feet of young girls to modify the shape and size of their feet in 10th century China, beginning in the elite during the Song dynasty and spreading to most social classes by the Qing dynasty (modified feet are called lotus feet; it ended in the 20th century)

Samsara

the cycle of death and rebirth in Indian religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism)

Neolithic Revolution (Agricultural Revolution)

the domestication of plants and animals

Olmecs

the earliest civilization in North America and the mother civilization of Mesoamerica

Swahili Coast

the east coast of Africa (Swahili became the dominant lingua franca there) [insert more here]

Horn of Africa

the easternmost part of Africa, extending into the Arabian Sea and home to Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia

rationalism

the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification"; a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"

Gunpowder Empires: Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal

the epoch of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires from the 16th century to the 18th century, all Islamic empires that saw large economic and military success; much of their territory was conquered through the use of newly-invented gunpowder

"Untouchables" (Dalits)

the ethnic groups in India and Nepal that have been kept repressed; they were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism (means "broken/scattered" in Sanskrit and Hindi)

Shintoism

the ethnic religion of Japan that focuses on ritual practices to be carried out diligently to establish a connection between present-day Japan and its ancient past, particularly in worship of natural forces

Columbian Exchange

the exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies between the Americas and the rest of the world following Columbus's voyages

Umayyad Caliphate

the family that came to power following the death of Ali in 661; they established their capital in Damascus and were noted for emphasizing Arabic ethnicity over Islamic adherence, inferior status for converts, respect for Jews and Christians as "People of the Book", and luxurious living for ruling families (prompting riots). Overthrown in 750 CE by the Abbasid dynasty.

xenophobia

the fear or hatred of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange

Kublai Khan

the fifth Khagan (Great Khan) of the Mongol Empire and grandson of Genghis Khan who founded the Yuan dynasty in China (also, he defeated his younger brother Ariq Böke in the Toluid Civil War, beginning the disunity of the empire)

Shi Huangdi

the first Chinese emperor, who founded the Qin dynasty and was also quite brutal

Ivan IV, "the Terrible"

the first Tzar of Russia; he oversaw Russia's transformation from a medieval state into an empire, though at immense cost to its people and long-term economy; after consolidating his power, he violently purged the Boyars

Chavín

the first civilization in South America, located in present-day Peru

darics

the first coins known to be minted; were created by the Persian Empire as a standardized currency to unify the empire

Mauryan Empire

the first of the two classical Indian civilizations, led at its zenith by Ashoka the Great as the largest political entity to have existed on the subcontinent

Good Neighbor Policy (1933)

the foreign policy of the administration of United States President Franklin Roosevelt towards Latin America; its main principle was that of non-intervention and non-interference in the domestic affairs of Latin America (Woodrow Wilson had previously used the term but then justified US involvement in the Mexican Revolution)

Five Pillars of Islam

the foundation of Muslim life, consisting of Shahadah ("There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God"), Salat (ritual prayers practiced five times daily while facing the Kaaba in Mecca), Zakat (the almsgiving of one's income, usually about 2.5%, to the Islamic community), Sawm (fasting between dawn and sunset during the month of Ramadan), and Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca)

Babur

the founder and first Emperor of the Mughal dynasty; the great-great grandson of Timur

Mohammad (Muhammad)

the founder of Islam; an orphan born in Mecca in 570 CE, he experienced revelations from the angel Gabriel proclaiming Allah as the one true God; later, he fled to Medina (re: Hegira) and organized his followers into the ummah, eventually dying in 632 without appointing a successor

Guru Nanak

the founder of Sikhism (when the Mughals were coming into India in the 16th century)

Martin Luther

the founder of his namesake branch of Christianity and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation; once a priest, he rejected many teachings of the Catholic Church (mostly indulgences), especially in his 95 Theses, leading to his excommunication; also, he translated the Bible into the German vernacular from Latin, making it more accessible

Cyrus the Great

the founder of the Persian Empire, which stretched from eastern Europe and North Africa to Asia and India (including the Levant, Middle East, and Egypt); later, they took over the Assyrians

"mother civilization"

the founding civilization (e.g. for all civilizations, Sumer; for Mesoamerica, the Olmecs)

Albert Einstein: General Relativity

the geometric theory of gravitation and the current description of gravitation in modern physics

Sudetenland

the historical German name for the northern, southern, and western areas of former Czechoslovakia which were inhabited primarily by Sudeten Germans; when Austria-Hungary was split up post-WWI, the German-speakers there found themselves living in Czechoslovakia

Quran

the holiest book in Islam containing the revelations and teachings of Muhammad, not compiled until 650 CE (after his death)

eugenics

the idea that the selective breeding of the "best" humans could improve society (eventually, it morphed into involving terrors like forced sterilization and was a large part of Nazism)

Triple Entente

the informal understanding between the Russian Empire, the French Third Republic, and Great Britain; it formed a powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance, and unlike them, it was not an alliance of mutual defense

Jacobins

the most influential political club during the French Revolution of 1789 and the following time; the period of their political ascendency includes the Reign of Terror, during which time well over ten thousand people were put on trial and executed in France, many for political crimes

James I

the king of England, Scotland, and Ireland (under the Union of the Crowns); he advocated for a united English-Scottish parliament, sponsored an eponymous version of the Bible, (VI in Scotland), avoided involvement in the Thirty Year's War, and under him, colonization of the Americas began

Mesopotamia

the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers

Mahayana Buddhism

the larger of the two main branches of Buddhism (53%), teaching that enlightenment can be attained in a single lifetime and even by a layperson; it emphasizes bodhisattvas, buddhas who have attained full enlightenment but delay entrance into nirvana and stay in samsara to help others become enlightened

Afro-Eurasia

the largest contiguous landmass on Earth, comprised of Africa and Eurasia (Europe/Asia); about 6 billion (86%) people live there (usually divided by the Suez Canal into Africa and Eurasia)

Mali

the largest empire in West Africa, existing from c. 1235 to 1670; it was founded by Sundiata Keita, its people spoke the Manding languages, and it became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa (they produced a huge amount of gold)

Incas

the largest empire in pre-Columbian America, located in the Andes and centered in Cusco; it was conquered by the Spanish and Pizarro by 1572; they built monumental architecture and an extensive road network, made finely-woven textiles, used of knotted strings (quipu) for record keeping and communication, made agricultural innovations in a difficult environment, and functioned largely without money or markets

Atahualpa

the last Inca Emperor (after defeating his brother, he became very briefly the last Sapa Inca of the Inca Empire before the Spanish conquest ended his reign)

Heian Period (794-1185 CE)

the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185; named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto (meaning "peace"); though the Imperial House of Japan had nominal power, the Fujiwara clan really held the power; also, Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height

Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)

the last of the European Wars of Religion, it represented a shift away from religion as a cause of war

Gupta Empire

the last of the classical civilizations, located in India and at its zenith between 319 to 543 CE

Shoguns

the leader of the bakufu (shogunate) and military dictator of Japan during the period from 1185 to 1868 (the de facto rulers of the country, though nominally appointed by the Emperor)

Law of the Twelve Tables (450 BCE)

the legislation at the center of Roman law: the accused are innocent until proven guilty, one has the right to face their accuser, and hear-say evidence is prohibited

Yellow River (Huang He)

the location of the first Chinese civilization (along it, you can grow millet)

Grand Canal

the longest as well as the oldest canal or artificial river in the world: a 1,776 km (1,104 mi) waterway linking the Yellow and the Yangtze Rivers between Beijing and Hangzhou, with construction beginning in the Han and completed during the Sui dynasties

Yangtze River

the longest river in Asia (the 3rd-largest in the world and located entirely within China), incorporated into Chinese territory under the Zhou dynasty

House of Commons

the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; its members are elected rather than appointed

Prince Henry the Navigator

the main initiator of the Age of Discovery; responsible for the early development of Portuguese exploration and maritime trade with other continents through the systematic exploration of Western Africa, the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, and the search for new routes

Siddhartha Gautama

the man who became the Buddha and upon whose teachings Buddhism was founded

polygyny

the marriage of one man to several women

Samurai

the military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan who pledged loyalty to a noble in return for land

Bantu Migrations

the most important event in African history: a people from West Africa migrated between about 2000 BC to recently, bringing with them the knowledge of iron and agriculture and going on to people much of southern and eastern Africa

Alexander Kerensky

the most important leader in the Russian provisional government; he wanted to Westernize Russia and had to flee once the Bolsheviks took power (he came to the US and became a history professor)

Marianne

the national personification of the French Republic since the French Revolution, as a personification of liberty, equality, fraternity and reason, and a portrayal of the Goddess of Liberty

Farsi

the official language of the Persian Empire

Zoroastrianism

the official religion of Persia that contained the first known expressions of monotheism

Theravada Buddhism

the older and smaller of the two branches of Buddhism, tending to be conservative in matters of doctrine and monastic discipline (their scriptures are called the Pāli Canon)

Devshirme

the practice of the Ottoman Empire to take Christian boys from their home communities to serve as janissaries

Meiji Restoration (1868)

the opening of Japan to trade and restoration of practical imperial rule under Emperor Meiji, leading to industrialization and adoption of many Western ideas (essentially caused by the Black Fleet visit by US Commodore Matthew C. Perry)

tax farming

the outsourcing of tax collection to a local entity when the government doesn't have a good capacity to do so in an area; especially associated with the Ottoman Empire and very susceptible to corruption (e.g. a government asks for $10 million; if the person collects $11 million, they can keep $1 million)

Dar al-Islam

the parts of the world controlled by Muslims

Reconquista

the period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of Granada (a Nasrid kingdom) to the expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492 (781 years); traditionally beginning with the Battle of Covadonga (also, in the late 10th century, the Umayyad vizier Almanzor battled for 30 years to subjugate the northern Christian kingdoms with an army mostly comprised of Slavic and African Mamluks)

Pax Mongolica

the period of approximately 150 years of relative peace and stability created by the conquests of the Mongol Empire (first under Genghis Khan and especially supported by the Silk Roads); later, it disintegrated in part due to the Black Death

Narmer

the pharaoh from Upper Egypt who conquered Lower Egypt and unified the two into one Egypt

Deism

the philosophical position that rejects revelation as a source of religious knowledge and asserts that reason and observation of the natural world are sufficient to establish the existence of a Supreme Being or creator of the universe

Confucianism

the philosophy/quasi-religion that defines the course of Chinese history to this day

hieroglyphics

the pictographic script of Ancient Egypt; means "priestly writings"

Hajj

the pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are asked to make once in their lifetime

"Socialism in One Country"

the policy associated with Stalin of building up the industrial base and military might of the Soviet Union before exporting revolution abroad; to this end, Stalin rescinded the NEP (New Economic Policy), began the collectivization of Soviet agriculture, and embarked on a national program of rapid, forced industrialization

usury

the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender

Gamal Addel Nasser (1918-70)

the second President of Egypt, once leader of the 1952 overthrow of the monarchy; he was socialist and wanted to unify Egypt and Syria into the United Arab Republic, later partaking in the Camp David Accords

Great Schism (1054)

the separation between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church

Scientific Revolution

the series of events that led to the birth of modern science in Europe during the late Renaissance (which arguably began with the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium)

Cahokia

the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city directly across the Mississippi River from modern St. Louis, Missouri; at its apex around 1100 CE, it covered about 6 square miles and included about 120 manmade earthen mounds in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions; it was the largest and most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture, which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the central and southeastern United States, beginning more than 1,000 years before European contact; today, it's considered the largest and most complex archaeological site north of the great pre-Columbian cities in Mexico (in population, it may have briefly exceeded contemporaneous London)

Cape Horn

the southernmost tip of South America, located in Chile as part of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago

vernacular

the speech variety used in everyday life by the general population in a geographical or social territory

Middle Passage

the stage of the triangular trade in which slaves were forcibly transported from Africa to the Americas (they'd there be sold for raw materials, which were then brought back to Europe); the Portuguese held a monopoly on it for 200 years until the 18th century; around 15% of Africans died at sea

extraterritoriality

the state of being exempted from the jurisdiction of local law, usually as the result of diplomatic negotiations

philology

the study of ancient languages

ontology

the study of being

paleontology

the study of old beings

Gothic

the style of architecture prevalent in western Europe in the 12th-16th centuries (between the Romanesque and Renaissance styles), characterized by pointed arches, rib vaults, and flying buttresses, together with large windows and elaborate tracery; the style's art often depicts Mary and the lives of saints

Triangular Trade

the system by which goods and slaves were transported across the Atlantic; slaves were fundamental to growing colonial cash crops, which were exported to Europe; European goods, in turn, were used to purchase African slaves, who were then brought on the sea lane west from Africa to the Americas (the Middle Passage)

Gran Colombia

the temporary union of the northern portion of South America after the independence movements led by Simón Bolívar; ended in 1830

Akbar the Great (1556 to 1605)

the third Mughal emperor, he gradually enlarged the it to include most of the Indian subcontinent, establishing a centralized system of administration and adopting a policy of conciliating conquered rulers through marriage and diplomacy; he was a patron of art and culture, abolished the jizya (winning the support of the native people for the first time), and tripled the Mughal Empire's size and wealth

"God, Gold, and Glory"

the three main motivations behind European exploration and conquest of the Americas

Estates-General

the traditional legislative body of France, consisting of the Church, the First Estate; the nobility, the Second Estate; and the commoners, the Third Estate

Treaty of Versailles (1919)

the treaty that officially ended World War I and was essentially negotiated by the French, English, Americans, and Germany; it legally blamed Germany for the war and placed immense penalties upon them, created the League of Nations, and left no party satisfied (the unrest it created in Germany was possibly the chief reason for WWII)

Shi'as/Sunnis

the two main branches of Islam, based on who they believe should be the caliph (Shi'as comprise about 15% of the community and believe that the caliph should be a descendent of Mohammad; Sunnis make up the other 85% and think that the caliph should be elected)

moksha

the unification with the soul of Brahma in Hinduism and end of worldly suffering, achieved by living a number of good lives

House of Lords

the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; its members are appointed instead of elected; while it is usually unable to prevent bills from passing into law, it can delay them and force the Commons to reconsider their decisions

Minoan Civilization

the very first civilization in Europe proper (and Greece), developing on the island of Crete around 2000 BCE; it depended on trade, was a maritime civilization, was quite prosperous and peaceful and had a high level of material culture, and developed a yet indecipherable language called "Linear A," largely disappearing by the Bronze Age Collapse

Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path

the way in which one attains Nirvana in Buddhism, based upon the fact that desire causes suffering

Buddhism

the world's 4th-largest religion and one of the universal religions, it split from Hinduism due to the caste system and founded in India by the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama); its ultimate goal is to overcome suffering and Saṃsāra (the cycle of death/rebirth) either through attaining Nirvana or Buddahood; its two main branches are Theravada and Mahayana

Christendom

the worldwide body or society of Christians (in a historical sense, it usually refers to the Medieval or Early Modern periods when Christanity was a geopolitical force juxtaposed with the pagan and Muslim worlds)

Malay Sailors

they began to trade across the Indian Ocean from their namesake peninsula, bringing the banana from Asia into Madagascar, from which it migrated and became a staple food of the Bantu people

Brezhnev Doctrine (1968)

though practiced prior to its codification, it says that any communist or Warsaw Pact nation that attempts to lessen or overthrow communism would be rightfully subject to Soviet Union intervention (named for the Soviet president at the time)

Johannes Kepler, Laws of Planetary Motion (1609-1619)

three scientific laws describing the motion of planets around the Sun, improving upon Copernicus's heliocentric theory (the orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci; a line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time; and the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit)

Hinduism

through Samsara, the Atman seeks Moksha to escape from the material world and become one with Brahman, but the pace of this progress depends on Karma

lateen sails

triangular sails on a long yard at an angle of 45° to the mast in a fore-and-aft direction (basically parallel to the boat) which became the favorite sails of the the Age of Discovery since it allows tacking/sailing "against the wind"

Spanish-American War (1898)

triggered by the mysterious explosion of the USS Maine in Havana, the US intervened in the Cuban War of Independence against Spain, leading to the US's predominance in the Caribbean region

Opium Wars (1839-1860)

two wars in the mid-19th century involving Great Qingand the British Government and concerned their imposition of trade of a namesake drug upon China; the resulting concession of Hong Kong compromised China's territorial sovereignty

Calicut

usually called Kozhikode, it was dubbed the City of Spices for its role as the major trading point of Indian spices during classical antiquity and the Middle Ages; visited six times by Ibn Battuta; the third-largest city in Kerala, India

Ghulam

usually foreigners (often once enslaved) who were put into the Safavid army

National Organization for Women (1966)

usually linked to 2nd-wave feminism, its goals were legalizing abortion, increasing contraception use, increasing equality in the workplace, and deposing of archaic sexist laws

Kshatriyas

warriors; second in the caste system (arms)

Leopold II and the Belgian Congo

was King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909; the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State

Bay of Pigs (1961)

was a failed attempt by US-sponsored Cuban exiles to reverse Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution, beginning with a military invasion of northern Cuba

Spanish Flu (1918)

was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus; it infected 500 million people around the world

Raj

was the rule by the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent from 1858 to 1947, when it was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the Dominion of India (later the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan; after Indian independence, it maintained many central elements of British government (like a parliament)

eclecticism

when a society picks and chooses things from others into theirs

Sinification

when non-Chinese societies come under the influence of Chinese culture, particularly Han Chinese culture, language, societal norms, and ethnic identity (areas of influence include diet, writing, industry, education, language, law, lifestyle, politics, philosophy, religion, science and technology, culture, and value systems)

eponymous

when one's surname is taken and turned into and adjective

caesaropapism

when the ruler in a society has both secular and spiritual power

Fertile Crecent

where earliest civilization began

sine qua non

without which not

Baron Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748)

written by a French political theorist, the book in which he put forward the idea of separation of power through branches of government while criticizing authoritarianism (an Enlightenment figure)

Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791)

written in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; by publishing this document, the author hoped to expose the failures of the French Revolution in the recognition of gender equality, but failed to create any lasting impact on the direction of the Revolution; because of her writings, she was accused of treason and executed in the Reign of Terror; it is significant because it brought attention to a set of feminist concerns that collectively reflected and influenced the aims of many French Revolution activists