AP World History Chapter 28 Key Terms

Western Front

A line of trenches and fortifications in WW1 that stretched without a break from Switzerland to the North Sea. Scene of most of the fighting between Germany, on the one hand, and France and Britain, on the other.

Mandate system

Allocation of former German colonies and Ottoman possessions to the victorious powers after WW1, to be administered under League of Nations supervision.

Wilbur and Orville Wright

American bicycle mechanics; the first to build and fly an airplane, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 7, 1903.

Faisal

Arab prince, leader of the Arab Revolt in WW1. The British made him king of Iraq in 1921, and he reigned under British protection until 1933.

Albert Einstein

Born in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany in 1879, Albert Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century. He died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey.

Yuan Shikai

Chinese general and first president of the Chipsets Republic (1912-1916). He stood inn the way of the democratic movement led my Sun Yat-sen.

Chiang Kai-shek

Chinese military and political leader. Succeeded Sun Yat-sen as head of the Guomindang in 1923; headed the Chinese government from 1928 to 1948; fought against the Chinese Communists and Japanese invaders. After 1949 he headed the Chipsets Nationalist government in Taiwan.

Sun Yat-sen

Chinese nationalist revolutionary, founder and leader of the Guomindag until his death. He attempted to create a liberal democratic political movement in China but was thwarted by military leaders.

Theodore Herzel

Founder of the political form of Zionism, a movement to establish a Jewish homeland. His pamphlet The Jewish State (1896) proposed that the Jewish question was a political question to be settled by a world council of nations. He organized a world congress of Zionists that met in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897 and became first president of the World Zionist Organization, established by the congress. Although Herzl died more than 40 years before the establishment of the State of Israel, he was an indefatigable organizer, propagandist, and diplomat who had much to do with making Zionism into a political movement of worldwide significance.

League of Nations

Int'l organization founded in 1919 to promote world peace and cooperation but greatly weakened by the refusal of the U.S. to join. It proved ineffectual in stopping aggression by Italy, Japan, and Germany in the 1930's, and it was superseded by the UN.

Vladimir Lenin

Leader of the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party. He lived in exile in Switzerland until 1917, then returned to Russia to lead the Bolsheviks to victory during the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed.

Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger was born on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. In 1910 she moved to Greenwich Village and started a publication promoting a woman's right to birth control (a term that she coined). Obscenity laws forced her to flee the country until 1915. In 1916 she opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. Sanger fought for women's rights her entire life. She died in 1966.

Guomindang

Nationalist political party founded on democratic principles by Sun Yat-sen in 1912. After 1925, the party was headed by Chiang Kai-she, who turned it into an increasingly authoritarian movement.

Max Planck

Planck made many contributions to theoretical physics, but his fame rests primarily on his role as originator of the quantum theory. This theory revolutionized our understanding of atomic and subatomic processes, just as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity revolutionized our understanding of space and time. Together they constitute the fundamental theories of 20th-century physics. Both have forced humankind to revise some of the most cherished philosophical beliefs, and both have led to industrial and military applications that affect every aspect of modern life.

New Economic Policy

Policy proclaimed by Vladimir Lenin in 1924 to encourage the revival of the Soviet economy by allowing small private enterprises. Joseph Stalin ended the N.E.P. in 1928 and replaced it with a series of Five-Year Plans.

Woodrow Wilson

President of the U.S. (1913-1921) and the leading figure at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. He was unable to persuade the U.S. Congress to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations.

Bolsheviks

Radical Marxist political party founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1903. Under Lenin's leadership, the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917 during the Russian Revolution.

Balfour Declaration

Statement issued by Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in 1917 favoring the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.

Treaty of Versailles

The treaty imposed on Germany by France, Great Britain, the U.S., and other Allied Powers after WW1. It demanded that Germany dismantle its military and give up some lands to Poland. It was resented by many Germans.