USAFA History 300 GR2 Terms (Fall 2018)

Empiricism

-A theory of inductive reasoning that calls for acquiring evidence through observation and experimentation rather than reason and speculation.

Nō theater

-A type of Japanese theater performed on a bare stage by one or two actors wearing brilliant brocade robes, one actor wearing a mask. The performers conveyed emotions and ideas as much through gestures, stances, and dress as through words.

Concubine

-A woman who is a recognized spouse but of lower status than a wife.

Sultan

-An Arabic word used by the Ottomans to describe a supreme political and military ruler.

Conquistador

-Spanish for "conqueror"; a Spanish soldier-explorer, such as Hernán Cortés or Francisco Pizarro, who sought to conquer the New World for the Spanish crown.

Daimyo

-Regional lords in Japan, many of whom were self-made men.

Ulama

-Religious scholars who interpret the Qur'an and the Sunna, the deeds and sayings of Muhammad.

Ottomans

-Ruling house of the Turkish empire that lasted from 1299 to 1922

Salons

- Regular social gatherings held by talented and rich Parisian women in their homes, where philosophes and their followers met to discuss literature, science, and philosophy.

Divine right of kings

- The belief propagated by absolutist monarchs in Europe that they derived their power from God and were only answerable to him.

Renaissance

-A French word meaning "rebirth," used to describe a cultural movement that began in fourteenth-century Italy and looked back to the classical past.

Haskalah

-A Jewish Enlightenment movement led by Prussian philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

Bill of Rights of 1689

-A bill passed by Parliament and accepted by William and Mary that limited the powers of British monarchs and affirmed those of Parliament.

Continental System

-A blockade imposed by Napoleon in which no ship coming from Britain or its colonies was permitted to dock at any port controlled by the French.

Steam engines

-A breakthrough invention by Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas Newcomen in 1705 that burned coal to produce steam, which was then used to operate a pump; the early models were superseded by James Watt's more efficient steam engine, patented in 1769.

General will

-A concept associated with Rousseau, referring to the common interests of all the people, who have displaced the monarch as the holder of sovereign power.

Valladolid debate

-A debate organized by Spanish king Charles I in 1550 in the city of Valladolid that pitted defenders of Spanish conquest and forcible conversion against critics of these practices.

Dreyfus affair

-A divisive case in which Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, was falsely accused and convicted of treason. The Catholic Church sided with the anti-Semites against Dreyfus; after Dreyfus was declared innocent, the French government severed all ties between the state and the church.

Laissez faire

-A doctrine of economic liberalism advocating unrestricted private enterprise and no government interference in the economy.

Indulgence

-A document issued by the pope that substituted for earthly penance or time in purgatory.

Constitutionalism

-A form of government in which power is limited by law and balanced between the authority and power of the government, on the one hand, and the rights and liberties of the subject or citizen, on the other; it includes constitutional monarchies and republics.

Republicanism

-A form of government in which there is no monarch and power rests in the hands of the people as exercised through elected representatives.

Separate spheres

-A gender division of labor with the wife at home as mother and homemaker and the husband as wage earner.

Tariff protection

-A government's way of supporting and aiding its own economy by laying high taxes on imported goods from other countries, as when the French responded to the flood of cheaper British goods in their country by imposing high tariffs on some imported products.

Philosophes

-A group of French intellectuals who proclaimed that they were bringing the light of knowledge to their fellow humans.

Civil service examinations

-A highly competitive series of written tests held at the prefecture, province, and capital levels in China to select men to become officials.

Thirty Years' War

-A large-scale conflict extending from 1618 to 1648 that pitted Protestants against Catholics in central Europe, but also involved dynastic interests, notably of Spain and France.

Law of inertia

-A law formulated by Galileo stating that motion, not rest, is the natural state of an object and that an object continues in motion forever unless stopped by some external force.

Congress of Vienna

-A meeting of the Quadruple Alliance (Russia, Prussia, Austria, Great Britain) and France held in 1814-1815 to fashion a general peace settlement after the defeat of Napoleonic France.

Girondists

-A moderate group that fought for control of the French National Convention in 1793.

Liberalism

-A philosophy whose principal ideas were equality and liberty; liberals demanded representative government and equality before the law as well as such individual freedoms as freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom from arbitrary arrest.

Jacobin club

-A political club during the French Revolution to which many of the deputies of the Legislative Assembly belonged.

Conservatism

-A political philosophy that stressed retaining traditional values and institutions, including hereditary monarchy and a strong landowning aristocracy.

Absolutism

-A political system common to early modern Europe in which monarchs claimed exclusive power to make and enforce laws, without checks by other institutions; this system was limited in practice by the need to maintain legitimacy and compromise with elites.

Socialism

-A radical political doctrine that opposed individualism and that advocated cooperation and a sense of community; key ideas were economic planning, greater economic equality, and state regulation of property.

Thermidorian reaction

-A reaction in 1794 to the violence of the Reign of Terror, resulting in the execution of Robespierre and the loosening of economic controls.

Protestant Reformation

-A religious reform movement that began in the early sixteenth century and split the Western Christian Church.

Spinning jenny

-A simple, inexpensive, hand-powered spinning machine created by James Hargreaves about 1765.

Caravel

-A small, maneuverable, three-masted sailing ship developed by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century that gave the Portuguese a distinct advantage in exploration and trade.

Water frame

-A spinning machine created by Richard Arkwright that had a capacity of several hundred spindles and used waterpower; it therefore required a larger and more specialized mill — a factory.

Captaincies

-A system established by the Portuguese in Brazil in the 1530s, whereby hereditary grants of land were given to nobles and loyal officials who bore the costs of settling and administering their territories

Mercantilism

-A system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state derived from the belief that a nation's international power was based on its wealth, specifically its supply of gold and silver.

Encomienda system

-A system whereby the Spanish crown granted the conquerors the right to forcibly employ groups of indigenous people as laborers and to demand tribute payments from them in exchange for providing food, shelter, and instruction in the Christian faith.

Industrial Revolution

-A term first coined in the 1830s to describe the burst of major inventions and economic expansion that took place in certain industries, such as cotton textiles and iron, between 1780 and 1850.

Peninsulares

-A term for natives of Spain and Portugal.

Mughal

-A term used to refer to the Muslim empire of India, which was the largest, wealthiest, and most populous of the Islamic empires of the early modern world.

Aztec Empire

-An alliance between the Mexica people and their conquered allies, with its capital in Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), that rose in size and power in the fifteenth century and possessed a sophisticated society and culture, with advanced mathematics, astronomy, and engineering.

Diet of Worms

-An assembly of representatives from the territories of the Holy Roman Empire convened by Charles V in the city of Worms in 1521. It was here that Martin Luther refused to recant his writings.

Revisionism

-An effort by various socialists to update Marxist doctrines to reflect the realities of the time.

Sensationalism

-An idea, espoused by John Locke, that all human ideas and thoughts are produced as a result of sensory impressions.

Public sphere

-An idealized intellectual space that emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment. Here, the public came together to discuss important social, economic, and political issues.

Class-consciousness

-An individual's sense of class differentiation, a term introduced by Karl Marx.

Enlightenment

-An intellectual and cultural movement in late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe and the wider world that used rational and critical thinking to debate issues such as political sovereignty, religious tolerance, gender roles, and racial difference.

Alternate residence system

-Arrangement in which Japanese lords were required to live in Edo every other year and left their wives and sons there as hostages to the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Sovereignty

-Authority of states that possess a monopoly over the instruments of justice and the use of force within clearly defined boundaries and in which private armies present no threat to central control; seventeenth-century European states made important advances toward sovereignty.

Deism

-Belief in a distant, noninterventionist deity, shared by many Enlightenment thinkers.

Predestination

-Calvin's teaching that God decided at the beginning of time who would be saved and who damned, so people could not actively work to achieve salvation.

Politiques

-Catholic and Protestant moderates who sought to end the religious violence in France by restoring a strong monarchy and granting official recognition to the Huguenots.

Viziers

-Chief assistants to caliphs.

Mines Act of 1842

-English law prohibiting underground work for all women and girls as well as for boys under ten.

Factory Act of 1833

-English law that led to a sharp decline in the employment of children by limiting the hours that children over age nine could work and banning employment of children younger than nine.

Combination Acts

-English laws passed in 1799 that outlawed unions and strikes, favoring capitalist business owners over skilled artisans. Bitterly resented and widely disregarded by many craft guilds, the acts were repealed by Parliament in 1824.

Cossacks

-Free groups and outlaw armies living on the borders of Russian territory from the fourteenth century onward. In the mid sixteenth century they formed an alliance with the Russian state.

Huguenots

-French Calvinists.

Napoleonic Code

-French civil code promulgated in 1804 that reasserted the 1789 principles of the equality of all male citizens before the law and the absolute security of wealth and private property.

National Assembly

-French representative assembly formed in 1789 by the delegates of the third estate and some members of the clergy, the second estate.

Luddites

-Group of handicraft workers who attacked factories in northern England in 1811 and after, smashing the new machines that they believed were putting them out of work.

Bride wealth

-In early modern Southeast Asia, a sum of money the groom paid the bride or her family at the time of marriage. This practice contrasted with the dowry in China, India, and Europe, which the husband controlled.

Mountain

-Led by Robespierre, the French National Convention's radical faction, which led the Convention in 1793.

Cottage industry

-Manufacturing with hand tools in peasant cottages and work sheds, a form of economic activity that became important in eighteenth-century Europe.

Puritans

-Members of a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century reform movement within the Church of England that advocated purifying it of Roman Catholic elements, such as bishops, elaborate ceremonials, and wedding rings.

Jesuits

-Members of the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, whose goal was the spread of the Roman Catholic faith through schools and missionary activity.

Navigation Acts

-Mid-seventeenth-century English mercantilist laws that greatly restricted other countries' rights to trade with England and its colonies.

Law of universal gravitation

-Newton's law that all objects are attracted to one another and that the force of attraction is proportional to the object's quantity of matter and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Qizilbash

-Nomadic Turkish Sufis who supplied the early Safavid state with military troops in exchange for grazing rights.

Antifederalists

-Opponents of the American Constitution who felt it diminished individual rights and accorded too much power to the federal government at the expense of the states.

Protestant

-Originally meaning "a follower of Luther," this term came to be generally applied to all non-Catholic western European Christians.

Creoles

-People of European descent born in the Americas.

Shah

-Persian word for "king."

Enlightened absolutism

-Term coined by historians to describe the rule of eighteenth-century monarchs who, without renouncing their own absolute authority took up the call to reform their governments in accordance with the rational and humane principles of the Enlightenment.

Treaty of Tordesillas

-The 1494 agreement giving Spain everything west of an imaginary line drawn down the Atlantic and giving Portugal everything to the east.

Treaty of Paris

-The 1763 peace treaty that ended the Seven Years' War, according vast French territories in North America and India to Britain and Louisiana to Spain.

Declaration of Independence

-The 1776 document in which the American colonies declared independence from Great Britain and recast traditional English rights as universal human rights.

Ming Dynasty

-The Chinese dynasty in power from 1368 to 1644; it marked a period of vibrant urban culture.

Tokugawa Shogunate

-The Japanese government in Edo founded by Tokugawa Ieyasu. It lasted from 1603 to 1867.

Proletariat

-The Marxist term for the working class of modern industrialized society.

Social Darwinism

-The application of the theory of biological evolution to human affairs, it sees the human race as driven to ever-greater specialization and progress by an unending economic struggle that determines the survival of the fittest.

Modernization

-The changes that enable a country to compete effectively with the leading countries at a given time.

Enclosure

-The controversial process of fencing off common land to create privately owned fields that increased agricultural production at the cost of reducing poor farmers' access to land.

Qing Dynasty

-The dynasty founded by the Manchus that ruled China from 1644 to 1911.

Safavid

-The dynasty that ruled all of Persia and other regions from 1501 to 1722; its state religion was Shi'ism.

Moral economy

-The early modern European view that community needs predominated over competition and profit and that necessary goods should thus be sold at a fair price.

Grand Empire

-The empire over which Napoleon and his allies ruled, encompassing virtually all of Europe except Great Britain.

Columbian exchange

-The exchange of animals, plants, and diseases between the Old and the New Worlds.

Germ theory

-The idea that disease is caused by the spread of living organisms that can be controlled.

Nationalism

-The idea that each people had its own spirit and its own cultural unity, which manifested itself especially in a common language and history and could serve as the basis for an independent political state.

Copernican hypothesis

-The idea that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe.

Evolution

-The idea, developed by Charles Darwin, that all life had gradually evolved from a common origin through a process of natural selection.

Sans-culottes

-The laboring poor of Paris, so called because the men wore trousers instead of the knee breeches of the wealthy; the term came to refer to the militant radicals of the city.

Crystal Palace

-The location of the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London, an architectural masterpiece made entirely of glass and iron.

Zionism

-The movement toward Jewish political nationhood started by Theodor Herzl.

Rocket

-The name given to George Stephenson's effective locomotive that was first tested in 1829 on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and reached a maximum speed of 35 miles per hour.

Sepoys

-The native Indian troops who were trained as infantrymen.

Black Legend

-The notion that the Spanish were uniquely brutal and cruel in their conquest and settlement of the Americas, an idea propagated by rival European powers.

Reign of Terror

-The period from 1793 to 1794, during which Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety tried and executed thousands suspected of political crimes and a new revolutionary culture was imposed.

October Manifesto

-The result of a great general strike in Russia in October 1905, it granted full civil rights and promised a popularly elected Duma (parliament) with real legislative power.

Economic liberalism

-The theory, associated with Adam Smith, that the pursuit of individual self-interest in a competitive market would lead to rising prosperity and greater social equality, rendering government intervention unnecessary and undesirable.

Inca Empire

-The vast and sophisticated Peruvian empire centered at the capital city of Cuzco that was at its peak in the fifteenth century but weakened by civil war at the time of the Spanish arrival.

Bourgeoisie

-The well-educated, prosperous, middle-class groups.

Iron law of wages

-Theory proposed by English economist David Ricardo suggesting that the pressure of population growth prevents wages from rising above the subsistence level.

Estates General

-Traditional representative body of the three estates of France that met in 1789 in response to imminent state bankruptcy.

Janissaries

-Turkish for "recruits"; they formed the elite army corps.

Banners

-Units of the Manchu army, composed of soldiers, their families, and slaves.

Christian humanists

...Humanists from northern Europe who thought that the best elements of classical and Christian cultures should be combined and saw humanist learning as a way to bring about reform of the church and deepen people's spiritual lives.

Devshirme-

A process whereby the sultan's agents swept the provinces for Christian youths to be trained as soldiers or civil servants.

Humanism

A program of study designed by Italians that emphasized the critical study of Latin and Greek literature with the goal of understanding human nature.

Protestant Reformation-

A religious reform movement that began in the early sixteenth century and split the Western Christian Church.

Ptolemy's Geography-

A second-century work reintroduced and translated into Latin around 1410 that synthesized the classical knowledge of geography and introduced latitude and longitude markings.

Debate about women

An argument about women's character, nature, and proper role in society that began in the later years of the fourteenth century and lasted for centuries.

Witch-hunts

Campaign against witchcraft in Europe and European colonies during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in which hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, were tried, and many of them executed.

Patronage

Financial support of writers and artists by cities, groups, and individuals, often to produce specific works or works in specific styles.

Jesuits

Members of the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1540, whose goal was the spread of the Roman Catholic faith through schools and missionary activity.

Viceroyalties-

The name for the four administrative units of Spanish possessions in the Americas: New Spain, Peru, New Granada, and La Plata.