The History glossary

The samizdat bulletin of the Soviet human rights movement, issued from 1968 to the early 1980s, which recorded arrests, trials and conditions in camps.

A Bakongo cultural association founded in 1950 that became a political party under Joseph Kasavubu and demanded immediate independence for the Congo in 1956.

The Muslim dynasty that took power in 750 and ruled most of the Islamic world from Baghdad, founded in 762; its political power declined from the tenth century and it ended with the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258.

The economic policy of Prime Minister Abe Shinzō from 2012: aggressive monetary easing, flexible government spending and structural reform, aimed at ending deflation.

A women's organisation led by Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti that campaigned against the taxation of women and the abuses of the Alake of Abeokuta, forcing him to leave his throne in 1949.

The "opening" of Brazil's military regime begun by President Geisel in 1974: a slow, controlled liberalisation that led through the Amnesty Law of 1979 to civilian rule in 1985.

The movement to abolish slavery or the slave trade; in the USA before 1861 it demanded the end of slavery and turned it into a moral and political question for many Northerners.

The legal right of an Indigenous people to land and waters they held under their own laws before colonisation, recognised by Canadian courts from the Calder case of 1973 and, as native title, by Australian law in the Mabo decision of 1992 and the Native Title Act 1993.

An organisation of educated Africans and chiefs in the Gold Coast, founded in 1897 to oppose British land bills that threatened African land rights; an early forerunner of Gold Coast nationalism.

The agreements of 2020 by which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco agreed to normalise relations with Israel, without a settlement of the Palestinian question.

A system of government in which the monarch claims supreme power, unlimited by any elected assembly or written constitution, and makes law, raises taxes and commands the army in his or her own name.

Producing work that is honestly your own and acknowledging exactly where you have used the words, ideas, data or images of others, including anything produced with AI tools.

The CEDA's position that the form of government, monarchy or republic, was secondary to its content, which allowed it to work within the Second Republic without declaring loyalty to it.

The middle ground between support and resistance under a dictatorship: outward conformity, such as joining organisations or attending rallies, for safety, career or lack of an alternative.

The Italian electoral law of 1923 that gave two-thirds of the seats in the Chamber to the list winning the most votes, provided it had at least 25 per cent.

The agreement of the American states in March 1945 that an attack on any one of them would be treated as an attack on all; it led to the Rio Pact of 1947.

The agreement of the American states in July 1940 that European colonies in the Americas could not be transferred to another non-American power.

The Nigerian political party founded by Obafemi Awolowo in 1951, based in the Yoruba Western Region.

Under the French Constitution of 1791, a man of at least 25 paying direct taxes worth three days' local wages, who could vote; poorer men and all women were passive citizens without the vote.

Refined prose literature and the cultivated knowledge and manners expected of educated officials and courtiers in the Abbasid world, drawing on Arabic, Persian and Greek material.

Informal instructions from Japanese ministries to firms, without legal force but hard to refuse because the ministries controlled licences, credit and other favours.

Charlemagne's long capitulary of 789 ordering reform of the clergy, preaching, worship and education.

Policies that require employers or institutions to take active steps to recruit and promote groups that have faced discrimination, such as women and racial minorities.

Barack Obama's health reform law of 23 March 2010, which required most people to have health insurance, expanded Medicaid, created subsidised insurance markets and banned refusals for existing illnesses.

The idea that Africans were active participants who made choices within historical processes such as the slave trade, as rulers, merchants, resisters and victims, and not only passive objects of European action.

A Christian church founded and led by Africans outside missionary control, often combining Christian belief with African forms of worship.

South Africa's main African nationalist organisation, founded in January 1912 as the South African Native National Congress; banned from 1960 to 1990, it won the first democratic election in 1994.

The belief that Africans should govern themselves and lead their own liberation from colonial or white-minority rule.

The claim of African leaders such as Nyerere, Senghor and Kenyatta that socialism grew from the communal values of African societies; in practice it ranged from Tanzania's ujamaa to Kenya's mixed, largely capitalist economy.

The organisation of African states founded in 2002 to replace the OAU, based in Addis Ababa. Unlike the OAU it may intervene in member states in cases of genocide or war crimes and suspends governments that seize power by coups.

The policy of transferring jobs, businesses and property from Europeans and Asians to African citizens after independence.

A Spanish army officer who made his career in the Moroccan wars, valued promotion for bravery in battle and despised politicians; Franco was one.

A white South African descended mainly from Dutch, German and French settlers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, speaking Afrikaans; earlier called a Boer (Dutch for farmer).

The belief that Afrikaners form a distinct nation (volk) with its own language, faith and history, entitled to rule itself; the ideology of the National Party.

The capacity of individuals and groups to make choices that change the course of events.

The most widely used herbicide in Operation Ranch Hand, named after the orange stripe on its barrels. It was contaminated with dioxin, a toxic chemical linked to cancers and birth defects.

The US law of May 1933 that paid farmers to reduce production in order to raise farm prices. The Supreme Court struck down its tax in 1936, and a new act followed in 1938.

The changes in farming in Britain and the Low Countries from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, including new crops and rotations, selective breeding and enclosure, that raised output; many historians stress that the change was gradual.

An approach to farming that applies ecological principles, using local varieties, crop diversity and natural inputs rather than heavy use of chemical fertiliser and pesticide.

The thirteenth month's pay introduced for Argentine workers under Perón, one of the benefits that built working-class support.

The principle of non-violence towards all living beings, drawn from Hindu, Jain and Buddhist traditions, which Gandhi made the foundation of satyagraha.

The main US federal welfare programme for poor families with children from 1935 to 1996, most of whose recipients were single mothers.

The Indigenous people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, whose lands were colonised and culture suppressed by the Meiji state.

A warship with a flight deck from which aircraft take off and land, which became the most important type of warship in the Pacific War.

African languages such as Hausa and Fulfulde written in Arabic script, used for religious poetry, teaching and letters.

Kinyarwanda for "little house": the inner circle around President Habyarimana's wife and her relatives that controlled power and wealth in Rwanda and organised Hutu Power.

The Nazi programme (1939–1941) for murdering disabled people in psychiatric institutions, which killed about 70,000 people by August 1941.

The mosque and university in Cairo, founded in the tenth century, that is the leading centre of Sunni Islamic learning. A law of 1961 brought it under the control of Nasser’s state.

The militant Islamist network founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden and others from among Arab volunteers in the Afghan war. From 1996 it was based in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and carried out the attacks of 11 September 2001.

A Somali jihadist movement ("the youth") that grew out of the Islamic Courts Union's militias, fought the Ethiopian occupation of 2006–2009 and the federal government, and joined al-Qaeda in 2012.

One of the Yoruba independent churches ("people of prayer") that grew from prayer groups after 1918, stressing healing, prophecy and dreams.

The title of the king of Oyo.

The Kazakh national government formed by the Alash party in December 1917, led by Alikhan Bokeikhanov; it sided with the Whites and then with the Bolsheviks before being dissolved in 1920.

The dike about 16 km long built across Lake Texcoco after the flood of 1449, which protected Tenochtitlan from floods and separated salty eastern water from the fresher lagoon around the city.

A fortified village into which the Portuguese army resettled rural people during the colonial wars, to cut guerrillas off from support.

The branch of mathematics that solves problems by working with unknown quantities in equations. Its name comes from al-jabr in the title of al-Khwarizmi's book, written in Baghdad around 820.

Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel (Hebrew, "ascent"). Zionist historiography numbers the waves of the late Ottoman and mandate periods from the First (1882–1903) to the Fifth (1932–1939).

The illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine organised in defiance of British restrictions between 1934 and 1948, mostly by sea.

A court in Northern Nigeria in which a Muslim judge (alkali) applied Islamic law; kept by the British under indirect rule.

The political organisation founded at Dhaka in December 1906 to represent the interests of Indian Muslims; from 1940 it demanded a separate state, Pakistan.

The rebel alliance led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila and backed by Rwanda and Uganda that overthrew Mobutu in the First Congo War (1996–1997).

A US-led programme of aid and reform for Latin America launched by Kennedy in 1961 and set out in the Charter of Punta del Este, aiming at growth, social reform and democracy as an alternative to revolution.

The network of treaties that divided the European great powers into two blocs before 1914, the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente.

The body through which the four occupying powers (USA, USSR, Britain and France) governed Germany as a whole from 1945; in November 1945 it planned the reception of the Germans transferred from Eastern Europe.

A West African Muslim title for a ruler who is also religious leader, from the Arabic al-imam; used in Futa Jallon and by Samori Touré from 1884.

A Berber Islamic reform movement of the eleventh century from the western Sahara, which took Awdaghust from Ghana (1054–1055), conquered Morocco and Muslim Spain and recognised the Abbasid caliph in name, until the Almohads overthrew it in 1147.

The Armée de Libération Nationale, the armed wing of the FLN during the Algerian War, with guerrilla units inside Algeria and a larger army based in Tunisia and Morocco.

The many New Deal agencies known by their initials, such as the CCC, WPA, TVA and NRA.

The basic political unit of central Mexico: a city-state made up of a town, its villages and lands, with its own ruler, temple and patron god.

Electric current that reverses direction many times a second and can be stepped up and down in voltage by transformers, which allows power to be sent long distances; promoted by George Westinghouse from 1886.

The national assembly of Iceland, founded in 930, which met each summer at Thingvellir to make law and settle disputes; it adopted Christianity in 999 or 1000.

The agreement of 15 January 1975 between Portugal and the MPLA, FNLA and UNITA that set Angola's independence for 11 November 1975 under a transitional government of all three movements. It collapsed into civil war within months.

Zulu age-regiments of young men called up together to serve the king as soldiers and labourers; under Shaka they lived in royal homesteads and could not marry until released.

A Lebanese Shi’a political movement and militia formed in 1975 from Musa al-Sadr’s Movement of the Deprived. Backed by Syria, it fought the Palestinian camps in 1985–1988 and Hezbollah in 1988–1990.

The joining of the Protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria into the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria on 1 January 1914, under Lugard as Governor-General.

The US law of 1987 (in force from 1988) that allowed Vietnamese children of American servicemen, and their close relatives, to emigrate to the United States with refugee benefits.

The main national organisation of immediate abolitionists in the USA, founded in 1833 by William Lloyd Garrison and others; it used newspapers, lecturers and petitions to demand an end to slavery.

The US army sent to Europe in 1917–1918 under General John J. Pershing.

The Native American rights organisation founded in Minneapolis in 1968, which used protests and occupations to press for treaty rights and against discrimination.

The US law of 26 July 1990 that banned discrimination against disabled people in employment and public life and required public buildings and transport to be accessible.

Hebrew for 'standing up': the historian Yehuda Bauer's term for the many forms of Jewish resistance to Nazi persecution, armed and unarmed.

The African Union Mission in Somalia, a peacekeeping force authorised in 2007 that protected the transitional and federal governments and fought al-Shabaab; it had more than 20,000 troops by the 2010s.

A legal pardon for past offences, usually for a whole group, granted to help end a conflict or reconcile former enemies.

A member of the radical reform groups that rejected infant baptism and baptised only adult believers; most also refused oaths, military service and state control of religion, and were persecuted by Catholics and Protestants alike.

The Union strategy proposed by General Winfield Scott in 1861: a naval blockade of the Confederate coast and control of the Mississippi River to split and strangle the Confederacy.

The political belief that the state and all compulsory government should be abolished. Around 1880–1920 it was strong among immigrant workers in Argentina, the USA and Mexico, and some anarchists used violence.

A form of anarchism that sees trade unions as the means to overthrow capitalism and the state through strikes and a revolutionary general strike, and as the basis for organising society afterwards.

The youth wing of the ANC founded in 1944 by activists including Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo, which pushed the ANC towards African nationalism and mass action.

The political and social system of France before 1789: an absolute monarchy ruling a society divided into legally privileged orders.

Haitians who had been free before the general emancipation of 1793, many of them of mixed descent, literate and property-owning.

The killing of protesters by Uzbek troops in Andijan on 13 May 2005; the official toll was 187, other estimates several hundred or more.

The Iraqi government’s campaign of 1986–1989 against the Kurds of northern Iraq, in which thousands of villages were destroyed and between 50,000 and 100,000 people killed, according to Human Rights Watch. Iraqi courts later tried it as genocide.

The modern name for the lands ruled by Henry II, Richard I and John (1154–1204), stretching from England to the Pyrenees.

A supporter, like Macaulay, of using Company funds for Western education taught in English rather than for traditional Indian learning.

A joint British–American committee that in April 1946 recommended the immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish displaced persons to Palestine; the British government did not accept the recommendation.

A treaty of June 1935 in which Britain accepted a German navy of up to 35 per cent of the size of the Royal Navy, condoning German rearmament in breach of Versailles.

The British company, largely owned by the British government, that produced Iran’s oil until nationalisation in 1951. It was renamed British Petroleum (BP) in 1954.

The alliance between Britain and Japan signed in 1902 and renewed in 1905 and 1911; Japan used it to enter the First World War in 1914, and it was replaced by the Four-Power Treaty and lapsed in 1923.

The treaty signed on 16 July 1894 under which Britain agreed to end extraterritoriality in Japan from 1899, the first revision of the unequal treaties.

The 1838 trade treaty that abolished Ottoman state monopolies and fixed low duties on British goods, opening the empire's markets to European trade.

The agreement of 31 August 1907 in which Britain and Russia settled their disputes over Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet, completing the Triple Entente with France.

The belief, widespread in Britain and the USA around 1900, that English-speaking peoples were racially superior and destined to spread their institutions across the world.

The northern warlord clique of Duan Qirui, which dominated the Beijing government with Japanese loans from 1916 until its defeat by the Zhili clique in 1920.

A group of French historians, named after the journal Annales founded in 1929, who studied long-term social, economic and geographical structures more than political events.

The incorporation of a territory into a state or empire. In the Aztec Empire it usually meant assigning a conquered region to a tribute province while its own rulers stayed in place.

The yearly royal ceremonies of Dahomey at which the king honoured his ancestors, distributed goods and displayed his power, including the sacrifice of some war captives.

The ceremony in which a new king was touched with holy oil by a bishop or pope, marking him as chosen by God, as the kings of the Old Testament had been.

The mass protests of 1959–1960 against the revision of the US–Japan Security Treaty, the largest in Japan's history; they forced the cancellation of Eisenhower's visit and the resignation of Prime Minister Kishi.

A Tunisian jihadist group founded in April 2011 by Seifallah Ben Hassine (Abu Iyadh). It attacked the US embassy in Tunis in September 2012 and was declared a terrorist organisation in August 2013.

The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938, forbidden by the peace treaties of 1919.

The repression of 1858–1859 in which the shogunate's chief minister Ii Naosuke punished daimyō, court nobles and activists who opposed his treaty and succession policies.

A proposed name for the period of Earth's history in which human activity has become the main influence on climate and ecosystems; suggested start dates include the late eighteenth century and the mid-twentieth century.

Gorbachev's campaign from May 1985 to cut drinking by reducing the production and sale of alcohol; it reduced deaths for a time but cost the state large tax revenues.

An agreement against the Communist International signed by Germany and Japan in November 1936 and joined by Italy in November 1937.

A middle-class pressure group founded in Manchester in 1838–1839 and led by Richard Cobden and John Bright, which campaigned successfully for the repeal of the Corn Laws and for free trade.

The campaign launched by Xi Jinping in 2012 against corrupt officials, both senior 'tigers' and junior 'flies'; it disciplined over a million officials and removed some of Xi's rivals.

The organisation founded by Alexei Navalny in 2011 to investigate corruption among Russian officials and publish the results online.

The Soviet campaign launched in 1949 against intellectuals accused of admiring the West; it was directed mainly against Jews, who lost jobs and cultural institutions.

The Burmese nationalist front formed in August 1944 and led by Aung San, which resisted the Japanese and then negotiated independence from Britain; it governed Burma until it split in 1958.

The official East German name for the Berlin Wall, presenting it as a defence against the West rather than a barrier to keep East Germans in.

A US organisation founded in 1898 that opposed the annexation of the Philippines and other overseas territories as a betrayal of American principles of self-government.

The name given to Malenkov, Molotov, Kaganovich and their allies after their failed attempt to remove Khrushchev in June 1957.

The programme run by UNHCR and Thailand from 1982 to 1991, funded by Western states, to protect boat people from pirates in the Gulf of Thailand through patrols, investigations and prosecutions.

The party founded by Francisco Madero in 1909 to oppose Díaz's re-election, under the slogan "Effective suffrage, no re-election". It nominated Madero for president in 1910.

The campaign in the Chinese Communist Party after the Lushan conference of 1959 against officials accused, like Peng Dehuai, of 'right deviation' for criticising the Great Leap Forward. It made officials afraid to report shortages and worsened the famine.

The Chinese campaign of 1957 that followed the Hundred Flowers, in which about 550,000 critics were labelled "rightists" and lost their jobs or were sent to labour camps.

The British society founded in 1823 to campaign for the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, after the slave trade had been abolished in 1807.

Organised opposition to vaccination, especially to compulsory vaccination laws, which grew in England from the 1860s and drew on distrust of the state, religious objections and fears about safety.

Opposition to the power and influence of the clergy and the Church in politics, education and public life. In revolutionary Mexico it was written into the Constitution of 1917 and enforced most strongly by Calles.

Hostility to, prejudice against or persecution of Jews as Jews. In the late nineteenth century older religious hostility was joined by a new racial and political antisemitism.

Hostility, prejudice and discrimination directed at Roma, Sinti and other groups labelled as "Gypsies".

The religious and political movement led by Kimpa Vita in Kongo from 1704, which taught that Jesus and the saints were Kongolese and called for the kingdom's reunification.

The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, formed in Egypt in 1914–1915 and first in action at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915; the word came to mean any Australian or New Zealand soldier of the First World War and the legend built around them.

The security treaty of 1951 between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, under which each agreed to consult and act to meet common dangers if any of them was attacked in the Pacific; the US suspended its obligations to New Zealand in 1986.

Afrikaans for "separateness": the system of racial classification and segregation enforced by law in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s.

The British and French policy of the 1930s of settling grievances, especially German ones, through negotiation and concession in order to avoid war.

The system that followed the abolition of slavery in most British colonies in 1834, under which most freed people had to keep working without pay for their former owners; it ended in 1838.

The American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, a populist and anti-imperialist party founded in 1924 by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre that became one of Peru's main parties.

An Egyptian activist group formed online in 2008 to support a planned strike at Mahalla al-Kubra; it helped to organise the protests of 25 January 2011.

The student-led protests in South Korea in April 1960 against the rigged elections of March 1960, which forced President Syngman Rhee to resign on 26 April 1960.

Lenin's programme of April 1917, which called for no support for the Provisional Government, an end to the war and the transfer of power to the soviets.

"Chosen women": girls selected by the Inca state to weave fine cloth and brew chicha in state enclosures, serve the Sun, or be given in marriage to nobles and kurakas.

The rivalry, so named by the political scientist Malcolm Kerr, between the revolutionary Arab republics led by Nasser’s Egypt and the conservative monarchies led by Saudi Arabia, from about 1958 to 1970. Its sharpest form was the war in Yemen.

The peacekeeping force authorised by Arab summits in October 1976 to end the fighting in Lebanon. Most of its troops were Syrian, and it gave legal cover to Syria’s military presence.

The leadership body of the Palestinian Arab parties formed in April 1936 under the Mufti; it led the Arab Revolt, was banned by Britain in 1937 and later rejected the UN partition plan.

The organisation of Arab states founded on 22 March 1945 by Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia (Yemen joined in May 1945) to coordinate their policies.

The volunteer force sent into Palestine by the Arab League in early 1948 under Fawzi al-Qawuqji.

The belief that the Arabic-speaking peoples form one nation that should be free of foreign control, whether within existing states or through the pan-Arab aim of political union; Nasser became its leading voice in the 1950s.

The Arab League plan of March 2002 offering normal relations with Israel in return for full withdrawal to the 1967 lines, a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and an agreed solution for refugees.

The rising against Ottoman rule launched in June 1916 by Sharif Hussein of Mecca with British support, which helped British forces take the Arab provinces.

The uprising of Palestinian Arabs against British rule and Jewish immigration, beginning with a six-month general strike in 1936 and becoming an armed rebellion in 1937–1939; it was crushed by British forces.

Egypt's single official political organisation from 1962, which followed the Liberation Rally (1953) and the National Union (1957).

The wave of protests and uprisings across the Arab world that began in Tunisia in December 2010 and spread to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain and elsewhere in 2011.

Land that can be ploughed and used to grow crops; in the Norse North Atlantic, meadow and pasture for hay mattered as much as fields.

The division of the West Bank under Oslo II (1995): Area A under full Palestinian control, Area B under Palestinian civil and Israeli security control, and Area C, about 60 per cent, under full Israeli control.

The descendants of the Moroccan soldiers who conquered Songhai in 1591, who ruled Timbuktu and the Niger bend as a military elite.

The deportation and mass killing of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire from 1915, in which most estimates put the dead at between about 600,000 and 1.5 million. Türkiye rejects the term genocide.

An agreement between the sides in a war to stop fighting while the terms of peace are worked out. It ends the fighting but is not itself a peace settlement.

The armistice of 30 October 1918 that ended the Ottoman Empire's part in the First World War and allowed the Allies to occupy the Straits and strategic points.

The Spanish army in Morocco, including the Foreign Legion and Moroccan Regulares; its professional troops, commanded by Franco from July 1936, were the core of the Nationalist forces.

The army raised by José de San Martín at Mendoza (1814–1817) that crossed the Andes in 1817 to liberate Chile and later took Lima.

Televised Senate hearings of April–June 1954 into McCarthy's conflict with the US Army, which turned public opinion against him and led to his censure by the Senate in December 1954.

A powerful religious oracle of the Aro people in the Bight of Biafra. People brought to it for judgement could be condemned to be sold, which made it part of the Aro network that supplied captives to the Atlantic trade.

The "arrangements" of 21 June 1929, mediated by US Ambassador Dwight Morrow, by which the Mexican government and the Catholic bishops ended the Cristero War. The laws stayed in force but were applied less harshly, and public worship resumed.

The education article of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which made public education secular and barred churches and clergy from running primary schools. An amendment of 1934 introduced "socialist education".

The article of the 1977 Soviet constitution that made the Communist Party the "leading and guiding force" of Soviet society; it was amended in March 1990, ending the party's legal monopoly.

The clause of Japan's 1947 constitution by which the Japanese people renounce war and the threat or use of force to settle international disputes.

The article of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 that made the nation the original owner of land, water and subsoil resources such as oil, allowed land to be granted to villages and limited foreign and Church ownership of property.

The article of the Weimar constitution that allowed the president to take emergency measures, including issuing decrees with the force of law and suspending civil rights, if public order and security were seriously threatened.

The article of the Soviet criminal code (from 1927) that defined "counter-revolutionary" crimes so broadly that it could be used against almost any criticism of the regime.

The labour article of the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which established an eight-hour day, a minimum wage, the right to organise and strike, protections for women and children and arbitration boards.

The article of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 that denied churches legal personality, required priests to register, allowed states to limit their number and barred them from voting or criticising the government.

The article of the Spanish constitution of 1978 that allows the government, with the approval of the Senate, to force an autonomous community to meet its obligations; it was used for the first time in Catalonia in October 2017.

The article of the Constitution of India that gave Jammu and Kashmir special autonomy, including its own constitution, and limited the Indian Parliament's power to legislate for it. It was effectively revoked in 2019.

The first constitution of the United States (ratified 1781), which created a weak Congress without power to tax or regulate trade; replaced by the Constitution in 1789.

The terms of the abdication of 1912, which let Puyi keep his title, live in the Forbidden City and receive a state allowance.

The peace agreements signed on 4 August 1993 between the Rwandan government and the RPF, providing for power-sharing, a merged army and the return of refugees.

A Hindu reform movement founded by Dayananda Saraswati in 1875, strongest in Punjab, which called for a return to the Vedas, rejected idol worship and caste by birth, and ran schools and reconversion campaigns.

The forced transfer of Jewish-owned businesses and property to non-Jewish owners in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe, usually at far below their value.

Group solidarity or social cohesion; in Ibn Khaldun’s theory (1377) the force that lets a people found a dynasty, and whose decline in city life leads to its fall.

The Queen Mother of Asante, a senior woman of the royal lineage who nominated candidates for the throne and sat in the councils of state.

The title of the king of Asante, who ruled from Kumasi as the occupant of the Golden Stool.

A strike by asbestos miners in Quebec in 1949 against American-owned companies, broken by Duplessis's police, which united unions, reform-minded Catholics and intellectuals against his government.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, founded in 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. In 1979 its members jointly refused to accept more Indochinese refugees without Western resettlement.

The Kazakh name for the famine of 1930–1933 caused by collectivisation and forced settlement, in which about 1.5 million Kazakhs died.

A multilateral development bank proposed by China in 2013 and founded in 2015 to finance infrastructure in Asia; many US allies joined despite American objections.

A contract by which the Spanish crown licensed a foreign merchant, company or state to supply enslaved Africans to its American colonies; held by Portuguese contractors (1595–1640) and later by the French and, from 1713, the British South Sea Company.

African soldiers serving in the colonial armies of Germany, Italy, Britain and Belgium in East Africa.

The title of the dynasty that ruled the Songhai empire from 1493 to 1591, founded by Askia Muhammad.

The European name for the Nizari Isma’ilis, a Shi’i movement with mountain fortresses in Iran and Syria that killed selected political and military leaders from the 1090s until the Mongols and Mamluks destroyed it in the 1250s–1270s.

The official Allied name for a camp where displaced persons were gathered, registered, fed and housed after 1945, usually before repatriation or resettlement.

A body of nobles, bishops and officials chosen by the king, called in 1787 (and again in 1788) to approve financial reforms; it refused to accept Calonne's land tax.

Paper bonds issued by the French revolutionary government from December 1789, backed by nationalised Church lands, which became paper money and lost most of their value through over-issue before being abandoned in 1796.

An African in a Portuguese colony who had been granted citizen status by showing that he spoke Portuguese, had a 'civilised' way of life and a regular income; fewer than 1 per cent of Africans.

A policy of absorbing a colonised or minority people into the ruling group's culture by replacing their language, education, customs and identity, as in French Africa or Japanese-ruled Korea. It rarely brought equal rights: very few Africans became French citizens, and Koreans stayed politically subordinate.

The Australian policy, official from the 1950s to the early 1970s, that expected migrants and Aboriginal people to give up their own languages and customs and live like other Australians; for Aboriginal people it was used to justify removing children from their families.

A royal decree or legal procedure in medieval England, such as the Assize of Clarendon of 1166.

The French colonial policy adopted from about 1905, under which most Africans remained subjects living under their own customs while French officials ruled them directly through appointed chiefs.

The Islamic reform movement founded in 1931 by Abd al-Hamid Ben Badis, which ran Arabic schools and argued that Algerians were a Muslim, Arabic-speaking nation that could never be French. It joined the FLN in 1956.

The dam on the Nile in southern Egypt, built with Soviet loans and engineers between 1960 and 1970. It ended the annual flood, allowed year-round irrigation and produced much of Egypt’s electricity, but stopped the silt that fertilised the land.

A Turkish title for a guardian or regent of a Seljuk prince who often ruled a province in his own right, as Zengi did in Mosul and Aleppo.

The name critics gave to Booker T. Washington's speech in Atlanta on 18 September 1895, in which he accepted social segregation in return for economic opportunity and education for African Americans.

A joint declaration of war aims by Churchill and Roosevelt in August 1941, promising the right of all peoples to choose their own form of government.

A strategy of wearing down the enemy's soldiers, equipment and will through continuous losses instead of seeking one decisive battle. It favours the side with greater reserves.

The people a source was made for. The intended audience shapes what a source says, how it says it and what it leaves out.

The statement of Lutheran beliefs drafted by Philipp Melanchthon and presented to Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530; it became the basic creed of the Lutheran churches.

The decrees of 4–11 August 1789 in which the National Assembly abolished the feudal system, the tithe, the sale of offices and tax privileges, ending the society of orders.

The failed attempt by pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet members of the North Korean Workers’ Party in August 1956 to criticise Kim Il Sung’s personality cult and policies. Kim defeated it and purged his critics.

The Compromise of 1867 between the Habsburg monarchy and Hungary that created Austria-Hungary, with separate governments for Austria and Hungary under one monarch.

The destruction of the Janissary corps by Mahmud II in June 1826, after it mutinied against his new army; it opened the way to military and administrative reform.

Government policy of cutting spending and raising taxes to reduce a budget deficit or debt.

Economic self-sufficiency: a policy of producing everything a country needs at home so that it does not depend on imports, pursued by Fascist Italy, by Nazi Germany from 1936 and by Franco's Spain in the 1940s.

Mobutu's campaign from 1971 to replace colonial and Christian names, dress and symbols with "authentic" African ones, renaming the country Zaire.

A form of rule in which power is concentrated in a leader, party, army or colonial administration that cannot be removed through free and fair elections, and that limits political opposition and civil liberties.

A system of government in which one person holds supreme power without legal limits, as the Russian tsar did.

A territory for a nationality inside a union republic (usually the RSFSR), with its own government but no right to leave the USSR.

The failed communist rising led by Mao Zedong in Hunan in September 1927, after which he took the survivors to the mountain base of Jinggangshan.

The German law of December 1916 that required all men aged 17 to 60 not in the armed forces to work in war-related employment, while giving trade unions a role in factory committees.

The withdrawal of about 120 opposition deputies from the Italian parliament in June 1924 in protest at the murder of Matteotti; it failed to bring Mussolini down, and the deputies were expelled in 1926.

An advanced Canadian-designed jet interceptor whose development was cancelled by the Diefenbaker government on 20 February 1959 because of its cost.

The alliance of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy announced by Mussolini in November 1936, later extended to Japan and other allies in the Second World War.

Ottoman provincial notables of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who collected taxes, raised private forces and often governed their districts almost independently.

A title for a senior Shi’a cleric recognised as an expert in Islamic law. The most senior, grand ayatollahs, act as sources of religious guidance whom ordinary believers follow.

An Andean kin community whose members claim a common ancestor, hold land together and exchange labour; the basic unit of Andean society.

Andean reciprocal labour between households: help given now and returned in kind later.

The legendary homeland of the Mexica, used by Chicano activists from 1969 as a name for the south-western United States as the homeland of the Chicano people.

An Arab nationalist and socialist ideology founded in Syria in the 1940s, calling for Arab unity, freedom and socialism. Rival Ba’ath parties ruled Syria from 1963 and Iraq from 1968 until 2003.

'Women's riots': protests led by peasant women in Soviet villages in 1929–1930 against collectivisation, for example to stop the removal of grain, livestock or church bells or to take back seed from collective farm stores.

The sharp rise in the birth rate in the United States after the Second World War, from 1946 to about 1964, peaking in 1957.

The result when repression of a movement produces more sympathy and support for it instead of less, usually because the attack is seen as unjust and becomes widely known.

A small brick furnace built by peasants and townspeople during the Great Leap Forward (1958) to make iron and steel; most of the metal produced was too poor to use.

A Western-backed defence alliance formed in 1955 by Iraq and Türkiye and joined by Britain, Pakistan and Iran. Nasser opposed it as a new form of imperialism; after Iraq left in 1959 it became the Central Treaty Organization.

A religion founded in nineteenth-century Iran that teaches the unity of all religions. Its followers are Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority and were persecuted as heretics after 1979.

A document of March 1957 by nine Hutu intellectuals, including Grégoire Kayibanda, that denounced the Tutsi "monopoly" of power and demanded the emancipation of the Hutu majority.

A rich livestock owner or wealthy man in Kazakh and Central Asian society; Soviet policy treated bai as class enemies and confiscated their herds from 1928.

Written Chinese based on the spoken language, which the New Culture Movement made the standard for modern literature and journalism in place of classical Chinese.

A salaried royal official appointed by Philip II of France from about 1190 to supervise justice and finance in the royal lands.

The government of the shogun (literally "tent government"), with its councils, officials and finances based in Edo.

The political order of Tokugawa Japan, combining the shogun's government (bakufu) with the semi-independent domains (han) of the daimyō.

The principle that no single state should become strong enough to dominate the others, so that peace is kept by an equilibrium between the great powers.

Richard Koo's term for a recession in which firms use their income to pay off debts after an asset bubble bursts instead of investing, so that low interest rates fail to revive the economy.

The British government's statement of 2 November 1917, in a letter from Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, favouring "a national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine while protecting the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities.

The alliance of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro formed in 1912 that drove the Ottoman Empire out of almost all its European territory in the First Balkan War.

'Rafters': Cubans who left the island for the United States on rafts and small boats, above all about 35,000 in August–September 1994 after Castro announced that the coastguard would not stop them.

An Egyptian Arabic term for hired thugs, used for the men paid by supporters of the Mubarak regime to attack protesters, as in the Battle of the Camel on 2 February 2011.

The resolution of the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (March 1921) that forbade organised groups inside the party from opposing its leadership's policy.

A member of the armed expeditions from São Paulo in colonial Brazil that explored the interior, captured Indigenous people as slaves and searched for gold in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

A term for the Russian economy of the 1990s, in which business, organised crime and violence were closely linked.

The conference of 29 Asian and African states held at Bandung, Indonesia, in April 1955, which condemned colonialism and called for cooperation among new states outside the Cold War blocs.

An order of the South African government, issued without trial, that restricted where a person could live and travel, whom they could meet and what they could publish; banned people could not be quoted.

The South African law of 1953 that placed African schooling under state control with a curriculum designed to prepare Africans for manual and subordinate work.

One of the ten ethnic 'homelands' created for Africans under grand apartheid; four were declared independent (1976–1981) but none was recognised by any other country.

A huge rectangular reservoir enclosed by earth banks, built by the Khmer kings at Angkor; historians debate how far barays served irrigation or religion.

A peasant in Mao's China given a few months' basic medical training to provide health care in a village, especially from 1968.

The Abbasid post and intelligence service, a network of relay stations and messengers that carried official letters and sent the caliph confidential reports on governors and officials.

An enclosure or barracks on the African coast in which captives were held, sometimes for weeks, while they waited to be sold and loaded on to slave ships.

The exchange of goods for other goods without money; in 1990s Russia it was widely used by enterprises to avoid taxes and make up for a shortage of cash.

A small group of poor Catholics who met to read the Bible and discuss their lives and communities, encouraged by liberation theology in Latin America from the late 1960s.

The programme adopted by the First Zionist Congress at Basel in August 1897, which declared the aim of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law.

The constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany, proclaimed on 23 May 1949.

The treaty of December 1972 in which West and East Germany recognised each other's existence and agreed to develop normal relations.

A volunteer militia created in Iran in November 1979 and placed under the Revolutionary Guards. Its volunteers fought in mass attacks in the Iran–Iraq War and it was later used to police morality and suppress protests.

The Soviet name for the armed Muslim resistance to Soviet rule in Central Asia from 1918 to the early 1930s, strongest in the Fergana valley and eastern Bukhara.

The main Basque nationalist party, Catholic and moderate, founded in 1895; it has led most Basque governments since 1980.

The programme of José Batlle y Ordóñez in Uruguay (president 1903–1907 and 1911–1915): a democratic welfare state with labour laws, state enterprises, secular education and limits on presidential power.

Mussolini's campaign from 1927 to raise Italy's birth rate through taxes on bachelors and rewards for large families.

Mussolini’s campaign from 1925 to make Italy self-sufficient in wheat through tariffs, subsidies and propaganda; it raised wheat output at the cost of other crops and dearer bread.

The Fascist programme of land reclamation, above all the draining of the Pontine Marshes near Rome in the 1930s, used as propaganda for the regime’s energy.

Mussolini’s revaluation of the lira from 1926, fixing it at about 92 to the pound in 1927; it served national prestige but hurt exports and wages.

The battle of 1 March 1896 in which Menelik II's Ethiopian army defeated an Italian invasion force, securing Ethiopia's independence.

The failed invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained Cuban exiles in April 1961, which strengthened Castro's position and his alliance with the USSR.

A series of seventeenth-century wars in which the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, armed by Dutch and English traders, fought French-allied Indigenous nations for control of the fur trade; they destroyed the Wendat (Huron) confederacy in 1649.

The modern, Western-trained army built in north China by Yuan Shikai from 1895; its officers backed Yuan in 1911–1916 and after his death led the northern warlord cliques.

The modern Qing navy of north China built up by Li Hongzhang and formally established in 1888; it was destroyed in the war with Japan in 1894–1895.

The agreement of 8 December 1991 in which the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus declared that the USSR had ceased to exist and created the Commonwealth of Independent States.

China's programme of investment in transport, energy and industry abroad, announced by Xi Jinping in Astana in September 2013.

Decrees issued by the Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš in 1945 that, among other things, removed citizenship from most Germans and Hungarians in Czechoslovakia and confiscated their property.

A famine in the Bengal province of British India in 1943 in which an estimated two to three million people died, worsened by wartime policies on food supply and distribution.

The supply of West Berlin by American and British aircraft during the Soviet blockade of 1948–1949, about 2.3 million tonnes in some 278,000 flights.

The Soviet closure of land routes to the western sectors of Berlin from June 1948 to May 1949, answered by a western airlift.

The international conference of November 1884 to February 1885 that settled free trade in the Congo basin, recognised Leopold II's Congo state and set rules for future claims on the African coast.

An Anglo-American conference on refugees held in April 1943 that produced almost no rescue measures.

A homeless or abandoned child in Soviet Russia in the 1920s; millions were left orphaned or abandoned by war, famine and family breakdown.

A British government report of December 1942 by William Beveridge that proposed a national insurance system to attack the 'five giants' of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

A devotional movement in Indian religion that stressed personal love for God over ritual, priests and caste, expressed in vernacular poetry by saints such as Kabir, Mirabai and Tulsidas.

Distortion or one-sided selection in an account that misrepresents what happened, whether deliberate or not. A biased source is still evidence, above all of its author's views and aims.

In New Zealand, the idea that the country rests on a partnership between Māori and the Crown (and Pākehā) under the Treaty of Waitangi, which should be reflected in law, language and institutions.

In Islamic thought, an innovation in religious belief or practice without basis in the Qur'an or the example of the Prophet; some scholars used the idea to condemn new practices, while others distinguished acceptable from unacceptable innovations.

The middle-class culture of Germany and Austria between 1815 and 1848, centred on home, family, music and private life.

The left's name for the period 1933–1935 in Spain, when centre-right governments supported by the CEDA slowed or reversed the reforms of 1931–1933; the right called it the bienio rectificador.

The first period of the Second Republic (1931–1933), when governments of left Republicans and Socialists led by Azaña reformed the army, Church, land, education and regional government.

The "two red years" of 1919–1920 in Italy, a wave of strikes, land seizures and factory occupations that frightened property owners and helped the growth of Fascism.

Theodore Roosevelt's approach to foreign policy: calm negotiation backed by the open threat of military, especially naval, force, above all in the Caribbean.

Quebec's Charter of the French Language (26 August 1977), which made French the only official language of Quebec and required French in commerce, work and, for most immigrants' children, schooling.

The Canadian law of 1985 that ended the Indian Act’s rule taking status away from First Nations women who married men without status, and restored status to those who had lost it.

A section of a constitution, or a separate law, that lists the rights of citizens and protects them against the government; South Africa's Bill of Rights forms chapter 2 of its 1996 Constitution.

The Zionist programme adopted in New York in May 1942 that openly demanded that Palestine become a Jewish commonwealth with Jewish control of immigration.

The electoral system created under Pinochet's 1980 Constitution in which each district elected two members, so that a bloc with one-third of the vote could win half the seats; it protected the right in Chile until its abolition in 2015.

The Uzbek popular front founded in 1988 that campaigned for the Uzbek language, the environment and reform; it was banned after independence.

The armed clash of July 1961 when Tunisia tried to force France out of its naval base at Bizerte; several hundred Tunisians or more were killed, and France left the base in 1963.

The merged British and American occupation zones of Germany from 1 January 1947, joined by the French zone in 1949 (Trizonia); the core of the later West German state.

Laws passed by Southern states in 1865–1866 to control the labour, movement and legal rights of freed African Americans.

The movement led by Steve Biko from the late 1960s, which argued that Black South Africans must free themselves from the sense of inferiority created by white rule and lead their own struggle.

The pandemic of plague that swept across western Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe between 1346 and 1353, killing perhaps a third to a half or more of the population.

A Japanese ultranationalist society founded in 1901 by Uchida Ryōhei that sought to drive Russia beyond the Amur River and expand Japanese influence in Asia, using intelligence work, propaganda and intimidation.

South African government policies, made law in 2003, that encourage businesses to increase Black ownership, management and employment in order to reduce the economic inequality left by apartheid.

18 November 1910, when police and bystanders assaulted about 300 suffragettes marching to Parliament in London over six hours; 115 women and four men were arrested.

A secret Serbian nationalist society of army officers, founded in 1911 and led by Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, which helped arm the assassins of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914.

Russian monarchist and antisemitic groups formed after 1905 that attacked Jews, students and revolutionaries.

A decentralised movement against police violence and racism towards Black people, begun as a hashtag in July 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi; it led the mass protests of 2020.

A revolutionary Black nationalist party founded in Oakland, California, in October 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, known for armed patrols to watch the police and for community programmes such as free breakfasts for children.

The slogan and movement, popular from 1966, that called on Black Americans to build their own political, economic and cultural power and to defend themselves, instead of relying on integration and white allies.

The fighting of September 1970 in which the Jordanian army defeated the Palestinian guerrilla groups and drove the PLO out of Jordan; also the name of a Palestinian group that carried out the Munich attack of 1972.

The arrest and sentencing of 75 Cuban dissidents, independent journalists and librarians in March 2003, many to more than twenty years in prison.

A list of people to be refused employment because of their political views or associations, such as the Hollywood blacklist of suspected communists in the late 1940s and 1950s.

Germany's promise of 5–6 July 1914 to support Austria-Hungary fully in whatever action it took against Serbia after the Sarajevo assassination.

The violent conflict in Kansas Territory from 1854 to 1859 between pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers over whether Kansas would become a slave state or a free state.

The German bombing of British cities between September 1940 and May 1941, which killed about 43,000 civilians.

The name given to the fast German campaigns of 1939–1941 that combined tanks, motorised infantry and aircraft to break through and advance deep into enemy territory.

A Quebec sovereigntist party in the Canadian federal Parliament, founded in 1990–1991 by Lucien Bouchard after the failure of the Meech Lake Accord; it was the Official Opposition from 1993 to 1997.

The use of naval or military forces to stop goods and people entering or leaving an enemy's ports or territory, in order to weaken its economy and war effort.

A small fortified strongpoint; in the fifth encirclement campaign of 1933–1934 the Nationalists built thousands of them linked by roads to tighten a blockade around the Jiangxi Soviet.

The false accusation, spread in medieval and early modern Europe, that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals; it led to torture, executions and massacres of Jewish communities.

Rural risings of 1873 against conscription and other reforms, named after the phrase "blood tax" in the conscription ordinance, which rumour took literally.

An administrative discharge from the US armed forces, neither honourable nor dishonourable, given during the Second World War to many gay and lesbian service members; it cost them veterans' benefits and carried a lasting stigma.

The division of Spanish volunteers, about 45,000 in total, who fought for Germany against the Soviet Union in 1941–1943.

A secret society of Whampoa graduates founded in 1932 that admired fascism, promoted loyalty to Jiang Jieshi and carried out covert operations against his enemies.

A French plan of 1936 to give citizenship to about 25,000 educated Algerian Muslims without requiring them to give up their Muslim personal status. Settler opposition prevented it from reaching a vote.

A British government board created by Pitt’s India Act (1784) to supervise the East India Company’s political, military and revenue affairs.

Refugees who fled by sea in small or overcrowded boats; the term was first widely used for those who left Vietnam after 1975.

The number of enemy dead reported after an operation, used by the US military in Vietnam to measure progress in a war without front lines. It encouraged inflated figures and the counting of civilians as enemies.

Iron ore that forms in bogs and wetlands, which the Norse smelted in small furnaces to make iron, as at L'Anse aux Meadows.

The days of rioting and destruction in Bogotá, Colombia, that followed the assassination of the Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on 9 April 1948, during the conference that founded the OAS.

Laws passed by the US Congress in 1982 and 1984 restricting and then banning US military aid to the Contras in Nicaragua.

Hugo Chávez's political project in Venezuela from 1999, named after Simón Bolívar: a new constitution, oil-funded social programmes, state control of the economy and the concentration of power in the presidency.

A member of the Marxist party led by Vladimir Lenin, which seized power in Russia in October (November) 1917 and later took the name Communist Party.

Rule by a strong leader who takes power after revolution or disorder, claims to stand above parties and classes, and seeks approval through plebiscites, as Napoleon I and Napoleon III did.

A free farmer in Norse society: the head of a household who owned or rented land, could bear arms and had the right to speak at the thing.

The agreement signed by Afghan anti-Taliban groups at a UN conference near Bonn on 5 December 2001, which set up an interim administration under Hamid Karzai and a timetable for a new constitution and elections.

About 15,000–20,000 First World War veterans who camped in Washington in 1932 to demand early payment of a promised bonus. The army drove them out on 28 July 1932.

A tax-exempt revolutionary foundation in Iran, such as the Foundation of the Oppressed, set up after 1979 with property taken from the Pahlavi family and the old elite. Bonyads run large businesses and charities and answer to the Supreme Leader.

The slave states that stayed in the Union during the US Civil War: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, joined by West Virginia in 1863.

The civil war of January 1868 to June 1869 in which the forces of the new imperial government, led by Satsuma and Chōshū, defeated supporters of the Tokugawa.

An enslaved person in Saint-Domingue who had been born in Africa; most were field labourers.

The destruction of 342 chests of East India Company tea in Boston harbour by colonists on 16 December 1773, in protest against the Tea Act.

Reforms by the Spanish Bourbon kings, above all Charles III (1759–1788), to increase royal control and revenue in the Americas through intendants, new taxes, monopolies and appointments of peninsulares.

The urban middle class of merchants, professionals, officials and property owners who lived from trade, office or investment rather than manual labour or noble title.

The settlement of 7 September 1901 that ended the Boxer war, imposing an indemnity of 450 million taels, foreign garrisons in Beijing and the punishment of officials.

The anti-foreign and anti-Christian movement of 1899–1901 in north China, backed by the Qing court in 1900, which led to the siege of the Beijing legations and foreign occupation of the capital.

A refusal to buy, use or deal with something, such as goods, a service, a business or an institution, as a form of protest or pressure.

The agreement between the USA and Mexico, begun in 1942, under which Mexican workers were contracted for farm and railway work in the USA; it lasted until 1964.

A Hindu reform society founded in Calcutta by Rammohan Roy in 1828, which promoted a monotheistic, rational form of Hinduism and campaigned against practices such as sati and caste discrimination.

The Brazilian army force of about 25,000 troops that fought in Italy in 1944–1945.

A meeting of French colonial officials in January–February 1944 that recommended reforms in French Africa but rejected self-government for the colonies.

A riot by people, often women, protesting against the price or shortage of food, usually by seizing bread and other goods from shops, as in Richmond, Virginia, in April 1863.

The Soviet claim, made after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, that socialist states had the right to intervene by force when socialism was threatened in any of them.

The underground network (Hebrew for "flight") that moved Jewish survivors out of Eastern Europe to the DP camps of the western zones and towards Palestine in 1944–1948.

The armed rebellion and banditry in the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 1861 to about 1865, suppressed by the Italian army.

The British plan of 1950, drawn up by Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Briggs, to defeat the communist insurgency in Malaya by moving about 500,000 rural Chinese into guarded New Villages and cutting the guerrillas off from supplies.

The policy of pushing a dangerous situation to the edge of war in order to force an opponent to back down, associated with John Foster Dulles.

The programme agreed in December 1939 under which Canada trained aircrew from Britain and the Commonwealth for the Second World War.

The British law of 29 March 1867 that created the Dominion of Canada from 1 July 1867 as a federation of Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with a strong central parliament and provincial legislatures.

British rule over India from 1858 to 1947, through a viceroy responsible to the British government.

A secret society of Afrikaner nationalist men founded in 1918 that worked to advance Afrikaner interests in politics, education, culture and business and had great influence in National Party governments.

The 1956 federal court case, upheld by the US Supreme Court in November 1956, that ruled segregation on Montgomery's buses unconstitutional.

The US Supreme Court decision of 17 May 1954 that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

The declaration of 25 July 1792 by the Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Austrian and Prussian armies, threatening Paris with destruction if the French royal family was harmed; it helped provoke the overthrow of the monarchy.

The international agreement of 1890 committing the powers to suppress the slave trade in Africa and restricting the import of modern firearms into much of the continent.

The fifty-year defence pact signed in March 1948 by Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, a forerunner of NATO.

The period of about 1986–1991 in which Japanese share and land prices rose far above their real value, fuelled by low interest rates and bank lending; its collapse left banks and firms with huge debts.

Agreements of August 1923 between Mexico and the USA under which Mexico accepted that Article 27 would not be applied retroactively to oil rights acquired before 1917 and agreed to compensate US landowners, in return for US recognition of Obregón.

The amount by which a government's spending is greater than its revenue in a year, which must be covered by borrowing or printing money.

The first modern Indonesian nationalist organisation, founded on 20 May 1908 by Javanese medical students to promote education and Javanese culture.

A belt of territory or states between two powers that protects one of them from attack; after 1945 Stalin sought one in Eastern Europe.

The agreement of 1900 in which Britain recognised Buganda's government and parliament and gave its chiefs large areas of freehold land in return for their cooperation.

Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph's term (1987) for India's middling owner-cultivators, who farmed with family labour and bullocks or small tractors, gained from the Green Revolution and became a powerful political interest.

"Civilisation and enlightenment": the early Meiji movement to adopt Western institutions, learning and customs.

Guillermo O'Donnell's term for the military regimes of the 1960s and 1970s in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, ruled by the armed forces as institutions with technocrats, which excluded the organised working class in order to restore economic growth.

The political truce in Germany from August 1914, under which parties, including the Social Democrats, and trade unions agreed to suspend conflict and support the war.

A railway of about 415 km built by the Japanese in 1942–1943 using Allied prisoners of war and Asian forced labourers, of whom about 12,000 prisoners and about 90,000 labourers died.

The Gold Coast constitution of 1946, named after Governor Alan Burns, which gave Africans a majority in the Legislative Council, though most were chosen by chiefs' councils rather than elected directly.

A German student fraternity of the kind founded at Jena in 1815, campaigning for a united and constitutional Germany; banned by the Carlsbad Decrees.

The idea, popularised by The Bulletin writers of the 1890s and analysed by Russel Ward in 1958, that the typical Australian was an independent, anti-authoritarian bushman loyal to his mates.

The US Supreme Court ruling of 12 December 2000 that stopped the recount of votes in Florida by five votes to four, giving George W. Bush the presidency.

Transporting pupils by bus to schools outside their neighbourhoods to end racial segregation in schools; approved by the US Supreme Court in 1971 and limited by it in 1974.

Buying shares with a small down payment and a loan from a broker for the rest. When prices fall, brokers demand more money, forcing investors who cannot pay to sell.

A cowshed; in Norse Greenland, cattle were kept in turf-walled byres for up to seven months and fed on stored hay.

A person who neither takes part in persecution nor acts against it; one of the three categories (with perpetrators and victims) used by the historian Raul Hilberg.

The Greek-speaking, Christian continuation of the Roman Empire in the east, ruled from Constantinople until its capture by the Ottomans in 1453.

The delegation of three British Cabinet ministers sent to India in 1946, whose plan of 16 May 1946 proposed a united India with a weak centre and three groups of provinces as an alternative to partition.

A local political boss who controls a town or district through patronage, family networks and force and acts as the link between villages and higher authorities, especially in Mexico, Latin America and Spain, where the system was called caciquismo.

In Communist China, a party or government official, from a village party secretary to a minister; cadres carried out the party's policies and campaigns.

"Coffee with milk": the arrangement in Brazil's Old Republic (1889–1930) by which the elites of São Paulo (coffee) and Minas Gerais (dairy) usually alternated the presidency.

The lists of grievances and proposals drawn up by parishes, guilds and electoral assemblies of the three estates in the spring of 1789 for their deputies to take to the Estates-General.

The agreement of 3 November 1969, brokered by Nasser, between the Lebanese army and the PLO, which allowed armed Palestinian groups to operate from camps and parts of southern Lebanon.

British laws of 1700 and 1721 that banned the import and then the sale and wearing of most printed Indian cotton cloth, to protect English wool and silk producers.

The Islamic state ruled by a caliph (khalifa, "successor"), who claimed to lead the whole Muslim community as successor to the Prophet Muhammad, with authority over its government, army and public religion.

The decree of June 1926 by President Calles that enforced the anticlerical articles of the Constitution with criminal penalties, including registration of priests and a ban on clerical dress in public. It led the bishops to suspend public worship and helped spark the Cristero War.

The 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2015) to governments, churches and other institutions on child welfare, education, language, health, justice and commemoration.

A temple school, mainly for the sons of nobles, that trained priests, judges and officials in religion, history, the calendar and the reading of painted books.

A Mexica steward placed in a conquered town to collect tribute and send it to the capitals of the Triple Alliance.

A ward or neighbourhood of an Aztec town that held land in common and had its own temple, school and military unit.

The form of Protestantism based on the teaching of John Calvin in Geneva, stressing God's sovereignty, predestination and the moral discipline of the church community; it spread to France, the Netherlands, Scotland and parts of Germany.

Historians, mainly at Cambridge in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Anil Seal and Gordon Johnson, who explained Indian nationalism as the result of competition among Indian elites for the power and patronage created by British reforms.

The German and Austrian science of state administration, taught in universities from the eighteenth century, which aimed to increase the ruler’s revenue, population and economic strength.

The two frameworks agreed by Sadat and Begin with Carter at Camp David in September 1978, which led to the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty of 1979 and proposed Palestinian autonomy.

The Chinese Communist campaign of 1950–1951 against former Guomindang officials, secret societies and alleged enemies of the new regime, in which hundreds of thousands were executed.

The resistance movement (1885–c. 1896) in which Vietnamese scholar-officials fought the French conquest in the name of the boy emperor Ham Nghi.

The contributory public pension for Canadian workers created in 1965; Quebec runs its own parallel Quebec Pension Plan.

The agreement signed in January 1988 that removed most tariffs between Canada and the USA from 1 January 1989; it was the main issue of the 1988 Canadian election and was extended into NAFTA in 1994.

The part of Canada's Constitution Act, 1982 that protects fundamental freedoms and democratic, legal, equality and language rights, and allows courts to strike down laws that break them.

The private railway, chartered in 1881 with large government grants of money and land, that linked eastern Canada to British Columbia; the last spike was driven on 7 November 1885.

An Afro-Brazilian religion, centred in Bahia, that combines West African, especially Yoruba, worship of spirits (orixás) with elements of Catholicism.

The arbitration of 1861 by Lord Canning, Viceroy of India, which confirmed the division of Sayyid Said's lands into separate sultanates of Oman and Zanzibar.

The rules, in force from 1757 to 1842, under which Western trade with China was confined to Canton and conducted only through licensed Chinese merchants, with strict limits on foreigners' movements and contacts.

The Prussian system of recruitment (1733) that gave each regiment a district from which it conscripted peasants, who trained for part of the year and worked their land for the rest.

An Inca ceremony in which children were sacrificed, often on mountain summits, at great state occasions or in times of crisis.

An economic system based on private ownership of property and businesses, markets and the pursuit of profit.

A person, usually a party official, accused in the Cultural Revolution of 'taking the capitalist road' by favouring markets, incentives or expertise over class struggle.

A written royal order or law of the Carolingian rulers, divided into chapters (capitula).

The name Iranian opponents gave to the law of October 1964 that exempted US military personnel and their families from Iranian courts, recalling the legal privileges forced on Iran by European powers in the nineteenth century.

Legal and commercial privileges granted by the Ottoman sultans to European states, which by the nineteenth century exempted foreigners and their protégés from Ottoman courts and many taxes; abolished in 1914 and finally at Lausanne in 1923.

The agreement of 17 April 1492 between Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, granting him the titles of admiral and governor of any lands he found and a tenth of the profits.

The labour system in Saint-Domingue, especially under Toussaint Louverture, in which free cultivators were bound to plantations and supervised by army officers to keep exports flowing.

The resolution of the Tenth Inter-American Conference (March 1954) declaring that control of any American state by the international communist movement would threaten all; it was aimed at Guatemala.

A Chilean army delegation that travelled through the provinces in October 1973 and executed nearly a hundred political prisoners without trial.

A small, manoeuvrable sailing ship with triangular (lateen) sails developed by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century, able to sail close to the wind on voyages along the African coast.

Secret revolutionary societies in early nineteenth-century Italy, mainly of officers and professional men, that sought constitutions and an end to foreign rule; behind the risings of 1820–1821.

A Spanish traditionalist movement that began in the 1830s in support of a rival Bourbon line and stood for an ultra-Catholic, anti-liberal monarchy; its militia, the Requetés, fought for the Nationalists in 1936–1939.

Measures passed by the German Federal Diet in September 1819 at Metternich's urging, imposing censorship, supervising universities, banning the Burschenschaften and creating a commission to investigate revolutionaries.

The military coup of 25 April 1974 that overthrew the Estado Novo dictatorship in Portugal and led to the independence of its African colonies.

A clear script of separated lower-case letters developed in the Carolingian period, the ancestor of modern lower-case letters.

The revival of learning, writing and the arts sponsored by Charlemagne and his successors in the late eighth and ninth centuries.

An insulting name used by white Southern Democrats for Northerners who moved to the South during Reconstruction, implying that they came only to profit from the region's defeat.

The African labourers used in their hundreds of thousands by Britain and Germany in the East African campaign of the First World War to carry supplies on foot; tens of thousands died.

President Carter’s declaration of 23 January 1980, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, that the United States would use military force to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf.

The House of Trade, founded in Seville in 1503, which licensed, taxed and controlled all Spanish trade and shipping with the Americas.

An anarcho-syndicalist workers' organisation founded in Mexico City in 1912. In February 1915 it allied with Carranza and supplied the Red Battalions in return for support for unions; Carranza suppressed it after the 1916 general strike.

The rule of the US Neutrality Act of November 1939 that countries at war could buy US arms if they paid cash and carried them in their own ships.

A crop grown to be sold, usually for export, rather than eaten by the farmer's household, such as cocoa, groundnuts, cotton or coffee.

A soldier killed, wounded, captured or missing in war; casualty figures are therefore higher than figures for deaths.

The British law of 1913 that allowed hunger-striking suffragettes to be released from prison when they became ill and re-arrested once they had recovered.

A member of a heretical movement strong in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which believed in two principles of good and evil.

A political and military strongman who holds power through personal loyalty, patronage and armed force more than through institutions, as many nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American leaders did; Franco took Caudillo as his title in Spain.

A sequence of events in which each is a consequence of the one before and a cause of the one after.

The relationship between causes and their effects. In history, explaining causation means showing how earlier conditions, actions and events led to a later event.

A raised road built across water or marsh. Tenochtitlan was joined to the shore by causeways with removable bridges, which also acted as dikes.

The faction of the brothers Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu that controlled the Guomindang party organisation under Jiang Jieshi.

An agreement to halt military operations, sometimes only in one area or for a set time, usually as a first step towards negotiations.

The Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing Groups, a mass Catholic party founded in 1933 under José María Gil-Robles; the largest party in the Cortes after the 1933 election.

The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, adopted in 1979, which commits states to end discrimination against women in law and practice.

The branch of imperial Chinese government that investigated officials for misconduct and could criticise policy to the emperor.

Control by an authority over what may be published, broadcast or said, so that some information and views are suppressed.

The US intelligence agency created by the National Security Act of 1947, responsible for gathering intelligence abroad and, from 1948, for covert operations.

The civil war of 1930 in which Feng Yuxiang, Yan Xishan and the Guangxi clique, with Wang Jingwei's support, fought Jiang Jieshi; Jiang won when Zhang Xueliang sided with him.

The term used by Chinese nationalists for the period from the First Opium War (1839) to 1949, when China was defeated and dominated by foreign powers.

One of the imaginary lines radiating from the Coricancha in Cuzco that linked more than 300 shrines (huacas), each cared for by a particular kin group.

Argentina's General Confederation of Labour, the trade union federation that became the organised base of Peronism.

The Mongol successor state in Central Asia ruled by the descendants of Chinggis Khan's son Chagatai, from which Timur rose in the 1360s.

The French offensive of 1959–1960 under General Maurice Challe, in which mobile forces with helicopters destroyed ALN units inside Algeria region by region.

Early-ripening, drought-tolerant rice varieties originally from the kingdom of Champa in central Vietnam, spread in Song China after 1012; they allowed two harvests a year in many southern regions.

The crisis of September 1922 when Britain asked the dominions to send troops against Turkey; Canada's refusal to commit automatically showed its new independence in foreign policy.

A difference between the way things were at one point in time and the way they were at a later point.

Max Weber's term for power that rests on followers' belief in the exceptional qualities of a leader, as opposed to tradition or law.

A package of constitutional reforms agreed in August 1992, including a distinct society clause, Senate reform and Indigenous self-government, rejected in a national referendum on 26 October 1992.

The Czechoslovak human rights movement founded in January 1977 by Václav Havel, Jan Patočka and others, which called on the government to respect the rights it had accepted at Helsinki.

One of the British laws (1793, 1813, 1833, 1853) that renewed the East India Company’s charter and changed its powers; the 1813 Act ended its monopoly of trade with India and the 1833 Act ended its trading altogether.

The five-article statement of aims sworn by Emperor Meiji on 6 April 1868, promising deliberative assemblies, unity of all classes, the end of evil customs and the search for knowledge abroad.

The Fascist declaration of April 1927 that set out the principles of the corporate state: labour as a social duty, private enterprise as the most efficient means of production, and state intervention where it failed.

Henry I's charter of 1100 promising to end abuses of royal power; it served as a model for Magna Carta.

A declaration signed in Stuttgart on 5 August 1950 by leaders of German expellee associations, renouncing revenge and demanding equal rights, compensation and a "right to the homeland".

Catherine II’s charter of 1785 confirming Russian nobles’ freedom from compulsory service, personal taxation and corporal punishment, their right to own land and serfs, and their corporate assemblies.

A private company given a charter by its government to acquire, govern and exploit a territory, with powers to make treaties, tax and keep armed forces, such as the British South Africa Company.

A British working-class movement (1838–c. 1858) named after the People's Charter of 1838, which demanded the vote for all men, secret ballots, annual parliaments and other democratic reforms.

A relay runner who carried messages and khipus between stations on the Inca roads.

A system in which enslaved people are the legal property of their owners, can be bought, sold and inherited, and pass their status on to their children.

A levy of one quarter of the land revenue that the Marathas demanded from territories outside their direct rule in return for not raiding them; sardeshmukhi was an additional tenth.

Constitutional arrangements by which each branch of government can limit the others, such as a presidential veto or a legislature’s power to confirm judges.

An African chief appointed by the French to run a canton (a group of villages), collecting tax and recruiting labour and soldiers.

The Soviet political police founded in December 1917 to fight "counter-revolution"; it carried out the Red Terror and was later renamed and reorganised several times.

Weapons that use toxic chemicals, such as mustard gas or nerve agents, to kill or injure. Banned in war by the Geneva Protocol of 1925 and prohibited entirely by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993; Iraq used them widely in 1983–1988.

Marathi royal title ("lord of the umbrella") taken by Shivaji at his coronation in 1674 to proclaim an independent Maratha kingdom.

Forced labour in Portuguese Mozambique, imposed on Africans who could not prove that they were employed or had paid their taxes.

Chilean economists, many trained at the University of Chicago, who ran economic policy under Pinochet from 1975 and introduced free-market reforms: cuts in spending, privatisation, free trade and private pensions.

The ideology of the Chicano movement: pride in Mexican and Indigenous heritage and a demand for Chicano self-determination in education, culture and politics.

The anti-Vietnam War march of 20,000–30,000 Mexican Americans in East Los Angeles on 29 August 1970, broken up by police; the journalist Rubén Salazar was killed that day.

The civil rights movement of Mexican Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, which campaigned for farm workers' rights, bilingual education, political representation and pride in Mexican American identity.

Maize beer brewed in the Andes, central to Inca feasts, rituals and the hospitality the state offered to workers.

The armed rising of indebted farmers in Chichibu, north-west of Tokyo, in October–November 1884, crushed by the army; the largest rural revolt of the Meiji period.

A whip of dried hippopotamus hide used to flog Africans in the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo, where it remained in use until the 1950s.

A society led by a hereditary chief who controls several villages, with ranked families but no full state bureaucracy; e.g. Cahokia.

Work by children that is harmful to their health, safety, schooling or development; historians use the term especially for children's work in the mills and mines of the Industrial Revolution.

The number of girls for every 1,000 boys aged 0 to 6 in a population; a very low figure, as in Punjab's 798 in 2001, suggests discrimination against girls before or after birth.

The US law of April 1948 that authorised a package of about 460 million dollars in economic and military aid for the Nationalist government.

The US State Department's collection of documents published in August 1949 to explain American policy in China; its introduction argued that the Nationalists had lost the civil war through their own failures.

An approach, set out by Paul Cohen in 1984, that explains modern Chinese history mainly through internal Chinese problems and experiences rather than the Western impact.

A raised field built from layers of mud and vegetation in a shallow freshwater lake and surrounded by canals, which allowed intensive farming with several harvests a year.

The party founded in Shanghai in July 1921 that, under Mao Zedong's leadership, won the civil war and has ruled the People's Republic of China since 1949.

Xi Jinping's slogan, from 2012, for the 'great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation': restoring China's wealth, power and status under Communist Party leadership.

The US law of 6 May 1882 that suspended the immigration of Chinese labourers and barred Chinese immigrants from citizenship; it was extended in 1892, made permanent in 1902 and repealed in 1943.

About 140,000 Chinese workers recruited by Britain and France in the First World War to dig trenches, unload ships and do other labour behind the Western Front.

The name given to the Chinese army that entered the Korean War from October 1950 under Peng Dehuai. Calling them volunteers allowed China to fight without formally declaring war on the United States.

The secret party founded by Sun Yixian in Tokyo in 1914, whose members swore personal loyalty to him; it was renamed the Guomindang in 1919.

The communist state proclaimed at Ruijin in Jiangxi on 7 November 1931, with Mao Zedong as chairman of its government; it governed the Jiangxi Soviet and other base areas until 1934.

A Korean term for Koreans who collaborated with Japanese colonial rule; their punishment and legacy became a lasting political issue in South Korea.

The North Korean mass campaign of the late 1950s, named after a mythical winged horse, that mobilised workers to raise output rapidly through competition and heroic effort.

The agreement of 27 June 1973 by which Harry Nkumbula brought his African National Congress into UNIP, completing Zambia's move to a one-party state.

The form of humanism, strongest in northern Europe, that used classical scholarship and the study of texts in their original languages to reform Christian life and return to the Bible and the early Church.

A script that adapted Chinese characters to write the Vietnamese language, used for literature from the Trần period onwards.

Freeze-dried potato made by exposing potatoes to frost at night and sun by day in the Andes; it could be stored for years.

A member of the group of technocratic advisers around Porfirio Díaz from the 1890s, led by the finance minister José Yves Limantour, who believed in government by experts and in positivist ideas of order and progress.

The second office in the Mexica state after the tlatoani, responsible for justice, finance and the city's internal affairs. Tlacaelel held it under Itzcoatl and Moctezuma I.

The rising of unskilled wool workers in Florence in 1378, who briefly took over the government and demanded their own guilds before the elite regained control.

Adult education classes designed by Septima Clark and run by the Highlander Folk School and later the SCLC, which taught Black southerners to read and write so that they could pass voter registration tests.

An independent state made up of a city and the surrounding farmland and villages it controls, with its own ruler and institutions. Classic Maya kingdoms and the altepetl of central Mexico were city-states.

The humanism of Florentine chancellors such as Salutati and Bruni, which praised active participation in the life of a free republic on Roman models; the term was made famous by the historian Hans Baron.

The code of French civil law issued by Napoleon in 1804, which confirmed equality before the law, secular civil status and property rights while strengthening the authority of fathers and husbands; introduced across much of Europe.

An official sent from revolutionary France with special powers to govern a colony and carry out the laws of the Assembly, above the governor.

The law of 12 July 1790 that reorganised the Catholic Church in France, with dioceses matching the departments and elected, state-paid clergy; the oath to it, required from November 1790, split the clergy.

The deliberate, open and non-violent breaking of a law that protesters consider unjust, with acceptance of the legal penalty.

The mass campaign led by Gandhi and Congress in 1930–1934, opened by the Salt March, in which Indians broke the salt and forest laws, refused taxes and boycotted British goods.

The use of non-violent methods such as protests, boycotts, strikes and non-cooperation by ordinary people to challenge those in power, for example to remove a government, without the use of arms.

A US federal law signed on 2 July 1964 that outlawed segregation in public places such as hotels, restaurants and shops and banned discrimination in employment on grounds of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.

A state whose authority comes from its citizens and its laws rather than from religion or the army. Article 2 of Tunisia's 2014 constitution defines Tunisia as a civil state.

Written tests on the Confucian classics used in imperial China to recruit government officials; under the Song they became the main route into government.

A person who is not a member of an armed force and takes no direct part in fighting.

A New Deal programme (1933–1942) that employed young unmarried men in camps on conservation work such as tree planting, flood control and parks.

The policy of Hertzog's Pact government from 1924 of giving white workers state jobs, such as on the railways, at wages thought suitable for a European standard of living, in place of Black workers.

The claim that European powers had a duty to spread their religion, education, law and economy to peoples they considered less advanced, used to justify colonial rule.

A group of families who trace descent from a common male ancestor. In Somalia clans and clan families provide protection and settle disputes, and became the basis of political rivalry.

The senior woman of a Haudenosaunee clan lineage, who held the title of its sachem, chose and could remove him, and spoke for the women of the clan.

A group of wealthy evangelical Anglicans, many living in Clapham near London, including William Wilberforce, who campaigned against the slave trade and slavery in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The Canadian law of 2000, passed after the Supreme Court's Reference re Secession of Quebec (1998), that lets the House of Commons decide whether a referendum question on secession and its majority are clear.

A State Department memorandum written by J. Reuben Clark in 1928 and published in 1930, which argued that the Monroe Doctrine did not justify US intervention in Latin America.

Nigeria's constitution of 1922, which created a Legislative Council with four elected African members, three for Lagos and one for Calabar.

A way of building a wooden hull from overlapping planks riveted together along their edges, starting from the keel, which gives a light, strong and flexible ship.

The free-trade agreement between Australia and New Zealand that came into force in 1983, one of the most comprehensive in the world.

A vote in the US Senate to end a debate and so defeat a filibuster; in 1964 it required two-thirds of senators present.

The lobby of colonial planters formed in Paris in 1789 to defend slavery and oppose equal rights for free people of colour.

The National Peasant Confederation, created in 1938 under Cárdenas to unite peasant and ejido organisations as the peasant sector of the ruling party.

The National Confederation of Labour, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union founded in 1910, strongest in Barcelona and among Andalusian labourers; it rejected parties and elections in favour of direct action.

A Canadian democratic socialist party founded in Calgary in 1932 by farmers, labour groups and intellectuals, whose Regina Manifesto (1933) called for public ownership and planning.

A regime's practice of winning over potential opponents or key groups by giving them jobs, influence or privileges, so that they have a stake in its survival.

An alliance of states, rulers or armed groups that fight together while keeping their own interests and commanders.

The alliance formed in June 1982 by the Khmer Rouge and two non-communist Cambodian resistance groups against the Vietnamese-backed government in Phnom Penh. It held Cambodia's UN seat and controlled many border camps.

A refusal by Gold Coast cocoa farmers to sell their crop to the European buying firms, used in 1930–1931 and 1937–1938 to protest against low prices fixed by the firms.

The Nahuatl name ("pestilence") for the devastating epidemics that struck the Indigenous population of New Spain in 1545–1548 and 1576–1580; their exact cause is still debated.

The set of special rules and punishments, applied without trial by colonial officials, that governed colonised subjects in French Algeria (from 1881) and other French colonies until its abolition in 1944–1946.

The code of laws issued by Henri Christophe in northern Haiti in 1812, which among other things enforced plantation labour.

The French royal edict of 1685 that defined slavery in the French colonies, making enslaved people the property of their owners and setting rules and punishments that were seldom enforced in their favour.

Tunisia's family law of 1956, which abolished polygamy, required the consent of both spouses to marriage and introduced judicial divorce open to women and men. Inheritance still followed Islamic law.

The Haitian law of 1826 under President Boyer that tried to bind rural workers to plantations and punish vagrancy.

The Convention for a Democratic South Africa, the forum of political parties that negotiated the end of apartheid in 1991–1992 before deadlocking in May 1992.

A hand-made book. In Mesoamerican history it means the painted books of the Aztecs, Mixtecs and Maya and the illustrated manuscripts made by Indigenous painters after the Spanish conquest.

A pictorial manuscript made in Mexico City about twenty years after the Spanish conquest for the viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, recording the Mexica rulers and their conquests, the tribute of each province and daily life, with Spanish notes.

Obedience obtained by force or the threat of force, such as arrest, imprisonment, violence or the loss of a job or home.

Four British laws of 1774, called the Intolerable Acts by colonists, that closed the port of Boston and tightened royal control of Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party.

A line of enslaved people chained or tied together and marched overland by slave traders, for example from Virginia to the markets of the Deep South.

The guild of licensed Chinese merchant houses at Canton that held the monopoly of trade with Westerners and was responsible for their conduct and customs duties; abolished by the Treaty of Nanjing.

A set of secret FBI operations from 1956 to 1971 that spied on, infiltrated and tried to discredit American political organisations, including civil rights and Black Power groups.

The rivalry between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies from about 1947 to 1991, fought through arms races, propaganda, aid and proxy wars rather than direct war between the superpowers.

Cooperation with the German occupiers in the Second World War by governments, organisations or individuals, from administrative and economic cooperation to taking part in persecution.

Cooperation with a colonial power by African rulers or groups pursuing their own aims, such as protection, trade, land or office; historians use the word without implying treachery.

The shared sense of belonging and purpose that unites the members of a movement. Symbols, songs, colours and shared rituals help to create it.

Rule by a group of leaders sharing the top posts, instead of one dictator; the principle proclaimed after Stalin's death in 1953 and again after Khrushchev's fall in 1964.

The shared understanding of the past held by a group or society, expressed in stories, commemorations, monuments, holidays and education.