History terms in Africa and the Middle East

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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 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 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.

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

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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 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.

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 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 Portuguese law of 1930, drawn up under Salazar, that defined the colonies as part of a Portuguese colonial empire and set the principles of colonial rule.

The Belgian law of 1908 under which Belgium annexed the Congo Free State and governed the Belgian Congo through parliament and a Minister of Colonies.

The alliance of the colonial state, the Catholic Church and large companies that governed the Belgian Congo, each supporting the others.

An ore from which tantalum is extracted for electronic components; mined in the eastern Congo, it helped to fund armies and militias in the Second Congo War.

A Boer mounted militia unit of citizen soldiers, raised by district; in the South African War commandos fought first as armies and then as guerrilla bands.

The Young Turk secret society founded in 1889, which forced the restoration of the constitution in 1908 and ruled the Ottoman Empire, from 1913 as a single party, until 1918.

The housing of African mineworkers in closed, single-sex barracks for the length of their contracts, introduced at Kimberley from 1885 to prevent theft and control workers.

The US law of October 1986, passed over President Reagan's veto, that banned new investment in and loans to South Africa and many imports from it.

A colonial policy, introduced in the Belgian Congo from 1917, that required peasants to grow set crops such as cotton and sell them at fixed prices.

The system, from 1815, by which the European Great Powers met in conferences to settle international crises and preserve the balance of power.

An agreement by which a ruler granted a company or individual rights to mine, trade, build or use land, often treated by Europeans in Africa as a transfer of sovereignty.

A private company granted exclusive rights by a colonial state to exploit land, labour or resources in a territory, often with its own armed agents; in the Congo Free State, examples were ABIR and the Société Anversoise.

A political system that shares out public offices, parliamentary seats and civil-service posts among religious communities in fixed proportions, as in Lebanon.

The state in the Congo basin ruled by Leopold II as his personal possession from 1885 until the Belgian state annexed it in 1908.

A British campaign founded in 1904 by E. D. Morel and Roger Casement to expose abuses in the Congo Free State; with American allies it helped force Leopold II to give up the Congo in 1908.

The 1878 meeting of the Great Powers that revised San Stefano: Bulgaria was reduced, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania became independent, Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Britain took Cyprus.

The policy of the Reagan administration in the 1980s of encouraging reform in South Africa through dialogue and continued ties rather than sanctions.

A system in which African workers were recruited for a fixed period to work far from home, with no right to change employer or bring their families; in Namibia it was run by a single recruiting agency, SWANLA, and in Angola it was a form of forced labour.

The strike of between about 13,000 and 25,000 Namibian contract workers from December 1971 to January 1972 against the contract labour system. It forced South Africa to abolish SWANLA and drew many young Namibians into politics.

The mass nationalist party founded by Kwame Nkrumah in the Gold Coast on 12 June 1949, with the slogan 'Self-Government Now'. It won the elections of 1951, 1954 and 1956 and led Ghana to independence in 1957.

The proclamation of a republic and the abolition of the Rwandan monarchy by Hutu leaders at Gitarama on 28 January 1961, with Belgian backing.

The all-African committee under Justice Henley Coussey that drafted a new Gold Coast constitution in 1949, providing for an elected majority and African ministers; it led to the election of 1951.

A. G. Hopkins's argument that the shift from the slave trade to palm oil and groundnuts weakened West African ruling elites, because small producers could enter the new trade.

An economy in which business success depends on close relationships with those in power, through licences, contracts and privatisations, rather than on open competition.

A group formed in spring 1954 by former members of the Organisation Spéciale to end the split in the MTLD by starting an armed revolt; it prepared the founding of the FLN in October 1954.

The four states founded by the First Crusade and its followers in Syria and Palestine: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Tripoli (1098–1291).

Resistance through religion, education, language and custom, such as independent churches and schools, which defended African identity against colonial claims.

The form of Zionism associated with Ahad Ha'am, which aimed first at a spiritual and cultural centre for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel rather than a state.

The local law applied to Africans in colonial courts in matters such as land and marriage, written down and often changed by colonial officials and chiefs.

The secret missionary and propaganda network that recruited support for the Abbasid movement in Iraq and Khurasan for about thirty years before the revolt of 747.

Small, often hidden acts of resistance, such as evading tax, working slowly, sabotaging crops or fleeing across borders.

Mahmood Mamdani's term for colonial rule through chiefs who combined executive, judicial and legislative power over rural 'subjects' under customary law.

UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 of 14 December 1960, which declared that colonial rule denied fundamental human rights, that all peoples had the right to self-determination, and that a lack of preparation should never be used to delay independence.

The older historical interpretation that the Ottoman Empire declined steadily from the late sixteenth century until its collapse; many historians now prefer to speak of adaptation and transformation.

A Rwandan Hutu armed group formed in eastern Congo in 2000, including former soldiers and militiamen involved in the 1994 genocide.

The committee of Ethiopian army and police officers that deposed Haile Selassie in 1974 and ruled as a Marxist-Leninist military government under Mengistu Haile Mariam until 1987; the name is often used for the regime until 1991.

A state that leads economic development directly by planning, directing investment into chosen sectors and building infrastructure, usually while limiting political opposition; Ethiopia under Meles Zenawi followed this model.

A sailing ship with one or more lateen sails used for trade across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, including the transport of enslaved people from East Africa.

A people's communities living outside their homeland. Used of Jews outside the Land of Israel and, after 1948, of Palestinians outside Palestine.

Colonial government through European officials and appointed chiefs whose authority came only from the colonial state, as in French West Africa and Portuguese Mozambique.

The selling of shares in companies that do business with a country or regime as a form of pressure; the main tactic of the 1980s anti-apartheid campaign in American universities and cities.

A form of rule in which the king is believed to have a special relationship with the gods or ancestors, so that the well-being of land and people depends on him.

A British law of 1788, introduced by Sir William Dolben, that limited the number of captives a British ship could carry in relation to its tonnage; the first parliamentary regulation of the slave trade.

A huge area of the Congo Free State whose rubber and ivory revenues went directly to Leopold II personally, created in the 1890s and kept secret for years.

A party that holds power for a long period through elections that other parties may contest but have little chance of winning, usually because the ruling party controls the state, the media and patronage.

The Anglo-French supervision of Egypt's revenue and spending from 1876 to 1882, imposed after Egypt could not pay its foreign debts.

Frederick Lugard's claim, in The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922), that colonial rule had a double duty: to develop Africa's resources for the world and to advance the welfare of its peoples.

Shared rule. In the Gold Coast from 1951 to 1957, African ministers ran most of the government while British officials kept control of defence, foreign affairs and some finance.

Mande-speaking Muslim traders who carried gold, kola and other goods between the forest and the savanna of West Africa for centuries.

The break between the Latin (Roman Catholic) and Greek (Orthodox) Churches, marked by the mutual excommunications of 1054 and deepened by the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

The problem for the European Great Powers, from the late eighteenth century to 1923, of what should happen to the territory of the weakening Ottoman Empire, the Straits and its Christian peoples.

Seymour Drescher's term for British abolition of the slave trade in 1807, which in his view destroyed a profitable, growing branch of the economy and so cannot be explained by economic decline.

The British principle, from 1922, that Jewish immigration to Palestine should not exceed the country's economic capacity to absorb new arrivals.

Zimbabwe's structural adjustment programme of 1991–1995, backed by the IMF and World Bank, which liberalised trade and cut state spending.

The Economic Community of West African States, founded in 1975 to promote economic integration, which later also acted against coups and unconstitutional changes of government in member states.

The decree of 3 November 1839 that opened the Tanzimat, promising security of life, honour and property, regular taxation and conscription to all subjects regardless of religion.

The principle, based on Article 35 of the Berlin General Act, that a claim to African territory should be backed by an actual presence able to keep order and protect trade.

A radical Egyptian Islamist group that aimed to overthrow the state by force. Its members, led by Khalid al-Islambouli, assassinated President Sadat on 6 October 1981.

A graded men's association of Old Calabar and the Cross River region whose oaths and sanctions let Efik merchants enforce debts and contracts in the slave and palm oil trades.

The freeing of enslaved people from slavery as a legal status, as distinct from the abolition of the slave trade.

A territory ruled by an emir; in the Sokoto Caliphate each emirate (Kano, Katsina, Zaria and others) had its own emir who owed allegiance to the caliph.

A clause in an anti-slave-trade treaty, such as Britain's treaty with Spain of 1835, allowing a ship to be seized if it carried equipment for the trade, such as shackles or slave decks, even with no captives on board.

The authoritarian regime in Portugal from 1933 to 1974, led by António de Oliveira Salazar and then Marcelo Caetano, which treated the colonies as part of the nation.

The Kemalist policy of the 1930s under which the state planned the economy and built and ran industries, adopted in response to the Great Depression.

The coalition of armed movements, led by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, that overthrew the Derg in 1991 and ruled Ethiopia until 2019 under Meles Zenawi and his successors.

A federal system whose internal borders and rights of self-government are based on ethnic or language groups, as in Ethiopia's constitution of 1995.

The first Algerian movement to demand full independence, founded among North African workers in Paris in 1926 and led by Messali Hadj. It was banned in 1929 and 1937 and succeeded by the PPA.

A castrated man. Enslaved African eunuchs served in the households and palaces of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt and Arabia, where some held positions of great influence.

The Brazilian law of 4 September 1850 that ended the import of enslaved Africans into Brazil and was enforced, closing the largest remaining market of the Atlantic trade.

In the Belgian Congo (and French Africa), an African with a European-style education and urban job whom the colonial authorities regarded as "evolved"; a few could gain a special legal status from 1948 and 1952.

The aim, declared by Khomeini after 1979, of spreading Iran’s Islamic revolution to other Muslim countries by example, propaganda and support for allied movements such as Hezbollah.

The Anglo-French confrontation on the upper Nile in September–November 1898, which ended with French withdrawal and British control of the Nile basin.

The Palestinian nationalist movement founded in the late 1950s by Yasser Arafat and others, which led the PLO from 1969 and dominated the Palestinian Authority.

An Isma’ili Shi’i dynasty claiming descent from the Prophet’s daughter Fatima, which proclaimed a rival caliphate in Ifriqiya in 909, ruled Egypt from 969 and founded Cairo, until Saladin ended it in 1171.

Arabic for "those who sacrifice themselves": Arab, especially Palestinian, guerrilla fighters who raided Israel from the 1950s.

The French investment fund for the economic and social development of the overseas territories, set up in 1946 to pay for infrastructure and services.

The rising of the Ndebele and Shona against the British South Africa Company in 1896–1897, led in part by spirit mediums; it was crushed but inspired later Zimbabwean nationalists.

A civil war within the early Muslim community; the third fitna (744–750) split the Umayyad dynasty and its Syrian army and opened the way for the Abbasid revolution.

The Angolan liberation movement led by Holden Roberto, rooted among the Bakongo of the north, which began as the UPA and launched the rising of March 1961. It was backed by Zaire and the United States and lost the struggle for Luanda in 1975.

The army and police of the Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo (1885–1960), with European officers and African soldiers, used to enforce rubber quotas, suppress revolts and fight wars; it mutinied days after independence in 1960.

The compulsory moving of people under apartheid from areas declared for another race or from 'black spots' to the homelands; about 3.5 million people were moved between 1960 and 1983.

Saint-Louis, Gorée, Rufisque and Dakar, the Senegalese towns whose African inhabitants had French citizenship and elected a deputy to the French parliament.

The network of political, military, financial and personal ties through which France kept influence over its former African colonies after independence.

The Mozambique Liberation Front, founded in Dar es Salaam in 1962 under Eduardo Mondlane, which fought Portuguese rule from 1964 and governed Mozambique from 1975.

The association created by de Gaulle's constitution of 1958, in which France's African territories became self-governing states with France controlling defence, foreign policy and currency. Territories that voted 'No' in the referendum left at once.

The federation of France's West African colonies, created in 1895 and governed from Dakar from 1902, which lasted until 1958.

The southern African states, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique, Angola and Zimbabwe, that supported the liberation movements against white minority rule and suffered South African raids in return.

Frederick Cooper's term for colonial and post-colonial African states whose power rested on controlling the point where the territory met the world economy, through customs, export taxes and aid.

The unilateral Israeli withdrawal of all settlers and troops from the Gaza Strip, and four settlements in the northern West Bank, in August–September 2005.

Cain and Hopkins's term for the financial and service interests of the City of London and the landed elite, which they see as the main driving force of British imperialism.

A slave soldier, usually of Turkish origin, bought young, trained as a cavalryman and expected to be loyal to his master; the Abbasids relied on ghilman from the reign of al-Mu’tasim (833–842).

A Cape law of 1894, passed under Cecil Rhodes, that limited African landholding to individual plots and taxed men who did not work outside their district, pushing them into wage labour.

The agreement signed in Pretoria on 17 December 2002 that shared power between Joseph Kabila's government and the main rebel movements and ended the Second Congo War.

The power-sharing agreement of 15 September 2008 between ZANU-PF and the two MDC factions, mediated by South Africa for SADC, which led to Zimbabwe's Government of National Unity (2009–2013).

The gold-covered sacred stool of the Asante, believed to have descended from the sky to Osei Tutu around 1701, which holds the soul (sunsum) of the Asante nation and symbolises its unity.

A coalition in which all major parties share power; in South Africa from 1994 to 1996 it included the ANC, the National Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party.

The policy of dividing South Africa territorially and politically by race and ethnicity, making Africans citizens of separate homelands rather than of South Africa.

The senior Muslim religious official in Jerusalem. Haj Amin al-Husseini, appointed by the British in 1921, used the post to lead the Palestinian Arab national movement.

The parliament that met in Ankara from 23 April 1920, led the War of Independence as a rival government to the sultan's, and became the parliament of the Republic of Türkiye.

The armistice lines of 1949 between Israel and its neighbours, which served as Israel's de facto borders until June 1967.

The Iranian protest movement that followed the disputed presidential election of June 2009, named after the campaign colour of the reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi. It was suppressed by the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards.

A hereditary bard of the Mande world who keeps a family's or dynasty's history, genealogies and praise poems and performs them orally, often attached to a royal house.

A British government project of 1947–1951 to grow peanuts on about 3 million acres of Tanganyika; it failed because of poor soil, drought and bad planning, costing about £49 million.

Ethiopia's five-year development plans of 2010–2015 and 2015–2020, which directed state investment into infrastructure, energy and manufacturing.

An Iranian body of six clerics appointed by the Supreme Leader and six jurists nominated by the judiciary. It checks that laws passed by the Majlis conform to Islam and the constitution, and vets candidates for elections.

The campaign of mass killing, torture and detention by Zimbabwe's Fifth Brigade and other forces in Matabeleland and the Midlands from 1983 to 1987, aimed at ZAPU and its Ndebele-speaking supporters.

An organisation formed in May 1981 by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman to coordinate their security and economies, largely in response to the Iranian revolution and the Iran–Iraq War.

In Ethiopia, the right granted by the emperor to a noble, official or church to collect tribute and labour from the peasants of a district.

The argument that African states bought firearms with captives and used them to take more captives, forcing their neighbours to do the same; historians debate how much difference imported guns made.

The Israeli religious-nationalist movement founded in 1974 to settle the West Bank, which it saw as part of the Land of Israel promised by God.

The main underground defence force of the Yishuv, founded in 1920; it became the core of the Israel Defense Forces in May 1948.

The Palestinian Islamist movement founded in December 1987 from the Muslim Brotherhood, which rejected the Oslo process, carried out suicide bombings and has ruled Gaza since 2007.

The 1845 treaty between Britain and Sayyid Said that banned the export of slaves from his African dominions to Arabia and the Gulf but allowed the trade between his own ports from Kilwa to Lamu.

The killing of Armenians across eastern Anatolia and in Istanbul in 1894–1896 during the reign of Abdülhamid II; estimates of the dead range from about 100,000 to 300,000.

A discredited racial theory claiming that African states were founded by light-skinned "Hamitic" invaders from north-east Africa; applied to Rwanda, it cast the Tutsi as a foreign, superior race.

An African independent church in Côte d'Ivoire formed by converts of the Liberian prophet William Wadé Harris, who baptised over 100,000 people in 1913–1914.

An early eighth-century movement that worked for rule by the family of the Prophet (the house of Hashim); the Abbasids took over its network and used it to organise their revolution.

A programme of the IMF and World Bank, begun in 1996, that cancelled much of the foreign debt of very poor countries that met conditions of economic reform; Zambia qualified in 2005.

The Labour Zionist policy of employing only Jewish workers in Jewish-owned enterprises, meant to build a Jewish working class; it excluded Arab workers.

The Anglo-German agreement of 1 July 1890 dividing East Africa: Britain received Zanzibar, Kenya and Uganda, and Germany German East Africa and the island of Heligoland.

The destruction of the Herero and Nama peoples of German South West Africa by German forces in 1904–1908; Germany acknowledged it as genocide in 2021.

A Lebanese Shi’a Islamist movement formed in 1982 with the help of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. It combines an armed force that fought Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, a political party and social services.

Clothing worn by some Muslim women to cover the hair and body in public. In Iran it was made compulsory in government offices in 1980 and for all women in public from 1983.

A migration away from an unjust ruler to a place of safety, modelled on the Prophet Muhammad's move from Mecca to Medina in 622; Usman dan Fodio's hijra to Gudu in 1804 began the Sokoto jihad.

The Jewish labour federation in Palestine, founded in 1920, which was also a large employer, bank, health service and builder of cooperatives.

Slavery in which enslaved people lived and worked within a household or lineage, often with some rights and the chance that their descendants would be absorbed into the family, though they could still be sold or punished.

The extremist movement of 1992–1994 that rejected power-sharing with the RPF, treated all Tutsi as enemies and organised the genocide.

The transfer of power in Rwanda from the Tutsi monarchy and chiefs to a Hutu-led republic between 1959 and 1962, with Belgian support, accompanied by violence against Tutsi and their mass flight.

The short, broad-bladed stabbing spear used by Zulu regiments for close combat from Shaka's time.

The Mongol state founded by Hülegü after the conquest of Baghdad in 1258, ruling Iran and Iraq until the 1330s.

A development strategy in which a state builds factories, usually behind tariffs and with state investment, to produce at home goods that were previously imported.

A political campaign by the people of a colony to end foreign rule and create their own sovereign state, by negotiation, mass protest, armed struggle or a combination of these.

A special Turkish court with wide powers, first created in 1920, used in the 1920s to try and execute rebels and political opponents.

The Portuguese colonial system, set out in the Native Statutes of 1926–1954, under which most Africans were classed as natives without citizenship, subject to forced labour and passes; abolished in 1961.

Colonial government through existing local rulers and institutions under the supervision of European officials; Lugard developed it as the British method in Northern Nigeria, and other powers, such as the Germans and Belgians in Rwanda, ruled in similar ways.

Sadat’s economic policy of "opening" from 1974, which invited foreign and Arab investment and private enterprise and moved Egypt away from Nasser’s state socialism.

Influence or control over a territory without formal annexation, exercised through trade, loans, advisers, treaties and the threat of force.

The youth militia of Rwanda's ruling MRND party ("those who attack together"), trained and armed from 1992 and the main civilian killers in the 1994 genocide.

The body founded at Leopold II's Brussels Geographical Conference in 1876, officially for exploration and anti-slavery work, which he used to pursue his own claims in the Congo.

The main judicial body of the United Nations, at The Hague, which settles disputes between states and gives advisory opinions; its opinions of 1950, 1966 and 1971 shaped the struggle over Namibia.

The UN court set up in 1994 at Arusha to try those most responsible for the genocide and other serious crimes in Rwanda in 1994; it closed in 2015.

Arabic for "shaking off": a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, the first in 1987–1993 and the second, far more violent, in 2000–2005.

The idea, applied to Africa by Terence Ranger (1983), that colonial rulers and African elites created or fixed 'traditional' customs, laws and tribal identities that had been more fluid.

Kinyarwanda for "cockroaches": the name given to Tutsi refugee raiders in the 1960s and later used by extremist propaganda for all Tutsi.

The seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by students on 4 November 1979 and the holding of 52 Americans for 444 days, until 20 January 1981. It strengthened the radicals in Iran and broke relations between Iran and the United States.

The scandal revealed in November 1986 in which officials of the Reagan administration secretly sold missiles to Iran, partly through Israel, hoping to free American hostages in Lebanon, and used the profits to fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Iran’s development of nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment at Natanz, revealed in 2002. Iran said it was for civilian use; the USA, Israel and European states feared it aimed at the capacity to build nuclear weapons.

Ze'ev Jabotinsky's argument (1923) that Zionism could succeed only behind a wall of military strength that Arab resistance could not break, after which agreement would become possible.

An alliance of local sharia courts and their militias that took control of Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia in 2006 until it was driven out by an Ethiopian invasion in December 2006.

A state that combines republican institutions, such as elections and a parliament, with the principle that law and government must follow Islam. In Iran unelected clerical bodies decide whether laws and candidates are acceptable.

The armed force created by Khomeini in May 1979 to protect the Islamic revolution, separate from the regular army. It fought in the Iran–Iraq War, runs Iran’s support for allied forces abroad through its Quds Force, and became a major political and economic power.

A branch of Shi’a Islam whose followers recognised Isma’il, son of the sixth imam, and his descendants as imams; the Fatimid caliphs, the Qarmatians and the Nizaris (Assassins) were Isma’ilis.

A civilian community built by Israel in the territories occupied in 1967; most states and the UN regard settlements as illegal under international law, which Israel disputes.

The failed armed invasion of the Transvaal led by Leander Starr Jameson for Cecil Rhodes from 29 December 1895 to 2 January 1896, meant to support an uitlander uprising.

A member of the Ottoman sultans' elite standing infantry; by the eighteenth century a largely hereditary corps that resisted military reform until Mahmud II abolished it in 1826.

The body recognised under the mandate (from 1929 in its enlarged form) to represent the Jewish community to the British administration; its executive became Israel's first government.

The Zionist fund founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine, which was to remain the permanent property of the Jewish people and be leased only to Jews.

The agreement of 14 July 2015 between Iran and six powers (the USA, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) that limited Iran’s nuclear programme in return for lifting sanctions. The USA withdrew from it in May 2018.

The title of the king of Buganda.

A Buganda royalist party founded in 1961 ("the king alone"), which allied with Obote's Uganda People's Congress to win power in 1962.

A statement by South African theologians and church leaders in 1985 declaring the apartheid state illegitimate and calling on Christians to oppose it.

A Lebanese Maronite political party and militia founded by Pierre Gemayel in 1936. It was the main Christian force at the start of the civil war in 1975.

The breakaway of the copper-rich Congolese province of Katanga under Moïse Tshombe from July 1960 to January 1963, backed by Belgian mining and military interests and ended by UN forces.

The fourteenth-century Ethiopian work in Ge'ez that tells how the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia with Menelik I, son of Solomon and Sheba, and so legitimised the Solomonic emperors.

The ideology of the Turkish Republic under Atatürk: a secular, nationalist, Westernising republic led by a modernising elite and summed up in the Six Arrows.

The land tax paid on agricultural land in the early Islamic empires, the largest source of caliphal revenue, assessed and recorded by the tax diwan.

A member of an early Islamic movement that rejected any dynastic claim to the caliphate and held that any pious Muslim could lead; Kharijites rebelled against both Umayyads and Abbasids, and Ibadi Kharijites ruled parts of North Africa.

The Arab League summit statement of 1 September 1967 setting out the principles of no peace with Israel, no recognition and no negotiations, alongside diplomatic efforts to recover occupied land.

The sermon given at Friday prayers, in which the ruler and the caliph he recognised were named; changing the name in the khutba announced a change of allegiance.

A collective agricultural settlement in which property is held in common and members share work and income; the first was Degania (1909–1910).

The religious movement founded by Simon Kimbangu in the lower Congo in 1921, banned by the Belgians and later one of the largest independent African churches.

Government by rulers who use their power to steal public wealth for themselves and their supporters.

A military order that grew from a hospital for pilgrims in Jerusalem and took on a military role by the 1130s; it held Krak des Chevaliers from 1142.

A military order founded in Jerusalem around 1119–1120 to protect pilgrims, named after its headquarters in the al-Aqsa mosque (the “Temple of Solomon”); it held castles and estates across Europe and the crusader states.

A South African police counter-insurgency unit (its name means 'crowbar') formed in South West Africa in 1979, notorious for its brutality towards civilians and suspected SWAPO members.

The assembly at which, according to Mande oral tradition, Sunjata Keita and the clans of the new Mali Empire agreed the roles and rights of each clan after the victory over Sosso, c. 1235.

The socialist form of Zionism that held that the Jewish nation would be renewed through its own physical labour on the land; it dominated the Yishuv and Israel until 1977.

The French law of 7 May 1946 that made all subjects of the overseas territories citizens, named after the Senegalese deputy Lamine Guèye.

A Portuguese trader who settled on the coast or rivers of West Africa, often marrying locally; the term also covers their Afro-Portuguese descendants who acted as brokers in the slave trade.

The agreement signed in London in December 1979 that ended the Rhodesian war, set a constitution for independent Zimbabwe and protected white-owned land for ten years through willing-buyer, willing-seller rules.

The law of 1930 that divided Southern Rhodesia's land by race, reserving about half, including most of the best farmland, for the small white minority.

The principle, drawn from Resolution 242, that Israel would return territory taken in 1967 in exchange for peace and recognition from its Arab neighbours.

The state set up by the leaders of the Fourth Crusade after they sacked Constantinople in 1204, ruled by western (Latin) emperors until the Byzantines recovered the city in 1261.

The Turkish emergency law of March 1925, passed during the Sheikh Said rebellion, that let the government ban organisations and publications; it was used to silence opposition until 1929.

A coalition of leftist, Nasserist, Druze and Muslim parties led by the Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt, allied with the PLO in the Lebanese Civil War and demanding the end of the confessional system.

The trade in goods such as palm oil, groundnuts and gum that European abolitionists hoped would replace the Atlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century; much of it was produced by enslaved workers.

The main Israeli right-wing party, formed in 1973 around Menachem Begin's Herut; it won power in 1977 and supported settlement of the occupied territories.

The policy of the Reagan administration from 1981 of making Namibian independence conditional on the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola; it was realised in the New York Accords of 1988.

The French enabling law of June 1956 that introduced universal suffrage and elected territorial governments in French Africa.

The period of falling prices, low profits and recurring crises in Europe and North America from 1873 to about 1896, which encouraged protectionism and the search for new markets.

The counties of Bunyoro given to Buganda by the British after the conquest of the 1890s and confirmed in 1900, a lasting grievance of the Banyoro that was settled by a referendum in 1964.

The council of chiefs (later a parliament) of the kingdom of Buganda, recognised by the Buganda Agreement of 1900.

The agreement of 7 September 1974 between Portugal and FRELIMO that set the transfer of power and independence of Mozambique on 25 June 1975.

The ceasefire signed in July 1999 by the states fighting in the Second Congo War and later by the main rebel groups, which fighting continued to break.

A theory of the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, adopted by the Salazar regime, which claimed that the Portuguese were uniquely free of racism and created harmonious mixed societies in the tropics; it was used to justify Portuguese colonial rule.

A Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed rebel movement in eastern Congo, formed in 2012 by former CNDP fighters and named after a peace agreement of 23 March 2009.

The tent and hut transit camps in which Israel housed many new immigrants, especially Mizrahi Jews, in the early 1950s.

A college for teaching Islamic law and religious sciences, usually funded by a pious endowment; madrasas such as the Nizamiyya of Baghdad (1067) spread Sunni learning under the Seljuks.

In Islamic belief, a redeemer expected at the end of time; Muhammad Ahmad claimed the title in Sudan in 1881 and founded the Mahdist state.

The Islamic state founded in Sudan after the revolt of Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi, which ruled from 1885 until its defeat at Omdurman in 1898.

Local armed militias in the eastern Congo, often claiming to defend Congolese communities against foreign forces, which fought in the Congo wars and after.

Freehold land granted to Buganda's chiefs and notables under the Buganda Agreement of 1900, on which peasants became tenants.

The rebellion of 1905–1907 by many peoples of southern German East Africa against forced cotton growing, united by belief in a protective sacred water; it was crushed by famine tactics.

Iran’s parliament, first created by the constitutional revolution of 1906. It regained power in the 1940s and early 1950s, was dominated by the Shah after 1953, and remained the elected legislature of the Islamic Republic.

The League of Nations document of 1922 under which Britain governed Palestine until 1948; it included the Balfour Declaration and obliged Britain to facilitate Jewish immigration.

A document drafted by Ferhat Abbas and presented to the French and Allied authorities in February 1943, demanding an Algerian state with its own constitution and equal rights for all its inhabitants.

The title of the king of Kongo, who ruled from Mbanza Kongo (São Salvador) and was chosen by electors from among the royal descendants.

The title of the ruler of the Mali Empire, meaning king or emperor in Mande; the most famous holder was Mansa Musa (r. c. 1312–1337).

A state body that bought a colony's export crop at a fixed price and sold it abroad, keeping the difference; set up in British West Africa from 1947.

A system in which office and property pass through the female line, so that a ruler is succeeded by a brother or a sister's son rather than his own son.

The first fully automatic machine gun, patented by Hiram Maxim in 1884, which gave small colonial forces overwhelming firepower.

The ten letters of 1915–1916 in which Britain promised to support Arab independence, within disputed limits, in return for an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman civil code (1869–1876), which set out Islamic law on contracts, property and obligations in the form of a modern legal code.

Europeans in Africa, such as officers, company agents and administrators, who extended empire by acting ahead of or against their governments' instructions.

The eviction of more than 3,000 Meru people from their land near Mount Meru in 1951 to make room for European farms. Kirilo Japhet took their case to the UN Trusteeship Council in 1952, publicising Tanganyikan grievances abroad.

The wars, migrations and state formation in south-eastern Africa between about 1815 and 1840; its causes, and the usefulness of the term itself, are debated.

The sea crossing from Africa to the Americas on a slave ship, in which captives were held in crowded holds for one to three months; about 12 to 15 per cent of those embarked died on average.

A religious order of knights and sergeants who took monastic vows and fought to defend the crusader states, such as the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights.

A recognised religious community of the Ottoman Empire, such as the Greek Orthodox, Armenian or Jewish community, whose religious leaders ran its religious, educational and family affairs.

The pulpit in a mosque from which the Friday sermon is given; Nur al-Din commissioned one for the al-Aqsa mosque, which Saladin installed after recovering Jerusalem in 1187.

The rapid industrialisation of South Africa after the discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1886), which brought foreign capital, railways, cities and a migrant labour system.

The female soldiers of the kingdom of Dahomey, who formed regiments of the royal army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Europeans called them Amazons.

The 1920 statement of the Turkish nationalist movement's demands: full independence for the Ottoman Muslim-majority lands held at the 1918 armistice.

A court set up under an anti-slave-trade treaty between Britain and another state, with judges from both, which tried captured slave ships and could declare the captives free; the main one sat at Freetown from 1819.

Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, most of whom moved to Israel after 1948 and long faced discrimination compared with Jews of European origin.

The movement founded by Messali Hadj's supporters in December 1954 as a rival to the FLN. The two fought a bitter internal war in Algeria and among Algerian workers in France, which the FLN won.

An economy that depends on one crop or commodity for export, such as groundnuts in colonial Senegal.

The 1936 agreement that restored Turkish control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles and allowed Türkiye to fortify them.

The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, created in 1999 and renamed MONUSCO in 2010.

The 1822 treaty between Britain and Sayyid Said of Oman that banned the sale of slaves by his subjects to Christian powers but left the trade within his dominions and to Arabia legal.

The German challenges to French influence in Morocco in 1905–1906 (Tangier and Algeciras) and 1911 (Agadir), which ended with a French protectorate in 1912.

A Sufi Muslim order founded in Senegal by Amadou Bamba in the 1880s, which taught that work was a form of devotion and became a major producer of groundnuts.

The Congolese nationalist party founded in October 1958, led by Patrice Lumumba, which sought a united, independent Congo and won the most seats in the elections of 1960.

Mobutu's party, founded in 1967, which became the only legal party in Zaire; all citizens were members by law.

Habyarimana's ruling party in Rwanda, founded in 1975 and the only legal party until 1991; its youth wing became the Interahamwe.

The Zimbabwean opposition party founded in September 1999 by trade unionists led by Morgan Tsvangirai, which challenged ZANU-PF in every election from 2000.

The Zambian alliance of trade unions, churches, business people and opposition politicians formed in July 1990 under Frederick Chiluba; it defeated Kaunda's UNIP in the election of 1991 and governed until 2011.

The Marxist Angolan liberation movement rooted among Luanda intellectuals, mestiços and the Mbundu, led from 1962 by Agostinho Neto. It declared Angola's independence on 11 November 1975 and has governed since.

Messali Hadj's legal nationalist party (1946–1954), successor of the banned PPA. It split in 1953–1954 between Messali's followers and its central committee, and its younger activists founded the FLN.

The force of American, French, Italian and later British troops sent to Beirut in 1982 to supervise the PLO’s evacuation and support the Lebanese government. It withdrew in February 1984 after the bombings of October 1983.

Kaunda's measures of April 1968, followed by the Matero Reforms of 1969, by which the Zambian state took a 51 per cent share in major companies and then in the copper mines.

An Ottoman administrative district under a governor (mutasarrif); the autonomous Mount Lebanon mutasarrifate, created in 1861, was governed by a non-Lebanese Christian under European guarantee.

The title of the king of Rwanda (and of Burundi) before the monarchy was abolished.

The Arab cultural and literary revival ("awakening") of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, centred on Beirut, Damascus and Cairo, from which Arab nationalism grew.

Arabic for "catastrophe": the Palestinian term for the flight and expulsion of about 700,000–750,000 Palestinians in 1947–1949 and the destruction of their society.

The Israeli Basic Law of 2018 that defined Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people and gave Arabic a "special status" instead of official-language status.

A large assembly of parties, unions, churches, the army and civil society that met in several French-speaking African states in 1990–1993, claimed sovereign power and organised the move from single-party rule to multi-party elections.

The ruling party founded by Sadat in 1978, which dominated Egyptian parliaments under Sadat and Mubarak until it was dissolved by a court in April 2011.

A coalition of Iranian liberal nationalists, bazaar merchants and some clerics formed in 1949 and led by Mohammad Mosaddeq. It campaigned for oil nationalisation and constitutional limits on the Shah’s power.

A party founded in Asante in September 1954 by cocoa farmers, chiefs and young men opposed to the CPP's cocoa price policy and to rule from Accra. It demanded a federal constitution and lost the 1956 election.

The unwritten agreement of 1943 between Lebanon’s Maronite and Sunni leaders: a Maronite president, a Sunni prime minister, a Shi’a speaker and a 6:5 ratio of Christian to Muslim deputies, with Christians renouncing French protection and Muslims union with Syria.

In British colonies, an African ruler or council recognised by law to govern a district under British supervision, with powers to collect tax, make rules and run courts.

A fund kept by a Native Authority under indirect rule, receiving part of the tax it collected and paying the salaries of the ruler and his officials and some local services.

The 1913 law that restricted African land ownership to reserves of about 7 per cent of South Africa (raised to about 13 per cent in 1936) and banned sharecropping on white-owned land.

The National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, founded in 1944 by Herbert Macaulay and Nnamdi Azikiwe; the first mass nationalist party in Nigeria, later based in the East.

A literary and cultural movement founded in Paris in the 1930s by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire and Léon-Gontran Damas, which celebrated African culture and identity against colonial ideas of assimilation.

Israeli scholars, such as Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappé, who from the late 1980s used newly opened archives to challenge the official Israeli account of 1948.

The rapid colonial expansion of European powers (and the USA and Japan) from about 1880 to 1914, marked by rivalry, formal annexation and racial justifications.

The agreements signed on 22 December 1988 by Angola, Cuba and South Africa, under which Cuban troops would leave Angola and South Africa would allow Namibian independence under Resolution 435.

A nationalist organisation founded in Lagos in 1934 (renamed in 1936) that campaigned for better education and African appointments and won the Lagos seats in 1938.

Selim III's 'New Order' of military and fiscal reform, especially the European-style army he raised from 1793; it was dissolved after the Janissaries deposed him in 1807.

The policy of refusing to join either side in the Cold War. Leaders such as Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno and Tito promoted it at Bandung (1955) and founded the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961.

The party of Northern Nigeria, led by Ahmadu Bello, which became a political party in 1951 and won the most seats in the federal election of 1959.

Hereditary occupational groups in Mande society, such as smiths, leatherworkers and griots, who held special skills and a distinct social status.

Small shells collected on Luanda island that served as the currency of the kingdom of Kongo; their supply was a royal monopoly.

The title of the king of Benin (and of Yoruba kings).

The territories taken by Israel in the 1967 war and held under military rule: the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights (and Sinai until 1982), as the UN describes them.

The South African plan of 1964 to divide South West Africa into ethnic 'homelands' on the model of apartheid, giving most of the land and wealth to the white areas.

The great annual festival of Asante at which the royal ancestors were honoured, chiefs renewed their oaths of loyalty and disputes were settled.

Robinson and Gallagher's term for the outlook of British ministers and officials, who in their view expanded in Africa mainly for strategic reasons.

The cut in production and ban on oil exports to the United States and other supporters of Israel imposed by Arab oil producers from October 1973 to March 1974.

Kaunda's name for Zambia's one-party state (1972–1991), in which voters could choose between candidates of UNIP but no other party was allowed.

The Zimbabwean government's demolition of informal housing and markets in the cities in May 2005, which a UN report estimated cost about 700,000 people their homes, livelihoods or both.

The French-led military intervention in south-western Rwanda authorised by the UN in June 1994, which protected some civilians but also let many organisers of the genocide escape.

Knowledge about the past passed down by word of mouth over generations, often by specialists such as griots or court historians; it differs from oral history, which records eyewitness memories.

The association of independent African states founded in Addis Ababa in 1963. It supported liberation movements and defended the borders inherited from colonial rule and non-interference in members' affairs; it was replaced by the African Union in 2002.

The secret armed wing of the MTLD, created in 1947 and led by Hocine Aït Ahmed and then Ahmed Ben Bella. The French police broke it up in 1950; its former members founded the CRUA and the FLN.

An African born in one of the Four Communes of Senegal (or descended from someone who was), who held French political rights.

The agreements between Israel and the PLO of 1993 and 1995 that established mutual recognition and interim Palestinian self-government, leaving final-status issues to later talks.

The first Ottoman constitution, proclaimed in December 1876, which created an elected parliament; Abdülhamid II suspended parliament in 1878 and the constitution was restored in 1908.

A body run by European creditors, set up in 1881 after the Ottoman default, that collected major state revenues directly to repay the debt.

The idea that all subjects of the Ottoman Empire, whatever their religion or language, should be equal citizens with a common loyalty to the state.

The council of seven nobles of the Oyo kingdom, led by the Basorun, which chose the alafin and could force him to take his own life.

The umbrella organisation of Palestinian national groups, founded in 1964 and led by Fatah under Arafat from 1969; recognised by Israel in 1993 as the representative of the Palestinian people.

The interim Palestinian self-government created in 1994 under the Oslo Accords, with limited powers in parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

The founding document of the PLO (1964, revised 1968), which declared armed struggle the only way to liberate Palestine and rejected the partition of 1947.

The idea that the Arabic-speaking peoples form one nation and should unite politically, or at least act together against outside powers. It reached its height under Nasser between 1956 and 1961.

The idea of the political unity of Muslims worldwide; Abdülhamid II used it to present the Ottoman sultan-caliph as leader of all Muslims.

The aim of uniting all Somali-inhabited territories, including Ethiopia's Ogaden, northern Kenya and Djibouti, in one Somali state.

Britain's claim to supreme authority over the whole of southern Africa, including the Boer republics and African kingdoms it did not directly rule.

Guinea's mass nationalist party, the Guinean branch of the RDA, led by Ahmed Sékou Touré from 1952. It won the 1957 election, led the 'No' campaign of 1958 and was the only legal party from independence until 1984.

The division of a territory into separate states, as proposed for Palestine by the Peel Commission (1937) and the UN (1947).

The British statement of policy of October 1930 that proposed limiting Jewish immigration and land purchase; it was reinterpreted in the MacDonald letter of 1931 after Zionist protests.

A form of credit in which a debtor handed over a person, often a dependant, to a creditor as security; pawns of debtors who could not pay might be sold into slavery.

The British Royal Commission whose report of July 1937 concluded that the mandate was unworkable and first proposed partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

The popular bands that set out for Jerusalem in 1096 ahead of the main armies of the First Crusade, inspired by preachers such as Peter the Hermit; some attacked Rhineland Jews, and most were destroyed by the Turks in Anatolia.

An Iranian organisation founded in 1965 that mixed Islam with Marxist ideas and turned to armed struggle against the Shah. After 1981 it fought the Islamic Republic, later from bases in Iraq.

The segregation of everyday life under apartheid: separate areas, facilities, transport and entrances, bans on mixed marriage and sex, and the pass laws.

A secret Greek society founded in Odessa in 1814 that planned and launched the Greek War of Independence in 1821.

The political police of the Estado Novo, active in Portugal's colonies from the 1950s, which arrested and tortured suspected nationalists.

Robbery or violence at sea by private persons outside the authority of any state; in international law pirates could be captured and tried by any nation.

The armed wing of SWAPO, which fought South African forces from 1966 until 1989, mostly from bases in Zambia and, after 1975, Angola.

The Haganah plan of March 1948 to secure the territory of the Jewish state and its roads, which allowed commanders to occupy, destroy and expel Arab villages; its intent is debated by historians.

A violent attack on a Jewish community, often by a mob and often tolerated or encouraged by the authorities, as in the Russian Empire after 1881.

The form of Zionism associated with Theodor Herzl, which sought a Jewish state through diplomacy and an internationally recognised charter from the great powers.

The compulsory transfer agreed in 1923 of about 1.2 million Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece and about 400,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey, decided by religion.

The campaign of strikes, boycotts and non-cooperation launched by Nkrumah's CPP in January 1950 to press for immediate self-government in the Gold Coast, modelled on Gandhi's methods.

A head of state appointed or elected to serve until death, as Bourguiba was in Tunisia from 1975, removing the possibility of replacing him by election.

In French Africa, a compulsory labour duty of several days a year on roads and public works owed by colonial subjects; abolished in 1946.

Ghana's law of 1958 that allowed the government to detain people without trial for up to five years; it was used against opponents of Nkrumah's government.

Armed or political opposition by existing African states and societies at the time of colonial conquest, roughly 1880–1910, as distinct from later nationalist movements.

Ethiopia's programme, begun in 2005, that gives food or cash to millions of chronically food-insecure rural households, mostly in return for work on public projects.

The policy of shielding a country's producers from foreign competition with tariffs, quotas or other barriers; the opposite of free trade.

A conflict in which outside powers support local forces with money, weapons, training or troops to pursue their own interests without fighting each other directly.

A judge who applied Islamic law (sharia), appointed by the caliph or another ruler to a city or district.

A Sufi brotherhood (tariqa) founded in twelfth-century Baghdad, to which Usman dan Fodio and many West African scholars belonged.

A member of a radical Isma’ili Shi’i movement based in eastern Arabia, which raided Iraq and the pilgrim routes in the tenth century and sacked Mecca in 930.

A drug made from the bark of the cinchona tree; taken regularly from the 1850s, it protected Europeans against malaria and opened the African interior to them.

A private Rwandan radio station (1993–1994) linked to Hutu Power that spread anti-Tutsi propaganda and directed killers during the genocide.

The CUP coup of 23 January 1913, led by Enver, in which the war minister was killed and the government overthrown, beginning CUP single-party rule.

One of the owners and financiers of the large Witwatersrand gold-mining companies in the late nineteenth century, such as Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Beit and Julius Wernher.

A federation of political parties across French West and Equatorial Africa founded at Bamako in October 1946, led by Houphouët-Boigny.

The single political party created by the Shah in March 1975, replacing the two official parties. Its anti-profiteering campaign of 1975–1976 against shopkeepers and bazaar merchants turned the bazaar against the regime.

A person freed from a slave ship seized by the Royal Navy after 1807; most were landed at Freetown in Sierra Leone, where many settled.

The name critics gave to the wild rubber collected in the Congo Free State through quotas enforced by hostage-taking, flogging, mutilation and killing, roughly 1891–1906.

The Derg's campaign of mass arrests, torture and killings in 1977–1978 against the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party and other opponents, especially students in the towns.

The Ottoman decree of February 1856, issued under British and French pressure, that promised non-Muslims full equality in government service, schools, courts and military service.

The rebel movement formed in 1976–1977 with Rhodesian, and later South African, support that fought FRELIMO's government in a civil war until 1992.

A state that receives most of its income from external rent, such as oil exports, rather than from taxing its citizens. Because it does not depend on taxpayers it can ignore them politically, but it is vulnerable to falls in revenue.

The party founded by Mustafa Kemal in 1923, the only legal party in Türkiye for most of the period up to 1946.

The UN General Assembly resolution of 29 November 1947 that recommended dividing Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state and an international zone around Jerusalem.

The UN General Assembly resolution of 11 December 1948 whose paragraph 11 resolved that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace should be allowed to do so, or be compensated.

The UN Security Council resolution of November 1967 calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the war and for the right of all states in the area to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries.

The UN Security Council resolution of 29 September 1978 that set out a plan for Namibian independence: a ceasefire, a UN force (UNTAG) and UN-supervised elections. It was finally carried out in 1989.

The principle, adopted at the UN World Summit in 2005, that states must protect their people from genocide and other mass atrocities and that the international community should act if they fail.

The right-wing form of Zionism founded by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1925, which demanded a Jewish state on both banks of the Jordan and stressed military strength; the forerunner of the Likud.

Nigeria's constitution of 1946, in force from 1947, which created regional assemblies for the North, West and East alongside a central Legislative Council.

The Palestinian claim, based on Resolution 194, that refugees of 1948 and their descendants may return to their homes in what became Israel; Israel rejects it.

A viral disease of cattle whose epizootic swept across Africa from about 1888 to 1897, killing most of the cattle in many pastoral societies.

The trial of 1963–1964 in which Nelson Mandela and other leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe were convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The seizure of power in Rwanda in 1896, after Rwabugiri's death, by a faction that overthrew his designated heir and installed Yuhi V Musinga.

The agreement of 30 October 1888 by which the Ndebele king Lobengula granted Cecil Rhodes's agents exclusive mining rights; Rhodes used it to obtain the charter of the British South Africa Company.

A movement and army formed in 1987 by mainly Tutsi Rwandan refugees in Uganda; it invaded Rwanda in 1990, ended the genocide in 1994 and has ruled Rwanda since.

A written order to pay money, used by merchants and officials in the Abbasid empire; the word is the origin of the English “cheque”.

The Allied conference of April 1920 that allocated the mandates for Syria and Lebanon to France and for Iraq and Palestine to Britain.

The Shah’s secret police and intelligence organisation, created in 1957 with American and Israeli help. It watched, arrested and often tortured opponents until the revolution of 1979.

The left-wing nationalist party of Djibo Bakary in Niger ("freedom" in Hausa), which won the elections of 1957, campaigned for immediate independence in 1958 and was banned in 1959.

The Marxist programme declared by Siad Barre's military government in Somalia in 1970, combining state ownership and one-party rule with claims that it was compatible with Islam.

Destroying crops, food stores, livestock and shelter in an area to deny them to an enemy.

The division of almost the whole of Africa among seven European powers between about 1880 and 1914, through treaties, agreements between the powers and conquest.

The armed struggle of ZANU's and ZAPU's guerrilla armies against white minority rule in Rhodesia, from 1966 to 1979.

The phrase of D. A. Low and John Lonsdale for the wave of experts, officials and development schemes sent to African colonies after the Second World War.

The separation of people by race in where they live, work, travel and take part in politics; in South Africa the policy of the Union governments from 1910, later hardened into apartheid.

The barrier of fences and walls built by Israel from 2002, much of it inside the West Bank; Israel calls it a security fence, Palestinians a separation or apartheid wall.

The killing of 69 unarmed people by police at an anti-pass protest at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960, followed by a state of emergency and the banning of the ANC and PAC.

The waterway formed by the Tigris and Euphrates that flows into the Gulf and forms part of the border between Iran and Iraq. Disputes over it were a cause of the Iran–Iraq War.

Muslims who hold that leadership of the community belonged to Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, and to imams descended from him and the Prophet’s daughter Fatima.

Negotiation in which a mediator travels back and forth between parties who will not meet directly, as Henry Kissinger did after the 1973 war.

A person of African descent in India or Pakistan, descended mainly from East Africans taken across the Indian Ocean as slaves, soldiers and servants.

A wealthy African or mixed-race woman trader of Saint-Louis or Gorée in Senegal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often married to a European merchant and owning property and slaves.

The six principles of the Republican People's Party adopted in 1931: republicanism, nationalism, populism, étatism, secularism and revolutionism.

The organised capture, transport and sale of people as slaves. Historians of Africa distinguish the Atlantic trade from the trans-Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean trades.

The British Act (royal assent 24 June 1824) that consolidated the laws against the slave trade and declared slave trading at sea by British subjects to be piracy, punishable by death.

The use of colonial expansion to win support at home and reduce social and political conflict, a motive historians such as Wehler attribute to Bismarck.

The name of Tunisia's ruling party, the former Neo-Destour, from 1964 to 1988, when it was the only legal party under Bourguiba.

The Islamic state founded by Usman dan Fodio's jihad of 1804 in what is now northern Nigeria, made up of about thirty emirates under the caliph at Sokoto until the British conquest of 1903.

The ruling house of Ethiopia from 1270 to 1974, which claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

The rebel movement founded in 1981, drawing its support mainly from the Isaaq clan of northern Somalia, which fought Siad Barre's regime and declared the independence of Somaliland in 1991.

The former British Somaliland in northern Somalia, which declared itself independent on 18 May 1991. It built a stable government and held elections but was not recognised by any state.

The secret meeting of FLN leaders in the Soummam valley on 20 August 1956 that gave the movement its programme and institutions and declared the primacy of political over military leaders and of the interior over the exterior.

The war of 1899–1902 in which Britain conquered the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, fought partly as a guerrilla war and marked by concentration camps for civilians.

A Lebanese militia, mostly Christian-led, founded by Major Saad Haddad and armed by Israel, which controlled Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon until Israel withdrew in May 2000.

The protests by school students in Soweto from 16 June 1976 against teaching in Afrikaans, which police met with gunfire and which spread across South Africa into 1977.

A region in which one power claims exclusive rights to expand or trade, recognised by other powers, without yet ruling it directly.

A person believed to be possessed by and speak for an ancestral or national spirit; in Shona society mediums held great religious and political authority.

The international campaign to exclude apartheid South Africa from sport, including its exclusion from the Olympic Games from 1964 and the Commonwealth's Gleneagles Agreement of 1977.

A political community in which a central authority makes laws, collects revenue and claims the right to use force over a defined population and territory.

Systematic corruption in which private interests shape a state's decisions, appointments and contracts for their own benefit; used in South Africa for the Gupta family's influence under President Zuma.

A society without a central ruler or permanent government, in which order is kept by kinship groups, elders, age-grades, councils and religious leaders.

The use by a colonial power of one African people to conquer or govern others, as when the British used Baganda agents to rule other parts of Uganda.

The building in Istanbul housing the grand vizier and the main Ottoman government offices; Europeans used the name for the Ottoman government itself.

The canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, opened in 1869, which shortened the sea route from Europe to India and made Egypt strategically vital to Britain.

A bill of exchange in the medieval Islamic world, by which money paid in one city could be collected in another, so that merchants did not need to carry coin.

The rapid change in seventeenth-century Caribbean colonies, beginning in Barbados in the 1640s, from small farms using European labour to large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans.

A Muslim ruler holding political and military power; from 1055 the Abbasid caliphs formally granted the title to the Seljuk rulers, who governed in the caliph’s name.

The office of the Ottoman sultan, the hereditary ruler of the empire; the Grand National Assembly abolished it on 1 November 1922.

The majority branch of Islam, which accepted the caliphs chosen by the community and came to place religious authority in scholars of law and tradition (the ulama).

A temporary provision that expires after a set period; in South Africa, Joe Slovo's 1992 proposal for five years of power-sharing and job guarantees for white civil servants after the first election.

The highest authority in the Islamic Republic of Iran, an Islamic jurist chosen by the Assembly of Experts, who commands the armed forces and appoints the head of the judiciary and half of the Guardian Council. Khomeini held the post from 1979 to 1989, Ali Khamenei from 1989.

The body created by the British in 1922 to run Muslim religious affairs in Palestine, its courts, schools and endowments; under Haj Amin al-Husseini it became a power base in Palestinian politics.

Independent Muslim trading towns on the East African coast, such as Kilwa, Mombasa and Malindi, which flourished from about the tenth to the fifteenth centuries on Indian Ocean trade.

The coast of East Africa from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, whose Muslim trading towns developed the Swahili language and culture and traded across the Indian Ocean.

Namibia's main liberation movement, founded on 19 April 1960 from the Ovamboland People's Organisation and led by Sam Nujoma. It fought South African rule by diplomacy and armed struggle and has governed Namibia since 1990.

The secret Anglo-French agreement of May 1916 that divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire into British and French zones, with most of Palestine under international administration.

The union of African planters founded in Côte d'Ivoire in 1944 by Félix Houphouët-Boigny to demand equal treatment with European planters and the end of forced labour.

The agreement signed by Lebanese parliamentarians in Taif, Saudi Arabia, on 22 October 1989, which ended the civil war by dividing parliament equally between Christians and Muslims, strengthening the Sunni prime minister and recognising special relations with Syria.

An association of African civil servants, teachers and traders founded in 1929, mainly for social and welfare purposes; it became TANU in 1954.

The nationalist party founded on 7 July 1954 from the Tanganyika African Association and led by Julius Nyerere. It won independence by negotiation in 1961 and ruled Tanganyika and then Tanzania as the only legal party until 1977.

The attacks by Iraq and Iran on oil tankers and shipping in the Gulf in 1984–1988, during the Iran–Iraq War, which drew in the US Navy to escort Kuwaiti tankers from 1987.

The Ottoman reform period of 1839–1876 ('reorderings'), which centralised the state and introduced new laws, ministries, schools, taxes and conscription and promised equality to all subjects.

The 1,860-kilometre railway from the Zambian Copperbelt to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, built by China with an interest-free loan and completed in 1975, to free Zambia from routes through white-ruled states.

Hausa for "continuity": the campaign of 2009 by supporters of President Mamadou Tandja of Niger to let him stay in office beyond his constitutional limit.

The Ottoman law of May 1915 authorising the deportation of populations considered a threat in wartime, used as the legal cover for the deportation of the Armenians.

A German military order founded at the siege of Acre in the 1190s, which defended the crusader states and later fought in the Baltic.

An Ottoman grant of the tax revenue of a piece of land to a cavalryman in return for military service; the system had largely decayed by 1800 and was abolished in 1831.

African infantry in the French colonial army, first raised in Senegal in 1857, who did much of the fighting in the French conquest of West Africa.

The long-distance camel-caravan trade across the Sahara between North and West Africa, from about the eighth century: gold, ivory, kola and enslaved people went north, and salt, copper, cloth and horses went south.

Paul Lovejoy's argument that the export slave trades transformed slavery inside Africa, making it larger, more commercial and more central to economic and political life between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The 1833 defensive alliance between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, made after Muhammad Ali's victories, by which the Ottomans agreed to close the Dardanelles to foreign warships at Russia's request.

The 1774 treaty ending a Russo-Ottoman war, which made Crimea independent of the sultan and gave Russia a foothold for later claims to protect Orthodox Christians in the empire.

The 1923 treaty between Turkey and the Allies that recognised Turkish sovereignty within roughly its present borders and abolished the capitulations.

The treaty ending the Crimean War, which guaranteed the independence and territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, admitted it to the Concert of Europe and neutralised the Black Sea.

The treaty dictated by Russia to the Ottoman Empire in March 1878, which created a large autonomous Bulgaria; the other powers forced its revision at Berlin.

The 1920 peace treaty signed by the sultan's government that would have partitioned Anatolia among Greece, Armenia, the Allies and a possible Kurdish state; it was never ratified.

The peace of 31 May 1902 ending the South African War: the Boer republics accepted British rule in return for reconstruction money and future self-government, and the African franchise was left to be decided after self-government.

The treaty of 2 May 1889 between Italy and Menelik II whose Article 17 Italy used to claim a protectorate over Ethiopia; the dispute led to the war of 1895–1896.

The parliament created by the 1983 constitution, with separate houses for whites, Coloureds and Indians and none for Africans; its introduction in 1984 provoked mass opposition.

A territory, mostly a former League of Nations mandate, placed under United Nations supervision after 1945. The administering power had to prepare its people for self-government and accept UN visiting missions and petitions.

The organ of the United Nations that supervised trust territories, received reports and petitions from them and sent visiting missions. It suspended its work in 1994 after the last trust territory became independent.

Iran’s pro-Soviet communist party, founded in 1941. It built a mass following among workers and intellectuals in the 1940s, was crushed after the 1953 coup, and was banned again by the Islamic Republic in 1983.

The idea, developed by writers such as Ziya Gökalp, that the Turks formed a nation whose language and culture should be the basis of the state; it replaced Ottomanism in the CUP and the republic.

A conference of ethnic delegations held in Windhoek in 1975–1977 under South African sponsorship to create an internal settlement for South West Africa that excluded SWAPO; it produced the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance.

A form of clientship in pre-colonial and colonial Rwanda in which a patron gave a client the use of cattle in return for service and loyalty; it was abolished in 1954.

Unpaid labour that Hutu had to perform for chiefs in return for the use of land, introduced under Rwabugiri and extended under colonial rule; it fell on Hutu but not Tutsi.

Afrikaans for 'outsider': a foreign, mostly British, immigrant drawn to the Transvaal by the gold rush, denied the vote by Kruger's government.

Julius Nyerere's policy of socialism and self-reliance, set out in the Arusha Declaration of 1967; the Swahili word means 'familyhood'. It included nationalisation and, from 1973, the compulsory movement of rural people into planned villages.

The scholars of Islamic religion and law, who studied the Qur’an and hadith, taught, issued opinions and served as judges; from the ninth century they, not the caliphs, defined religious doctrine.

The first hereditary dynasty of caliphs, which ruled the Islamic empire from Damascus from 661 until the Abbasid revolution of 750; a branch of the family continued to rule Muslim Spain from Córdoba.

The UN Security Council resolution of 20 July 1987 that demanded a ceasefire in the Iran–Iraq War and the withdrawal of forces to the international border. Iran accepted it on 18 July 1988.

A group of delegates sent by the UN Trusteeship Council every three years to inspect a trust territory, receive petitions and report. The 1954 mission to Tanganyika recommended a timetable for self-government.

The UN peacekeeping force placed on the Egyptian side of the border with Israel after the Suez Crisis (1956–1967); Egypt's demand for its withdrawal in May 1967 helped cause the Six-Day War.

The UN peacekeeping force created by Security Council Resolution 425 in March 1978 to confirm Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and help the Lebanese government restore its authority there.

The declaration by Ian Smith's white minority government on 11 November 1965 that Rhodesia was independent of Britain, made to prevent majority rule; no state formally recognised it.

The self-governing British dominion formed on 31 May 1910 from the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, with a parliament open only to white men.

The Angolan movement founded by Jonas Savimbi on 13 March 1966, based among the Ovimbundu of the central highlands. It fought Portugal and then the MPLA government until 2002, with South African and US support after 1975.

The nationalist party founded in August 1947 by J. B. Danquah and other lawyers and businessmen, which sought self-government 'in the shortest possible time'. Nkrumah was its secretary before breaking away to form the CPP.

The international organisation of states founded in 1945 to keep peace and promote co-operation; its Security Council can impose sanctions and authorise peacekeeping and the use of force.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda (1993–1996), led in 1994 by Roméo Dallaire, which was reduced to 270 troops during the genocide.

The UN peacekeeping force in the Congo from 1960 to 1964, which grew to about 20,000 troops and ended the Katanga secession.

A party founded in 1956 with the support of the colonial government and settlers to promote 'multiracialism', the equal sharing of power between Europeans, Asians and Africans; it was defeated by TANU.

The agreement of 22 December 1987 by which ZAPU merged into ZANU-PF, ending the Gukurahundi and making Zimbabwe a de facto one-party state.

The UN agency created in 1949 to provide relief, schools and health care for Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza.

The UN committee of eleven states that investigated Palestine in 1947 and recommended, by a majority, its partition into Jewish and Arab states.

The movement of 1881–1882 led by Colonel Ahmad Urabi against foreign financial control of Egypt, defeated by the British invasion of 1882.

The doctrine, developed by Khomeini in the 1960s and 1970s, that in the absence of the hidden Twelfth Imam the most learned Islamic jurists should govern the state. It is the basis of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s constitution.

The Asante rising of 1900, led by Yaa Asantewaa, against British demands for the Golden Stool; it was defeated, but the stool was never surrendered.

A man appointed by the British in south-eastern Nigeria and given a warrant to sit in a native court, usually in communities that had no tradition of chiefs.

The Swahili word for runaways; it was used for the communities of people who escaped from slavery on the East African coast and settled in the hinterland in the nineteenth century.

The British commission of inquiry into the Accra riots of 1948. It concluded that political frustration lay behind the unrest and that the 1946 constitution was out of date, which led to the Coussey Committee.

The idea that in many African societies, where land was plentiful and labour scarce, power came from controlling people (wives, children, clients and slaves) more than from owning land.

The five Western members of the UN Security Council in 1977–1978 (the United States, Britain, France, West Germany and Canada) that negotiated a plan for Namibian independence, which became Resolution 435.

The British statement of policy of May 1939 that limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 over five years, restricted land sales and promised an independent Palestine within ten years.

The programme of reforms from above launched by Mohammad Reza Shah and approved by referendum in January 1963: land reform, votes for women, profit-sharing for workers, a Literacy Corps and other measures.

One of the six military and political regions into which the FLN divided Algeria during the war, each with its own commander and council; after independence the word was used for Algeria's provinces.

The protest of tens of thousands of women in south-eastern Nigeria in November–December 1929 against warrant chiefs, native courts and the feared taxation of women; about 55 women were killed.

An international financial institution founded in 1944 that lends to governments for development projects; from the 1980s its loans to African states carried conditions of structural adjustment.

The body founded at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 to organise the Zionist movement, raise funds and represent it in diplomacy.

The Jewish community in Palestine before the creation of Israel in 1948, with its own institutions, economy and defence force.

A group of Ottoman writers and officials formed in 1865, including Namık Kemal, who called for a constitution, a parliament and Ottoman patriotism justified by Islamic principles.

The rising of CUP officers in Macedonia in July 1908 that forced Abdülhamid II to restore the constitution of 1876.

The movement of Ottoman exiles, students and officers that opposed Abdülhamid II and sought to restore the constitution; its main organisation was the Committee of Union and Progress.

The official of the kingdom of Dahomey ("chief of the whites") who governed Whydah and supervised the European traders there on the king's behalf.

Mobutu's policy, announced in 1973, of handing foreign-owned businesses to Zairean citizens, which mostly enriched his allies and damaged the economy.

Kenneth Kaunda's ideology, published in 1967, which put the welfare of the individual at the centre of policy and combined Christian ethics, African communal values and state control of the economy.

The state ruled from the island of Zanzibar by the Omani Busaidi dynasty, separate from Oman from 1856, claiming much of the East African coast; it became a British protectorate in 1890.

The period from 1769 to 1855 in which Ethiopia's emperors at Gondar were puppets of rival regional lords.

The national movement for the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and the creation of a Jewish national home or state there, organised politically from 1897.

The network of women teachers organised by Nana Asma'u in the Sokoto Caliphate to educate rural women in Islam.

Somalia's system of sharing seats in parliament and government, introduced in 2000, which gives equal shares to the four major clan families and half a share to minority groups.

The counter-revolutionary mutiny in Istanbul of 13 April 1909 (31 March in the Ottoman calendar) against the CUP; its defeat led to the deposition of Abdülhamid II.