History terms in Asia and Oceania

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Russian-led military alliance of former Soviet states, based on a treaty of 1992 and made an organisation in 2002.

The Communist International (1919–1943), the Moscow-controlled organisation that directed communist parties worldwide and, from 1920, supported and trained anti-colonial revolutionaries.

The temporary constitution of the People's Republic of China, adopted in September 1949 by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and replaced by the state constitution of 1954.

The self-governing government of the Philippines from 15 November 1935 to independence in 1946, with an elected Filipino president, under ultimate US sovereignty.

A Chinese merchant employed by a foreign firm in a treaty port to manage its dealings with Chinese buyers, sellers and officials.

The ethical and political teaching derived from Confucius (551–479 BCE), stressing moral cultivation, hierarchy, filial piety and government by educated men of virtue; the official ideology of imperial China.

The constitution imposed by Yuan Shikai in May 1914 in place of the Provisional Constitution, giving the president almost unlimited powers.

In late Qing China, a reformer who sought a constitution and an elected parliament under the monarchy, rather than a republic.

A faction in the Japanese army in the 1930s, associated with Nagata Tetsuzan and Tōjō Hideki, that sought to prepare Japan for total war by planning the economy through the bureaucracy and industry; it dominated the army after 1936.

The agreements of October 1860 that ended the Second Opium War: China ratified the Tianjin treaties, ceded Kowloon to Britain, raised the indemnities and gave Russia the Ussuri territory.

The 1885 agreement between China and Japan to withdraw their troops from Korea and to notify each other before sending troops there in future.

The investigation from 1983 into the false reporting of cotton harvests in Uzbekistan, which led to the dismissal or prosecution of thousands of officials.

In Aboriginal English, the land, waters, sky, living things, ancestral beings and sacred sites to which an Aboriginal group belongs and which it has a duty to care for.

The British offer taken to India by Sir Stafford Cripps in March–April 1942: dominion status after the war, an elected constitution-making body and the right of provinces to stay out. Congress and the League both rejected it.

A Dutch policy in Java (1830–1870) that required villages to set aside part of their land or labour to grow export crops such as coffee, sugar and indigo for the colonial government, earning huge profits for the Netherlands and causing hardship and famine.

A form of nationalism that seeks to preserve and strengthen a nation through its language, history, education and culture, especially when political independence is not possible.

The phase of Japanese colonial rule in Korea from 1919 into the early 1930s, when some Korean newspapers and associations were allowed while police surveillance grew.

A title given to the living father of a Korean king who had not reigned himself; it usually refers to Yi Ha-eung, regent for his son Gojong from 1864 to 1873.

A Mongol overseer placed over a conquered city or region to supervise local rulers, take the census, collect taxes and keep order.

A movement that fought to make Indonesia an Islamic state, led by S. M. Kartosuwiryo in West Java from 1949 and spreading to Aceh and South Sulawesi; it was defeated in 1962.

A pass issued by the East India Company that exempted its goods from customs duties in Bengal under the Mughal farman of 1717; its abuse by Company servants trading privately caused conflict with the nawabs.

The accusation that a lending state, above all China under the Belt and Road Initiative, lends more than borrowers can repay in order to gain influence or control of assets; many researchers dispute it.

Student protests that began in Beiping on 9 December 1935 against Japanese encroachment in north China and the Nationalist government's failure to resist.

A sustained fall in the general level of prices; in Japan from the late 1990s it encouraged people to postpone spending and increased the real burden of debt.

A decline in industrial or craft production in a region; used of Indian handloom weaving in the early nineteenth century, when cheap machine-made British cloth took its markets.

A great imperial assembly held at Delhi to proclaim or celebrate the British monarch as ruler of India, notably in 1877 (Victoria proclaimed Empress of India) and 1911 (George V, who announced the reversal of the partition of Bengal).

The series of Muslim dynasties (Mamluk, Khalji, Tughluq, Sayyid and Lodi) that ruled from Delhi over much of north India from 1206 until Babur defeated the last Lodi sultan in 1526.

The strip of land about 4 km wide and 250 km long that runs across Korea along the armistice line of 1953, from which both sides withdrew their forces. It became one of the most heavily fortified borders in the world.

A stretch of wall in central Beijing where people put up posters criticising the Cultural Revolution and calling for democracy in 1978–1979, until the movement was suppressed.

A Japanese centre-left party that defeated the LDP in a landslide in 2009 and governed until 2012 under Hatoyama Yukio, Kan Naoto and Noda Yoshihiko.

The communist state proclaimed after the Saur Revolution of April 1978; renamed the Republic of Afghanistan in 1987, it lasted until the fall of Najibullah in April 1992.

A conservative Sunni Islamic revivalist movement that began at a seminary in Deoband, India, in 1867. Many madrasas in Pakistan that educated the Taliban followed Deobandi teaching.

The easing of tension between the superpowers in the late 1960s and 1970s, marked by arms-control agreements, summits and increased trade.

The royal cult established by Jayavarman II at Angkor in 802, which linked the king's authority to a Hindu god; historians debate whether the king himself was worshipped.

The test in the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 under which an officer could require any migrant to write out 50 words in any European language he chose, used to exclude non-Europeans without naming race.

A circle of personal disciples of Akbar formed around 1582, with its own rituals of loyalty to the emperor; most historians see it as a discipleship for courtiers, not a new religion.

The right to collect the land revenue of a province; the Mughal emperor granted the diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the East India Company in 1765.

The radical Burmese nationalist association founded in 1930, whose members called themselves Thakin (master); its leaders included Aung San and U Nu.

Dalhousie’s policy (1848–1856) of annexing a dependent Indian state when its ruler died without a natural male heir, refusing to recognise an adopted son as successor.

The deflationary programme imposed on Japan in 1949 by the American banker Joseph Dodge: a balanced budget, an end to subsidies and a fixed rate of ¥360 to the dollar; it stopped inflation but caused a recession.

A Korean religion founded by Choe Je-u in 1860 that combined Confucian, Buddhist, Daoist and folk beliefs, taught the equal worth of all people and opposed Western influence; renamed Cheondogyo in 1905.

The peasant rising of 1894 in southern Korea, led by Jeon Bong-jun and organised through Donghak networks, against corrupt officials and foreign influence; it was crushed by Japanese and government forces.

The body of Aboriginal law, story and ceremony that explains how ancestral beings shaped the land and set down the rules for living on it and caring for Country.

The arrangement in Bengal from 1765 to 1772 in which the Company collected the revenue while the nawab’s officials remained responsible for justice and order, so that no one was accountable.

The system in reform-era China from the mid-1980s under which goods produced under the plan were sold at fixed prices and output above the plan at market prices.

The border between Afghanistan and British India agreed in 1893, which divided the Pashtun lands. Afghan governments refused to accept it as the border with Pakistan after 1947.

The English (from 1707 British) joint-stock company chartered in 1600 to trade with Asia, which from 1757 conquered and governed most of India until the Crown took over in 1858.

The hereditary military organisation of the Qing, made up of Manchu, Mongol and Han units whose members lived in garrisons and were paid by the state; the main force of the conquest, it had declined by the late eighteenth century.

The force of Japan, Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary that relieved the Beijing legations in August 1900.

The name of the main communist army in north China from 1937, when the Red Army was placed nominally under the national government in the Second United Front.

"Leader of the Nation", the title and lifelong privileges given to Nursultan Nazarbayev by a law of 2010.

Minobe Tatsukichi's interpretation of the Meiji Constitution, standard in the 1920s, that the state was a legal body and the emperor its highest organ acting through the cabinet and Diet; it was officially condemned in 1935.

The widow or mother of a Chinese emperor, who could act as regent for a child emperor.

One of the five Nationalist offensives of 1930–1934 to surround and destroy the communist base in Jiangxi; the first four failed and the fifth forced the Red Army to leave.

A group of young Korean reformers led by Kim Ok-gyun who admired Meiji Japan and sought to end Chinese suzerainty and abolish privilege; they staged the Gapsin Coup of 1884.

A port where goods from many places are brought, stored and re-exported, whose wealth comes from handling and taxing trade.

A Dutch colonial policy announced in 1901 that aimed to repay the Indies for past profits through irrigation, emigration from crowded Java and education; its schools produced many of the first Indonesian nationalists.

The treaty of 17 November 1905 that made Korea a Japanese protectorate, placing its foreign relations under Japan and creating a Japanese Resident-General in Seoul.

The Russian-led single market and customs union founded in 2015, which Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan joined.

The armed rebellion of gold miners at Ballarat, Victoria, crushed by troops on 3 December 1854; it led to the abolition of the miner's licence and the vote for miners, and became a symbol of Australian democracy.

A force of Chinese soldiers with Western officers, led by Frederick Townsend Ward and then Charles Gordon, that fought the Taiping around Shanghai from 1860 to 1864.

The managed paper currency introduced by the Nationalist government in November 1935 in place of silver; wartime and civil-war printing of fabi caused hyperinflation.

A fortified or walled trading station of a European company in Asia, run by agents called factors.

A spiritual movement combining breathing exercises and moral teachings that became popular in China in the 1990s; the government banned it in July 1999 and detained many of its followers.

A royal decree issued by a Mughal emperor, for example granting trading privileges to a European company.

The failed coup of 26–29 February 1936 by about 1,500 troops under Imperial Way Faction officers, who killed several leading statesmen in Tokyo; its suppression left the Control Faction and the army dominant.

A union of self-governing states or provinces under a national government, with powers divided between them; in Australia, the union of the six colonies as the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901.

The Manchurian warlord clique of Zhang Zuolin, backed by Japan, which fought the Zhili clique in 1922 and 1924 and held Beijing in 1926–1928.

The Confucian duty of children to obey, respect and care for their parents and ancestors, used by the imperial state as the model for subjects' loyalty to the emperor.

Aboriginal land management by regular, controlled burning, which kept open grasslands, encouraged new growth and drew game.

The eleven British ships under Arthur Phillip that brought about 1,400 people, about half of them convicts, to found the penal colony of New South Wales at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788.

The war of 1946–1954 between France and the Viet Minh over Vietnam's independence, which ended with the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Accords.

The war of 1894–1895 between Qing China and Japan over Korea, which ended in a decisive Japanese victory and the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

A campaign of 1952 against private business owners in the PRC, accused of bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on government contracts and stealing state economic information.

People in China living away from the place where their household registration (hukou) is held, mostly rural migrants working in cities, who lack full access to urban services.

A district of a Chinese treaty port, such as in Shanghai or Tianjin, leased to a foreign power, which ran its own police, courts and taxes there under its own laws.

Australia's Cold War strategy of fighting communism in Southeast Asia, alongside its allies, before it could threaten Australia itself; it justified commitments in Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam.

India's policy from late 1961 of setting up military posts in areas of the border claimed by China, on the assumption that China would not fight. It contributed to the Sino-Indian war of 1962.

The four principles set out by Deng Xiaoping in March 1979 as the limit on political reform: the socialist road, the people's democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the Communist Party, and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.

The modernisation of agriculture, industry, national defence, and science and technology: proposed by Zhou Enlai and adopted as the programme of reform under Deng Xiaoping from 1978.

Old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas: the targets of the Red Guards' attacks on temples, books, art and traditions in 1966.

A campaign of the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to kill rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows; the killing of sparrows contributed to insect plagues that damaged crops.

An area of South Vietnam in which US forces were allowed to treat anyone as an enemy and attack without further permission, on the assumption that civilians had left.

The association of France and its colonies and associated states created in 1946, in which France kept control of defence and foreign policy; France offered Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos places within it instead of full independence.

The violent conflicts between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and British colonists over land, from the first years of Sydney in the 1790s to the early 1930s, involving armed resistance, reprisals and massacres.

The mutiny and purge among communists in Jiangxi in December 1930, in which thousands of party members and soldiers accused of belonging to the anti-communist 'AB Corps' were tortured and killed with Mao Zedong's approval.

Sweeping reforms carried out in Korea in 1894–1896 by a pro-Japanese cabinet, including the abolition of slavery, legal status distinctions and the civil service examinations.

The agreement of 5 March 1931 between Gandhi and the viceroy Lord Irwin, by which civil disobedience was suspended and Gandhi agreed to attend the Second Round Table Conference, in return for the release of prisoners and the right of coastal villagers to make salt.

A failed seizure of power in Seoul on 4–6 December 1884 by the Enlightenment Party with Japanese legation support, crushed by Chinese troops under Yuan Shikai.

The UN-mediated agreement signed in Moscow on 27 June 1997 that ended the Tajik civil war and gave the opposition 30 per cent of government posts.

The Japanese law of 1925 that gave the vote to all men aged 25 and over, raising the electorate from about 3.3 million to about 12.5 million.

The agreements signed on 14 April 1988 by Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the United States and the Soviet Union as guarantors, which provided for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan by February 1989.

The civil war of 1180–1185 between the Taira and Minamoto warrior houses, won by the Minamoto at Dan-no-ura, which led to the founding of the Kamakura shogunate.

In imperial China, the local elite of men who held degrees from the civil service examinations, usually owned land, and led their clans and communities, acting as the link between the state and village society.

The growing integration of national economies, societies and cultures through trade, investment, migration, communications and the movement of ideas across borders.

The religious community founded in Guangxi in the 1840s by followers of Hong Xiuquan, which became the core of the Taiping movement.

A direct vassal of the Kamakura shogun, who received confirmation of land rights and appointments in return for military and guard service.

The currency introduced by the Nationalist government in August 1948 at three million old dollars to one, with a price freeze; it collapsed within months and wiped out middle-class savings.

The Mongol successor state on the steppes of Russia and Ukraine, ruled by the descendants of Jochi, which received tribute from the Russian princes until the late fifteenth century.

The law code of 51 articles issued by the Hōjō regent Yasutoki in 1232 to settle warriors' disputes, based on the shogunate's precedents and common sense.

The British law of 2 August 1858 that abolished the East India Company’s rule and transferred the government of India to the Crown, with a Secretary of State for India and a Council of India in London.

The British law, based on the Montagu–Chelmsford report, that introduced dyarchy in the provinces, created a two-chamber central legislature with an elected majority and gave the vote to about five million Indians, while the viceroy kept full executive power.

The Japanese colonial government of Korea from 1910 to 1945, headed by a governor-general who was a military officer responsible to the emperor and who ruled by decree.

The Russian imperial province created in 1867 to rule the conquered settled south of Central Asia from Tashkent, under a military governor-general.

A small body of trusted advisers created by the Yongzheng Emperor around 1729, which drafted edicts and handled military and urgent business for the Qing emperor.

The paper cartridge of the Enfield rifle issued in 1857, rumoured to be greased with cow and pig fat; biting it open would have offended Hindu and Muslim sepoys.

Japan's name, from 1940, for the bloc of Asian territories it planned to lead, presented as the liberation of Asia from Western imperialism but run to supply Japan's war with resources and labour.

Shanghai's largest criminal society, led by Du Yuesheng, whose gunmen attacked the communist-led unions for Jiang Jieshi in the Shanghai massacre of April 1927.

The Qing's regular army of Han Chinese soldiers, used mainly to keep order in the provinces; like the Banners, it performed poorly against the rebellions of the 1790s and 1850s.

The Cambodian government-in-exile formed in Beijing in May 1970 by the overthrown Prince Sihanouk in alliance with the Khmer Rouge, to fight Lon Nol’s government.

"Official supervision, merchant management": the model of late Qing enterprises in which merchants supplied capital and ran the business while officials protected and controlled it.

Sukarno's system of rule in Indonesia (1959–1965), in which a strong president governed with appointed councils and consensus instead of elected cabinets, balancing the army against the PKI.

The meeting of the Fourth Red Army in December 1929 that resolved that the Communist Party must control the army and that soldiers should receive political education.

The modernising reforms of the Korean Empire, 1897–1904, including a land survey, new banks, railways, trams and schools, carried out under an absolute monarchy.

A Han Chinese group of southern China, descended from migrants from the north, with its own dialect; many early Taiping leaders and followers were Hakka.

A Māori sub-tribe of related whānau, the main unit that held land and made political decisions before and after 1840.

A transnational Islamist party that seeks a caliphate by non-violent means; it was banned and its members imprisoned across Central Asia.

The network of paths and roads through Laos and Cambodia, begun in 1959, along which North Vietnam sent soldiers and supplies to the war in the south.

One of two organisations founded in 1916 by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant to campaign for Indian self-government within the British Empire, on the model of Irish home rule.

A law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing on 30 June 2020 that created crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

The Qing official appointed by the emperor to supervise the customs at Canton and collect duties on foreign trade.

The system that replaced collective farming in China from 1978 to 1983: families farmed allocated land, delivered a quota to the state and kept or sold the rest.

The regional army raised by Li Hongzhang in 1862 on the model of the Xiang Army, which became the basis of his military power in north China.

The Communist campaign launched on 8 March 1927 to make Uzbek and Tajik women abandon the veil (paranji and chachvon); it met violent resistance.

The communist-led peasant army of central Luzon, founded in 1942 to fight the Japanese, which rebelled against the Philippine government from 1946 until its defeat in 1954.

Emperor Hirohito's rescript of 1 January 1946 rejecting the idea that the emperor was a living god and that the Japanese were destined to rule the world.

The reforms decreed by the Guangxu Emperor between 11 June and 21 September 1898 on the advice of Kang Youwei, ended by Cixi's coup.

The large attack by the communist Eighth Route Army on Japanese railways, roads and garrisons in north China from August to December 1940.

The committee appointed by the Government of India in October 1919, under Lord Hunter, to investigate the disturbances in Punjab, including the Amritsar massacre. Its British majority criticised General Dyer; its Indian members wrote a stronger minority report.

The hall at Fatehpur Sikri, built in 1575, where Akbar held debates first among Muslim scholars and from 1578 among scholars of many religions, including Jesuits from Goa.

Japan's largest land offensive of the war in China, April–December 1944, which overran Henan, Hunan and Guangxi and showed how weak the Nationalist armies had become.

A bill of 1883 that would have allowed Indian magistrates in country districts to try Europeans. Fierce protest by British residents forced a compromise in 1884 that gave Europeans the right to a jury at least half European.

An educated Filipino of the late nineteenth century, often trained in Manila or Europe, who campaigned for reform of Spanish rule; José Rizal was the best known.

A mutiny of unpaid Korean soldiers in Seoul in July 1882 that attacked the Min clan and the Japanese legation, briefly restored the Daewongun and led to Chinese military intervention.

An interpretation of modern Chinese history, associated with John K. Fairbank, that explains change mainly as China's response to the impact of the West.

A meeting of Japan's senior ministers and military chiefs in the emperor's presence that approved the most important national decisions, such as the decisions of 1941 that led to war.

The national organisation founded in Japan in October 1940 after the political parties dissolved themselves, intended to unite the nation behind the war; it was controlled by the bureaucracy and never became a mass party.

A faction in the Japanese army in the early 1930s, led by Generals Araki and Mazaki, that stressed spiritual values, loyalty to the emperor and a 'Shōwa Restoration'; its young officers staged the February 26 Incident of 1936.

Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato's economic plan of December 1960 to double Japan's national income in ten years; the target was reached in about seven.

A Korean reform association of 1896–1898 led by Seo Jae-pil and Yun Chi-ho that published The Independent and campaigned for independence, education and a consultative council until Gojong suppressed it.

A foreign policy in which a small state sets its own course on major issues, even against its allies; in New Zealand, associated above all with the anti-nuclear policy of 1984–1987.

A British law that allowed the viceroy to nominate a few non-officials, including Indians, to the legislative councils, which could discuss laws but had no control over the executive.

The British law of July 1947 that created the two independent dominions of India and Pakistan from 15 August 1947 and ended British paramountcy over the princely states.

A force of about 40,000 Indians, mostly former prisoners of war, raised with Japanese support in Southeast Asia and led by Subhas Chandra Bose from 1943, which fought against British forces in 1944–1945. The trials of its officers in 1945–1946 provoked mass protest.

The rising of sepoys of the Bengal Army and of many civilians across north and central India against East India Company rule in 1857–1858, which ended Company rule.

The war between India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir that began with the tribal invasion of October 1947 and ended with the UN-arranged ceasefire of 1 January 1949, leaving the state divided.

The communist party founded by Ho Chi Minh in February 1930 as the Vietnamese Communist Party and renamed in October 1930; it led the Viet Minh and was later renamed the Workers' Party (1951).

The system in Heian Japan, from 1086, in which retired emperors governed through their own households while a younger emperor performed the court rituals.

The legal document by which the ruler of a princely state joined India or Pakistan in 1947–1948, usually surrendering defence, external affairs and communications to the dominion.

Pakistan’s military intelligence agency. In the 1980s it distributed foreign aid to the Afghan mujahideen and favoured Islamist Pashtun parties; in the 1990s it supported the Taliban.

The government of India formed on 2 September 1946 under Jawaharlal Nehru, with Indian ministers holding all the departments of the viceroy's Executive Council. The Muslim League joined it in October 1946.

An armed Islamist group formed in the late 1990s to overthrow Karimov; it made incursions from Tajikistan in 1999–2000 and later fought in Afghanistan.

An Islamic party founded in 1990; its Tajik branch was part of the opposition in the civil war, legal from 1997 and banned in 2015.

The government formed under the Peshawar Accord in 1992, led from June 1992 by President Burhanuddin Rabbani. It controlled little beyond parts of Kabul and was driven out of the capital by the Taliban in 1996.

The Daewongun's policy of refusing diplomatic and trade relations with Western countries and resisting their expeditions, 1864–1873.

A Māori tribe made up of related hapū descended from a common ancestor, often traced to one of the ancestral canoes.

A movement of Muslim reformers in the Russian Empire, strong in Central Asia from the 1890s, who promoted "new method" schools, a modern press and national renewal; many later joined the Soviet state.

An assignment of the land revenue of an area to a Mughal mansabdar in place of a cash salary; the holder (jagirdar) collected the revenue but did not own the land and was usually moved every few years.

The shortage of productive jagirs for the growing number of Mughal mansabdars in the late seventeenth century, which historians of the Aligarh school see as a main cause of Mughal decline.

The seizure of power in Shanghai by rebel workers and radicals in January 1967, which Mao approved and which led to rebel seizures of power across China.

Japan's rapid post-war growth, especially from 1955 to 1973, when real GDP grew by about 9 per cent a year and Japan became the second largest economy in the capitalist world.

The mass self-immolation of Rajput women when a besieged fort was about to fall, to avoid capture; recorded at Chittor in 1568.

The left-wing rising on Jeju island in South Korea that began on 3 April 1948 against the southern elections and police repression. Its suppression by 1949 killed tens of thousands of islanders, most of them civilians.

The protests of Kazakh students and young people in Alma-Ata on 17–18 December 1986 against the appointment of Gennady Kolbin, crushed by Soviet forces.

The largest communist base area in China, centred on Ruijin in southern Jiangxi, governed by the CCP from 1931 until the Red Army abandoned it in October 1934.

The mountain area on the Hunan–Jiangxi border where Mao Zedong and Zhu De built the first rural communist base and the Red Army in 1927–1929.

A steward appointed by the Kamakura shogunate to an estate, who collected dues, kept order and received a share of the estate's income.

A business owned by many investors who buy shares, share profits and risk, and elect directors to manage it.

The brief war of 1221 in which the retired emperor Go-Toba tried to overthrow the Hōjō regents and was defeated, leaving the Kamakura shogunate supreme over the court.

The US law of 1916 that gave the Philippines an elected Senate and promised independence as soon as a stable government could be established.

The official ideology of North Korea, first set out by Kim Il Sung in 1955: Korean communists should apply Marxism-Leninism to Korean conditions and rely on themselves rather than copying the Soviet Union or China.

"Divine wind": the storms of 1274 and 1281 that Japanese temples and the court credited with destroying the Mongol fleets; the name was later given to Japanese suicide pilots in 1944–1945.

The declaration of the Soviet government of July 1919 offering to give up the privileges in China gained by the tsarist empire; it won Soviet Russia much sympathy among Chinese nationalists.

The Karaganda corrective labour camp in Kazakhstan, one of the largest camp complexes of the Gulag, from 1931 to 1959.

Death from overwork, through heart attack, stroke or suicide caused by excessive working hours, recognised in Japan by the courts and labour ministry from the late 1980s.

The secret revolutionary society founded by Andrés Bonifacio in Manila in 1892, which launched the Philippine Revolution against Spain in August 1896.

The word used in the Māori text of the Treaty of Waitangi for what the chiefs gave the Queen: governorship or government, a missionary coinage from "governor", where the English text says "sovereignty".

Groups of Japanese companies linked by cross-shareholdings, a main bank and trading ties, such as the Mitsubishi and Sumitomo groups, which re-formed after the zaibatsu were dissolved.

The Japanese military police, which used arrest, torture and execution to suppress opposition in occupied territories during the Second World War.

Emperor Go-Daigo's attempt to restore direct imperial rule in Japan after the fall of the Kamakura shogunate, 1333–1336, which ended when Ashikaga Takauji turned against him.

The Mongol khan's personal guard, about 10,000 men by 1206, which protected the khan, ran his household and trained future commanders.

Land whose revenue went directly to the Mughal treasury rather than being assigned as jagirs.

The more radical faction of the PDPA, led by Taraki and Amin and drawn mainly from rural Pashtuns. It dominated the government in 1978–1979 and imposed its reforms by force.

The community of initiated Sikhs founded by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699, committed to defend the faith and marked by the five Ks.

The non-violent movement of Pashtun Muslims in the North-West Frontier Province, founded by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in 1929, which allied with Congress against British rule and opposed Partition.

The Māori King Movement, founded in 1858 when Waikato and allied iwi installed Pōtatau Te Wherowhero as king, to unite iwi, stop land sales and keep Māori authority alongside the Crown.

The autonomous government of Turkestan proclaimed by Muslim leaders at Kokand in November 1917 and destroyed by Red forces from Tashkent in February 1918.

The idea that Japan was a unique family-state under an emperor of one unbroken line, owed absolute loyalty; it was taught in schools and protected by the Peace Preservation Law of 1925.

The Japanese policy of turning colonial peoples into loyal imperial subjects, pursued in Korea from 1937 through shrine worship, the Japanese language and Japanese names.

Indonesia's undeclared, low-level war against the new federation of Malaysia (1963–1966), fought mainly through raids in Borneo, which Malaysia resisted with British and Commonwealth help.

The Japanese government's statement of 4 August 1993 acknowledging military involvement in the comfort stations and the recruitment of women against their will, with an apology to the survivors.

The name of the Korean state from 1897, when Gojong proclaimed himself emperor, until its annexation by Japan in 1910.

The army of North Korea, formally founded in February 1948 and armed and trained by the Soviet Union. It invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950.

The Soviet policy of the 1920s and early 1930s of promoting non-Russian nationalities in their own territories through native officials, national-language schools and national cultures.

The ritual of kneeling three times and touching the head to the ground nine times before the Chinese emperor, required of tribute envoys as a sign of submission.

An assembly of Mongol princes and commanders that elected a new khan and decided on major campaigns.

Units of forced labour in the USSR during the Second World War, made up largely of Soviet Germans and other mobilised civilians.

The resolution of the All-India Muslim League adopted at Lahore on 24 March 1940, which demanded that the Muslim-majority areas of north-western and eastern India be grouped to form "Independent States". It became the basis of the demand for Pakistan.

The Japanese colonial survey of 1910–1918 that measured and registered all land in Korea, turning unreported, royal and communal land into Government-General property.

The reforms of 1901–1911, including a New Army, modern schools, the abolition of the examinations and steps towards a constitution, through which the Qing tried to modernise and survive.

A Japanese terrorist group led by the preacher Inoue Nisshō whose members murdered the former finance minister Inoue Junnosuke and the Mitsui executive Dan Takuma in 1932.

Land that remained formally part of China but was governed by a foreign power for a fixed term, such as Jiaozhou Bay, Port Arthur or the New Territories.

A child in rural China whose parents have migrated to work in cities, usually leaving the child with grandparents.

The acceptance by subjects and rival elites that a ruler or government has the right to rule, built through descent, religion, law, success and recognition.

Japan's main conservative party, formed by a merger in November 1955; it governed without a break until 1993 and for most of the period since.

The Qing office that managed relations with Mongolia, Tibet, Xinjiang and other Inner Asian territories, which were governed separately from the provinces of China proper.

The practice in large Japanese firms of hiring core (mostly male) employees from school or university and keeping them until retirement, with pay that rose with seniority.

A tax on goods in transit introduced in 1853 to pay for the war against the Taiping, controlled by provincial officials; abolished in 1931.

The agreement of November 1946 in which the Netherlands recognised the Indonesian Republic's authority in Java, Madura and Sumatra and both sides agreed to form a federal Indonesia; it broke down in 1947.

A state of the Indian Union whose boundaries were drawn so that most of its people share one language, such as Andhra (1953), Kerala (1956) or Maharashtra (1960).

A campaign by a state to search out and punish writings considered seditious; under Qianlong it led to the destruction of books and the punishment of authors for disrespect towards the Manchus.

The lower, directly elected house of the Parliament of India, first elected in 1951–1952.

The period of very slow growth, bad debts and deflation in Japan after the bubble burst in 1990–1991, often extended to two or three 'lost decades'.

A traditional Afghan grand assembly of tribal, religious and regional leaders called to decide major national questions. An emergency Loya Jirga in June 2002 chose Hamid Karzai to head the transitional administration.

The agreement of December 1916 between the Indian National Congress and the All-India Muslim League, in which Congress accepted separate electorates and extra Muslim seats in exchange for joint demands for self-government.

The League of Nations commission under Lord Lytton that reported in October 1932 that Japan's seizure of Manchuria was not self-defence and that Manchukuo was not a genuine state; Japan left the League after its report was adopted.

The land-revenue system of the North-Western Provinces from the 1820s, in which the revenue was assessed on a whole village or estate (mahal) and collected through its headmen or joint holders.

The form of Buddhism, dominant in East Asia, that honours many Buddhas and bodhisattvas who help others to enlightenment; it was the religion of Srivijaya and of Jayavarman VII.

A declaration signed by leading Muslim scholars in 1579 that allowed Akbar, as a just ruler, to decide between conflicting interpretations of Islamic law.

The communist party of Malaya, founded in 1930 with an almost entirely Chinese membership, which led the resistance to Japan and fought the British and the Malayan government in the Emergency of 1948–1960.

The guerrilla war of 1948–1960 between the Malayan Communist Party's army and British, Malayan and Commonwealth forces, defeated through resettlement, food control, intelligence and political concessions.

In Māori culture, authority, power and prestige that come from ancestry, achievement and generosity, and that a leader must uphold.

The Qing practice of appointing a Manchu and a Han Chinese official jointly to many senior posts, so that the conquering minority shared power with, and supervised, the Han majority.

A model of the early Southeast Asian state as overlapping circles of power around a ruler, whose authority over lesser rulers depended on his personal prestige, so that its extent grew and shrank from reign to reign.

The Chinese idea that Heaven grants a ruler the right to rule as long as he governs justly, and that disasters and rebellion show that a dynasty has lost it.

A rank in the Mughal imperial service, expressed as two numbers: zat (personal rank and salary) and sawar (the number of cavalry the holder had to maintain). Its holder was a mansabdar.

The Mughal system, organised by Akbar from the 1570s, that gave every noble and senior official a numbered rank (mansab) fixing his status, pay and the cavalry he had to maintain for the emperor.

The Qing customs administration for foreign trade, run by foreign inspectors under Chinese authority from 1854; under Robert Hart it became an efficient source of revenue.

The attempt by the US general George Marshall, December 1945 to January 1947, to mediate a ceasefire and a coalition government between the Guomindang and the CCP.

The British belief, used in recruiting the Indian Army after 1857, that some groups such as Sikhs, Gurkhas and Punjabi Muslims were naturally warlike and more loyal than others.

A burst of mobilisation by the Chinese Communist Party aimed at one goal or one enemy, carried out through propaganda, meetings, denunciations and confessions; the main method of rule under Mao.

The failed coup of 15 May 1932 in which young naval officers killed Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, ending the period of party cabinets in Japan.

The wave of strikes, boycotts and anti-imperialist protest across China after police of Shanghai's International Settlement shot demonstrators on 30 May 1925.

The boundary between British India and Tibet drawn at the Simla Conference of 1914; India treats it as its north-eastern border, while China rejects it as an imperialist imposition.

The Malay and Indonesian word for independence, used above all for the independence of the Federation of Malaya on 31 August 1957.

The rising of the Miao people of Hunan and Guizhou from 1795, against Han settlers and officials who had taken their land; suppressed by 1797, with resistance continuing to 1806.

A cycle in which a state raises revenue to pay for armies and uses the armies to seize more revenue; historians use it to explain both the eighteenth-century Indian states and the East India Company.

The first phase of Japanese colonial rule in Korea, 1910–1919, when the military police acted as the ordinary police and political activity was banned.

Describing beliefs or movements that expect the present world to end or be transformed soon, followed by a perfect age for the faithful.

The Chinese dynasty founded in 1368 by Zhu Yuanzhang after the expulsion of the Yuan, which ruled China until 1644.

The Taliban’s religious police, which enforced their decrees on dress, prayer, beards and the seclusion of women, often with beatings in public.

The Japanese ministry created in 1949 that guided industrial development through control of foreign exchange and technology imports, cheap credit, cartels and administrative guidance; it was reorganised in 2001.

Yoshino Sakuzō's idea (1916) that government should serve the welfare of the people and follow their wishes, a form of democracy that left the emperor's sovereignty in place.

Japan's other main pre-war party, formed in 1927 from the Kenseikai; stronger in the cities, it favoured balanced budgets and cooperation with the Western powers under Hamaguchi and Wakatsuki.

An economy in which a large state-owned or state-directed sector exists alongside private enterprise, as in Nehru's India, where the state controlled heavy industry and planning while agriculture and most trade stayed private.

An electoral system combining constituency seats with party-list seats so that each party's share of seats matches its share of the vote; adopted by New Zealand in a 1993 referendum and first used in 1996.

The empire founded by Chinggis Khan in 1206, which by the 1270s stretched from Korea to Iraq and Russia; after 1260 it divided into four successor states.

The reforms of 1909, named after the Secretary of State John Morley and the viceroy Lord Minto, which enlarged the legislative councils, increased elected members, appointed Indians to executive councils and created separate electorates for Muslims.

An Urdu word for a migrant, used in Pakistan for the Muslims who moved there from India at and after Partition, especially those who settled in Karachi and Sindh.

Those who wage jihad: the name taken by the Afghan guerrillas who fought the communist government and the Soviet army from 1978 to 1992. They were divided by party, ethnic group, sect and region.

A foreign policy of keeping good relations with several great powers at once, such as Kazakhstan's balance between Russia, China and the West.

The wars between Māori iwi from about 1807 to the late 1830s in which groups that obtained muskets first raided far and wide, causing perhaps 20,000 deaths and large migrations.

The alliance treaty signed by the United States and South Korea on 1 October 1953, which committed them to help each other if attacked and allowed US forces to stay in South Korea.

An English corruption of nawab, used in eighteenth-century Britain for Company servants who returned from India with large fortunes.

The slogan of Japan's forced assimilation policy in Korea from 1937, claiming that Japan and Korea were one body.

The period from 1927 to 1937 when the Guomindang government ruled China from Nanjing, between the Northern Expedition and the Japanese invasion.

The redrawing of Soviet Central Asia in 1924 into territories named after nationalities, which created the Uzbek and Turkmen SSRs and the units that became the other republics.

The Japanese law of 1938 that let the government control labour, wages, prices, industry, materials and the press by decree for the war effort, in Japan and in its colonies, including Korea.

9 May, the day in 1915 on which Yuan Shikai accepted Japan's ultimatum on the Twenty-One Demands, marked by Chinese nationalists as a day of protest.

The front of communists and other opponents of Diệm’s government founded in South Vietnam on 20 December 1960, directed by the Vietnamese Communist Party. Its armed forces fought the Saigon government and the United States.

The legislature of the People's Republic of China under the constitution of 1954 and its successors; formally the highest organ of state power, in practice it approves decisions taken by the Communist Party.

The revolt that began in Yunnan in December 1915 against Yuan Shikai's attempt to make himself emperor; it forced him to abandon the monarchy in March 1916.

The policy announced by Najibullah in January 1987 of ceasefires and power-sharing with opponents, and of playing down communism and restoring Islam’s public role, to prepare for Soviet withdrawal.

The court set up in 1865 to turn Māori customary land into individual titles; its procedures and costs made it the main means by which Māori land passed into settler hands in the late nineteenth century. Renamed the Māori Land Court in 1947.

Colonial police forces of Aboriginal troopers under European officers, used from the 1840s, above all in Queensland (1849–c. 1900), to suppress Aboriginal resistance, often by killing.

A Mughal provincial governor; in the eighteenth century the title of the autonomous rulers of successor states such as Bengal and Awadh.

The constitutional scheme drafted by an all-parties committee under Motilal Nehru in August 1928, proposing dominion status, a strong centre and joint electorates with reserved seats. Jinnah's amendments were rejected, and he answered with his Fourteen Points.

The body of Sweden, Switzerland, Poland and Czechoslovakia set up by the Korean armistice of 1953 to check that neither side brought new forces or weapons into Korea.

The anti-nuclear movement founded in Kazakhstan in February 1989 by the poet Olzhas Suleimenov, which campaigned successfully to end testing at Semipalatinsk.

The modern Qing army created after 1901 on Western and Japanese lines; units of the New Army began the Wuchang uprising of 1911.

The intellectual movement of about 1915–1923, centred on New Youth and Peking University, that attacked Confucianism and called for science, democracy, individual freedom and writing in the spoken language.

Mao's term for the first stage of the Chinese revolution, in which four classes, including the 'national bourgeoisie', were to cooperate under Communist leadership before the transition to socialism; it was the official basis of the PRC from 1949 to about 1953.

The communist army formed in central China in 1937 from guerrillas left behind after the Long March; government troops attacked its headquarters in January 1941.

The ambush of the New Fourth Army's headquarters column by Nationalist troops in southern Anhui in January 1941, which effectively ended the Second United Front.

The Guomindang campaign launched in 1934 to renew Chinese society through the Confucian virtues of li, yi, lian and chi, discipline and rules of personal behaviour; it had little effect outside the cities.

An approach to Qing history developed from the 1990s that uses Manchu and other non-Chinese sources and stresses the Qing as an Inner Asian empire with a distinct Manchu identity.

One of several hundred fenced and guarded settlements into which rural Chinese in Malaya were moved under the Briggs Plan during the Emergency.

A rebellion of mounted bands in the plains of north China from 1851 to 1868, suppressed by the regional armies.

The line on Chinese maps that marks China's claim to most of the South China Sea; an arbitral tribunal ruled in 2016 that it has no legal basis, a ruling China rejects.

The treaty of February 1922 in which nine powers, including Japan, Britain and the USA, agreed to respect China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and the Open Door principle.

Loans of about 145 million yen made by Japanese banks to Duan Qirui's government in 1917–1918, secured on Chinese railways and resources; they financed his army and strengthened Japan's claims in Shandong.

Two announcements by President Nixon in 1971 that shook Japan: his planned visit to China (July), made without consulting Tokyo, and the end of the dollar's convertibility into gold (August), which forced up the yen.

Hereditary slaves in Joseon Korea, owned by the state or by private families; state-owned slaves were freed in 1801 and slavery was abolished by the Gabo reforms of 1894.

The group of states that refused to join either Cold War bloc, founded at a conference in Belgrade in 1961 led by Yugoslavia, India and Egypt.

The principle, insisted on by the United States in the Korean armistice talks, that no prisoner of war should be returned home against his will. The dispute over it delayed the armistice for more than a year.

The coalition of mainly Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara forces, led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, that fought the Taliban from 1996 and helped overthrow them with US support in 2001.

The military campaign of the Guomindang's National Revolutionary Army from Guangzhou against the warlords, July 1926 to June 1928, which reunified China under the Nanjing government.

China's policy, from 1980 to 2015, of limiting most couples to one child, with exceptions such as a second child for many rural families and minorities; replaced by a two-child policy in 2016.

The CIA programme to arm and fund the Afghan mujahideen through Pakistan, from 1979 and on a large scale under Reagan in the 1980s, matched by Saudi funding.

The US programme of 1962–1971 of spraying herbicides from aircraft over South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to destroy forest cover and crops used by communist forces.

An ethnic Kazakh from abroad who returned to settle in independent Kazakhstan under a state programme of repatriation.

Seafaring peoples of the islands of the Strait of Malacca whose fleets protected or attacked shipping and served Srivijaya and later Melaka.

A Japanese state-backed company founded in 1908 to develop and settle Korea, which became one of the largest landowners in colonial Korea.

In early nineteenth-century India, a Company official or scholar who favoured supporting education in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic learning; later the word also came to mean a Western view of the East as inferior.

The CCP law of October 1947 ordering the confiscation of landlords' land and its equal redistribution among the people of each village in the areas the party controlled.

A tablet of gold, silver or wood issued by the Mongol khans, giving its holder authority and the right to use the relay stations.

The five founding principles of the Indonesian state, set out by Sukarno on 1 June 1945: belief in one God, a just and civilised humanity, the unity of Indonesia, democracy through consultation and representation, and social justice.

The system of elected village, block and district councils (panchayats) introduced in India from 1959 to give rural people a role in local government and development.

The five principles of peaceful coexistence set out in the India–China agreement on trade with Tibet of 29 April 1954: respect for territory and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.

The agreement of 12 February 1947 between Aung San and Shan, Kachin and Chin leaders to join a union of Burma in return for autonomy in the internal administration of their areas.

The informal title given to the most powerful leader in the PRC, especially Deng Xiaoping, who ruled from 1978 to the early 1990s without holding the top party or state post.

The full-length robe worn with a horsehair face veil (chachvon) by many urban Uzbek and Tajik women before the Soviet unveiling campaign.

The more moderate and urban faction of the PDPA, led by Babrak Karmal. The Soviet Union installed it in power after the invasion of December 1979.

The idea, promoted by Afghan governments from 1947, of an autonomous or independent homeland for the Pashtuns living in Pakistan. It caused lasting hostility between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A campaign in China from the early 1990s that used schools, media and museums to stress the country's humiliation by foreign powers and the Communist Party's role in national revival.

The period of about 1250 to 1350 when Mongol rule over most of Eurasia made long-distance travel and trade across the continent safer than before or after.

A Japanese law of 1925, applied in Korea, that made it a crime to organise against the imperial system or private property; it was used against communists and nationalists.

A settlement founded to hold and punish convicts sent from the home country, such as New South Wales from 1788.

Mao's description of the state founded in 1949: democracy for the classes counted as 'the people' and dictatorship over those counted as reactionaries, with the Communist Party deciding who belonged to each.

The Afghan communist party, founded in 1965 and split into the Khalq and Parcham factions, which seized power in the Saur Revolution of April 1978 and ruled until 1992.

The name of the CCP's armed forces from 1946–1947, which won the civil war and became the army of the People's Republic of China.

The state proclaimed by Mao Zedong in Beijing on 1 October 1949, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Turkmenistan's status, recognised by the UN General Assembly on 12 December 1995, of staying out of all military alliances.

The land-revenue system introduced by Cornwallis in Bengal in 1793, which made zamindars the owners of the land and fixed their revenue payment to the Company for ever.

The official ideology of Ngô Đình Diệm’s government, drawn from French Catholic thought, which rejected both communism and liberal individualism and stressed a moral community and a strong state.

The agreement of 24 April 1992 among the mujahideen parties to form an interim government after the fall of Najibullah. Hekmatyar rejected it, and it failed to prevent civil war.

The chief minister of the Maratha kings; from 1713 the office became hereditary and the Peshwas at Pune were the real rulers of the Maratha confederacy until 1818.

A volunteer army of Indonesians with Indonesian officers, created by the Japanese in Java in 1943, which became the core of the army of the Indonesian Republic after 1945.

The visit of the US table-tennis team to China in April 1971, the first public sign of the rapprochement between the PRC and the United States.

The official system for writing Chinese in the Latin alphabet, adopted by the People's Republic of China in 1958; it replaced older systems such as Wade–Giles (Mao Zedong, not Mao Tse-tung).

The body set up by the Indian government in 1950, chaired by the prime minister, to draw up the five-year plans that directed investment in the economy. It was replaced in 2015.

The agreement of September 1985 among the five largest industrial economies to lower the value of the US dollar; the yen rose steeply, and Japan's response of cheap credit helped create the bubble economy.

A society made up of separate communities that live under one government and trade with one another but keep apart in language, religion, occupation and social life; J. S. Furnivall used the term for colonial Burma and the Dutch East Indies.

The Dutch name for its two military offensives against the Indonesian Republic (July 1947 and December 1948), which presented them as restoring order rather than as war.

The second of Sun Yixian's three stages of revolution, in which the Guomindang would rule and train the people for self-government before a constitution; Jiang Jieshi's government used it from 1928 to justify one-party rule.

The Crown's exclusive right, under article 2 of the Treaty of Waitangi, to buy any land Māori wished to sell.

An informal name for a child of a senior Chinese Communist Party leader of the revolutionary generation, such as Xi Jinping.

A territory of British India ruled by its own Indian prince under British overlordship (paramountcy): the ruler kept internal powers while Britain controlled defence and foreign relations. There were about 565 in 1947.

The first Qing cabinet, appointed in May 1911, nine of whose thirteen members were Manchu, which convinced constitutionalists that the court would not share power.

The Japanese government's plan of 1947 to direct scarce resources, credit and labour into coal and steel production to restart the post-war economy.

An annual payment that the Indian government made to the former rulers of the princely states in return for their accession and the merger of their states. Privy purses were abolished in 1971.

The system under which Australian colonial and state governments, from the 1830s to the mid-twentieth century, placed Aboriginal people under protectors and boards that confined them to missions and reserves and controlled their work, movement, marriages and children.

The constitution of the Republic of China adopted in March 1912, which created a parliament and a cabinet responsible to it in order to limit the power of the president, Yuan Shikai.

The Korean government-in-exile founded in Shanghai in April 1919 after the March First Movement, later based in Chongqing; it claimed to represent Korea until 1945 but was never recognised by the Allies.

A state or government that appears independent but is controlled by a foreign power, such as Manchukuo and Wang Jingwei's regime under Japan.

The seclusion of women from public view, through separate living quarters (the zenana) and veiling, practised by elite Muslim and many Hindu families.

A school of Buddhism teaching that faith in Amida Buddha and repetition of his name bring rebirth in his paradise, the Pure Land; it spread widely in Kamakura Japan.

The defensive line around the port of Pusan (Busan) in south-east Korea that UN and South Korean forces held in August–September 1950, the low point of their fortunes in the Korean War.

In Afghanistan, any solidarity group to which a person belongs, such as an extended family, clan, tribe, village or religious community. Political loyalties in the countryside ran through the qawm.

Queen Victoria’s announcement of 1 November 1858 that the Crown had taken over India, promising no further annexations, respect for princes, religious non-interference and equal eligibility for office.

The hairstyle, with the front of the head shaved and the rest worn in a long braid, that the Qing required all Han Chinese men to adopt as a sign of submission to Manchu rule.

Japan's proposal at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to write equal treatment regardless of race into the Covenant of the League of Nations; it won a majority but was blocked by President Wilson's ruling that unanimity was needed.

The boundary between India and Pakistan drawn in 1947 by boundary commissions chaired by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, which divided Punjab and Bengal. It was published on 17 August 1947, after independence.

The protests of 1911, strongest in Sichuan, against the Qing plan to nationalise provincial railways with foreign loans; they helped to trigger the Xinhai Revolution.

The confiscation of Māori land by the Crown under the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 and related laws after the New Zealand Wars, about 1.2 million hectares in all.

The armed militia of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen in Hyderabad, led by Qasim Razvi in 1947–1948, which supported the Nizam's bid for independence and attacked his opponents until the Indian invasion of September 1948.

The dismissal of communists and suspected sympathisers from Japanese unions, media, businesses and government in 1949–1950, encouraged by the occupation authorities during the Reverse Course.

Risings in central and southern China from 1351, partly inspired by belief in the coming of the future Buddha, Maitreya, from which Zhu Yuanzhang emerged to found the Ming.

The official name for the policies begun in China in December 1978: market reforms within the planned economy and the opening of China to foreign trade, investment and technology.

The British law of 1773 that first brought the East India Company under parliamentary supervision, created a Governor-General of Bengal with a council and a Supreme Court at Calcutta.

The CCP's wartime policy in its base areas of limiting rents (usually to 37.5 per cent of the crop) and interest on loans, instead of confiscating land, to win peasants without driving landlords out of the united front.

A loan of £25 million from a consortium of British, French, German, Russian and Japanese banks, signed by Yuan Shikai in April 1913 without the approval of parliament; it paid for the army he used against his opponents.

The state in the south of Vietnam proclaimed by Ngô Đình Diệm in October 1955 and backed by the United States. It lasted until North Vietnamese forces took Saigon on 30 April 1975.

A Company (later British) official posted at the court of an Indian ruler, through whom the Company supervised and controlled the state.

The Japanese official who controlled Korea's foreign relations, and from 1907 its internal government, during the protectorate of 1905–1910.

The mass campaign in China during the Korean War that mobilised support for the war and justified campaigns against counter-revolutionaries and private business.

The decision of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s Central Committee in January 1959 to approve armed struggle against Diệm’s government in the south, alongside political struggle.

A ruler who had given up the throne to a younger successor but continued to guide or control government, as under the Trần in Đại Việt and the insei system in Japan.

The group of young Moscow-trained CCP leaders, such as Wang Ming and Bo Gu, who led the party with Comintern backing from 1931 until the Zunyi Conference of 1935.

The revolutionary society founded by Sun Yixian in Honolulu in 1894 to overthrow the Qing.

The organ of power set up in Chinese provinces, cities and workplaces from 1967, combining rebels, army officers and approved cadres; in practice usually dominated by the army.

Protests and riots against the high price of rice that spread across Japan in July–September 1918; they brought down the Terauchi cabinet and led to Hara Takashi's party cabinet.

Irregular Korean militias raised to resist foreign invasion; in 1895–1896 and 1905–1910 they fought Japanese forces and pro-Japanese officials.

In Mao's China, a person officially labelled an opponent of socialism, above all in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957; the label brought loss of work and often labour camp, and was removed only in 1978–1979.

The free-market economic reforms of New Zealand's fourth Labour government (1984–1990), named after the finance minister Roger Douglas: floating the dollar, removing subsidies and controls, a goods and services tax and corporatisation.

The office set up in Kyoto by the Kamakura shogunate after 1221 to watch the imperial court, keep order in the capital and govern western Japan.

The sustained US bombing campaign against North Vietnam from March 1965 to November 1968, intended to break Hanoi’s will and cut its supplies to the south.

Three conferences held in London in 1930–1932 between the British government and representatives of Indian parties, princes and minorities to discuss a new constitution for India. They led to the Government of India Act 1935.

The book of history, morals and autobiography by Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazov (2001), made compulsory reading in schools and public life.

The spread of the Russian language and culture among non-Russian peoples, by policy or pressure, such as compulsory Russian in schools and the Cyrillic alphabet.

The land-revenue system introduced in Madras by Thomas Munro, in which the government assessed and collected revenue directly from each cultivator (ryot) and revised it periodically.

Sixteen moral maxims issued by the Kangxi Emperor in 1670 and expanded by the Yongzheng Emperor in 1724, read and explained to villagers to teach Confucian morality and obedience.

The official Muslim religious body set up by the Soviet state in Tashkent in 1943 to manage registered mosques and clergy under state supervision.

The claim that the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, with official encouragement, as a harmless outlet for Indian discontent that would protect British rule from another rising. Most historians regard it as an exaggeration of A. O. Hume's role.

A Mahayana Buddhist dynasty that ruled central Java from about the mid-eighth to the mid-ninth century and built Borobudur; one of its princes became king of Srivijaya.

The community of Buddhist monks; in Burma its loss of royal patronage after 1886 led many monks into nationalist protest.

The political movement founded by Prince Sihanouk in 1955 after he gave up the throne, through which he dominated Cambodian politics until 1970.

An Indonesian Islamic association founded in 1912 by batik traders, which grew into the first mass political movement in the Dutch East Indies.

The practice of a Hindu widow burning herself, or being burned, on her husband’s funeral pyre; banned in Bengal by Bentinck’s regulation of 1829.

The seizure of power in Afghanistan by communist officers of the PDPA on 27–28 April 1978, in which President Daoud was killed. Saur is the month of the Afghan calendar in which it took place.

The second number in a Mughal mansab, setting how many cavalrymen and horses the holder had to maintain for imperial service.

The rush by the powers in 1897–1898 to obtain leased territories, railway and mining rights and spheres of influence in China.

The US tactic in Vietnam, especially in 1965–1968, of sending large units to find and kill enemy forces in the countryside, rather than holding territory.

The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, an anti-communist defence alliance set up by the Manila Pact of September 1954 by the USA, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines; it was dissolved in 1977.

The war of 1856–1860 in which Britain and France defeated Qing China, ending in the Treaties of Tianjin and the Convention of Beijing.

The failed revolt of Sun Yixian and southern military governors against Yuan Shikai in July–September 1913, after the murder of Song Jiaoren.

The settlement of nomadic people in permanent villages; in Soviet Kazakhstan it was imposed by force from 1929–1930 and helped cause famine.

The domination of Joseon government between about 1800 and 1863 by the families of royal consorts, above all the Andong Kim clan, who ruled in the name of weak or child kings.

One of Japan's two main pre-war parties, founded in 1900, with support among rural landlords and business; its leaders Hara Takashi, Tanaka Giichi and Inukai Tsuyoshi headed cabinets.

Laws of the 1860s in the Australian colonies, such as the Robertson Land Acts of New South Wales (1861), that let people choose small farms of 40 to 320 acres from Crown land, including squatters' runs.

The programme of about 1861–1895 in which Qing officials adopted Western weapons, technology and methods, through arsenals, shipyards, schools and enterprises, without changing China's political institutions.

A term used for the condition of China after the unequal treaties: formally independent, but with foreign powers holding treaty privileges, leased territories and spheres of influence.

The main Soviet nuclear testing ground, in north-eastern Kazakhstan, where about 456 tests were carried out from 1949 to 1989; it was closed in 1991.

Private Confucian academies and shrines in Joseon Korea; they were tax-exempt and served as bases for factions until the Daewongun closed most of them in 1871.

An Indian soldier trained and armed in the European style and serving in the army of the East India Company or later the British Crown.

A party work conference of about 7,000 officials in Beijing in January–February 1962, at which Liu Shaoqi blamed the Great Leap's disasters mainly on human error and Mao made a limited self-criticism.

The agreement of May 1951 between the PRC and representatives of the Dalai Lama's government, which accepted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet in return for promises to keep its political system; the Dalai Lama repudiated it in 1959.

The communist-governed region around Yan'an, covering parts of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, recognised by the national government under the Second United Front.

The joint statement issued at the end of Nixon's visit to China in February 1972, in which the United States 'acknowledged' that Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait held there was one China.

A security and economic organisation founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, growing out of the Shanghai Five of 1996.

The foreign policy of Shidehara Kijūrō, Japanese foreign minister in 1924–1927 and 1929–1931: cooperation with Britain and the United States, non-interference in China's internal affairs and the pursuit of Japanese interests by economic means.

The regent of the Kamakura shogun, an office held by the Hōjō family from 1203 to 1333, which held the real power in the shogunate.

A private, tax-exempt estate in Heian and Kamakura Japan, owned by a court noble or temple and run by local managers, with rights to its income divided among several holders.

The aim of radical young officers and ultranationalists in the 1930s to sweep away the emperor's 'corrupt' advisers, politicians and capitalists and restore direct imperial rule, in imitation of the Meiji Restoration.

A provincial constable appointed by the Kamakura shogunate from its vassals to arrest rebels and murderers and organise guard duty; later shugo became powerful regional lords.

The Allied military intervention in the Russian Far East after the Russian Revolution (1918–1922), in which Japan sent more than 70,000 troops and stayed longest, hoping to create a buffer zone.

The vast collection of Chinese books compiled on Qianlong's orders between 1773 and 1782, during which works judged anti-Manchu or disloyal were banned or destroyed.

The all-British commission under Sir John Simon, appointed in 1927 to review India's constitution. Because it included no Indians it was boycotted by almost every Indian party.

A united front of Korean nationalists and socialists, 1927–1931, that built branches across Korea before dissolving amid left–right divisions.

The treaty of 14 August 1945 between the Soviet Union and Jiang Jieshi's government, in which Stalin recognised the Nationalists and gained rights in Manchuria and Mongolia.

The six central departments of imperial Chinese government: Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Punishments and Works.

A campaign of 1962–1966 against corruption and 'capitalist' tendencies in the Chinese countryside, launched by Mao and steered by Liu Shaoqi; disagreement over it helped to cause the Cultural Revolution.

The official description of China's economic system adopted at the 14th Party Congress in 1992: markets set most prices and allocate most resources, while the state keeps control of key sectors.

Mao's term for the collectivisation of agriculture and the takeover of private industry and commerce by the state in the PRC, completed mostly in 1955–1956.

The Japanese army's screening and mass killing of Chinese men in Singapore and Malaya in February and March 1942; estimates of the dead range from about 6,000 to 100,000.

The 1940 Japanese policy that pressed Korean families to register Japanese-style surnames; about 80 per cent of households had done so by August 1940.

The former German Pacific islands north of the equator (the Marshalls, Carolines, Marianas except Guam, and Palau) that Japan governed under a League of Nations mandate from 1920.

The agreement in 1900 by which governors-general in central and southern China ignored the court's declaration of war on the powers and kept order in their provinces.

Deng Xiaoping's visit to Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai in January–February 1992, in which he praised market reforms and relaunched them after the slowdown that followed 1989.

The agreement of 13 April 1941 in which the Soviet Union and Japan promised to stay neutral if either was attacked by a third power; the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in August 1945.

Mass meetings organised by CCP work teams during land reform at which peasants publicly accused landlords of past wrongs; many of the accused were beaten or killed.

An area of China, beginning with Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen in 1980, where foreign firms could invest with lower taxes and fewer controls.

A place of compulsory residence under NKVD control for deported kulaks and deported peoples, who could not leave without permission.

In colonial Australia, a pastoralist who occupied large areas of Crown land beyond official settlement, first without title and later under licence or lease, and who built the wool industry.

Brezhnev's promise that party officials would keep their posts, which allowed long-serving leaders and patronage networks to grow in the republics.

The constitution of the USSR adopted on 5 December 1936, which created eleven union republics (including the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs) and promised rights that the terror ignored.

The Indian law that redrew the boundaries of the states, mostly along linguistic lines, creating 14 states and 6 union territories from November 1956.

Debts in pounds sterling owed by Britain to India and other countries at the end of the Second World War for goods, services and military spending supplied on credit. India's balances were about £1.3 billion in 1945.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children removed from their families by Australian governments, churches and welfare bodies, mostly between about 1910 and 1970, under protection and assimilation policies; acknowledged in the National Apology of 2008.

The South Vietnamese policy of 1962–1963, backed by the United States, of moving peasants into fortified villages to cut them off from the communist guerrillas. Forced resettlement made it deeply unpopular.

A public meeting in Mao's China at which a person accused of political crimes was denounced, humiliated and often beaten by a crowd until they confessed.

A province of the Mughal Empire, governed by a subadar (governor) alongside a separate diwan responsible for revenue.

A treaty, used above all by Richard Wellesley, under which an Indian ruler paid for a Company army stationed in his state, accepted a British Resident and gave up an independent foreign policy.

A regional state, such as Hyderabad, Bengal or Awadh, formed in the eighteenth century when a Mughal governor made his province independent in practice while still recognising the emperor.

The mystical tradition of Islam, which seeks a direct experience of God through devotion, music and the guidance of a master; in India the Chishti order was close to the Mughal court.

Persian for "universal peace": Akbar’s principle that the emperor stood above religious communities and should treat them all with tolerance.

The joint statement of Sun Yixian and the Soviet envoy Adolf Joffe of 26 January 1923, which said China was not ready for communism and that the Soviet Union would support its unification and independence.

The emperor's right under the Meiji Constitution to command the army and navy directly through the General Staffs, outside the control of the cabinet; the armed forces used it to resist civilian interference.

A relationship in which one state claims a superior position over another while leaving it to run its own internal affairs, as Qing China claimed over Korea until 1895.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield's plan to sell colonial land at a "sufficient price" and use the money to bring out labourers, so that a balanced society of landowners and workers would grow up; applied in South Australia and by the New Zealand Company.

The rebellion of 1850–1864 led by Hong Xiuquan, who set up the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace at Nanjing; the war caused an estimated 20–30 million deaths.

The Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, the state proclaimed by Hong Xiuquan in 1851, with its capital at Nanjing from 1853 to 1864.

The growth of party government, liberal ideas and popular movements in Japan from about 1905 to 1932, at its height when party leaders headed cabinets between 1924 and 1932; it rested on convention rather than on the Meiji Constitution.

A US law of April 1979 that allowed unofficial relations and arms sales to Taiwan after the United States recognised the People's Republic of China.

The war of 1992–1997 between the government, backed by Russia and Uzbekistan, and the United Tajik Opposition, which killed tens of thousands.

The Islamist movement of mainly Pashtun religious students that emerged in Kandahar in 1994 under Mullah Mohammad Omar, ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and imposed a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

A great landholder in Awadh with rights over the revenue of many villages, whose estates were reduced by the British after the annexation of 1856.

"People of the land": the Māori term for the Indigenous people of a place, and for Māori as the first people of Aotearoa New Zealand.

The agreement of 31 May 1933 between China and Japan that created a demilitarised zone south of the Great Wall, in effect accepting the loss of Manchuria and Rehe.

The ten military campaigns of the Qianlong reign, from the conquest of the Zunghars and Xinjiang to costly or failed wars in Jinchuan, Burma and Vietnam, which Qianlong celebrated as complete victories.

"Nobody's land": the doctrine that land belonging to no recognised sovereign could be acquired by occupation; it underlay British claims to Australia until the High Court rejected it in the Mabo case of 1992.

A state whose power rests on control of the sea and sea trade rather than on large territories, such as Srivijaya.

The form of Buddhism based on the Pali scriptures and monastic communities, which spread through mainland Southeast Asia from Sri Lanka from the thirteenth century.

A programme from 1964 to about 1980 to build heavy industry, arms factories and railways in China's interior provinces, such as Sichuan and Guizhou, where they would be safer in a war.

The meeting of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee in December 1978 that made economic modernisation the party's main task; usually taken as the start of the reform era.

The row of warehouses and offices outside the walls of Canton where Western merchants were required to live and trade under the Canton system.

The group of young Burmese nationalists, including Aung San and Ne Win, who were secretly trained by the Japanese in 1941 and founded the Burma Independence Army.

The Chinese Communist Party's method of changing people's beliefs, especially intellectuals', through study sessions, criticism, self-criticism and written confessions under group pressure.

The three main revenue systems of late Joseon Korea: the land tax, the military cloth tax and the state grain-loan system, whose abuse by officials caused peasant revolts.

The Chinese name for the Japanese scorched-earth campaigns of 1941–1942 against communist base areas in north China, in which villages were burned, people killed and crops seized.

The policies associated with the Guomindang congress of January 1924: alliance with the Soviet Union, cooperation with the communists and support for workers and peasants.

Sun Yixian's programme of nationalism, democracy (people's rights) and people's livelihood, first set out in 1905 and later the ideology of the Guomindang.

Jiang Zemin's theory, written into the party constitution in 2002, that the Communist Party represents China's advanced productive forces, its advanced culture and the interests of the majority; it justified admitting private entrepreneurs to the party.

Mao's view, set out in 1974, that the world was divided into the two superpowers, their developed allies and the developing countries, with China counted among the third group.

A campaign of 1951–1952 against corruption, waste and bureaucratism among officials and managers of state enterprises in the PRC.

The robbery and murder of travellers by gangs believed by the British to form a hereditary religious fraternity; suppressed by William Sleeman from the 1830s. Historians debate how far the British exaggerated it.

The formula "Chinese learning for the essence, Western learning for practical use", which justified borrowing Western techniques while keeping Confucian values and institutions.

The killings of 1856 in the Taiping capital, in which the Eastern King Yang Xiuqing and thousands of his followers were massacred, breaking the original Taiping leadership.

"Full chieftainship" or highest authority: what the Māori text of the Treaty of Waitangi guaranteed to the chiefs over their lands, villages and treasures; now used for Māori self-determination.

"Virtuous government": an edict cancelling debts and returning sold land, such as the Kamakura shogunate's Einin edict of 1297 for its vassals.

The Revolutionary Alliance founded by Sun Yixian and others in Tokyo in August 1905 to overthrow the Qing and found a republic; the forerunner of the Guomindang.

The school of foreign languages founded in Beijing in 1862 to train interpreters and diplomats, which added mathematics and science in 1867 despite conservative opposition.

The attempt in about 1862–1874 to restore the Confucian order and effective government after the Taiping war, through tax relief, resettlement and the appointment of able officials.

The Korean government order of December 1895 requiring men to cut off their traditional topknots, which provoked Confucian anger and armed risings.

The average number of children a woman would have over her lifetime at current birth rates; about 2.1 is needed to keep a population stable without migration.

A rural factory or business owned by a township or village government in reform-era China; TVEs grew fast in the 1980s and absorbed surplus rural labour.

The Nationalist strategy in the war with Japan of giving up territory rather than risking the army, so that China could survive a long war until foreign allies joined it.

The treaty of 1858 by which Qing China recognised Russian control of the lands north of the Amur River.

The treaty of 29 August 1842 that ended the First Opium War: China ceded Hong Kong Island, opened five treaty ports, abolished the Cohong and paid an indemnity of 21 million dollars.

The treaty of 17 April 1895 by which China recognised Korean independence, ceded Taiwan, the Pescadores and (briefly) Liaodong to Japan and paid an indemnity of 200 million taels.

The treaties of June 1858 between Qing China and Britain, France, Russia and the United States, which opened more ports and the Yangzi, allowed legations in Beijing and protected missionaries.

The agreement of 6 February 1840 between the British Crown and Māori rangatira, in English and Māori texts that differ on sovereignty and chiefly authority; the founding document of New Zealand.

The Chinese system of foreign relations in which other rulers sent missions with gifts to the emperor, recognising his superiority, and received gifts, titles and trading rights in return.

The diplomatic pressure by Russia, France and Germany in April 1895 that forced Japan to return the Liaodong peninsula to China.

The "Bamboo Grove" school of Zen Buddhism founded by the retired Trần king Nhân Tông in 1299, the first Vietnamese school with Vietnamese founders.

Administration of a territory by one or more outside powers for a set period to prepare it for self-government, as proposed for Korea at the Moscow Conference of 1945.

Local militia raised and led by the gentry to defend their districts against rebels or bandits, used by the Qing against the White Lotus and the Taiping.

The protests in Kyrgyzstan after flawed elections that overthrew President Askar Akayev on 24 March 2005.

A Central Asian battle tactic in which mobile units of mounted archers rode round the enemy flanks to attack from the sides and rear; Babur used it at Panipat in 1526.

A Mongol army unit of about ten thousand men, the largest unit of the decimal organisation of tens, hundreds, thousands and ten thousands.

The commission with full powers sent by Moscow to Tashkent in 1919, led by Frunze and Kuibyshev, to restore central control and win Muslim support for Soviet rule.

A unit of the German army in the Second World War recruited from Central Asian Soviet prisoners of war.

The railway linking Soviet Central Asia with Siberia, built in 1927–1930 as a flagship project of the first Five-Year Plan.

Japan's secret demands on China of January 1915 for rights in Shandong, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia and, in a fifth group, Japanese advisers in the Chinese government; Yuan Shikai accepted most of them under an ultimatum in May 1915.

The policy announced in February 1977 under Hua Guofeng that the party would uphold whatever decisions Mao had made and follow whatever instructions he had given.

The argument, made by Jinnah and the Muslim League from the late 1930s, that the Hindus and Muslims of India were two separate nations with different religions, customs and histories, and that Muslims were entitled to a state or states of their own.

The US law of 1934 that created the self-governing Commonwealth of the Philippines and set independence for 1946 after a ten-year transition.

The Malay nationalist party founded in May 1946 to oppose the Malayan Union; in the Alliance with Chinese and Indian parties it led Malaya to independence and governed until 2018.

The state monopoly of the grain trade introduced in the PRC in November 1953: peasants had to sell surplus grain to the state at fixed prices, and private grain trade was banned.

The federation of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia created in 1887: the colony of Cochinchina and the protectorates of Annam, Tonkin and Cambodia, with Laos added in 1893, under a French governor-general.

One of the full members of the USSR, with its own government and a formal constitutional right to secede; there were five in Central Asia from 1936.

The secret Japanese army unit near Harbin in Manchuria that carried out biological and chemical warfare research, including lethal experiments on prisoners, and spread plague in attacks on Chinese towns.

The unified command of the forces sent by UN member states to defend South Korea, created by Security Council Resolution 84 in July 1950 and placed under a US commander.

The commission set up by the UN General Assembly in November 1947 to supervise elections across Korea. The Soviet Union refused it entry to the north, so it observed elections in the south only, in May 1948.

The alliance of Islamic, democratic and regional groups that fought the Tajik government in the civil war and signed the peace of 1997.

The Kyrgyz name for the flight of Kyrgyz and Kazakhs to China after the suppression of the revolt of 1916, in which very many died.

The philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill that laws and institutions should be judged by whether they produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number; it shaped Company reform in India in the 1820s and 1830s.

A law of 1878, under Lord Lytton, that allowed the government to censor and punish newspapers published in Indian languages but not those in English. It was repealed by Lord Ripon in 1882.

The title used from 1858 for the Governor-General of India as the representative of the British monarch.

The name used by the Saigon government and the United States for the NLF and its fighters, from a phrase meaning Vietnamese communists.

Nixon’s policy from 1969 of withdrawing US troops from Vietnam while expanding and re-equipping the South Vietnamese army to take over the fighting.

Khrushchev's programme, launched in 1954, to plough tens of millions of hectares of steppe in northern Kazakhstan and Siberia for grain, using mainly Slavic settlers.

The People's Council of the Dutch East Indies (1918–1942), a partly elected body with mainly advisory powers that the colonial government could ignore.

The permanent commission of inquiry set up by the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 to investigate Māori claims that the Crown has breached the principles of the treaty and to recommend remedies; from 1985 it could hear claims going back to 1840.

A military commander who controlled territory through a personal army, collected its taxes and acted independently of any central government, as many did in China from 1916 to 1928.

A loose alliance of Chinese military commanders, based on regional origin and personal loyalty, that competed for territory and for control of the Beijing government between 1916 and 1928.

The conference of 1921–1922 at which the powers limited naval armaments, Japan agreed to return Shandong to China and the Nine-Power Treaty guaranteed China's independence and territorial integrity.

The CCP Politburo meeting of December 1935 in northern Shaanxi that called for a national united front against Japan, including the Guomindang.

The officer academy opened near Guangzhou in 1924 with Soviet help to train a Guomindang party army; Jiang Jieshi was its commandant and its graduates became the core of the Nationalist officer corps.

The Māori extended family, the basic unit of everyday life within a hapū.

The set of Australian laws and practices, beginning with the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, that kept out non-European migrants; dismantled in stages between 1958 and 1973.

A rebellion of 1796–1804 in the highlands of Hubei, Sichuan and Shaanxi, led by millenarian Buddhist sects and fuelled by poverty and official extortion; its suppression emptied the Qing treasury.

The campaign of arrests and executions of communists and left-wing activists by Jiang Jieshi's forces and their allies from April 1927, which destroyed the CCP's urban organisation.

A Korean conservative Confucian movement of the later nineteenth century that opposed contact with the West and Japan as a threat to orthodox moral order.

The international organisation, founded in 1995, that sets and enforces rules for trade between its member states; China joined on 11 December 2001.

The seizure of power by the Empress Dowager Cixi on 21 September 1898, which ended the Hundred Days' Reform and confined the Guangxu Emperor.

The detention of Jiang Jieshi by his generals Zhang Xueliang and Yang Hucheng at Xi'an on 12–25 December 1936 to force him to end the civil war and lead a united front against Japan.

The regional army raised by Zeng Guofan in Hunan from 1853, led by gentry officers and loyal to its commanders, which defeated the Taiping.

The revolution that began with the Wuchang uprising of 10 October 1911 and ended the Qing dynasty with the abdication of Puyi on 12 February 1912.

The seizure of power in November 1861 by Cixi, Ci'an and Prince Gong, who overthrew the regents for the infant Tongzhi Emperor.

The Mongol network of relay stations that provided horses, food and lodging for officials, envoys and messengers across the empire.

The town in northern Shaanxi that was the CCP's capital from January 1937 to March 1947; the Yan'an period is the time in which the party built its base areas, army and methods under Mao.

The hereditary aristocracy of Joseon Korea, whose families supplied scholar-officials, dominated the civil service examinations and held much of the land.

The body of rules and decrees attributed to Chinggis Khan that governed the army and the Mongol elite; no complete text survives.

A Shinto shrine in Tokyo that honours Japan's war dead, including fourteen Class A war criminals enshrined in 1978; visits by prime ministers have caused protests in China and South Korea.

The post-war Japanese strategy, associated with Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, of relying on the United States for security, keeping rearmament minimal and concentrating on economic recovery.

The declaration of the Second Indonesian Youth Congress (28 October 1928) that its members acknowledged one motherland, one nation and one language of unity, Indonesia and Indonesian.

A famine of 1180–1182, caused by drought and harvest failure, that struck western Japan and Kyoto and weakened the Taira during the Genpei War.

The Mughal revenue system developed by Todar Mal (1580), which measured cultivated land and assessed tax in cash from average yields and prices over the previous ten years (dahsala).

A holder of rights over land and its revenue; under the Mughals a local hereditary intermediary, and under the Permanent Settlement a landowner responsible for paying a fixed revenue.

The personal rank of a Mughal mansabdar, which set his place in the hierarchy and his salary.

A school of Buddhism, called Chan in China and Thiền in Vietnam, that stresses meditation and direct experience over the study of texts.

The northern warlord clique of Feng Guozhang, Cao Kun and Wu Peifu, which controlled Beijing from 1920 to 1924 and was destroyed by the Northern Expedition in 1926.

Jiang Jieshi's move against the communists in Guangzhou in March 1926, when he arrested communist officers and Soviet advisers after claiming that the gunboat Zhongshan was part of a plot against him.

The office for foreign affairs created by the Qing in 1861 under Prince Gong, the first new central institution for dealing with Western states; replaced by a Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1901.

The meeting of the CCP leadership at Zunyi in Guizhou on 15–17 January 1935, during the Long March, that criticised the military strategy of Bo Gu and Otto Braun and brought Mao Zedong into the party's leadership.

The line of latitude chosen in August 1945 to divide Korea into Soviet and American occupation zones; it became the border between North and South Korea in 1948.

The pattern of Japanese politics from 1955 to 1993: permanent government by the Liberal Democratic Party, a permanent Socialist opposition, and close ties between LDP politicians, the bureaucracy and big business.

"Great Viet": the name of the Vietnamese kingdom of the Red River delta from the eleventh century, ruled by the Lý, Trần and later dynasties.