History terms in Historical concepts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The forced merging of private peasant farms into large collective farms controlled by the state, carried out in the USSR from 1929.

The transfer of plants, animals, people, ideas and diseases between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia that followed Columbus's voyages of the 1490s; the term comes from the historian Alfred Crosby (1972).

A holiday on or around 12 October marking Columbus's landing in the Americas in 1492; proclaimed a national holiday in the United States in 1937.

A public act of remembering a person or event, through monuments, ceremonies, holidays, names, museums or anniversaries.

The assembly elected in Russia in November 1917 to decide the country's constitution; the Bolsheviks, who were a minority in it, dissolved it after one day in January 1918.

A source produced during or close to the time of the events it describes, before the outcome was fully known.

Dependence of an event on circumstances that could have turned out differently, such as an accident, an illness or a chance meeting.

Whatever persisted over a period of time: institutions, beliefs, practices and conditions that stayed the same or changed very little.

Checking one source against others to see which of its details are confirmed, contradicted or found only in that source.

A question or argument about what would have happened if one cause had been absent or different. Historians use short counterfactuals to test whether a cause was necessary.

The name, meaning "broken" or "oppressed", used by people formerly called "untouchables" in the Indian caste system.

Lenin's decree of 8 November 1917 (26 October in the old calendar) that abolished landlords' ownership of land without compensation and placed estates at the disposal of peasant committees and soviets.

The view that events were bound to happen because of the conditions that preceded them, leaving no room for choice or chance.

The name given in Spain and parts of Latin America to 12 October, celebrated as a day of Spanish language and culture in the Americas; Spain's national day.

A US Supreme Court ruling of 1857 that African Americans could not be citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in the western territories.

The elected Russian parliament created after the revolution of 1905, which had only limited power over the tsar's government.

The reform of 1861 that freed the serfs of the Russian Empire from personal bondage to their lords, while making them pay for their land through redemption payments.

The German law of 23 March 1933 that allowed Hitler's government to make laws without the Reichstag, the legal basis of the Nazi dictatorship.

History that studies the relationship between human societies and climate, disease, ecology and natural resources.

A way of writing history that treats Europe as the centre and the standard, overlooking or undervaluing the achievements and perspectives of other parts of the world.

How deep a change went, from superficial or limited to fundamental.

History that recovers women's experiences and examines how inequality between women and men shaped the past.

A national plan setting production targets for five years. Stalin's first Five-Year Plan began in 1928; India adopted its own Five-Year Plans from 1951.

A member of the groups of Christian penitents who marched from town to town whipping themselves during the Black Death, hoping to win God's mercy.

A change in laws, institutions, official policies or rulers.

British law of 1812 that made the deliberate destruction of stocking frames and other textile machinery a capital offence, passed in response to Luddism.

History that examines how ideas of masculinity and femininity shaped power, work, politics and identity in the past.

Mao Zedong's campaign of 1958–1962 to industrialise China rapidly through mass mobilisation and people's communes, which led to a famine in which tens of millions died.

The view, associated with Thomas Carlyle in the nineteenth century, that history is shaped mainly by the actions of exceptional individuals. Most historians now reject it as a general explanation.

The movement of about six million African Americans from the rural South to cities in the North and West of the United States between about 1910 and 1970.

The Soviet and Russian name for the war between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and its allies, 1941–1945.

The British law of 1832 that redistributed parliamentary seats towards growing towns and gave the vote to more middle-class men, raising the electorate of England and Wales to about 650,000.

An Algerian Muslim who served as an auxiliary with the French army during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962).

The survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; the Japanese word means people affected by the bomb.

Knowledge of how events turned out, available to people looking back but not to those living through them.

The evidence-based attempt to understand the beliefs, feelings and choices of people in the past within their own context, without necessarily approving of them.

A judgement about why something in the past matters: how far it changed things, affected people, lasted or reveals something important. It is made by someone, for a purpose, using criteria.

The study of how history has been written: how historians' interpretations of a subject differ, how they have changed, and why.

An approach to history that studies the experiences and actions of ordinary people rather than only elites and leaders.

A connected set of political, social or economic ideas that explains how society works and how it should be organised, such as liberalism, nationalism or Marxism–Leninism.

The 150 million francs France demanded from Haiti in 1825 in return for recognising its independence, to compensate former colonists; reduced to 90 million francs in 1838.

The elite administrative service of British India; after independence it continued as the Indian Administrative Service.

A holiday on the second Monday of October, first adopted by Berkeley, California, in 1992, that honours the Indigenous peoples of the Americas instead of, or alongside, Columbus.

The change from hand production to machine production in factories, powered by water and then steam, that began in Britain around 1760 and spread to other countries in the nineteenth century.

A result that the people who acted wanted and planned for.

An interpretation that explains the policies of a regime, especially Nazi Germany, mainly through the ideas and intentions of its leader.

An identity document that citizens needed in order to live and move within their own country. Used by the tsars, abolished after 1917 and reintroduced by Stalin in December 1932.

A historian's explanation or judgement of the past, built from evidence and argument.

The laws and customs that enforced racial segregation and denied African Americans the vote in the southern United States from the 1890s to the 1960s.

A US law of 1854 that let settlers in the Kansas and Nebraska territories decide for themselves whether to allow slavery, overturning the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

A period of cooler climate, especially in the North Atlantic and Europe, from about 1300 (or later, by some definitions) to the mid-nineteenth century.

A change in people's everyday experience, such as their work, income, rights in practice and family life. It can lag far behind formal change.

A condition that developed over years or decades and made an event possible or likely, without deciding when it happened.

A result that develops over decades after an event, often mixed with the effects of later causes.

French for "long duration": the slow, almost unchanging structures of geography, climate and everyday life that the historian Fernand Braudel argued shaped events.

The movement of English textile workers who broke machinery in 1811–1816 to defend their trades, wages and customs; by extension, opposition to new technology.

A member of the military elite of slave origin that ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517; also the name of the state they ran.

The secret American programme, with British and Canadian participation, that built the first atomic bombs between 1942 and 1945.

A group pushed to the edge of a society's political, economic or social life, with less power and voice than others, such as enslaved people, colonised peoples, minorities, refugees and in many societies women.

A rule that women had to leave certain jobs, such as teaching or the civil service, when they married. In Britain marriage bars lasted in many professions until the 1940s.

An approach to history, based on the ideas of Karl Marx, that gives the main causal weight to economic structures and conflict between social classes.

Kenya's Heroes' Day, 20 October, the anniversary of the 1952 arrests, renamed from Kenyatta Day under the 2010 constitution.

The movement that took oaths of unity from about 1950 and fought an armed revolt against British rule in Kenya from 1952 to 1960; its fighters called themselves the Kenya Land and Freedom Army.

Corrupted or poisonous air, which medieval and early modern doctors believed caused epidemic disease.

Files removed from British colonies at independence and held secretly in Britain, whose existence the government admitted in 2011.

The Russian peasant commune, which held village land in common and periodically redistributed strips among households.

An explanation that attributes an event to a single cause. In history such explanations are usually incomplete, because the same cause rarely has the same effect everywhere.

The refusal of Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, to ride the city's segregated buses from December 1955 to December 1956, after the arrest of Rosa Parks.

Printing with separate pieces of type, one for each character or letter, that are arranged to form a page and reused for other pages; first made by Bi Sheng in China in the 1040s.

The idea that historical events have several causes, which act together and differ in importance.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a US civil rights organisation founded in 1909 that campaigned against segregation, above all through the courts.

A cause without which an event would not have happened. Most necessary causes produce an event only in combination with others.

Continued economic or political control by a former colonial power, or another powerful state, over a formally independent country; the term was popularised by Kwame Nkrumah in 1965.

The policy introduced by Lenin in March 1921 that ended grain requisitioning and allowed peasants and small traders to sell goods privately, while the state kept large industry.

The purge of 30 June to 2 July 1934 in which the SS killed Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders, together with other opponents of Hitler.

The secret political police of the Russian Empire from 1881 to 1917.

The recording and study of people's spoken memories of events they lived through.

An English law of June 1349, re-enacted as the Statute of Labourers in 1351, that ordered workers to accept the wages paid before the Black Death.

The first interpretation of an event to become widely accepted, often close to the views of the winners or the government of the time.

How quickly a change happened, from sudden to gradual.

A form of rule in which the ruler treats the country and its people as his own property; Richard Pipes used it to describe tsarist and Soviet government.

The rising of peasants and townspeople in south-east England in May–June 1381, set off by a poll tax, which demanded an end to serfdom before it was crushed.

A very large collective unit created in rural China from 1958 that organised farming, industry, local government and daily life, sometimes with tens of thousands of members.

The division of the past into named periods. Every periodisation is an interpretation, because it claims that the boundaries mark real changes.

The point of view from which someone sees, experiences or explains an event, shaped by their position, knowledge, time of writing and purpose. In history it can mean the view of a person at the time, of a source, or of a historian.

The council of workers' and soldiers' deputies formed in Petrograd in March 1917, which shared power with the Provisional Government; a soviet is an elected council.

A disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, spread by flea bites (bubonic plague) or through the air from infected lungs (pneumonic plague).

An interpretation that combines elements of an orthodox view and the revisionist challenge to it.

An approach that studies how colonial power shaped knowledge, archives, identities and societies, including after independence.

Statement of 26 July 1945 by the United States, Britain and China calling on Japan to surrender unconditionally or face "prompt and utter destruction".

A long-term condition that makes an event possible. Historians sometimes contrast preconditions with precipitants, the short-term causes and triggers that decide when the event happens.

Judging or interpreting the past by the values, knowledge and assumptions of the present.

A source produced during the period being studied, usually by someone involved in or close to the events, such as a letter, law, speech, photograph or diary.

A machine that presses inked type onto paper; the screw press adapted by Gutenberg in Mainz around 1450, used with cast metal type, spread across Europe after 1460.

Change judged to be an improvement by some standard. A claim of progress needs the standard and the people for whom it was progress to be named.

Information, images or ideas spread deliberately, usually by a state or political movement, to shape what people believe and how they act.

The origin of a source: who made it, when, where, for whom and for what purpose.

The government formed from Duma leaders that ruled Russia after the abdication of Nicholas II in March 1917, until the Bolsheviks overthrew it in November 1917.

History presented to the general public outside schools and universities, in museums, heritage sites, memorials, films and the media.

A system of compulsory grain quotas imposed on the peasants, first introduced by the tsarist government in December 1916 and used much more harshly by the Bolsheviks under war communism.

The emergency decree of 28 February 1933 that suspended civil liberties in Germany after the Reichstag fire.

Payments demanded from a defeated state to compensate the victors for the costs and damage of a war, as imposed on Germany after the First World War; the word is also used for compensation claimed for historic wrongs such as slavery.

British law that gave the vote to all men over 21 and to women over 30 who met a property qualification.

A British law of 1919 that required employers to restore the pre-war working practices agreed with trade unions, returning many skilled jobs taken by women during the First World War to men.

In historiography, an interpretation that challenges an established one, often using new sources or asking new questions.

A student protest movement that began at the University of Cape Town in 2015 and won the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes; it spread to other universities as a campaign against colonial legacies.

An English trading company chartered in 1660 (rechartered in 1672) that held a monopoly of English trade with West Africa and transported many thousands of enslaved Africans to the Americas.

Gandhi's march of March–April 1930 from Sabarmati to Dandi on the coast of Gujarat to make salt in defiance of the British salt tax, beginning a mass civil disobedience campaign.

The Nazi Party's elite force, led by Heinrich Himmler, which carried out the Night of the Long Knives and later ran the police, the concentration camps and the extermination camps.

The tightening of lords' control over peasants in much of eastern Europe from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when serfdom was declining in the West.

A source produced later by someone interpreting the past, usually from primary sources, such as a history book or scholarly article.

A system in which peasants were legally bound to a lord's land and owed him labour, dues and obedience, and could not leave without permission.

A development in the months or few years before an event that brought an existing situation to a head.

A result that appears within months or a few years of an event.

An interpretation that explains the policies of a regime, especially Nazi Germany, mainly through the structures of the state and the competition between its agencies and officials.

Structure means the large, impersonal conditions that limit what people can do, such as the economy, social classes, climate and institutions; it is usually contrasted with agency.

The Nazi Party's paramilitary force of street fighters, led by Ernst Röhm until his murder in 1934.

A school of history founded in the early 1980s, led by Ranajit Guha, that studies the politics of peasants and other subordinated groups in South Asia, ignored by both colonial and nationalist histories.

A cause that would have produced an event on its own, whatever else was present. Sufficient causes are rare in history.

A member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in Britain in 1903, which used militant methods to campaign for women's right to vote.

A campaigner for women's right to vote by legal and peaceful methods, such as members of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in Britain.

The Indigenous Arawak-speaking people of the Greater Antilles and the Bahamas at the time of Columbus's arrival in 1492.

The section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that banned discrimination in employment on the basis of race, colour, religion, national origin and sex.

The forced transport of about 12.5 million enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; about 10.7 million survived the crossing.

The peace treaty signed by Germany and the Allied powers on 28 June 1919, which took territory from Germany, limited its armed forces and made it liable to pay reparations.

The incident that sets off a larger event whose conditions already existed. It explains the timing and form of the event more than its deeper causes.

The four Tunisian civil-society organisations (the UGTT trade union federation, the UTICA employers' federation, the Tunisian Human Rights League and the Order of Lawyers) that brokered a political settlement in 2013–2014 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015.

A moment after which the direction or pace of change shifted significantly. Calling an event a turning point is a claim that has to be tested against what happened before and after it.

A result that the people who acted did not aim at, which may be welcome, unwelcome or simply unexpected.

The practice of excluding people from the lowest-ranked groups in the caste system from contact with others; abolished by Article 17 of the Indian Constitution of 1950.

The holiday on 9 May that marks the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in 1945; the most important national holiday in Russia.

The US law of 1965 that suspended literacy tests and allowed federal examiners to register voters in southern states that had excluded African Americans from voting.

The economic policies of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War of 1918–1921: nationalisation of industry, a ban on private trade and forced requisitioning of grain.

The name Germans gave to Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, under which Germany accepted responsibility for the loss and damage caused by the First World War. It was the legal basis for reparations.

A way of writing history as a story of steady progress towards the present, judging past people by how far they seemed to point towards modern values; criticised by Herbert Butterfield in 1931.

Printing in which the text and pictures of a whole page are carved into one wooden block, which is inked and pressed onto paper; used in China from at least the seventh century.

A world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's voyage and American progress.