History terms in Innovation and transformation (from 750 CE onwards)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A period of rapid growth in trade, markets, money and cities; historians use the term for Song China and for parts of medieval and early modern Europe.

In Punjab, a trader who handles the sale of farmers' grain at the market for a commission and often lends them money, to be repaid from the harvest.

A rival technology, technique or institution that meets the same need as a new innovation, whether an older method that remains efficient or another new method developed at the same time.

A provision of the Vaccination Act of 1898 that allowed parents in England and Wales to obtain exemption from compulsory vaccination for their children on grounds of conscience.

British tariffs on imported grain (1815–1846) that kept bread prices high to protect the incomes of landowners; their repeal in 1846 marked Britain's turn to free trade.

A machine patented by Eli Whitney in 1793 that separated the seeds from short-staple cotton much faster than by hand, making cotton growing profitable across the US South and leading to the expansion of slavery.

A general council of the Catholic Church held at Trent in northern Italy between 1545 and 1563, which defined Catholic doctrine against Protestantism and reformed the Church; it authorised the Index of 1564.

The Catholic Church's response to the Reformation from the 1540s, including the Council of Trent, new religious orders, the Roman Inquisition and the Index of Forbidden Books.

A skilled worker in the woollen industry who finished cloth by raising the nap and shearing it with heavy hand shears; Yorkshire croppers were the core of Luddism in 1812.

An explanation of innovation that starts from a need or market, such as a shortage, a crisis or customers wanting a product, which made people look for something new.

A member of a protected non-Muslim community (such as Christians and Jews) under Muslim rule, allowed to keep their religion in return for paying the jizya and accepting some legal restrictions.

The spread of an innovation from the people and place where it was first used to others, usually with changes and adaptations along the way.

The gap between people who have access to digital technology such as phones and the internet, and the skills to use it, and those who do not.

Electric current that flows in one direction only; Thomas Edison's early power networks used low-voltage direct current, which could not be sent far.

A government department or register in the early Islamic caliphates, such as the departments for the army, taxation or correspondence; by extension, the bureaucracy as a whole.

The buying, selling and forced movement of enslaved people within the United States after the import of enslaved Africans was banned in 1808; about a million people were moved from the Upper South to the cotton states.

The money, goods or property that a bride's family gives when she marries; in Song China a wife could keep some control over hers, while in modern India dowry demands became a source of pressure on families with daughters.

In Mexico, land held in common by a rural community and farmed in individual plots, created by land reform after the Mexican Revolution and greatly extended in the 1930s.

The fencing off and private ownership of open fields and common land in England, mostly by acts of Parliament between about 1750 and 1830, which deprived many rural labourers of access to land.

A person or institution already holding power when an innovation appears, such as a ruler, church, religious body, guild, company or bank.

A British law that banned children under nine from textile mills, limited the hours of children aged 9 to 13, required two hours of schooling a day and appointed four inspectors to enforce it.

A way of organising production in which wage workers operate machines driven by a central power source (water, then steam) in one building under supervision. It replaced production in homes and small workshops, first in the British cotton industry from the 1770s.

Philosophy in the Islamic world in the tradition of Greek thinkers such as Aristotle, developed after the translation movement by scholars such as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd.

A formal legal opinion given by a qualified Islamic scholar in answer to a question about religious law.

A household in which a woman is the main decision-maker and usually the main earner, often because a husband has died, left or is working far away.

A decree issued by the Ottoman sultan, carrying the force of law.

Access for individuals and businesses, especially the poor, to useful and affordable financial services such as payments, savings, credit and insurance.

An early gunpowder weapon made of a tube filled with gunpowder and fixed to a spear, used by Song forces from the 1130s; a forerunner of the gun.

The custom of tightly wrapping girls' feet from early childhood to keep them small, which spread among elite Chinese families from the Song dynasty and later to other classes; it was banned in the twentieth century.

A worker who made stockings and other hosiery on a hand-operated stocking frame, usually at home or in a small workshop, renting the frame from a hosier.

Trade between countries without tariffs, quotas or other barriers; the policy Britain adopted from the 1840s, starting with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.

The way a society assigns different kinds of work to men and women, such as field work to men and spinning, childcare and food preparation to women.

A machine that raised the nap on woollen cloth with teasels before shearing, replacing part of the croppers' hand work.

The overthrow of James II of England in 1688–1689 and the accession of William III and Mary II, which established Parliament's control over taxation and limited the power of the crown.

The growth after about 1800 of a large gap in wealth and productivity between western Europe (with its offshoots) and the rest of the world, especially China; the term was popularised by Kenneth Pomeranz.

The system of laws and technologies developed by the People's Republic of China from 1998 to block foreign websites and filter internet content.

The spread from the 1960s of high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, used with chemical fertiliser, pesticides and irrigation, which raised grain output in Mexico, South Asia and elsewhere.

Under Wang Anshi's New Policies, state loans of money or seed to farmers in spring, repaid with interest after the harvest, intended to free peasants from private moneylenders.

An explosive mixture of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal, discovered in China; the earliest surviving written formulas are in the Song military manual Wujing Zongyao (1044).

A name given by the historians Marshall Hodgson and William McNeill to the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whose rulers used expensive cannon and firearms to build large, centralised states.

A report of the sayings or actions of the Prophet Muhammad, passed down through a chain of named transmitters; collections of hadith are, after the Qur'an, the main source of Islamic law and practice.

A weaver who produced cloth on a hand-operated loom, usually at home; handloom weavers in Britain and India lost much of their income as machine-made yarn and cloth spread in the early nineteenth century.

A belief or teaching that contradicts the official doctrine of a religion, especially as defined by a church or religious authority.

Mark Elvin's explanation (1973) of why late imperial China did not industrialise: traditional methods were so efficient and labour so plentiful and cheap that labour-saving machines did not pay.

A crop variety bred to produce much more grain per hectare than traditional types, usually with short, stiff stems that can carry heavy heads when given plenty of fertiliser and water.

The decimal digits 0–9 with place value, developed in India, adopted in the Islamic world and later in Europe, which made written calculation far easier than Roman numerals.

The palace library in Abbasid Baghdad, associated especially with the caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833), where scholars copied and translated texts and studied astronomy and mathematics.

The list of publications that Catholics were forbidden to print, sell or read, issued by the papacy from 1559 and regularly updated until it was abolished in 1966.

Joel Mokyr's term for the eighteenth-century culture in which scientists, engineers and craftsmen shared useful knowledge, which he argues explains Britain's run of inventions.

Jan de Vries's term for the change in household behaviour in north-western Europe from the late seventeenth century, when families worked longer and sold more in order to buy consumer goods, raising demand before and during industrialisation.

A person who develops or first puts a new technology, method or idea into practical use: an inventor, but also a craft worker, entrepreneur, translator or scientist who adapts it.

Deliberate infection with a small amount of live smallpox matter to produce a mild case and lifelong protection; practised in Asia and Africa before it spread to Europe in the 1720s.

Church courts set up to find and punish heresy; in early modern Spain and Italy they also enforced censorship of books.

A research centre at Los Baños in the Philippines, founded in 1960 by the Ford and Rockefeller foundations with the Philippine government, which bred the high-yielding rice IR8, released in 1966.

A new idea, device or method. An invention becomes an innovation only when it is put to regular practical use.

Paper notes first issued by merchants in Sichuan in the early eleventh century as receipts exchangeable for coin; from 1024 the Song state issued them, making them the world's first government paper money.

The highest degree in the Chinese civil-service examinations, awarded after the final examination in the capital; under the Song dynasty about 200 were awarded a year on average.

A tax paid by non-Muslim subjects (dhimmi) under Muslim rule in return for protection and exemption from military service.

A secretary in the administration of an Islamic state; the kuttab of the Abbasid caliphate, many of Persian background, ran its correspondence, records and finances.

Hand-spun and hand-woven cloth, promoted by Gandhi from about 1918 as a symbol of Indian self-reliance and an alternative to imported machine-made textiles.

The belief that the state should interfere as little as possible in trade and industry, leaving owners and markets to decide wages, hours and conditions.

The state of the Khitan people (916–1125) in northern China and Mongolia, the Song dynasty's main northern rival until the Jurchen destroyed it.

An organisation of women mill workers in Lowell, Massachusetts, founded in 1845 and led by Sarah Bagley, which campaigned for a ten-hour working day; one of the first unions of working women in the United States.

An informal club of scientists, inventors and manufacturers in Birmingham, active from the 1760s to about 1813, whose members included Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood and Joseph Priestley.

The mobile money service launched by Safaricom and Vodafone in Kenya in March 2007, which lets users store money on a phone account and transfer it by text message.

A device that uses a magnetised needle to show direction; Chinese writers described it in the eleventh century and recorded its use at sea by 1119.

The replacement of human or animal labour by machines, such as tractors, threshers and combine harvesters in agriculture or power looms in textiles.

The social group between the landed aristocracy and manual workers, including manufacturers, merchants, bankers and professionals; in industrial Britain it grew rapidly and demanded political influence.

An inquisition begun by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun in 833 that required religious scholars and judges to accept that the Qur'an was created; abandoned under al-Mutawakkil around 848, its failure strengthened traditionalist scholars.

A British law, passed after the report of Lord Ashley's commission, that banned women and girls of any age and boys under ten from working underground in mines.

A system in which money is stored as a balance linked to a mobile phone number and transferred by text message, with cash paid in and out through agents such as shops.

A shopkeeper or trader licensed to exchange cash for electronic money on a mobile money account and back again, earning a commission on each transaction.

E. P. Thompson's term for the customary beliefs of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century working people about fair prices, fair wages and the protection of trades, which they defended through protest.

A school of Islamic theology, influential at the Abbasid court in the ninth century, that stressed reason and held that the Qur'an was created rather than eternal.

A labourer who dug canals and later built railways in Britain, from "navigator", the name for the men who dug the canals; many navvies were Irish migrants.

A member of the Maoist revolutionary movement in India named after the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal, where an armed peasant rising began in 1967. Naxalites have fought for land redistribution and the rights of landless labourers and tribal communities.

The question, posed by Joseph Needham, of why China, which led the world in many technologies before about 1500, did not go on to develop modern science and industry.

A revival and reinterpretation of Confucian thought in Song China, above all by Zhu Xi (1130–1200), that stressed moral self-cultivation, hierarchy and family order; it became the official basis of the examinations from 1313.

A group of historians writing since the 2010s, such as Sven Beckert and Edward Baptist, who argue that slavery and cotton were central to the growth of modern industrial capitalism.

The reform programme of the Song chief minister Wang Anshi (1069–1085), which used the state's finances to lend to farmers, regulate markets, replace labour service with a cash tax and organise village militias; conservatives led by Sima Guang repealed most of it in 1085–1086.

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which ended most cash relief for able-bodied poor people in England and Wales and made the workhouse the main form of relief.

In the standard of living debate, a historian who argues that industrialisation raised the living standards of British workers, especially after about 1820.

A writing material made from the pith of the papyrus plant, grown mainly in Egypt, used across the Mediterranean and Middle East until paper replaced it.

A writing material made from the prepared skins of animals such as sheep, goats or calves; durable but much more expensive than paper.

A legal right granted by a state that gives an inventor a monopoly over an invention for a fixed period, so that others cannot copy it without permission.

An employer's or ruler's practice of providing for the welfare of workers or subjects (housing, schools, discipline) as a father might, in return for obedience, without giving them rights or a voice.

Support given by a powerful person or institution (a ruler, noble, church or company) to scholars, artists or inventors through money, offices, protection or commissions, usually in return for loyalty, prestige or useful work.

The settlement of 1555 in the Holy Roman Empire that allowed each ruler to choose whether his territory would be Lutheran or Catholic, summed up later as cuius regio, eius religio ('whose realm, his religion').

The punishment of sending convicted criminals to a distant colony, used by Britain for convicts sent to Australia from 1788 to 1868.

In the standard of living debate, a historian who argues that industrialisation did not raise, or lowered, the living standards of British workers before about 1850.

The attack by cavalry on a peaceful meeting of about 60,000 people demanding parliamentary reform at St Peter's Field, Manchester, on 16 August 1819, which killed between 15 and 18 people.

The US Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954, later called Food for Peace, which sold or gave surplus American grain to other countries on easy terms and also served US foreign policy aims.

Low-lying land reclaimed from a marsh, lake or the sea by surrounding it with dykes and draining it; large areas of the Yangzi delta were turned into polder fields under the Song.

Resistance by ordinary people, through riots, machine-breaking, petitions, demonstrations, boycotts or refusal to adopt, usually by those whose work, health or way of life an innovation affected.

The amount of output produced from a given amount of input, such as grain per hectare of land or cloth per hour of labour.

Edward Baptist's term (2014) for the methods of quotas, measurement and violence that he argues forced enslaved people to pick ever more cotton; other historians stress new cotton varieties instead.

A way of organising manufacture before factories, in which a merchant supplied raw materials to families who spun, wove or made goods in their own homes, then collected and sold the finished products.

An enslaved woman in the medieval Islamic world trained in music, poetry and conversation to entertain elite households; skilled qiyan were sold for high prices and some became famous.

A wage measured by what it can buy, after taking account of changes in prices; if prices rise faster than money wages, real wages fall.

The religious movement begun by Martin Luther in 1517 that challenged the authority and teachings of the Catholic Church and created the Protestant churches.

Money sent by a migrant worker to family or others in their home area or country.

The capacity of inherited beliefs, customs and forms of knowledge to adapt and endure alongside innovations, rather than simply disappearing or blocking them.

Opposition to the adoption or spread of a new technology, technique, institution or idea, through bans and regulation, protest and violence, refusal to adopt, or support for rival methods.

A week of rioting in Rio de Janeiro in November 1904 against a law making smallpox vaccination compulsory and against the city's wider modernisation; the government suspended compulsion and then repressed the revolt.

A large US philanthropic organisation founded in 1913 that funded medical and agricultural research abroad, including the programme in Mexico from 1943 that bred the wheat of the Green Revolution.

The parliamentary select committee chaired by Michael Sadler in 1832, which collected evidence from mill workers about children's hours and treatment in support of a ten-hour bill; its report led towards the Factory Act of 1833.

The official name in the Indian constitution (1950) for the castes formerly treated as untouchable, which are entitled to reserved places in education, government jobs and legislatures.

In imperial China, a man educated in the Confucian classics who served in government, usually after passing the civil-service examinations.

The transformation of European ideas about nature between about 1540 and 1700, from Copernicus to Newton, based on observation, experiment and mathematics rather than ancient authority.

The deliberate circulation of texts in handwritten copies rather than print, common among European elites into the seventeenth century, partly because it let authors control their readers and avoid censors.

A person who copied texts by hand for a living; in Europe and the Islamic world scribes produced books before printing, and many continued to work long after it appeared.

Speech, writing or action that encourages rebellion or resistance against the lawful authority of a state.

The chief religious official of the Ottoman Empire, head of the learned religious hierarchy, whose legal opinions (fatwas) could approve or condemn state policies.

A machine that held several pairs of cloth shears and did the work of hand croppers with far less labour; Yorkshire Luddites attacked shearing frames in 1812.

The small group at the top of a society that holds most of its wealth, status or power, such as aristocrats and landowners, officials, senior clergy, wealthy merchants and industrialists.

The long-running dispute among historians over whether the living standards of ordinary British people rose or fell during industrialisation, roughly 1780–1850, between optimists and pessimists.

The London guild of printers and booksellers, which received a royal charter in 1557 giving its members a monopoly of printing in England and the duty to search out unlicensed presses.

The English law of 1624 that abolished most royal monopolies but allowed patents of up to fourteen years for new inventions.

A hand-operated knitting machine for making stockings and other hosiery; Nottinghamshire Luddites broke wide frames used to make cheap 'cut-up' goods.

An explanation of innovation that starts from capacity: the knowledge, materials, skills and capital that made a new solution possible at a particular time and place.

Meaning 'of one's own country', the Indian nationalist policy of boycotting foreign, especially British, goods and buying Indian-made ones instead.

The movement of knowledge, techniques or devices from one society to another through trade, war, migration, scholarship or aid, usually followed by local adaptation.

A British law of 1847 that limited the working day of women and young people in textile mills to ten hours.

A machine, powered by horses, water or later steam, that separated grain from straw, replacing the winter work of labourers threshing by hand with flails; a main target of the Swing Riots of 1830.

The habit of organising work and life by the clock rather than by tasks, daylight and seasons, which employers imposed on industrial workers; a concept developed by the historian E. P. Thompson (1967).

A change in the basic structure of a society: how most people make a living, who holds power, how people use the environment, or what they believe. It differs from incremental change, which alters details within a structure that stays the same.

The translation of Greek, Persian, Syriac and Indian scientific and philosophical works into Arabic, centred on Baghdad from the late eighth to the tenth century and paid for by caliphs, officials and wealthy families.

The agreement of 1005 between the Song and the Liao that ended their border wars; the Song agreed to send annual payments of silk and silver.

A narrow well, drilled into the ground and fitted with a pipe and pump, that draws groundwater for irrigation; their spread in Punjab and Haryana made the Green Revolution possible but lowered water tables.

The nineteenth-century word for a strike, in which workers walked out of a mill together; used for the protests of the Lowell mill women in 1834 and 1836.

Elizabeth Eisenstein's term for the ability of print to produce many identical, permanent copies of a text, which she argued allowed knowledge to be compared, corrected and accumulated.

People who have no account with a bank or other formal financial institution and so rely on cash and informal ways of saving, borrowing and sending money.

The US government agency, created in 1961, that runs American economic and development aid to other countries.

Protection against a disease by giving a harmless or weakened form of it; first used against smallpox, with cowpox, by Edward Jenner in 1796.

The everyday spoken language of a people (such as German or English), as opposed to a learned or sacred language such as Latin.

A group with a strong stake in keeping an existing arrangement, such as workers, guilds or firms whose income depends on an older technology, and which therefore tends to resist change.

The chief minister of a Muslim ruler, who ran the government and its finances on the ruler's behalf.

The commercial and publicity struggle in the United States in the late 1880s and early 1890s between Edison's direct current system and Westinghouse's alternating current system, which alternating current won.

A legal prosecution for witchcraft; in Europe between about 1450 and 1750 some 40,000 to 60,000 people, roughly 80 per cent of them women, were executed after such trials.

The social group of people who live by selling their labour for wages, especially in factories, mines and workshops; in Britain it became a distinct group with shared identities during industrialisation.

A revolt of enslaved East African labourers and others in southern Iraq (869–883) against the Abbasid caliphate, centred on the marshes near Basra where they had been forced to clear salt from the land.