The History glossary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The title of the king of Oyo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A system in which states agree that aggression against one is a concern of all and that all will act together, by sanctions or force, to stop an aggressor; the central principle of the League of Nations.

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

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

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

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

British laws of 1940 and 1945 that provided money for economic development, education and health in the colonies.

The forced labour draft of Spanish Peru, reorganised by Viceroy Francisco de Toledo between 1569 and 1581 from the Inca mita, which required highland communities to send one-seventh of their adult men each year to the mines of Potosí and Huancavelica; abolished in 1812.

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

The rule of one people by another, usually from a distant country, in which the colonising power controls the colony's government, land and economy and treats its people as subjects.

Informal and legal racial segregation that excluded Africans from European hotels, clubs, schools, residential areas and better-paid jobs.

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

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 Black lesbian socialist feminist group in Boston (1974–1980) whose 1977 statement argued that the major systems of oppression are interlocking.

A member of an armed force who takes a direct part in fighting.

Fighting by using different weapons and branches (infantry, artillery, tanks, aircraft) together so that each covers the weaknesses of the others.

The Soviet-led economic organisation of communist states, founded in 1949; Cuba joined in 1972.

The Spanish decree of 1778 that opened trade between more ports of Spain and Spanish America, still within the empire; it mainly benefited merchants in Spain.

The euphemism used for women and girls forced into sexual slavery in brothels run by or for the Japanese military from the 1930s to 1945, mostly from Korea and China.

The Communist Information Bureau (1947–1956), which linked the ruling communist parties of Eastern Europe with the French and Italian parties under Soviet direction.

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

Clandestine workers' committees formed in Spain in the 1960s, led largely by Communists, which used the official union elections to organise strikes; a major union in democratic Spain.

The instruction word or phrase in a question (explain, analyse, examine, to what extent) that sets the kind of thinking and the depth of answer expected.

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

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

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.

The German order of 6 June 1941 that Soviet political commissars captured in the war against the USSR were to be shot.

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.

The committee of twelve members of the French National Convention that directed the war, the economy and the Terror in 1793–1794; its members included Robespierre, Saint-Just and Carnot.

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

The US government propaganda agency of 1917–1919, led by George Creel, which promoted support for the First World War.

Cuban neighbourhood committees founded on 28 September 1960 to organise community work and rallies and to watch residents for political disloyalty.

The EEC's farm policy from 1962, which guaranteed prices for farmers and became the largest item in the Community budget.

The law common to the whole of England, developed by the royal courts from the twelfth century through writs, juries and judges' decisions.

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 loose association of former Soviet republics created in December 1991 to replace the USSR, with no common government.

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

The decision announced by the British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald in August 1932 to give separate electorates to several Indian communities, including the Depressed Classes (Dalits), which Gandhi opposed by fasting.

An ideology, based on the work of Karl Marx, that aims at a classless society in which the means of production are owned in common; in the twentieth century, also the system of one-party rule by communist parties in the USSR, China, Cuba and elsewhere.

Cuba's ruling and only legal party, founded in October 1965 from the merger of Castro's movement with the old communists and other revolutionary groups.

The successor to the Soviet Communist Party in Russia, founded in 1993 and led by Gennady Zyuganov; the largest opposition party of the 1990s.

The ruling party of the USSR, which held a legal monopoly of power until 1990 and controlled the state, economy and society through its own hierarchy. It was banned in Russia in November 1991.

A War on Poverty programme (1964) that funded local agencies run with the "maximum feasible participation" of poor people; it clashed with city governments and was cut back by Congress.

The interpretation of Canadian Confederation as a pact between the provinces, or between English and French Canadians, which the federal government could not change without their consent.

A decline in public and government willingness to help victims of a long-running humanitarian crisis, used of Western attitudes to Indochinese refugees in the 1980s.

The ending of slavery with payments to slave owners for the loss of the people they owned, as in the British colonies in 1834; the enslaved themselves received nothing.

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 type of regime in which elections and opposition parties exist but the rulers tilt the playing field so heavily, through the media, courts and state resources, that they cannot realistically lose.

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

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

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

The plan adopted at Geneva in June 1989 that kept first asylum for Indochinese asylum seekers but screened those arriving after a cut-off date, resettling refugees and returning those found not to be refugees. It ended in 1996.

The informal settlement of the disputed presidential election of 1876, by which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes became president and federal troops were withdrawn from the South, ending Reconstruction.

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

Argentina's National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, created by Alfonsín in December 1983; its report Nunca Más (1984) documented 8,961 people who disappeared under the military regime.

A camp where civilians or political prisoners are held without trial in harsh conditions, such as the British camps for Boer and African civilians in the South African War (1899–1902) and the camps run by the SS in Nazi Germany from 1933.

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

The alliance of Chilean centre and left parties, led by the Christian Democrats and Socialists, that won the 1988 plebiscite against Pinochet and governed Chile from 1990 to 2010.

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

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

The arrangement under which the Basque Country and Navarre collect almost all their own taxes and pay an agreed sum to the Spanish state for shared services.

The theory, strongest in the early fifteenth century, that a general council of the Church held authority above the pope and could reform or depose him.

One of three cross-party bills of 1910–1912 that would have given the vote to a limited number of propertied women; all failed, which angered the suffrage movement.

The coalition of conservatives, anti-Yrigoyen Radicals and independent socialists that governed Argentina from 1932 to 1943 through electoral fraud.

A treaty between the papacy and a state that regulates the position of the Catholic Church in that state, such as Napoleon's Concordat of 1801, the Reich Concordat with Nazi Germany (1933) and Franco's Concordat of 1953.

The agreement of 1122 between Emperor Henry V and Pope Calixtus II that ended the Investiture Contest in the empire.

The practice in which a man keeps one or more secondary partners, of lower status than his wife, alongside her.

The Haudenosaunee ceremony in which the League mourned dead sachems and installed their successors, renewing the League itself.

The German air and ground force sent by Hitler to help Franco in 1936–1939; about 19,000 men served in it in rotation, and it bombed Guernica in April 1937.

The leader of a band of mercenary soldiers hired by an Italian state under a contract (condotta); some, such as Francesco Sforza, became rulers themselves.

The Confederate States of America, formed in February 1861 by Southern states that seceded from the United States to protect slavery; it was defeated in 1865.

A union of independent communities or states that act together for some purposes, such as defence, while keeping their own governments; e.g. the Haudenosaunee League and Tlaxcala.

The league of German states, eventually about 39, formed under Napoleon's protection in 1806; its members left the Holy Roman Empire and supplied troops to France until 1813.

A movement of German Protestant clergy and congregations, formed in 1934, that rejected Nazi control of the Protestant church and the pro-Nazi German Christians. Leaders such as Martin Niemöller were imprisoned.

The process after about 1550 by which Lutheran, Calvinist and Catholic states each imposed a defined confession of faith on their subjects through catechisms, visitations, schools and discipline, strengthening the state.

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

Internal exile imposed on opponents of Fascism by administrative commissions without trial, in remote villages or on islands, for up to five years.

An association of lay people who met for shared prayer, charity and religious ceremonies, often under the patronage of a saint.

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

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

The alliance of the ANC with Indian, Coloured, white democratic and trade union organisations in South Africa in the 1950s, which adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955.

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

The US labour federation formed in 1935–1938 under John L. Lewis to organise whole industries, such as steel and cars, including unskilled, Black and immigrant workers.

The first inter-American conference (1826), called by Bolívar to form a league of the new Spanish American republics; its treaty was ratified only by Gran Colombia.

The large parliament created in the USSR in 1989, partly through contested elections, and the similar body elected in Russia in 1990, which was dissolved by Yeltsin in 1993.

A US civil rights organisation founded in Chicago in 1942 that used non-violent direct action. It organised the Freedom Rides of 1961.

A federation of mainly Black trade unions in South Africa founded in December 1985, which used strikes and stay-aways against apartheid and allied itself with the ANC.

The conference of European powers (September 1814 to June 1815) that redrew the map of Europe after Napoleon, restoring many old dynasties and creating the German Confederation.

The series of meetings of the great powers between 1818 and 1822 (Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach, Verona) held to uphold the 1815 settlement and deal with revolutions.

The alliance of 1852 between Cavour's centre-right and Rattazzi's centre-left in the Piedmontese parliament, which gave Cavour a secure majority; the word means "marriage".

The military campaigns of 1878–1885, led by Julio Argentino Roca, in which Argentina conquered the Indigenous peoples of the southern Pampas and Patagonia and opened their land to large estates.

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.

A person who refuses to serve in the armed forces on grounds of conscience, usually religious or moral; about 16,000 men did so in Britain in the First World War.

The practice of meeting in small groups to share personal experiences in order to discover their common, political causes, developed by radical feminists in 1967–1968.

Compulsory enlistment of people, usually young men, into the armed forces by law.

The political conflict in Canada over compulsory overseas service, which divided English Canada from French Canada.

Obedience given willingly, because people agree with a government, benefit from it or accept its right to rule.

A legal settlement approved by a court in which a party agrees to change its practices without admitting guilt, such as AT&T's 1973 agreement with the EEOC.

A political outlook that defends established institutions such as monarchy, the Church and the nobility, and prefers slow change to reform or revolution.

The informal alliance of Republicans and Southern Democrats in the US Congress, from the late 1930s to the 1960s, that blocked many liberal reforms, including Kennedy's health and education bills.

The party formed on 7 December 2003 by the merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party; it governed under Stephen Harper from 2006 to 2015.

A Spanish royal decree of 1804 that forced Church institutions in the Americas to call in their loans and pass the money to the crown, hurting creole landowners, especially in New Spain.

The code of 1943 that brought together the labour laws of the Vargas era in Brazil: working hours, holidays, minimum wage, labour courts and state-recognised unions.

The process by which a new regime secures control after taking office by removing rivals, taking over state institutions and silencing opposition.

The plot of 1796 led by Gracchus Babeuf to overthrow the Directory and establish common ownership of property; betrayed, it ended with Babeuf's execution in 1797.

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.

The constitution of Mexico proclaimed at Querétaro on 5 February 1917, still in force. Its articles on land (27), labour (123), education (3) and the Church (130) made it one of the most radical constitutions of its time.

The first Spanish constitution (1812), written by the Cortes at Cádiz, which declared the sovereignty of the nation and limited the king’s power, but excluded people of African descent from citizenship.

The constitution of the Republic of India, in force from 26 January 1950, which introduced universal adult suffrage, guaranteed fundamental rights and abolished untouchability.

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

The pursuit of self-government through legal political methods such as petitions, delegations, elections and negotiation, rather than violence.

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

The revolutionary coalition led by Venustiano Carranza from 1913, first against Huerta and then against Villa and Zapata, whose leaders included the Sonoran generals Obregón and Calles. It won the war of the factions in 1915.

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

The government of France from 1799 to 1804 under the Constitution of the Year VIII, in which the First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, held almost all executive power.

Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama, which from 1983 worked for a negotiated peace in Central America without outside intervention.

The US strategy, from 1947, of preventing the spread of Soviet power and communism beyond the areas where they already existed, through economic aid, alliances, military strength and covert action.

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

The army of the United States created by the Continental Congress in June 1775 and commanded by George Washington during the War of Independence.

The assembly of delegates from the American colonies that met from 1774, raised the Continental Army, declared independence in 1776 and governed the United States until 1781.

Napoleon's attempt from 1806 to defeat Britain economically by closing the ports of continental Europe to British trade.

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.

In the US Civil War, an enslaved person who escaped to Union lines and was treated as enemy property that could be kept rather than returned, from General Butler's ruling of May 1861.

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

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

The armed groups, funded and directed largely by the CIA, that fought the Sandinista government of Nicaragua from 1981 to 1990.

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 meeting of revolutionary generals in October–November 1914, after Huerta's fall, that tried to form a government. Dominated by Villa and Zapata's supporters, it adopted the Plan of Ayala; Carranza rejected it, starting the war of the factions.

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

The Argentine policy of 1991–2001 that fixed one peso to one US dollar by law; it ended hyperinflation but collapsed in the crisis of December 2001.

The grouping of merchant ships to sail together under the protection of warships, which made them harder for submarines to find and attack.

Lester Pearson's approach to the provinces in the 1960s: negotiated shared programmes, with the right for a province, above all Quebec, to opt out and run its own with federal compensation.

The conditions for joining the EU set in 1993: stable democracy, the rule of law and minority rights; a functioning market economy; and the ability to adopt EU law.

A Northern Democrat who opposed the US Civil War and called for a negotiated peace with the Confederacy; the name came from a poisonous snake.

The rising of workers and students in the Argentine city of Córdoba in May 1969 against the military government of Onganía, which marked the beginning of mass resistance to the regime.

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.

The system of rural political control in Brazil's Old Republic, in which local landowners and bosses (coronéis) delivered the votes of their dependants to state governments in return for patronage and local power.

The Italian force of about 70,000–80,000 troops sent by Mussolini to fight for Franco in 1936–1939; it was defeated at Guadalajara in March 1937.

The Fascist system in which employers and workers in each branch of the economy were organised in state-run corporations instead of independent unions; largely a façade that controlled labour.

A system in which the state organises society into officially recognised groups by occupation or function, each represented through one organisation that bargains with the government. In Mexico it was built into the ruling party in 1938.

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

Compulsory unpaid labour owed to the state, such as work on roads; revived by the US occupation authorities in Haiti after 1915.

A member of the self-governing, semi-military communities of the southern and eastern frontiers of Russia and Ukraine, who served the state as soldiers in return for land and privileges.

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

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.

The cotton-growing region of the US Deep South, from South Carolina to Texas, where most enslaved people lived and worked by 1860.

The meeting of the leaders of the United States, Britain, France and Italy (Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Orlando) that took the main decisions at the Paris Peace Conference from March 1919.

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.

In the Carolingian Empire, a royal official drawn from the aristocracy who ran a county, holding courts, raising troops and keeping order; later a hereditary noble title.

An argument or body of evidence that challenges the claim being tested. In a strong essay it is weighed against the claim, not simply listed.

The military, political and social methods a government uses to defeat a guerrilla or insurgent movement, above all by separating it from the population.

An organised campaign formed to oppose a popular movement and defend the existing order, such as the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League in Britain or the White Citizens' Councils in the American South.

Jean Casimir's term for the way of life rural Haitians built after independence, based on family land and food crops, in rejection of plantation labour.

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.

The youth culture of the 1960s and early 1970s in the United States and elsewhere that rejected mainstream values of work, consumption, sexual restraint and conformity.

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.

A medieval siege engine whose throwing arm is swung by a heavy falling weight, able to throw larger stones further and more accurately than engines worked by pulling teams.

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 sudden and illegal seizure of power by a small group, usually from within the army or the state, as by the Free Officers in Egypt in 1952.

The coup of 18–19 Brumaire Year VIII (9–10 November 1799) in which Napoleon Bonaparte, Sieyès and their allies overthrew the Directory and set up the Consulate.

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

Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal of February 1937 to appoint up to six extra Supreme Court justices, which Congress rejected as an attack on the independence of the courts.

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

The founding document of the League of Nations, written into the peace treaties of 1919–1920, which set out its aims, its organisation and its members' obligations, including collective security (Article 10) and sanctions (Article 16).

Secret activity by a government to influence events in another country while hiding its own role, such as propaganda, funding parties, sabotage, arming rebels and organising coups.

The principal wife of the Sapa Inca, usually his full sister, who had her own lands and religious duties and influence over the succession.

The gap between what the US government said about the Vietnam War and what the public believed, which widened as official claims of progress were contradicted by events.

A person born in a colony, as opposed to one born in Africa or Europe, and the mixed cultures and languages that grew up in such colonies, such as Kreyòl in Saint-Domingue.

The process by which enslaved Africans of many origins, and their descendants, created new cultures, languages and religions in the Americas by combining African, European and Indigenous elements.

Serious crimes such as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and persecution committed against a civilian population, first defined in the charter of the International Military Tribunal in 1945.

The charge, first used at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, of planning, starting or waging a war of aggression.

A person of Spanish descent born in the Americas; criollos owned much of the land and wealth of Spanish America but were largely excluded from the highest offices, which went to peninsulares.

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

A Catholic rebel in the Cristero War of 1926–1929, named after the cry "¡Viva Cristo Rey!" ("Long live Christ the King!"). Most Cristeros were peasants and ranchers of west-central Mexico.

The armed rising of 1926–1929 by Catholic peasants and townspeople in west-central Mexico against the anticlerical laws of President Calles. It ended with the arreglos of June 1929.

A set of constitutional amendments proposed in December 1860 that would have extended the 36°30′ line to the Pacific, protecting slavery south of it, and guaranteed slavery permanently; Republicans rejected it.

The Regional Confederation of Mexican Workers, the main labour federation of the 1920s, founded in 1918 and led by Luis Morones. It supported Obregón and Calles in return for official favour and lost influence after 1928.

The name given by the historian Robert Barlow in 1945 to a lost Nahuatl history of Tenochtitlan that both Diego Durán and Hernando Alvarado Tezozomoc used as their main source.

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

A credit system in the post-war US South in which merchants or landlords supplied goods in return for a legal claim on the farmer's future crop; high interest and low prices kept many sharecroppers in debt.

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.

A British colony ruled directly by a governor appointed from London, without an elected assembly with real power; Jamaica became one in 1866.

Colonial laws of 1902 and 1915 that let the Kenyan government grant land to European settlers and declared all land in the colony, including African-occupied land, to be Crown land.

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

The protests by Catholic parents and villagers in Bavaria in 1941 against a Nazi order to remove crucifixes from school classrooms, which forced the order to be withdrawn.

A holy war called by the papacy, in which participants took a vow and received spiritual rewards; above all the expeditions to recover Jerusalem from Muslim rule from 1095 onwards.

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

The Confederation of Mexican Workers, founded in February 1936 under Vicente Lombardo Toledano with Cárdenas's support. It became the labour sector of the ruling party in 1938.

The confrontation of October 1962 between the USA and the USSR over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, which ended when Khrushchev withdrew them in return for an American promise not to invade Cuba.

The principle, agreed at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, that the ruler of each territory in the Holy Roman Empire decided whether it would be Catholic or Lutheran.

The use of propaganda, ceremony and the arts to present a leader as an exceptional, almost superhuman figure who embodies the nation or the revolution.

The civic religion promoted by Robespierre in 1794, based on belief in God and the immortality of the soul, celebrated in a festival in Paris on 8 June 1794.

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.

The name given to former slaves who worked on plantations after emancipation in Saint-Domingue; legally free, they were bound to their estates by labour regulations.

The destruction of the structures and practices that allow a group to continue as a group, such as its land, institutions, languages and spiritual practices; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission used the term for Canada's residential schools policy.

A travelling team of teachers, doctors, agricultural experts and artists sent by Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education from 1923 to train rural teachers and improve village life.

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.

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

Mao's campaign of 1966–1976 to renew revolutionary spirit and remove rivals, in which Red Guards attacked party officials, teachers and "class enemies".

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.

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

Hans Mommsen’s term for the way competition between rival Nazi agencies pushed policy to ever more extreme measures.

The replacement of the Reichsmark by the Deutschmark in the western zones of Germany on 20 June 1948, which started West German recovery and led to the Berlin Blockade.

A boundary line between Poland and Soviet Russia proposed in 1919–1920; at Yalta in 1945 the Allies accepted it, roughly, as Poland's new eastern border.

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

An agreement between states to abolish customs duties on trade between them and to charge a common tariff on imports from outside.

A date after which new arrivals lose an entitlement given to earlier ones. Under the Comprehensive Plan of Action, Vietnamese arriving after the cut-off (14 March 1989 in most countries) had to be screened instead of being resettled automatically.

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

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 lord who ruled one of the roughly 260 domains (han) of Tokugawa Japan, with his own samurai, laws and taxes, under the control of the shogun.

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

Tribute paid by English kings to Viking raiders in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries; the name was later given to the land tax.

The work unit in Mao's China, through which urban workers received jobs, housing, rations and welfare, and through which the party watched and organised them.

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 US law of 1887 that divided reservation land into individual family plots and sold the "surplus" to settlers, aiming to turn Indigenous people into individual farmers; it cost them about two-thirds of their land by 1934.

The 1924 agreement that rescheduled German reparation payments and provided American loans to stabilise the German economy.

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

Separation of races that exists in practice without a law requiring it, for example because of housing patterns, lending practices or income.

Separation of races required by law, as under the Jim Crow laws of the southern United States.

The Bolshevik policy of 1919 of mass terror against Cossacks who had fought against Soviet power, including executions and deportations.

The Soviet policy, begun after Stalin's death in 1953 and made public by Khrushchev's Secret Speech in 1956, of ending mass terror, releasing and rehabilitating many victims and dismantling the cult of Stalin, while keeping the one-party state.

The forced marches of concentration camp prisoners away from the advancing Allied armies in 1944–1945, on which many thousands died.

The crisis that began when Mexico announced in August 1982 that it could not pay its foreign debts; lending to Latin America stopped and most countries had to cut spending and accept IMF conditions.

A system in which workers were bound to an employer, usually a large estate, by debts for advances of wages or goods that they could never repay.

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.

The "Tragic Ten Days" of 9–19 February 1913, when an army revolt in Mexico City led to fighting in the city centre and ended with General Victoriano Huerta's seizure of power and the murder of President Madero.

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

The campaign of 1793–1794 in revolutionary France to remove Christianity from public life: closing churches, pressing priests to give up their vocation and replacing worship with civic cults.

A formal statement that a territory has separated from the state that ruled it and become a sovereign state.

The statement of principles adopted by the French National Assembly on 26 August 1789, declaring that men are born and remain free and equal in rights.

A Soviet decree of 2 (15) November 1917 that promised equality and self-determination, including the right to secede, to all the peoples of the former Russian Empire.

The statement agreed at Yalta in February 1945 in which the Allies promised to help the liberated peoples of Europe form governments through free elections.

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

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

The process by which colonies gained independence from imperial powers, in Africa mainly between the late 1950s and the 1970s.

Guatemala's agrarian reform law of 17 June 1952, under President Árbenz, which expropriated uncultivated land on large estates, including much United Fruit land, and gave it to peasant families.

An Argentine decree of March 1956 that banned Peronist symbols, songs, images and even the names of Juan and Eva Perón in public.

Yeltsin's decree of 21 September 1993 dissolving the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, which the Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional and which led to the October crisis.

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.

A term for the unelected institutions of a state, such as the army, security services, courts and bureaucracy, believed to keep power regardless of who governs; used in Egypt for the institutions that survived the 2011 revolution.

A British law of 8 August 1914, extended during the war, that gave the government wide powers to take over industry and land, censor the press and restrict daily life.

The non-violent campaign launched by the ANC and the South African Indian Congress in June 1952, in which volunteers deliberately broke apartheid laws and accepted arrest.

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.

Belief in a creator God who made the universe as a rational system governed by natural laws, combined with rejection of miracles, revelation and the authority of churches.

The Soviet campaign of 1930–1933 to destroy the 'kulaks' as a class, by seizing their property and deporting about 1.8 million people to remote regions.

A term coined by the political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell for a system with free elections in which the elected president governs with few checks from parliament or the courts.

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.

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.

The part of a manor kept by the lord for his own use and worked by the labour services of his peasants.

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.

The criticism that EU decisions are made by bodies that are too remote from, or not accountable enough to, voters.

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

The official name of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime, 1975–1979. After 1979 its representatives kept Cambodia's seat at the United Nations.

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.

The Allied policy after 1945 of removing Nazis from public life and Nazi ideas from German society, through trials, questionnaires and tribunals.

The dating and study of tree rings. Because a tree adds one ring a year, wider in good years and narrower in poor ones, ring patterns date wood exactly and give a record of past climate.

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.

An administrative division of France. Algeria was organised as three French départements from 1848, so most French politicians saw it as part of France rather than a colony.

The argument, developed by Latin American scholars from the 1950s, that exporting primary products to industrial countries kept Latin America economically subordinate, because profits flowed abroad, local industry stayed weak and economies were exposed to world prices.

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

A Spanish legal term for disrespect towards public officials; a 1949 law under Perón widened and toughened the offence, which was used against opposition politicians and journalists.

The period of rapid, state-guided economic growth in Spain from about 1959 to 1973, when the Franco regime sought legitimacy through prosperity.

"The shirtless ones": the Argentine urban workers who supported Perón, a name first used as an insult by his opponents and then adopted with pride after 17 October 1945.

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

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

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 Brezhnev-era doctrine that the USSR had reached a long, stable stage of socialism before full communism, which replaced Khrushchev's promise of communism by 1980.

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

A British government statement of 1923 that African interests in Kenya must be paramount where they conflicted with those of immigrant races; it blocked Indian demands but changed little for Africans.

A religious movement in the Netherlands and Germany from the late fourteenth century that stressed personal prayer, moral life and education, through communities such as the Brethren of the Common Life.

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.

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

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

The name given to General Berenguer's government of 1930–1931, which relaxed Primo de Rivera's dictatorship without restoring full constitutional rule; a pun on dictadura (dura, hard; blanda, soft).

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.

Rule by one person or a small group with unlimited power, not limited by a constitution, elections or courts.

Meetings of the imperial Diet in 1526, which let each ruler act on religion as he would answer to God and the emperor, and in 1529, which reversed this and provoked the protest that gave Protestants their name.

The assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire (the electors, the other princes and the imperial cities), whose consent the emperor needed for imperial taxes and laws.

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.

German for a dictated order; the name many Germans gave the Treaty of Versailles because Germany was not allowed to negotiate its terms.

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.

Chile's secret police from 1974 to 1977, led by Manuel Contreras, which carried out torture, disappearances and murders at home and abroad; it was replaced by the CNI.

The reversal of alliances in 1756, when Austria allied with its old enemy France and Britain allied with Prussia, shortly before the Seven Years’ War.

Protest that confronts an injustice directly, by doing what is forbidden or blocking what is objected to, instead of working only through petitions, courts or elections.

16 August 1946, when the All-India Muslim League called for protests in support of Pakistan; communal violence in Calcutta killed about 4,000 people and spread to other parts of India.

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.

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

The government of France from November 1795 to November 1799 under the Constitution of the Year III, with five Directors as the executive and two elected councils as the legislature.

The mass campaign in Brazil in 1984 for the direct election of the president, which failed in Congress but helped bring the military regime to an end.

The name for the campaign of state terror by the Argentine military regime of 1976–1983 against people it accused of subversion, using abduction, secret detention, torture and murder.

A person abducted by state agents, held in secret and usually killed while the authorities denied holding them; the method was used by several Latin American military regimes.

A procedure in the US House of Representatives that forces a bill out of a committee that refuses to act on it, if a majority of members sign.

Disembarkation Resettlement Offers, a scheme from 1979 under which Western states guaranteed to resettle boat people rescued by ships of countries that did not take refugees, so that captains would stop to help. A later companion scheme was called RASRO.

Removing the right to vote from a group. In the US South after 1890 it was done without naming race, through poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses and white primaries, backed by violence.

In Allied usage after 1944, a civilian outside their own country because of the Second World War who needed help to return home or settle elsewhere; Germans were excluded. Today the term also covers people forced from their homes who remain inside their own country.

The US law of 25 June 1948, amended in 1950, that allowed displaced persons to enter the United States outside the normal quotas; about 400,000 DPs were admitted under it.

The expression of disagreement with a regime or its policies, in private or in public, without necessarily trying to bring the regime down. A dissident is a person who openly criticises an authoritarian regime.

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

A strategy in which a ruling power weakens opposition by encouraging or exploiting divisions among the people it governs, for example by giving religious or caste groups separate representation.

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

The doctrine that monarchs receive their authority directly from God and are answerable to God alone, so that resistance to a king is resistance to God.

The revolutionary army of the north led by Pancho Villa from 1913, the largest of the revolution, which moved by railway and destroyed Huerta's army at Zacatecas in 1914 before its defeat by Obregón in 1915.

The splitting of production into separate tasks, each done by a different worker, which Adam Smith argued greatly increases productivity.

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 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 States’ Rights Democratic Party, formed by southern Democrats who left the party in 1948 in protest at President Truman’s support for civil rights; its candidate, Strom Thurmond, won four southern states.

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

The false accusation, announced in January 1953, that leading Kremlin doctors, most of them Jewish, had plotted to kill Soviet leaders; it was dropped after Stalin's death.

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 US law of July 2010 that tightened the regulation of banks and financial markets after the 2008 crisis and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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

The foreign policy of President Taft and Secretary of State Knox (1909–1913), which used US loans and investment, backed by the government, to gain influence and stability in Latin America and East Asia.

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

The record of the survey of England ordered by William I in 1085 and carried out in 1086, listing landholders, land, resources and values.

The belief, dominant in post-war American culture, that a woman's fulfilment lay in being a full-time wife, mother and homemaker in a single-earner family.

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.

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

A self-governing country of the British Empire, such as Canada or Australia, which ran its own internal affairs while sharing the British Crown; until the 1920s its foreign policy was set in London.

The belief, stated by Eisenhower in April 1954, that if one country fell to communism its neighbours would follow, like a row of falling dominoes.

A forged document, claimed to be from the fourth-century emperor Constantine, granting the pope authority over the western Roman Empire; Lorenzo Valla proved it a forgery in 1440.

Pippin III's grant to the pope in 756 of lands in central Italy taken from the Lombards, usually seen as the origin of the Papal States.

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.

An Arctic people who lived in parts of Arctic Canada and Greenland before the Thule; the ruins the Norse found in Greenland may have been theirs or those of even earlier cultures.

The burden Haiti carried after 1825 of paying both the indemnity to France and loans, with interest, taken from French banks to pay it.

Frances Beal's term (1969) for the combined oppression of Black women by racism and sexism, together with economic exploitation.

The campaign launched by the Black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier in February 1942 for victory over fascism abroad and over racism at home.

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.

A camp in occupied Germany, Austria or Italy that housed, fed and registered displaced persons under Allied military and UN administration after 1945, usually organised by nationality.

The argument, made by Dadabhai Naoroji and others from the 1870s, that British rule drained India's wealth to Britain through payments to London, salaries, pensions and profits.

A battleship of the type introduced by the British HMS Dreadnought in 1906, with a single calibre of heavy guns and turbine engines, which made earlier battleships obsolete.

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.

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 understanding of 1873 between the emperors of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia to consult on common problems and resist revolution, revived as a secret alliance in 1881 and ended in 1887.

Sea ice that moves with currents and winds; ice from the Arctic drifts down Greenland's east coast and around Cape Farewell, and when heavy it blocks shipping.

The defensive alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary signed in 1879, the core of the Triple Alliance.

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

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

The division of authority in Russia between March and October 1917 between the Provisional Government, which held legal power, and the Petrograd Soviet, which controlled the soldiers and workers.

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.

NATO's decision of December 1979 to deploy new US medium-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe while offering the Soviet Union talks to limit such weapons.

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.

"Leader": the title of Mussolini as head of the Fascist movement and regime, at the centre of his cult of personality.

The Polish state created by Napoleon in 1807 from Prussian (and in 1809 Austrian) partition lands, with the king of Saxony as duke; occupied by Russia in 1813.

The Argentine law of June 1987 that presumed that officers below the senior ranks had acted under orders and could not be prosecuted for crimes of the dictatorship; it was annulled in 2003.

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

A group of early-twentieth-century historians, named after William A. Dunning, who portrayed Reconstruction as a corrupt failure imposed on the South; their views reflected and supported segregation.

One of the three permanent outcomes UNHCR seeks for refugees: voluntary return home, integration in the country of asylum, or resettlement in a third country.

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 drought-stricken southern Great Plains of the USA in the 1930s, where over-ploughed soil blew away in huge dust storms and hundreds of thousands of families abandoned their farms.

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

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

Elite Aztec military orders whose members had taken several captives in battle and wore distinctive costumes and enjoyed noble privileges.

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

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

The larger of the two Norse settlement districts in Greenland, around Eiriksfjord near the southern tip of the island, founded about 985 and abandoned by about 1450.

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

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

A person who moves to another country mainly to find work or a better standard of living, rather than to escape persecution. Economic migrants have no claim to refugee status under international law.

Local associations founded in Spain from 1765, with royal encouragement, in which nobles, clergy and professionals promoted better farming, crafts, trade and schools.

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

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

Groups of working-class young people in western Germany who rejected the Hitler Youth in the late 1930s and 1940s; some fought Hitler Youth patrols and, in 1944, took part in armed attacks.

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

The decree of Emperor Ferdinand II in March 1629 ordering the return to the Catholic Church of all Church lands secularised since 1552; it threatened the Protestant settlement and helped to bring Sweden into the Thirty Years' War.

The decree of Emperor Charles V in May 1521 that declared Martin Luther an outlaw and banned his writings in the Holy Roman Empire.

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

The European Free Trade Association, formed in 1960 by Britain and six other states as a free-trade area without the common policies of the EEC.

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

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.

Mobile killing units of the SS security police and SD that carried out mass shootings of Jews, communists, Roma and others behind the German front, above all in the USSR in 1941–1943.

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.

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

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

A fund set up by the NUWSS in 1912 to support Labour Party candidates against Liberals at by-elections, because Labour supported votes for women and the Liberal government had let the Conciliation Bills fail.

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

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.

Lincoln's order, in force from 1 January 1863, declaring enslaved people in areas in rebellion free and allowing Black men to serve in the Union armed forces.

A Maya hieroglyphic title that named a royal dynasty and its kingdom, used by Classic kings to identify their city.

In Egypt, the law in force almost continuously from 1981 to 2012 that allowed detention without trial, banned most demonstrations and gave the security police wide powers.

A person, usually a noble or a priest, who left France during the revolution, often to work for counter-revolution from abroad; émigrés' property was confiscated from 1792.

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

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 view that knowledge comes from experience, observation and experiment, associated with Francis Bacon and John Locke.

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

France's boycott of EEC meetings in 1965–1966 over majority voting and farm finance, ended by the Luxembourg Compromise, which allowed a national veto on vital interests.

The report of 13 July 1870 of King William I's meeting with the French ambassador at Ems, which Bismarck shortened and published to provoke France into declaring war.

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.

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.

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 grant by the Spanish crown to a colonist of the tribute and labour of a group of Indigenous people, in return for their protection and Christian instruction; it was a grant of people, not land.

The encyclopaedia edited by Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert and published in 28 volumes (1751–1772), which presented all knowledge, including trades and crafts, as useful and open to criticism.

A drainage basin with no outlet to the sea, where water leaves only by evaporation or seepage, so that salts collect in its lowest lake.

A resident of a country at war who is a citizen of an enemy state, or who was born there; enemy aliens were registered and many interned in Canada and the USA.

Three US laws of 1870–1871 that made it a federal crime to use force or intimidation to stop citizens voting and let the president use the army against groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

Rule by an absolute monarch who claims to govern by Enlightenment principles, carrying out reforms from above for the good of subjects without sharing power with them; a term coined by nineteenth-century historians.

The eighteenth-century intellectual movement that judged beliefs and institutions by reason and argued for natural rights, religious toleration and limits on arbitrary power.

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.

Tunisia's main Islamist movement, founded in 1981 as the Islamic Tendency Movement and renamed Ennahda ("Renaissance") in 1989. Banned and repressed under Ben Ali, it was legalised in 2011 and led the government from 2011 to 2014.

The agreements of April 1904 by which Britain and France settled their colonial disputes; an understanding rather than a military alliance.

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

The view that the natural environment (climate, geography, resources) decides how societies develop; most historians reject strong versions of it.

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

The US federal agency created by Nixon in December 1970 to set and enforce national standards on air and water pollution, waste and chemicals.

The purge of collaborators in France at and after the Liberation of 1944, including both killings without trial and trials in special courts.

A US law of 1974 banning discrimination in lending on the basis of sex or marital status.

The US federal agency created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to enforce Title VII's ban on discrimination in employment. It opened in July 1965.

The British law of 2 July 1928 that gave women the vote on the same terms as men, from the age of 21.

A US law of June 1963 requiring equal pay for women and men doing equal work in the same workplace.

A proposed amendment to the US Constitution banning the denial of equal rights on account of sex. Passed by Congress in 1972, it was ratified by only 35 of the 38 states needed.

The West German law of 1952 that taxed surviving property to compensate expellees and others who had lost homes and possessions in the war.

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

The name given by Gorbachev and his supporters to the late Brezhnev years (roughly 1970–1985), when Soviet economic growth slowed and the political system resisted change.

The armed wing of a Trotskyist party in Argentina, active from 1970 until its destruction in 1976–1977, which waged urban guerrilla war and a rural campaign in Tucumán.

An anti-communist guerrilla rising in the Escambray mountains of central Cuba from 1959 to 1965, crushed by the Cuban government in what it called the struggle against bandits.

The Mexican fighter squadron that flew combat missions with US forces in the Philippines in 1945.