389 of the History glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
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.
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.
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.