116 of the History glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
The legal right of a person under arrest to be brought before a judge, who decides whether the detention is lawful; suspending it lets a government hold people without charge or trial.
A large landed estate in Spanish America producing crops and livestock, worked by resident labourers who were often bound by debt.
The use of computer hacking for political protest, such as blocking or defacing government websites or leaking documents.
A report of the sayings or actions of the Prophet Muhammad, passed down through a chain of named transmitters; collections of hadith are, after the Qur'an, the main source of Islamic law and practice.
The main underground defence force of the Yishuv, founded in 1920; it became the core of the Israel Defense Forces in May 1948.
The abolition of the domains and their replacement by centrally governed prefectures on 29 August 1871.
The revolution of 1791–1804 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, in which enslaved people destroyed slavery and created the independent state of Haiti on 1 January 1804; the only successful slave revolution in history.
A Han Chinese group of southern China, descended from migrants from the north, with its own dialect; many early Taiping leaders and followers were Hakka.
A fishing treaty of 1923 between Canada and the USA, the first treaty Canada signed without a British co-signature.
West Germany's policy from 1955 of refusing diplomatic relations with any state (except the USSR) that recognised the GDR; abandoned under Ostpolitik.
The Palestinian Islamist movement founded in December 1987 from the Muslim Brotherhood, which rejected the Oslo process, carried out suicide bombings and has ruled Gaza since 2007.
The 1845 treaty between Britain and Sayyid Said that banned the export of slaves from his African dominions to Arabia and the Gulf but allowed the trade between his own ports from Kilwa to Lamu.
The killing of Armenians across eastern Anatolia and in Istanbul in 1894–1896 during the reign of Abdülhamid II; estimates of the dead range from about 100,000 to 300,000.
A discredited racial theory claiming that African states were founded by light-skinned "Hamitic" invaders from north-east Africa; applied to Rwanda, it cast the Tutsi as a foreign, superior race.
A weaver who produced cloth on a hand-operated loom, usually at home; handloom weavers in Britain and India lost much of their income as machine-made yarn and cloth spread in the early nineteenth century.
The return of the daimyō's domain registers to the emperor in 1869, which made the lords imperial governors of their former domains.
A Māori sub-tribe of related whānau, the main unit that held land and made political decisions before and after 1840.
Swahili for “let us all pull together”: Kenyatta's national motto and a movement of community self-help projects.
A secondary school in Kenya built and run with money raised by the local community through fund-raising meetings.
The displaced persons, mostly the old, sick, disabled and those with tuberculosis, whom no resettlement country would accept and who remained in camps into the 1950s.
An Algerian Muslim who served as an auxiliary with the French army during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962).
The flowering of African American literature, music and art centred on Harlem in New York in the 1920s, associated with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude McKay and Alain Locke's The New Negro (1925).
The commercial treaty of 29 July 1858 between the United States and Japan, negotiated by Townsend Harris, which opened ports to trade and imposed extraterritoriality and fixed low tariffs.
The report of August 1945 by Earl G. Harrison to President Truman on the conditions of displaced persons, especially Jews, in Germany and Austria, which led to separate and better camps for Jewish DPs.
An African independent church in Côte d'Ivoire formed by converts of the Liberian prophet William Wadé Harris, who baptised over 100,000 people in 1913–1914.
William I's systematic destruction of crops, livestock and settlements in northern England in the winter of 1069–1070 to crush rebellion.
A general stoppage of work and business as a form of protest, a long-standing practice in South Asia that Gandhi used on a national scale from 1919.
An early eighth-century movement that worked for rule by the family of the Prophet (the house of Hashim); the Abbasids took over its network and used it to organise their revolution.
The Jewish Enlightenment of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, led at first by Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin, which encouraged Jews to combine their faith with secular learning and European culture.
The US tariff law signed by Herbert Hoover on 17 June 1930 that raised duties on thousands of imported goods. Other countries retaliated, and world trade shrank further.
The treaty of 18 November 1903 that gave the USA a canal zone across Panama in perpetuity for 10 million dollars and an annual payment.
A federal programme, begun in 1965, that gives pre-school education, meals and health care to children from low-income families.
A programme of the IMF and World Bank, begun in 1996, that cancelled much of the foreign debt of very poor countries that met conditions of economic reform; Zambia qualified in 2005.
The Labour Zionist policy of employing only Jewish workers in Jewish-owned enterprises, meant to build a Jewish working class; it excluded Arab workers.
An empire that controls its subjects indirectly, leaving local rulers in place and relying on tribute and the threat of force rather than occupation and direct government.
The Calvinist catechism issued in 1563 for the Palatinate by Elector Frederick III, which became one of the standard statements of Reformed faith.
The Anglo-German agreement of 1 July 1890 dividing East Africa: Britain received Zanzibar, Kenya and Uganda, and Germany German East Africa and the island of Heligoland.
The agreement signed by 35 states in August 1975 that recognised Europe's post-war borders and committed signatories to respect human rights.
The destruction of the Herero and Nama peoples of German South West Africa by German forces in 1904–1908; Germany acknowledged it as genocide in 2021.
A belief or teaching that contradicts the official doctrine of a religion, especially as defined by a church or religious authority.
A Lebanese Shi’a Islamist movement formed in 1982 with the help of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. It combines an armed force that fought Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, a political party and social services.
The survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; the Japanese word means people affected by the bomb.
Mark Elvin's explanation (1973) of why late imperial China did not industrialise: traditional methods were so efficient and labour so plentiful and cheap that labour-saving machines did not pay.
A crop variety bred to produce much more grain per hectare than traditional types, usually with short, stiff stems that can carry heavy heads when given plenty of fertiliser and water.
Clothing worn by some Muslim women to cover the hair and body in public. In Iran it was made compulsory in government offices in 1980 and for all women in public from 1983.
A migration away from an unjust ruler to a place of safety, modelled on the Prophet Muhammad's move from Mecca to Medina in 622; Usman dan Fodio's hijra to Gudu in 1804 began the Sokoto jihad.
The German plan of August 1916 to greatly increase the production of guns, shells and other munitions by directing industry and labour to the war.
Knowledge of how events turned out, available to people looking back but not to those living through them.
The series of Indian laws passed in 1955–1956 that reformed Hindu family law, giving Hindu women rights to divorce and to inherit property.
The decimal digits 0–9 with place value, developed in India, adopted in the Islamic world and later in Europe, which made written calculation far easier than Roman numerals.
The Jewish labour federation in Palestine, founded in 1920, which was also a large employer, bank, health service and builder of cooperatives.
The evidence-based attempt to understand the beliefs, feelings and choices of people in the past within their own context, without necessarily approving of them.
The internal assessment in IB History: a short piece of research in which a student frames an inquiry question, analyses up to seven sources and synthesises their evidence into an argued answer.
In Spain, the movement since about 2000 to recover, recognise and compensate the victims of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, including the exhumation of mass graves.
The Spanish law of December 2007 that declared Francoist political sentences unjust, helped families exhume victims and ordered the removal of Francoist symbols; it was extended by the Democratic Memory Law of 2022.
A judgement about why something in the past matters: how far it changed things, affected people, lasted or reveals something important. It is made by someone, for a purpose, using criteria.
The study of how history has been written: how historians' interpretations of a subject differ, how they have changed, and why.
An approach to history that studies the experiences and actions of ordinary people rather than only elites and leaders.
Ian Kershaw’s term for the image of Hitler as a leader above everyday politics and criticism, which made him far more popular than his party and held the regime together.
The Nazi party's youth organisation for boys (with the League of German Girls for girls), made the official youth organisation in 1936 and compulsory in 1939.
A transnational Islamist party that seeks a caliphate by non-violent means; it was banned and its members imprisoned across Central Asia.
A highland people of Laos (and of China, Vietnam and Thailand). Many Hmong fought in the CIA's secret army in Laos and fled to Thailand after the communist victory of 1975.
The network of paths and roads through Laos and Cambodia, begun in 1959, along which North Vietnam sent soldiers and supplies to the war in the south.
The ethnic Chinese of Vietnam, concentrated in Cholon (Saigon) as traders and in the North as workers and peasants. In 1978–1979 they were the largest group fleeing Vietnam, after the closure of private trade and the break with China.
A secret British and French plan of December 1935 to end the Abyssinian war by giving Italy large parts of Ethiopia; its leak discredited both governments and the League.
The killing of 11 detainees by guards at Hola detention camp on 3 March 1959, which became a political scandal in Britain.
A camp in Thailand, run with UNHCR, for Cambodians who crossed the border in 1979–1980, such as Khao-I-Dang, from which refugees could be considered for resettlement.
The systematic, state-organised persecution and murder of about 6 million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, from 1933 to 1945; most of the killing took place between 1941 and 1945.
Ukrainian for 'death by hunger': the famine of 1932–1933 in Soviet Ukraine, caused by Stalin's grain procurement policies, which killed an estimated 3.5–5 million people. Whether it was a genocide is debated.
The agreement of September 1815 between the rulers of Russia, Austria and Prussia to govern by Christian principles and support each other; the name was used for the cooperation of the three conservative monarchies.
The ceremony in which a man became the vassal of a lord, kneeling and placing his hands between the lord's hands.
The civilian population and economy of a country at war, whose work, morale and supplies support the armed forces.
A force of loyalist Kikuyu, Embu and Meru raised by the colonial government from 1952 to fight Mau Mau and guard villages.
One of two organisations founded in 1916 by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant to campaign for Indian self-government within the British Empire, on the model of Irish home rule.
The US law of 1862 that offered 160 acres of western public land to settlers who lived on and farmed it for five years, speeding white settlement of land taken from Native American nations.
A law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing on 30 June 2020 that created crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.
Herbert Hoover's proposal of June 1931 to suspend payments of war debts and reparations for one year, in an attempt to stop the collapse of German and Austrian banks.
A shanty town built by homeless people on the edge of a US city in the early 1930s, named in mockery of President Hoover.
The Qing official appointed by the emperor to supervise the customs at Canton and collect duties on foreign trade.
Combining many firms at the same stage of production in one industry, as Rockefeller did by buying up rival oil refiners, to reduce competition and control prices.
The minutes, written by Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, of a meeting on 5 November 1937 at which Hitler told his military leaders that Germany's need for living space would have to be solved by force by 1943–1945.
The palace library in Abbasid Baghdad, associated especially with the caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 813–833), where scholars copied and translated texts and studied astronomy and mathematics.
A committee of the US House of Representatives (1938–1975) that investigated alleged communist and other subversive activity, most famously in the Hollywood film industry from 1947.
The system that replaced collective farming in China from 1978 to 1983: families farmed allocated land, delivered a quota to the state and kept or sold the rest.
Slavery in which enslaved people lived and worked within a household or lineage, often with some rights and the chance that their descendants would be absorbed into the family, though they could still be sold or punished.
In the Andes, any sacred place, object or being, such as a mountain, spring, stone, shrine or ancestor's mummy.
The regional army raised by Li Hongzhang in 1862 on the model of the Xiang Army, which became the basis of his military power in north China.
An English trading company chartered on 2 May 1670 with a monopoly of the fur trade in the lands draining into Hudson Bay.
"Great speaker": the title of the ruler of Tenochtitlan as leader of the Triple Alliance.
A French Protestant (Calvinist). Huguenots were tolerated under the Edict of Nantes (1598) until Louis XIV revoked it in 1685, when around 200,000 fled abroad.
The patron god of the Mexica, a god of war and the sun, worshipped in one of the two shrines on the Templo Mayor.
The Communist campaign launched on 8 March 1927 to make Uzbek and Tajik women abandon the veil (paranji and chachvon); it met violent resistance.
The communist-led peasant army of central Luzon, founded in 1942 to fight the Japanese, which rebelled against the Philippine government from 1946 until its defeat in 1954.
China's household registration system, formalised in 1958, which tied each person to a place of residence and controlled movement, especially from countryside to city.
The US proposal handed to Japan by Secretary of State Cordell Hull on 26 November 1941, which demanded Japanese withdrawal from China and Indochina; Japan treated it as an ultimatum.
The ritual killing of people as an offering to gods. In Mexica belief it repaid the gods for creating the world and kept the sun moving; it was practised across Mesoamerica.
Thailand's policy from 1981 of keeping its border open to refugees but holding new arrivals in austere camps without access to resettlement, to discourage others from coming.
The Renaissance educational and intellectual movement centred on the study of classical Latin and Greek literature, history and moral philosophy, which aimed to produce virtuous and eloquent people able to serve the community.
Emperor Hirohito's rescript of 1 January 1946 rejecting the idea that the emperor was a living god and that the Japanese were destined to rule the world.
The special session of the US Congress from 9 March to 16 June 1933 in which Roosevelt's first major New Deal laws were passed.
Napoleon's return to power in France from his landing on 1 March 1815 to his second abdication after Waterloo on 22 June 1815.
The series of Allied attacks on the Western Front from the Battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918 to the armistice of 11 November 1918, which drove the German army back.
The reforms decreed by the Guangxu Emperor between 11 June and 21 September 1898 on the advice of Kang Youwei, ended by Cixi's coup.
Mao's invitation in 1956–1957 for intellectuals to criticise the Chinese Communist Party, which ended when the criticism became too sharp.
The large attack by the communist Eighth Route Army on Japanese railways, roads and garrisons in north China from August to December 1940.
A refusal to eat as a form of protest, often by prisoners. Imprisoned suffragettes used it from 1909 to demand recognition as political prisoners.
The severe winter of 1946–1947, when food and fuel shortages left much of occupied Germany and Europe cold and underfed.
The committee appointed by the Government of India in October 1919, under Lord Hunter, to investigate the disturbances in Punjab, including the Amritsar massacre. Its British majority criticised General Dyer; its Indian members wrote a stronger minority report.
The extremist movement of 1992–1994 that rejected power-sharing with the RPF, treated all Tutsi as enemies and organised the genocide.
The transfer of power in Rwanda from the Tutsi monarchy and chiefs to a Hutu-led republic between 1959 and 1962, with Belgian support, accompanied by violence against Tutsi and their mass flight.
Warfare that combines regular forces with deniable irregular fighters, local proxies, cyber attacks, propaganda and economic pressure, as Western analysts described Russian tactics in Ukraine from 2014.
A provision first passed by the US Congress in 1976 that bars the use of federal Medicaid funds for most abortions.
The agreement of April 1941 between Canada and the USA to coordinate war production and trade.
The Quebec government's electricity company, which took over the province's private power companies in 1962–1963 and became a symbol of the Quiet Revolution and of francophone economic power.
Extremely rapid inflation in which prices rise so fast that money becomes almost worthless, as in Germany in 1923.