93 of the History glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
"Holy lord": the title of a Classic Maya king, who was both ruler and the chief link between his city and its gods.
The title of the king of Buganda.
A Buganda royalist party founded in 1961 ("the king alone"), which allied with Obote's Uganda People's Congress to win power in 1962.
A member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, the main Russian liberal party founded in 1905 and led by Pavel Milyukov, which wanted a parliamentary government.
The Kenya African Democratic Union, founded in 1960 by leaders of smaller ethnic groups; it favoured regional government and merged into KANU in 1964.
A statement by South African theologians and church leaders in 1985 declaring the apartheid state illegitimate and calling on Christians to oppose it.
"Divine wind": the storms of 1274 and 1281 that Japanese temples and the court credited with destroying the Mongol fleets; the name was later given to Japanese suicide pilots in 1944–1945.
A US law of 1854 that let settlers in the Kansas and Nebraska territories decide for themselves whether to allow slavery, overturning the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
The Kenya African National Union, founded in 1960 and led by Jomo Kenyatta, which won the 1963 election and ruled Kenya, from 1969 as the only party in practice.
Jomo Kenyatta, Bildad Kaggia, Kung'u Karumba, Fred Kubai, Paul Ngei and Achieng' Oneko, convicted in 1953 of managing Mau Mau after a trial at Kapenguria later shown to rest on false evidence.
The attempt by Freikorps units and nationalists under Wolfgang Kapp to seize power in Berlin in March 1920; it collapsed after four days because of a general strike.
The declaration of the Soviet government of July 1919 offering to give up the privileges in China gained by the tsarist empire; it won Soviet Russia much sympathy among Chinese nationalists.
The Karaganda corrective labour camp in Kazakhstan, one of the largest camp complexes of the Gulag, from 1931 to 1959.
Death from overwork, through heart attack, stroke or suicide caused by excessive working hours, recognised in Japan by the courts and labour ministry from the late 1980s.
The occupations of the Kasbah square in Tunis in January and February–March 2011 by protesters, many from the interior, which forced the resignation of the interim prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi and led to the election of a constituent assembly.
A Lebanese Maronite political party and militia founded by Pierre Gemayel in 1936. It was the main Christian force at the start of the civil war in 1975.
The breakaway of the copper-rich Congolese province of Katanga under Moïse Tshombe from July 1960 to January 1963, backed by Belgian mining and military interests and ended by UN forces.
A secretary in the administration of an Islamic state; the kuttab of the Abbasid caliphate, many of Persian background, ran its correspondence, records and finances.
The secret revolutionary society founded by Andrés Bonifacio in Manila in 1892, which launched the Philippine Revolution against Spain in August 1896.
The word used in the Māori text of the Treaty of Waitangi for what the chiefs gave the Queen: governorship or government, a missionary coinage from "governor", where the English text says "sovereignty".
The fourteenth-century Ethiopian work in Ge'ez that tells how the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia with Menelik I, son of Solomon and Sheba, and so legitimised the Solomonic emperors.
The strong timber running along the bottom of a ship's hull, which gives it strength and keeps it on course under sail.
"Enough": the Egyptian Movement for Change of 2004–2005, a coalition of activists that protested against a fifth term for Hosni Mubarak and the succession of his son Gamal.
Groups of Japanese companies linked by cross-shareholdings, a main bank and trading ties, such as the Mitsubishi and Sumitomo groups, which re-formed after the zaibatsu were dissolved.
A treaty of August 1928, eventually signed by more than sixty states, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy; it had no means of enforcement.
The ideology of the Turkish Republic under Atatürk: a secular, nationalist, Westernising republic led by a modernising elite and summed up in the Six Arrows.
The Japanese military police, which used arrest, torture and execution to suppress opposition in occupied territories during the Second World War.
Emperor Go-Daigo's attempt to restore direct imperial rule in Japan after the fall of the Kamakura shogunate, 1333–1336, which ended when Ashikaga Takauji turned against him.
Kenya's first colony-wide African political organisation, founded in 1944 and led by Jomo Kenyatta from 1947; it used constitutional methods and was banned in 1953.
The name Mau Mau fighters used for their own forces, reflecting their demands for land and freedom.
The opposition party founded by Oginga Odinga in 1966 on a more radical land and economic programme; it was banned in 1969.
The commission appointed by President Johnson in 1967 to explain the urban riots, whose report of 1968 blamed white racism, segregation and poverty and warned that the nation was moving toward two separate and unequal societies.
The Mongol khan's personal guard, about 10,000 men by 1206, which protected the khan, ran his household and trained future commanders.
The economic theory of John Maynard Keynes that governments should increase spending and run deficits during a slump to make up for the lack of private demand.
The Soviet political police and intelligence service from 1954 to 1991, responsible for internal security, surveillance of dissent and foreign intelligence.
Hand-spun and hand-woven cloth, promoted by Gandhi from about 1918 as a symbol of Indian self-reliance and an alternative to imported machine-made textiles.
Land whose revenue went directly to the Mughal treasury rather than being assigned as jagirs.
The more radical faction of the PDPA, led by Taraki and Amin and drawn mainly from rural Pashtuns. It dominated the government in 1978–1979 and imposed its reforms by force.
The community of initiated Sikhs founded by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699, committed to defend the faith and marked by the five Ks.
The land tax paid on agricultural land in the early Islamic empires, the largest source of caliphal revenue, assessed and recorded by the tax diwan.
A member of an early Islamic movement that rejected any dynastic claim to the caliphate and held that any pious Muslim could lead; Kharijites rebelled against both Umayyads and Abbasids, and Ibadi Kharijites ruled parts of North Africa.
The Arab League summit statement of 1 September 1967 setting out the principles of no peace with Israel, no recognition and no negotiations, alongside diplomatic efforts to recover occupied land.
The agreement of 31 August 1996 that ended the First Chechen War, providing for the withdrawal of Russian forces and postponing a decision on Chechnya's status to 2001.
The campaign by Indian Muslims from 1919 to protect the Ottoman sultan as caliph after the First World War; Gandhi allied with it in the non-cooperation movement.
An Andean record made of knotted cords whose colours, positions and knots recorded numbers and categories such as census counts, tribute and storehouse contents; kept by specialists called khipukamayuq.
The Cambodian communist movement led by Pol Pot, which ruled Cambodia as Democratic Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979, emptying the cities and causing the deaths of an estimated 1.5–2 million people.
A cheap, prefabricated five-storey block of flats built in the USSR from the late 1950s, which gave millions of families their own flat for the first time.
The non-violent movement of Pashtun Muslims in the North-West Frontier Province, founded by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in 1929, which allied with Congress against British rule and opposed Partition.
The sermon given at Friday prayers, in which the ruler and the caliph he recognised were named; changing the name in the khutba announced a change of allegiance.
A collective agricultural settlement in which property is held in common and members share work and income; the first was Degania (1909–1910).
The killing of 42 Jews by a crowd including soldiers and police in Kielce, Poland, on 4 July 1946, which led tens of thousands of Polish Jews to flee the country.
A Kikuyu political organisation founded in 1924 that campaigned over land and colonial controls; Jomo Kenyatta was its general secretary from 1928, and it was banned in 1940.
An organisation of African-run schools founded after the female circumcision controversy of 1929–1931, combining Western education with Kikuyu cultural values.
The religious movement founded by Simon Kimbangu in the lower Congo in 1921, banned by the Belgians and later one of the largest independent African churches.
The rescue of about 10,000 mainly Jewish children from Nazi Germany and the lands it controlled to Britain in 1938–1939.
The Confederate strategy of using Europe's dependence on Southern cotton to force Britain and France to recognise the Confederacy and break the Union blockade.
The British colonial army regiment recruited from East and Central Africa, in which tens of thousands of Kenyans served in the Second World War.
The German kingdom created by Napoleon in 1807 and ruled by his brother Jérôme from Kassel, intended as a model state of French reforms; it collapsed in 1813.
The Māori King Movement, founded in 1858 when Waikato and allied iwi installed Pōtatau Te Wherowhero as king, to unite iwi, stop land sales and keep Māori authority alongside the Crown.
A registration certificate with fingerprints and employment record that every African man over 15 in colonial Kenya had to carry from 1920, used to control movement and labour.
A memorandum dictated by Bismarck in June 1877 that set out his foreign-policy ideal: a Europe in which every power except France needed Germany and was kept from combining against it.
The "smaller German" solution to the German question: a united Germany excluding Austria and led by Prussia.
Government by rulers who use their power to steal public wealth for themselves and their supporters.
A deep, broad Norse ocean-going cargo ship that relied mainly on its sail and needed a small crew; it carried settlers, livestock and goods across the North Atlantic.
The obligation of a landholder to provide a fixed number of armed mounted warriors for the king's army in return for land.
A military order that grew from a hospital for pilgrims in Jerusalem and took on a military role by the 1130s; it held Krak des Chevaliers from 1142.
A military order founded in Jerusalem around 1119–1120 to protect pilgrims, named after its headquarters in the al-Aqsa mosque (the “Temple of Solomon”); it held castles and estates across Europe and the crusader states.
An anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic US political party of the mid-1850s, officially the American Party, which briefly attracted many former Whigs before splitting over slavery.
A South African police counter-insurgency unit (its name means 'crowbar') formed in South West Africa in 1979, notorious for its brutality towards civilians and suspected SWAPO members.
The autonomous government of Turkestan proclaimed by Muslim leaders at Kokand in November 1917 and destroyed by Red forces from Tashkent in February 1918.
"National learning": an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century school that studied ancient Japanese texts to recover a native tradition and exalted the emperor as divine.
The idea that Japan was a unique family-state under an emperor of one unbroken line, owed absolute loyalty; it was taught in schools and protected by the Peace Preservation Law of 1925.
The Japanese policy of turning colonial peoples into loyal imperial subjects, pursued in Korea from 1937 through shrine worship, the Japanese language and Japanese names.
The Soviet Communist Party's youth organisation, for people aged about 14 to 28.
Indonesia's undeclared, low-level war against the new federation of Malaysia (1963–1966), fought mainly through raids in Borneo, which Malaysia resisted with British and Commonwealth help.
The Japanese government's statement of 4 August 1993 acknowledging military involvement in the comfort stations and the recruitment of women against their will, with an apology to the survivors.
The name of the Korean state from 1897, when Gojong proclaimed himself emperor, until its annexation by Japan in 1910.
The army of North Korea, formally founded in February 1948 and armed and trained by the Soviet Union. It invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950.
The US Supreme Court decision of December 1944 that upheld the wartime exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
The Soviet policy of the 1920s and early 1930s of promoting non-Russian nationalities in their own territories through native officials, national-language schools and national cultures.
The failed move of troops on Petrograd by General Lavr Kornilov in August 1917, which discredited Kerensky and led to the arming of the Red Guards and a rise in Bolshevik support.
The ritual of kneeling three times and touching the head to the ground nine times before the Chinese emperor, required of tribute envoys as a sign of submission.
The Communist Party of Germany, founded in 1918–1919; its rising vote in 1930–1932 increased middle-class and elite fear of revolution. It was banned in 1933.
A group of German opponents of Hitler, named after Helmuth James von Moltke's estate at Kreisau, that met in 1940–1943 to plan the government and society of Germany after Nazism. Several members were executed after the 20 July plot of 1944.
The Nazi pogrom of 9–10 November 1938, in which synagogues were burned, Jewish shops and homes wrecked, about 90 Jews killed and about 30,000 Jewish men sent to concentration camps.
"Roof": in 1990s Russia, a protection arrangement in which a criminal gang, security firm or corrupt officials protected a business and enforced its contracts in return for payment.
A white supremacist organisation founded in Tennessee in 1866 that used terror against Black Americans and their white allies during Reconstruction; later versions revived in the 1910s and 1950s.
Literally 'fist': a Soviet term for a supposedly rich peasant who exploited others. Under Stalin it was applied to any peasant who resisted collectivisation.
A nation united by language, literature and culture rather than by a state; the term describes how many Germans saw their nation before unification.
A local lord in the Andes. Under the Incas, kurakas kept their positions and organised their communities' labour service in return for gifts and status.
The assembly at which, according to Mande oral tradition, Sunjata Keita and the clans of the new Mali Empire agreed the roles and rights of each clan after the victory over Sosso, c. 1235.
An assembly of Mongol princes and commanders that elected a new khan and decided on major campaigns.
The Japanese army stationed in north-east China from 1906 to guard Japan's railway interests; its officers staged the Mukden incident of 1931 and seized Manchuria without government approval.