230 of the History glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
The mobile money service launched by Safaricom and Vodafone in Kenya in March 2007, which lets users store money on a phone account and transfer it by text message.
A Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed rebel movement in eastern Congo, formed in 2012 by former CNDP fighters and named after a peace agreement of 23 March 2009.
The tent and hut transit camps in which Israel housed many new immigrants, especially Mizrahi Jews, in the early 1950s.
The treaty signed in February 1992 that created the European Union, EU citizenship and the plan for a single currency; in force from November 1993.
An Aztec commoner. Commoners held land through their calpulli, paid tribute in goods and labour and served as soldiers.
A state depot that owned tractors and other farm machinery and worked the fields of Soviet collective farms for payment in kind, while its officials supervised the villages; abolished in 1958.
1 June, the anniversary of Kenya's internal self-government in 1963, a national holiday.
A college for teaching Islamic law and religious sciences, usually funded by a pious endowment; madrasas such as the Nizamiyya of Baghdad (1067) spread Sunni learning under the Seljuks.
The mothers of people disappeared under Argentina's military regime, who from April 1977 marched every Thursday in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to demand news of their children.
The bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid on 11 March 2004 by an Islamist cell, which killed 191 people three days before a general election.
A line of fortifications built by France along its border with Germany from 1929, reflecting a defensive military strategy.
The charter agreed between King John and his rebel barons in June 1215, limiting royal power; annulled within months but reissued from 1216.
A device that uses a magnetised needle to show direction; Chinese writers described it in the eleventh century and recorded its use at sea by 1119.
The land-revenue system of the North-Western Provinces from the 1820s, in which the revenue was assessed on a whole village or estate (mahal) and collected through its headmen or joint holders.
The form of Buddhism, dominant in East Asia, that honours many Buddhas and bodhisattvas who help others to enlightenment; it was the religion of Srivijaya and of Jayavarman VII.
In Islamic belief, a redeemer expected at the end of time; Muhammad Ahmad claimed the title in Sudan in 1881 and founded the Mahdist state.
The Islamic state founded in Sudan after the revolt of Muhammad Ahmad, the Mahdi, which ruled from 1885 until its defeat at Omdurman in 1898.
A declaration signed by leading Muslim scholars in 1579 that allowed Akbar, as a just ruler, to decide between conflicting interpretations of Islamic law.
Local armed militias in the eastern Congo, often claiming to defend Congolese communities against foreign forces, which fought in the Congo wars and after.
Freehold land granted to Buganda's chiefs and notables under the Buganda Agreement of 1900, on which peasants became tenants.
The rebellion of 1905–1907 by many peoples of southern German East Africa against forced cotton growing, united by belief in a protective sacred water; it was crushed by famine tactics.
Swahili for “regions”: KADU's plan for a federal Kenya with regional assemblies, partly adopted in the 1963 constitution and abolished soon after.
Iran’s parliament, first created by the constitutional revolution of 1906. It regained power in the 1940s and early 1950s, was dominated by the Shah after 1953, and remained the elected legislature of the Islamic Republic.
The communist party of Malaya, founded in 1930 with an almost entirely Chinese membership, which led the resistance to Japan and fought the British and the Malayan government in the Emergency of 1948–1960.
The guerrilla war of 1948–1960 between the Malayan Communist Party's army and British, Malayan and Commonwealth forces, defeated through resettlement, food control, intelligence and political concessions.
A riot along the Malecón, Havana's seafront, on 5 August 1994, during the economic crisis of the Special Period. It was the largest protest against Castro's government and was followed by the rafter crisis.
The march of 1946 in which Kolla Indigenous people walked about 2,000 kilometres from north-western Argentina to Buenos Aires to demand the return of their lands.
A member of the military elite of slave origin that ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517; also the name of the state they ran.
In Māori culture, authority, power and prestige that come from ancestry, achievement and generosity, and that a leader must uphold.
A system in which elections and parties exist but the government controls their results through the media, state resources and the choice of permitted candidates.
The Qing practice of appointing a Manchu and a Han Chinese official jointly to many senior posts, so that the conquering minority shared power with, and supervised, the Han majority.
The puppet state set up by Japan in Manchuria in 1932, nominally ruled by the last Qing emperor, Puyi, but controlled by the Japanese army until 1945.
A model of the early Southeast Asian state as overlapping circles of power around a ruler, whose authority over lesser rulers depended on his personal prestige, so that its extent grew and shrank from reign to reign.
The League of Nations document of 1922 under which Britain governed Palestine until 1948; it included the Balfour Declaration and obliged Britain to facilitate Jewish immigration.
The Chinese idea that Heaven grants a ruler the right to rule as long as he governs justly, and that disasters and rebellion show that a dynasty has lost it.
The arrangement under which former German colonies and Ottoman territories were governed after 1919 by Allied powers on behalf of the League of Nations, in theory as a step towards self-government.
A minimum prison term that a judge must impose for a particular crime, whatever the circumstances; the US Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 set them for drug offences.
The secret American programme, with British and Canadian participation, that built the first atomic bombs between 1942 and 1945.
The nineteenth-century belief that Americans were destined by God to expand across North America, later used to justify overseas expansion.
The statement published in July 1938 under the regime’s sponsorship declaring that Italians were an Aryan race and that Jews did not belong to it; it prepared the racial laws.
A document drafted by Ferhat Abbas and presented to the French and Allied authorities in February 1943, demanding an Algerian state with its own constitution and equal rights for all its inhabitants.
The title of the king of Kongo, who ruled from Mbanza Kongo (São Salvador) and was chosen by electors from among the royal descendants.
The Spanish ships that sailed between Acapulco in New Spain and Manila in the Philippines from 1565 to 1815, carrying American silver to Asia and Chinese silk and porcelain back.
The crisis that followed Manitoba's decision in 1890 to end public funding for Catholic schools and French as an official language; it was settled by the Laurier–Greenway compromise of 1896.
The approach to Latin America set out by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann in March 1964, which put economic growth, US investment and anti-communism ahead of opposition to military coups.
The organisation of rural life in estates (manors) worked by dependent peasants, who owed the lord labour, dues and obedience to his court.
The title of the ruler of the Mali Empire, meaning king or emperor in Mande; the most famous holder was Mansa Musa (r. c. 1312–1337).
A rank in the Mughal imperial service, expressed as two numbers: zat (personal rank and salary) and sawar (the number of cavalry the holder had to maintain). Its holder was a mansabdar.
The Mughal system, organised by Akbar from the 1570s, that gave every noble and senior official a numbered rank (mansab) fixing his status, pay and the cavalry he had to maintain for the emperor.
The freeing of an enslaved person by their owner, by will, by deed or by purchase.
Rural guerrilla groups of the French Resistance, many formed by young men escaping compulsory labour in Germany from 1943.
The mobilisation of Mussolini's Fascist squads towards Rome in October 1922, after which King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister.
The demonstration of about 250,000 people in Washington, D.C., on 28 August 1963 in support of civil rights legislation, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.
A group pushed to the edge of a society's political, economic or social life, with less power and voice than others, such as enslaved people, colonised peoples, minorities, refugees and in many societies women.
The emigration of about 125,000 Cubans by boat from the port of Mariel to the United States in 1980, allowed by the Castro regime.
The Qing customs administration for foreign trade, run by foreign inspectors under Chinese authority from 1854; under Robert Hart it became an efficient source of revenue.
A range of marks with a description of the qualities an answer in that range shows. Examiners place an answer in the band whose description fits it best ("best fit").
An economy in which most enterprises are privately owned and prices, wages and output are set mainly by supply and demand rather than by the state.
A state body that bought a colony's export crop at a fixed price and sold it abroad, keeping the difference; set up in British West Africa from 1947.
The flight of enslaved people from their owners, either for a short time (petit marronnage) or permanently to free communities in remote areas (grand marronnage).
A rule that women had to leave certain jobs, such as teaching or the civil service, when they married. In Britain marriage bars lasted in many professions until the 1940s.
The Chinese law of 1 May 1950 that banned arranged marriage, concubinage and child marriage, and gave women the right to divorce and to own property.
A Nazi loan of up to 1,000 Reichsmarks (from 1933) to newly married couples, at first on condition that the wife left paid work; a quarter was cancelled for each child born.
The attempt by the US general George Marshall, December 1945 to January 1947, to mediate a ceasefire and a coalition government between the Guomindang and the CCP.
The US programme of economic aid to Western Europe from 1948 to 1952, officially the European Recovery Program, worth about 13 billion dollars; it speeded recovery, helped absorb refugees and was meant to hold back communism.
Rule by the armed forces in place of normal civil law; in Poland it was imposed on 13 December 1981 to suppress Solidarity.
The British belief, used in recruiting the Indian Army after 1857, that some groups such as Sikhs, Gurkhas and Punjabi Muslims were naturally warlike and more loyal than others.
The official ideology of the Soviet Communist Party: Marx's theory of class struggle and proletarian revolution as adapted by Lenin, above all the idea that a disciplined vanguard party must lead the revolution and rule in the workers' name.
An approach to history, based on the ideas of Karl Marx, that gives the main causal weight to economic structures and conflict between social classes.
Kenya's Heroes' Day, 20 October, the anniversary of the 1952 arrests, renamed from Kenyatta Day under the 2010 constitution.
A burst of mobilisation by the Chinese Communist Party aimed at one goal or one enemy, carried out through propaganda, meetings, denunciations and confessions; the main method of rule under Mao.
The very high rate of imprisonment in the United States from the 1980s, which fell disproportionately on Black and Hispanic men and which critics such as Michelle Alexander describe as a new system of racial control.
The campaign by white southern politicians in the United States from 1956 to block the desegregation of schools ordered by Brown v. Board of Education, through state laws, school closures and political pressure.
The US doctrine, announced by John Foster Dulles in January 1954, of deterring attack by threatening an overwhelming, possibly nuclear, response at a time and place of US choosing.
A Russian state payment introduced in 2007 for families on the birth of a second child, usable for housing, education or pensions, to raise the birth rate.
A system in which office and property pass through the female line, so that a ruler is succeeded by a brother or a sister's son rather than his own son.
The financial policy of Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi from 1881, which cut spending and withdrew paper money; it stabilised the currency but caused a sharp fall in farm prices.
The movement that took oaths of unity from about 1950 and fought an armed revolt against British rule in Kenya from 1952 to 1960; its fighters called themselves the Kenya Land and Freedom Army.
Non-Arab converts to Islam in the early caliphates, who were attached as clients to Arab tribes and often treated as second-class Muslims; their grievances helped the Abbasid Revolution of 747–750.
The first fully automatic machine gun, patented by Hiram Maxim in 1884, which gave small colonial forces overwhelming firepower.
The period 1928–1934 in Mexico, when former president Plutarco Elías Calles, the Jefe Máximo, held real power behind Presidents Portes Gil, Ortiz Rubio and Rodríguez.
The failed coup of 15 May 1932 in which young naval officers killed Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, ending the period of party cabinets in Japan.
The street fighting in Barcelona on 3–8 May 1937 between anarchists and the POUM on one side and government forces and Communists on the other, which led to the fall of Largo Caballero and the suppression of the POUM.
Russian decrees of May 1882, issued as temporary rules, that barred Jews from settling in rural areas and restricted their property rights and trade.
The wave of strikes, boycotts and anti-imperialist protest across China after police of Shanghai's International Settlement shot demonstrators on 30 May 1925.
Landless labourers who worked the private estates of Aztec nobles in return for a plot of land, a group that grew as nobles received conquered lands.
The chief official of the Merovingian Frankish kings, who by the early eighth century held real power; the Carolingian family held the office before taking the throne in 751.
The practice of making public accusations of disloyalty or subversion with little or no evidence, named after Senator Joseph McCarthy; also the wider anti-communist campaign in the USA in the late 1940s and 1950s.
The boundary between British India and Tibet drawn at the Simla Conference of 1914; India treats it as its north-eastern border, while China rejects it as an imperialist imposition.
The ten letters of 1915–1916 in which Britain promised to support Arab independence, within disputed limits, in return for an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman civil code (1869–1876), which set out Islamic law on contracts, property and obligations in the form of a modern legal code.
The replacement of human or animal labour by machines, such as tractors, threshers and combine harvesters in agriculture or power looms in textiles.
The US health care programme for people on low incomes, created in 1965 and run jointly by the federal government and the states; the Affordable Care Act of 2010 expanded it.
The US federal health insurance programme for people aged 65 and over, created by the Social Security Amendments signed by Lyndon Johnson on 30 July 1965.
Canada's universal public health insurance, built from provincial plans that the federal government helped fund under the Medical Care Act of 1966 (in effect from 1 July 1968).
The Florentine bank founded by Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici in 1397, which became banker to the papacy and had branches across Europe; its profits paid for the Medici family's political power and patronage.
A period of about 950–1250 when the North Atlantic and many other regions were warmer than in the centuries before and after, with large regional differences in rainfall; scientists now often call it the Medieval Climate Anomaly because the change was uneven.
Agreements of 1887 between Britain, Italy and Austria-Hungary (with Spain) to preserve the status quo in the Mediterranean and the Near East, which in practice meant blocking Russia at the Straits.
The constitutional agreement of 1987 between Mulroney and the ten premiers that would have recognised Quebec as a "distinct society"; it failed in June 1990 when Manitoba and Newfoundland did not ratify it.
Credit notes issued in Germany from 1934 by a dummy company, Mefo, and accepted by the Reichsbank, to pay arms manufacturers secretly and hide the cost of rearmament.
The constitution promulgated on 11 February 1889 as the emperor's gift, which made the emperor sovereign and created an Imperial Diet with an elected lower house.
The overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and the restoration of rule in the emperor's name, followed by the reforms that turned Japan into a centralised, industrialising state.
Europeans in Africa, such as officers, company agents and administrators, who extended empire by acting ahead of or against their governments' instructions.
A member of the moderate faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, led by Julius Martov, which expected a long period of liberal rule before socialism and favoured a broad, open party.
An economic theory and policy of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries holding that a state grows strong by building up wealth through trade surpluses, and that colonies exist to supply raw materials and markets for the mother country.
The Malay and Indonesian word for independence, used above all for the independence of the Federation of Malaya on 31 August 1957.
The eviction of more than 3,000 Meru people from their land near Mount Meru in 1951 to make room for European farms. Kirilo Japhet took their case to the UN Trusteeship Council in 1952, publicising Tanganyikan grievances abroad.
The cultural region of central and southern Mexico and northern Central America whose peoples, including the Olmecs, Maya and Aztecs, shared farming, calendars, writing and religious practices before the Spanish conquest.
Racial and cultural mixing between Indigenous, European and African peoples, celebrated by Latin American nationalists such as José Vasconcelos as the basis of national identity.
In Spanish America, a person of mixed Spanish and Indigenous descent.
An agricultural terrace on a hillside in central Mexico, often edged with maguey plants, that held soil and water and reduced erosion.
A people of mixed Indigenous and European, mainly French, descent who formed a distinct community in the fur-trading regions of the Great Lakes and later the Red River in North America.
The Nahuatl-speaking people of Tenochtitlan and its twin city Tlatelolco, the leading partner in the Aztec Empire. "Aztec" is a later label; the Mexica used this name for themselves.
The war of 1846–1848 between the United States and Mexico, ended by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico lost California and the Southwest to the USA.
The wars, migrations and state formation in south-eastern Africa between about 1815 and 1840; its causes, and the usefulness of the term itself, are debated.
The rising of the Miao people of Hunan and Guizhou from 1795, against Han settlers and officials who had taken their land; suppressed by 1797, with resistance continuing to 1806.
Corrupted or poisonous air, which medieval and early modern doctors believed caused epidemic disease.
The social group between the landed aristocracy and manual workers, including manufacturers, merchants, bankers and professionals; in industrial Britain it grew rapidly and demanded political influence.
The sea crossing from Africa to the Americas on a slave ship, in which captives were held in crowded holds for one to three months; about 12 to 15 per cent of those embarked died on average.
A state that is not a great power but has enough influence to shape international affairs through alliances, diplomacy and international organisations; Canada's self-image in the Cold War.
In South Africa, the system by which African men worked on fixed contracts in mines and cities far from home while their families stayed in the rural reserves.
Files removed from British colonies at independence and held secretly in Britain, whose existence the government admitted in 2011.
An inquisition begun by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun in 833 that required religious scholars and judges to accept that the Qur'an was created; abandoned under al-Mutawakkil around 848, its failure strengthened traditionalist scholars.
The belief that a country should maintain strong armed forces and be ready to use them, often with the glorification of military values and a large political role for the armed forces.
The principles an armed force follows about how to fight: how units are organised, how weapons work together and how commanders decide.
A cycle in which a state raises revenue to pay for armies and uses the armies to seize more revenue; historians use it to explain both the eighteenth-century Indian states and the East India Company.
A government led by a committee of military officers, usually after a coup.
A religious order of knights and sergeants who took monastic vows and fought to defend the crusader states, such as the Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights.
The first phase of Japanese colonial rule in Korea, 1910–1919, when the military police acted as the ordinary police and political activity was banned.
The committee set up by the Petrograd Soviet in October 1917 and directed by Trotsky, which organised the Bolshevik seizure of power.
The Canadian law of August 1917 that introduced conscription for overseas service.
Describing beliefs or movements that expect the present world to end or be transformed soon, followed by a perfect age for the faithful.
A recognised religious community of the Ottoman Empire, such as the Greek Orthodox, Armenian or Jewish community, whose religious leaders ran its religious, educational and family affairs.
The settlement programme of 1962 to about 1970 that bought over a million acres of European farms and divided them into smallholdings for about 35,000 African families.
A Mesoamerican field in which maize, beans and squash are grown together, the beans enriching the soil and the squash suppressing weeds.
The pulpit in a mosque from which the Friday sermon is given; Nur al-Din commissioned one for the al-Aqsa mosque, which Saladin installed after recovering Jerusalem in 1187.
The rapid industrialisation of South Africa after the discovery of diamonds (1867) and gold (1886), which brought foreign capital, railways, cities and a migrant labour system.
A British law, passed after the report of Lord Ashley's commission, that banned women and girls of any age and boys under ten from working underground in mines.
The Chinese dynasty founded in 1368 by Zhu Yuanzhang after the expulsion of the Yuan, which ruled China until 1644.
A purge of party officials in Georgia in 1951–1952, based on a fabricated nationalist plot, which weakened the security chief Beria, himself a Mingrelian.
An unfree knight or official in the Holy Roman Empire who served the emperor or a prince as a soldier and administrator.
The Taliban’s religious police, which enforced their decrees on dress, prayer, beards and the seclusion of women, often with beatings in public.
The Japanese ministry created in 1949 that guided industrial development through control of foreign exchange and technology imports, cheap credit, cartels and administrative guidance; it was reorganised in 2001.
The Fascist ministry created in 1937 from the press office to direct the press, radio, cinema, theatre and tourism in Italy.
Andean communal work for the benefit of the whole community, such as cleaning canals, rewarded with food and drink.
The female soldiers of the kingdom of Dahomey, who formed regiments of the royal army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Europeans called them Amazons.
A government whose party holds fewer than half the seats in the legislature, so it depends on other parties to pass laws and survive confidence votes. Pearson, Clark, Martin and Harper (2006–2011) led minority governments in Canada.
Agreements of 1919–1923 by which the new and enlarged states of central and eastern Europe and the defeated states promised equal rights to minorities, under League of Nations supervision.
Yoshino Sakuzō's idea (1916) that government should serve the welfare of the people and follow their wishes, a form of democracy that left the emperor's sovereignty in place.
Japan's other main pre-war party, formed in 1927 from the Kenseikai; stronger in the cities, it favoured balanced budgets and cooperation with the Western powers under Hamaguchi and Wakatsuki.
The Russian peasant commune, which held village land in common and periodically redistributed strips among households.
The 1920 statement of the Turkish nationalist movement's demands: full independence for the Ottoman Muslim-majority lands held at the 1918 armistice.
Royal inspectors sent out by Charlemagne, usually in pairs of a layman and a churchman, to hear complaints, check on counts and announce royal orders.
A party formed in 1964 by civil rights activists, open to all races, which challenged the all-white official Mississippi delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.
The agreement of 1820 that admitted Missouri to the USA as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30′.
The encyclical of Pope Pius XI of March 1937, smuggled into Germany and read in Catholic churches, which condemned Nazi breaches of the Concordat and the worship of race and state.
The Inca system of labour service by which every household owed turns of work on state and religious lands, in weaving, building, carrying and the army.
The Inca policy of resettling whole communities: loyal settlers were moved into newly conquered or rebellious areas and rebellious peoples moved away from their homelands.
A school of thought centred on the Tokugawa branch domain of Mito that combined Confucian loyalty with reverence for the emperor and called for resistance to the West.
A court set up under an anti-slave-trade treaty between Britain and another state, with judges from both, which tried captured slave ships and could declare the captives free; the main one sat at Freetown from 1819.
An economy in which a large state-owned or state-directed sector exists alongside private enterprise, as in Nehru's India, where the state controlled heavy industry and planning while agriculture and most trade stayed private.
An electoral system combining constituency seats with party-list seats so that each party's share of seats matches its share of the vote; adopted by New Zealand in a 1993 referendum and first used in 1996.
Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, most of whom moved to Israel after 1948 and long faced discrimination compared with Jews of European origin.
A Russian investment company run as a pyramid scheme, which attracted millions of small investors before collapsing in July 1994.
The movement founded by Messali Hadj's supporters in December 1954 as a rival to the FLN. The two fought a bitter internal war in Algeria and among Algerian workers in France, which the FLN won.
A system in which money is stored as a balance linked to a mobile phone number and transferred by text message, with cash paid in and out through agents such as shops.
A shopkeeper or trader licensed to exchange cash for electronic money on a mobile money account and back again, earning a commission on each transaction.
The organisation of a society's population, wealth, industry, food and transport for war, including raising soldiers, money and war production.
The organisations and networks (churches, unions, colleges, clubs, online groups) through which a movement recruits members, raises money and coordinates action.
The early leaders of the Indian National Congress, such as Gokhale and Naoroji, who sought gradual reform and self-government through petitions and constitutional methods.
The change from a mainly rural, agricultural and locally organised society to an urban, industrial and nationally organised one, with stronger states, mass education and new technology; the term describes change without implying it was always beneficial.
The agreements of October 1977 between the Spanish government and the main parties, backed by the unions, to limit wage rises and fight inflation in return for reforms and political freedoms.
The gap between the money people hold and the goods available to buy at fixed prices; in the late USSR it showed itself in empty shops and queues rather than rising prices.
The empire founded by Chinggis Khan in 1206, which by the 1270s stretched from Korea to Iraq and Russia; after 1260 it divided into four successor states.
An explanation that attributes an event to a single cause. In history such explanations are usually incomplete, because the same cause rarely has the same effect everywhere.
An economy that depends on one crop or commodity for export, such as groundnuts in colonial Senegal.
The US declaration of 1823 that the Americas were closed to new European colonisation and that European interference in the hemisphere would be treated as unfriendly to the USA.
A French name ("mountain dweller") for the highland peoples of central Vietnam, many of whom fought alongside US Special Forces and were persecuted after 1975.
The agreement signed at the Pan-American Conference in Montevideo in December 1933, which defined statehood and declared that no state had the right to intervene in another's affairs.
The refusal of Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, to ride the city's segregated buses from December 1955 to December 1956, after the arrest of Rosa Parks.
The organisation formed in December 1955 to run the Montgomery bus boycott, with Martin Luther King Jr. as its president.
A left-wing Peronist guerrilla organisation in Argentina, formed in 1970, which killed former president Aramburu and was destroyed in the Dirty War after 1976.
The 1936 agreement that restored Turkish control of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles and allowed Türkiye to fortify them.
The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, created in 1999 and renamed MONUSCO in 2010.
Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy, which claimed to rest on moral principles such as support for constitutional democracy and refusal to recognise governments that seized power by force.
E. P. Thompson's term for the customary beliefs of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century working people about fair prices, fair wages and the protection of trades, which they defended through protest.
The rising of poor Black Jamaicans led by Paul Bogle in October 1865, suppressed by Governor Eyre under martial law with hundreds of killings and executions.
The 1822 treaty between Britain and Sayyid Said of Oman that banned the sale of slaves by his subjects to Christian powers but left the trade within his dominions and to Arabia legal.
The fortified barrier of electrified fences, minefields and radar built by France along Algeria's border with Tunisia from 1957 to stop ALN fighters and arms crossing.
The reforms of 1909, named after the Secretary of State John Morley and the viceroy Lord Minto, which enlarged the legislative councils, increased elected members, appointed Indians to executive councils and created separate electorates for Muslims.
The German challenges to French influence in Morocco in 1905–1906 (Tangier and Algeciras) and 1911 (Agadir), which ended with a French protectorate in 1912.
A group of Soviet dissidents founded in 1976 by Yuri Orlov to monitor Soviet compliance with the human rights terms of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975.
A treaty clause promising that any privilege granted to one foreign country will automatically be granted to the country holding the clause.
A Nazi decoration (from December 1938) awarded in bronze, silver and gold to 'Aryan' mothers of four, six and eight or more children.
A castle of an earth mound (motte) with a wooden tower, beside an enclosed courtyard (bailey), quickly built by the Normans after 1066.
A Sufi Muslim order founded in Senegal by Amadou Bamba in the 1880s, which taught that work was a form of devotion and became a major producer of groundnuts.
A raid by the Haudenosaunee and other north-eastern peoples to take captives who would replace dead members of a family, by adoption or ritual execution.
The Congolese nationalist party founded in October 1958, led by Patrice Lumumba, which sought a united, independent Congo and won the most seats in the elections of 1960.
Mobutu's party, founded in 1967, which became the only legal party in Zaire; all citizens were members by law.
Habyarimana's ruling party in Rwanda, founded in 1975 and the only legal party until 1991; its youth wing became the Interahamwe.
Printing with separate pieces of type, one for each character or letter, that are arranged to form a page and reused for other pages; first made by Bi Sheng in China in the 1040s.
The Zimbabwean opposition party founded in September 1999 by trade unionists led by Morgan Tsvangirai, which challenged ZANU-PF in every election from 2000.
The Zambian alliance of trade unions, churches, business people and opposition politicians formed in July 1990 under Frederick Chiluba; it defeated Kaunda's UNIP in the election of 1991 and governed until 2011.
The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965), a US government report by Daniel Patrick Moynihan that blamed problems in Black communities partly on a "matriarchal" family structure.
The Marxist Angolan liberation movement rooted among Luanda intellectuals, mestiços and the Mbundu, led from 1962 by Agostinho Neto. It declared Angola's independence on 11 November 1975 and has governed since.
Messali Hadj's legal nationalist party (1946–1954), successor of the banned PPA. It split in 1953–1954 between Messali's followers and its central committee, and its younger activists founded the FLN.
A school of Islamic theology, influential at the Abbasid court in the ninth century, that stressed reason and held that the Qur'an was created rather than eternal.
An American investigative journalist of the Progressive Era, such as Ida Tarbell or Upton Sinclair, who exposed corruption and abuses; the name was given by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.
An Urdu word for a migrant, used in Pakistan for the Muslims who moved there from India at and after Partition, especially those who settled in Karachi and Sindh.
Those who wage jihad: the name taken by the Afghan guerrillas who fought the communist government and the Soviet army from 1978 to 1992. They were divided by party, ethnic group, sect and region.
The Arabic term for intelligence services; in Nasser's Egypt, the security and intelligence agencies that watched and arrested the regime's opponents.
In colonial usage, a person of mixed European and African descent; a term of the sistema de castas, now generally considered offensive in English.
"Joint rule": government of the Postclassic Maya city of Mayapán (c. 1220–1440s) by a council of the heads of noble lineages.
The idea that historical events have several causes, which act together and differ in importance.
A foreign policy of keeping good relations with several great powers at once, such as Kazakhstan's balance between Russia, China and the West.
A policy that recognises and supports the cultures of all of a society's ethnic groups instead of expecting them to assimilate; Canada adopted it in 1971 ("multiculturalism within a bilingual framework") and Australia made it official policy after the Galbally Report of 1978.
The force of American, French, Italian and later British troops sent to Beirut in 1982 to supervise the PLO’s evacuation and support the Lebanese government. It withdrew in February 1984 after the bombings of October 1983.
The colonial policy of the 1950s of sharing power among Europeans, Asians and Africans in separate, unequal blocs rather than by majority rule.
Kaunda's measures of April 1968, followed by the Matero Reforms of 1969, by which the Zambian state took a 51 per cent share in major companies and then in the copper mines.
The agreement of 29–30 September 1938 between Germany, Britain, France and Italy that transferred the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany without Czechoslovak participation.
Hitler's failed attempt to seize power in Bavaria on 8–9 November 1923, after which he was tried and imprisoned.
A woman who worked in a British munitions factory in the First World War; nearly a million did so by 1918.
The movement of Mexican artists, led by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, who from 1921 painted large murals on public buildings presenting the revolution, Indigenous heritage and popular struggles as the nation's story.
The wars between Māori iwi from about 1807 to the late 1830s in which groups that obtained muskets first raided far and wide, causing perhaps 20,000 deaths and large migrations.
The Islamist movement founded in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna in 1928 to build a society based on Islam; it was the Free Officers' main rival for popular support and was banned after an attempt on Nasser's life in 1954.
An Ottoman administrative district under a governor (mutasarrif); the autonomous Mount Lebanon mutasarrifate, created in 1861, was governed by a non-Lebanese Christian under European guarantee.
The nationalist claim, popularised by D’Annunzio, that Italy had been cheated of its rightful gains at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, above all Dalmatia and Fiume.
The alliance treaty signed by the United States and South Korea on 1 October 1953, which committed them to help each other if attacked and allowed US forces to stay in South Korea.
The Voluntary Militia for National Security, created in January 1923 from the Fascist squads; a party army paid by the state and loyal to Mussolini.
The title of the king of Rwanda (and of Burundi) before the monarchy was abolished.