91 of the History glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
The swearing of solemn oaths, based on Kikuyu ritual, that bound people to secrecy and loyalty to the Mau Mau movement and, in later oaths, to fight.
The title of the king of Benin (and of Yoruba kings).
A set of African-derived spiritual and healing practices in the British Caribbean, feared by colonial authorities and banned in Jamaica after Tacky's Revolt of 1760.
The concentration of women and men in different jobs, with women crowded into a narrow range of lower-paid occupations.
The territories taken by Israel in the 1967 war and held under military rule: the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights (and Sinai until 1982), as the UN describes them.
The march of Parisian women and the National Guard to Versailles on 5–6 October 1789 that forced Louis XVI to accept the August Decrees and the Declaration of Rights and to move to Paris.
The declaration by Nicholas II on 17 (30) October 1905 that promised civil liberties and an elected Duma with power over legislation, issued to end the general strike.
A member of the moderate liberal party founded in 1905 that accepted the October Manifesto as a basis for cooperation with the tsar; it led the Third Duma.
The South African plan of 1964 to divide South West Africa into ethnic 'homelands' on the model of apartheid, giving most of the land and wealth to the white areas.
The border between Germany and Poland along the rivers Oder and western Neisse, set at Potsdam in 1945; it moved Poland westwards and led to the expulsion of the Germans east of it.
The great annual festival of Asante at which the royal ancestors were honoured, chiefs renewed their oaths of loyalty and disputes were settled.
The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, set up in 1948 by the states receiving Marshall aid to share it out and coordinate recovery; later the OECD.
The policy, set out in the Official Languages Act (1969) and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), that English and French have equal status in Canada's federal institutions.
The Canadian law of 1969 that made English and French the official languages of the federal government and gave Canadians the right to federal services in either.
Robinson and Gallagher's term for the outlook of British ministers and officials, who in their view expanded in Africa mainly for strategic reasons.
The ideology of the Russian state from the 1830s, summed up as Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality: loyalty to the Orthodox Church, the unlimited power of the tsar and Russian traditions.
The agreement of August 1940 between Canada and the USA that created a Permanent Joint Board on Defence.
The cut in production and ban on oil exports to the United States and other supporters of Israel imposed by Arab oil producers from October 1973 to March 1974.
A 78-day stand-off in Quebec in 1990 between Mohawks blocking the extension of a golf course onto land including a burial ground and the Quebec police and later the Canadian army.
The secret political police of the Russian Empire from 1881 to 1917.
Brazil's first republic, from the overthrow of the empire in 1889 to the revolution of 1930: a federal system dominated by the elites of the largest states, with a vote limited to literate men.
In 1990s Russia, one of the small group of businessmen who made vast fortunes through banking, privatisation and natural resources and used their wealth and media to influence the government.
Government by a small, privileged group, such as the landowning and merchant elites of many Latin American states or, in Meiji Japan, the dozen or so former samurai and court nobles who held the key offices of state from 1868 into the 1890s.
The Kenya Education Commission of 1964–1965, chaired by Simeon Ominde, which planned a national, non-racial school system to build unity and train Kenyans.
A single bill that changes many different laws at once; Canadian governments, especially Harper's, used them to pass large budget and policy changes with limited debate.
The protest of June 1935 in which unemployed men from Canada's relief camps rode freight trains east to demand work and wages; it was stopped at Regina, where a riot broke out on 1 July 1935.
The first year of the 52-year Mexica calendar cycle; 1454 was a One Rabbit year. After the famine of that year, One Rabbit years were feared as times of disaster.
China's policy, from 1980 to 2015, of limiting most couples to one child, with exceptions such as a second child for many rural families and minorities; replaced by a two-child policy in 2016.
Kaunda's name for Zambia's one-party state (1972–1991), in which voters could choose between candidates of UNIP but no other party was allowed.
A state in which only one political party holds power, either by law (de jure) or in practice (de facto).
The US policy, set out in John Hay's notes of 1899 and 1900, that all powers should have equal access to trade in China and respect its territorial integrity; more broadly, a US preference for economic access over formal colonies.
The Fascist youth organisation founded in 1926 for children and teenagers, combining sport, drill and political teaching; in 1937 it became part of the party’s Italian Youth of the Lictor.
The Fascist leisure organisation founded in 1925, which ran clubs, sports, excursions and cheap holidays for workers and became the regime’s most popular mass organisation.
The British military operation of April 1954 that sealed off Nairobi and screened its African population, detaining tens of thousands of suspected Mau Mau supporters.
The US airlift of about 2,500–3,000 Vietnamese children, most of them orphans, for adoption abroad in April 1975, shortly before the fall of Saigon.
The Soviet offensive of June–August 1944 in Belarus that destroyed the German Army Group Centre.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on 22 June 1941.
The US naval task force, with fuel and arms, prepared in 1964 to support the Brazilian military's coup against Goulart if it met resistance; it was not needed.
The secret network of cooperation, formalised in 1975, between the intelligence services of South American military regimes to track, kidnap and kill political opponents across borders.
The CIA programme to arm and fund the Afghan mujahideen through Pakistan, from 1979 and on a large scale under Reagan in the 1980s, matched by Saudi funding.
The US plan for the invasion of the Japanese home islands in 1945–1946, made unnecessary by Japan's surrender.
The final US helicopter evacuation of Americans and Vietnamese from Saigon on 29–30 April 1975.
The mass arrest of Jomo Kenyatta and about 180 other African leaders on the night the State of Emergency was declared, 20–21 October 1952.
The name later given to the forced repatriation of Soviet citizens, many of them former soldiers, from the American zones to the USSR in 1946–1947.
The CIA campaign against Castro's Cuba authorised in November 1961, including sabotage, propaganda and plots to assassinate Castro.
The Zimbabwean government's demolition of informal housing and markets in the cities in May 2005, which a UN report estimated cost about 700,000 people their homes, livelihoods or both.
The reception and processing of more than 111,000 Vietnamese evacuees on Guam between April and November 1975, before their onward movement to the United States.
The CIA operation of 1953–1954 that overthrew President Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, using an exile force under Carlos Castillo Armas, propaganda radio and air attacks.
The US programme of 1962–1971 of spraying herbicides from aircraft over South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to destroy forest cover and crops used by communist forces.
The Nazi programme of 1942–1943 to murder the Jews of the Government General in occupied Poland in the killing centres of Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka.
The French-led military intervention in south-western Rwanda authorised by the UN in June 1994, which protected some civilians but also let many organisers of the genocide escape.
A German emergency plan for the Reserve Army to take control in the event of internal unrest, which the conspirators of the 20 July 1944 plot adapted to seize power in Berlin after killing Hitler.
The forced resettlement in 1947 of about 140,000 Ukrainians and Lemkos from south-eastern Poland to the former German territories in the west and north.
The war of 1839–1842 in which Britain defeated Qing China and forced it, in the Treaty of Nanjing, to open ports, cede Hong Kong and pay an indemnity.
Organised political activity against a government or its policies, usually by groups that want to change or replace it, such as rival party factions, banned parties, army officers, church leaders or exiles.
In the standard of living debate, a historian who argues that industrialisation raised the living standards of British workers, especially after about 1820.
A Catholic organisation founded in Spain in 1928 whose members included the technocrats who ran the Spanish economy from 1957 and designed the Stabilisation Plan and the Development Plans.
The recording and study of people's spoken memories of events they lived through.
Knowledge about the past passed down by word of mouth over generations, often by specialists such as griots or court historians; it differs from oral history, which records eyewitness memories.
An ethnic Kazakh from abroad who returned to settle in independent Kazakhstan under a state programme of repatriation.
Seafaring peoples of the islands of the Strait of Malacca whose fleets protected or attacked shipping and served Srivijaya and later Melaka.
The mass protests in Ukraine in November 2004 – January 2005 against a fraudulent presidential election, which led to a re-run won by Viktor Yushchenko.
The order of the Petrograd Soviet of 1 (14) March 1917 that put soldiers under their elected committees and the Soviet in political matters and took weapons out of officers' control.
Stalin's order of 16 August 1941 that declared Soviet officers who surrendered to be traitors and made their families liable to arrest.
The scheme agreed by UNHCR and Vietnam in 1979 that let Vietnamese emigrate legally by air to resettlement countries, mainly for family reunion, instead of risking escape by boat.
An English law of June 1349, re-enacted as the Statute of Labourers in 1351, that ordered workers to accept the wages paid before the Black Death.
Louis the Pious's plan of 817 for the succession, making his eldest son Lothar co-emperor and heir to the whole empire, with his younger sons as subordinate kings.
The regulations Napoleon added in 1802 to the Concordat without the pope's agreement, placing the Catholic Church under closer state control and organising the Protestant churches.
The French law of September 1947 that created an Algerian Assembly of 120 members, half elected by Europeans and a small minority of Muslims and half by more than eight million Muslim Algerians.
A clandestine organisation of French army officers and settlers formed in 1961 that used bombings and assassinations to prevent Algerian independence.
The association of independent African states founded in Addis Ababa in 1963. It supported liberation movements and defended the borders inherited from colonial rule and non-interference in members' affairs; it was replaced by the African Union in 2002.
The secret armed wing of the MTLD, created in 1947 and led by Hocine Aït Ahmed and then Ahmed Ben Bella. The French police broke it up in 1950; its former members founded the CRUA and the FLN.
The regional organisation of the American states founded at Bogotá in 1948; its charter promised non-intervention, but in the Cold War it was also used to support US anti-communist policy. Canada joined in 1990.
The elected assemblies at municipal, provincial and national level created by Cuba's 1976 Constitution, in which candidates were selected through processes controlled by the Communist Party.
A Japanese state-backed company founded in 1908 to develop and settle Korea, which became one of the largest landowners in colonial Korea.
In early nineteenth-century India, a Company official or scholar who favoured supporting education in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic learning; later the word also came to mean a Western view of the East as inferior.
An African born in one of the Four Communes of Senegal (or descended from someone who was), who held French political rights.
The first interpretation of an event to become widely accepted, often close to the views of the winners or the government of the time.
The agreements between Israel and the PLO of 1993 and 1995 that established mutual recognition and interim Palestinian self-government, leaving final-status issues to later talks.
Nostalgia among some former East Germans after 1990 for aspects of life in the GDR, such as job security, childcare and community.
"Eastern workers": civilians from the occupied Soviet Union deported to work in Nazi Germany, who were made to wear an OST badge and lived under harsh controls.
Willy Brandt's policy from 1969 of improving relations with the Soviet Union, Poland and the GDR by accepting the post-war borders.
The first Ottoman constitution, proclaimed in December 1876, which created an elected parliament; Abdülhamid II suspended parliament in 1878 and the constitution was restored in 1908.
A body run by European creditors, set up in 1881 after the Ottoman default, that collected major state revenues directly to repay the debt.
The idea that all subjects of the Ottoman Empire, whatever their religion or language, should be equal citizens with a common loyalty to the state.
The most serious punishment in Norse law, removing the protection of the law from a person: lesser outlawry meant three years' exile, full outlawry meant anyone could kill the outlaw without penalty.
The CCP law of October 1947 ordering the confiscation of landlords' land and its equal redistribution among the people of each village in the areas the party controlled.
The political secret police of Fascist Italy, set up in 1927, which watched and arrested opponents through a network of informers.
"Hired foreigners": the Western experts and teachers employed by the Meiji government and private firms to transfer technology and knowledge.
The secret archive of the Warsaw ghetto organised by Emanuel Ringelblum to record Jewish life and Nazi persecution; parts were recovered in 1946 and 1950.
The council of seven nobles of the Oyo kingdom, led by the Basorun, which chose the alafin and could force him to take his own life.