365 of the History glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
The deliberate destruction or damage of property such as railways, power lines or government buildings, to weaken an opponent or make a political point.
One of the 50 hereditary chiefs of the Haudenosaunee League council, chosen from a lineage by its clan mother.
A religious ceremony believed to give God's grace. The medieval Church recognised seven; Luther and most Protestants accepted only baptism and the Eucharist.
Sixteen moral maxims issued by the Kangxi Emperor in 1670 and expanded by the Yongzheng Emperor in 1724, read and explained to villagers to teach Confucian morality and obedience.
The parliamentary select committee chaired by Michael Sadler in 1832, which collected evidence from mill workers about children's hours and treatment in support of a ten-hour bill; its report led towards the Factory Act of 1833.
The official Muslim religious body set up by the Soviet state in Tashkent in 1943 to manage registered mosques and clergy under state supervision.
The Argentine electoral law of 1912 that made voting secret, compulsory and universal for adult male citizens, ending the oligarchy's control of elections.
The claim that the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, with official encouragement, as a harmless outlet for Indian discontent that would protect British rule from another rising. Most historians regard it as an exaggeration of A. O. Hume's role.
A prose narrative written in medieval Iceland, mostly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, about the kings of Norway or early Icelanders and their families, drawing on oral tradition.
A Mahayana Buddhist dynasty that ruled central Java from about the mid-eighth to the mid-ninth century and built Borobudur; one of its princes became king of Srivijaya.
A written order to pay money, used by merchants and officials in the Abbasid empire; the word is the origin of the English “cheque”.
The Tokugawa policy of strictly limiting foreign contact from the 1630s to 1853, under which only the Dutch and Chinese could trade, at Nagasaki.
A tax of one-tenth of income and movable goods imposed in England and France in 1188 to pay for the Third Crusade, on everyone who did not take the cross.
A strict Sunni Muslim movement that seeks to return to the beliefs and practices of the first generations of Muslims. Most Salafists are non-violent, but jihadist groups draw on Salafist ideas.
The method of the communist takeovers in Eastern Europe after 1945: removing rival parties and leaders one slice at a time while keeping the appearance of a coalition.
The oath of loyalty sworn directly to William I by the leading landholders of England, including the knights of the tenants-in-chief, in August 1086.
A regular gathering in a private home, usually hosted by a woman, where writers, nobles and visitors read and discussed new ideas; important in eighteenth-century Paris.
Gandhi's march of March–April 1930 from Sabarmati to Dandi on the coast of Gujarat to make salt in defiance of the British salt tax, beginning a mass civil disobedience campaign.
Literally 'self-publishing': banned or unofficial texts copied by hand or typewriter and passed secretly from reader to reader in the USSR.
The policy, from 1897, of uniting German landowners and industrialists behind the government against the Social Democrats, by giving industry naval contracts and agriculture tariffs on imported grain.
The hereditary warrior class of Japan, who by the Tokugawa period served mainly as administrators on stipends paid in rice; their status was abolished in the 1870s.
The Allied conference of April 1920 that allocated the mandates for Syria and Lebanon to France and for Iraq and Palestine to Britain.
Penalties imposed by one or more states on another to force it to change its behaviour, such as restrictions on trade, investment, travel or finance.
The Nicaraguan revolutionary movement, founded in 1961 and named after Augusto Sandino, that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and governed Nicaragua until 1990.
The community of Buddhist monks; in Burma its loss of royal patronage after 1886 led many monks into nationalist protest.
The political movement founded by Prince Sihanouk in 1955 after he gave up the throne, through which he dominated Cambodian politics until 1970.
The Tokugawa rule of alternate attendance, which required each daimyō to spend every other year in Edo and to leave his family there as hostages.
The politically active working people of Paris and other French towns (artisans, shopkeepers, journeymen) who wore trousers rather than knee-breeches and pressed for direct democracy, price controls and the Terror in 1792–1794.
An Afro-Cuban religion that combines Yoruba worship of spirits (orishas) with Catholic saints.
The ruler of the Inca state ("unique Inca"), regarded as the son of the Sun god Inti.
An Indonesian Islamic association founded in 1912 by batik traders, which grew into the first mass political movement in the Dutch East Indies.
The practice of a Hindu widow burning herself, or being burned, on her husband’s funeral pyre; banned in Bengal by Bentinck’s regulation of 1829.
The rising of former samurai led by Saigō Takamori in 1877, defeated by the conscript army; the last armed challenge to the Meiji government.
Gandhi's method of non-violent resistance, meaning "truth-force" or "holding firmly to truth", in which protesters refuse to obey unjust laws and accept punishment without using violence.
The seizure of power in Afghanistan by communist officers of the PDPA on 27–28 April 1978, in which President Daoud was killed. Saur is the month of the Afghan calendar in which it took place.
The Shah’s secret police and intelligence organisation, created in 1957 with American and Israeli help. It watched, arrested and often tortured opponents until the revolution of 1979.
The left-wing nationalist party of Djibo Bakary in Niger ("freedom" in Hausa), which won the elections of 1957, campaigned for immediate independence in 1958 and was banned in 1959.
The second number in a Mughal mansab, setting how many cavalrymen and horses the holder had to maintain for imperial service.
An insulting name used by white Southern Democrats for white Southerners who supported the Republican Party during Reconstruction.
The official name in the Indian constitution (1950) for the castes formerly treated as untouchable, which are entitled to reserved places in education, government jobs and legislatures.
The agreement, applied from 1995, that removed passport checks at the borders between most EU states and some others.
Germany's pre-1914 war plan for a war against France and Russia: defeat France quickly by marching through Belgium, then turn east against the slower Russian army.
The defensive alliance of Lutheran princes and cities formed in 1531, led by Saxony and Hesse; Charles V defeated it at Mühlberg in 1547.
In imperial China, a man educated in the Confucian classics who served in government, usually after passing the civil-service examinations.
The US Army school that trained Latin American soldiers and police, in the Panama Canal Zone from 1946 and at Fort Benning, Georgia, from 1984; renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001.
The Nazi Party's elite force, led by Heinrich Himmler, which carried out the Night of the Long Knives and later ran the police, the concentration camps and the extermination camps.
The transformation of European ideas about nature between about 1540 and 1700, from Copernicus to Newton, based on observation, experiment and mathematics rather than ancient authority.
The gap that opened in Soviet Russia in 1923 between high prices for industrial goods and low prices for farm produce, which led peasants to hold back grain.
Destroying crops, food stores, livestock and shelter in an area to deny them to an enemy.
The division of almost the whole of Africa among seven European powers between about 1880 and 1914, through treaties, agreements between the powers and conquest.
The rush by the powers in 1897–1898 to obtain leased territories, railway and mining rights and spheres of influence in China.
The interrogation of suspects in the Kenya Emergency to decide whether they had taken Mau Mau oaths and where they should be detained.
The deliberate circulation of texts in handwritten copies rather than print, common among European elites into the seventeenth century, partly because it let authors control their readers and avoid censors.
A person who copied texts by hand for a living; in Europe and the Islamic world scribes produced books before printing, and many continued to work long after it appeared.
A payment made to the king in place of knight service, used to hire paid soldiers.
The US tactic in Vietnam, especially in 1965–1968, of sending large units to find and kill enemy forces in the countryside, rather than holding territory.
The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, an anti-communist defence alliance set up by the Manila Pact of September 1954 by the USA, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines; it was dissolved in 1977.
The women's organisation of the Falange (1934–1977), led by Pilar Primo de Rivera, which ran the compulsory Social Service for women and promoted their role as Catholic wives and mothers.
The formal withdrawal of a state or region from a larger political union, such as the departure of eleven Southern states from the United States in 1860–1861.
The armed struggle of ZANU's and ZAPU's guerrilla armies against white minority rule in Rhodesia, from 1966 to 1979.
The phrase of D. A. Low and John Lonsdale for the wave of experts, officials and development schemes sent to African colonies after the Second World War.
The Allied land campaign in western Europe that Stalin demanded from 1942 to relieve pressure on the USSR; it opened with the Normandy landings of June 1944.
The war of 1856–1860 in which Britain and France defeated Qing China, ending in the Treaties of Tianjin and the Convention of Beijing.
The competition between the Democratic and Whig parties in the USA from about 1834 to 1854; because both needed votes in the North and the South, they tended to keep slavery out of national politics.
The wave of fear of communist subversion in the United States from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, marked by loyalty investigations, congressional hearings, blacklists and prosecutions; also called McCarthyism.
The failed revolt of Sun Yixian and southern military governors against Yuan Shikai in July–September 1913, after the murder of Song Jiaoren.
The tightening of lords' control over peasants in much of eastern Europe from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when serfdom was declining in the West.
The unpaid housework and childcare that women in paid work continue to do after their working day, a double burden found in capitalist and communist societies alike; the sociologist Arlie Hochschild named it the second shift (1989).
The women's movement in the United States and other Western countries in the 1960s and 1970s, which sought equality in work, education, law, the family and sexuality.
A source produced later by someone interpreting the past, usually from primary sources, such as a history book or scholarly article.
A police force whose main task is to protect a regime against its opponents through surveillance, informers, arrest and interrogation, usually outside the control of the courts.
Khrushchev's speech to a closed session of the Twentieth Party Congress on 25 February 1956, which condemned Stalin's cult of personality and his purges of party members.
The clause of the US Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that banned discrimination against disabled people in programmes receiving federal money; disabled activists' sit-ins in 1977 forced the government to enforce it.
Loyalty to the interests of one's own region above those of the nation; in the USA before 1861, the growing tendency to see politics as a contest between North and South.
The principle that the state and its laws should be separate from religion. In Tunisia, secularists generally opposed giving Islamic law a role in legislation.
The secret police of communist Romania, one of the most feared in the Soviet bloc.
The US agency created in 1934 to regulate the stock market and the sale of shares.
The settlement of nomadic people in permanent villages; in Soviet Kazakhstan it was imposed by force from 1929–1930 and helped cause famine.
The practice of living in one place all year round, usually based on farming. Semi-sedentary farmers move their villages every few years or decades.
Speech, writing or action that encourages rebellion or resistance against the lawful authority of a state.
The US law of May 1918 that made it a crime to use 'disloyal' language about the government, the flag or the armed forces.
The domination of Joseon government between about 1800 and 1863 by the families of royal consorts, above all the Andong Kim clan, who ruled in the name of weak or child kings.
The separation of people by race in where they live, work, travel and take part in politics; in South Africa the policy of the Union governments from 1910, later hardened into apartheid.
Payments and services owed by peasants to the lord (seigneur) of the land they lived on, such as rents, fees on land sales, tolls and the use of his mill; abolished in France between 1789 and 1793.
The debate of 1873 over sending Saigō Takamori to Korea to provoke a war; its rejection split the government and led to samurai rebellion and the people's rights movement.
One of Japan's two main pre-war parties, founded in 1900, with support among rural landlords and business; its leaders Hara Takashi, Tanaka Giichi and Inukai Tsuyoshi headed cabinets.
Laws of the 1860s in the Australian colonies, such as the Robertson Land Acts of New South Wales (1861), that let people choose small farms of 40 to 320 acres from Crown land, including squatters' runs.
The US law of May 1917 that introduced conscription for the First World War.
The seizure of extra-constitutional powers by an elected leader, who closes the legislature or suspends the constitution, as Alberto Fujimori did in Peru on 5 April 1992.
The right of a people to decide its own political future, including whether to form an independent state.
Setting fire to oneself as an act of protest.
The programme of about 1861–1895 in which Qing officials adopted Western weapons, technology and methods, through arsenals, shipyards, schools and enterprises, without changing China's political institutions.
The empire of the Seljuk Turks, Sunni Muslim rulers who took Baghdad in 1055 and defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071; it broke into rival states after 1092.
The week of January 1919 in which the army and armed civilian groups crushed a general strike in Buenos Aires, killing hundreds of people.
A term used for the condition of China after the unequal treaties: formally independent, but with foreign powers holding treaty privileges, leased territories and spheres of influence.
"The rule of the seven bankers": a Russian term for the political influence of a handful of oligarchs in the mid-1990s.
A college for training priests; the Council of Trent ordered every diocese to set one up so that clergy would be educated and disciplined.
The main Soviet nuclear testing ground, in north-eastern Kazakhstan, where about 456 tests were carried out from 1949 to 1989; it was closed in 1991.
The first women's rights convention in the United States, held in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848 and organised by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.
The roughly 17 million urban young people sent to live and work in the countryside in China from 1968, during and after the Cultural Revolution.
Private Confucian academies and shrines in Joseon Korea; they were tax-exempt and served as bases for factions until the Daewongun closed most of them in 1871.
An electoral system in which voters of one community, such as Muslims in British India from 1909, vote only for candidates of their own community in seats reserved for it.
The belief, strong in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain and America, that men belonged in public life, work and politics and women in the home and family, which was used to argue against votes for women.
The barrier of fences and walls built by Israel from 2002, much of it inside the West Bank; Israel calls it a security fence, Palestinians a separation or apartheid wall.
The division of government into separate legislative, executive and judicial branches so that no one person or body holds all power.
An Indian soldier trained and armed in the European style and serving in the army of the East India Company or later the British Crown.
The killing of about 1,100–1,400 prisoners, many of them priests and ordinary criminals, by crowds in the Paris prisons on 2–6 September 1792, amid fear of a Prussian advance and a counter-revolutionary plot.
A system in which peasants were legally bound to a lord's land and owed him labour, dues and obedience, and could not leave without permission.
The compulsory labour service introduced in occupied France in February 1943, which sent between 600,000 and 650,000 French workers to Germany.
The Kenyan government's policy paper African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya (1965), which committed the state to a mixed economy and Africanisation.
A community centre in a poor urban district, staffed by middle-class reformers who lived there, offering classes, childcare and help to immigrants and campaigning for social laws.
A colony in which Europeans settled permanently, owned land and claimed political power, such as Kenya, Southern Rhodesia or Algeria.
A party work conference of about 7,000 officials in Beijing in January–February 1962, at which Liu Shaoqi blamed the Great Leap's disasters mainly on human error and Mao made a limited self-criticism.
A global war (1756–1763) in which Britain and Prussia fought France, Austria, Russia and Spain; in North America it ended French rule on the mainland and left Britain with a large debt.
The agreement of May 1951 between the PRC and representatives of the Dalai Lama's government, which accepted Chinese sovereignty over Tibet in return for promises to keep its political system; the Dalai Lama repudiated it in 1959.
The British law of 1919 that stated that sex or marriage should not disqualify anyone from public office or the professions, opening the law, juries and the magistracy to women.
The chief religious official of the Ottoman Empire, head of the learned religious hierarchy, whose legal opinions (fatwas) could approve or condemn state policies.
"The surviving remnant": the name Jewish Holocaust survivors in the displaced persons camps used for themselves.
The communist-governed region around Yan'an, covering parts of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, recognised by the national government under the Second United Front.
Economic activity outside the official plan and law, such as private trade, services and the resale of goods stolen from the state; it grew large in the late Soviet period.
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, General Eisenhower's command of the western Allied armies in 1944–1945, which planned the first care and repatriation of displaced persons.
The joint statement issued at the end of Nixon's visit to China in February 1972, in which the United States 'acknowledged' that Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait held there was one China.
A security and economic organisation founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, growing out of the Shanghai Five of 1996.
The waterway formed by the Tigris and Euphrates that flows into the Gulf and forms part of the border between Iran and Iraq. Disputes over it were a cause of the Iran–Iraq War.
An armed uprising of indebted farmers in Massachusetts in 1786–1787 that convinced many American leaders that the Articles of Confederation were too weak.
A machine that held several pairs of cloth shears and did the work of hand croppers with far less labour; Yorkshire Luddites attacked shearing frames in 1812.
The name used in the First World War for the psychological breakdown of soldiers caused by prolonged exposure to bombardment and combat, now understood as a form of post-traumatic stress.
The king's officer in an English shire, responsible for royal revenue, justice and order; sheriffs accounted to the Exchequer.
The US law of 1890 that made combinations "in restraint of trade" and attempts at monopoly illegal; weakly enforced until the 1900s.
Muslims who hold that leadership of the community belonged to Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, and to imams descended from him and the Prophet’s daughter Fatima.
The foreign policy of Shidehara Kijūrō, Japanese foreign minister in 1924–1927 and 1929–1931: cooperation with Britain and the United States, non-interference in China's internal affairs and the pursuit of Japanese interests by economic means.
A hut on an outlying summer pasture, used while animals grazed away from the home farm so that the meadows near the house could grow hay.
The guerrilla war of 1963–1967 in which Somalis of north-eastern Kenya sought to join Somalia; the government called the fighters shifta, “bandits”.
The regent of the Kamakura shogun, an office held by the Hōjō family from 1203 to 1333, which held the real power in the shogunate.
A Maoist guerrilla party founded by Abimael Guzmán in Ayacucho, Peru, which waged a "people's war" from 1980 and was responsible for more than half the deaths in Peru's internal conflict.
"Men of high purpose": young samurai activists of the 1850s and 1860s who left their domains to work, often violently, for the imperial cause.
The legal category of former samurai families created in 1869, which kept a title but lost the stipends, offices and swords of the old samurai status.
A strategy for moving from a planned to a market economy all at once: freeing prices and trade, cutting state spending and privatising state property quickly.
A private, tax-exempt estate in Heian and Kamakura Japan, owned by a court noble or temple and run by local managers, with rights to its income divided among several holders.
The hereditary military ruler of Japan who held real political power in the emperor's name; from 1603 to 1867 the office belonged to the Tokugawa family.
A development in the months or few years before an event that brought an existing situation to a head.
A result that appears within months or a few years of an event.
A public trial staged for propaganda, in which the verdict is decided in advance and defendants usually confess to invented crimes, such as the Moscow trials of 1936–1938.
The aim of radical young officers and ultranationalists in the 1930s to sweep away the emperor's 'corrupt' advisers, politicians and capitalists and restore direct imperial rule, in imitation of the Meiji Restoration.
A provincial constable appointed by the Kamakura shogunate from its vassals to arrest rebels and murderers and organise guard duty; later shugo became powerful regional lords.
Negotiation in which a mediator travels back and forth between parties who will not meet directly, as Henry Kissinger did after the 1973 war.
The Allied military intervention in the Russian Far East after the Russian Revolution (1918–1922), in which Japan sent more than 70,000 troops and stayed longest, hoping to create a buffer zone.
A person of African descent in India or Pakistan, descended mainly from East Africans taken across the Indian Ocean as slaves, soldiers and servants.
A wealthy African or mixed-race woman trader of Saint-Louis or Gorée in Senegal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often married to a European merchant and owning property and slaves.
A form of government in an Italian city in which one lord and his family held power, often after seizing it in a time of civil conflict. In Florence the same word was also used for the city's governing council of priors.
The vast collection of Chinese books compiled on Qianlong's orders between 1773 and 1782, during which works judged anti-Manchu or disloyal were banned or destroyed.
A member of Russia's security, military or police services, or an official who came from them; many held senior posts under Putin.
The all-British commission under Sir John Simon, appointed in 1927 to review India's constitution. Because it included no Indians it was boycotted by almost every Indian party.
The buying and selling of church offices, condemned by the reform movement of the eleventh century.
A Catholic, nationalist and anti-communist mass movement founded in Mexico in 1937 (the National Synarchist Union), strong among rural people in west-central Mexico and opposed to Cárdenas's reforms.
The name given in October 1989 by a Soviet spokesman to Gorbachev's policy of letting the countries of Eastern Europe choose their own path, after Frank Sinatra's song "My Way".
A united front of Korean nationalists and socialists, 1927–1931, that built branches across Korea before dissolving amid left–right divisions.
The 1986 treaty that set the goal of a single market by the end of 1992 and extended majority voting in the European Community.
The breakdown of relations between communist China and the Soviet Union from the late 1950s, which by the 1970s made them rivals and shaped the conflicts in Indochina, where China backed Cambodia and the Soviet Union backed Vietnam.
The treaty of 14 August 1945 between the Soviet Union and Jiang Jieshi's government, in which Stalin recognised the Nationalists and gained rights in Manchuria and Mongolia.
The ranking of people of mixed descent in eighteenth-century Spanish America into named categories according to their Spanish, Indigenous and African ancestry.
One of the dependent republics set up with French support in conquered territories in 1795–1799, such as the Batavian (Dutch), Cisalpine (north Italian) and Helvetic (Swiss) Republics.
A protest in which people occupy a place, such as a segregated lunch counter, and refuse to leave until their demands are met or they are removed. The Greensboro sit-in of February 1960 started a wave across the US South.
The six principles of the Republican People's Party adopted in 1931: republicanism, nationalism, populism, étatism, secularism and revolutionism.
The six central departments of imperial Chinese government: Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Punishments and Works.
The war of 5–10 June 1967 in which Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria and occupied Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
The programme adopted by the PNR in 1933 for the presidency of 1934–1940, promising land reform, labour rights, state direction of the economy and socialist education. Cárdenas used it as the basis of his reforms.
The Old Norse name for the Indigenous peoples of Greenland and North America met by the Norse; its original meaning is uncertain and it was not a name these peoples used for themselves.
Five eleventh-century ships sunk to block a channel in Roskilde Fjord, Denmark, and raised in 1962; they include an ocean-going knarr built in western Norway in about 1030.
A soured, strained milk product made in Norse Iceland and Greenland, which could be stored through the winter.
A body of colonial law defining the status of enslaved people and the powers of their owners, such as the Barbados Slave Code (1661) and the French Code Noir (1685).
A group of armed local white men who rode at night in the US South to stop enslaved people travelling, meeting or escaping without permission.
The name used by opponents of slavery for the slaveholding elite, which they believed controlled the US federal government and threatened the liberties of white Northerners.
The organised capture, transport and sale of people as slaves. Historians of Africa distinguish the Atlantic trade from the trans-Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean trades.
The British law of 25 March 1807 that made it illegal for British subjects and ships to take part in the Atlantic slave trade. It did not free people who were already enslaved.
The British Act (royal assent 24 June 1824) that consolidated the laws against the slave trade and declared slave trading at sea by British subjects to be piracy, punishable by death.
The British law of 28 August 1833 that abolished slavery in most British colonies from 1 August 1834, with £20 million compensation to slave owners and a period of unpaid apprenticeship for the freed people.
The alliance between workers and peasants that Lenin wanted the New Economic Policy to restore after the Civil War.
The ruling communist party of East Germany, formed in 1946 by the forced merger of the Communist and Social Democratic parties in the Soviet zone.
A French society founded in 1788 that campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade, equal rights for free people of colour and the gradual end of slavery.
The committee founded in London in May 1787, mostly by Quakers, with Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp among its members, to campaign for an end to the British slave trade through petitions, publications and lobbying.
The Quakers, a Protestant Christian group founded in seventeenth-century England, who believed in the equal worth of every person and led the early campaign against the slave trade.
The Catholic religious order founded by Ignatius Loyola and approved in 1540, devoted to education, missions and the defence of Catholicism, with a special vow of obedience to the pope.
A Paris women's club of 1793, led by Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe and allied with the sans-culottes, closed with all other women's clubs by the Convention on 30 October 1793.
The Islamic state founded by Usman dan Fodio's jihad of 1804 in what is now northern Nigeria, made up of about thirty emirates under the caliph at Sokoto until the British conquest of 1903.
A woman who travelled with a Mexican army during the revolution, providing food, nursing and supplies and sometimes fighting. The name "Adelita", from a famous corrido, became a romantic symbol of these women.
The independent trade union and opposition movement founded in Poland in 1980, which won the semi-free elections of June 1989.
An extra tax on income introduced in Germany in 1991 to help pay for the costs of reunification.
The ruling house of Ethiopia from 1270 to 1974, which claimed descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
The rebel movement founded in 1981, drawing its support mainly from the Isaaq clan of northern Somalia, which fought Siad Barre's regime and declared the independence of Somaliland in 1991.
The former British Somaliland in northern Somalia, which declared itself independent on 18 May 1991. It built a stable government and held elections but was not recognised by any state.
The 1772 ruling by Lord Mansfield that James Somerset, an enslaved man in England, could not be forcibly removed from the country; it was widely taken to mean that slavery could not exist in England.
Prisoners forced to work at the gas chambers and crematoria of the killing centres; the Auschwitz Sonderkommando revolted in October 1944.
The argument that Germany followed a "special path" of modernisation without a successful liberal revolution, leaving power with the old elites; challenged by Blackbourn and Eley.
A member of the Song educated class who refused to serve the Mongol Yuan dynasty after 1279 and kept the memory of the Song alive through art and writing.
"Revere the emperor, expel the barbarians": the slogan of activists of the 1850s and 1860s who opposed the shogunate's foreign policy and later the shogunate itself.
Groups of colonial artisans, merchants and lawyers formed in 1765 to resist the Stamp Act and later British measures, through protests, boycotts and intimidation of royal officials.
The Japanese army's screening and mass killing of Chinese men in Singapore and Malaya in February and March 1942; estimates of the dead range from about 6,000 to 100,000.
The 1940 Japanese policy that pressed Korean families to register Japanese-style surnames; about 80 per cent of households had done so by August 1940.
The secret meeting of FLN leaders in the Soummam valley on 20 August 1956 that gave the movement its programme and institutions and declared the primacy of political over military leaders and of the interior over the exterior.
The war of 1899–1902 in which Britain conquered the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, fought partly as a guerrilla war and marked by concentration camps for civilians.
A Lebanese militia, mostly Christian-led, founded by Major Saad Haddad and armed by Israel, which controlled Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon until Israel withdrew in May 2000.
A British joint-stock company founded in 1711 that held the asiento to supply enslaved Africans to Spanish America from 1713.
The former German Pacific islands north of the equator (the Marshalls, Carolines, Marianas except Guam, and Palau) that Japan governed under a League of Nations mandate from 1920.
The agreement in 1900 by which governors-general in central and southern China ignored the court's declaration of war on the powers and kept order in their provinces.
A civil rights organisation of Black church leaders founded in January 1957 after the Montgomery bus boycott and led by Martin Luther King Jr. It organised non-violent campaigns such as Birmingham (1963) and Selma (1965).
A statement signed in March 1956 by 101 members of Congress from the former Confederate states, condemning the Brown v. Board of Education decision and supporting resistance to it by lawful means.
The problem of the poverty and backwardness of southern Italy compared with the north, and of its relationship with the Italian state after 1861.
The Republican effort, from Nixon's campaign of 1968, to win white Southern voters who had left the Democrats over civil rights, through appeals on crime, busing, states' rights and patriotism.
Deng Xiaoping's visit to Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai in January–February 1992, in which he praised market reforms and relaunched them after the slowdown that followed 1989.
A term promoted by the Kremlin official Vladislav Surkov from 2006 for a Russian form of democracy shaped without foreign interference, used to justify state control of politics.
Supreme authority within a territory: the power to make and enforce laws without being subject to any higher power inside or outside the state.
The Parti Québécois's proposal that Quebec become a sovereign state while keeping an economic association, including a common currency, with Canada; the subject of the 1980 referendum.
A council of elected delegates of workers, soldiers or peasants, first formed in Russia in 1905; in 1917 soviets became rival centres of authority and then the formal basis of Bolshevik rule.
The agreement of 13 April 1941 in which the Soviet Union and Japan promised to stay neutral if either was attacked by a third power; the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in August 1945.
The remodelling of a state on the Soviet pattern: one-party rule, a planned economy, collectivised farming, a secret police and a leader cult.
One of about 105 regional economic councils that took over the management of Soviet industry from the central ministries under Khrushchev's reform of 1957; abolished in 1965.
The Council of People's Commissars, the Soviet government formed in October 1917 with Lenin as chairman.
The protests by school students in Soweto from 16 June 1976 against teaching in Afrikaans, which police met with gunfire and which spread across South Africa into 1977.
The competition between the USSR and the USA, from Sputnik in 1957 to the American Moon landing in 1969, to achieve firsts in space, which both treated as proof of the superiority of their system.
The influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, which killed tens of millions of people worldwide. Troop movements and wartime hardship helped it to spread, and it was called Spanish only because neutral Spain reported it freely.
The side in the Spanish Civil War that supported the military rising of July 1936, led by Franco from October 1936; Republicans called them rebels or fascists.
The side in the Spanish Civil War that defended the government of the Second Republic against the rising of July 1936, a coalition of liberal Republicans, Socialists, Communists, anarchists and Basque and Catalan nationalists.
The change from the Franco dictatorship to parliamentary democracy in Spain, usually dated from Franco's death in 1975 to the Socialist election victory of 1982, carried out by negotiation within the existing law.
Mass meetings organised by CCP work teams during land reform at which peasants publicly accused landlords of past wrongs; many of the accused were beaten or killed.
An area of China, beginning with Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen in 1980, where foreign firms could invest with lower taxes and fewer controls.
The severe economic crisis in Cuba in the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR ended Soviet subsidies and trade.
A place of compulsory residence under NKVD control for deported kulaks and deported peoples, who could not leave without permission.
The Fascist court created in November 1926, staffed by militia officers, which tried political opponents of the regime until 1943.
A region in which one power claims exclusive rights to expand or trade, recognised by other powers, without yet ruling it directly.
A person believed to be possessed by and speak for an ancestral or national spirit; in Shona society mediums held great religious and political authority.
The name given to Britain's late nineteenth-century policy of avoiding permanent alliances with other European powers, which it gave up between 1902 and 1907.
The Inca custom by which a dead ruler's palaces, lands and servants stayed with his mummy and lineage, so that each new ruler had to acquire new lands of his own.
The practice of giving government jobs to supporters of the winning party, from the saying "to the victor belong the spoils".
The international campaign to exclude apartheid South Africa from sport, including its exclusion from the Olympic Games from 1964 and the Commonwealth's Gleneagles Agreement of 1977.
The series of German attacks on the Western Front from March to July 1918, which gained ground but failed to win the war before American troops arrived.
The armed Fascist squads of 1920–1922, known as Blackshirts, which used violence to destroy Socialist and Catholic organisations, often with the support of landowners and the tolerance of the police.
Theodore Roosevelt's domestic programme of 1901–1909: fair treatment for business, labour and consumers through regulation of corporations, consumer protection and conservation.
An African family living and working on a European-owned farm in colonial Kenya, allowed to cultivate a plot and graze livestock in return for labour, but with no legal right to the land.
In colonial Australia, a pastoralist who occupied large areas of Crown land beyond official settlement, first without title and later under licence or lease, and who built the wool industry.
The false claim, spread by German nationalists after 1918, that the German army had not been defeated in the field but betrayed by revolutionaries and politicians at home.
The Spanish economic reform of July 1959 that devalued the peseta, cut spending and opened the economy to foreign trade and investment, ending autarky and preparing the boom of the 1960s.
Brezhnev's promise that party officials would keep their posts, which allowed long-serving leaders and patronage networks to grow in the republics.
Measuring the ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone to work out what kinds of food, for example marine or land-based, a person ate.
The combination of a stagnant economy, with low growth and high unemployment, and high inflation, as in the USA and Canada in the 1970s. It undermined the Keynesian policies of the post-war years.
The Soviet campaign, named after the miner Alexei Stakhanov's record shift of August 1935, that rewarded workers who exceeded their output norms and was used to raise norms for all.
The constitution of the USSR adopted on 5 December 1936, which created eleven union republics (including the Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs) and promised rights that the terror ignored.
A British law of 1765 that taxed printed papers in the American colonies; the first direct tax laid on them by Parliament, repealed in 1766 after colonial resistance.
The long-running dispute among historians over whether the living standards of ordinary British people rose or fell during industrialisation, roughly 1780–1850, between optimists and pessimists.
A way of funding a state by collecting basic goods such as food and cloth, or the labour to produce them, and paying officials and workers in kind; used of the Inca state.
The East German secret police and intelligence service, with about 91,000 employees and 189,000 unofficial informers in 1989.
A political community in which a central authority makes laws, collects revenue and claims the right to use force over a defined population and territory.
Systematic corruption in which private interests shape a state's decisions, appointments and contracts for their own benefit; used in South Africa for the Gupta family's influence under President Zuma.
The group of eight senior Soviet officials who tried to seize power from Gorbachev in the coup of 19–21 August 1991.
The promotion of women's rights by the state from above, as part of a government's own programme, rather than through an independent women's movement.
A legal declaration giving a government special powers, such as detention without trial and bans on organisations; Kenya's lasted from October 1952 to January 1960.
The organisation of Shinto shrines and rituals under state control from the Meiji period, presenting the emperor as a descendant of the sun goddess and the focus of national loyalty.
A person who is not recognised as a citizen by any state.
A society without a central ruler or permanent government, in which order is kept by kinship groups, elders, age-grades, councils and religious leaders.
The Indian law that redrew the boundaries of the states, mostly along linguistic lines, creating 14 states and 6 union territories from November 1956.
The doctrine that the individual states of the USA kept powers the federal government could not override; before 1861 it was used above all to defend slavery and to justify secession.
The London guild of printers and booksellers, which received a royal charter in 1557 giving its members a monopoly of printing in England and the duty to search out unlicensed presses.
The Vichy laws of October 1940 and June 1941 that defined Jews by race and excluded them from public office, teaching and many professions.
The basic law of one of Spain's autonomous communities, approved by its own representatives and the Spanish Cortes, setting out its institutions and powers.
The English law of 1624 that abolished most royal monopolies but allowed patents of up to fourteen years for new inventions.
The British law of 1931 that gave the dominions full legal independence in their own affairs, including foreign policy.
A Russian law of August 1881 that allowed provinces to be placed under emergency rule, giving officials power to ban meetings, close newspapers and exile suspects without trial; it was renewed until 1917.
The constitution granted by King Charles Albert of Piedmont on 4 March 1848; the only constitution of 1848 in Italy to survive, it became the constitution of the Kingdom of Italy.
An upright carved stone slab. Maya stelae showed rulers and recorded their reigns in dated hieroglyphic texts.
The sterilisation of people without their informed consent. In the 1970s USA it fell mostly on poor Black, Native American and Mexican-American women.
Debts in pounds sterling owed by Britain to India and other countries at the end of the Second World War for goods, services and military spending supplied on credit. India's balances were about £1.3 billion in 1945.
A hand-operated knitting machine for making stockings and other hosiery; Nottinghamshire Luddites broke wide frames used to make cheap 'cut-up' goods.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children removed from their families by Australian governments, churches and welfare bodies, mostly between about 1910 and 1970, under protection and assimilation policies; acknowledged in the National Apology of 2008.
Reforms of 1906–1911 that allowed Russian peasants to leave the commune, own their land privately and consolidate their strips, aiming to create a class of prosperous peasants loyal to the regime.
A nickname for the hangman's noose, from the executions carried out under Pyotr Stolypin in 1906–1910.
Protests that began after a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York, on 28 June 1969, often seen as the start of the gay liberation movement.
The campaign founded by Phyllis Schlafly in 1972 to prevent ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment; it later worked within her wider conservative organisation, Eagle Forum. STOP stood for "Stop Taking Our Privileges".
The South Vietnamese policy of 1962–1963, backed by the United States, of moving peasants into fortified villages to cut them off from the communist guerrillas. Forced resettlement made it deeply unpopular.
A plan for winning a war or campaign as a whole: which enemy forces or places to attack, in what order and for what political aim.
The leisure organisation of the German Labour Front, founded in 1933, which offered workers cheap holidays, cruises, concerts and sport.
The agreement of Britain, France and Italy in April 1935 to oppose German rearmament and any change to Austria's independence; it collapsed during the Abyssinian crisis.
A package of free-market reforms, such as cutting subsidies and state spending, privatising state companies and opening the economy to trade, required by the IMF and World Bank in return for loans in the 1980s and 1990s.
An interpretation that explains the policies of a regime, especially Nazi Germany, mainly through the structures of the state and the competition between its agencies and officials.
Structure means the large, impersonal conditions that limit what people can do, such as the economy, social classes, climate and institutions; it is usually contrasted with agency.
A public meeting in Mao's China at which a person accused of political crimes was denounced, humiliated and often beaten by a crowd until they confessed.
The US civil rights organisation founded by student activists in April 1960, which organised sit-ins, Freedom Rides and voter registration in the Deep South.
The subjects taught by Renaissance humanists: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy, studied through classical texts.
The Nazi Party's paramilitary force of street fighters, led by Ernst Röhm until his murder in 1934.
The use by a colonial power of one African people to conquer or govern others, as when the British used Baganda agents to rule other parts of Uganda.
A province of the Mughal Empire, governed by a subadar (governor) alongside a separate diwan responsible for revenue.
A school of history founded in the early 1980s, led by Ranajit Guha, that studies the politics of peasants and other subordinated groups in South Asia, ignored by both colonial and nationalist histories.
The building in Istanbul housing the grand vizier and the main Ottoman government offices; Europeans used the name for the Ottoman government itself.
A home loan to a borrower with a poor credit record, usually at a higher interest rate. Defaults on subprime mortgages in the USA from 2006 set off the financial crisis of 2008.
The EU principle that decisions should be taken at European level only where the aim cannot be achieved better by member states.
A treaty, used above all by Richard Wellesley, under which an Indian ruler paid for a Company army stationed in his state, accepted a British Resident and gave up an independent foreign policy.
A regional state, such as Hyderabad, Bengal or Awadh, formed in the eighteenth century when a Mughal governor made his province independent in practice while still recognising the emperor.
The border regions of Czechoslovakia with a German-speaking majority, about three million people, transferred to Germany by the Munich Agreement of 1938.
The canal linking the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, opened in 1869, which shortened the sea route from Europe to India and made Egypt strategically vital to Britain.
The crisis that followed Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company in July 1956, in which Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt but were forced to withdraw.
A cause that would have produced an event on its own, whatever else was present. Sufficient causes are rare in history.
A member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded in Britain in 1903, which used militant methods to campaign for women's right to vote.
A campaigner for women's right to vote by legal and peaceful methods, such as members of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in Britain.
The mystical tradition of Islam, which seeks a direct experience of God through devotion, music and the guidance of a master; in India the Chishti order was close to the Mughal court.
A bill of exchange in the medieval Islamic world, by which money paid in one city could be collected in another, so that merchants did not need to carry coin.
The British law of 1846 that began to equalise the duties on colonial and foreign sugar, ending the protection that British Caribbean sugar had enjoyed.
The share of the US sugar market reserved for Cuban sugar at preferential prices under the Reciprocity Treaty of 1934; the United States cut it in July 1960.
The rapid change in seventeenth-century Caribbean colonies, beginning in Barbados in the 1640s, from small farms using European labour to large sugar plantations worked by enslaved Africans.
Persian for "universal peace": Akbar’s principle that the emperor stood above religious communities and should treat them all with tolerance.
A Muslim ruler holding political and military power; from 1055 the Abbasid caliphs formally granted the title to the Seljuk rulers, who governed in the caliph’s name.
The office of the Ottoman sultan, the hereditary ruler of the empire; the Grand National Assembly abolished it on 1 November 1922.
A law that limits what people of different ranks may wear, eat, own or build, so that each person's status is visible.
A possible Norse navigation instrument: a disc on which the shadow of a pointer showed direction. A broken wooden disc found at Uunartoq in Greenland in 1948 may be one, but this is debated.
The joint statement of Sun Yixian and the Soviet envoy Adolf Joffe of 26 January 1923, which said China was not ready for communism and that the Soviet Union would support its unification and independence.
The majority branch of Islam, which accepted the caliphs chosen by the community and came to place religious authority in scholars of law and tradition (the ulama).
A temporary provision that expires after a set period; in South Africa, Joe Slovo's 1992 proposal for five years of power-sharing and job guarantees for white civil servants after the first election.
A system of government in which the elected president has far greater powers than the legislature and courts, including wide powers to rule by decree and dissolve parliament.
A state with enough military, economic and political power to act across the whole world; after 1945 the term was used for the United States and the Soviet Union.
An explanation of innovation that starts from capacity: the knowledge, materials, skills and capital that made a new solution possible at a particular time and place.
The theory that economic growth comes mainly from encouraging work, saving and investment through lower taxes and lighter regulation; critics call it "trickle-down economics".
A South African law of 1950 that banned the Communist Party and defined communism so broadly that the government could use it against almost any opponent of apartheid, including through banning orders.
The emperor's right under the Meiji Constitution to command the army and navy directly through the General Staffs, outside the control of the cabinet; the armed forces used it to resist civilian interference.
The title of General Douglas MacArthur as head of the occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1951, also used for his headquarters.
The body of senior Egyptian generals that took power when Hosni Mubarak resigned on 11 February 2011 and ruled Egypt until the election of Mohamed Morsi in June 2012.
The highest authority in the Islamic Republic of Iran, an Islamic jurist chosen by the Assembly of Experts, who commands the armed forces and appoints the head of the judiciary and half of the Guardian Council. Khomeini held the post from 1979 to 1989, Ali Khamenei from 1989.
The body created by the British in 1922 to run Muslim religious affairs in Palestine, its courts, schools and endowments; under Haj Amin al-Husseini it became a power base in Palestinian politics.
A private company authorised under Mexican laws of 1883 and 1894 to survey supposedly vacant public land (terrenos baldíos) and keep up to a third of it as payment. Survey companies helped transfer village land to large owners.
Germany's promise of May 1916, after the attack on the ferry Sussex, not to sink merchant ships without warning and without saving the lives of those on board.
A relationship in which one state claims a superior position over another while leaving it to run its own internal affairs, as Qing China claimed over Korea until 1895.
Meaning 'of one's own country', the Indian nationalist policy of boycotting foreign, especially British, goods and buying Indian-made ones instead.
Independent Muslim trading towns on the East African coast, such as Kilwa, Mombasa and Malindi, which flourished from about the tenth to the fifteenth centuries on Indian Ocean trade.
The coast of East Africa from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, whose Muslim trading towns developed the Swahili language and culture and traded across the Indian Ocean.
Namibia's main liberation movement, founded on 19 April 1960 from the Ovamboland People's Organisation and led by Sam Nujoma. It fought South African rule by diplomacy and armed struggle and has governed Namibia since 1990.
"Self-rule": the goal of Indian nationalists, meaning self-government within the empire for some and full independence for others; Gandhi also used it for moral self-control.
Afrikaans for 'black danger': the fear, used by the National Party from its 1948 election campaign onwards, that Black majority rule would destroy white society.
Farming that clears land by cutting and burning vegetation, cultivates it for a few years and then leaves it to regrow while new land is cleared.
Mainly middle-class young people in Hamburg and other German cities who defied Nazi culture by listening and dancing to American jazz and swing in the late 1930s and 1940s.
A colonial programme of 1954 to consolidate African landholdings, register them with individual title deeds and allow Africans to grow cash crops such as coffee and tea.
The secret Anglo-French agreement of May 1916 that divided the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire into British and French zones, with most of Palestine under international administration.
The blending of elements of different religions or cultures into a new form, such as Indigenous or African beliefs combined with Christianity.
The union of African planters founded in Côte d'Ivoire in 1944 by Félix Houphouët-Boigny to demand equal treatment with European planters and the end of forced labour.
Combining evidence from several sources, examples or perspectives into one argument, showing how they relate to each other, rather than treating each separately.
Edward Gibbon Wakefield's plan to sell colonial land at a "sufficient price" and use the money to bring out labourers, so that a balanced society of landowners and workers would grow up; applied in South Australia and by the New Zealand Company.
The idea that legitimate government rests on an agreement among the people it governs, who give up some freedoms in return for security and the protection of their rights.