70 of the History glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
A form of clientship in pre-colonial and colonial Rwanda in which a patron gave a client the use of cattle in return for service and loyalty; it was abolished in 1954.
Unpaid labour that Hutu had to perform for chiefs in return for the use of land, introduced under Rwabugiri and extended under colonial rule; it fell on Hutu but not Tutsi.
The centrist coalition led by Adolfo Suárez that won the Spanish elections of 1977 and 1979 and governed during the transition; it collapsed in 1982.
The General Union of Workers, the Spanish socialist trade union founded in 1888 and linked to the PSOE.
The Tunisian General Labour Union, the national trade union federation founded in 1946. Its regional branches helped lead the 2010–2011 revolution, and it chaired the National Dialogue Quartet in 2013.
Afrikaans for 'outsider': a foreign, mostly British, immigrant drawn to the Transvaal by the gold rush, denied the vote by Kruger's government.
Julius Nyerere's policy of socialism and self-reliance, set out in the Arusha Declaration of 1967; the Swahili word means 'familyhood'. It included nationalisation and, from 1973, the compulsory movement of rural people into planned villages.
A Ukrainian nationalist guerrilla army formed in 1942 that fought German and then Soviet forces in western Ukraine until the early 1950s.
The scholars of Islamic religion and law, who studied the Qur’an and hadith, taught, issued opinions and served as judges; from the ninth century they, not the caliphs, defined religious doctrine.
A final set of demands, with a time limit, whose rejection will lead to war or other serious action; for example, Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia of 23 July 1914.
The British code-name for intelligence gained by breaking German codes, especially the Enigma cipher, at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
Cuban forced-labour camps of 1965–1968 that held men judged unfit for military service, including gay men and religious believers.
The first hereditary dynasty of caliphs, which ruled the Islamic empire from Damascus from 661 until the Abbasid revolution of 750; a branch of the family continued to rule Muslim Spain from Córdoba.
The armed wing formed by the ANC and the South African Communist Party in 1961. It began a sabotage campaign on 16 December 1961 and later fought a guerrilla struggle from exile until 1990.
The Malay nationalist party founded in May 1946 to oppose the Malayan Union; in the Alliance with Chinese and Indian parties it led Malaya to independence and governed until 2018.
The UN Security Council resolution of 20 July 1987 that demanded a ceasefire in the Iran–Iraq War and the withdrawal of forces to the international border. Iran accepted it on 18 July 1988.
A group of delegates sent by the UN Trusteeship Council every three years to inspect a trust territory, receive petitions and report. The 1954 mission to Tanganyika recommended a timetable for self-government.
People who have no account with a bank or other formal financial institution and so rely on cash and informal ways of saving, borrowing and sending money.
A surrender in which the defeated side gives up its armed forces and its government's authority without negotiating any terms; the victors decide what follows.
An informal network of free Black people, white abolitionists and escaped slaves who helped enslaved people flee from the US South to the free states and Canada before 1861.
The UN peacekeeping force placed on the Egyptian side of the border with Israel after the Suez Crisis (1956–1967); Egypt's demand for its withdrawal in May 1967 helped cause the Six-Day War.
A nineteenth-century treaty imposed on an Asian state by Western powers that granted foreigners privileges such as extraterritoriality and fixed low tariffs without equal rights in return.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, created in December 1950, which protects refugees and supervises the 1951 Refugee Convention.
The state monopoly of the grain trade introduced in the PRC in November 1953: peasants had to sell surplus grain to the state at fixed prices, and private grain trade was banned.
The UN peacekeeping force created by Security Council Resolution 425 in March 1978 to confirm Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon and help the Lebanese government restore its authority there.
The declaration by Ian Smith's white minority government on 11 November 1965 that Rhodesia was independent of Britain, made to prevent majority rule; no state formally recognised it.
A result that the people who acted did not aim at, which may be welcome, unwelcome or simply unexpected.
The federation of French colonial territories in Southeast Asia created in 1887: the colony of Cochinchina and the protectorates of Annam, Tonkin and Cambodia, with Laos added in 1893, under a French governor-general.
The self-governing British dominion formed on 31 May 1910 from the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony, with a parliament open only to white men.
The official party created by Primo de Rivera in 1924 to support his dictatorship; it had little popular following and disappeared after his fall.
One of the full members of the USSR, with its own government and a formal constitutional right to secede; there were five in Central Asia from 1936.
The 'sacred union' of French political parties, including socialists, behind the war effort from August 1914, which suspended normal political conflict.
The treaty negotiated in 1990–1991 to turn the USSR into a looser federation of sovereign republics; the August 1991 coup was launched to stop its signature.
The secret Japanese army unit near Harbin in Manchuria that carried out biological and chemical warfare research, including lethal experiments on prisoners, and spread plague in attacks on Chinese towns.
The Angolan movement founded by Jonas Savimbi on 13 March 1966, based among the Ovimbundu of the central highlands. It fought Portugal and then the MPLA government until 2002, with South African and US support after 1975.
The union of Egypt and Syria under Nasser from 1958 to 1961, when Syria left.
A legal alliance of several hundred South African community, church, student and union organisations formed in August 1983 to oppose apartheid and the new constitution of that year. It led rent and consumer boycotts in the mid-1980s.
The farmworkers’ union led by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, formed in 1966 from the National Farm Workers Association and the Filipino Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee.
An alliance between the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party, first in 1923–1927 against the warlords and again from 1937 against Japan.
A US company that grew and shipped bananas and owned large estates, railways and ports in Central America and the Caribbean; it lobbied against Árbenz's land reform in Guatemala.
The nationalist party founded in August 1947 by J. B. Danquah and other lawyers and businessmen, which sought self-government 'in the shortest possible time'. Nkrumah was its secretary before breaking away to form the CPP.
The international organisation of states founded in 1945 to keep peace and promote co-operation; its Security Council can impose sanctions and authorise peacekeeping and the use of force.
The UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda (1993–1996), led in 1994 by Roméo Dallaire, which was reduced to 270 troops during the genocide.
The UN body set up in January 1982 to supply food and services to Cambodians in camps along the Thai border. It had no mandate to protect them or to find lasting solutions.
The unified command of the forces sent by UN member states to defend South Korea, created by Security Council Resolution 84 in July 1950 and placed under a US commander.
The UN peacekeeping force in the Congo from 1960 to 1964, which grew to about 20,000 troops and ended the Katanga secession.
The commission set up by the UN General Assembly in November 1947 to supervise elections across Korea. The Soviet Union refused it entry to the north, so it observed elections in the south only, in May 1948.
The pro-Kremlin 'party of power' formed in 2001, which has held a majority in the Russian State Duma since 2003 and supports the president.
The segregated regiments of Black soldiers, most of them formerly enslaved, who served in the Union army under white officers from 1863.
The unanimous Supreme Court ruling of 24 July 1974 that ordered President Nixon to hand over his tape recordings to the Watergate prosecutor, rejecting his claim of executive privilege.
The alliance of Islamic, democratic and regional groups that fought the Tajik government in the civil war and signed the peace of 1997.
A party founded in 1956 with the support of the colonial government and settlers to promote 'multiracialism', the equal sharing of power between Europeans, Asians and Africans; it was defeated by TANU.
The agreement of 22 December 1987 by which ZAPU merged into ZANU-PF, ending the Gukurahundi and making Zimbabwe a de facto one-party state.
The right of every adult citizen to vote, without conditions of property, income, education, sex, race or religion.
The statement of basic rights and freedoms adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948.
The mass organisation founded by Marcus Garvey in Jamaica in 1914 and based in Harlem from 1917, which promoted Black pride, Black-owned businesses and Pan-African unity.
The sinking of merchant ships, including neutral ones, without warning by submarines; resumed by Germany on 1 February 1917, it helped bring the USA into the First World War.
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (1943–1947), which provided relief to liberated countries and helped run displaced persons camps, with repatriation as its aim.
The UN agency created in 1949 to provide relief, schools and health care for Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza.
The UN committee of eleven states that investigated Palestine in 1947 and recommended, by a majority, its partition into Jewish and Arab states.
The United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia, the UN peacekeeping and civil administration mission of 1992–1993 set up under the Paris Agreements of 1991. It organised the return of refugees from Thailand and the elections of May 1993.
The practice of excluding people from the lowest-ranked groups in the caste system from contact with others; abolished by Article 17 of the Indian Constitution of 1950.
The movement of 1881–1882 led by Colonel Ahmad Urabi against foreign financial control of Egypt, defeated by the British invasion of 1882.
The Kyrgyz name for the flight of Kyrgyz and Kazakhs to China after the suppression of the revolt of 1916, in which very many died.
The US law of 26 October 2001, passed after the 11 September attacks, that widened the powers of government agencies to carry out surveillance, obtain records and share intelligence.
The US government agency, created in 1961, that runs American economic and development aid to other countries.
"Acceleration": Gorbachev's first economic policy (1985–1986), which tried to speed up growth through more investment and stricter discipline within the existing planned economy.
The principle that new states inherit the administrative boundaries of the colonial units they replace, used by the Spanish American republics after independence.
Tunisia's main employers' federation, a member of the National Dialogue Quartet.
The philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill that laws and institutions should be judged by whether they produce the greatest happiness of the greatest number; it shaped Company reform in India in the 1820s and 1830s.