91 of the History glossary’s terms, each with the part of the syllabus where you first meet it.
A Reconstruction bill passed by Congress in July 1864 that required a majority of white men in a Confederate state to swear loyalty before readmission; Lincoln blocked it with a pocket veto.
Egypt's largest nationalist party before 1952, founded in 1919 to campaign for independence from Britain. It was dissolved with the other parties in 1953.
The US law of 5 July 1935 that guaranteed private-sector workers the right to join unions and bargain collectively, and set up the National Labor Relations Board to enforce it.
The permanent commission of inquiry set up by the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 to investigate Māori claims that the Crown has breached the principles of the treaty and to recommend remedies; from 1985 it could hear claims going back to 1840.
The collapse of share prices on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929, above all on 24 and 29 October, which set off the Great Depression in the USA.
Purple and white shell beads, woven into strings and belts used by the Haudenosaunee and their neighbours to record agreements and support the memory of speakers.
A meeting of senior Nazi officials chaired by Reinhard Heydrich in Berlin on 20 January 1942 to coordinate the 'Final Solution' across government departments.
The economic policies of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War of 1918–1921: nationalisation of industry, a ban on private trade and forced requisitioning of grain.
The name Germans gave to Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, under which Germany accepted responsibility for the loss and damage caused by the First World War. It was the legal basis for reparations.
The US agency that coordinated war production in the First World War, setting priorities and allocating materials.
The Canadian law of 1914 that gave the federal government sweeping emergency powers in war; used for internment in both world wars.
The war of 1812–1815 between the United States and Britain, with its Canadian colonists and Indigenous allies, ended by the Treaty of Ghent without territorial change.
The war of 1799–1800 between Toussaint Louverture and André Rigaud for control of Saint-Domingue, which deepened divisions between black and coloured people.
The European war of 1740–1748 that began when Frederick II of Prussia invaded Silesia after Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg lands; the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) left Silesia to Prussia.
The commercial and publicity struggle in the United States in the late 1880s and early 1890s between Edison's direct current system and Westinghouse's alternating current system, which alternating current won.
The Asante rising of 1900, led by Yaa Asantewaa, against British demands for the Golden Stool; it was defeated, but the stool was never surrendered.
The war of 1879–1884 in which Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia and took their nitrate-rich coastal provinces; Bolivia lost its access to the sea.
The war of 1864–1870 in which Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay defeated Paraguay; Paraguay lost a large share of its population, especially adult men.
The US federal campaign against illegal drugs begun under Nixon in 1971 and greatly expanded from the 1980s, with tougher sentences, more policing and a rapid growth in imprisonment.
The anti-poverty programmes launched by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 through the Economic Opportunity Act, including the Job Corps, VISTA, the Community Action Program and Head Start.
The name the George W. Bush administration gave to its campaign after September 2001 against terrorist groups and the states that supported them, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The US law of November 1973, passed over Nixon's veto, requiring the president to consult Congress before sending troops into hostilities and to withdraw them within 60 days without its approval.
A US government agency set up in January 1944 to rescue victims of Nazi persecution, which helped fund rescue work such as Raoul Wallenberg's in Budapest.
Bolívar’s decree of June 1813 threatening death to Spaniards who did not support independence while sparing Americans, to turn a civil war into a national one.
A military commander who controlled territory through a personal army, collected its taxes and acted independently of any central government, as many did in China from 1916 to 1928.
A loose alliance of Chinese military commanders, based on regional origin and personal loyalty, that competed for territory and for control of the Beijing government between 1916 and 1928.
The period from about 1916 to 1928 when China was divided among regional military commanders after the collapse of central authority following the fall of the Qing dynasty.
A man appointed by the British in south-eastern Nigeria and given a warrant to sit in a native court, usually in communities that had no tradition of chiefs.
The military alliance of the USSR and the communist states of Eastern Europe, founded in 1955 and dissolved in July 1991.
The Canadian law of September 1917 that gave the vote to female relatives of soldiers and removed it from many citizens born in enemy countries.
The conference of 1921–1922 at which the powers limited naval armaments, Japan agreed to return Shandong to China and the Nine-Power Treaty guaranteed China's independence and territorial integrity.
The economist John Williamson's name (1989) for the free-market policies urged on Latin America by Washington-based institutions: fiscal discipline, privatisation, trade liberalisation and deregulation.
President Woodrow Wilson's policy towards Huerta's Mexico in 1913–1914: refusing recognition and applying pressure without full-scale war, while waiting for Huerta's regime to collapse.
The political scandal that began with a break-in at the Democratic Party's offices in the Watergate building in June 1972 and the White House cover-up that followed, and ended with Richard Nixon's resignation on 9 August 1974.
The Swahili word for runaways; it was used for the communities of people who escaped from slavery on the East African coast and settled in the hinterland in the nineteenth century.
The British commission of inquiry into the Accra riots of 1948. It concluded that political frustration lay behind the unrest and that the 1946 constitution was out of date, which led to the Coussey Committee.
The CCP Politburo meeting of December 1935 in northern Shaanxi that called for a national united front against Japan, including the Guomindang.
The idea that in many African societies, where land was plentiful and labour scarce, power came from controlling people (wives, children, clients and slaves) more than from owning land.
The democratic German state of 1919–1933, named after the town where its constitution was drawn up.
A system in which the state takes responsibility for the basic well-being of its citizens through social insurance, health care, education and housing, as built in Britain after 1945.
German 'world policy' from 1897: the aim of making Germany a world power with colonies, overseas bases, a large battle fleet and a voice in every international question.
The Royal Navy force that patrolled the coast of West Africa from 1808 to intercept slave ships after Britain abolished its slave trade.
The planters, merchants, bankers and shipowners whose wealth came from Britain's Caribbean sugar colonies, and their allies in Parliament, who lobbied against the abolition of the slave trade and slavery.
The belief, strong in the Canadian West, especially Alberta, that federal governments elected mainly by Ontario and Quebec ignore or exploit Western interests.
The five Western members of the UN Security Council in 1977–1978 (the United States, Britain, France, West Germany and Canada) that negotiated a plan for Namibian independence, which became Resolution 435.
The smaller, more northerly Norse settlement district in Greenland, in the fjords near modern Nuuk, founded about 985 and abandoned by about 1360.
The officer academy opened near Guangzhou in 1924 with Soviet help to train a Guomindang party army; Jiang Jieshi was its commandant and its graduates became the core of the Nationalist officer corps.
The Māori extended family, the basic unit of everyday life within a hapū.
The rapid expansion of wheat farming and exports on the Canadian Prairies from about 1896 to 1913, driven by rising world prices, cheaper transport, immigration and new varieties such as Marquis wheat.
A way of writing history as a story of steady progress towards the present, judging past people by how far they seemed to point towards modern values; criticised by Herbert Butterfield in 1931.
The set of Australian laws and practices, beginning with the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, that kept out non-European migrants; dismantled in stages between 1958 and 1973.
The reaction of many white Americans against the civil rights movement and Black protest from the mid-1960s, seen in support for 'law and order' candidates and resistance to integrated housing and school busing.
The fertile central uplands of Kenya reserved for European ownership between 1902 and 1961, covering about 31,000 square kilometres.
An armed white paramilitary organisation founded in Louisiana in 1874 that used violence and intimidation to overthrow Republican rule; in September 1874 it briefly seized the state government in New Orleans.
A rebellion of 1796–1804 in the highlands of Hubei, Sichuan and Shaanxi, led by millenarian Buddhist sects and fuelled by poverty and official extortion; its suppression emptied the Qing treasury.
The Canadian government’s proposal of June 1969 to abolish the Indian Act and Indian status and transfer services to the provinces; opposition from First Nations forced its withdrawal in 1971.
The British statement of policy of May 1939 that limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 over five years, restricted land sales and promised an independent Palestine within ten years.
The programme of reforms from above launched by Mohammad Reza Shah and approved by referendum in January 1963: land reform, votes for women, profit-sharing for workers, a Literacy Corps and other measures.
A resistance group of students and a professor at the University of Munich who wrote and distributed six anti-Nazi leaflets in 1942–1943. Its leaders, including Hans and Sophie Scholl, were executed in 1943.
The killings of former Jacobins and revolutionaries by royalist and Catholic groups in south-eastern France in 1795, after the fall of Robespierre.
The campaign of arrests and executions of communists and left-wing activists by Jiang Jieshi's forces and their allies from April 1927, which destroyed the CCP's urban organisation.
The anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian Civil War, led mostly by former tsarist officers such as Kolchak, Denikin, Yudenich and Wrangel.
A Korean conservative Confucian movement of the later nineteenth century that opposed contact with the West and Japan as a threat to orthodox moral order.
One of the six military and political regions into which the FLN divided Algeria during the war, each with its own commander and council; after independence the word was used for Algeria's provinces.
The violent, largely unregulated expulsions of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia in May–July 1945, before the Potsdam Agreement.
The principle that land would be transferred only by voluntary sale at market prices, without confiscation.
A proposal of 1846 to ban slavery in all territory acquired from Mexico; it passed the US House of Representatives but never the Senate, and became the founding principle of the Free Soil and Republican parties.
The general strike in Winnipeg in May–June 1919, broken by the federal government and police.
The uprising in Tunisia from 17 December 2010 to 14 January 2011 that forced President Ben Ali to flee. Western media called it the Jasmine Revolution, a name many Tunisians reject.
The rapid growth and recovery of the West German economy in the 1950s and 1960s.
A legal prosecution for witchcraft; in Europe between about 1450 and 1750 some 40,000 to 60,000 people, roughly 80 per cent of them women, were executed after such trials.
A British suffrage organisation formed in 1907 by members who left the WSPU in protest at the Pankhursts' autocratic leadership; it used non-violent civil disobedience such as tax resistance and boycotting the 1911 census.
The radical, mostly younger wing of the women's movement of the late 1960s and 1970s; the press also used "women's lib" for the whole movement, often mockingly.
A British organisation founded in 1908, with Mary Ward among its leaders, to oppose votes for women in parliamentary elections; it merged with the men's league in 1910 to form the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage.
The militant women's suffrage organisation founded in Manchester in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, whose members, the suffragettes, used direct action and, from 1912, attacks on property.
A nationwide day of protest on 26 August 1970, the fiftieth anniversary of women's suffrage, demanding abortion rights, equal opportunity and free child care.
The protest of tens of thousands of women in south-eastern Nigeria in November–December 1929 against warrant chiefs, native courts and the feared taxation of women; about 55 women were killed.
Printing in which the text and pictures of a whole page are carved into one wooden block, which is inked and pressed onto paper; used in China from at least the seventh century.
The Yugoslav economic system from 1950 in which elected workers' councils ran enterprises within a partly market-based framework.
The social group of people who live by selling their labour for wages, especially in factories, mines and workshops; in Britain it became a distinct group with shared identities during industrialisation.
Ian Kershaw’s description of how officials in Nazi Germany took initiatives that they believed matched Hitler’s wishes, so his ideas drove policy without detailed orders.
The largest New Deal relief agency (1935–1943), which employed about 8.5 million people over its life on public works and cultural projects.
An international financial institution founded in 1944 that lends to governments for development projects; from the 1980s its loans to African states carried conditions of structural adjustment.
The League of Nations conference on reducing armaments that met in Geneva from February 1932; it failed after Germany withdrew in October 1933.
A UN campaign from June 1959 to June 1960 to raise funds and close the remaining refugee camps in Europe and help refugees elsewhere.
The international organisation, founded in 1995, that sets and enforces rules for trade between its member states; China joined on 11 December 2001.
The body founded at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 to organise the Zionist movement, raise funds and represent it in diplomacy.
A world's fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of Columbus's voyage and American progress.
A short sealed letter by which an English king sent orders to officials or began legal proceedings in the royal courts.
Charles Tilly's shorthand for what a social movement displays in public to show its strength: worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment.
The seizure of power by the Empress Dowager Cixi on 21 September 1898, which ended the Hundred Days' Reform and confined the Guangxu Emperor.