| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Abbasid Caliphate | Descendants of the Prophet Muhammad's uncle, al-Abbas, the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate and ruled an Islamic empire from their capital in Baghdad (founded 762) from 750 to 1258. (p. 234) |
| absolution | The theory popular in France and other early modern European monarchies that royal power should be free of constitutional checks. (p. 452) |
| Acheh Sultanate | Muslim kingdom in northern Sumatra. Main center of Islamic expansion in Southeast Asia in the early seventeenth century, it declined after the Dutch seized Malacca from Portugal in 1641. (p. 541) |
| acllas | Women selected by Inca authorities to serve in religious centers as weavers and ritual participants. (p. 318) |
| Aden | Port city in the modern south Arabian country of Yemen. It has been a major trading center in the Indian Ocean since ancient times. (p. 385) |
| Adolf Hitler | Born in Austria, Hitler became a radical German nationalist during World War I. He led the National Socialist German Workers' Party-the Nazi Party-in the 1920s and became dictator of Germany in 1933. He led Europe into World War II. (p. 786) |
| African National Congress | An organization dedicated to obtaining equal voting and civil rights for black inhabitants of South Africa. Founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress, it changed its name in 1923. Eventually brought equality (809) |
| Afrikaners | South Africans descended from Dutch and French settlers of the seventeenth century. Their Great Trek founded new settler colonies in the nineteenth century. Though a minority among South Africans, they held political power after 1910. (735) |
| Agricultural Revolution | The change from food gathering to food production that occurred between ca. 8000 and 2000 B.C.E. Also known as the Neolithic Revolution. (p. 17) |
| agricultural revolution | The transformation of farming that resulted in the eighteenth century from the spread of new crops, improvements in cultivation techniques and livestock breeding, and consolidation of small holdings into large farms from which tenants were expelled (600) |
| Akbar | Most illustrious sultan of the Mughal Empire in India (r. 1556-1605). He expanded the empire and pursued a policy of conciliation with Hindus. (p. 536) |
| Akhenaten | Egyptian pharaoh (r. 1353-1335 B.C.E.). He built a new capital at Amarna, fostered a new style of naturalistic art, and created a religious revolution by imposing worship of the sun-disk. (p.66) |
| Albert Einstein | German physicist who developed the theory of relativity, which states that time, space, and mass are relative to each other and not fixed. (p. 774) |
| Aleandria | City on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt founded by Alexander. It became the capital of the Hellenistic kingdom of the Ptolemies. It contained the famous Library and the Museum-a center for leading scientific and literary figures. (138) |
| Alexander | King of Macedonia in northern Greece. Between 334 and 323 B.C.E. he conquered the Persian Empire, reached the Indus Valley, founded many Greek-style cities, and spread Greek culture across the Middle East. Later known as Alexander the Great. (p. 136) |
| Alexander Nevski | Prince of Novgorod (r. 1236-1263). He submitted to the invading Mongols in 1240 and received recognition as the leader of the Russian princes under the Golden Horde. (p. 339) |
| All-India Muslim League | Political organization founded in India in 1906 to defend the interests of India's Muslim minority. Led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, it attempted to negotiate with the Indian National Congress. Demanded Pakistan (813) |
| Anasazi | Important culture of what is now the southwest (1000-1300 C.E.). Centered on Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and Mesa Verde in Colorado, the Anasazi culture built multistory residences and worshipped in subterranean buildings called kivas. (pg 308) |
| aqueduct | A conduit, either elevated or under ground, using gravity to carry water from a source to a location-usually a city-that needed it. The Romans built many aqueducts in a period of substantial urbanization. (p. 156) |
| Arawak | Amerindian peoples who inhabited the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean at the time of Columbus. (p. 423) |
| Armenia | One of the earliest Christian kingdoms, situated in eastern Anatolia and the western Caucasus and occupied by speakers of the Armenian language. (p. 221) |
| Asante | African kingdom on the Gold Coast that expanded rapidly after 1680. Asante participated in the Atlantic economy, trading gold, slaves, and ivory. It resisted British imperial ambitions for a quarter century before being absorbed into Britain. 1902 (736) |
| Ashikaga Shogunate | The second of Japan's military governments headed by a shogun (a military ruler). Sometimes called the Muromachi Shogunate. (p. 365) |
| Ashoka | Third ruler of the Mauryan Empire in India (r. 270-232 B.C.E.). He converted to Buddhism and broadcast his precepts on inscribed stones and pillars, the earliest surviving Indian writing. (p. 184) |
| Ashur | Chief deity of the Assyrians, he stood behind the king and brought victory in war. Also the name of an important Assyrian religious and political center. (p. 94) |
| Asian Tigers | Collective name for South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore-nations that became economic powers in the 1970s and 1980s. (p. 861) |
| Atahualpa | Last ruling Inca emperor of Peru. He was executed by the Spanish. (p. 438) |
| Atlantic System | The network of trading links after 1500 that moved goods, wealth, people, and cultures around the Atlantic Ocean basin. (p. 497) |
| Augustus | Honorific name of Octavian, founder of the Roman Principate, the military dictatorship that replaced the failing rule of the Roman Senate. (151) |
| Auschwitz | Nazi extermination camp in Poland, the largest center of mass murder during the Holocaust. Close to a million Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and others were killed there. (p. 800) |
| autocracy | The theory justifying strong, centralized rule, such as by the tsar in Russia or Haile Selassie in Ethiopia. The autocrat did not rely on the aristocracy or the clergy for his or her legitimacy. (p. 553) |
| Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini | Shi'ite philosopher and cleric who led the overthrow of the shah of Iran in 1979 and created an Islamic republic. (p. 859) |
| ayllu | Andean lineage group or kin-based community. (p. 312) |
| Aztecs | Also known as Mexica, the Aztecs created a powerful empire in central Mexico (1325-1521 C.E.). They forced defeated peoples to provide goods and labor as a tax. (p. 305) |
| Babylon | The largest and most important city in Mesopotamia. It achieved particular eminence as the capital of the Amorite king Hammurabi in the eighteenth century B.C.E. and the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century B.C.E. (p. 29) |
| balance of power | The policy in international relations by which, beginning in the eighteenth century, the major European states acted together to prevent any one of them from becoming too powerful. (p. 455) |
| Balfour Declaration | Statement issued by Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in 1917 favoring the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. (p. 761) |
| Balfour Declaration | Statement issued by Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in 1917 favoring the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. (p. 761) |
| Bannermen | Hereditary military servants of the Qing Empire, in large part descendants of peoples of various origins who had fought for the founders of the empire. (p. 684) |
| Bantu | Collective name of a large group of sub-Saharan African languages and of the peoples speaking these languages. (p. 219) |
| Bartolome de Las Casas | First bishop of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. He devoted most of his life to protecting Amerindian peoples from exploitation. His major achievement was the New Laws of 1542, which limited the ability of Spanish settlers to compel Amerindians to labor, (476 |
| Bartolomeu Dias | Portuguese explorer who in 1488 led the first expedition to sail around the southern tip of Africa from the Atlantic and sight the Indian Ocean. (p. 428) |
| Batavi | Fort established ca.1619 as headquarters of Dutch East India Company operations in Indonesia; today the city of Jakarta. (p. 543) |
| Battle of Midway | U.S. naval victory over the Japanese fleet in June 1942, in which the Japanese lost four of their best aircraft carriers. It marked a turning point in World War II. (p. 795) |
| Battle of Omdurman | British victory over the Mahdi in the Sudan in 1898. General Kitchener led a mixed force of British and Egyptian troops armed with rapid-firing rifles and machine guns. (p. 730) |
| Beijing | China's northern capital, first used as an imperial capital in 906 and now the capital of the People's Republic of China. (p. 351) |
| Bengal | Region of northeastern India. It was the first part of India to be conquered by the British in the eighteenth century and remained the political and economic center of British India throughout the nineteenth century.(812) |
| Benito Mussolini | Fascist dictator of Italy (1922-1943). He led Italy to conquer Ethiopia (1935), joined Germany in the Axis pact (1936), and allied Italy with Germany in World War II. He was overthrown in 1943 when the Allies invaded Italy. (p. 786) |
| Benjamin Franklin | American intellectual, inventor, and politician He helped to negotiate French support for the American Revolution. (p. 577) |
| Berlin Conference | Conference that German chancellor Otto von Bismarck called to set rules for the partition of Africa. It led to the creation of the Congo Free State under King Leopold II of Belgium. (See also Bismarck, Otto von.) (p. 732) |
| Bhagavad-Gita | The most important work of Indian sacred literature, a dialogue between the great warrior Arjuna and the god Krishna on duty and the fate of the spirit. (p. 185) |
| Black Death | An outbreak of bubonic plague that spread across Asia, North Africa, and Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, carrying off vast numbers of persons. (p. 397) |
| Blaise Diagne | Senegalese political leader. He was the first African elected to the French National Assembly. During World War I, in exchange for promises to give French citizenship to Senegalese, he helped recruit Africans to serve in the French army. (809) |
| Bolsheviks | Radical Marxist political party founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1903. Under Lenin's leadership, the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917 during the Russian Revolution. (See also Lenin, Vladimir.) (p. 761) |
| Borobodur | A massive stone monument on the Indonesian island of Java, erected by the Sailendra kings around 800 C.E. The winding ascent through ten levels, decorated with rich relief carving, is a Buddhist allegory for the progressive stages of enlightenment. (193) |
| bourgeoisie | In early modern Europe, the class of well-off town dwellers whose wealth came from manufacturing, finance, commerce, and allied professions. (p. 459) |
| breech loading rifle | Gun into which the projectiles had to be individually inserted. Later guns had magazines, a compartment holding multiple projectiles that could be fed rapidly into the firing chamber. (p. 681) |
| British raj | The rule over much of South Asia between 1765 and 1947 by the East India Company and then by a British government. (p. 659) |
| bubonic plague | A bacterial disease of fleas that can be transmitted by flea bites to rodents and humans; humans in late stages of the illness can spread the bacteria by coughing. High mortality rate and hard to contain. Disastrous. (280) |
| Buddha | An Indian prince named Siddhartha Gautama, who renounced his wealth and social position. After becoming 'enlightened' (the meaning of Buddha) he enunciated the principles of Buddhism. (180) |
| business cycle | Recurrent swings from economic hard times to recovery and growth, then back to hard times and a repetition of the sequence. (p. 615) |
| Byzantine Empire | Historians' name for the eastern portion of the Roman Empire from the fourth century onward, taken from 'Byzantion,' an early name for Constantinople, the Byzantine capital city. The empire fell to the Ottomans in 1453. (250) |
| caliphate | Office established in succession to the Prophet Muhammad, to rule the Islamic empire; also the name of that empire. (See also Abbasid Caliphate; Sokoto Caliphate; Umayyad Caliphate.) (p. 232) |
| capitalism | The economic system of large financial institutions-banks, stock exchanges, investment companies-that first developed in early modern Europe. Commercial capitalism, the trading system of the early modern economy. (506) |
| caravel | A small, highly maneuverable three-masted ship used by the Portuguese and Spanish in the exploration of the Atlantic. (p. 427) |
| Carthage | City located in present-day Tunisia, founded by Phoenicians ca. 800 B.C.E. It became a major commercial center and naval power in the western Mediterranean until defeated by Rome in the third century B.C.E. (p. 107) |
| Catholic Reformation | Religious reform movement within the Latin Christian Church, begun in response to the Protestant Reformation. It clarified Catholic theology and reformed clerical training and discipline. (p. 447) |
| Cecil Rhodes Asante | British entrepreneur and politician involved in the expansion of the British Empire from South Africa into Central Africa. The colonies of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) were named after him. (p. 736) |
| Celts | Peoples sharing a common language and culture that originated in Central Europe in the first half of the first millennium B.C.E.. After 500 B.C.E. they spread as far as Anatolia in the east, Spain and the British Isles in the west, onquered by Romans (90) |
| Champa | A state formerly located in what is now southern Vietnam. It was hostile to Annam and was annexed by Annam and destroyed as an independent entity in 1500. (p. 366) |
| Champa Rice | Quick-maturing rice that can allow two harvests in one growing season. Originally introduced into Champa from India, it was later sent to China as a tribute gift by the Champa state. (See also tributary system.) (p. 295) |
| Chang'an | City in the Wei Valley in eastern China. It became the capital of the Zhou kingdom and the Qin and early Han Empires. Its main features were imitated in the cities and towns that sprang up throughout the Han Empire. >(p. 164) |
| Charlemagne | King of the Franks (r. 768-814); emperor (r. 800-814). Through a series of military conquests he established the Carolingian Empire, which encompassed all of Gaul and parts of Germany and Italy. Illiterate, though started an intellectual revival. (250) |
| Charles Darwin | English naturalist. He studied the plants and animals of South America and the Pacific islands, and in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) set forth his theory of evolution. (p. 715) |
| chartered Company | Groups of private investors who paid an annual fee to France and England in exchange for a monopoly over trade to the West Indies colonies. (p. 498) |
| Chav?n | The first major urban civilization in South America (900-250 B.C.E.). Its capital, Chav?n de Hu?ntar, was located high in the Andes Mountains of Peru. Chav?n became politically and economically dominant in a densely populated region. (89) |
| Chiang Kai-Shek | General and leader of Nationalist China after 1925. Although he succeeded Sun Yat-sen as head of the Guomindang, he became a military dictator whose major goal was to crush the communist movement led by Mao Zedong. (p. 788) |
| chiefdom | Form of political organization with rule by a hereditary leader who held power over a collection of villages and towns. Less powerful than kingdoms and empires, chiefdoms were based on gift giving and commercial links. (p. 311) |
| Chimu | Powerful Peruvian civilization based on conquest. Located in the region earlier dominated by Moche. Conquered by Inca in 1465. (p. 314) |
| chinampas | Raised fields constructed along lake shores in Mesoamerica to increase agricultural yields. (p. 301) |
| Christopher Columbus | Genoese mariner who in the service of Spain led expeditions across the Atlantic, reestablishing contact between the peoples of the Americas and the Old World and opening the way to Spanish conquest and colonization. (p. 430) |
| city-state | A small independent state consisting of an urban center and the surrounding agricultural territory. A characteristic political form in early Mesopotamia, Archaic and Classical Greece, Phoenicia, and early Italy. (p. 32) |
| clipper ship | Large, fast, streamlined sailing vessel, often American built, of the mid-to-late nineteenth century rigged with vast canvas sails hung from tall masts. (p. 666) |
| Cold War | The ideological struggle between communism (Soviet Union) and capitalism (United States) for world influence. The Soviet Union and the United States came to the brink of actual war during the Cuban missile crisis but never attacked one another. (831) |
| colonialism | Policy by which a nation administers a foreign territory and develops its resources for the benefit of the colonial power. (p. 731) |
| Columbian Exchange | The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies between the Americas and the rest of the world following Columbus's voyages. (p. 472) |
| Confederation of 1867 | Negotiated union of the formerly separate colonial governments of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. This new Dominion of Canada with a central government in Ottawa is seen as the beginning of the Canadian nation.(p. 627) |
| Confucius | Western name for the Chinese philosopher Kongzi (551-479 B.C.E.). His doctrine of duty and public service had a great influence on subsequent Chinese thought and served as a code of conduct for government officials.(p. 62) |
| Congress of Vienna | Meeting of representatives of European monarchs called to reestablish the old order after the defeat of Napoleon I. (p. 594) |
| conquistadors | Early-sixteenth-century Spanish adventurers who conquered Mexico, Central America, and Peru. (See Cort?s, Hern?n; Pizarro, Francisco.) (p. 436) |
| Constantine | Roman emperor (r. 312-337). After reuniting the Roman Empire, he moved the capital to Constantinople and made Christianity a favored religion. (p.159) |
| Constitutional Convention | Meeting in 1787 of the elected representatives of the thirteen original states to write the Constitution of the United States. (p. 583) |
| constitutionalism | The theory developed in early modern England and spread elsewhere that royal power should be subject to legal and legislative checks. (p. 452) |
| contract of indenture | A voluntary agreement binding a person to work for a specified period of years in return for free passage to an overseas destination. Before 1800 most indentured servants were Europeans; after 1800 most indentured laborers were Asians. (p. 670) |
| Cossaks | Peoples of the Russian Empire who lived outside the farming villages, often as herders, mercenaries, or outlaws. Cossacks led the conquest of Siberia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (p. 552) |
| cottage industries | Weaving, sewing, carving, and other small-scale industries that can be done in the home. The laborers, frequently women, are usually independent. (p. 353) |
| cotton | The plant that produces fibers from which cotton textiles are woven. Native to India, cotton spread throughout Asia and then to the New World. It has been a major cash crop in various places, including early Islamic Iran, Yi Korea, Egypt, & US (363) |
| Council of the Indes | The institution responsible for supervising Spain's colonies in the Americas from 1524 to the early eighteenth century, when it lost all but judicial responsibilities. (p. 476) |
| coureurs de bois | (runners of the woods) French fur traders, many of mixed Amerindian heritage, who lived among and often married with Amerindian peoples of North America. (p. 489) |
| creoles | In colonial Spanish America, term used to describe someone of European descent born in the New World. Elsewhere in the Americas, the term is used to describe all nonnative peoples. (p. 482) |
| Crusades | Armed pilgrimages to the Holy Land by Christians determined to recover Jerusalem from Muslim rule. The Crusades brought an end to western Europe's centuries of intellectual and cultural isolation. (p. 270) |
| Crystal Palace | Building erected in Hyde Park, London, for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Made of iron and glass, like a gigantic greenhouse, it was a symbol of the industrial age. (p. 606) |
| Cuban Missile Crisis | Brink-of-war confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over the latter's placement of nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. (p. 839) |
| cultural imperialism | Domination of one culture over another by a deliberate policy or by economic or technological superiority. (p. 894) |
| Cultural Revolution | Campaign in China ordered by Mao Zedong to purge the Communist Party of his opponents and instill revolutionary values in the younger generation.(p. 848) |
| cuneiform | A system of writing in which wedge-shaped symbols represented words or syllables. It originated in Mesopotamia and was used initially for Sumerian and Akkadian but later was adapted to represent other languages of western Asia. |
| Cyrus | Founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Between 550 and 530 B.C.E. he conquered Media, Lydia, and Babylon. Revered in the traditions of both Iran and the subject peoples. |
| dalai lama | Originally, a title meaning 'universal priest' that the Mongol khans invented and bestowed on a Tibetan lama (priest) in the late 1500s to legitimate their power in Tibet. Subsequently, the title of the religious and political leader of Tibet. (p. 556) |
| Daoism | Chinese School of Thought: Daoists believe that the world is always changing and is devoid of absolute morality or meaning. They accept the world as they find it, avoid futile struggles, and deviate as little as possible from the Dao, or 'path' of nature. |
| Darius I | Third ruler of the Persian Empire (r. 521-486 B.C.E.). He crushed the widespread initial resistance to his rule and gave all major government posts to Persians rather than to Medes. |
| Declaration of the Rights of Man | Statement of fundamental political rights adopted by the French National Assembly at the beginning of the French Revolution. (p. 586) |
| deforestation | The removal of trees faster than forests can replace themselves. (p. 462) |
| Delhi Sulatanate | Centralized Indian empire of varying extent, created by Muslim invaders. (p. 374) |
| democracy | system of government in which all 'citizens' (however defined) have equal political and legal rights, privileges, and protections, as in the Greek city-state of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. (p. 127) |
| Demographic Transition | A change in the rates of population growth. Before the transition, both birth and death rates are high, resulting in a slowly growing population; then the death rate drops but the birth rate remains high, causing a population explosion. (867) |
| Deng Xiaoping | Communist Party leader who forced Chinese economic reforms after the death of Mao Zedong. (p. 862) |
| devshirme | 'Selection' in Turkish. The system by which boys from Christian communities were taken by the Ottoman state to serve as Janissaries.(p. 526) |
| dhow | Ship of small to moderate size used in the western Indian Ocean, traditionally with a triangular sail and a sewn timber hull. (p. 382) |
| diaspora | A Greek word meaning 'dispersal,' used to describe the communities of a given ethnic group living outside their homeland. Jews, for example, spread from Israel to western Asia and Mediterranean lands in antiquity and today can be found in other places.103 |
| Dirty War | War waged by the Argentine military (1976-1982) against leftist groups. Characterized by the use of illegal imprisonment, torture, and executions by the military. (p. 857) |
| divination | Techniques for ascertaining the future or the will of the gods by interpreting natural phenomena such as, in early China, the cracks on oracle bones or, in ancient Greece, the flight of birds through sectors of the sky. (p. 59) |
| division of labor | Manufacturing technique that breaks down a craft into many simple and repetitive tasks that can be performed by unskilled workers. Pioneered in the pottery works of Josiah Wedgwood and in other eighteenth-century factories, increasing productivity, (603) |
| driver | A privileged male slave whose job was to ensure that a slave gang did its work on a plantation. (p. 503) |
| Druids | The class of religious experts who conducted rituals and preserved sacred lore among some ancient Celtic peoples. They provided education, mediated disputes between kinship groups, and were suppressed by the Romans as potential resistance. (92) |
| durbar | An elaborate display of political power and wealth in British India in the nineteenth century, ostensibly in imitation of the pageantry of the Mughal Empire. (p. 661) |
| Dutch West India Company | Trading company chartered by the Dutch government to conduct its merchants' trade in the Americas and Africa. (p. 498) |
| economic sanctions | Boycotts, embargoes, and other economic measures that one country uses to pressure another country into changing its policies. (p. 889) |
| El Alamein | Town in Egypt, site of the victory by Britain's Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery over German forces led by General Erwin Rommel (the 'Desert Fox') in 1942-1943. (p. 793) |
| electric telegraph | A device for rapid, long-distance transmission of information over an electric wire. It was introduced in England and North America in the 1830s and 1840s and replaced telegraph systems that utilized visual signals such as semaphores. (609) |
| electricity | A form of energy used in telegraphy from the 1840s on and for lighting, industrial motors, and railroads beginning in the 1880s. (p. 702) |
| Emilano Zapata | Revolutionary and leader of peasants in the Mexican Revolution. He mobilized landless peasants in south-central Mexico in an attempt to seize and divide the lands of the wealthy landowners. Though successful for a time, he was ultimately assassinated. 819 |
| Emilio Aguinaldo | Leader of the Filipino independence movement against Spain (1895-1898). He proclaimed the independence of the Philippines in 1899, but his movement was crushed and he was captured by the United States Army in 1901. (p. 743) |
| Emperor Menelik | . Emperor of Ethiopia (r. 1889-1911). He enlarged Ethiopia to its present dimensions and defeated an Italian invasion at Adowa (1896). (p. 737) |
| Empress Dowager Cixi | Empress of China and mother of Emperor Guangxi. She put her son under house arrest, supported antiforeign movements, and resisted reforms of the Chinese government and armed forces. (p. 721) |
| encomienda | A grant of authority over a population of Amerindians in the Spanish colonies. It provided the grant holder with a supply of cheap labor and periodic payments of goods by the Amerindians. It obliged the grant holder to Christianize the Amerindians. (479) |
| Enlightenment | A philosophical movement in eighteenth-century Europe that fostered the belief that one could reform society by discovering rational laws that governed social behavior and were just as scientific as the laws of physics. (pp. 468, 574) |
| Enlightenment | A philosophical movement in eighteenth-century Europe that fostered the belief that one could reform society by discovering rational laws that governed social behavior and were just as scientific as the laws of physics. (pp. 468, 574) |
| equites | In ancient Italy, landowners second in wealth and status to the senatorial aristocracy. The Roman emperors allied with this group to counterbalance the influence of the old aristocracy and used the equites to staff the imperial civil service (152) |
| Estates General | France's traditional national assembly with representatives of the three estates, or classes, in French society: the clergy, nobility, and commoners. The calling of the Estates General in 1789 led to the French Revolution. (p. 585) |
| Ethiopia | East African highland nation lying east of the Nile River. (See also Menelik II; Selassie, Haile.) (p. 221) |
| ethnic cleansing | Effort to eradicate a people and its culture by means of mass killing and the destruction of historical buildings and cultural materials. Ethnic cleansing was used by both sides in the conflicts that accompanied the disintegration of Yugoslavia (883) |
| European Community | An organization promoting economic unity in Europe formed in 1967 by consolidation of earlier, more limited, agreements. Replaced by the European Union (EU) in 1993. (p. 834) |
| Eva Peron | Wife of Juan Per?n and champion of the poor in Argentina. She was a gifted speaker and popular political leader who campaigned to improve the life of the urban poor by founding schools and hospitals and providing other social benefits. (p. 824) |
| extraterritoriality | Foreign residents in a country living under the laws of their native country, disregarding the laws of the host country. 19th/Early 20th Centuries: European and US nationals in certain areas of Chinese and Ottoman cities were granted this right. (682) |
| Faisal | Arab prince, leader of the Arab Revolt in World War I. The British made him king of Iraq in 1921, and he reigned under British protection until 1933. (p. 760) |
| Fascist Party | Italian political party created by Benito Mussolini during World War I. It emphasized aggressive nationalism and was Mussolini's instrument for the creation of a dictatorship in Italy from 1922 to 1943. (See also Mussolini, Benito.) (p. 786) |
| Ferdinand Magellan | Portuguese navigator who led the Spanish expedition of 1519-1522 that was the first to sail around the world. (p. 431) |
| First Temple | A monumental sanctuary built in Jerusalem by King Solomon in the tenth century B.C.E. to be the religious center for the Israelite god Yahweh. The Temple priesthood conducted sacrifices, received a tithe or percentage of agricultural revenues. (102) |
| Five Year Plans | Plans that Joseph Stalin introduced to industrialize the Soviet Union rapidly, beginning in 1928. They set goals for the output of steel, electricity, machinery, and most other products and were enforced by the police powers of the state. (781) |
| Forbidden City | The walled section of Beijing where emperors lived between 1121 and 1924. A portion is now a residence for leaders of the People's Republic of China. (p. 355) |
| Francisco Pancho Villa | A popular leader during the Mexican Revolution. An outlaw in his youth, when the revolution started, he formed a cavalry army in the north of Mexico and fought for the rights of the landless in collaboration with Emiliano Zapata. (819) |
| Francois Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture | Leader of the Haitian Revolution. He freed the slaves and gained effective independence for Haiti despite military interventions by the British and French. (p. 593) |
| Fransisco Pizarro | Spanish explorer who led the conquest of the Inca Empire of Peru in 1531-1533. (p. 438) |
| free-trade imperialism | Economic dominance of a weaker country by a more powerful one, while maintaining the legal independence of the weaker state. In the late nineteenth century, free-trade imperialism characterized the relations between the Latin American republics. (744) |
| fresco | A technique of painting on walls covered with moist plaster. It was used to decorate Minoan and Mycenaean palaces and Roman villas, and became an important medium during the Italian Renaissance. (p. 73) |
| Funan | An early complex society in Southeast Asia between the first and sixth centuries C.E. It was centered in the rich rice-growing region of southern Vietnam, and it controlled the passage of trade across the Malaysian isthmus. (p. 191) |
| gens de couleur | Free men and women of color in Haiti. They sought greater political rights and later supported the Haitian Revolution. (See also L'Ouverture, Fran?ois Dominique Toussaint.) (p. 593) |
| gentry | In China, the class of prosperous families, next in wealth below the rural aristocrats, from which the emperors drew their administrative personnel. (166) |
| George Washington | Military commander of the American Revolution. He was the first elected president of the United States (1789-1799). (p. 581) |
| Getulio Vargas | Dictator of Brazil from 1930 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1954. Defeated in the presidential election of 1930, he overthrew the government and created Estado Novo ('New State'), a dictatorship that emphasized industrialization. (823) |
| Ghana | First known kingdom in sub-Saharan West Africa between the sixth and thirteenth centuries C.E. Also the modern West African country once known as the Gold Coast. (p. 215) |
| Ghengis Khan | The title of Tem?jin when he ruled the Mongols (1206-1227). It means the 'oceanic' or 'universal' leader. Genghis Khan was the founder of the Mongol Empire. (p. 325) |
| Gold Coast | Region of the Atlantic coast of West Africa occupied by modern Ghana; named for its gold exports to Europe from the 1470s onward. (p. 428) |
| Golden Horde | Mongol khanate founded by Genghis Khan's grandson Batu. It was based in southern Russia and quickly adopted both the Turkic language and Islam. Also known as the Kipchak Horde. (p. 333) |
| Gothic Cathedrals | Large churches originating in twelfth-century France; built in an architectural style featuring pointed arches, tall vaults and spires, flying buttresses, and large stained-glass windows. (p. 405) |
| Grand Canal | The 1,100-mile (1,700-kilometer) waterway linking the Yellow and the Yangzi Rivers. It was begun in the Han period and completed during the Sui Empire. (p. 277) |
| Great Circuit | The network of Atlantic Ocean trade routes between Europe, Africa, and the Americas that underlay theAtlantic system. (p. 508) |
| Great Western Schism | A division in the Latin (Western) Christian Church between 1378 and 1417, when rival claimants to the papacy existed in Rome and Avignon. (p. 411) |
| Great Western Schism | A division in the Latin (Western) Christian Church between 1378 and 1417, when rival claimants to the papacy existed in Rome and Avignon. (p. 411) |
| Great Zimbabwe | City, now in ruins (in the modern African country of Zimbabwe), whose many stone structures were built between about 1250 and 1450, when it was a trading center and the capital of a large state. (p. 385) |
| guild | In medieval Europe, an association of men (rarely women), such as merchants, artisans, or professors, who worked in a particular trade and banded together to promote their economic and political interests. (403) |
| Gujarat | Region of western India famous for trade and manufacturing; the inhabitants are called Gujarati. (p. 380) |
| gunpowder | The formula, brought to China in the 400s or 500s, was first used to make fumigators to keep away insect pests and evil spirits. In later centuries it was used to make explosives and grenades and to propel cannonballs, shot, and bullets. (p. 289) |
| Guomindang | Nationalist political party founded on democratic principles by Sun Yat-sen in 1912. After 1925, the party was headed by Chiang Kai-shek, who turned it into an increasingly authoritarian movement. (p. 769) |
| Gupta Empire | Powerful Indian state based, like its Mauryan predecessor, on a capital at Pataliputra in the Ganges Valley. It controlled most of the Indian subcontinent through a combination of military force and its prestige as a center of sophisticated culture (186) |
| Habsburg | A powerful European family that provided many Holy Roman Emperors, founded the Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) Empire, and ruled sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain. (p. 449) |
| hadith | A tradition relating the words or deeds of the Prophet Muhammad; next to the Quran, the most important basis for Islamic law. (p. 241) |
| Haile Selassie | Emperor of Ethiopia (r. 1930-1974) and symbol of African independence. He fought the Italian invasion of his country in 1935 and regained his throne during World War II, when British forces expelled the Italians. He ruled Ethiopia as an autocrat. (809) |
| Hammurabi | Amorite ruler of Babylon (r. 1792-1750 B.C.E.). He conquered many city-states in southern and northern Mesopotamia and is best known for a code of laws, inscribed on a black stone pillar, illustrating the principles to be used in legal cases. (p. 34) |
| Han | A term used to designate (1) the ethnic Chinese people who originated in the Yellow River Valley and spread throughout regions of China suitable for agriculture and (2) the dynasty of emperors who ruled from 206 B.C.E. to 220 C.E. (p. 164) |
| Hanseatic League | An economic and defensive alliance of the free towns in northern Germany, founded about 1241 and most powerful in the fourteenth century. (p. 401) |
| Harappa | Site of one of the great cities of the Indus Valley civilization of the third millennium B.C.E. It was located on the northwest frontier of the zone of cultivation , and may have been a center for the acquisition of raw materials. (p. 48) |
| Hatshepsut | Queen of Egypt (1473-1458 B.C.E.). Dispatched a naval expedition down the Red Sea to Punt (possibly Somalia), the faraway source of myrrh. There is evidence of opposition to a woman as ruler, and after her death her name was frequently expunged. (p.66) |
| Hebrew Bible | A collection of sacred books containing diverse materials concerning the origins, experiences, beliefs, and practices of the Israelites. Most of the extant text was compiled by members of the priestly class in the fifth century B.C.E. (99) |
| Hellenistic Age | Greek culture spread across western Asia and northeastern Africa after the conquests of Alexander the Great. The period ended with the fall of the last major Hellenistic kingdom to Rome, but Greek cultural influence persisted until spread of islam. (137) |
| Helsinki Accords | Political and human rights agreement signed in Helsinki, Finland, by the Soviet Union and western European countries. (p. 839) |
| Henry the Navigator | (1394-1460) Portuguese prince who promoted the study of navigation and directed voyages of exploration down the western coast of Africa. (p. 425) |
| Hernan Cortes | Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the conquest of Aztec Mexico in 1519-1521 for Spain. (p. 437) |
| Herodotus | Heir to the technique of historia-'investigation'-developed by Greeks in the late Archaic period. He came from a Greek community in Anatolia and traveled extensively, collecting information in western Asia and the Mediterranean lands. (128) |
| Hidden Imam | Last in a series of twelve descendants of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali, whom Shi'ites consider divinely appointed leaders of the Muslim community. In occlusion since ca. 873, he is expected to return as a messiah at the end of time. (p. 532) |
| hieroglyphics | System of writing in which pictorial symbols represented sounds, syllables, or concepts. Used for official and monumental inscriptions in ancient Egypt. |
| high culture | Canons of artistic and literary masterworks recognized by dominant economic classes. (p. 897) |
| Hinduism | Term for a wide variety of beliefs and ritual practices that have developed in the Indian subcontinent since antiquity. Hinduism has roots in ancient Vedic, Buddhist, and south Indian religious concepts and practices. Spread along trade routes (181) |
| Hiroshima | City in Japan, the first to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, on August 6, 1945. The bombing hastened the end of World War II. (p. 797) |
| Hittites | A people from central Anatolia who established an empire in Anatolia and Syria in the Late Bronze Age. With wealth from the trade in metals and military power based on chariot forces, the hittites vied with New Kingdom Egypt over Syria (p.64) |
| Holocaust | Nazis' program during World War II to kill people they considered undesirable. Some 6 million Jews perished during the Holocaust, along with millions of Poles, Gypsies, Communists, Socialists, and others. (p. 800) |
| Holy Roman Empire | Loose federation of mostly German states and principalities, headed by an emperor elected by the princes. It lasted from 962 to 1806. (pp. 260, 449) |
| Holy Roman Empire | Loose federation of mostly German states and principalities, headed by an emperor elected by the princes. It lasted from 962 to 1806. (pp. 260, 449) |
| hoplite | Heavily armored Greek infantryman of the Archaic and Classical periods who fought in the close-packed phalanx formation. Hoplite armies-militias composed of middle- and upper-class citizens supplying their own equipment: Superior to all other forces 128 |
| horse collar | Harnessing method that increased the efficiency of horses by shifting the point of traction from the animal's neck to the shoulders; its adoption favors the spread of horse-drawn plows and vehicles. (p. 269) |
| House of Burgesses | Elected assembly in colonial Virginia, created in 1618. (p. 486) |
| humanists (renaissance) | European scholars, writers, and teachers associated with the study of the humanities (grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, languages, and moral philosophy), influential in the fifteenth century and later. (p. 408) |
| Hundred Years War | Series of campaigns over control of the throne of France, involving English and French royal families and French noble families. (p. 413) |
| Ibn Battuta | Moroccan Muslim scholar, the most widely traveled individual of his time. He wrote a detailed account of his visits to Islamic lands from China to Spain and the western Sudan. (p. 373) |
| Ibn Khaldun | Arab historian. He developed an influential theory on the rise and fall of states. Born in Tunis, he spent his later years in Cairo as a teacher and judge. In 1400 he was sent to Damascus to negotiate the surrender of the city. (336) |
| Il-Khan | A 'secondary' or 'peripheral' khan based in Persia. The Il-khans' khanate was founded by H?leg?, a grandson of Genghis Khan, was based at Tabriz in modern Azerbaijan. It controlled much of Iran and Iraq. (p. 333) |
| Import Substitution Industrialization | An economic system aimed at building a country's industry by restricting foreign trade. It was especially popular in Latin American countries such as Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil in the mid-twentieth century. (823) |
| Inca | Largest and most powerful Andean empire. Controlled the Pacific coast of South America from Ecuador to Chile from its capital of Cuzco. (p. 316) |
| indentured servant | A migrant to British colonies in the Americas who paid for passage by agreeing to work for a set term ranging from four to seven years. (p. 486) |
| Indian Civil Service | The elite professional class of officials who administered the government of British India. Originally composed exclusively of well-educated British men, it gradually added qualified Indians. (p. 661) |
| Indian National Congress | A movement and political party founded in 1885 to demand greater Indian participation in government. Its membership was middle class, and its demands were modest until World War I. Led after 1920 by Mohandas K. Gandhi, appealing to the poor. (p. 663) |
| Indian National Congress | A movement and political party founded in 1885 to demand greater Indian participation in government. Its membership was middle class, and its demands were modest until World War I. Led after 1920 by Mohandas K. Gandhi, it appealed to the poor (812) |
| Indian Ocean Maritime System | In premodern times, a network of seaports, trade routes, and maritime culture linking countries on the rim of the Indian Ocean from Africa to Indonesia. (p. 207) |
| indulgence | The forgiveness of the punishment due for past sins, granted by the Catholic Church authorities as a reward for a pious act. Martin Luther's protest against the sale of indulgences is often seen as touching off the Protestant Reformation. (p. 446) |
| Industrial Revolution | The transformation of the economy, the environment, and living conditions, occurring first in England in the eighteenth century, that resulted from the use of steam engines, the mechanization of manufacturing in factories, transit, and communications (599 |
| investiture | controversy Dispute between the popes and the Holy Roman Emperors over who held ultimate authority over bishops in imperial lands. (p. 261) |
| iron curtain | Winston Churchill's term for the Cold War division between the Soviet-dominated East and the U.S.-dominated West. (p. 831) |
| Iroquois Confederacy | An alliance of five northeastern Amerindian peoples (after 1722 six) that made decisions on military and diplomatic issues through a council of representatives. Allied first with the Dutch and later with the English, it dominated W. New England. (488) |
| Islam | Religion expounded by the Prophet Muhammad (570-632 C.E.) on the basis of his reception of divine revelations, which were collected after his death into the Quran. (231) |
| Israel | In antiquity, the land between the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, occupied by the Israelites from the early second millennium B.C.E. The modern state of Israel was founded in 1948. (p. 98) |
| Jacobins | Radical republicans during the French Revolution. They were led by Maximilien Robespierre from 1793 to 1794. (See also Robespierre, Maximilien.) (p. 588) |
| James Watt | Scot who invented the condenser and other improvements that made the steam engine a practical source of power for industry and transportation. The watt, an electrical measurement, is named after him. (p. 607) |
| Janissaries | Infantry, originally of slave origin, armed with firearms and constituting the elite of the Ottoman army from the fifteenth century until the corps was abolished in 1826. See also devshirme. (p. 526, 675) |
| Janissary | Infantry, originally of slave origin, armed with firearms and constituting the elite of the Ottoman army from the fifteenth century until the corps was abolished in 1826. See also devshirme. (p. 526, 675) |
| Jawaharial Nehru | Indian statesman. He succeeded Mohandas K. Gandhi as leader of the Indian National Congress. He negotiated the end of British colonial rule in India and became India's first prime minister (1947-1964). (p. 815) |
| Jesuits | Members of the Society of Jesus, a Roman Catholic order founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534. They played an important part in the Catholic Reformation and helped create conduits of trade and knowledge between Asia and Europe. (p. 548) |
| Jesus | A Jew from Galilee in northern Israel who sought to reform Jewish beliefs and practices. He was executed as a revolutionary by the Romans. (155) |
| Joesph Stalin | Bolshevik revolutionary, head of the Soviet Communists after 1924, and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. He led the Soviet Union with an iron fist, using Five-Year Plans to increase industrial production and terror to crush opposition (780) |
| joint-stock company | A business, often backed by a government charter, that sold shares to individuals to raise money for its trading enterprises and to spread the risks (and profits) among many investors. (p. 460) |
| Jose Maria Morelos | Mexican priest and former student of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, he led the forces fighting for Mexican independence until he was captured and executed in 1814. (See also Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel.) (p. 626) |
| Joseph Brant | Mohawk leader who supported the British during the American Revolution. (p. 581) |
| Josiah Wedgwood | English industrialist whose pottery works were the first to produce fine-quality pottery by industrial methods. (p. 603) |
| Juan Peron | President of Argentina (1946-1955, 1973-1974). As a military officer, he championed the rights of labor. Aided by his wife Eva Duarte Per?n, he was elected president in 1946. He built up Argentinean industry, became very popular among the urban poor. (823 |
| junk | A very large flatbottom sailing ship produced in the Tang and Song Empires, specially designed for long-distance commercial travel. (p. 288) |
| Kamakura Shogunate | The first of Japan's decentralized military governments. (1185-1333). (p. 294) |
| kamikaze | The 'divine wind,' which the Japanese credited with blowing Mongol invaders away from their shores in 1281. (p. 365) |
| Kangxi | Qing emperor (r. 1662-1722). He oversaw the greatest expansion of the Qing Empire. |
| Karl Marx | German journalist and philosopher, founder of the Marxist branch of socialism. He is known for two books: The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (Vols. I-III, 1867-1894). (p. 709) |
| karma | In Indian tradition, the residue of deeds performed in past and present lives that adheres to a 'spirit' and determines what form it will assume in its next life cycle. Used in India to make people happy with their lot in life (177) |
| keiretsu | Alliances of corporations and banks that dominate the Japanese economy. (p. 861) |
| khipu | System of knotted colored cords used by preliterate Andean peoples to transmit information. (p. 312) |
| Khubilai Khan | Last of the Mongol Great Khans (r. 1260-1294) and founder of the Yuan Empire. (p. 351) |
| Kievan Russia | State established at Kiev in Ukraine ca. 879 by Scandinavian adventurers asserting authority over a mostly Slavic farming population. (p. 267) |
| King Leopold II | King of Belgium (r. 1865-1909). He was active in encouraging the exploration of Central Africa and became the ruler of the Congo Free State (to 1908). (p. 732) |
| Korean War | Conflict that began with North Korea's invasion of South Korea and came to involve the United Nations (primarily the United States) allying with South Korea and the People's Republic of China allying with North Korea. (p. 836) |
| Koryo | Korean kingdom founded in 918 and destroyed by a Mongol invasion in 1259. (p. 292) |
| labor union | An organization of workers in a particular industry or trade, created to defend the interests of members through strikes or negotiations with employers. (p. 709) |
| laissez faire | The idea that government should refrain from interfering in economic affairs. The classic exposition of laissez-faire principles is Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776). (p. 615) |
| lama | In Tibetan Buddhism, a teacher. (p. 351) |
| Latin West | Historians' name for the territories of Europe that adhered to the Latin rite of Christianity and used the Latin language for intellectual exchange in the period ca. 1000-1500. (p. 394) |
| Lazaro Cardenas | President of Mexico (1934-1940). He brought major changes to Mexican life by distributing millions of acres of land to the peasants, bringing representatives of workers and farmers into the inner circles of politics, and nationalizing the oil industry 820 |
| League of Nations | International organization founded in 1919 to promote world peace and cooperation but greatly weakened by the refusal of the United States to join. It proved ineffectual in stopping aggression by Italy, Japan, and Germany in the 1930s. (763) |
| Legalism | In China, a political philosophy that emphasized the unruliness of human nature and justified state coercion and control. The Qin ruling class invoked it to validate the authoritarian nature of their regime. (p.52) |
| Legitimate Trade | Exports from Africa in the nineteenth century that did not include the newly outlawed slave trade. (p. 654) |
| Li Shimin | One of the founders of the Tang Empire and its second emperor (r. 626-649). He led the expansion of the empire into Central Asia. (p. 277) |
| liberalism | A political ideology that emphasizes the civil rights of citizens, representative government, and the protection of private property. This ideology, derived from the Enlightenment, was especially popular among the property-owning middle classes. (713) |
| Library of Ashurbanipal | A large collection of writings drawn from the ancient literary, religious, and scientific traditions of Mesopotamia. It was assembled by the sixth century B.C.E. Assyrian ruler Ashurbanipal. (98) |
| Little Ice Age | A century-long period of cool climate that began in the 1590s. Its ill effects on agriculture in northern Europe were notable. (p. 462) |
| loess | fine, light silt deposited by wind and water. It constitutes the fertile soil of the Yellow River Valley in northern China. Because loess soil is not compacted, easily worked, but it leaves the region vulnerable to earthquakes. (p.58) |
| Long March | The 6,000-mile (9,600-kilometer) flight of Chinese Communists from southeastern to northwestern China. The Communists, led by Mao Zedong, were pursued by the Chinese army under orders from Chiang Kai-shek. (789) |
| ma'at | Egyptian term for the concept of divinely created and maintained order in the universe. Reflecting the ancient Egyptians' belief in an essentially beneficent world, the divine ruler was the earthly guarantor of this order. (See also pyramid.) (p. 42) |
| Macartney Mission | The unsuccessful attempt by the British Empire to establish diplomatic relations with the Qing Empire. (p. 560) |
| Mahabharata | A vast epic chronicling the events leading up to a cataclysmic battle between related kinship groups in early India. It includes the Bhagavad-Gita, the most important work of Indian sacred literature. (p. 185) |
| Mahayana Buddhism | Great Vehicle' branch of Buddhism followed in China, Japan, and Central Asia. The focus is on reverence for Buddha and for bodhisattvas, enlightened persons who have postponed nirvana to help others attain enlightenment. (p. 181) |
| Malacca | Port city in the modern Southeast Asian country of Malaysia, founded about 1400 as a trading center on the Strait of Malacca. Also spelled Melaka. (p. 387) |
| Malay Peoples | A designation for peoples originating in south China and Southeast Asia who settled the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia, and the Philippines, then spread eastward across the islands of the Pacific Ocean and west to Madagascar. (p. 190) |
| Mali | Empire created by indigenous Muslims in western Sudan of West Africa from the thirteenth to fifteenth century. It was famous for its role in the trans-Saharan gold trade. (See also Timbuktu.) (p. 375) |
| mamluks | Under the Islamic system of military slavery, Turkic military slaves who formed an important part of the armed forces of the Abbasid Caliphate of the ninth and tenth centuries. Mamluks eventually founded their own state, ruling Egypt and Syria. (236) |
| Mamluks | Under the Islamic system of military slavery, Turkic military slaves who formed an important part of the armed forces of the Abbasid Caliphate of the ninth and tenth centuries. Mamluks eventually founded their own state, ruling Egypt and Syria (1250-1517) |
| Manchuria | Region of Northeast Asia bounded by the Yalu River on the south and the Amur River on the east and north. (p. 354) |
| Manchus | Federation of Northeast Asian peoples who founded the Qing Empire. (p. 556) |
| Mandate of Heaven | Chinese religious and political ideology developed by the Zhou, was the prerogative of Heaven, the chief deity, to grant power to the ruler of China. |
| Mandate System | Allocation of former German colonies and Ottoman possessions to the victorious powers after World War I, to be administered under League of Nations supervision. (p. 770) |
| manor | In medieval Europe, a large, self-sufficient landholding consisting of the lord's residence (manor house), outbuildings, peasant village, and surrounding land. (p. 254) |
| Mansa Kankan Musa | Ruler of Mali (r. 1312-1337). His pilgrimage through Egypt to Mecca in 1324-1325 established the empire's reputation for wealth in the Mediterranean world. (p. 376) |
| mansabs | In India, grants of land given in return for service by rulers of the Mughal Empire. (p. 536) |
| manumission | A grant of legal freedom to an individual slave. (p. 505) |
| Mao Zedong | Leader of the Chinese Communist Party (1927-1976). He led the Communists on the Long March (1934-1935) and rebuilt the Communist Party and Red Army during the Japanese occupation of China (1937-1945). (789) |
| maroon | A slave who ran away from his or her master. Often a member of a community of runaway slaves in the West Indies and South America. (p. 505) |
| mass deportation | Removal of entire peoples used as terror tactic by Assyrian and Persian Empires. (95) |
| mass production | The manufacture of many identical products by the division of labor into many small repetitive tasks. This method was introduced into the manufacture of pottery by Josiah Wedgwood and into the spinning of cotton thread by Richard Arkwright. (602) |
| Mauryan Empire | The first state to unify most of the Indian subcontinent. It was founded by Chandragupta Maurya in 324 B.C.E. and survived until 184 B.C.E. From its capital at Pataliputra in the Ganges Valley it grew wealthy from taxes. (184) |
| Max Planck | German physicist who developed quantum theory and was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1918. (p. 774) |
| Maximillien Robespierre | Young provincial lawyer who led the most radical phases of the French Revolution. His execution ended the Reign of Terror. See Jacobins. (p. 589) |
| Maya | Mesoamerican civilization concentrated in Mexico's Yucat?n Peninsula and in Guatemala and Honduras but never unified into a single empire. Major contributions were in mathematics, astronomy, and development of the calendar. (p. 302) |
| Mecca | City in western Arabia; birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, and ritual center of the Islamic religion. (p. 230) |
| mechanization | The application of machinery to manufacturing and other activities. Among the first processes to be mechanized were the spinning of cotton thread and the weaving of cloth in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century England. (p. 603) |
| medieval | Literally 'middle age,' a term that historians of Europe use for the period ca. 500 to ca. 1500, signifying its intermediate point between Greco-Roman antiquity and the Renaissance. (p. 250) |
| Medina | City in western Arabia to which the Prophet Muhammad and his followers emigrated in 622 to escape persecution in Mecca. (p. 231) |
| Meiji Restoration | The political program that followed the destruction of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868, in which a collection of young leaders set Japan on the path of centralization, industrialization, and imperialism. (See also Yamagata Aritomo.) (p. 694) |
| Memphis | The capital of Old Kingdom Egypt, near the head of the Nile Delta. Early rulers were interred in the nearby pyramids. (p. 43) |
| mercantilism | European government policies of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries designed to promote overseas trade between a country and its colonies and accumulate precious metals by requiring colonies to trade only with their motherland country 506 |
| Mero? | Capital of a flourishing kingdom in southern Nubia from the fourth century B.C.E. to the fourth century C.E. In this period Nubian culture shows more independence from Egypt and the influence of sub-Saharan Africa. (p. 71) |
| mestizo | The term used by Spanish authorities to describe someone of mixed Amerindian and European descent. (p. 484) |
| Middle Passage | The part of the Great Circuit involving the transportation of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas. (p. 508) |
| Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla | Mexican priest who led the first stage of the Mexican independence war in 1810. He was captured and executed in 1811. (p. 625) |
| Mikhail Gorbachev | Head of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991. His liberalization effort improved relations with the West, but he lost power after his reforms led to the collapse of Communist governments in eastern Europe. (p. 863) |
| Mikhail Romanov | Russian tsar (r. 1613-1645) A member of the Russian aristocracy, he became tsar after the old line of Muscovite rulers was deposed. (p. 551) |
| Ming Empire | Empire based in China that Zhu Yuanzhang established after the overthrow of the Yuan Empire. The Ming emperor Yongle sponsored the building of the Forbidden City and the voyages of Zheng He. (355) |
| Ming Empire | Empire based in China that Zhu Yuanzhang established after the overthrow of the Yuan Empire. The Ming emperor Yongle sponsored the building of the Forbidden City and the voyages of Zheng He. (554) |
| Minoan | Prosperous civilization on the Aegean island of Crete in the second millennium B.C.E. The Minoans engaged in far-flung commerce around the Mediterranean and exerted powerful cultural influences on the early Greeks. (p. 73) |
| mit'a | Andean labor system based on shared obligations to help kinsmen and work on behalf of the ruler and religious organizations. (p. 312) |
| Moche | Civilization of north coast of Peru (200-700 C.E.). An important Andean civilization that built extensive irrigation networks as well as impressive urban centers dominated by brick temples. (p. 313) |
| Moctezuma II | Last Aztec emperor, overthrown by the Spanish conquistador Hern?n Cort?s. (p. 437) |
| modernization | The process of reforming political, military, economic, social, and cultural traditions in imitation of the early success of Western societies, often with regard for accommodating local traditions in non-Western societies. (p. 652) |
| Mohandas K. Gandhi | Leader of the Indian independence movement and advocate of nonviolent resistance. After being educated as a lawyer in England, he returned to India and became leader of the Indian National Congress in 1920. (813) |
| Mohenjo-Daro | Largest city of the Indus Valley civilization. It was centrally located in the extensive floodplain of the Indus River. Little is known about the political institutions of Indus Valley communities, but the large-scale implies central planning. (p. 48) |
| moksha | The Hindu concept of the spirit's 'liberation' from the endless cycle of rebirths. (179) |
| monasticism | Living in a religious community apart from secular society and adhering to a rule stipulating chastity, obedience, and poverty. (Primary Centres of Learning in Medieval Europe) (261) |
| Mongols | A people of this name is mentioned as early as the records of the Tang Empire, living as nomads in northern Eurasia. After 1206 they established an enormous empire under Genghis Khan, linking western and eastern Eurasia. >(p. 325) |
| monotheism | Belief in a single divine entity. The Israelite worship of Yahweh developed into an exclusive belief in one god, and this concept passed into Christianity and Islam. (102) |
| monsoon | These strong and predictable winds have long been ridden across the open sea by sailors, and the large amounts of rainfall that they deposit on parts of India, Southeast Asia, and China allow for the cultivation of several crops a year. (pp. 174, 371) |
| most-favored-nation status | A clause in a commercial treaty that awards to any later signatories all the privileges previously granted to the original signatories. (p. 686) |
| movable type | Type in which each individual character is cast on a separate piece of metal. It replaced woodblock printing, allowing for the arrangement of individual letters and other characters on a page. Invented in Korea 13th Century. (293) |
| Mughal Empire | Muslim state (1526-1857) exercising dominion over most of India in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (p. 536) |
| Muhammad (570-632 C.E.) | Arab prophet; founder of religion of Islam. (p. 230) |
| Muhammad Ali | Leader of Egyptian modernization in the early nineteenth century. He ruled Egypt as an Ottoman governor, but had imperial ambitions. His descendants ruled Egypt until overthrown in 1952. (p. 652) |
| Muhammad Ali Jinnah | Indian Muslim politician who founded the state of Pakistan. A lawyer by training, he joined the All-India Muslim League in 1913. As leader of the League from the 1920s on, he negotiated with the British/INC for Muslim Political Rights (816) |
| mulatto | The term used in Spanish and Portuguese colonies to describe someone of mixed African and European descent. (p. 484) |
| Muscovy | Russian principality that emerged gradually during the era of Mongol domination. The Muscovite dynasty ruled without interruption from 1276 to 1598. (p. 551) |
| Muslim | An adherent of the Islamic religion; a person who 'submits' (in Arabic, Islam means 'submission') to the will of God. (p. 231) ) |
| Mycenae | Site of a fortified palace complex in southern Greece that controlled a Late Bronze Age kingdom. In Homer's epic poems Mycenae was the base of King Agamemnon, who commanded the Greeks besieging Troy. (74) |
| Napoleon Bonaparte | . Overthrew French Directory in 1799 and became emperor of the French in 1804. Failed to defeat Great Britain and abdicated in 1814. Returned to power briefly in 1815 but was defeated and died in exile. (p. 591) |
| Nasir al-Din Tusi | Persian mathematician and cosmologist whose academy near Tabriz provided the model for the movement of the planets that helped to inspire the Copernican model of the solar system. (p. 337) |
| National Assembly | French Revolutionary assembly (1789-1791). Called first as the Estates General, the three estates came together and demanded radical change. It passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789. (p. 585) |
| nationalism | Political ideology that stresses people's membership in a nation-a community defined by a common culture and history as well as by territory. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, nationalism was a force for unity in western Europe (713) |
| NATO | Organization formed in 1949 as a military alliance of western European and North American states against the Soviet Union and its east European allies. (See also Warsaw Pact.)(p. 832) |
| nawab | A Muslim prince allied to British India; technically, a semi-autonomous deputy of the Mughal emperor. (p. 657) |
| Nazis | German political party joined by Adolf Hitler, emphasizing nationalism, racism, and war. When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Nazi Party became the only legal party and an instrument of Hitler's absolute rule. (786) |
| Neo-Assyrian Empire | An empire extending from western Iran to Syria-Palestine, conquered by the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia between the tenth and seventh centuries B.C.E. They used force and terror and exploited the wealth and labor of their subjects. (93) |
| Neo-Babylonian kingdom | (blank) |
| Neolithic | The period of the Stone Age associated with the ancient Agricultural Revolution(s). It follows the Paleolithic period. (p. 11) |
| New Economic Policy | Policy proclaimed by Vladimir Lenin in 1924 to encourage the revival of the Soviet economy by allowing small private enterprises. Joseph Stalin ended the N.E.P. in 1928 and replaced it with a series of Five-Year Plans. (See also Lenin, Vladimir.) (p. 766) |
| New France | French colony in North America, with a capital in Quebec, founded 1608. New France fell to the British in 1763. (p. 489) |
| New Imperialism | Historians' term for the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century wave of conquests by European powers, the United States, and Japan, which were followed by the development and exploitation of the newly conquered territories. (p. 726) |
| New Imperialism | Historians' term for the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century wave of conquests by European powers, the United States, and Japan, which were followed by the development and exploitation of the newly conquered territories for the benefit of the col |
| new monarchies | Historians' term for the monarchies in France, England, and Spain from 1450 to 1600. The centralization of royal power was increasing within more or less fixed territorial limits. (p. 414) |
| newly industrialized economies | Rapidly growing, new industrial nations of the late twentieth century, including the Asian Tigers. (p. 861) |
| nomadism | A way of life, forced by a scarcity of resources, in which groups of people continually migrate to find pastures and water. (p. 326) |
| nonaligned Nations | Developing countries that announced their neutrality in the Cold War. (p. 846) |
| Nongovernmental Organizations | Nonprofit international organizations devoted to investigating human rights abuses and providing humanitarian relief. Two NGOs won the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1990s: International Campaign to Ban Landmines (1997) and Doctors Without Borders (1999). (p. 8 |
| nuclear nonproliferation | Goal of international efforts to prevent countries other than the five declared nuclear powers (United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China) from obtaining nuclear weapons. The first Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed in 1968. (p. 890) |
| Olmec | The first Mesoamerican civilization. Between ca. 1200 and 400 B.C.E., the Olmec people of central Mexico created a vibrant civilization that included intensive agriculture, wide-ranging trade, ceremonial centers, and monumental construction. (86) |
| Oman | Arab state based in Musqat, the main port in the southwest region of the Arabian peninsula. Oman succeeded Portugal as a power in the western Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century. (p. 542) |
| Opium War | War between Britain and the Qing Empire that was, in the British view, occasioned by the Qing government's refusal to permit the importation of opium into its territories. The victorious British imposed the one-sided Treaty of Nanking on China. (p. 684) |
| Otto von Bismarck | Chancellor of Prussia from 1862 until 1871, when he became chancellor of Germany. A conservative nationalist, he led Prussia to victory against Austria (1866) and France (1870) and was responsible for the creation of the German Empire (714) |
| Ottomans | Turks who had come to Anatolia in the same wave of migrations as the Seljuks. (344) |
| Paleolithic | The period of the Stone Age associated with the evolution of humans. It predates the Neolithic period. (p. 11) |
| Panama Canal | Ship canal cut across the isthmus of Panama by United States Army engineers; it opened in 1915. It greatly shortened the sea voyage between the east and west coasts of North America. The United States turned the canal over to Panama on Jan 1, 2000 (746) |
| papacy | The central administration of the Roman Catholic Church, of which the pope is the head. (pp. 258, 445) |
| papacy | The central administration of the Roman Catholic Church, of which the pope is the head. (pp. 258, 445) |
| papyrus | A reed that grows along the banks of the Nile River in Egypt. From it was produced a coarse, paperlike writing medium used by the Egyptians and many other peoples in the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. (p. 44) |
| Parthians | Iranian ruling dynasty between ca. 250 B.C.E. and 226 C.E. (p. 204) |
| patron/client relationship | Anciant Roman: a fundamental social relationship in which the patron-a wealthy and powerful individual-provided legal and economic protection and assistance to clients, men of lesser status and means, and in return the clients supported their patrons (149 |
| Paul | A Jew from the Greek city of Tarsus in Anatolia, he initially persecuted the followers of Jesus but, after receiving a revelation on the road to Syrian Damascus, became a Christian. (156) |
| pax romana | Roman peace,' The stability and prosperity that Roman rule brought to the lands of the Roman Empire in the first two centuries C.E. The movement of people and trade goods along Roman roads and safe seas allowed for the spread of cuture/ideas (154) |
| Pearl Harbour | Naval base in Hawaii attacked by Japanese aircraft on December 7, 1941. The sinking of much of the U.S. Pacific Fleet brought the United States into World War II. (p. 793) |
| Peloponnesian War | Conflict between Athenian And Spartan Alliances. The war was largely a consequence of Athenian imperialism. Possession of a naval empire allowed Athens to fight a war of attrition. Ultimately, Sparta prevailed because of Athenian errors/Persian $$$ (135) |
| percussion cap | Gunpowder-filled capsules that, when struck by the hammer of a gun, ignite the explosive charge in a gun. Their use meant that guns no longer needed to be ignited by hand. (p. 681) |
| Perestroika | Policy of 'openness' that was the centerpiece of Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to liberalize communism in the Soviet Union. (See also Gorbachev, Mikhail.) (p. 863) |
| Pericles | Aristocratic leader who guided the Athenian state through the transformation to full participatory democracy for all male citizens. (130) |
| Persepolis | A complex of palaces, reception halls, and treasury buildings erected by the Persian kings Darius I and Xerxes in the Persian homelan (119) |
| Persian Wars | Conflicts between Greek city-states and the Persian Empire, ranging from the Ionian Revolt (499-494 B.C.E.) through Darius's punitive expedition that failed at Marathon. Chronicled by Herodotus. (131) |
| personalist leaders | Political leaders who rely on charisma and their ability to mobilize and direct the masses of citizens outside the authority of constitutions and laws. Nineteenth-century examples include Jos? Antonio P?ez of Venezuela and Andrew Jackson of the US. (628) |
| Peter the Great | (1672-1725) Russian tsar (r. 1689-1725). He enthusiastically introduced Western languages and technologies to the Russian elite, moving the capital from Moscow to the new city of St. Petersburg. (p. 552) |
| Phoenicians | Semitic-speaking Canaanites living on the coast of modern Lebanon and Syria in the first millennium B.C.E. From major cities such as Tyre and Sidon, Phoenician merchants and sailors explored the Mediterranean, and engaged in widespread commerce. (103) |
| pilgrimage | Journey to a sacred shrine by Christians seeking to show their piety, fulfill vows, or gain absolution for sins. Other religions also have pilgrimage traditions, such as the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. (270) |
| Pilgrims | Group of English Protestant dissenters who established Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620 to seek religious freedom after having lived briefly in the Netherlands. (p. 487) |
| plantocracy | In the West Indian colonies, the rich men who owned most of the slaves and most of the land, especially in the eighteenth century. (p. 502) |
| popular culture | Entertainment spread by mass communications and enjoying wide appeal. (p. 897) |
| positivism | A philosophy developed by the French count of Saint-Simon. Positivists believed that social and economic problems could be solved by the application of the scientific method, leading to continuous progress. Popular in France and Latin America. (616) |
| postmodernism | Post-World War II intellectual movement and cultural attitude focusing on cultural pluralism and release from the confines and ideology of Western high culture. (p. 900) |
| Potosi | Located in Bolivia, one of the richest silver mining centers and most populous cities in colonial Spanish America. (p. 479) |
| printing press | A mechanical device for transferring text or graphics from a woodblock or type to paper using ink. Presses using movable type first appeared in Europe in about 1450. See also movable type. (p. 409) |
| Protestant Reformation | Religious reform movement within the Latin Christian Church beginning in 1519. It resulted in the 'protesters' forming several new Christian denominations, including the Lutheran and Reformed Churches and the Church of England. (p. 446) |
| proxy wars | During the Cold War, local or regional wars in which the superpowers armed, trained, and financed the combatants. (p. 855) |
| Ptolemies | Descendents of Macedonian officers under Alexander. Gov't largely took over the system created by Egyptian pharaohs to extract the wealth of the land, rewarding Greeks and Hellenized non-Greeks serving in the military and administration. (p. 138) |
| Puritans | English Protestant dissenters who believed that God predestined souls to heaven or hell before birth. They founded Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. (p. 487) |
| Qin | A people and state in the Wei Valley of eastern China that conquered rival states and created the first Chinese empire (221-206 B.C.E.). The Qin ruler, Shi Huangdi, standardized many features of Chinese society and enslaved subjects. (163) |
| Qing Empire | Empire established in China by Manchus who overthrew the Ming Empire in 1644. At various times the Qing also controlled Manchuria, Mongolia, Turkestan, and Tibet. The last Qing emperor was overthrown in 1911. (p. 556) |
| Quran | Book composed of divine revelations made to the Prophet Muhammad between ca. 610 and his death in 632; the sacred text of the religion of Islam. (p. 232) |
| railroads | Networks of iron (later steel) rails on which steam (later electric or diesel) locomotives pulled long trains at high speeds. First railroads were built in England in the 1830s. Success caused a railroad building boom lasting into the 20th Century (704) |
| Rajputs | Members of a mainly Hindu warrior caste from northwest India. The Mughal emperors drew most of their Hindu officials from this caste, and Akbar I married a Rajput princess. (p. 537) |
| Ramesses II | A long-lived ruler of New Kingdom Egypt (r. 1290-1224 B.C.E.). He reached an accommodation with the Hittites of Anatolia after a standoff in battle at Kadesh in Syria. He built on a grand scale throughout Egypt. (p. 68) |
| Rashid al-Din | Adviser to the Il-khan ruler Ghazan, who converted to Islam on Rashid's advice. (p. 334) |
| recaptives | Africans rescued by Britain's Royal Navy from the illegal slave trade of the nineteenth century and restored to free status. (p. 655) |
| reconquest of Iberia | Beginning in the eleventh century, military campaigns by various Iberian Christian states to recapture territory taken by Muslims. In 1492 the last Muslim ruler was defeated, and Spain and Portugal emerged as united kingdoms. (p. 414) |
| Renaissance | A period of intense artistic and intellectual activity, said to be a 'rebirth' of Greco-Roman culture. Usually divided into an Italian Renaissance, from roughly the mid-fourteenth to mid-fifteenth century, and a Northern Renaissance 1400-1600 (445) |
| Renaissance (European) | A period of intense artistic and intellectual activity, said to be a 'rebirth' of Greco-Roman culture. Usually divided into an Italian Renaissance, from roughly the mid-fourteenth to mid-fifteenth century, and a Northern trans-Alpine Renaissance (407,445) |
| Revolutions of 1848 | Democratic and nationalist revolutions that swept across Europe. The monarchy in France was overthrown. In Germany, Austria, Italy, and Hungary the revolutions failed. (p. 595) |
| Richard Arkwright | English inventor and entrepreneur who became the wealthiest and most successful textile manufacturer of the early Industrial Revolution. He invented the water frame, a machine that, with minimal human supervision, could spin several threads at once. (604) |
| Roman Principate | A term used to characterize Roman government in the first three centuries C.E., based on the ambiguous title princeps ('first citizen') adopted by Augustus to conceal his military dictatorship. (p. 151) |
| Roman Republic | The period from 507 to 31 B.C.E., during which Rome was largely governed by the aristocratic Roman Senate. (p. 148) |
| Roman Senate | A council whose members were the heads of wealthy, landowning families. Originally an advisory body to the early kings, in the era of the Roman Republic the Senate effectively governed the Roman state and the growing empire. (148) |
| Romanization | The process by which the Latin language and Roman culture became dominant in the western provinces of the Roman Empire. Romans did not seek to Romanize them, but the subjugated people pursued it. (155) |
| Royal African Company | A trading company chartered by the English government in 1672 to conduct its merchants' trade on the Atlantic coast of Africa. (p. 507) |
| Saddam Husain | President of Iraq since 1979. Waged war on Iran in 1980-1988. In 1990 he ordered an invasion of Kuwait but was defeated by United States and its allies in the Gulf War (1991). (p. 860) |
| Safavid Empire | Iranian kingdom (1502-1722) established by Ismail Safavi, who declared Iran a Shi'ite state. (p. 531) |
| Sahel | Belt south of the Sahara; literally 'coastland' in Arabic. (p. 215) |
| Salvador Allende | Socialist politician elected president of Chile in 1970 and overthrown by the military in 1973. He died during the military attack. (p. 856) |
| samurai | Literally 'those who serve,' the hereditary military elite of the Tokugawa Shogunate. (p. 563) |
| Sandinistas | Members of a leftist coalition that overthrew the Nicaraguan dictatorship of Anastasia Somoza in 1979 and attempted to install a socialist economy. The United States financed armed opposition by the Contras. The Sandinistas lost national elections in 1990 |
| Sasanid Empire | Iranian empire, established ca. 226, with a capital in Ctesiphon, Mesopotamia. The Sasanid emperors established Zoroastrianism as the state religion. Islamic Arab armies overthrew the empire ca. 640. (p. 225) |
| satrap | The governor of a province in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, often a relative of the king. He was responsible for protection of the province and for forwarding tribute to the central administration. Enjoyed much power. (pg118) |
| scholasticism | A philosophical and theological system, associated with Thomas Aquinas, devised to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy and Roman Catholic theology in the thirteenth century. (p. 408) |
| Scientific Revolution | The intellectual movement in Europe, initially associated with planetary motion and other aspects of physics, that by the seventeenth century had laid the groundwork for modern science. (p. 466) |
| scramble for africa | Sudden wave of conquests in Africa by European powers in the 1880s and 1890s. Britain obtained most of eastern Africa, France most of northwestern Africa. Other countries (Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and Spain) acquired lesser amounts. (p. 731) |
| seasoning | An often difficult period of adjustment to new climates, disease environments, and work routines, such as that experienced by slaves newly arrived in the Americas. (p. 504) |
| Semitic | Family of related languages long spoken across parts of western Asia and northern Africa. In antiquity these languages included Hebrew, Aramaic, and Phoenician. The most widespread modern member of the Semitic family is Arabic. (p. 32) |
| Seperate Spheres | Nineteenth-century idea in Western societies that men and women, especially of the middle class, should have different roles in society: women as wives, mothers, and homemakers; men as breadwinners and participants in business and politics (711) |
| sepoy | A soldier in South Asia, especially in the service of the British. (p. 658) |
| Sepoy Rebellion | The revolt of Indian soldiers in 1857 against certain practices that violated religious customs; also known as the Sepoy Mutiny. (p. 661) |
| Serbia | The Ottoman province in the Balkans that rose up against Janissary control in the early 1800s. After World War II the central province of Yugoslavia. Serb leaders struggled to maintain dominance as the Yugoslav federation dissolved in the 1990s. (p. 676) |
| serf | In medieval Europe, an agricultural laborer legally bound to a lord's property and obligated to perform set services for the lord. In Russia some serfs worked as artisans and in factories; serfdom was not abolished there until 1861. (pp. 254, 553) |
| serfs | In medieval Europe, an agricultural laborer legally bound to a lord's property and obligated to perform set services for the lord. In Russia some serfs worked as artisans and in factories; serfdom was not abolished there until 1861. (pp. 254, 553) |
| shaft graves | A term used for the burial sites of elite members of Mycenaean Greek society in the mid-second millennium B.C.E. At the bottom of deep shafts lined with stone slabs, the bodies were laid out along with gold and bronze jewelry, implements, and weapons (75 |
| Shah Abbas I | Shah of Iran (r. 1587-1629). The most illustrious ruler of the Safavid Empire, he moved the imperial capital to Isfahan in 1598, where he erected many palaces, mosques, and public buildings. (p. 533) |
| shamanism | The practice of identifying special individuals (shamans) who will interact with spirits for the benefit of the community. Characteristic of the Korean kingdoms of the early medieval period and of early societies of Central Asia. (p. 292) |
| Shang | The dominant people in the earliest Chinese dynasty for which we have written records (ca. 1750-1027 B.C.E.). Ancestor worship, divination by means of oracle bones, and the use of bronze vessels for ritual purposes were major elements of Shang culture. |
| Shi Huangdi | Founder of the short-lived Qin dynasty and creator of the Chinese Empire (r. 221-210 B.C.E.). He is remembered for his ruthless conquests of rival states and standardization. (163) |
| Shi'ite Islam | Branch of Islam believing that God vests leadership of the community in a descendant of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali. Shi'ism is the state religion of Iran. (See also Sunnis.) (pp. 225, 531) |
| Shi'ites | Muslims belonging to the branch of Islam believing that God vests leadership of the community in a descendant of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali. Shi'ism is the state religion of Iran. (See also Sunnis.) (pp. 225, 531) |
| Siberia | The extreme northeastern sector of Asia, including the Kamchatka Peninsula and the present Russian coast of the Arctic Ocean, the Bering Strait, and the Sea of Okhotsk. (p. 551) |
| Sikhism | Indian religion founded by the guru Nanak (1469-1539) in the Punjab region of northwest India. After the Mughal emperor ordered the beheading of the ninth guru in 1675, Sikh warriors mounted armed resistance to Mughal rule. (p. 538) |
| Silk Road | Caravan routes connecting China and the Middle East across Central Asia and Iran. (p. 203) |
| Simon Bolivar | The most important military leader in the struggle for independence in South America. Born in Venezuela, he led military forces there and in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. (p. 623) |
| socialism | Socialists advocated government protection of workers from exploitation by property owners and government ownership of industries. This ideology led to the founding of socialist or labor parties in the late 1800s. (709) |
| Socrates | Athenian philosopher (ca. 470-399 B.C.E.) who shifted the emphasis of philosophical investigation from questions of natural science to ethics and human behavior. He made enemies in government by revealing the ignorance of others. (133) |
| Sokoto Caliphate | large Muslim state founded in 1809 in what is now northern Nigeria. (p. 651) |
| Solidarity | Polish trade union created in 1980 to protest working conditions and political repression. It began the nationalist opposition to communist rule that led in 1989 to the fall of communism in eastern Europe. (p. 863) |
| Song Empire | Empire in southern China (1127-1279; the 'Southern Song') while the Jin people controlled the north. Distinguished for its advances in technology, medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. (p. 285) |
| Srivijaya | A state based on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, between the seventh and eleventh centuries C.E. It amassed wealth and power by a combination of selective adaptation of Indian technologies and concepts, and control of trade routes. (192) |
| Stalingrad | City in Russia, site of a Red Army victory over the Germany army in 1942-1943. The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Today Volgograd. (p. 793) |
| Stanley, Henry Morton (1841-1904) | British-American explorer of Africa, famous for his expeditions in search of Dr. David Livingstone. Stanley helped King Leopold II establish the Congo Free State. (p. 732) |
| steam engine | A machine that turns the energy released by burning fuel into motion. Thomas Newcomen built the first crude but workable steam engine in 1712. James Watt vastly improved his device in the 1760s and 1770s. Steam power was then applied to machinery. (607) |
| steel | A form of iron that is both durable and flexible. It was first mass-produced in the 1860s and quickly became the most widely used metal in construction, machinery, and railroad equipment. (p. 701) |
| steppe | Treeless plains, especially the high, flat expanses of northern Eurasia, which usually have little rain and are covered with coarse grass. They are good lands for nomads and their herds. Good for breeding horses: essential to mongol military. (326) |
| stock exchange | A place where shares in a company or business enterprise are bought and sold. (p. 460) |
| Stone Age | The historical period characterized by the production of tools from stone and other nonmetallic substances. It was followed in some places by the Bronze Age and more generally by the Iron Age. (p. 11) |
| submarine telegraph cables | Insulated copper cables laid along the bottom of a sea or ocean for telegraphic communication. The first short cable was laid across the English Channel in 1851; the first successful transatlantic cable was laid in 1866. (pg 704) |
| sub-Saharan Africa | Portion of the African continent lying south of the Sahara. (p. 216) |
| Suez Canal | Ship canal dug across the isthmus of Suez in Egypt, designed by Ferdinand de Lesseps. It opened to shipping in 1869 and shortened the sea voyage between Europe and Asia. Its strategic importance led to the British conquest of Egypt in 1882. (p. 726) |
| Suez Canal | Ship canal dug across the isthmus of Suez in Egypt, designed by Ferdinand de Lesseps. It opened to shipping in 1869 and shortened the sea voyage between Europe and Asia. Its strategic importance led to the British conquest of Egypt in 1882. (p. 726) |
| Suleiman the Magnificent | The most illustrious sultan of the Ottoman Empire (r. 1520-1566); also known as Suleiman Kanuni, 'The Lawgiver.' He significantly expanded the empire in the Balkans and eastern Mediterranean. (p. 526) |
| Sumerians | The people who dominated southern Mesopotamia through the end of the third millennium B.C.E. They were responsible for the creation of many fundamental elements of Mesopotamian culture-such as irrigation technology, cuneiform, and religious conceptions. |
| Sun Yat-Sen | Chinese nationalist revolutionary, founder and leader of the Guomindang until his death. He attempted to create a liberal democratic political movement in China but was thwarted by military leaders. (p. 768) |
| Sunnis | Muslims belonging to branch of Islam believing that the community should select its own leadership. The majority religion in most Islamic countries. (See also Shi'ites.) (p. 225) |
| Swahili | Bantu language with Arabic loanwords spoken in coastal regions of East Africa. (p. 542) |
| Swahili Coast | East African shores of the Indian Ocean between the Horn of Africa and the Zambezi River; from the Arabic sawahil, meaning 'shores.' (p. 383) |
| Taiping Rebellion | The most destructive civil war before the twentieth century. A Christian-inspired rural rebellion threatened to topple the Qing Empire. (p. 687) |
| Tamil Kingdoms | The kingdoms of southern India, inhabited primarily by speakers of Dravidian languages, which developed in partial isolation, and somewhat differently, from the Aryan north. (185) |
| Tang Empire | Empire unifying China and part of Central Asia, founded 618 and ended 907. The Tang emperors presided over a magnificent court at their capital, Chang'an. (p. 277) |
| Tanzimat | 'Restructuring' reforms by the nineteenth-century Ottoman rulers, intended to move civil law away from the control of religious elites and make the military and the bureacracy more efficient. (p. 678) |
| tax farming | A government's use of private collectors to collect taxes. Individuals or corporations contract with the government to collect a fixed amount for the government and are permitted to keep as profit everything they collect over that amount. (p. 334) |
| technology transfer | The communication of specific plans, designs, or educational programs necessary for the use of new technologies from one society or class to another. (p. 358) |
| Tenochtitlan | Capital of the Aztec Empire, located on an island in Lake Texcoco. Its population was about 150,000 on the eve of Spanish conquest. Mexico City was constructed on its ruins. (p. 305) |
| Teotihuacan | A powerful city-state in central Mexico (100-75 C.E.). Its population was about 150,000 at its peak in 600. (p. 300) |
| terrorism | Political belief that extreme and seemingly random violence will destabilize a government and permit the terrorists to gain political advantage. Though an old technique, terrorism gained prominence in the late 20th Century (890) |
| theater-state | state that acquires prestige and power by developing attractive cultural forms and staging elaborate public ceremonies (as well as redistributing valuable resources) to attract and bind subjects to the center. (186) |
| Thebes | Capital city of Egypt and home of the ruling dynasties during the Middle and New Kingdoms. Amon, patron deity of Thebes, became one of the chief gods of Egypt. Monarchs were buried across the river in the Valley of the Kings. (p. 43) |
| Theodore Herzl | Austrian journalist and founder of the Zionist movement urging the creation of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. (p. 760) |
| Theravada Buddhism | 'Way of the Elders' branch of Buddhism followed in Sri Lanka and much of Southeast Asia. Therevada remains close to the original principles set forth by the Buddha; it downplays the importance of gods (181) |
| third century crisis | political, military, and economic turmoil that beset the Roman Empire during much of the third century C.E.: frequent changes of ruler, civil wars, barbarian invasions, decline of urban centers, and near-destruction of long-distance commerce. (157) |
| Third World | Term applied to a group of developing countries who professed nonalignment during the Cold War. (p. 846) |
| Thomas Edison | American inventor best known for inventing the electric light bulb, acoustic recording on wax cylinders, and motion pictures. (p. 703) |
| Thomas Malthus | Eighteenth-century English intellectual who warned that population growth threatened future generations because, in his view, population growth would always outstrip increases in agricultural production. (p. 867) |
| three-field system | A rotational system for agriculture in which one field grows grain, one grows legumes, and one lies fallow. It gradually replaced two-field system in medieval Europe. (p. 396) |
| Tianamen Square | Site in Beijing where Chinese students and workers gathered to demand greater political openness in 1989. The demonstration was crushed by Chinese military with great loss of life. (p. 862) |
| Timbuktu | City on the Niger River in the modern country of Mali. It was founded by the Tuareg as a seasonal camp sometime after 1000. As part of the Mali empire, Timbuktu became a major major terminus of the trans-Saharan trade and a center of Islamic learning (388 |
| Timur | Member of a prominent family of the Mongols' Jagadai Khanate, Timur through conquest gained control over much of Central Asia and Iran. He consolidated the status of Sunni Islam as orthodox, and his descendants, the Timurids, maintained his empire. (336) |
| Tiwanaku | Name of capital city and empire centered on the region near Lake Titicaca in modern Bolivia (375-1000 C.E.). (p. 315) |
| Tokugawa Shogunate | The last of the three shogunates of Japan. (p. 563) |
| Toltecs | Powerful postclassic empire in central Mexico (900-1168 C.E.). It influenced much of Mesoamerica. Aztecs claimed ties to this earlier civilization. (p. 305) |
| tophet | cemetery containing burials of young children, possibly sacrificed to the gods in times of crisis, found at Carthage and other Phoenician settlements in the western Mediterranean. (p. 108) |
| trans-Saharan Caravan Routes | Trading network linking North Africa with sub-Saharan Africa across the Sahara. (p. 210) |
| Treaty of Nanking | Treaty that concluded the Opium War. It awarded Britain a large indemnity from the Qing Empire, denied the Qing government tariff control over some of its own borders, opened additional ports of residence to Britons, and ceded Hong Kong to Britain. (685) |
| Treaty of Versailles | The treaty imposed on Germany by France, Great Britain, the United States, and other Allied Powers after World War I. It demanded that Germany dismantle its military and give up some lands to Poland. It was resented by many Germans. (p. 763) |
| Treaty Ports | Cities opened to foreign residents as a result of the forced treaties between the Qing Empire and foreign signatories. In the treaty ports, foreigners enjoyed extraterritoriality. (p. 685) |
| tributary system | A system in which, from the time of the Han Empire, countries in East and Southeast Asia not under the direct control of empires based in China nevertheless enrolled as tributary states, acknowledging the superiority of the emperors in China. (279) |
| tribute system | A system in which defeated peoples were forced to pay a tax in the form of goods and labor. This forced transfer of food, cloth, and other goods subsidized the development of large cities. An important component of the Aztec and Inca economies. (p. 307) |
| trireme | Greek and Phoenician warship of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. It was sleek and light, powered by 170 oars arranged in three vertical tiers. Manned by skilled sailors, it was capable of short bursts of speed and complex maneuvers. (p. 132) |
| tropics | Equatorial region between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. It is characterized by generally warm or hot temperatures year-round, though much variation exists due to altitude and other factors. (370) |
| Troy | Site in northwest Anatolia, overlooking the Hellespont strait, where archaeologists have excavated a series of Bronze Age cities. One of these may have been destroyed by Greeks ca. 1200 B.C.E., as reported in Homer's epic poems. (p. 76) |
| tsar | From Latin caesar, this Russian title for a monarch was first used in reference to a Russian ruler by Ivan III (r. 1462-1505). (pp. 340, 551) |
| tsar | From Latin caesar, this Russian title for a monarch was first used in reference to a Russian ruler by Ivan III (r. 1462-1505). (pp. 340, 551) |
| Tulip Period | Last years of the reign of Ottoman sultan Ahmed III, during which European styles and attitudes became briefly popular in Istanbul. (p. 530) |
| Tupac Amaru II | Member of Inca aristocracy who led a rebellion against Spanish authorities in Peru in 1780-1781. He was captured and executed with his wife and other members of his family. (p. 493) |
| Uigurs | A group of Turkic-speakers who controlled their own centralized empire from 744 to 840 in Mongolia and Central Asia. (p. 284) |
| ulama | Muslim religious scholars. From the ninth century onward, the primary interpreters of Islamic law and the social core of Muslim urban societies. (p. 238) |
| Umayyad Caliphate | First hereditary dynasty of Muslim caliphs (661 to 750). From their capital at Damascus, the Umayyads ruled an empire that extended from Spain to India. Overthrown by the Abbasid Caliphate. (p. 232) |
| umma | The community of all Muslims. A major innovation against the background of seventh-century Arabia, where traditionally kinship rather than faith had determined membership in a community. (p. 231) |
| United Nations | International organization founded in 1945 to promote world peace and cooperation. It replaced the League of Nations. (p. 833) |
| Universal Declaration of Human Rights | A 1946 United Nations covenant binding signatory nations to the observance of specified rights. (p. 892) |
| universities | Degree-granting institutions of higher learning. Those that appeared in Latin West from about 1200 onward became the model of all modern universities. (p. 407) |
| Urdu | A Persian-influenced literary form of Hindi written in Arabic characters and used as a literary language since the 1300s. (p. 388) |
| utopian socialism | Philosophy introduced by the Frenchman Charles Fourier in the early nineteenth century. Utopian socialists hoped to create humane alternatives to industrial capitalism by building self-sustaining communities whose inhabitants would work cooperatively (616 |
| variolation | The technique of enhancing immunity by exposing patients to dried mucous taken from those already infected. (p. 559) |
| varna/jati | Two categories of social identity of great importance in Indian history. Varna are the four major social divisions: the Brahmin priest class, the Kshatriya warrior/administrator class, the Vaishya merchant/farmer class, and the Shudra laborer class. (177) |
| Vasco da Gama | Portuguese explorer. In 1497-1498 he led the first naval expedition from Europe to sail to India, opening an important commercial sea route. (p. 428) |
| vassal | In medieval Europe, a sworn supporter of a king or lord committed to rendering specified military service to that king or lord. (p. 256) |
| Vedas | Early Indian sacred 'knowledge'-the literal meaning of the term-long preserved and communicated orally by Brahmin priests and eventually written down. (175) |
| Victorian Age | Reign of Queen Victoria of Great Britain (1837-1901). The term is also used to describe late-nineteenth-century society, with its rigid moral standards and sharply differentiated roles for men and women and for middle-class and working-class people (711) |
| Vietnam War | Conflict pitting North Vietnam and South Vietnamese communist guerrillas against the South Vietnamese government, aided after 1961 by the United States. (p. 838) |
| Vladimir Lenin | Leader of the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party. He lived in exile in Switzerland until 1917, then returned to Russia to lead the Bolsheviks to victory during the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed. (p. 761) |
| Wari | Andean civilization culturally linked to Tiwanaku, perhaps beginning as colony of Tiwanaku. (p. 314) |
| Warsaw Pact | The 1955 treaty binding the Soviet Union and countries of eastern Europe in an alliance against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (p. 836) |
| water wheel | A mechanism that harnesses the energy in flowing water to grind grain or to power machinery. It was used in many parts of the world but was especially common in Europe from 1200 to 1900. (p. 398) |
| Western Front | A line of trenches and fortifications in World War I that stretched without a break from Switzerland to the North Sea. Scene of most of the fighting between Germany, on the one hand, and France and Britain, on the other. (p. 757) |
| witch-hunt | The pursuit of people suspected of witchcraft, especially in northern Europe in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (p. 464) |
| Woodrow Wilson | President of the United States (1913-1921) and the leading figure at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. He was unable to persuade the U.S. Congress to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations. (p. 762) |
| World Bank | A specialized agency of the United Nations that makes loans to countries for economic development, trade promotion, and debt consolidation. Its formal name is the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. (p. 834) |
| WTO | An international body established in 1995 to foster and bring order to international trade. (p. 889) |
| Xiongnu | A confederation of nomadic peoples living beyond the northwest frontier of ancient China. Chinese rulers tried a variety of defenses and stratagems to ward off these 'barbarians,' as they called them, and dispersed them in 1st Century. (168) |
| Yamagata Arimoto | One of the leaders of the Meiji Restoration. (p. 722) |
| Yi Kingdom | The Yi dynasty ruled Korea from the fall of the Koryo kingdom to the colonization of Korea by Japan. (p. 362) |
| yin/yang | In Chinese belief, complementary factors that help to maintain the equilibrium of the world. Yin is associated with masculine, light, and active qualities; yang with feminine, dark, and passive qualities. (p. 63) |
| Yongle | Reign period of Zhu Di (1360-1424), the third emperor of the Ming Empire (r. 1403-1424).Sponsored the building of the Forbidden City, a huge encyclopedia project, the expeditions of Zheng He, and the reopening of China's borders to trade and travel (355) |
| Yuan Empire | Empire created in China and Siberia by Khubilai Khan. (p. 349) |
| Yuan Shikai | Chinese general and first president of the Chinese Republic (1912-1916). He stood in the way of the democratic movement led by Sun Yat-sen. (p. 768) |
| Zen | The Japanese word for a branch of Mahayana Buddhism based on highly disciplined meditation. It is known in Sanskrit as dhyana, in Chinese as chan, and in Korean as son. (p. 289) |
| Zheng He | An imperial eunuch and Muslim, entrusted by the Ming emperor Yongle with a series of state voyages that took his gigantic ships through the Indian Ocean, from Southeast Asia to Africa. (pp. 355, 422) |
| Zhou | The people and dynasty that took over the dominant position in north China from the Shang and created the concept of the Mandate of Heaven to justify their rule. Remembered as prosperous era in Chinese History. (p. 61) |
| ziggurat | massive pyramidal stepped tower made of mudbricks. It is associated with religious complexes in ancient Mesopotamian cities, but its function is unknown. (p. 37) |
| Zoroastrianism | A religion originating in ancient Iran with the prophet Zoroaster. It centered on a single benevolent deity-Ahuramazda, Emphasizing truth-telling, purity, and reverence for nature, the religion demanded that humans choose sides between good and evil (120) |
| Zulu | A people of modern South Africa whom King Shaka united beginning in 1818. (p. 649) |
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