| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Ideology | the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group. |
| Capitalism | an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth. |
| Democracy | government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system. |
| Fascism | (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism. |
| Feminism | the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men. |
| Protestantism | the religion of Protestants |
| Roman Catholicism | the faith, practice, and system of government of the Roman Catholic Church |
| Totalitarianism | absolute control by the state or a governing branch of a highly centralized institution. |
| The Enlightenment | a philosophical movement of the 18th century, characterized by belief in the power of human reason and by innovations in political, religious, and educational doctrine. |
| Political spectrum | a way of visualizing different political positions. It does this by placing them upon one or more geometric axes symbolising political dimensions that it models as being independent of one another. |
| Liberal | (often initial capital letter) noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform. |
| Conservative | disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change. |
| Socialism | a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole. |
| Communism | a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state. |
| Nationalism | the policy or doctrine of asserting the interests of one's own nation, viewed as separate from the interests of other nations or the common interests of all nations. |
| Anarchism | a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty. |
| Mao Zedong | 1893-1976, founder of the People's Republic of China. Mao was one of the most prominent Communist theoreticians and his ideas on revolutionary struggle and guerrilla warfare have been extremely influential, especially among Third World revolutionaries. |
| Cultural Revolution | a radical sociopolitical movement in China c1966–71, led by Mao Zedong and characterized by military rule, terrorism, purges, restructuring of the educational system |
| Ayatollah Khomeini | 1900-1989, Iranian Shiite religious leader. Educated in Islam at home and in theological schools, in the 1950s he was designated ayatollah, a supreme religious leader, in the Iranian Shiite community |
| Winston Churchill | a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. A noted statesman, orator and strategist, Churchill was also a soldier in the British Army. He has been studied to a unique extent as part of modern British and world history. A prolific author, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his own historical writings. |
| Adolf Hitler | 1889-1945, founder and leader of National Socialism (Nazism), and German dictator |
| Fidel Castro | 1926-, Cuban revolutionary, premier of Cuba (1959-76), president of the Council of State and of the Council of Ministers (1976-). As a student leader and lawyer, Castro opposed the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar. On July 26, 1953, he led an unsuccessful attack on an army post in Santiago de Cuba and was imprisoned. Released (1955) in a general amnesty, he went to Mexico where he organized the 26th of July movement. In Dec., 1956, he landed in SW Oriente prov. with a small group of rebels. Castro and 11 others, including his brother Raúl and Ernesto "Che" Guevara, survived the initial encounter and hid in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. There, they organized a guerrilla campaign that eventually toppled the Batista regime on Jan. 1, 1959. |
| Juan Peron | an Argentine general and politician, elected three times as President of Argentina and serving from 1946 to 1955 and from 1973 to 1974. |
| Egalitarian | the moral doctrine that people should be treated as equals, in some respect. Generally it applies to being held equal under the law, the church, and society at large |
| Free Market | an economic system in which prices and wages are determined by unrestricted competition between businesses, without government regulation or fear of monopolies. |
| Liberalism | a political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavor, and governmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties |
| Individualism | a social theory advocating the liberty, rights, or independent action of the individual |
| Imperialism | the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies |
| Agrarian | a person who favors the equal division of landed property and the advancement of agricultural groups |
| Industrial Revolution | the totality of the changes in economic and social organization that began about 1760 in England and later in other countries, characterized chiefly by the replacement of hand tools with power-driven machines, as the power loom and the steam engine, and by the concentration of industry in large establishments. |
| Globalization | to extend to other or all parts of the globe; make worldwide |
| Bourgeoisie | the class that, in contrast to the proletariat or wage-earning class, is primarily concerned with property values |
| French Revolution | the revolution that began in 1789, overthrew the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons and the system of aristocratic privileges, and ended with Napoleon's overthrow of the Directory and seizure of power in 1799 |
| American Revolution | the war between Great Britain and its American colonies, 1775–83, by which the colonies won their independence. |
| Evolution | change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift |
| Benjamin Franklin | 1706–90, American statesman, diplomat, author, scientist, and inventor |
| Galileo | 1564–1642, Italian physicist and astronomer |
| Karl Marx | 1818–83, German economist, philosopher, and socialist |
| Simon Bolivar | 1783–1830, Venezuelan statesman: leader of revolt of South American colonies against Spanish rule. |
| John Locke | 1632-1704, English philosopher, founder of British empiricism. Locke summed up the Enlightenment in his belief in the middle class and its right to freedom of conscience and right to property, in his faith in science, and in his confidence in the goodness of humanity |
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau | French philosopher and writer born in Switzerland; believed that the natural goodness of man was warped by society; ideas influenced the French Revolution (1712-1778) |
| Islam | the religious faith of Muslims, based on the words and religious system founded by the prophet Muhammad and taught by the Koran, the basic principle of which is absolute submission to a unique and personal god, Allah |
| Caliphate | the rulership of Islam; caliph, the spiritual head and temporal ruler of the Islamic state |
| Adam Smith | (1723–90) Economist and philosopher, born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, E Scotland, UK. He studied at Glasgow and Oxford, lectured in Edinburgh, and became professor of logic at Glasgow (1751), but took up the chair of moral philosophy the following year |
Combine with other sets
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace
!