Political Power Processes and Family Migration

Vocabulary terms and historical concepts related to geopolitical power processes, regional conflicts, and historical migration.

Choke point

A small area that has a lot of traffic and can be the flash point for political power struggles.

Shatter belt

A region full of warring political factions.

Ottoman Empire

An empire that ruled Southeastern Europe until it crumbled during the nineteenth century, leading Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria to win independence.

Suez Canal

A choke point in Egypt where the narrator's ancestors moved in the 1860s and the site where the 1973 Yom Kippur War began.

Yom Kippur War

A 1973 war that began at the Suez Canal choke point, the violence of which prompted the narrator's family to migrate to Sudan.

Treaty of friendship

A treaty signed between India and the Soviet Union after India broke relations with the United States.

Indian Emergency

A period of massive social unrest in India beginning in the mid-1970s that was brought on by rising economic and social problems.

Decolonization

A political process Macau underwent after Portugal recognized it in 1974 as a Chinese territory under Portuguese administration, initiating its return to Chinese control.