History of Global Science and Technology Lecture Review

Flashcards covering vocabulary and key concepts from medieval science, technology, and global intellectual history including Byzantium, China, India, the Islamic world, Africa, the Americas, and Europe.

Inclusion and exclusion

The social dynamic where every boundary of collective belonging inherently establishes both who is recognized as an insider and who is cast out.

Nationalism

A modern political ideology emerging in the late 18th and 19th centuries centered on identifying with a sovereign nation and cultivating an 'us versus them' group consciousness.

Imagined community

A socially constructed collective identity where individuals feel linked to distant strangers through shared language, territory, culture, history, and customs.

Imperialism

A policy of state expansion rooted in the conviction that a powerful nation must conquer foreign territories to extend its dominion and prestige.

Globalization

The progressive integration and interconnectedness of worldwide economic, social, and political systems.

First Industrial Revolution

The economic transition beginning around 1750 that shifted rural, agrarian societies into factory-driven urban manufacturing centers.

Transportation Revolution

The rapid expansion of canals, steamboats, railroads, and telegraph lines between the 1820s and 1840s that replaced animal and wind power.

Market economy

An agricultural and commercial system in which producers cultivate surplus goods for cash exchange rather than basic subsistence.

Haves and have-nots

The widening socioeconomic divide produced by industrialization between an enriched capitalist class and an impoverished working population.

Steam engine

The mechanical prime mover perfected by James Watt that powered locomotives, steamboats, factories, and mechanized printing presses.

Cotton gin

Eli Whitney's mechanical separator that accelerated the processing of raw cotton, revitalizing the expansion of Southern slavery.

Mechanical reaper

Cyrus McCormick's horse-drawn harvesting machine that dramatically increased wheat yields and pioneered purchasing agricultural machinery on credit.

Interchangeable parts

Standardized components manufactured to identical specifications, facilitating rapid assembly and field repair during the Market Revolution.

Revolver

Samuel Colt's six-shot firearm that allowed multiple discharges without reloading, fundamentally transforming personal combat.

Railroads

The transformative infrastructure of the 19th century that spurred urban growth, expanded domestic markets, necessitated standardized time zones, and accelerated news distribution.

Introduction of 'Technology' into English

Occurred in 1829, marking a cultural shift toward viewing innovation as an inherently positive force for human progress.

Louis Pasteur

French scientist who formulated the germ theory of disease, demonstrating that infections stem from microorganisms rather than moral fault and prompting sterile surgical standards.

Traditional society

A pre-modern social order characterized by rural agrarian life, peasant-noble hierarchies, divine-right monarchy, kinship primacy, and resistance to change.

Society as a body

The traditional metaphor asserting that social classes possess fixed organic functions, requiring each person to accept their assigned station without seeking upward mobility.

Liberalism

A political philosophy championing individual autonomy, natural rights, legal equality, economic competition, and private property against traditional hierarchy.

John Locke

Enlightenment thinker regarded as the father of liberalism, arguing that individuals possess fundamental natural rights derived from nature rather than governmental authority.

"The Mob"

The term used by liberal thinkers to designate unpropertied working masses whom they feared would use political suffrage to confiscate and redistribute private wealth.

Liberal mechanisms to restrain "The Mob"

Institutional checks such as property-based voting requirements, indirect elections, constitutional checks and balances, and strong executive authority.

Democratic movements (19th century)

Working-class factions that challenged wealth concentration, advocating for universal suffrage, extensive redistribution of wealth, and restrained executive power.

Three modern visions of progress

Traditional order through hierarchy; liberal progress through individual competition and property rights; and democratic progress through socioeconomic equality.

Age of Empire

The intense burst of European imperialist expansion spanning from 1880 to 1914 that brought large portions of the globe under direct colonial subjugation.

European partition of Africa (1875 vs. 1895)

A rapid imperial expansion where European colonial control over the continent surged from $10\%$ to $90\%$ in two decades.

Proportion of the globe under European or American control by 1914

Approximately four-fifths ($80\%$) of the entire planet.

Industrial catalyst of imperialism

Technological, transport, and weapons supremacy that drove industrialized powers to dominate and exploit non-industrialized regions.

Economic motives for imperialism

The imperial drive to acquire raw natural resources, protect strategic maritime chokepoints, control agricultural commodities, and secure captive export markets.

Industrial need for foreign markets

The structural imperative for manufacturing economies to sell mass-produced consumer goods and established commercial brands abroad to prevent domestic overproduction.

Nationalist justification for imperial conquest

The belief that foreign populations were cultural outsiders, thereby legitimizing their military subjugation or elimination in the name of national greatness.

Social Darwinism

The pseudoscientific application of evolutionary theories to human societies, asserting that racial or national groups are ranked along a biological hierarchy of fitness.

Charles Darwin's 1859 landmark work

On the Origin of Species, which introduced the biological principles of evolution, natural selection, and environmental adaptation.

Herbert Spencer

Social theorist who coined the term 'survival of the fittest,' arguing that human inequalities and cultural differences are rooted in biological laws.

Function of Social Darwinism in empire building

Provided intellectual and moral justification for domestic class hierarchies and foreign colonial exploitation, operating as pseudoscientific racism.

19th-century Spanish imperial decline

The waning of Spain's global standing as it fell behind industrial competitors and lost vast overseas colonies to independence revolts.

Strategic importance of Cuba to 19th-century Spain

Served as the economic center of the lucrative sugar trade and stood as the most vital surviving symbol of the historic Spanish Empire.

Drivers of 1890s U.S. imperialism

Surplus industrial manufacturing, geopolitical desires to project national influence, ideological Social Darwinism, and sensationalist mass media.

Role of mass media in the Spanish-American War

Newspaper publishers used sensationalized 'yellow journalism' to inflame public sentiment and manipulate national support for war.

Spanish-American War

The brief 1898 war, termed 'a splendid little war,' that ended Spanish colonial rule in the Americas and established the United States as an overseas imperial power.

U.S. postwar presence in Cuba

A 26-year military and political occupation that concluded with the formal acquisition of a perpetual naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

Territorial gains of the U.S. in 1898

Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, the Guano Islands, and the simultaneous annexation of Hawaii.

Guano Islands

Oceanic islands annexed by the United States to extract avian droppings ('white gold'), an essential source of agricultural fertilizer.

Status of the Philippines prior to U.S. arrival

Filipino nationalists had already declared formal independence from Spain in 1897 and established their own governing republic.

U.S. acquisition method in the Philippines

American forces allied with Filipino insurgents to dismantle Spanish control, then raised the American flag and formally annexed the islands instead of granting independence.

William McKinley's justification for annexing the Philippines

The paternalistic claim that Americans had a moral duty to 'uplift, civilize, and Christianize' Filipinos who were deemed unfit for self-government.

U.S. counter-insurgency tactics in the Philippines

Widespread military atrocities, including the burning of villages, executions of non-combatants, torture such as the 'water cure,' and forced reconcentration.

Philippine reconcentration camps

Forced detention zones established by U.S. commanders where starvation and epidemics caused a civilian death rate of approximately $20\%$.

General Jacob Smith

U.S. general who directed the 1901 Samar pacification campaign, issuing orders to shoot and kill any Filipino male over the age of eleven.

Philippine-American War

The brutal armed conflict lasting from January 1899 to July 4, 1902, waged to crush the Filipino struggle for national independence.

Casualties of the Philippine-American War

Resulted in roughly $4{,}000$ U.S. military fatalities, $16{,}000$ Filipino insurgent deaths, and between $500{,}000$ and $1{,}000{,}000$ Filipino civilian casualties.

"The Long Fuse"

The systemic structural origins of World War I: virulent nationalism, imperial competition, militarism, internal class dissent, rigid mutual alliances, and inflexible railway mobilization plans.

Nationalism's destabilizing effect before WWI

Ethnic minority groups held within multi-ethnic empires agitated for sovereign states, creating widespread regional unrest described as a political contagion.

Militarism prior to WWI

The escalation of standing armies and the Anglo-German naval arms race, which saw European military budgets double between 1890 and 1914.

Diplomatic consequence of extreme military expenditures

Vast defense spending created internal pressure to employ armaments in combat to politically justify their immense domestic expense.

European domestic unrest before 1914

Intense internal class friction, including general strikes across France in 1906, major socialist electoral victories in Germany in 1912, and violent strikes across Russia from 1912 to 1914.

Elite perception of foreign war before 1914

Viewed by governing rulers as an effective mechanism to suppress domestic working-class agitation and restore patriotic cohesion through a 'splendid little war.'

Rigid European alliance network

A web of mutual defense treaties and secret pacts that transformed localized regional disputes into an unavoidable continent-wide conflagration.

Inflexible military mobilization technology

Complex railroad transport schedules that, once activated, could not be halted or redirected without crippling national defense.

Spark of World War I

The assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.

Gavrilo Princip

The Serbian nationalist militant who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand to advance the independence of South Slavs from Austro-Hungarian rule.

1914 mobilization chain reaction

Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia prompted full Russian mobilization, which activated German war commitments and plunged Europe into war.

Entente Powers (WWI)

The military coalition consisting primarily of the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro.

Central Powers (WWI)

The wartime alliance composed of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire.

Initial expectations of WWI's duration

Both opposing alliances were convinced the war would be short, heroic, and decided in their favor by Christmas.

Schlieffen Plan

Germany's strategic offensive to rapidly defeat France by invading neutral Belgium before wheeling east to confront the Russian army, which failed at the Battle of the Marne.

Trench warfare (1914–1917)

A devastating, immobile Western Front stalemate characterized by opposing networks of fortified ditches, artillery barrages, and futile infantry assaults.

Battle of Verdun (1916)

A ten-month battle of attrition between French and German armies that resulted in over $600{,}000$ total casualties without achieving any decisive strategic advantage.

Battle of the Somme (1916)

A bloody Allied Western Front offensive that caused over $1{,}000{,}000$ total casualties in exchange for only a few square miles of ground.

World War I as the "first modern war"

The large-scale battlefield deployment of industrial technologies, including machine guns, airplanes, tanks, submarines, dirigibles, barbed wire, and poison gases.

World War I casualty toll

Approximately $10{,}000{,}000$ military dead, $7{,}000{,}000$ civilian fatalities, $20{,}000{,}000$ wounded, and an overall combatant casualty rate of $58\%$.

1918 Influenza Pandemic (Spanish Flu)

A worldwide viral outbreak that infected all continents, killing roughly $50{,}000{,}000$ people, or $3\%$ of the global population.

U.S. entry into World War I

Occurred in April 1917, framed by President Woodrow Wilson as a democratic moral crusade to 'make the world safe for democracy.'

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

The March 1918 separate peace accord signed by the new Bolshevik government that officially withdrew Russia from World War I at the cost of substantial territory.

End of World War I

Prompted by German naval mutinies, home-front economic exhaustion, and the abdication of the Kaiser, resulting in the signing of the armistice on November 11, 1918.

Expansion of wartime executive authority

National governments assumed unprecedented centralized powers to coordinate industry, direct manual labor, manage transport, and suppress political dissent.

Economic winners of WWI

Industrial manufacturing corporations producing munitions, aircraft, and armaments, which gained influence as the traditional landed nobility lost economic ground.

Organized labor during WWI

Trade unions expanded their power and membership, utilizing widespread strikes to secure higher real wages amidst wartime labor shortages.

Great Migration

The demographic relocation of hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the rural South to Northern urban factories, which was often met by violent white race riots.