AP World 1570-1900

American Revolution

Successful rebellion against British rule conducted by the European settlers in the thirteen colonies of British North America, starting in 1775; a conservative revolution whose success preserved property rights and class distinctions but established republican government in place of monarchy

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

Charter of political liberties, drawn up by the French National Assembly in 1789, that proclaimed the equal rights of all male citizens; the declaration gave expression to the essential outlook of the French Revolution and became the preamble to the French constitution completed in 1791

French Revolution

Massive upheaval of French society (1789–1815) that overthrew the monarchy, ended the legal privileges of the nobility, and for a time outlawed the Catholic Church. The French Revolution proceeded in stages, becoming increasingly radical and violent until the period known as the Terror in 1793–1794, after which it became more conservative, especially under Napoleon Bonaparte (r. 1799–1815)

Maximilien Robespierre

(1758-1794); Leader of the French Revolution during the Terror; his Committee of Public Safety executed tens of thousands of enemies of the revolution until he was arrested and guillotined

Napoleon Bonaparte

French head of state and general (r. 1799–1815); Napoleon preserved much of the French Revolution under a military dictatorship and was responsible for the spread of revolutionary ideals through his conquest of much of Europe

Haitian Revolution

The only fully successful slave rebellion in world history; the uprising in the French Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue (later renamed Haiti, which means “mountainous” or “rugged” in the native Taino language) was sparked by the French Revolution and led to the establishment of an independent state after a long and bloody war (1791–1804). Its first leader was Toussaint Louverture, a former enslaved person

Latin American revolutions

Series of risings in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America (1808–1825) that established the independence of new states from European rule but that for the most part retained the privileges of the elites despite efforts at more radical social change by the lower classes

Hidalgo-Morelos rebellion

Socially radical peasant rebellion in Mexico (1810) led by the priests Miguel Hidalgo and José Morelos

Tupac Amaru

Leader of a Native American rebellion in Peru in the early 1780s, claiming the last Inca emperor as an ancestor

Great Jamaica Revolt

Slave rebellion in the British West Indies (1831–1832) in which around 60,000 enslaved people attacked several hundred plantations; inspired by the Haitian Revolution, the discontent of the enslaved population and the brutality of the British response helped sway the British public to support the abolition of slavery

abolitionist movement

An international movement that condemned slavery as morally repugnant and contributed much to ending slavery in the Western world during the nineteenth century; the movement was especially prominent in Britain and the United States beginning in the late eighteenth century

Nationalism

The focusing of citizens’ loyalty on the notion that they are part of a “nation” that merits an independent political life, with a unique culture, territory, and common experience; first became a prominent element of political culture in nineteenth-century Europe and the Americas

Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Written in 1792 by Mary Wollstonecraft, this tract was one of the earliest expressions of feminist consciousness

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Leading figure of the early women’s rights movement in the United States. At the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, she drafted a statement paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence, stating that men and women were created equal

Maternal feminism

Movement that claimed that women have value in society not because of an abstract notion of equality but because women have a distinctive and vital role as mothers; its exponents argued that women have the right to intervene in civil and political life because of their duty to watch over the future of their children

steam engine

The great breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution, the coal-fired steam engine provided an almost limitless source of power and could be used to drive any number of machines as well as locomotives and ships; the introduction of the steam engine allowed a hitherto unimagined increase in productivity and made the Industrial Revolution possible

British textile industry

The site of the initial technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century Britain, where multiple innovations transformed cotton textile production, resulting in an enormous increase in output

middle-class society

British social stratum developed in the nineteenth century, composed of small businessmen, doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, and other professionals required in an industrial society; politically liberal, they favored constitutional government, private property, free trade, and social reform within limits; had ideas of thrift, hard work, rigid morality, “respectability,” and cleanliness

ideology of domesticity/cult of domesticity

A set of ideas and values that defined the ideal role of middle-class women in nineteenth-century Europe, focusing their activity on homemaking, child rearing, charitable endeavors, and “refined” activities as the proper sphere for women

lower middle class

Social stratum that developed in Britain in the nineteenth century and that consisted of people employed in the service sector as clerks, salespeople, secretaries, police officers, and the like; by 1900, this group made up about 20 percent of Britain’s population

laboring classes

The majority of Britain’s nineteenth-century population, which included manual workers in the mines, ports, factories, construction sites, workshops, and farms of Britain’s industrializing and urbanizing society; this class suffered the most and at least initially gained the least from the transformations of the Industrial Revolution

Karl Marx

1818-1883; The most influential proponent of socialism, Marx was a German expatriate in England who predicted working-class revolution as the key to creating an ideal communist future

Labour Party

British working-class political party established in the 1890s and dedicated to reforms and a peaceful transition to socialism, in time providing a viable alternative to the revolutionary emphasis of Marxism

socialism in the United States

Fairly minor political movement in the United States; at its height in 1912, it gained 6 percent of the vote for its presidential candidate

Progressives

Followers of an American political movement (progressivism) in the period around 1900 that advocated reform measures such as wages-and-hours legislation to correct the ills of industrialization

Russian Revolution of 1905

Spontaneous rebellion that erupted in Russia after the country’s defeat at the hands of Japan in 1905; the revolution was suppressed, but it forced the government to make substantial reforms

caudillos

Military strongmen who seized control of a government in nineteenth-century Latin America, and were frequently replaced

Latin American export boom

Large-scale increase in Latin American exports (mostly raw materials and foodstuffs) to industrializing countries in the second half of the nineteenth century, made possible by major improvements in shipping; the boom mostly benefited the upper and middle classes

Mexican Revolution

Long and bloody war (1910–1920) in which Mexican reformers from the middle class joined with workers and peasants to overthrow the dictator Porfirio Díaz and create a new, much more democratic political order

dependent development

Term used to describe Latin America’s economic growth in the nineteenth century, which was largely financed by foreign capital and dependent on European and North American prosperity and decisions; also viewed as a new form of colonialism

Taiping Uprising

Massive Chinese rebellion against the ruling Qing dynasty that devastated much of the country between 1850 and 1864; it was based on the millenarian teachings of Hong Xiuquan

Opium Wars

Two wars fought between Western powers and China (1840–1842 and 1856–1858) after China tried to restrict the importation of foreign goods, especially opium; China lost both wars and was forced to make major concessions

Commissioner Lin Zexu

Royal official charged with ending the opium trade in China; his concerted efforts to seize and destroy opium imports provoked the Opium Wars. (pron. lin zuh-SHOO)

unequal treaties

Series of nineteenth-century treaties in which China made major concessions to Western powers

informal empires

Term commonly used to describe areas that were dominated by Western powers in the nineteenth century but retained their own governments and a measure of independence (e.g., China)

self-strengthening movement

China’s program of internal reform in the 1860s and 1870s, based on vigorous application of traditional principles and limited borrowing from the West

Boxer Uprising

Antiforeign movement (1898–1901) led by Chinese militia organizations, in which large numbers of Europeans and Chinese Christians were killed. It resulted in military intervention by Western powers and the imposition of a huge payment as punishment

Chinese revolution of 1911-1912

The collapse of China’s imperial order, officially at the hands of organized revolutionaries but for the most part under the weight of the troubles that had overwhelmed the imperial government for the previous century

“the sick man of Europe”

Western Europe’s description of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, based on the empire’s economic and military weakness and its apparent inability to prevent the shrinking of its territory

Tanzimat

Important reform measures undertaken in the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1839; the term “Tanzimat” means “reorganization”

Young Ottomans

Group of would-be reformers in the mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire that included lower-level officials, military officers, and writers; they urged the extension of westernizing reforms to the political system

Sultan Abd al-Hamid II

Ottoman sultan (r. 1876–1909) who accepted a reform constitution but then quickly suppressed it, ruling as a despotic monarch for the rest of his long reign

Young Turks

Movement of Turkish military and civilian elites that advocated a militantly secular public life and a Turkish national identity; came to power through a coup in 1908

Tokugawa Japan

A period of internal peace in Japan (1600–1850) that prevented civil war but did not fully unify the country; led by military rulers, or shoguns, from the Tokugawa family, who established a “closed door” policy toward European encroachments

Meiji Restoration

The political takeover of Japan in 1868 by a group of young samurai from southern Japan. The samurai eliminated the shogun and claimed they were restoring to power the young emperor, Meiji. The new government was committed to saving Japan from foreign domination by drawing upon what the modern West had to offer to transform Japanese society

Russo-Japanese War

1904-1905; Fought over rival ambitions in Korea and Manchuria, this conflict ended in a Japanese victory, establishing Japan as a formidable military competitor in East Asia. The war marked the first time that an Asian country defeated a European power in battle, and it precipitated the Russian Revolution of 1905

scientific racism

A new kind of racism that emerged in the nineteenth century that increasingly used the prestige and apparatus of science to support European racial prejudices and preferences

“civilizing mission”

A European understanding of empire that emphasized Europeans’ duty to “civilize inferior races” by bringing Christianity, good government, education, work discipline, and production for the market to colonized peoples, while suppressing “native customs,” such as polygamy, that ran counter to Western ways of living

social Darwinism

An outlook that suggested that European dominance inevitably led to the displacement or destruction of backward peoples or “unfit” races; this view made imperialism, war, and aggression seem both natural and progressive

scramble for Africa

The process by which European countries partitioned the continent of Africa among themselves in the period 1875–1900

settler colonies

Imperial territories in which Europeans settled permanently in substantial numbers. Examples include British North America, Portuguese Brazil, Spanish Mexico and Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, and South Africa

Indian Rebellion of 1857-1858

Massive uprising of parts of India against British rule caused by the introduction to the colony’s military forces of a new cartridge smeared with animal fat from pigs and cows, which caused strife among Muslims, who regarded pigs as unclean, and Hindus, who venerated cows. It came to express a variety of grievances against the colonial order