all euro key terms

thats all of them

Triple Alliance

The alliance of Austria, Germany, and Italy. Italy left the alliance when war broke out in 1914 on the grounds that Austria had launched a war of aggression.

Triple Entente

The alliance of Great Britain, France, and Russia prior to and during the First World War.

Schlieffen Plan

Failed German plan calling for a lightning attack through neutral Belgium and a quick defeat of France before turning on Russia.

total war

A war in which distinctions between the soldiers on the battlefield and civilians at home are blurred, and where the government plans and controls economic and social life in order to supply the armies at the front with supplies and weapons.

trench warfare

A type of fighting used in World War I behind rows of trenches, mines, and barbed wire; the cost in lives was staggering and the gains in territory minimal.

February Revolution

Unplanned uprisings accompanied by violent street demonstrations begun in March 1917 (old calendar February) in Petrograd, Russia, that led to the abdication of the tsar and the establishment of a provisional government.

Petrograd Soviet

A huge, fluctuating mass meeting of two to three thousand workers, soldiers, and socialist intellectuals modeled on the revolutionary soviets of 1905.

Bolsheviks

Lenin's radical, revolutionary arm of the Russian party of Marxist socialism, which successfully installed a dictatorial socialist regime in Russia.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Peace treaty signed in March 1918 between the Central Powers and Russia that ended Russian participation in World War I and ceded Russian territories containing a third of the Russian empire's population to the Central Powers.

War Communism

The application of centralized state control during the Russian civil war, in which the Bolsheviks seized grain from peasants, introduced rationing, nationalized all banks and industry, and required everyone to work.

Treaty of Versailles

The 1919 peace settlement that ended war between Germany and the Allied powers.

Fourteen Points

Wilson's 1918 peace proposal calling for open diplomacy, a reduction in armaments, freedom of commerce and trade, the establishment of the League of Nations, and national self-determination.

League of Nations

A permanent international organization, established during the 1919 Paris peace conference, designed to protect member states from aggression and avert future wars.

national self-determination

The notion that peoples should be able to choose their own national governments through democratic majority-rule elections and live free from outside interference in nation-states with clearly defined borders.

war guilt clause

An article in the Treaty of Versailles that declared that Germany (with Austria) was solely responsible for the war and had to pay reparations equal to all civilian damages caused by the fighting.

mandate system

The plan to allow Britain and France to administer former Ottoman territories, put into place after the end of the First World War.

Balfour Declaration

A 1917 British statement that declared British support of a National Home for the Jewish People in Palestine.

logical positivism

A philosophy that sees meaning in only those beliefs that can be empirically proven, and that therefore rejects most of the concerns of traditional philosophy, from the existence of God to the meaning of happiness, as nonsense.

existentialism

A philosophy that stresses the meaninglessness of existence and the importance of the individual in searching for moral values in an uncertain world.

theory of special relativity

Albert Einstein's theory that time and space are relative to the observer and that only the speed of light remains constant.

id, ego, and superego

Freudian terms to describe the three parts of the self and the basis of human behavior, which Freud saw as basically irrational.

modernism

A label given to the artistic and cultural movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were typified by radical experimentation that challenged traditional forms of artistic expression.

functionalism

The principle that buildings, like industrial products, should serve as well as possible the purpose for which they were made, without excessive ornamentation.

Bauhaus

A German interdisciplinary school of fine and applied arts that brought together many leading modern architects, designers, and theatrical innovators.

Dadaism

An artistic movement of the 1920s and 1930s that attacked all accepted standards of art and behavior and delighted in outrageous conduct.

stream-of-consciousness technique

A literary technique, found in works by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and others, that uses interior monologue — a character's thoughts and feelings as they occur — to explore the human psyche.

"modern girl"

Somewhat stereotypical image of the modern and independent working woman popular in the 1920s.

Dawes Plan

War reparations agreement that reduced Germany's yearly payments, made payment dependent on economic prosperity, and granted large U.S. loans to promote recovery.

Great Depression

A worldwide economic depression from 1929 through 1939, unique in its severity and duration and with slow and uneven recovery.

Popular Front

A short-lived New Deal-inspired alliance in France led by Léon Blum that encouraged the union movement and launched a far-reaching program of social reform.

totalitarianism

A radical dictatorship that exercises "total claims" over the beliefs and behavior of its citizens by taking control of the economic, social, intellectual, and cultural aspects of society.

fascism

A movement characterized by extreme, often expansionist nationalism, antisocialism, a dynamic and violent leader, and glorification of war and the military.

eugenics

A pseudoscientific doctrine that maintains that the selective breeding of human beings can improve the general characteristics of a national population, which helped inspire Nazi ideas about "race and space" and ultimately contributed to the Holocaust.

five-year plan

A plan launched by Stalin in 1928, and termed the "revolution from above," aimed at modernizing the Soviet Union and creating a new Communist society with new attitudes, new loyalties, and a new socialist humanity.

New Economic Policy (NEP)

Lenin's 1921 policy to re-establish limited economic freedom in an attempt to rebuild agriculture and industry in the face of economic disintegration.

collectivization of agriculture

The forcible consolidation of individual peasant farms into large state-controlled enterprises in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

kulaks

The better-off peasants who were stripped of land and livestock under Stalin and were generally not permitted to join collective farms; many of them starved or were deported to forced-labor camps for "re-education."

Black Shirts

Mussolini's private militia that destroyed socialist newspapers, union halls, and Socialist Party headquarters, eventually pushing Socialists out of the city governments of northern Italy.

Lateran Agreement

A 1929 agreement that recognized the Vatican as an independent state, with Mussolini agreeing to give the church heavy financial support in return for public support from the pope.

National Socialism

A movement and political party driven by extreme nationalism and racism, led by Adolf Hitler; its adherents ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945 and forced Europe into World War II.

Enabling Act

An act pushed through the Reichstag by the Nazis that gave Hitler absolute dictatorial power for four years.

appeasement

The British policy toward Germany prior to World War II that aimed at granting Hitler whatever he wanted, including western Czechoslovakia, in order to avoid war.

New Order

Hitler's program based on racial imperialism, which gave preferential treatment to the Nordic peoples; the French, an "inferior" Latin people, occupied a middle position, and Slavs and Jews were treated harshly as "subhumans."

Holocaust

The systematic effort of the Nazi state to exterminate all European Jews and other groups deemed racially inferior during the Second World War.

Triple Alliance

The alliance of Austria, Germany, and Italy. Italy left the alliance when war broke out in 1914 on the grounds that Austria had launched a war of aggression.

Triple Entente

The alliance of Great Britain, France, and Russia prior to and during the First World War.

Schlieffen Plan

Failed German plan calling for a lightning attack through neutral Belgium and a quick defeat of France before turning on Russia.

total war

A war in which distinctions between the soldiers on the battlefield and civilians at home are blurred, and where the government plans and controls economic and social life in order to supply the armies at the front with supplies and weapons.

trench warfare

A type of fighting used in World War I behind rows of trenches, mines, and barbed wire; the cost in lives was staggering and the gains in territory minimal.

February Revolution

Unplanned uprisings accompanied by violent street demonstrations begun in March 1917 (old calendar February) in Petrograd, Russia, that led to the abdication of the tsar and the establishment of a provisional government.

Petrograd Soviet

A huge, fluctuating mass meeting of two to three thousand workers, soldiers, and socialist intellectuals modeled on the revolutionary soviets of 1905.

Bolsheviks

Lenin's radical, revolutionary arm of the Russian party of Marxist socialism, which successfully installed a dictatorial socialist regime in Russia.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

Peace treaty signed in March 1918 between the Central Powers and Russia that ended Russian participation in World War I and ceded Russian territories containing a third of the Russian empire's population to the Central Powers.

War Communism

The application of centralized state control during the Russian civil war, in which the Bolsheviks seized grain from peasants, introduced rationing, nationalized all banks and industry, and required everyone to work.

Treaty of Versailles

The 1919 peace settlement that ended war between Germany and the Allied powers.

Fourteen Points

Wilson's 1918 peace proposal calling for open diplomacy, a reduction in armaments, freedom of commerce and trade, the establishment of the League of Nations, and national self-determination.

League of Nations

A permanent international organization, established during the 1919 Paris peace conference, designed to protect member states from aggression and avert future wars.

national self-determination

The notion that peoples should be able to choose their own national governments through democratic majority-rule elections and live free from outside interference in nation-states with clearly defined borders.

war guilt clause

An article in the Treaty of Versailles that declared that Germany (with Austria) was solely responsible for the war and had to pay reparations equal to all civilian damages caused by the fighting.

mandate system

The plan to allow Britain and France to administer former Ottoman territories, put into place after the end of the First World War.

Balfour Declaration

A 1917 British statement that declared British support of a National Home for the Jewish People in Palestine.

logical positivism

A philosophy that sees meaning in only those beliefs that can be empirically proven, and that therefore rejects most of the concerns of traditional philosophy, from the existence of God to the meaning of happiness, as nonsense.

existentialism

A philosophy that stresses the meaninglessness of existence and the importance of the individual in searching for moral values in an uncertain world.

theory of special relativity

Albert Einstein's theory that time and space are relative to the observer and that only the speed of light remains constant.

id, ego, and superego

Freudian terms to describe the three parts of the self and the basis of human behavior, which Freud saw as basically irrational.

modernism

A label given to the artistic and cultural movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which were typified by radical experimentation that challenged traditional forms of artistic expression.

functionalism

The principle that buildings, like industrial products, should serve as well as possible the purpose for which they were made, without excessive ornamentation.

Bauhaus

A German interdisciplinary school of fine and applied arts that brought together many leading modern architects, designers, and theatrical innovators.

Dadaism

An artistic movement of the 1920s and 1930s that attacked all accepted standards of art and behavior and delighted in outrageous conduct.

stream-of-consciousness technique

A literary technique, found in works by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and others, that uses interior monologue — a character's thoughts and feelings as they occur — to explore the human psyche.

"modern girl"

Somewhat stereotypical image of the modern and independent working woman popular in the 1920s.

Dawes Plan

War reparations agreement that reduced Germany's yearly payments, made payment dependent on economic prosperity, and granted large U.S. loans to promote recovery.

Great Depression

A worldwide economic depression from 1929 through 1939, unique in its severity and duration and with slow and uneven recovery.

Popular Front

A short-lived New Deal-inspired alliance in France led by Léon Blum that encouraged the union movement and launched a far-reaching program of social reform.

Renaissance

A French word meaning "rebirth," used to describe the rebirth of the culture of classical antiquity in Italy during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries.

patronage

Financial support of writers and artists by cities, groups, and individuals, often to produce specific works or works in specific styles.

popolo

Disenfranchised common people in Italian cities who resented their exclusion from power.

signori

Government by one-man rule in Italian cities such as Milan; also refers to these rulers.

courts

Magnificent households and palaces where signori and other rulers lived, conducted business, and supported the arts.

humanism

A program of study designed by Italians that emphasized the critical study of Latin and Greek literature with the goal of understanding human nature.

virtù

The quality of being able to shape the world according to one's own will.

Christian humanists

Northern humanists who interpreted Italian ideas about and attitudes toward classical antiquity and humanism in terms of their own religious traditions.

debate about women

Debate among writers and thinkers in the Renaissance about women's qualities and proper role in society.

New Christians

A term for Jews and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula who accepted Christianity; in many cases they included Christians whose families had converted centuries earlier.

anticlericalism

Opposition to the clergy.

indulgence

A document issued by the Catholic Church lessening penance or time in purgatory, widely believed to bring forgiveness of all sins.

Protestant

The name originally given to Lutherans, which came to mean all non-Catholic Western Christian groups.

Spanish Armada

The fleet sent by Philip II of Spain in 1588 against England as a religious crusade against Protestantism. Weather and the English fleet defeated it.

The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Calvin's formulation of Christian doctrine, which became a systematic theology for Protestantism.

predestination

The teaching that God has determined the salvation or damnation of individuals based on his will and purpose, not on their merit or works.

Holy Office

The official Roman Catholic agency founded in 1542 to combat international doctrinal heresy.

Jesuits

Members of the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola, whose goal was the spread of the Roman Catholic faith.

Huguenots

French Calvinists.

politiques

Catholic and Protestant moderates who held that only a strong monarchy could save France from total collapse.

Edict of Nantes

A document issued by Henry IV of France in 1598, granting liberty of conscience and of public worship to Calvinists, which helped restore peace in France.

Union of Utrecht

The alliance of seven northern provinces (led by Holland) that declared its independence from Spain and formed the United Provinces of the Netherlands.

conquistador

Spanish for "conqueror"; Spanish soldier-explorers, such as Hernando Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, who sought to conquer the New World for the Spanish crown.

caravel

A small, maneuverable, three-mast sailing ship developed by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century that gave the Portuguese a distinct advantage in exploration and trade.

Ptolemy's Geography

A second-century-c.e. work that synthesized the classical knowledge of geography and introduced the concepts of longitude and latitude. Reintroduced to Europeans in 1410 by Arab scholars, its ideas allowed cartographers to create more accurate maps.

Treaty of Tordesillas

The 1494 agreement giving Spain everything to the west of an imaginary line drawn down the Atlantic and giving Portugal everything to the east.