World History Midterm Exam Vocab.

Civilization

An advanced stage of human society marked by a well-organized government and high levels of culture, science, and industry.

Steppe

A sparse, dry, treeless grassland.

Cultural Diffusion

The spread of ideas, customs, and technologies from one people to another.

City-State

A political unit that includes a city and its surrounding lands and villages.

Empire

A state containing several countries.

Citizen

A legal member of a country.

Monarchy

A form of government in which the state is ruled by a monarch.

Oligarchy

Government in which ruling power belongs to a few people.

Democracy

A form of government in which citizens hold political power.

Legislature

A lawmaking body.

Direct Democracy

A system of government in which citizens participate directly in the day-to-day affairs of government rather than through elected representatives.

Messiah

A savior sent by God.

Christian Bible

The sacred writing of the Christian religion.

Apostle

A leader or teacher of a new faith or movement.

Martyr

A person who suffers or dies because of his or her beliefs.

Clergy

The body of people who conduct Christian services.

Pope

Head of the Roman Catholic Church; in ancient Rome, bishop of Rome who claimed authority over all other bishops.

Heresy

Religious belief that is contrary to the official teachings of a church.

Sacrament

A sacred ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.

Benedictine Rule

Rule regulating monastic life drawn up by Benedict in 530, emphasizing obedience, poverty, and chastity.

Secular

Having to do with worldly, rather than religious, matters; nonreligious.

Papal Supremacy

The claim of medieval popes that they had authority over all secular rulers.

Canon Law

The body of laws of a church.

Excommunication

Exclusion from the Roman Catholic Church as a penalty for refusing to obey Church law.

Anti-Semitism

Prejudice against Jews.

Schism

A split or divide.

Icon

A holy image of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Great Schism

The official split between the Roman Catholic and Byzantine churches that occurred in 1054.

Crusades

A series of wars from the 1000s through 1200s where European Christians tried to win control of the Holy Land from Muslims.

Holy Land

Jerusalem and other places where Christians believe Jesus had lived and preached.

Gothic Style

Type of European architecture in the Middle Ages characterized by flying buttresses, ribbed vaulting, thin walls, and high roofs.

Black Death

An epidemic of the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 1300s.

Epidemic

Outbreak of a rapidly spreading disease.

Humanism

An intellectual movement at the heart of the Renaissance that focused on education and the classics.

Humanities

Study of subjects such as grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and history taught in ancient Greece and Rome.

Patron

A person who provides financial support for the arts.

Perspective

Artistic technique used to give paintings and drawings a three-dimensional effect.

Utopian

Idealistic or visionary, usually used to describe a perfect society.

Indulgence

In the Roman Catholic Church, pardon for sins committed during a person's lifetime.

Predestination

Calvinist belief that God long ago determined who would gain salvation.

Theocracy

Government run by religious leaders.

Sect

A subgroup of a major religious group.

Canonize

To recognize a person as a saint.

Council of Trent

A group of Catholic leaders that met between 1545 and 1563 to respond to Protestant challenges.

Ghetto

A separate section of a city where members of a minority group are forced to live.

Heliocentric

Based on the belief that the sun is the center of the universe.

Scientific Method

A careful, step-by-step process used to confirm findings and to prove or disprove a hypothesis.

Hypothesis

An unproved theory accepted for the purposes of explaining certain facts.

Calculus

A branch of mathematics in which calculations are made using special symbolic notations.

Gravity

Force that pulls objects in Earth's sphere to the center of Earth.

Leonardo da Vinci

Italian artist considered the ideal Renaissance man due to his varied talents.

Michelangelo

Italian painter known for his sculpture, engineering, architecture, and poems.

Raphael

A Renaissance painter who blended Christian and classical styles.

Baldassare Castiglione

Italian courtier and writer known for his handbook on court manners.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Renaissance political philosopher known for his work 'The Prince'.

Albrecht Durer

German painter known for his engravings and religious themes.

Erasmus

Dutch priest and scholar who promoted humanism.

Sir Thomas More

Lawyer and author of 'Utopia' describing an ideal society.

William Shakespeare

English poet and playwright during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

Johannes Gutenberg

German inventor of the printing press with movable type.

Martin Luther

German monk who initiated the Protestant Reformation with his 95 theses.

Charles V

Holy Roman emperor during the time of Martin Luther's reformation.

John Calvin

French theologian who influenced the Protestant movement and established a theocracy in Geneva.

Henry VIII

King of England known for his role in the separation from the Catholic Church.

Mary Tudor

The first queen to rule England in her own right, known for her persecution of Protestants.

Elizabeth

Queen of England known for balancing religious conflicts and strengthening the monarchy.

Nicolaus Copernicus

Polish astronomer who proposed a heliocentric model of the universe.

Galileo

Italian astronomer whose discoveries supported the heliocentric theories of Copernicus.

Francis Bacon

English philosopher who promoted the scientific method and rational thought.

Rene Descartes

French philosopher and mathematician known for advocating observation and experiments.

Robert Boyle

English-Irish philosopher who contributed to chemistry and physics.

Isaac Newton

English mathematician and physicist known for his laws of motion and the law of gravity.

Moluccas

An island chain in Indonesia known as the Spice Islands.

Cartographer

A person who makes maps.

Line of Demarcation

Line set by the Treaty of Tordesillas dividing the non-European world into two zones.

Treaty of Tordesillas

Treaty signed between Spain and Portugal in 1494, dividing the non-European world.

Circumnavigate

To travel completely around the world.

Cape Town

The first permanent European settlement in Africa, established by the Dutch.

Mughal Empire

Muslim empire that ruled most of northern India from the mid-1500s to mid-1700s.

Goa

A coastal city seized by Portugal that became its military base in India.

Malacca

City located near the strategic Straits of Malacca.

Outpost

A distant military station or remote settlement.

Dutch East India Company

Trading company established by the Netherlands in 1602.

Sovereign

Having full, independent power.

Sepoy

An Indian soldier who served in an army set up by the French or English trading companies.

Manchus

People from Manchuria who conquered the Ming dynasty and ruled as the Qing dynasty.

Qing

Dynasty established by the Manchus in the mid-1600s, China's last dynasty.

Tokugawa

Shogun rulers who unified Japan and reestablished order.

Nagasaki

Japanese city where limited Dutch trade was allowed by Tokugawa shoguns.

Conquistador

Spanish 'conqueror' during the conquest of the Americas.

Tenochtitlan

Capital city of the Aztec empire.

Alliance

Formal agreement between two or more nations to cooperate.

Moctezuma

Last Aztec emperor defeated by conquistador Cortés.

Civil War

A war fought between groups of people in the same nation.

Viceroy

Representative of the king of Spain ruling colonies in his name.

Encomienda

Right granted to conquistadors to demand labor or tribute from Native Americans.

Peon

A worker forced to labor for a landlord to pay off an impossible debt.

Creole

An American-born descendant of Spanish settlers.

Mestizo

A person of Native American and European descent.

New France

French possessions in present-day Canada.