World History: Early Modern to Modern Era Flashcards

A comprehensive vocabulary review of 100 historical terms covering early modern and modern global transformations, including religious reformations, scientific and intellectual revolutions, Atlantic political upheavals, industrialization, and 19th-century imperialism.

Protestant Reformation

A major religious schism initiated by Martin Luther that split the Roman Catholic Church into Catholic and Protestant factions due to corruption and doctrinal disputes.

Ninety-Five Theses

The document authored by Martin Luther that exposed corruption within the Catholic Church and was widely circulated across Europe via the printing press.

Salvation by Faith Alone

Martin Luther's core teaching that salvation is achieved strictly through personal faith in God rather than through monetary payments or Church rituals.

Council of Trent

A series of Catholic Reformation assemblies that reformed church practices, prohibited the sale of indulgences, and created seminaries to educate priests.

Thirty Years' War

A devastating European conflict between Catholics and Protestants that fractured the continent's political order and ended with the Peace of Westphalia.

Virgin of Guadalupe

A Mexican religious figure that exemplified religious syncretism by combining Mesoamerican indigenous beliefs with Spanish Catholic concepts of Divine Motherhood.

Wahhabi Movement

An influential eighteenth-century Islamic renewal movement that sought to purge the faith of syncretic innovations and return strictly to pure Islamic teachings.

Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab

The Islamic scholar who argued that crises in the Islamic world, including the Ottoman decline, were caused by deviations from pure Islamic practice.

Muhammad Ibn Saud

The Arabian ruler who formed a political alliance with Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab to establish an expansive reformist state in Arabia.

Wang Yangming

A prominent Ming dynasty thinker who argued that a virtuous life could be attained through introspection and contemplation rather than traditional Confucian study.

Kaozheng

A Chinese intellectual movement emphasizing evidence-based research, critical analysis, and the rigorous historical study of ancient texts.

Bhakti Movement

A devotional Hindu religious movement that bridged divides between Hinduism and Islam by disregarding caste distinctions in favor of personal spiritual connection.

Mirabai

A celebrated female bhakti poet who expressed devotion to her god following the death of her husband while challenging traditional Hindu social rules.

Sikhism

A religious tradition founded in the Punjab region of India that integrated elements of Hinduism and Islam into an independent faith.

Nicolaus Copernicus

The Polish astronomer who in $1543$ developed the heliocentric theory proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Heliocentric Theory

The scientific proposition that the sun, rather than the Earth, is situated at the center of the solar system.

Sir Isaac Newton

The English scientist whose formulation of universal laws of motion and mechanics marked the culmination of the Scientific Revolution.

Deism

An Enlightenment philosophical belief in an impersonal, remote creator deity that established natural laws but does not intervene in worldly affairs.

Pantheism

The Enlightenment-era belief system holding that God and the physical natural universe are identical.

Predestination

A foundational doctrine of Calvinism stating that God has already determined who will receive salvation, and those chosen cannot lose it.

Priesthood of All Believers

Martin Luther's theological concept asserting that all Christian believers have direct spiritual access to God without reliance on ordained priests.

Church of England

The Anglican church created by King Henry VIII after separating from the Catholic Church, characterized by the absence of papal authority and vernacular services.

Popular Sovereignty

The Enlightenment principle establishing that legitimate political authority resides in the people rather than in divine right or dynastic tradition.

Seven Years' War

A global military contest ($1754\text{--}1763$) between Britain and France whose accumulated war debts led both crowns to levy taxes, provoking revolutions.

Stamp Act

A British parliamentary tax requiring stamps on printed materials and legal documents in the American colonies, sparking intense colonial resistance.

Sons of Liberty

A colonial organization established to oppose British taxation that organized boycotts of British manufactured goods to force the repeal of the Stamp Act.

Townshend Acts

British legislation imposing import duties on American colonial imports of lead, glass, paint, paper, and tea.

Boston Massacre

An incident in $1770$ where British soldiers fired into a crowd of taunting colonial protesters in Boston, killing $5$ colonists.

Boston Tea Party

A $1773$ protest against the Tea Act in which American colonists boarded three ships and threw $92{,}000$ pounds of tea into Boston Harbor.

Quartering Act

British legislation requiring American colonists to house soldiers in vacant buildings and accommodating spaces, paired with a blockade of Boston Harbor.

First Continental Congress

A $1774$ assembly of American colonial delegates in Philadelphia convened to formulate a united colonial response to the Quartering and Intolerable Acts.

Battles of Lexington and Concord

The opening armed skirmishes of the American Revolution triggered when General Gage dispatched British troops to seize weapons from Concord.

Second Continental Congress

The representative colonial body that organized the colonial militia, appointed George Washington commander, and drafted the Declaration of Independence.

Olive Branch Petition

A final conciliation proposal dispatched by the Second Continental Congress to King George III seeking reconciliation, which the king promptly rejected.

Battle of Bunker Hill

The bloodiest single battle of the American Revolution, resulting in roughly $450$ colonial casualties and approximately $1{,}000$ British casualties.

Estates General

The French representative body convened in $1789$ by King Louis XVI consisting of delegates representing the clergy, nobility, and commoners.

Third Estate

The French social order consisting of commoners and the bourgeoisie who represented approximately $98\%$ of the population but held minimal political power.

National Assembly

The governing body established by representatives of the French Third Estate after breaking away from the overruled Estates General.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

A revolutionary French manifesto declaring that all men are born free and remain equal in legal and political rights.

Taille

A direct state tax in pre-revolutionary France from which both the clergy (First Estate) and nobility (Second Estate) were exempt.

Bourgeoisie

The educated urban middle-class portion of the Third Estate comprising bankers, lawyers, and merchants who advocated Enlightenment ideals against aristocratic privilege.

Jacques Necker

The French finance minister appointed by King Louis XVI to resolve the royal monarchy's severe debt and impending bankruptcy.

Tennis Court Oath

The pledge taken on June $20$, $1789$, by members of the French National Assembly swearing to continue meeting until drafting a new constitution.

Storming of the Bastille

The assault on the royal Bastille prison by French revolutionaries on July $14$, $1789$, to seize gunpowder and dismantle a fortress symbolizing royal tyranny.

Sans-culottes

Working-class French radicals who mobilized direct street violence and pushed the French Revolution toward radical extremism and mass executions.

Reign of Terror

A period ($1793\text{--}1794$) of extreme violence during the French Revolution when radical authorities used the guillotine to execute suspected political opponents.

Maximilien Robespierre

The radical leader of the French Revolution who directed the Reign of Terror before his own arrest and execution by guillotine in July $1794$.

Jean-Paul Marat

A radical French revolutionary journalist who promoted political violence and was elevated to revolutionary martyrdom after being assassinated.

Napoleon Bonaparte

The French military leader who seized power via a coup d'état, preserved revolutionary civil equality under a military dictatorship, and built an empire across Europe.

Saint Domingue

The wealthy French sugar and coffee colony in the Caribbean that became the site of the Haitian Revolution.

Toussaint Louverture

The formerly enslaved military commander who unified and led rebel slave forces to victory during the Haitian Revolution.

Independence Debt

A massive financial indemnity imposed by France on the newly independent republic of Haiti, burdening its economy for generations.

Creoles

Native-born elites of Spanish descent in Latin America who resented imperial taxes and led national independence movements against the Spanish monarchy.

Tupac Amaru Rebellion

An indigenous rebellion in Peru led by a direct descendant of the last Inca emperor that heightened social anxieties among Spanish-American Creole elites.

Nativism

A political strategy utilized by Latin American revolutionary leaders classifying all people born in the Americas as "Americanos" against European-born Spaniards.

Abolitionist Movement

A transatlantic social reform movement grounded in Enlightenment philosophy, religious thought, and slave uprisings that advocated the legal prohibition of slavery.

Great Jamaica Revolt

A massive slave uprising in the British West Indies that demonstrated enslaved people were actively discontent, helping compel Britain to outlaw slavery.

Freetown

A settlement established in Sierra Leone where British naval patrols sent formerly enslaved people intercepted from illegal transatlantic slave vessels.

Nationalism

The modern political ideology asserting that groups sharing a distinct culture and territorial identity constitute an independent, self-governing political nation.

Vindication of the Rights of Woman

A seminal feminist treatise written by Mary Wollstonecraft that challenged patriarchal domestic norms and argued for equal educational rights for women.

Women's Rights Convention of 1848

The first organized feminist convention held in Seneca Falls, New York, asserting that women are autonomous individuals possessing equal rights to men.

Guano

Seabird excrement harvested from Peru during the nineteenth century that served as an essential agricultural fertilizer to feed rising global populations.

Steam Engine

A coal-fueled technological innovation that provided limitless mechanical energy, replacing human and animal labor and driving the Industrial Revolution.

Reform Bill of 1832

British parliamentary legislation that extended parliamentary franchise and voting rights to middle-class men.

Friendly Societies

Working-class mutual aid organizations established by British laborers to provide sickness insurance, funeral expenses, and social community.

Karl Marx

The German social theorist who analyzed British industrial society and argued that industrial capitalism was inherently unstable and would collapse into a classless society.

Labour Party

A British working-class political party established to pursue a peaceful, parliamentary democratic transition toward socialism.

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

An illegal Marxist political organization formed by educated Russian radicals to organize workers, coordinate strikes, and pursue revolution.

Russian Revolution of 1905

A series of widespread worker strikes, peasant uprisings, and military mutinies across Russia triggered by the nation's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War.

Bolsheviks

The radical Marxist faction led by Vladimir Lenin that successfully captured state power during the Russian Revolution of $1917$.

Caudillos

Military strongmen who capitalized on post-independence political instability to seize authoritarian control over Latin American republics.

Latin American Export Boom

A mid-nineteenth-century economic surge where Latin American countries exported raw minerals and agricultural commodities to industrializing European and U.S. markets.

Porfirio Díaz

The Mexican dictator whose decades-long authoritarian rule was overthrown by an alliance of middle-class reformers, workers, and peasant armies in $1910$.

Banana Republics

A term describing Central American nations that became politically dependent on foreign agricultural corporations, such as the United Fruit Company.

Scientific Racism

A pseudoscientific ideology developed by nineteenth-century Europeans that classified races hierarchically to legitimize imperialism and white supremacy.

Scramble for Africa

The process by which half a dozen European powers partitioned and colonized nearly the entire African continent in roughly $25$ years.

Berlin Conference

An assembly of European imperial nations that divided Africa among themselves without African participation, mandating physical occupation to claim land.

King Leopold II

The Belgian monarch who ruled the Congo Free State as a personal colony, forcing indigenous people to extract wild rubber under brutal quotas.

Boer Wars

Armed conflicts in South Africa between British imperial forces and Dutch Boer settlers, culminating in British victory and white minority dominance.

Cultivation System

A Dutch colonial system in Indonesia requiring peasants to cultivate at least $20\%$ of their land in cash crops to pay imperial taxes.

Indian Rebellion of 1857-1858

A massive military mutiny and civilian uprising across northern India sparked by greased rifle cartridges that violated Hindu and Muslim dietary laws.

Taiping Uprising

A devastating peasant rebellion in China ($1850\text{--}1864$) inspired by a unique Christian ideology that sought to overthrow the Qing dynasty and redistribute land.

First Opium War

A military conflict provoked by British naval expeditions to defend the illegal British opium trade in China following a Chinese imperial crackdown.

Treaty of Nanking

The $1842$ unequal treaty ending the First Opium War that ceded Hong Kong to Britain, opened five treaty ports, and required Chinese indemnity payments.

Self-Strengthening Movement

A Chinese reform campaign in the late nineteenth century seeking to introduce Western military technology and light industry while preserving traditional Confucian governance.

Boxer Uprising

An anti-foreigner and anti-Christian rebellion in northern China in $1900$ that killed Westerners and Chinese converts before being crushed by a multinational coalition.

Chinese Revolution of 1911-1912

The revolutionary upheaval that resulted in the abdication of China's last emperor and the collapse of the two-thousand-year-old imperial dynastic system.

Janissaries

The elite military infantry corps of the Ottoman Empire that resisted modernizing military reforms, weakening Ottoman defense against Western powers.

Capitulations

Unequal treaties and commercial agreements that granted European merchants exemptions from Ottoman taxation and judicial law.

Tanzimat Reforms

A state-led defensive modernization program in the Ottoman Empire ($1839\text{--}1868$) that instituted legal equality for non-Muslims and modern secular schools.

Young Ottomans

A group of Western-educated Ottoman intellectuals who supported modern scientific adoption and constitutional government while maintaining Muslim identity.

Young Turks

A coalition of military officers and secular reformers who seized power in the Ottoman Empire in $1908$ to implement a militantly secular Turkish nationalist state.

Commodore Matthew Perry

The American naval commander who arrived in Japan in $1853$ and used naval gunboat diplomacy to force the Tokugawa shogunate to open trade ports.

Tokugawa Shogunate

The feudal military government that pacified and ruled Japan for over two centuries, maintaining internal stability while enforcing international isolation.

Daimyo

Feudal Japanese regional lords who exercised autonomy over their private domains while being required by the shogun to spend alternating years in Edo.

Meiji Restoration

The $1868$ political revolution led by young samurai that restored the emperor, abolished feudalism, and launched Japan's rapid modernization.

Zaibatsu

Large, privately owned industrial and financial conglomerates that dominated modern Japan's manufacturing and economic infrastructure.

Russo-Japanese War

The $1904\text{--}1905$ war where Japan defeated the Russian Empire, marking the first time in modern history that an Asian nation defeated a major European power.

Amritsar Massacre

A $1919$ incident where British colonial troops opened fire on unarmed Indian peaceful protesters in Punjab, resulting in over $1{,}500$ casualties.

Salt March

A nonviolent civil disobedience campaign led by Mahatma Gandhi where thousands marched to harvest ocean salt in defiance of the British colonial monopoly.