Late 19th-Century Imperialism, Global State-Building, and World War I

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards reviewing the concepts, entities, conflicts, and peace settlements of late 19th-century imperialism, global modernization, and the First World War.

Imperialism

The process by which a nation-state acquires new territories while viewing the colonized inhabitants as inferior, denying them the political rights enjoyed by citizens of the home nation.

The Raj

The period of direct British colonial administration in India established after the suppression of the 1857 Indian Rebellion, characterized by infrastructural modernization and the transformation of India into an integrated supplier of raw staples and consumer of British goods.

Orientalism

A cultural genre in Western literature and art that portrayed non-Western peoples as exotic, sensuous, and economically backward compared to modern European civilization.

Leopold II

King of the Belgians who acted as the most determined and deadly empire builder during the late 19th-century European colonization of Central Africa.

Anglo-Boer War

A colonial war in South Africa that pitted the British in the Cape Colony and Natal against the Afrikaners, descendants of original Dutch settlers in the Transvaal and Orange Free State.

Boxer Uprising

A violent, anti-foreign rebellion in China fueled by humiliation over the 1894–1895 Sino-Japanese War, foreign spheres of influence, and Christian missionary activities, supported by the Empress Dowager in 1900.

Sun Yat Sen

A Western-educated Chinese intellectual who advocated for the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of a Chinese republic centered on Han nationalism.

Indian National Congress

A political party established in 1885 by voluntary urban associations in India to petition for greater Indian representation in government, criticize British economic policies, and promote local industrialization.

Separate Spheres

A prevailing 19th-century Western ideological doctrine dictating that women should be confined to domestic household affairs while men occupy the realms of public affairs and economic enterprise.

Berlin Conference of 1884–1885

An international diplomatic meeting convened at Portugal's request where European powers, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire established partition rules to carve up Africa into recognized colonial spheres.

Menelik

The Emperor of Ethiopia who led the only successful African military resistance against invading European colonial forces, maintaining his empire's independence during the Scramble for Africa.

Manifest Destiny

The ideological conviction used to unify the United States, asserting that American expansion across the entire North American continent was divinely ordained.

Second Industrial Revolution

The late 19th-century phase of rapid industrialization centered in Western Europe and North America that was propelled by steel, electricity, chemicals, oil, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Social Darwinism

A socio-political doctrine that distorted Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to claim that it was natural for powerful nations to dominate weaker peoples and to rationalize inequalities within industrial societies.

Meiji Restoration

The political transformation in Japan initiated in 1868 following the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which centralized power under Emperor Mutsuhito and carried out systematic modernization and Westernization of state institutions.

Imperial Diet

The bicameral national legislature created in Japan under the Meiji Constitution, first elected in 1890 by approximately 450,000 elite property-owning men comprising 1 percent of the population.

July Crisis

The rapid diplomatic collapse and sequence of military mobilizations triggered across Europe following the June 1914 assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo.

Schlieffen Plan

The 1905 German operational military strategy designed to rapidly defeat France within six weeks by invading through neutral Belgium before redirecting forces east to counter the Russian army.

Trench Warfare

A defensive form of combat dominating the Western Front in World War I, in which opposing armies fortified static subterranean ditch systems reinforced by barbed wire, artillery, and machine guns.

Soviets

Grassroots councils formed by factory workers, soldiers, and sailors across Russian towns and garrisons during the revolutionary unrest of 1917 following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II.

Bolsheviks

The radical socialist party led by Vladimir Lenin that overthrew the Russian Provisional Government in October 1917 and concluded a separate peace with Germany to exit World War I in March 1918.

Treaty of Versailles

The 1919 peace settlement concluding World War I that assigned sole war guilt to Germany, imposed heavy economic reparations, mandated territory losses, and reorganized the territories of four fallen empires.

League of Nations

An international body conceived by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to guarantee collective security and avert future wars, which suffered crippled influence when the U.S. Senate refused to ratify membership.

Self-Determination

The principle promoted after World War I asserting that distinct peoples have the inherent right to establish their own sovereign governments, though Western powers applied it selectively to European peoples while maintaining their overseas colonies.

Nguyen Ai Quoc

The political activist and future Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh who presented a formal petition for basic civil liberties for colonial subjects under French rule at the post-World War I peace talks, which European leaders disregarded.

Sykes-Picot Agreement

A secret May 1916 treaty negotiated between Britain and France, with Russian approval, establishing zones of direct administration and influence to divide the Middle Eastern territories of the Ottoman Empire.