Modern World History: Civilizations, Revolutions, and Global Transformations

Comprehensive practice flashcards detailing key vocabulary terms, political concepts, imperial institutions, and socioeconomic movements from the lecture notes on modern world history.

Scholar-officials

A professional administrative class of highly trained civil servants in imperial China who earned government positions by passing rigorous examinations on calligraphy and Confucian classics rather than through noble inheritance.

Mandate of Heaven

The traditional Chinese political concept allowing the emperor to rule as a secular representative of divinity without establishing the empire as a theocracy.

Foot binding

A patriarchal Chinese cultural practice persisting until the 1949 Communist Revolution that physically crippled women to conform to aristocratic fashion standards.

Hongwu Emperor

The reign title meaning 'expansive and martial' taken by Zhu Yuanzhang, the rebel leader of the Red Turbans who founded the Ming Dynasty in 1368 and rebuilt Chinese infrastructure.

Yongle Emperor

The imperial title of Zhu Di (meaning 'perpetual happiness'), who took power in 1402, moved the capital to Beijing, built the Forbidden City, and commissioned maritime expeditions.

Zheng He

A Chinese Muslim eunuch admiral who led seven major naval expeditions between 1405 and 1433 to extract tribute and expand trade networks across South Asia, the Middle East, and East Africa.

Janissaries

An elite Ottoman fighting force recruited as tribute boys from Christian villages in the Balkans, converted to Islam, educated, and loyal directly to the Sultan.

Shah Abbas the Great

The Safavid ruler who moved the Persian imperial capital to Isfahan in central Iran and resettled hundreds of thousands of Armenian refugees in the early 1600s.

Akbar the Great

The Mughal emperor who launched the empire's golden age in 1556 by expanding territory while allowing subject peoples to retain their native languages and religions.

Humanism

A Renaissance intellectual movement focusing on classical Greek and Roman texts, learning outside of church-approved scripture, and skepticism toward religious authorities.

Indulgences

Certificates sold by the Catholic Church as remission of temporal punishment in purgatory, the sale of which financed St. Peter's Basilica and sparked Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation.

Aufklärung

The German word meaning 'a clearing up,' used by Immanuel Kant to describe the Enlightenment as humanity's emergence from its self-imposed adolescence.

Reconquista

An eight-century campaign by Christian monarchies in Portugal and Spain to capture the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim Moorish rule, concluding in 1492.

Popul Vuh

The sacred Maya origin story recorded in hieroglyphic script that bears thematic similarities to the biblical Book of Genesis.

Chinampas

Raised, highly fertile agricultural plots constructed on floating platforms in Lake Texcoco by the Aztecs to support high urban population densities.

Treaty of Tordesillas

A 1494 papal agreement dividing newly explored global territories between Portugal (lands east of the 47th meridian) and Spain (lands west of it).

Virgin soil epidemic

The devastating introduction of infectious pathogens into a human population lacking inherited immunity or previous exposure.

Malintzin

An enslaved Nahua woman (also known as La Malinche or Doña Marina) who served as an interpreter and advisor to Hernán Cortés during the conquest of the Aztec Empire.

Encomiendas

Grants of captured territory and indigenous labor awarded to Spanish conquistadors for military service, with theoretical obligations to integrate the workers into Christianity.

Cerro Rico

A mountain located in Potosí, Bolivia, that contained massive deposits of silver mined by the Spanish to supply the global economy.

Pieces of eight

Spanish silver coins minted from Andean and Mexican mines that became the primary international currency of European and Asian commerce.

Casta System

A complex social hierarchy developed in colonial Spanish America that classified individuals into distinct ranks based on bloodlines, origin, and racial mixture.

Peninsulares

Spaniards born on the Iberian Peninsula who occupied the highest administrative, judicial, and clerical offices in colonial Spanish America.

Criollos

People of pure Spanish descent born in the American colonies who formed the landed, mercantile, and local clerical elite beneath the peninsulares.

Mercantilism

An economic policy in which colonies served the home country as closed sources of raw materials and captive consumer markets to protect domestic commerce.

Obedezco, pero no cumplo

A Spanish colonial legal phrase meaning 'I obey, but I do not comply,' used by local authorities to set aside royal orders that conflicted with local realities.

Asiento

A monopoly contract established by the Spanish Crown granting foreign commercial interests the exclusive legal right to sell enslaved Africans into Spanish America.

Maroon colonies

Autonomous communities established in remote hinterlands by escaped enslaved Africans and displaced indigenous peoples across the Americas.

Royal Proclamation of 1763

A British royal decree establishing a western border along the Appalachian Mountains, reserving trans-Appalachian lands for Native Americans and angering American colonists.

Estates-General

The traditional French representative assembly comprising the clergy, nobility, and commoners, convened by King Louis XVI in 1789 to resolve state debts.

Jacobins

A radical French political faction led by Maximillian Robespierre that directed the Reign of Terror and executed thousands of perceived counter-revolutionaries.

Napoleonic Code

The 1804 French civil legal code established under Napoleon Bonaparte that replaced feudal customs with modern, standardized legal principles.

Toussaint l'Ouverture

A military leader of formerly enslaved rebels in San Dominique who defeated French and British forces to lay the foundations of independent Haiti.

Grito de Dolores

The 1810 call to rebellion issued by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla that launched the Mexican War of Independence against Spanish rule.

Plan de Iguala

An 1821 compromise accord between Vicente Guerrero and Agustín de Iturbide declaring Mexico an independent constitutional empire while granting universal citizenship regardless of racial origin.

Gran Colombia

A northern South American republic governed by Simón Bolívar from 1819 to 1830 that incorporated parts of modern Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Brazil.

Monroe Doctrine

An 1823 U.S. foreign policy declaration designating the Western Hemisphere as closed to further European colonization and political interference.

Congress of Vienna

An 1814–1815 peace conference of European monarchs designed to restore the conservative status quo ante and prevent future French expansion following Napoleon's defeat.

Chartists

British working-class political reformers in the 1830s and 1840s who petitioned Parliament for universal male suffrage and democratic reforms under the People's Charter.

Luddites

English handicraft weavers who protested mechanized textile factories and falling wages by sabotaging power looms under the fictional figurehead 'Ned Ludd.'

Interchangeable parts

A standardized manufacturing technique pioneered by Eli Whitney for firearms that allowed low-skilled laborers to assemble, repair, and maintain machinery rapidly.

Proletariat

The industrial working class in Marxist theory who survive entirely by selling their physical labor to capitalist factory owners.

Bourgeoisie

The capitalist class in Marxist theory who privately own the factories, machinery, and means of production.

Guano

Accumulated seabird droppings harvested from arid Pacific islands off South America, prized globally as an intensive nitrogen-, phosphorus-, and potassium-rich agricultural fertilizer.

Caliche

Nitrate-dense desert soil found in the Atacama Desert that overtook guano after 1870 as an essential ingredient for agricultural fertilizer and military explosives.

War of the Pacific

An 1879–1883 South American conflict in which Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia, gaining control over the Atacama Desert and its lucrative nitrate deposits.

Lin Zexu

A prominent Qing imperial commissioner sent to Canton in 1839 who confiscated and destroyed 20,000 chests of British opium, precipitating the First Opium War.

Treaty of Nanking

The 1842 unequal treaty concluding the First Opium War that opened five Chinese ports to European trade, ceded Hong Kong to Great Britain, and imposed indemnities on China.

Taiping Rebellion

A mid-nineteenth-century civil war led by Hong Xiuquan against the Qing dynasty that devastated southern China and resulted in the deaths of approximately 30 million people.

Meiji Restoration

The 1867–1868 political transition in Japan that eliminated the Tokugawa shogunate, restored direct governing power to the Emperor, and catalyzed rapid modernization.