Modern World History Final

22-23 Final

Columbian exchange

The enormous network of transatlantic communication, migration, trade, and the transfer of diseases, plants, and animals that began in the period of European exploration and colonization of the Americas.

mestizo

A term used to describe the mixed-race population of Spanish colonial societies in the Americas, most prominently the product of unions between Spanish men and Native American women.

mulattoes

Term commonly used for people of mixed African and European blood.

settler colonies

Imperial territories in which Europeans settled permanently in substantial numbers. Used in reference to the European empires in the Americas generally and particularly to the British colonies of North America.

Ottoman Empire

Major Islamic state centered on Anatolia that came to include the Balkans, parts of the Middle East, and much of North Africa; lasted in one form or another from the fourteenth to the early twentieth century.

devshirme

A term that means "collection or gathering"; it refers to the Ottoman Empire's practice of removing young boys from their Christian subjects and training them for service in the civil administration or in the elite Janissary infantry corps.

Indian Ocean commercial network

The massive, interconnected web of commerce in premodern times between the lands that bordered the Indian Ocean; the network was transformed as Europeans entered it in the centuries following 1500.

trading post empire

Form of imperial dominance based on control of trade through military power rather than on control of peoples or territories.

British East India Company

Private trading company chartered by the English around 1600, mainly focused on India; it was given a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade, including the right to make war and to rule conquered peoples.

Dutch East India Company

Private trading company chartered by the Netherlands around 1600, mainly focused on Indonesia; it was given a monopoly on Indian Ocean trade, including the right to make war and to rule conquered peoples.

African diaspora

The global spread of African peoples via the slave trade.

signares

The small number of African women who were able to exercise power and accumulate wealth through marriage to European traders.

Silk Roads

Land-based trade routes that linked many regions of Eurasia. They were named after the most famous product traded along these routes.

Sea Roads

The world's largest sea-based system of communication and exchange before 1500 c.e. Centered on India, it stretched from southern China to eastern Africa.

Zheng He

Great Chinese admiral who commanded a huge fleet of ships in a series of voyages in the Indian Ocean that began in 1405.

Sand Roads

A term used to describe the routes of the trans-Saharan trade, which linked interior West Africa to the Mediterranean and North African world.

trans-Saharan slave trade

A fairly small-scale commerce in enslaved people that flourished especially from 1100 to 1400, exporting West African slaves across the Sahara for sale in Islamic North Africa.

House of Wisdom

An academic center for research and translation of foreign texts that was established in Baghdad in 830 c.e. by the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun.

Black Death

A massive pandemic that swept through Eurasia in the early fourteenth century, spreading along the trade routes within and beyond the Mongol Empire and reaching the Middle East and Western Europe by 1347. Associated with a massive loss of life.

patriarchy

A social system in which women have been made subordinate to men in the family and in society; often linked to the development of plow-based agriculture, intensive warfare, and private property.

Hinduism

A religion based on the many beliefs, practices, sects, rituals, and philosophies in India; in the thinking of nineteenth-century Indian reformers, it was expressed as a distinctive tradition, an Indian religion wholly equivalent to Christianity.

Confucianism

The Chinese philosophy first enunciated by Confucius, advocating the moral example of superiors as the key element of social order.

Judaism

The monotheistic religion developed in the Middle East by the Hebrews, emphasizing a sole personal god

bushido

The "way of the warrior," referring to the martial values of the Japanese samurai, including bravery, loyalty, and an emphasis on death over surrender.

Crusades

A term used to describe the "holy wars" waged by Western Christendom, especially against the forces of Islam in the eastern Mediterranean from 1095 to 1291 and on the Iberian Peninsula into the fifteenth century.

American Revolution

Successful rebellion against British rule conducted by the European settlers in the thirteen colonies of British North America, starting in 1776; a conservative revolution whose success preserved property rights and class distinctions but established republican government in place of monarchy.

French Revolution

Massive upheaval of French society (1789–1815) that overthrew the monarchy, ended the legal privileges of the nobility, and for a time outlawed the Catholic Church. This proceeded in stages, becoming increasingly radical and violent until the period known as the Terror in 1793–1794, after which it became more conservative, especially under Napoleon Bonaparte 

Mercantilism

The economic theory that governments served their countries’ economic interests best by encouraging exports and accumulating bullion (precious metals such as silver and gold); helped fuel European colonialism.

Robespierre

Leader of the French Revolution during the Terror; his Committee of Public Safety executed tens of thousands of enemies of the revolution until he was arrested and guillotined.

Napoleon Bonaparte

French head of state and general, preserved much of the French Revolution under a military dictatorship and was responsible for the spread of revolutionary ideals through his conquest of much of Europe.

Nationalism

The focusing of citizens’ loyalty on the notion that they are part of a “nation” with a unique culture, territory, and common experience, which merits an independent political life; first became a prominent element of political culture in nineteenth-century Europe and the Americas.

Karl Marx

The most influential proponent of socialism, was a German expatriate in England who advocated working-class revolution as the key to creating an ideal communist future.

Progressives

Followers of an American political movement in the period around 1900 that advocated reform measures such as wages-and-hours legislation to correct the ills of industrialization.

Opium Wars

Two wars fought between Western powers and China (1840–1842 and 1856–1858) after China tried to restrict the importation of foreign goods; China lost both wars and was forced to make major concessions.

Vladimir Lenin

leader of the Russian Bolshevik (later Communist) Party in 1917, when it seized power.

“The sick man of Europe”

Western Europe’s description of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, based on the empire’s economic and military weakness and its apparent inability to prevent the shrinking of its territory.

Meiji Restoration

The political takeover of Japan in 1868 by a group of young samurai from southern Japan. The samurai eliminated the shogun and claimed they were restoring to power the young emperor

Civilizing Mission

A European understanding of empire that emphasized Europeans’ duty to “civilize inferior races” by bringing Christianity, good government, education, work discipline, and production for the market to colonized peoples, while suppressing “native customs,” such as polygamy, that ran counter to Western ways of living.

Social Darwinism

An outlook that suggested that European dominance inevitably led to the displacement or destruction of backward peoples or “unfit” races; this view made imperialism, war, and aggression seem both natural and progressive.

Scramble for Africa

The process by which European countries partitioned the continent of Africa among themselves in the period 1875–1900.

Fascism

Political ideology that considered the conflict of nations to be the driving force of history; marked by intense nationalism and an appeal to post–World War I discontent. They praised violence against enemies as a renewing force in society, celebrated action rather than reflection, and placed their faith in a charismatic leader. They also bitterly condemned individualism, liberalism, feminism, parliamentary democracy, and communism.

Great Depression

Worldwide economic contraction that began in 1929 with a stock market crash in the United States and continued in many areas until the outbreak of World War II.

Marshall Plan

Huge U.S. government initiative to aid in the post–World War II recovery of Western Europe that was put into effect in 1948.

Decolonization

Process in which many African and Asian states won their independence from Western colonial rule, in most cases by negotiated settlement and in some cases through violent military confrontations.

Economic globalization

The deepening economic entanglement of the world’s peoples, especially since 1950; accompanied by the spread of industrialization in the Global South and extraordinary economic growth following World War II; the process has also generated various forms of inequality and resistance as well as increasing living standards for many.

Global urbanization

The explosive growth of cities after 1900, caused by the reduced need for rural labor and more opportunities for employment in manufacturing, commerce, government, and the service industry.

Temujin

Birth name of the Mongol leader better known as Chinggis Khan (1162–1227), or “universal ruler,” a name he acquired after unifying the Mongols