Atlantic Revolutions, Industrialization, and Colonial Encounters (1750–1950)

Practice vocabulary flashcards defining key historical terms, concepts, movements, and policies across the Atlantic Revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, and European colonial encounters.

Popular Sovereignty

The political principle that legitimate government power originates from the people rather than from divine right or religious tradition.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen

A foundational document drafted by the French National Assembly in 1789 declaring that all men are born free and equal in rights.

The Terror of 1793–1794

A radical period of the French Revolution directed by Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety during which tens of thousands of suspected enemies were executed by guillotine.

Gens de couleur libres

The free people of color in colonial Saint Domingue who sought legal and civil equality, contributing to the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution.

Toussaint Louverture

A formerly enslaved military leader who led the slaves in the Haitian Revolution, overcoming rival European forces and resisting Napoleon's attempt to restore French control.

Americanos

The collective label used by creole leaders in Spanish American wars of independence to unite all people born in the Americas against European-born Spaniards and Portuguese.

Hidalgo-Morelos Rebellion

A socially radical peasant rebellion in Mexico initiated in 1810 by two priests that was suppressed by creole landowners fearful of social revolution.

Great Jamaica Revolt (1831–1832)

A major rebellion by enslaved people in the British West Indies whose brutal suppression provoked widespread public outrage in Britain and accelerated the empire-wide abolition of slavery.

Civic Nationalism

A political conception of nationalism, prominent in the United States and France, that defines the nation by shared territory and citizenship and enables diverse cultures to assimilate.

Maternal Feminism

A strand of the feminist movement that argued women possessed a distinct right to civic life and political influence based on their responsibilities as mothers and protectors of family life.

Anthropocene

The geological epoch or 'age of man' marking the era in which industrialization and human reliance on fossil fuels fundamentally transformed Earth's ecology, atmosphere, and geology.

Ideology of Domesticity

A 19th-century middle-class set of beliefs defining home, child-rearing, and moral refinement as the proper realm for women, while business and public employment belonged to men.

Friendly Societies

Working-class mutual aid associations in industrial Britain where laborers pooled dues to secure insurance against illness, cover funeral expenses, and foster social fraternity.

Scientific Socialism

Karl Marx's theoretical perspective asserting that human history is driven by class struggle and objective social laws, making the collapse of capitalism and a proletarian revolution inevitable.

Social Democracy

A working-class movement, prominent in Germany and within Britain's Labor Party, that pursued socialism through peaceful legislative reforms and democratic transitions rather than violent revolution.

Luddites

Displaced British textile artisans who engaged in organized machine-breaking and factory attacks to protest unlivable wage cuts, child labor, and mechanization.

Duma

The national representative assembly in Russia reluctantly conceded and established by the tsar in response to the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Caudillos

Military strongmen in 19th-century Latin America who repeatedly seized political power to enforce order amid frequent unrest and civil conflict.

Dependent Development

A pattern of economic growth in post-independence Latin America driven by the export of primary raw materials and agricultural commodities financed by European and North American capital.

Scientific Racism

The 19th-century use of skull measurements, craniology, and biological hierarchies to claim that white Europeans were intellectually and evolutionarily superior to Asian and African peoples.

Social Darwinism

The application of Charles Darwin's evolutionary concept of 'survival of the fittest' to human societies to justify European imperial conquest as natural and inevitable.

Berlin Conference

An 1884–1885 diplomatic assembly among European powers to establish ground rules for partitioning the African continent to avert intra-European armed conflict.

Battle of Adowa (1896)

A decisive military confrontation in which Ethiopian forces defeated an invading Italian army, successfully maintaining Ethiopia's national sovereignty.

Indian Rebellion of 1857–1858

A massive uprising across India provoked by various grievances against British colonial rule that resulted in the British crown assuming direct control of the subcontinent from the British East India Company.

Apartheid

A system of institutionalized racial segregation and white minority rule legally implemented in South Africa to control African labor while maintaining total separation of facilities and communities.

Congo Free State

A private colony in Central Africa controlled by King Leopold II of Belgium where state-sanctioned concession companies used widespread terror and forced labor to collect wild rubber.

Cultivation System

A Dutch colonial policy in Indonesia requiring Javanese peasants to allocate at least 20 percent of their land to produce export cash crops such as sugar and coffee for the colonial government.

Maji Maji Rebellion (1904–1905)

An anti-colonial uprising in German East Africa sparked by forced cotton cultivation that successfully compelled colonial administrators to abolish compulsory production.

Bantustans

Overcrowded, segregated native reserves in South Africa where Africans were confined and compelled into precarious, low-wage migrant labor in mines and on white-owned farms.

Edward Blyden

A prominent West African scholar who promoted an egalitarian Pan-African identity, contrasting Africa's communal values with Europe's individualistic and exploitative society.