Chapter 9, Strayer, Ways of the World with Sources for the AP® Modern Course Since 1300 C.E., 5E

Taiping Uprising

Massive Chinese rebellion against the ruling Qing dynasty that devastated much of the country between 1850 and 1864; it was based on the millenarian teachings of Hong Xiuquan.

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, especially opium; China lost both wars and was forced to make major concessions.

Commissioner Lin Zexu

Royal official charged with ending the opium trade in China; his concerted efforts to seize and destroy opium imports provoked the Opium Wars.

unequal treaties

Series of nineteenth-century treaties in which China made major concessions to Western powers.

self-strengthening

Term commonly used to describe areas that were dominated by Western powers in the nineteenth century but retained their own governments and a measure of independence (e.g., China).

Boxer Uprising

Antiforeign movement (1898–1901) led by Chinese militia organizations, in which large numbers of Europeans and Chinese Christians were killed. It resulted in military intervention by Western powers and the imposition of a huge payment as punishment.

Chinese revolution of 1911–1912

The collapse of China’s imperial order, officially at the hands of organized revolutionaries but for the most part under the weight of the troubles that had overwhelmed the imperial government for the previous century.

“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.

Tanzimat

Important reform measures undertaken in the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1839; the term “_____” means “reorganization.”

Young Ottomans

Group of would-be reformers in the mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire that included lower-level officials, military officers, and writers; they urged the extension of westernizing reforms to the political system

Sultan Abd al-Hamid II

Ottoman sultan (r. 1876–1909) who accepted a reform constitution but then quickly suppressed it, ruling as a despotic monarch for the rest of his long reign.

Young Turks

Movement of Turkish military and civilian elites that advocated a militantly secular public life and a Turkish national identity; came to power through a coup in 1908.

Tokugawa Japan

A period of internal peace in Japan (1600–1850) that prevented civil war but did not fully unify the country; led by military rulers, or shoguns, from the Tokugawa family, who established a “closed door” policy toward European encroachments.

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, Meiji. The new government was committed to saving Japan from foreign domination by drawing upon what the modern West had to offer to transform Japanese society.

Russo-Japanese War

Fought over rival ambitions in Korea and Manchuria, this conflict ended in a Japanese victory, establishing Japan as a formidable military competitor in East Asia. The war marked the first time that an Asian country defeated a European power in battle, and it precipitated the Russian Revolution of 1905.