Chapter 23: Key Terms

Red Shirts

The guerilla army of Giuseppe Garibaldi, who invaded Sicily in 1860 in an attempt to liberate it, winning the hearts of the Sicilian peasantry

Homestead Act

An American law enacted during the Civil War that gave western land to settlers, reinforcing the concept of free labor in a market economy

Crimean War

Conflict fought between 1853 and 1856 over Russian desires to expand into Ottoman territory; Russia was defeated by France, Britain, and the Ottomans, under-scoring the need for reform in the Russian Empire

Bloody Sunday

A massacre of peaceful protestors at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in 1915, triggering a revolution that overturned absolute tsarist rule and made Russia a conservative constitutional monarchy

October Manifesto

The result of a paralyzing general strike in October 1905, a Russian decree that granted full civil rights and promised a popularly elected Duma (Parliament) with real legislative power

Duma

The Russian Parliament that opened in 1906, elected indirectly by universal male suffrage but controlled after 1907 by the tsar and the conservative class

Young Turks

Fervent patriots who seized power in a 1908 coup in the Ottoman Empire, forcing the conservative sultan to implement reforms

Tanzimat

A set of reforms designed to remake the Ottoman Empire on a western European model

Reichstag

The popularly elected lower house of government of the new German Empire after 1871

Kulturkampf

Bismark’s attack on the Catholic Church within Germany from 1870-1878, resulting from Pius IX’s declaration of PayPal infallibility

German Social Democratic Party (SPD)

A German working-class political party founded in the 1870s, the SPD championed Marxism but in practice turned away from Marxist revolution and instead worked for social and workplace reforms in the German parliament

Dreyfus Affair

A divisive case in which Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army, was falsely accused and convicted of treason. The Catholic Church sided with the anti-Semites against Dreyfus; after Dreyfus was declared innocent, the French government severed all ties between the state and church

People’s Budget

A bill proposed after the Liberal Party came to power in Britain in 1906, it was designed to increase spending on social welfare services, but was initially vetoed in the House of Lords

Zionism

A movement dedicated to building a Jewish homeland in Palestine, started by Theodor Herzl

Revisionism

An effort by moderate socialists to update Marxist doctrines to reflect the realities of the time