Western Civ 2 Final Exam - Jones - Fall 2025

New Woman

A woman who, from the 1880s on, dressed practically, moved about freely, and often supported herself.

Sigmund Freud

An Austrian medical doctor and founder of pshychoanalysis, a theory of mental processes and problems and a method of treating them. He did this in the late 19th century.

Modernism

Artistic styles around the turn of the twentieth century that featured a break with realism in art and literature and with lyricism in music.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Late-nineteenth-century German philosopher who called for a new morality in the face of God's death at the hands of science and whose theories were reworked by his sister to emphasize militarism and anti-Semitism.

Art Nouveau

An early-twentieth-century artistic style in graphics, fashion, and household design that featured flowing, sinuous lines, borrowed in large part from Asian art.

Emmeline Pankhurst

Organizer of a militant branch of the British suffrage movement, working actively for women's right to vote.

Nicholas II

Tsar of Russia (r. 1894-1917) who promoted anti-Semitism and resisted reform in the empire.

Zionism

A movement that began in the late nineteenth century among European Jews to found a Jewish state.

South African War

The war (1899-1902) between Britain and the Boer (originally Dutch) inhabitants of South Africa for control of the region; also called the Boer War.

Duma

The Russian parliament set up in the aftermath of the outbreak of the Revolution of 1905.

Entente Cordiale

An alliance between Britain and France that began with an agreement in 1904 to honor colonial holdings.

Mitteleuropa

Literally, "central Europe," but used by military leaders in Germany before World War I to refer to land in both central and eastern Europe that they hoped to acquire.

Total War

A war built on the full mobilization of soldiers, civilians, and technology of the nations involved. The term also refers to a highly destructive war of ideologies.

Cult of the offensive

A military strategy of constantly attacking the enemy that was believed to be the key to winning World War I but that brought great loss of life while failing to bring decisive victory.

Schlieffen Plan

The Germans' strategy in World War I that called for attacks on two fronts — concentrating first on France to the west and then turning east to attack Russia.

Fourteen Points

U.S. president Woodrow Wilson's World War I peace proposal; based on settlement rather than on conquest, it encouraged the surrender of the Central Powers.

Soviets

Councils of workers and soldiers first formed in Russia in the Revolution of 1905; they were revived to represent the people in the early days of the 1917 Russian Revolution.

V. I. Lenin

Bolshevik leader who executed the Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917, took Russia out of World War I, and imposed communism in Russia.

Bolshevik Revolution

The overthrow of Russia's Provisional Government in the fall of 1917 by V. I. Lenin and his Bolshevik forces.

Weimar Republic

The parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the monarchy.

Peace of Paris

The series of peace treaties (1919-1920) that provided the settlement of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles with Germany was the centerpiece of the Peace of Paris.

War Guilt Clause

The part of the Treaty of Versailles that assigned blame for World War I to Germany.

League of Nations

The international organization set up following World War I to maintain peace by arbitrating disputes and promoting collective security. 42 founding countries, 58 countries at its peak. The big 5 were France, Britain, Italy, Japan, and the United States. Although the United States never officially joined.

Mandate System

The political control over the former colonies and territories of the German and Ottoman Empires granted to the victors of World War I by the League of Nations.

Aleksandra Kollontai

A Russian activist and minister of public welfare in the Bolshevik government who promoted social programs such as birth control and day care for children of working parents.

Benito Mussolini

Leader of Italian fascist movement and, after the March on Rome in 1922, dictator of Italy.

Fascism

A doctrine that emphasizes violence and glorifies the state over the people and their individual or civil rights; in Italy, the Fascist Party took hold in the 1920s as Mussolini consolidated power.

Civil Disobedience

The act of deliberately but peacefully breaking the law, a tactic used by Mohandas Gandhi in India and earlier by British suffragists to protest oppression and obtain political change.

Joseph Stalin

Leader of the USSR who, with considerable backing, formed a brutal dictatorship in the 1930s and forcefully converted the country into an industrial power.

five-year plans

Centralized programs for economic development begun in 1929 by Joseph Stalin and copied by Adolf Hitler; these plans set production priorities and gave production targets for individual industries and agriculture.

Purges

The series of attacks on citizens of the USSR accused of being "wreckers," or saboteurs of communism, in the 1930s and later.

`Adolf Hitler

Chancellor of Germany (1933-1945) who, with considerable backing, overturned democratic government, created the Third Reich, persecuted millions, and ultimately led Germany and the world into World War II.

Enabling Act

The legislation passed in 1933 Germany suspending constitutional government for four years in order to meet the crisis in the economy.

Pump Priming

An economic policy used by governments, including the Nazis in Germany, to stimulate the economy through public works programs and other infusions of public funds.

Nuremburg Laws

Legislation enacted by the Nazis in 1935 that deprived Jewish Germans of their citizenship and imposed many other hardships on them.

Family Allowance

Government funds given to families with children to boost the birthrate in democratic countries (e.g., Sweden during the Great Depression) and totalitarian ones alike.

Popular Front

An alliance of political parties (initially led by Léon Blum in France) in the 1930s to resist fascism despite philosophical differences.

Charlie Chaplin

Major entertainment leader, whose sympathetic portrayals of the common man and satires of Hitler helped preserve democratic values in the 1930s and 1940s.

Lebensraum

Literally, "living space"; the land that Hitler proposed to conquer so that the people he defined as true Aryans might have sufficient space to live their noble lives.

Francisco Franco

Right-wing general who in 1936 successfully overthrew the democratic republic in Spain and instituted a repressive dictatorship.

Appeasement

Making concessions in the face of grievances as a way of preventing conflict.

Nazi-Soviet Pact

The agreement reached in 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union in which both agreed not to attack the other in case of war and to divide any conquered territories.

Blitzkrieg

Literally "lightning war"; a strategy for the conduct of war (used by the Germans in World War II) in which motorized firepower quickly and overwhelmingly attacks the enemy, leaving it unable to resist psychologically or militarily.

Cold War

The rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1989 that led to massive growth in nuclear weapons on both sides.

Truman Doctrine

The policy devised by U.S. president Harry Truman to limit communism after World War II by countering political crises with economic and military aid.

Marshall Plan

A post-World War II program funded by the United States to get Europe back on its feet economically and thereby reduce the appeal of communism. It played an important role in the rebirth of European prosperity in the 1950s.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

The security alliance formed in 1949 to provide a unified military force for the United States, Canada, and their allies in western Europe and Scandinavia.

Warsaw Pact

A security alliance of the Soviet Union and its allies formed in 1955, in retaliation for NATO's admittance of West Germany.

Christian Democrats

Powerful center to center-right political parties that evolved in the late 1940s from former Catholic parties of the pre-World War II period.

European Economic Community (EEC)

A consortium of six European countries established in 1957 to promote free trade and economic cooperation among its members; its membership and activities expanded over the years, and it later evolved into the European Union (EU).

Welfare State

A system (developed on both sides during the cold war) comprising government-sponsored social programs to provide health care, family allowances, disability insurance, and pensions for veterans and retired workers.

Nikita Khrushchev

Leader of the USSR from c. 1955 until his dismissal in 1964; known for his speech denouncing Stalin, creation of the "thaw," and participation in the Cuban missile crisis.

Decolonization

The process — whether violent or peaceful — by which colonies gained their independence from the imperial powers after World War II.

United Nations

An organization set up in 1945 for collective security and for the resolution of international conflicts through both deliberation and the use of force.

Vatican II

A Catholic Council held between 1962 and 1965 to modernize some aspects of church teachings (such as condemnation of Jews), to update the liturgy, and to promote cooperation among the faiths (i.e., ecumenism).

Existentialism

A philosophy prominent after World War II developed primarily by Jean-Paul Sartre to stress the importance of action in the creation of an authentic self.

Simone de Bouvoir

Author of The Second Sex (1949), a globally influential work that created an interpretation of women's age-old inferior status from existentialist philosophy.

John F. Kennedy

U.S. president (1961-1963) who faced off with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban missile crisis.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The confrontation in 1962 between the United States and the USSR over Soviet installation of missile sites off the U.S. coast in Cuba.

DNA

The genetic material that forms the basis of each cell; the discovery of its structure in 1952 revolutionized genetics, molecular biology, and other scientific and medical fields.

In vitro fertilization

A process developed in the 1970s by which human eggs are fertilized with sperm outside the body and then implanted in a woman's uterus.

Multinational corporation

A business that operates in many foreign countries by sending large segments of its manufacturing, finance, sales, and other business components abroad.

pop art

A style in the visual arts that mimicked advertising and consumerism and that used ordinary objects as a part of paintings and other compositions.

ostopolitik

A policy initiated by West German foreign minister Willy Brandt in the late 1960s in which West Germany sought better economic relations with the Communist countries of eastern Europe.

Samizdat

A key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced government-suppressed publications by hand and passed them from reader to reader, thus building a foundation for the successful resistance of the 1980s.

Civil Rights Act

A U.S. civil rights and labor law enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 which forbade racial segregation in public facilities and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to fight job discrimination based on "race, color, national origin, religion, and sex."

Richard Nixon

U.S. president (1969-1974) who escalated the Vietnam War, worked for accommodation with China, and resigned from the presidency after trying to block free elections.

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)

A consortium that regulated the supply and export of oil and that acted with more unanimity after the United States supported Israel against the Arabs in the wars of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Stagflation

The combination of a stagnant economy and soaring inflation; a period of stagflation occurred in the West in the 1970s as a result of an OPEC embargo on oil.

Margaret Thatcher

Prime minister of Britain (1979-1990) who set a new tone for British politics by promoting neoliberal economic policies and criticizing poor people, union members, and racial minorities as worthless, even harmful citizens.

Neoliberalism

A theory first promoted by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, calling for a return to liberal principles of the nineteenth century, including the reduction of welfare-state programs and the cutting of taxes for the wealthy to promote economic growth.

Mikhail Gorbachev

Leader of the Soviet Union (1985-1991) who instituted reforms such as glasnost and perestroika, thereby contributing to the collapse of Communist rule in the Soviet bloc and the USSR.

Perestroika

Literally, "restructuring"; an economic policy instituted in the 1980s by Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev calling for the introduction of market mechanisms and the achievement of greater efficiency in manufacturing, agriculture, and services.

Glastnos

Literally "openness" or "publicity"; a policy instituted in the 1980s by Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev calling for greater openness in speech and in thinking, which translated to the reduction of censorship in publishing, radio, television, and other media.

Solidarity

A Polish labor union founded in 1980 by Lech Walesa and Anna Walentynowicz that contested Communist Party programs and eventually succeeded in ousting the party from the Polish government.

Globalization

The interconnection of labor, capital, ideas, services, and goods around the world. Although globalization has existed for hundreds of years, the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are seen as more global because of the speed with which people, goods, and ideas travel the world.

Slobodan Milosevic

President of Serbia (1989-1997) who pushed for Serb control of post-Communist Yugoslavia; in 2002, he was tried for crimes against humanity in the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the dissolution of the Yugoslav state.

Ethnic Cleansing

The mass murder — genocide — of people according to ethnicity or nationality; it can also include eliminating all traces of the murdered people's past. Examples include the post-World War I elimination of minorities in eastern and central Europe and the rape and murders that resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Vladimir Putin

President of Russia from 2000 to 2008; prime minister 2008-present. He has worked to reestablish Russia as a world power through control of the country's resources and military capabilities.

Maastricht Treaty

The agreement among the members of the European Community to have a closer alliance, including the use of common passports and eventually the development of a common currency; by the terms of this treaty, the European Community became the European Union (EU) in 1994.

European Union (EU)

Formerly the European Economic Community (EEC, or Common Market), and then the European Community (EC); formed in 1994 by the terms of the Maastricht Treaty. Its members have political ties through the European parliament as well as long-standing common economic, legal, and business mechanisms.

Euro

The common currency in seventeen member states of the European Union (EU) and of EU institutions. It went into effect gradually, used first in business transactions in 1999 and entering public circulation in 2002.

Nongovernmental Organization (NGO)

Charitable foundations and activist groups such as Doctors Without Borders that work outside of governments, often on political, economic, and relief issues; also, philanthropic organizations such as the Rockefeller, Ford, and Open Society Foundations that shape economic and social policy and the course of political reform.

Global Warming

An increase in the temperature of the earth's lower atmosphere resulting from a buildup of chemical emissions.

Green Party

A political party first formed in West Germany in 1979 to bring about environmentally sound policies. It spread across Europe and around the world thereafter.

Osama Bin Laden

Wealthy leader of the militant Islamic group al-Qaeda, which executed terrorist plots, including the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, to end the presence of U.S. forces in his home country, Saudi Arabia.

Brexit

An invented term first referring to the referendum held in June 2016 to determine whether Britain would leave the European Union. With the referendum outcome favoring leaving, Brexit now refers to the process of negotiating the terms of the withdrawal from Europe.

Toni Morrison

The first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; her works include Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), and A Mercy (2008).

Postmodernism

A term applied in the late twentieth century to both an intense stylistic mixture in the arts without a central unifying theme or elite set of standards and a critique of Enlightenment and scientific beliefs in rationality and the possibility of certain knowledge.

Digital Age

The twenty first century's diffusion of powerful micro-computer technology that enabled information-intensive production and the transformation of personal communication.