AP World Unit 7 Vocab

Serbia

The Ottoman province in the Balkans that rose up against Janissary control in the early 1800s. After World War II the central province of Yugoslavia. Serb leaders struggled to maintain dominance as the Yugoslav federation dissolved in the 1990s.

Taiping Rebellion

A Christian-inspired rural rebellion that threatened to topple the Qing Empire

Empress Dowager Cixi

Empress of China and mother of Emperor Guangxi. She put her son under house arrest, supported antiforeign movements, and resisted reforms of the Chinese government and armed forces.

Mexican Revolution

A complicated series of revolts beginning in 1910 aimed at reducing social inequality and establishing constitutional government . A constitution was adopted in 1917

Emiliano Zapata

Revolutionary and leader of peasants in the Mexican Revolution. He mobilized landless peasants in south-central Mexico in an attempt to seize and divide the lands of the wealthy landowners. Though successful for a time, he was ultimately defeated and assasinated.

Francisco “Pancho” Villa

A popular leader during the Mexican Revolution. An outlaw in his youth, when the revolution started, he formed a calvary army in the north of Mexico and fought for the rights of the landless in collaboration with Emiliano Zapata. He was assasinated in 1923.

Western Front

A line of trenches and fortifications in World War I that stretched without a break from Switzerland to the North Sea. Scene of most of the fighting between Germany, on the one hand, and France and Britain, on the other.

Faisal

Arab prince, leader of the Arab Revolt in World War I. The British made him king of Iraq in 1921, and he reigned under British protection until 1933.

Theodore Herzl

Austrian journalist and founder of the Zionist movement urging the creation of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.

Balfour Declaration

Statement issued by Britain’s foreign secretary Arthur Balfour in 1917 favoring the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.

Bolsheviks

Radical Marxist political party founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1903. Under Lenin’s leadership, they seized power in November 1917 during the Russian Revolution.

Vladimir Lenin

Leader of the Bolshevik (later Communist) Party. He lived in exile in Switzerland until 1917, then returned to Russia to lead the Bolsheviks to victory during the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed.

Sun Yat-sen

Chinese nationalist revolutionary, founder and leader of the Guomindang until his death. He attempted to create a liberal democratic political movement in China but was thwarted by military leaders.

Yuan Shikai

Chinese general and first president of the Chinese Republic (1912-1916). He stood in the way of the democratic movement led by Sun Yat-sen.

Guomindang

Nationalist political party founded on democratic principles by Sun Yat-sen in 1912. After 1925, the party was headed by Chiang Kai-shek who turned it into an increasingly authoritarian movement.

Woodrow Wilson

President of the United States (1913-1921) and a leading figure at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. He was unable to persuade the U.S. Congress to ratify the treaty of Versailles or join the League of Nations.

Fourteen Points

A peace program presented to the U.S. Congress by President Woodrow Wilson in January 1918. It called for the evacuation of German-occupied lands, the drawing of borders and the settling of territorial disputes by the self-determination of the affected populations, and the founding of an association of nations to preserve the peace and guarantee their territorial integrity. It was rejected by Germany, but it made Wilson the moral leader of the Allies in the last year of World War I.

League of Nations

International organization founded in 1919 to promote world peace and cooperation but greatly weakened by the refusal of the United States to join. It proved ineffectual in stopping aggression by Italy, Japan, and Germany in the 1930s. It was superseded in 1945 by the United Nations, which assumed some of its functions.

Mandate system

Allocation of former German colonies and Ottoman possessions to the victorious powers after World War I, to be administered under League of Nations supervision.

New Economic Policy

A policy that returned most agriculture, retail, and small industry to private ownership after the centralized control of all economic assets had virtually destroyed the Soviet economy.

Joseph Stalin

Bolshevik revolutionary, head of the Soviet Communist Party after 1924, and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. He led the Soviet Union with an iron fist, using Five-Year Plans to increase industrial production and terror to crush all opposition.

Five-Year Plans

Plans that Joseph Stalin introduced to industrialize the Soviet Union rapidly, beginning in 1928. They set goals for the output of steel, electricity, machinery, and most other products and were enforced by the police powers of the state. They succeeded in making the Soviet Union a major industrial power before World War II.

Treaty of Versailles

The treaty imposed on Germany by France, Great Britain, the United States, and other Allied Powers after World War I. It demanded that Germany dismantle its military and give up some lands to Poland. It was resented by many Germans.

Atatürk

The founder of Modern Turkey. He distinguished himself in the defense of Gallipoli in World War I and expelled a Greek expeditionary army from Anatolia in 1921–1922. He replaced the Ottoman Empire with the Turkish Republic in 1923. As president, he pushed through a radical westernization and reform of Turkish society.

Chiang Kai-shek

Chinese military and political leader. Succeeded Sun Yat-sen as head of the Guomindang in 1925; headed the Chinese government from 1928 to 1949; fought against the Chinese Communists and Japanese invaders. After 1949 he headed the Chinese nationalist government in Taiwan.

Benito Mussolini

Fascist dictator of Italy (1922–1943). He led Italy to conquer Ethiopia (1935), joined Germany in the Axis pact (1936), and allied Italy with Germany in World War II. He was overthrown in 1943 when the Allies invaded Italy.

Fascist Party

Italian political party created by Benito Mussolini during World War I. It emphasized aggressive nationalism and was Mussolini’s instrument for the creation of a dictatorship in Italy from 1922 to 1943.

Adolf Hitler

Born in Austria, He became a radical German nationalist during World War I. He led the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—the Nazis—in the 1920s and became dictator of Germany in 1933. He led Europe into World War II.

Nazis

German political party led by Adolf Hitler, emphasizing nationalism, racism, and war. When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Nazis became the only legal party and an instrument of Hitler’s absolute rule. The party’s formal name was National Socialist German Workers’ Party.

Mao Zedong

Leader of the Chinese Communist Party (1927–1976). He led the Communists on the Long March (1934–1935) and rebuilt the Communist Party and Red Army during the Japanese occupation of China (1937–1945). After World War II, he led the Communists to victory over the Guomindang. He ordered the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

Long March

The 6,000-mile flight of Chinese Communists from southeastern to northwestern China. The Communists, led by Mao Zedong, were pursued by the Chinese army under orders from Chiang Kai-shek. The 4,000 survivors of the march formed the nucleus of a revived Communist movement that defeated the Guomindang after World War II.

Stalingrad

City in Russia, site of a Red Army victory over the German army in 1942–1943. The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Today it is Volgograd.

El Alamein

Town in Egypt, site of the victory by Britain’s Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery over German forces led by General Erwin Rommel (the “Desert Fox”) in 1942–1943.

Pearl Harbor

Naval base in Hawaii attacked by Japanese aircraft on December 7, 1941. The sinking of much of the U.S. Pacific Fleet brought the United States into World War II.

Battle of Midway

U.S. naval victory over the Japanese fleet in June 1942, in which the Japanese lost four of their best aircraft carriers. It marked a turning point in World War II.

Hiroshima

City in Japan, the first to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, on August 6, 1945. The bombing hastened the end of World War II.

Auschwitz

Nazi extermination camp in Poland, the largest center of mass murder during the Holocaust. Close to a million Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and others were killed there.

Holocaust

Nazis’ program during World War II to kill people they considered undesirable. Some 6 million Jews perished during the Holocaust, along with millions of Poles, Gypsies, Communists, Socialists, and others.