Vocabulary Set 1

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. (p. 430)

Taiping (Tie-PING) Rebellion

A Christian-inspired rural rebellion that threatened to topple the Qing Empire. (p. 431)

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. (p. 433)

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. (p. 435)

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 assassinated. (p. 437)

Francisco "Pancho" Villa

A popular leader during the Mexican Revolution. An outlaw in his youth, when the revolution started, he formed a cavalry army in the north of Mexico and fought for the rights of the landless in collaboration with Emiliano Zapata. He was assassinated in 1923. (p. 437)

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. (p. 443)

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. (p. 444)

Theodore Herzl

Austrian journalist and founder of the Zionist movement urging the creation of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. (p. 444)

Balfour Declaration

Statement issued by Britain's foreign secretary Arthur Balfour in 1917 favoring the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. (p. 446)

Bolsheviks

Radical Marxist political party founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1903. Under Lenin's leadership, the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917 during the Russian Revolution. (p. 447)

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. (p. 447)

Sun Yat-sen

Chinese nationalist revolutionary, founder and leader of the Guomindang. He attempted to create a liberal democratic movement in China but was thwarted by military leaders. (p. 447)

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. (p. 448)

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. (p. 447)

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. (p. 448)

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. (p. 448)

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. (p. 448)

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. (p. 451)