AP World History: Modern - Unit 8: Cold War and Decolonization & Unit 9: Globalization VOCAB

The BEST vocabulary flashcards set for Units 8-9 of AP World History: Modern!

Tehran Conference

A meeting held in 1943 in Iran between leaders of the Allied Powers during World War II, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, to discuss the next phase of the war and post-war arrangements

Yalta Conference

A meeting held between the Big Three in Crimea to discuss the division of Germany and Austria into occupation zones and commit the USSR to enter the war against Japan in exchange for allowing the Soviets to prevent free elections in Eastern Europe

Potsdam Conference

A meeting held between the Big Three in Germany to discuss the country’s demilitarization, denazification, and finalize plans on how to occupy it

Arms Race

A competition between nations to accumulate and develop weapons in order to achieve military superiority and deter adversaries

Space Race

A period of competition between the USSR and the United States focused on achieving significant accomplishments in space exploration and ended with American astronaut Neil Armstrong’s successful landing on the moon

Containment

A geopolitical strategy aimed at preventing the spread of communism beyond where it already existed, particularly during the Cold War

Marshall Plan

A post-WWII initiative to provide economic aid from the U.S. to Western European states to help them rebuild and combat communism

Korean War

A proxy war that began when the Soviet-backed North Koreans attacked the American-backed South Koreans, resulting in a stalemate (both North Korea and South Korea are still independent states)

Angolan Civil War

A brutal conflict from 1975 to 2002 following Angola’s independence from Portugal, became a key proxy war in the Cold War, pitting the Soviet-backed MPLA against the U.S. and South African-supported FNLA and UNITA

NATO

A supranational organization consisting of the U.S., Canada, and several Western European countries; initially created to combat Soviet dominance

Warsaw Pact

A supranational organization that consisted of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellite states

Chinese Communist Revolution

Marked the transition from an ROC- to PRC-controlled Mainland China

Nuclear Proliferation

The build-up of nuclear weapon stockpiles in the United States and USSR

White Revolution

A series of reforms launched in 1963 by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to modernize Iran’s economy and society, aimed at transforming Iran into a global power through land reforms, industrialization, and social welfare programs

Great Leap Forward

A failed movement aimed at rapidly industrializing and collectivizing agriculture in China; it resulted in famine and poverty

Proxy War

A conflict where two opposing countries or parties support combatants that serve their interests instead of waging war directly against each other

Indian National Congress

An organization that used mass civil disobedience to air grievances against and push for independence from the British

Gandhi

Indian independence advocate who at one point led the Indian National congress; he used nonviolent civil disobedience to push his agenda

Partition of India

In 1947, the British Raj was split into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan (it later was split, with the west becoming Pakistan and the East becoming Bangladesh)

Gold Coast

A British colony that later merged with British Togoland to form their independent country of Ghana; famous for its abundance of gold and other natural resources

Autonomy

The right or condition to self-rule

Biafra secessionists

Advocates for the establishment of an independent state of Biafra; their influence sparked the Nigerian Civil War

State of Israel

A state formed for European Jews following the atrocities of WWII and the Holocaust, although its creation angered Muslim Palestinians who sought a country of their own

Imperial metropoles

Cities of the former colonizer; many saw an influx of immigration from former colonies, forming large diasporas (e.g., Indians to London, United Kingdom, Filipinos to San Francisco, United States of America, or Algerians to Paris, France)

Julius Nyerere

1st president of Tanzania and prominent figure in the Pan-African movement; was a key leader in Tanzania’s independence and a proponent of the “Ujamaa” philosophy

Martin Luther King Jr.

An eminent figure in the Civil Rights Movement, who used nonviolent disobedience to advocate for desegregation in the American South

Nelson Mandela

A leader in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa; later became the country’s first black president

Nonviolence

A philosophy and strategy for social change that rejects the use of violence, promoting peaceful means of protest and resistance

Shining Path

During the 1970s, former philosophy professor Abimael Guzmán created this revolutionary terrorist organization; it orchestrated bombings and assassinations in Peru for decades to overthrow the government and replace it with a communist one

Al-Qaeda

A fundamentalist Islamic terrorist group that infamously attacked the Twin Towers, Pentagon, and crash-landed in Pennsylvania in a series of attacks on September 11, 2001 that killed thousands

Invasion of Afghanistan

In 1979, the USSR intervened to support a communist regime against a growing Afghan resistance, ultimately leading to a decade-long war and the USSR’s decline

Nuclear Power

Research in the 1930s and 1940s that led to the atomic bomb also led to the 1st use of this as electricity for factories and homes

Green Revolution

A mid-20th century revolution that caused advancements in pesticides, fertilizers, crossbreeding, and genetic engineering with an intent to combat world hunger

Vaccinations

These have been developed to combat diseases like polio, measles, smallpox, mumps, and whooping cough