Unit 9 AP World History Vocab.

Age of Fossil Fuels

Twentieth-century shift in energy production with increased use of coal, oil, and natural gas, resulting in the widespread availability of electricity and the internal combustion engine; a major source of the greenhouse gasses that drive climate change

Communication Revolution

Modern transformation of communication technology, from the nineteenth-century telegraph to the present-day smart phone

Economic Globalization

The deepening economic entanglement of the world’s peoples, especially since 1950; accompanied by the spread f industrialization in the Global South and extraordinary economic growth following World War II; the process has also generated various forms of inequality and resistance as well as increasing living standards for many.

Asian Tigers

Nickname for the East Asian countries of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong, which experienced remarkable export-driven economic growth in the late twentieth century

Bretton Woods System

Name for the agreements and institutions (including the world Bank and the International Monetary Fund) set up in 1944 to regulate commercial and financial dealings among the major capitalist countries

Transnational Corporations

Global businesses that produce goods or deliver services simultaneously in many countries; growing in number since the 1960s, some have more assets and power than many countries

World Trade Organization (WTO)

An international body now representing 164 nations and charged with negotiating the rules for global commerce and promoting free trade; its meetings have been the site of major anti-globalization protests since 1999

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada, established in 1984. IT was replaced in 2020 by a new agreement among the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Consumerism

A culture of leisure and consumption that developed during the past century or so in tandem with global economic growth and an enlarged middle class; emerged first in the Western world and late elsewhere

Export Processing Zones (EPZs)

Areas where international companies can operate with tax and other benefits, offered as an incentive to attract manufacturers.

Service Sector

Industries like government, medicine, education finance, and communication that have grown due to increasing consumerism, population, and communication technologies.

Informal Economy

Also known as the “shadow” economy; refers to unofficial, unregulated, and untaxed economic activity

One Child Family Policy

Chinese policy of population control that lasted from 1980 to 2014; used financial incentives and penalties to promote birth control, sterilization, and abortions in an effort to limit most families to a single child.

Women’s Department (USSR)

A distinctive organization, known as Zhenotdel, within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that worked to promote equality for women in the 1920s with conferences, publications, and education.

Second Wave Feminism

Women’s rights movement that revived in the 1960s with a different agenda from earlier women’s suffrage movements; second-wave feminists demanded equal rights for women in employment and education, women’s rights to control their own bodies, and the end of patriarchal domination.

Feminism in the Global South

Mobilization of women across Asia, Africa, and Latin America; distinct from Western feminism because of its focus on issues such as colonialism, racism, and poverty, rather than those exclusively related to gender.

Population Explosion

An extraordinarily rapid growth in human population during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that quadrupled human numbers in little more than a century. Experienced primarily in the Global South

Green Revolution

Innovations in agriculture during the twentieth century, such as mechanical harvesters, chemical fertilizers, and the development of high-yielding crops, that enabled global food production to keep up with, and even exceed, growing human numbers.

Global Urbanization

The explosive growth of cities after 1900, caused by the reduced need for rural labor and more opportunities for employment in manufacturing, commerce, government, and the service industry.

Megacities

Very large urban centers with populations of over 10 million; by 2020, there were thirty-secen such cities on five continents.

Labor Migration

The movement of people, often illegally, into another country to escape poverty or violence and to seek opportunities for work that are less available in their own countries.

Influenza Pandemic

One of the worst pandemics in human history, caused by three waves of influenza that swept across the globe in 1918 and 1919, carried by demobilized soldiers, refugees, and other dislocation people returning home from World War I; at least 50 million people died in the pandemic.

HIV/AIDS

A pathogen that spreads primarily through sexual contact, contaminated blood products, or the sharing of needles; after sparking a global pandemic in the 1980s, it spread rapidly across the globe and caused tens of millions of death.

Cultural Globalization

The global spread of elements of popular culture such as film, language, and music from various places of origin, especially the spread of Western cultural forms to the rest of the world; has come to symbolize modernity, inclusion in global culture, and liberation or rebellion. It has prompted pushback from those who feel that established cultural traditions have been threatened.

Religious Fundamentalism

Occurring within all the major world religions, fundamentalism is a self-proclaimed return to the alleged “fundamentals” of a religion and is marked by a militant piety, exclusivism, and a sense of threat from the modern secular world.

Hindutva

A Hindu nationalist movement that became politically important in India in the 1980s; advocated a distinct Hindu identity and decried government efforts to accommodate other faith communities, particularly Islamic.

Islamic Radicalism

Movements that promote strict adherence to the Quran and the sharia, often in position to key elements of Western culture. Particularly prominent since the 1970s, such movements often present themselves as returning to an earlier expression of Islam. Examples include the Iranian revolution, Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Islamic State.

Anthropocene

A recently coined term denoting the “age of man,” in general since the Industrial Revolution and more specifically since the mid-twentieth century. It refers to the unprecedented and enduring impact of human activity on the atmosphere, the geosphere, and the biosphere.

Holocene Era

A warmer and often a wetter period that began approximately 12,000 years ago following the end of the last Ice Age. These environmental conditions were uniquely favorable for human thriving and enable the development of agriculture, significant population growth, and the creation of complex civilizations.

Climate Change

The warming of the planet, largely caused by higher concentrations of “greenhouse gases” generated by the burning of fossil fuels. It has become the most pressing environmental issue of the early twenty-first century.

Second Wave Environmentalism

A movement that began in the 1960s and triggered environmental movements in Europe and North America. It was characterized by wide-spread grassroots involvement focused on issues such as pollution, resource depletion, protection of wildlife habitats, and nuclear power.

Paris Climate Agreement

An international agreement negotiated in 2015 among some 195 countries, 700 cities, and many companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently to avoid a 2*C increase in global temperatures.