Exam Study Notes

Buddhism

• Founded by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha).
• Core Teachings:
  • Life is full of suffering caused by desire.
  • Suffering ends when desire ends.
  • Enlightenment (Nirvana) is achieved through right conduct, wisdom, and meditation.
  • Enlightenment releases one from desire, suffering, and rebirth.

Caste System

• A system of social organization in India.
• Evolved over millennia.
• Based on a division into four inherited classes (varna).
• Includes thousands of social distinctions based on occupation (jatis).
• Jatis became the main cell of social life in India.

Confucianism

• A Chinese philosophy.
• Advocates the moral example of superiors as key to social order.

Judaism

• A monotheistic religion developed by the Hebrews.
• Emphasizes a sole personal god (Yahweh) concerned with social justice.

Mandate of Heaven

• The idea that heaven granted Chinese emperors the right to rule.
• Heaven bestows its mandate to a just ruler, the Son of Heaven.
• Heaven withdraws the mandate from a despotic ruler, leading to overthrow.

Patriarchy

• Literally “rule of the father”.
• A social system of male dominance.

Quran

• The most holy text of Islam.
• Records the revelations given to the prophet Muhammad between 610 and 632.

Sufism

• A branch of Islam.
• Defined as the inner, mystical dimension of Islam.

Roman Catholic Church

• Western European branch of Christianity.
• Separated from Eastern Orthodoxy (major break in 1054 CE).
• Western Christendom centered on the Pope as the ultimate authority in doctrine by the 11th century.

Abbasid Caliphate

• Dynasty of caliphs who ruled an increasingly fragmented Islamic state from 750 to 1258.
• The Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258.

Aztec Empire

• Major state in present-day Mexico in the 14th and 15th centuries.
• Dominated by the seminomadic Mexica tribe.
• The Mexica tribe migrated from northern Mexico.

Champa Rice

• Quick-maturing, drought-resistant rice.
• Allows two harvests of sixty days each in one growing season.
• Originated from Vietnam and was sent to China as a tribute gift.

Foot Binding

• Chinese practice of tightly wrapping girls’ feet to keep them small.
• Prevalent in the Song dynasty.
• Emphasis on small size and delicacy as central to views of female beauty.

Inca Empire

• The Western Hemisphere’s largest imperial state in the 15th and early 16th centuries.
• Built by Quechua-speaking people.
• Stretched 2,500 miles along the Andes Mountains.
• Contained 10 million subjects.

Mit'a

• Mandatory public service in the Inca Empire.
• A form of coerced labor.

Ottoman Empire

• Major Islamic state centered in Anatolia.
• Included the Balkans, the Near East, and much of North Africa.
• Lasted until 1922.

Renaissance, European

• A “rebirth” of classical learning.
• Associated with the cultural blossoming of Italy in the period 1350–1500.
• Included a rediscovery of Greek learning, major developments in art, and growing secularism.

Song Dynasty

• A Chinese dynasty (960–1279).
• Marked by an explosion of scholarship, rise of Neo-Confucianism, and revolutions in agriculture and industry.
• China became the richest and most populated country on earth.

House of Wisdom

• An academic center for research and translation of foreign texts.
• Established in Baghdad in 830 CE by the Abbasid caliph.

Sea Roads

• World’s largest sea-based system of communication and exchange before 1500 CE.
• Indian Ocean commerce stretched from southern China to eastern Africa.
• Included the exchange of luxury and bulk goods, ideas, and crops.

Mali

• A prominent state within West African civilization; established in 1235.
• Monopolized the import of horses and metals as part of the trans-Saharan trade.
• Mansa Musa was the most famous ruler.

Sand Roads

• The routes of the trans-Saharan trade.
• Linked interior West Africa to the Mediterranean and North Africa.

Silk Roads

• Land-based trade routes that linked Eurasia.
• In use 130 BCE - 1453 CE.

Swahili Civilization

• An East African civilization that emerged in the eighth century CE.
• A blending of Bantu & Islamic.
• Important part of the Indian Ocean trade.

Timbuktu

• Great trading city of West Africa.
• Noted in the fourteenth–sixteenth centuries as a center of Islamic scholarship.

Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

• A fairly small-scale trade that developed in the twelfth century CE.
• Exported West African slaves captured in raids across the Sahara.
• Slaves were sold mostly as household servants in Islamic North Africa.

Black Death

• The massive epidemic that swept Eurasia in the fourteenth century CE.

Chinggis Khan

• Mongol leader Temujin united the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia.
• Title Chinggis Khan, meaning “universal ruler” given to him in 1206.

Ming Dynasty

• Chinese dynasty (1368–1644) that succeeded the Yuan dynasty of the Mongols.
• Noted for its return to traditional Chinese ways and restoration of the land after the destructiveness of the Mongols.

Yuan Dynasty

• Mongol dynasty that ruled China from 1279 to 1368.

Little Ice Age

• A period of unusually cool temperatures from the 13th to 19th centuries.
• Most prominently in the Northern Hemisphere.

Mercantilism

• The economic theory that governments served their countries' economic interests best by encouraging exports and accumulating bullion (silver & gold).
• Helped fuel European colonialism.

Columbian Exchange

• The massive transatlantic interaction between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia.
• Began in the period of European exploration and colonization.

Devshirme

• The tribute of boy children that the Ottoman Turks levied from their Christian subjects in the Balkans.
• The Ottomans raised the boys for service in the civil administration or in the elite Janissary infantry corps.

Great Dying

• The devastating demographic impact of European-borne epidemic diseases on the Americas.

Mughal Empire

• A state founded by an Islamized Turkic group related to the Mongols.
• Mughal rule was noted for efforts to create partnerships between Hindus and Muslims under Akbar.
• Height of the empire under Aurangzeb in the late 17th century.

Settler Colonies

• Colonies in which the colonizing people settle with the purpose of territorial occupation rather than the extraction of labor or resources.
• Examples: Afrikaners in South Africa; British in Australia.

Benin

• West African kingdom whose strong kings sharply limited engagement with the slave trade.

Dahomey

• West African kingdom that became strong through its rulers’ exploitation of the slave trade.

East India Companies

• Private trading companies chartered by the governments of England and the Netherlands around 1600.
• Given monopolies on Indian Ocean trade, including the right to make war and to rule conquered peoples.

Manila

• Capital of the Spanish Philippines and a major multicultural trade city.
• Already had a population of more than 40,000 by 1600.

Silver Drain

• The siphoning of money from Europe to pay for the luxury products of the East.
• Eventually, the bulk of the world’s silver supply made its way to China.

Trading Post Empire

• Form of imperial dominance based on control of trade rather than on control of subject peoples.

European Enlightenment

• European intellectual movement of the 18th century that applied the lessons of the Scientific Revolution to human affairs.
• Noted for its commitment to open-mindedness and inquiry and the belief that knowledge could transform human society.

Protestant Reformation

• Massive schism within Christianity that had its formal beginning in 1517 with the German priest Martin Luther.
• Leaders claimed to seek to “reform” a Church that had fallen from biblical practice.
• The movement was radically innovative in its challenge to Church authority and its endorsement of salvation “by faith alone.”

Scientific Revolution

• Great European intellectual and cultural transformation.
• Based on the principles of the scientific method.

Sikhism

• A significant syncretic religion that evolved in India.
• Blending elements of Islam and Hinduism.

Thirty Years’ War

• Highly destructive war (1618–1648) that eventually included most of Europe.
• Fought for the most part between Protestants and Catholics.
• Ended with the Peace of Westphalia (1648).

Wahhabi Islam

• Major Islamic movement beginning in the 18th century led by the Muslim theologian Abd al-Wahhab.
• Advocated an austere lifestyle and strict adherence to the sharia (Islamic law).

Abolitionist Movement

• An international movement that between approximately 1780 and 1890 succeeded in condemning slavery as morally repugnant and abolishing it in much of the world.

French Revolution

• Massive dislocation of French society (1789–1799) that overthrew the monarchy.
• Destroyed most of the French aristocracy.
• Launched radical reforms of society that were lost again, in part, under Napoleon’s imperial rule and after the restoration of the monarchy.

Haitian Revolution

• The only fully successful slave rebellion in world history.
• The uprising in the French Caribbean colony was sparked by the French Revolution.
• Led to the establishment of an independent state (1791–1803).

Latin American Revolutions

• Series of uprisings in the Spanish colonies of Latin America (1810–1825) that established the independence of new states from Spanish rule.
• Retained the privileges of the elites despite efforts at more radical social rebellion by the lower classes.

Nationalism

• The focusing of citizens’ loyalty on the notion that they are part of a “nation” with a unique culture, territory, and destiny.
• First became prominent in the nineteenth century.

North American Revolution

• Successful rebellion conducted by the colonists of North America against British rule (1775–1783).
• Established republican government in place of monarchy.

Seneca Falls Conference

• The first organized women’s rights conference, which took place at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.

Bourgeoisie

• Term that Karl Marx used to describe the owners of industrial capital.

Indian Cotton Textiles

• For much of the eighteenth century, well-made and inexpensive cotton textiles from India flooded Western markets.
• The competition stimulated the British textile industry to industrialize.

Latin American Export Boom

• Large-scale increase in Latin American exports in the second half of the nineteenth century, made possible by major improvements in shipping.
• The boom mostly benefited the upper and middle classes.

Marx, Karl

• The most influential proponent of socialism.
• Marx advocated a working-class revolution as the key to creating an ideal communist future.
• Communist Manifesto (1848).

Mexican Revolution

• War (1910–1920) in which Mexican reformers from the middle class joined with workers and peasants to overthrow the dictator Porfirio Díaz and create a new, much more democratic political order.

Steam Engine

• Mechanical device in which steam drives a piston, rather than relying on human or animal muscle power.
• Allowed an unimagined increase in productivity and made the Industrial Revolution possible.

Cash-Crop Production

• Agricultural production of crops for sale in the market rather than for consumption by the farmers themselves.
• Operated at the level of both individual farmers and large-scale plantations.

Cultivation System

• System of forced labor used in the Netherlands East Indies in the 19th century.
• Peasants were required to cultivate at least 20% of their land in cash crops for sale at low and fixed prices to government contractors, who earned enormous profits from the resale.

Scientific Racism

• A new kind of racism that emerged in the 19th century that increasingly used the prestige of science to support European racial prejudices and preferences.

Civilizing Mission

• European understanding of empire that emphasized their duty to "civilize inferior races" by bringing Christianity, government, education to colonized peoples while suppressing "native customs."

Congo Free State/Leopold II

• Leopold II was king of Belgium from 1865 to 1909.
• His rule as private owner of the Congo Free State is the worst abuse of Europe’s second wave of colonization, resulting in millions of deaths.

Indian Rebellion

• 1857–1858; Massive uprising of much of India against British rule.
• Also called the Indian Mutiny or the Sepoy Mutiny.
• The rebellion first broke out among Indian troops serving the British.

Scramble for Africa

• The European countries’ partition of the continent of Africa between themselves in the period 1875–1900.

Social Darwinism

• An erroneous application of the concept of “survival of the fittest” to human history in the nineteenth century.

Unequal Treaties

• Series of 19th-century treaties in which China made major concessions to Western powers.

Boxer Rebellion

• Rising of Chinese militia organizations in 1900 in which large numbers of Europeans and Chinese Christians were killed.

Chinese Revolution

• Long revolutionary process in the period 1912–1949 that began with the overthrow of the Chinese imperial system and ended with the triumph of the Communist Party under the leadership of Mao Zedong.

Meiji Restoration

• The overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan in 1868, restoring power to the emperor Meiji.

Opium Wars

• Two wars fought between Western powers and China (1839–1842 and 1856–1858) after China tried to restrict the importation of foreign goods, especially opium.
• China lost both wars and was forced to make major concessions.

Taiping Uprising

• Massive Chinese rebellion that devastated much of the country between 1850 and 1864; it was based on millenarian teachings.

Tanzimat Reforms

• Reform measures undertaken in the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1839.

Tokugawa Japan

• Military rulers who successfully unified Japan politically by the early seventeenth century and established a “closed door” policy toward European encroachments.

Stalin, Joseph

• Leader of the Soviet Union from the late 1920's until his death.

Total War

• War that requires each country involved to mobilize its entire population in the effort to defeat the enemy.

Fascism

• Political ideology marked by its intense nationalism and authoritarianism.

Great Depression

• Worldwide economic depression that began in 1929 with the New York stock market crash and continued in many areas until the outbreak of World War II.

Guomindang

• The Chinese Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek that governed from 1928 until communist overthrow in 1949.

Ho Chi Minh

• Leader of the Vietnamese communist movement; established control first in the north, and then in the whole of Vietnam after 1975.

Holocaust

• Name commonly used for the Nazi genocide of Jews and other "undesirables" in German society.

Mao Zedong

• Chairman of China's Communist Party and de facto ruler of China from 1949 until his death in 1976.

Treaty of Versailles

• 1919 treaty that officially ended World War I; the immense penalties it placed on Germany are regarded as one of the causes of World War II.

Vladamir Lenin

• Russian Bolshevik who was the main leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Mikhail Gorbachev

• Leader of the Soviet Union from 1985-1991 whose efforts to reform the USSR led to its collapse.

Cold War

• Political and ideological near-war between the Western world and the communist world that lasted from 1946 to 1991.

Decolonization

• Process in which many African and Asian states won their independence from Western colonial rule, in most cases by negotiated settlement with gradual political reforms and a program of investment rather than through military confrontation.

Deng Xiaoping

• Leader of China from 1976-1997. His reforms dismantled many of the distinctive communist elements of the Chinese economy.

Great Leap Forward

• Major Chinese initiative (1958–1960) led by Mao Zedong that was intended to promote small-scale industrialization; in reality, it caused a major crisis and worsened the impact of a devastating famine.

Marshall Plan

• Huge US government initiative to aid in the post-WWII recovery of Western Europe; put into effect in 1948.

Mohandas Ghandi

• The political leader of the Indian drive for independence from Great Britain; rejected the goal of modern industrialization and advocated nonviolence.

NATO

• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military and political alliance founded in 1949 that committed the United States to the defense of Europe in the event of Soviet aggression.

Syrian Civil War

• Began in 2011. Generated 12 million refugees by mid-2016 and engaged regional and world powers on various sides of the conflict.

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 later elsewhere.

Age of Fossil Fuels

• 20th-century shift in energy production with increased use of coal and oil, resulting in widespread availability of electricity and the internal combustion engine; a major source of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change.

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 major capitalist countries.

Communication Revolution

• Modern transformation of communication technology, from the 19th-century telegraph to the present-day smart phone.

Economic Globalization

• Deepening economic entanglement of the world's peoples since 1950; accompanied by the spread of industrialization in the Global South and extraordinary economic growth following WWII; the process has generated increased living standards for many as well as various forms of resistance and inequality.

Second-Wave Feminism

• Women’s rights movement that revived in the 1960s; demanded equal rights for women in employment and education, women’s right to control their own bodies and the end of patriarchal domination.

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

• International body representing 149 nations that negotiates the rules for global commerce and is dedicated to the promotion of free trade.

Second-Wave Environmentalism

• A movement that began in the 1960's and triggered environmental movements in Europe and North America. Characterized by widespread grassroots involvement focused on issues such as pollution, resource depletion, protection of wildlife habitats, and nuclear power.

Climate Change

• The warming of the planet largely caused by higher concentrations of "greenhouse gases" generated by the burning of fossil fuels. The most pressing environmental issue of the early 21st century.

Green Revolution

• Innovations in agriculture (chemical fertilizers; high-yielding crops) during the 20th century that enabled global food production to keep up with growing human population.

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 deaths.

Influenza Pandemic

• The worst pandemic in human history in 1918 and 1919. Carried by people returning home from WWI. Between 50 million and 100 million deaths.

Islamic Radicalism

• Movements that promote strict adherence to the Quran and the sharia, often in opposition to Western culture. Prominent since the 1970s, they often present themselves as returning to an earlier expression of Islam. Examples: Iranian Revolution, Taliban, a-Qaeda, Islamic State.

Population Explosion

• An extraordinarily rapid growth in human population during the 20th century that quadrupled population in little more than a century. Experienced primarily in the Global South.

Religious Fundamentalism

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

Apartheid

• The system that developed in South Africa of strictly limiting the social and political integration of whites and blacks.

Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal

• Founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey (1881–1938); as military commander and leader of the Turkish national movement, he made Turkey into a secular state.

Borobudur

• The largest Buddhist monument ever built, Borobudur is a mountainous ten-level monument with an elaborate carving program, probably built in the ninth century c.e.; outstanding example of cultural exchange and syncretism.

Byzantine Empire

• The surviving eastern Roman Empire during the medieval centuries; named after the ancient Greek city Byzantium, on the site of which the Roman emperor Constantine founded a new capital, Constantinople.

Cartaz

• A pass that the Portuguese required of all merchant vessels attempting to trade in the Indian Ocean.

Chinese Buddhism

• China’s only large-scale cultural borrowing before the twentieth century; Buddhism entered China from India in the first and second centuries c.e. but only became popular in 300–800 c.e. through a series of cultural accommodations. At first supported by the state, Buddhism suffered persecution during the ninth century but continued to play a role in Chinese society.

Chinese Revolution of 1949

• An event that marks the coming to power of the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong following a decades-long struggle against domestic opponents & Japanese imperialism.

Christianity, Eastern Orthodox

• Branch of Christianity that developed in the eastern part of the Roman Empire and gradually separated, mostly on matters of practice, from the branch of Christianity dominant in Western Europe.

Colonial Tribalism

• A European tendency, especially in African colonies, to identify and sometimes invent distinct “tribes” that had often not existed before, reinforcing the European idea that African societies were primitive.

Creoles

• Spaniards born in the Americas.

Daimyo

• Feudal lords of Japan who ruled with virtual independence thanks to their bands of samurai warriors.

Daoism

• A Chinese philosophy/popular religion that advocates simplicity and understanding of the world of nature, founded by the legendary figure Laozi.

Diaspora

• A scattered population of a common origin away from their homeland.

Environmentalism

• Twentieth-century movement to preserve the natural world in the face of spiraling human ability to alter the world environment.

European Economic Community

• The EEC (also known as the Common Market) was an alliance formed in 1957 by Italy, France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, and dedicated to developing common trade policies and reduced tariffs; it gradually developed into the European Union.

Fundamentalism

• Occurring within all the major world religions, fundamentalism is a self-proclaimed return to the “fundamentals” of a religion and is marked by a militant piety.

Glasnost

• Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of “openness,” in the Soviet Union which allowed greater cultural and intellectual freedom and ended most censorship of the media.

Globalization

• The massive growth in international economic transactions from around 1950 to the present.

Hangzhou

• China’s capital during the Song dynasty, with a population of more than a million people. An important trading city located at the east end of the Silk Roads.

Ibn Battuta

• A famous Muslim traveler who visited much of the Islamic world in the fourteenth century and wrote a major account of what he saw.

Indian National Congress

• Organization established in 1885 by Western-educated elite Indians in an effort to win a voice in the governance of India; the INC became a major popular movement that won India’s independence from Britain.

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

• Struggle between the Jewish state of Israel and the adjacent Palestinian Muslim territories that has generated periodic wars and upheavals since 1948.

Jihad

• Arabic for “struggle,” this term describes both the spiritual striving of each Muslim toward a godly life and armed struggle against the forces of unbelief and evil.

Louverture, Toussaint

• First leader of the Haitian Revolution, a former slave who wrote the first constitution of Haiti. Served as the first governor of the newly independent state.

Mecca

• The birthplace of Islam. Location of the Kaaba, which is the major pilgrimage site for Islam.

Mestizo

• A term used to describe the mixed-race population of Spanish colonial societies in the Americas.

Middle Passage

• Name commonly given to the journey across the Atlantic undertaken by African slaves being shipped to the Americas.

Mongol Empire

• Existed during the 13th and 14th centuries was the largest land empire in history. It connected the east with the west and revitalized the Silk Roads with an enforced Pax Mongolica allowing trade, technologies, commodities, and ideologies to be disseminated and exchanged across Eurasia.

Mulattoes

• Term used for people of mixed African and European blood.

Muslim League

• Created in 1906, was a response to the Indian National Congress in India’s struggle for independence from Britain; the League’s leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, argued that regions of India with a Muslim majority should form a separate state called Pakistan.

NAFTA

• North American Free Trade Agreement between the US, Mexico, and Canada established in 1984.

Nazi Germany

• Germany as ruled by Hitler and the Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945; a fascist state dedicated to extreme nationalism, territorial expansion, and the purification of the German state.

Newton, Isaac

• English natural scientist (1642–1727) whose formulation of the laws of motion and mechanics is regarded as the culmination of the Scientific Revolution.

Peninsulares

• In the Spanish colonies of Latin America, the term used to refer to people who had been born in Spain; they claimed superiority over Spaniards born in the Americas.

Perestroika

• Bold economic program launched in 1987 by Mikhail Gorbachev with the intention of freeing up Soviet industry and businesses.

Pillars of Islam

• The five core practices required of Muslims: a profession of faith, regular prayer, charitable giving, fasting during Ramadan, and a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Plantation Complex

• Agricultural system based on African slavery that was used in Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southern colonies of North America.

Proletariat

• Term that Karl Marx used to describe the industrial working class; originally used in ancient Rome to describe the poorest part of the urban population.

Qing Dynasty

• Ruling dynasty of China from 1644 to 1912; the Qing rulers were originally from Manchuria.

Russian Revolution

• Massive revolutionary upheaval in 1917 that overthrew the Romanov dynasty in Russia and ended with the seizure of power by communists under the leadership of Lenin.

Russo-Japanese War

• 1904–1905 Japansese victory established them as a formidable military competitor in East Asia and led the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Safavid Empire

• Major Turkic empire of Persia founded in the early sixteenth century, notable for it efforts to convert its populace to Shia Islam.

Samurai

• Members of Japan’s warrior class, which developed as political power became increasingly decentralized.

Seizure of Constantinople

• The capital and almost the only outpost left of the Byzantine Empire, fell to the army of the Ottomans in 1453, marked the end of Christian Byzantium.

Serfdom

• The status of peasants under feudalism. It was a type of coerced labor which developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe. Serfs who occupied a plot of land were required to work for the Lord of the Manor who owned that land, and in return were entitled to protection and justice.

Sharia

• Islamic law, dealing with all matters of both secular and religious life.

Srivijaya

• A Malay kingdom that dominated the Straits of Malacca between 670 and 1025 c.e.; noted for its creation of a native/Indian hybrid culture.

Tribute System

• Chinese method of dealing with foreign lands and peoples that assumed the subordination of all non-Chinese authorities and required the payment of tribute to the Chinese emperor (although the Chinese gifts given in return were often much more valuable).

• Western European branch of Christianity that gradually defined itself as separate from Eastern Orthodoxy, with a major break occurring in 1054 c.e. that still has not been overcome. By the eleventh century, Western Christendom was centered on the pope as the ultimate authority in matters of doctrine. The Church struggled to remain independent of established political authorities.

United Nations

• International peacekeeping organization and forum for international opinion, established in 1945.

Vodou

• syncretic religion in Haiti

Voltaire

• Pen name of the French philosopher François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778), whose work is often taken as a model of Enlightenment questioning of traditional values and attitudes; noted for his deism and his criticism of traditional religion.

Young Ottomans

• Group of reformers in the mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire; they urged Westernizing reforms to the political system.

Young Turks

• Movement of Turkish military and civilian elites that developed ca. 1900, eventually bringing down the Ottoman Empire.

Zheng He

• Great Chinese admiral who commanded a fleet of more than 300 ships in a series of voyages of contact and exploration to enhance Chinese prestige. Began in 1405.

Zhenotdel

• Women’s Department of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1930; Zhenotdel worked strongly to promote equality for women.