HIST 121 Final Exam

An international movement that between approximately 1780 and 1890 succeeded in condemning slavery as morally repugnant and abolishing it in much of the world; the movement was especially prominent in Britain and the United States.

Document drawn up by the French National Assembly in 1789 that proclaimed the equal rights of all men; the declaration ideologically launched the French Revolution.

French representative assembly called into session by Louis XVI to address pressing problems and out of which the French Revolution emerged; the three estates were the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners.

Series of risings in the Spanish colonies of Latin America (1810–1826) that established the independence of new states from Spanish rule but that for the most part retained the privileges of the elites despite efforts at more radical social rebellion by the lower classes.

French head of state from 1799 until his abdication in 1814 (and again briefly in 1815); Napoleon preserved much of the French Revolution under an autocratic system and was responsible for the spread of revolutionary ideals through his conquest of much of Europe.

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

Term used to describe the revolutionary violence in France in 1793–1794, when radicals under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre executed tens of thousands of people deemed enemies of the revolution.

Term used to describe Latin America’s economic growth in the nineteenth century, which was largely financed by foreign capital and dependent on European and North American prosperity and decisions.

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, which led to the eventual destruction of the Indian textile market both in Europe and in India.

Large-scale increase in Latin American exports (mostly raw materials and foodstuffs) to industrializing countries in the second half of the nineteenth century, made possible by major improvements in shipping; the boom mostly benefited the upper and middle classes.

Social stratum that developed in Britain in the nineteenth century and that consisted of people employed in the service sector as clerks, salespeople, secretaries, police officers, and the like; by 1900, this group comprised about 20 percent of Britain’s population.

The most influential proponent of socialism, Marx (1818–1883) was a German expatriate in England who advocated working-class revolution as the key to creating an ideal communist future.

Late-nineteenth-century American political movement that denounced corporate interests of all kinds.

Spontaneous rebellion that erupted in Russia after the country’s defeat at the hands of Japan in 1905; the revolution was suppressed, but it forced the government to make substantial reforms.

Mechanical device in which the steam from heated water builds up pressure to drive a piston, rather than relying on human or animal muscle power; the introduction of the steam engine allowed a hitherto unimagined increase in productivity and made the Industrial Revolution possible.

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

The collapse of China’s imperial order, officially at the hands of organized revolutionaries but for the most part under the weight of the troubles that had overwhelmed the government for the previous half-century.

Term commonly used to describe areas that were dominated by Western powers in the nineteenth century but that retained their own governments and a measure of independence, e.g., Latin America and China.

U.S. navy commodore who in 1853 presented the ultimatum that led Japan to open itself to more normal relations with the outside world.

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.

Ending in a Japanese victory, this war established Japan as a formidable military competitor in East Asia and precipitated the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Western Europe’s unkind nickname for the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a name based on the sultans’ inability to prevent Western takeover of many regions and to deal with internal problems; it fails to recognize serious reform efforts in the Ottoman state during this period.

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

Series of nineteenth-century treaties in which China made major concessions to Western powers.

Group of would-be reformers in the mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire that included lower-level officials, military officers, and writers; they urged the extension of Westernizing reforms to the political system.

Process that occurred in non-Muslim Africa, where millions who were converted to Christianity sought to maintain older traditions alongside new Christian ideas; many converts continued using protective charms and medicines and consulting local medicine men, and many continued to believe in their old gods and spirits.

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

Leopold II was king of Belgium from 1865 to 1909; his rule as private owner of the Congo Free State during much of that time is typically held up as the worst abuse of Europe’s second wave of colonization, resulting as it did in millions of deaths.

System of forced labor used in the Netherlands East Indies in the nineteenth century; peasants were required to cultivate at least 20 percent of their land in cash crops, such as sugar or coffee, for sale at low and fixed prices to government contractors, who then earned enormous profits from further sale of the crops.

Massive uprising of much of India against British rule; also called the Indian Mutiny or the Sepoy Mutiny from the fact that the rebellion first broke out among Indian troops in British employ.

Term commonly used to describe areas such as Latin America and China that were dominated by Western powers in the nineteenth century but that retained their own governments and a measure of independence.

Name used for the process of the European countries’ partition of the continent of Africa between themselves in the period 1875–1900.

The main beneficiaries in Asian and African lands colonized by Western powers; schooled in the imperial power’s language and practices, they moved into their country’s professional classes but ultimately led anticolonial movements as they grew discouraged by their inability to win equal status to the colonizers.

The final step in a series of arrangements to increase cooperation between European states in the wake of World War II; the EU was formally established in 1994, and twelve of its members adopted a common currency in 2002.

Plan of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson to establish lasting peace at the end of World War I; although Wilson’s views were popular in Europe, his vision largely failed.

Heir to the Austrian throne whose assassination by a Serbian nationalist on June 28, 1914, was the spark that ignited World War I.

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.

Name originally given to the First World War (1914–1918).

Leader of the German Nazi Party (1889–1945) and Germany’s head of state from 1933 until his death.

International peacekeeping organization created after World War I; first proposed by U.S. president Woodrow Wilson as part of his Fourteen Points.

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.

Properly known as the National Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party, the Nazi party was founded in Germany shortly after World War I and advocated a strongly authoritarian and nationalist regime based on notions of racial superiority.

Series of laws passed by the Nazi-dominated German parliament in 1935 that forbade sexual relations between Jews and other Germans and mandated that Jews identify themselves in public by wearing the Star of David.

Also known as Radical Nationalism, this was a movement in Japanese political life ca. 1930–1945 that was marked by extreme nationalism, a commitment to elite leadership focused around the emperor, and dedication to foreign expansion.

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

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

President of the United States from 1913 to 1921 who was especially noted for his idealistic approach to the end of World War I, which included advocacy of his Fourteen Points intended to regulate future international dealings and a League of Nations to enforce a new international order. Although his vision largely failed, Wilson was widely respected for his views.

The “Great War” (1914–1918), in essence a European civil war with global implications that was marked by massive casualties, the expansion of offensive military technology beyond tactics and means of defense, and a great deal of disillusionment with the whole idea of “progress.”

A struggle essentially to halt Japanese imperial expansion in Asia, fought by the Japanese against primarily Chinese and American foes.

A struggle essentially to halt German imperial expansion in Europe, fought by a coalition of allies that included Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

Wall constructed by East German authorities in 1961 to seal off East Berlin from the West; it was breached on November 9, 1989.

Euphemistic expression for the often-forcible transformation of society when a communist regime came to power in a state.

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.

: Process of rural reform undertaken by the communist leadership of both the USSR and China in which private property rights were abolished and peasants were forced onto larger and more industrialized farms to work and share the proceeds as a community rather than as individuals.

Major standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962 over Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba; the confrontation ended in compromise, with the USSR removing its missiles in exchange for the United States agreeing not to invade Cuba.

China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a massive campaign launched by Mao Zedong in the mid-1960s to combat the capitalist tendencies that he believed reached into even the highest ranks of the Communist Party; the campaign threw China into chaos.

Adopted name of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924), the main leader of Russia’s communist revolution and head of the Soviet state from 1917 until his death.

South African political party established in 1912 by elite Africans who sought to win full acceptance in colonial society; it only gradually became a popular movement that came to control the government in 1994.

South African movement that sought to foster pride, unity, and political awareness among the country’s African majority and often resorted to violent protest against white minority rule.

A process of growth or increasing production and the distribution of the proceeds of that growth to raise living standards; nearly universal desire for economic development in the second half of the twentieth century reflected a central belief that poverty was no longer inevitable.

The All-India 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.

The leader of al-Qaeda terrorist organization, a wealthy Saudi Arabian who turned to militant fundamentalism. (pron. oh-ZAHM-ah bin LAWD-n) responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks that included the Twin Towers.

Named for a conference held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, this system provided the foundation for postwar economic globalization, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; based on the promotion of free trade, stable currencies, and high levels of capital investment.

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

Term commonly used to refer to the massive growth in international economic transactions from around 1950 to the present.

A worldwide scientific consensus that the increased burning of fossil fuels and the loss of trees have begun to warm the earth’s atmosphere artificially and significantly, causing climate change and leading to possibly catastrophic results if the problem is not addressed.

An approach to the world economy, developed in the 1970s, that favored reduced tariffs, the free movement of capital, a mobile and temporary workforce, the privatization of industry, and the curtailing of government efforts to regulate the economy.

Growing disparity between the Global North and the Global South that appears to be exacerbated by current world trade practices.

Sweeping series of reforms instituted by communist leader Alexander Dubcek in Czechoslovakia in 1968; the movement was subsequently crushed by a Soviet invasion.

The fundamentalist phenomenon as it appeared in U.S. politics in the 1970s.

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

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