History Identification Questions Flashcards
Great Dying
Term used to describe the devastating demographic impact of European-borne epidemic diseases on the Americas; in many cases, up to 90 percent of the pre-Columbian population died.
Columbian Exchange
The enormous network of transatlantic communication, migration, trade, and the transfer of diseases, plants, and animals that began in the period of European exploration and colonization of the Americas. Allowed for lots of resources but spread diseases and suffering.
Settler colonies
Imperial territories in which Europeans settled permanently in substantial numbers. Examples include British North America, Portuguese Brazil, Spanish Mexico and Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, South Africa.
Indian Ocean Commercial Network
The massive, interconnected web of commerce in premodern times between the lands that bordered the Indian Ocean (including East Africa, India, and Southeast Asia); the network was transformed as Europeans entered it in the centuries following 1500.
Trading Post Empire
Form of imperial dominance based on control of trade through military power rather than on control of peoples or territories.
British/Dutch East India Companies
Form of imperial dominance based on control of trade through military power rather than on control of peoples or territories.
Silver drain
the phenomenon during the late medieval and early modern periods where large quantities of silver were exported from Europe to Asia, particularly in exchange for luxury goods
Protestant reformation
Massive schism within Christianity had its formal beginning in 1517 with the German priest Martin Luther; the movement was radically innovative in its challenge to church authority and its endorsement of salvation by faith alone, and also came to express a variety of political, economic, and social tensions.
Wahhabi Islam
Major Islamic movement led by the Muslim theologian Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) that advocated an austere lifestyle and strict adherence to the Islamic law; became an expansive state in central Arabia.
Sikhism
Religious tradition of northern India founded by Guru Nanak (1469–1539); combines elements of Hinduism and Islam and proclaims the brotherhood of all humans and the equality of men and women.
American Revolution
Successful rebellion against British rule conducted by the European settlers in the thirteen colonies of British North America, starting in 1775; a conservative revolution whose success preserved property rights and class distinctions but established republican government in place of monarchy. (Ch. 16)
French Revolution
Massive upheaval of French society (1789–1815) that overthrew the monarchy, ended the legal privileges of the nobility, and for a time outlawed the Catholic Church. The French Revolution proceeded in stages, becoming increasingly radical and violent until the period known as the Terror in 1793–1794, after which it became more conservative, especially under Napoleon Bonaparte (r. 1799–1815). (
Haitian Revolution
The only fully successful slave rebellion in world history; the uprising in the French Caribbean colony of Saint Domingue (later renamed Haiti, which means “mountainous” or “rugged” in the native Taino language) was sparked by the French Revolution and led to the establishment of an independent state after a long and bloody war (1791–1804). Its first leader was Toussaint Louverture, a former enslaved person.
Latin American Revolution
Series of risings in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America (1808–1825) that established the independence of new states from European rule but that for the most part retained the privileges of the elites despite efforts at more radical social change by the lower classes.
Steam engine
The great breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution, the coal-fired steam engine provided an almost limitless source of power and could be used to drive any number of machines as well as locomotives and ships; the introduction of the steam engine allowed a hitherto unimagined increase in productivity and made the Industrial Revolution possible. (
ideology of domesticity
A set of ideas and values that defined the ideal role of middle-class women in nineteenth-century Europe, focusing their activity on homemaking, child rearing, charitable endeavors, and “refined” activities as the proper sphere for women
middle-class society
British social stratum developed in the nineteenth century, composed of small businessmen, doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, and other professionals required in an industrial society; politically liberal, they favored constitutional government, private property, free trade, and social reform within limits; had ideas of thrift, hard work, rigid morality, “respectability,” and cleanliness.
