Glossary
161 terms from the notes. Each explains what the term means and — more importantly for the exam — why it matters.
Italy's invasion and conquest of Abyssinia (Ethiopia), a fellow League member.
Why it matters The League's limited sanctions, which excluded oil, and the Hoare–Laval Pact exposed collective security as a failure and drove Italy towards Germany.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion See also: Hoare–Laval Pact , League of Nations
The union of Austria with Germany, forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.
Why it matters It added seven million Germans to the Reich and outflanked Czechoslovakia's defences. Britain and France protested but did nothing.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion
An agreement between Germany and Japan to cooperate against the Communist International; Italy joined in 1937.
Why it matters It aligned the revisionist powers ideologically against the USSR and paved the way for the Tripartite Pact of 1940, linking the crises in Europe and Asia.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia See also: Tripartite Pact
The purge of those who had criticised the party during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, labelling around 550,000 people "rightists".
Why it matters It silenced intellectuals and party members, so few dared to challenge the Great Leap Forward.
Appears in: Mao's China See also: Hundred Flowers Campaign
The system of racial segregation and white minority rule enforced by law in South Africa, from the Afrikaans word for "separateness".
Why it matters It classified people by race and controlled every part of their lives. Resistance to it made South Africa a focus of international human rights campaigning.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
The policy of avoiding war by making concessions to an aggressor's grievances, associated with Neville Chamberlain's dealings with Hitler.
Why it matters It reached its peak at Munich in 1938 and was abandoned after Germany occupied Prague in 1939. Historians still debate whether it was cowardice or a realistic policy for a weak Britain.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion See also: Munich Agreement
Lenin's programme on returning to Russia — no support for the Provisional Government, an end to the war, land to the peasants, and all power to the soviets.
Why it matters It set the Bolsheviks apart from every other party and gave them the simple, radical message that won support as the government failed.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924
The peace agreement between the Rwandan government and the RPF, providing for power-sharing, a merged army and the return of refugees.
Why it matters Hutu extremists saw it as a betrayal; their determination to prevent it being carried out was a key cause of the genocide.
Appears in: Rwanda — civil war and genocide
Two wars in which the Balkan states first drove the Ottoman Empire out of most of Europe and then fought each other over the spoils.
Why it matters Serbia doubled in size and confidence, convincing Austria-Hungary's leaders that Serbian nationalism threatened their empire's survival.
Appears in: The outbreak of the First World War
The law bringing Black African education under state control, with a separate, inferior curriculum.
Why it matters It aimed to prepare Black Africans for manual labour. Opposition to it culminated in the Soweto uprising of 1976.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
Ethnic "homelands" created for Black South Africans, several of which were later declared "independent" by the government.
Why it matters They were central to Verwoerd's "grand apartheid" — the aim of stripping Black South Africans of citizenship. No other country recognised their independence.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
A failed invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained Cuban exiles, approved by President Kennedy.
Why it matters It humiliated Kennedy, pushed Castro closer to the USSR, and convinced Khrushchev and Castro that the USA would try again — a key cause of the missile deployment.
Appears in: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The Soviet closure of road, rail and canal routes to West Berlin, answered by an Anglo-American airlift that supplied the city for eleven months.
Why it matters The first major crisis of the Cold War. Its failure hastened NATO and the division of Germany.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War
A secret Serbian nationalist society, led by army officers, that aimed to unite all Serbs — including those in Austria-Hungary — in a Greater Serbia.
Why it matters It armed and trained the young Bosnian Serbs who assassinated Franz Ferdinand, giving Austria-Hungary its grounds to blame Serbia.
Appears in: The outbreak of the First World War
Germany's assurance to Austria-Hungary that it would support whatever action Vienna took against Serbia.
Why it matters Historians who stress German responsibility see it as the key decision of the July Crisis, since it emboldened Austria-Hungary to risk war with Russia.
Appears in: The outbreak of the First World War
The faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party led by Lenin, committed to a disciplined party of professional revolutionaries. Renamed the Communist Party in 1918.
Why it matters Their organisation, clear slogans and willingness to take power alone let a minority party seize and hold power in 1917.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924
The Supreme Court decision that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
Why it matters A landmark legal victory for the NAACP that inspired activism — but Southern "massive resistance" showed that court rulings alone could not end segregation.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
The Bolshevik secret police, founded in December 1917 under Felix Dzerzhinsky.
Why it matters It carried out the Red Terror against opponents of the regime and was the forerunner of the OGPU and NKVD that enforced Stalin's rule.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924
The federal law that banned segregation in public accommodations and discrimination in employment on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.
Why it matters It ended legal segregation in the South, passed through Johnson's political skill after Kennedy's assassination and years of protest.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
The forced merger of private peasant farms into collective (kolkhoz) and state (sovkhoz) farms.
Why it matters It gave the state control of grain supplies to fund industrialisation, but destroyed the peasantry's independence and contributed to the famine of 1932–33.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union See also: Kulaks , Holodomor
The Communist Information Bureau, set up by the USSR to coordinate the communist parties of Europe.
Why it matters It was Stalin's answer to the Marshall Plan and a tool for enforcing Soviet control over Eastern European parties — Yugoslavia was expelled in 1948.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War
The elected body meant to decide Russia's future constitution. The Socialist Revolutionaries won the most seats; the Bolsheviks dissolved it after one day.
Why it matters Its closure showed that the Bolsheviks would not give up power through elections and marked the start of one-party rule.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924
The US policy of preventing the further spread of Soviet influence and communism through economic aid, alliances and, when necessary, military force.
Why it matters It shaped US foreign policy for four decades, from the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan to the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War See also: Truman Doctrine , Marshall Plan , Long Telegram
The four Latin Christian states created in the Levant after the First Crusade — the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Tripoli.
Why it matters They depended on a steady flow of reinforcements from Europe and on divisions among their Muslim neighbours. Their gradual loss, from Edessa in 1144 to Acre in 1291, drove further crusades.
Appears in: The First Crusade
The use of propaganda to present a leader as heroic, wise and infallible — through images, songs, rewritten history and public ceremonies.
Why it matters Stalin, Mao and other authoritarian leaders used it to build legitimacy and loyalty beyond the party. Khrushchev denounced Stalin's cult in 1956.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Mao's campaign against alleged "capitalist roaders" in the party and "old" culture.
Why it matters It removed Mao's rivals and strengthened his cult, but caused widespread violence, persecution, and damage to education and culture.
Appears in: Mao's China See also: Red Guards , Little Red Book , Gang of Four
The peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Why it matters By leaving Kosovo out, it convinced many Kosovo Albanians that nonviolence was failing and helped the KLA win support.
Appears in: Kosovo — conflict and NATO intervention
The ANC-led campaign in which thousands of volunteers deliberately broke apartheid laws, such as by using "whites only" facilities, and accepted arrest.
Why it matters It turned the ANC into a mass movement, increasing its membership dramatically, but the government responded with harsher laws.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
The sharing of authority between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet after the February Revolution.
Why it matters It left the government responsible for Russia's problems without full control of the army or the streets — a key reason it could not govern effectively.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924 See also: Provisional Government , Petrograd Soviet
A grant by the Spanish Crown to a colonist of the labour and tribute of a group of Indigenous people, in return for protecting them and instructing them in Christianity.
Why it matters In practice it enabled severe exploitation and contributed to population decline, prompting the reforms of the New Laws.
Appears in: The conquest of Mexico
The forcible removal of an ethnic or religious group from a territory, through violence, terror and expulsion.
Why it matters The term became widespread during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. It overlaps with genocide but is not the same — genocide requires intent to destroy a group, not only to remove it.
Appears in: Kosovo — conflict and NATO intervention
The Executive Committee of the National Security Council — Kennedy's group of advisers during the crisis.
Why it matters Its debates, recorded on tape, show how the US moved from calls for air strikes towards the quarantine and a negotiated settlement.
Appears in: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The strikes, demonstrations and army mutinies in Petrograd that forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate.
Why it matters It ended three centuries of Romanov rule with little planning by any party — showing how far war and shortages had destroyed the regime's authority.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924
Centrally set production targets for the Soviet economy, beginning with the First Five-Year Plan in 1928, focused on heavy industry.
Why it matters They made the USSR a major industrial power by 1941 — vital to victory over Germany — at a huge human cost and with chronic shortages of consumer goods.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union
The statement of principles adopted by the Congress of the People at Kliptown, calling for a non-racial, democratic South Africa.
Why it matters It became the ANC's core programme. The state used it as evidence in the Treason Trial, and Africanist opposition to it led to the PAC split.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
Journeys by integrated groups on interstate buses to test Supreme Court rulings against segregation in bus travel, organised by CORE.
Why it matters Riders were beaten and a bus was burned in Alabama. The violence forced the Kennedy administration to enforce desegregation of interstate travel.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
The radical faction led by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, who promoted the Cultural Revolution.
Why it matters Their arrest in October 1976, a month after Mao's death, ended the Cultural Revolution and opened the way for Deng Xiaoping's reforms.
Appears in: Mao's China
A Japanese term meaning "the lower overturning the higher" — junior officers defying or pre-empting their superiors and the government.
Why it matters It describes how Kwantung Army officers and young radicals drove Japanese policy through faits accomplis and political violence, weakening civilian control.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
The famine caused by the Great Leap Forward's policies, made worse by bad weather in some regions.
Why it matters It is usually estimated to have killed around 30 million people, with some historians estimating far more — the deadliest famine in recorded history.
Appears in: Mao's China
Mao's campaign to transform China into an industrial and communist society at speed, through people's communes and mass mobilisation.
Why it matters It caused the Great Chinese Famine and weakened Mao's position, leading to the recovery policies of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.
Appears in: Mao's China See also: People's communes , Great Chinese Famine
The peak of Stalin's repression, including show trials of leading Bolsheviks, a purge of the Red Army, and mass arrests and executions across Soviet society.
Why it matters It eliminated any possible challenge to Stalin, but damaged the army and economy on the eve of war. It is central to debates about how far Stalin's rule depended on terror.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union See also: Show trials , NKVD , Gulag
Japan's proposed bloc of Asian nations under Japanese leadership, presented as liberation from Western colonialism.
Why it matters In practice it meant Japanese control of the region's resources. Its announcement in 1940 showed that Japan's aims had grown from China to all of Southeast Asia.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
The law assigning urban residential and business areas to specific racial groups.
Why it matters It led to the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of people from areas such as Sophiatown and District Six.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
A Basque town destroyed by German and Italian bombers during the Nationalist campaign in the north.
Why it matters It became a symbol of the terror bombing of civilians, immortalised by Picasso's painting, and seemed to foreshadow the air war to come.
Appears in: The Spanish Civil War
The Soviet system of forced-labour camps, from the Russian acronym for the Main Administration of Camps.
Why it matters Millions of prisoners passed through it. It was both an instrument of terror and a source of labour for mining, construction and timber in remote regions.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union
A secret plan by the British and French foreign ministers to end the Abyssinian war by giving Italy much of Abyssinia.
Why it matters Its leak caused public outrage and Hoare's resignation. It showed that Britain and France valued Italian friendship over the League's principles.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion
The famine in Soviet Ukraine caused by collectivisation, excessive grain requisitioning and policies that blocked starving peasants from leaving; the name means "death by hunger".
Why it matters Millions died. Whether it was genocide deliberately targeting Ukrainians is debated by historians; Ukraine and many other states recognise it as such.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union
The record of a meeting at which Hitler told his military and foreign policy chiefs of his plans to expand, starting with Austria and Czechoslovakia.
Why it matters Intentionalist historians see it as evidence of a plan; others note it was an unofficial summary and that events unfolded differently from what Hitler described.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion
A direct communication link between the White House and the Kremlin, set up in 1963.
Why it matters The slow exchange of letters during the crisis showed the danger of miscommunication; the hotline was an early step towards managing the Cold War.
Appears in: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The use of force by states or international organisations to protect people from mass atrocities in another state, without that state's consent.
Why it matters The failure in Rwanda and the NATO action in Kosovo shaped the debate, which led to the UN's "Responsibility to Protect" principle in 2005.
Appears in: Rwanda — civil war and genocide
Mao's invitation to intellectuals to criticise the party's work.
Why it matters The criticism was so fierce that it was followed by the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Historians debate whether it was a genuine opening or a trap.
Appears in: Mao's China See also: Anti-Rightist Campaign
An extremist ideology and political movement that portrayed Tutsi as foreign enemies and called for Hutu unity against them.
Why it matters It united extremists across parties, rejected the Arusha Accords, and provided the ideology that justified the genocide.
Appears in: Rwanda — civil war and genocide
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, set up by the UN Security Council in Arusha, Tanzania.
Why it matters It convicted leading organisers of the genocide and set legal precedents, including the first recognition of rape as an act of genocide (the Akayesu case, 1998).
Appears in: Rwanda — civil war and genocide
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, set up by the UN in The Hague.
Why it matters It indicted Milošević while he was still head of state, establishing that leaders could be held personally responsible for war crimes.
Appears in: Kosovo — conflict and NATO intervention
A grant by the Church remitting the penance due for sins. Urban II offered crusaders full remission for those who went to Jerusalem with pure motives.
Why it matters It turned war into an act of penance, which helps explain the scale of the response to Urban's call — and later became a focus of criticism of the Church during the Reformation.
Appears in: The First Crusade
A Hutu militia linked to the ruling party, whose name means "those who stand (or attack) together".
Why it matters Trained and armed before 1994, it carried out much of the killing, manning roadblocks and leading massacres.
Appears in: Rwanda — civil war and genocide
Units of foreign volunteers, organised by the Comintern, who fought for the Republic.
Why it matters They helped defend Madrid in 1936 and became a symbol of international anti-fascism, but were withdrawn in 1938 in a failed attempt to secure the withdrawal of German and Italian forces.
Appears in: The Spanish Civil War
Churchill's image for the division of Europe between Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe and the West.
Why it matters It became the defining metaphor of the Cold War in Europe; the physical border fortifications fell in 1989.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War
In Islam, "struggle" or "striving" in the path of God; in its military sense, war to defend or extend Muslim rule.
Why it matters The call for jihad against the Franks was revived by Zengi, Nur al-Din and Saladin, uniting Syria and Egypt and leading to the recapture of Jerusalem in 1187.
Appears in: The First Crusade
The system of laws and customs that enforced racial segregation and disenfranchised African Americans, especially in the Southern states.
Why it matters It was the target of the civil rights movement. Its legal foundations fell with Brown (1954) and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts (1964–65).
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
The month of diplomacy and decisions between the assassination in Sarajevo and the outbreak of general war.
Why it matters It is where long-term tensions became war. Analysing each power's decisions during these weeks is essential to any argument about responsibility.
Appears in: The outbreak of the First World War
US medium-range nuclear missiles deployed in Italy and Turkey, within range of the USSR.
Why it matters Their secret removal from Turkey was part of the deal that ended the crisis — a concession kept hidden for years.
Appears in: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The khan's personal guard, recruited from the sons of commanders and trusted followers.
Why it matters It protected the khan, served as the core of his household administration, and trained a loyal elite of future commanders — while also serving as a source of hostages for their families' good behaviour.
Appears in: Genghis Khan and the Mongol conquests
The NATO-led Kosovo Force responsible for security after Serbian forces withdrew.
Why it matters It oversaw the return of Albanian refugees but struggled at first to protect Serbs and Roma from revenge attacks.
Appears in: Kosovo — conflict and NATO intervention
A Persianate Muslim empire in Central Asia and Iran, ruled at its height by Shah Muhammad II.
Why it matters Its destruction by Genghis Khan in 1219–1221 was one of the most devastating campaigns of the Mongol conquests and opened the Islamic heartlands to later Mongol invasion.
Appears in: Genghis Khan and the Mongol conquests
An apparent attempt by the army commander, General Kornilov, to move troops on Petrograd, which Kerensky defeated with the help of the soviets and armed workers.
Why it matters It discredited Kerensky, armed the Red Guards, and restored the Bolsheviks' standing after the July Days.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924
An ethnic Albanian armed group that fought for Kosovo's independence from Serbia.
Why it matters Its attacks and Serbia's brutal response escalated the conflict into war. It was accused of its own abuses, and several former commanders were later tried for war crimes.
Appears in: Kosovo — conflict and NATO intervention
The self-government Kosovo enjoyed under Yugoslavia's 1974 constitution, with its own assembly and representation in federal institutions.
Why it matters Its removal by Milošević in 1989 excluded Albanians from public life and began the confrontation that led to war.
Appears in: Kosovo — conflict and NATO intervention
A label for supposedly wealthy peasants, applied in practice to any peasant who resisted collectivisation.
Why it matters "Dekulakisation" meant shooting, deportation and dispossession of millions, and removed the most productive farmers from the countryside.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union
An assembly of Mongol princes and leaders that chose a new khan and decided major campaigns.
Why it matters The kurultai of 1206 gave Temüjin legitimacy as Genghis Khan over all the steppe peoples. Later kurultais to choose his successors could halt campaigns, as when the army withdrew from Europe after Ögedei's death in 1241.
Appears in: Genghis Khan and the Mongol conquests
The Japanese army garrison stationed in the Kwantung Leased Territory and along the South Manchuria Railway, which grew into Japan's largest and most autonomous field army.
Why it matters Its officers staged the Mukden Incident in 1931 without government approval. The army's ability to act first and have Tokyo accept the result is key evidence that the military, not the cabinet, was driving Japanese expansion.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
The international organisation created by the Paris peace settlement to keep peace through collective security, arbitration and disarmament.
Why it matters Its failure to stop Japan in Manchuria (1931–33) and Italy in Abyssinia (1935–36) showed that collective security depended on great powers willing to impose sanctions or use force — which Britain and France were not, and the United States was not a member.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
"Living space" — the Nazi goal of conquering land in Eastern Europe for German settlement.
Why it matters It links Hitler's racial ideology to his foreign policy and is central to the argument that he planned a war of conquest in the East.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion
Letters Lenin dictated in his final illness assessing the party's leaders, including a postscript recommending that Stalin be removed as General Secretary.
Why it matters It could have ended Stalin's career, but the leadership chose not to publish it — showing how Stalin's rivals underestimated him.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union
Quotations from Chairman Mao, compiled under Lin Biao for the army, which became the Red Guards' essential text.
Why it matters A central symbol of the cult of personality — hundreds of millions of copies were printed.
Appears in: Mao's China
The retreat of the Communist Red Army from its base in Jiangxi to Yan'an in north-west China — some 9,000 km — to escape Guomindang encirclement.
Why it matters Only a fraction of the marchers survived, but it became the CCP's founding legend, and Mao emerged as the party's leading figure during it.
Appears in: Mao's China
George Kennan's cable from Moscow arguing that Soviet hostility sprang from insecurity and ideology and could be resisted with patient, firm pressure.
Why it matters It gave Washington an intellectual basis for containment and influenced the shift to a harder line towards the USSR.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War See also: Containment
The League of Nations inquiry, led by Britain's Lord Lytton, into the conflict in Manchuria. Its report rejected Japan's claim of self-defence and recommended autonomy for Manchuria under Chinese sovereignty.
Why it matters When the League adopted the report in February 1933, Japan walked out and left the League. The League had judged Japan but would not act — exposing the weakness of collective security.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
A leading spokesman for the Nation of Islam who rejected nonviolence and integration in favour of Black self-defence and separation; he broke with the Nation in 1964 and was assassinated in February 1965.
Why it matters He offered a radical alternative to King's approach and influenced the Black Power movement that followed.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
A Nahua woman, also called Doña Marina, who became Cortés's interpreter, adviser and mistress.
Why it matters Her knowledge of Nahuatl, Maya and Mesoamerican politics made negotiation and alliance-building possible. In Mexican memory she has been seen both as a traitor and as a survivor with little choice.
Appears in: The conquest of Mexico
The nominally independent state Japan created in Manchuria, headed by Puyi, the last Qing emperor, but controlled by the Kwantung Army and Japanese officials.
Why it matters A puppet state that let Japan claim it was supporting local self-determination while exploiting Manchuria's resources. Almost no country recognised it, which shows how isolated Japan's actions left it.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
A mass demonstration for jobs and freedom in Washington, D.C., attended by about 250,000 people.
Why it matters It built national support for the civil rights bill and is remembered for King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
A clash between Japanese and Chinese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing.
Why it matters Neither side backed down, and the skirmish escalated into the Second Sino-Japanese War — an undeclared, full-scale war that tied down Japan's army for the rest of the decade.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
The European Recovery Program, which gave about $13 billion in US aid to rebuild Western Europe's economies.
Why it matters It helped Western Europe recover and tied it to the US, but Stalin's refusal to let Eastern Europe take part deepened the division of the continent.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War See also: Containment , Cominform
The organisation of the Mongol army into units of 10 (arban), 100 (jaghun), 1,000 (mingghan) and 10,000 (tumen).
Why it matters It made a huge army easy to command, mixed members of different tribes to break old loyalties, and allowed promotion by merit.
Appears in: Genghis Khan and the Mongol conquests
A 381-day boycott of Montgomery's segregated buses, begun after Rosa Parks's arrest and organised by the Montgomery Improvement Association.
Why it matters It ended with bus desegregation after a federal court ruling, showed the power of organised mass action, and made Martin Luther King Jr. a national figure.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
A small explosion on the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway near Mukden, staged by Kwantung Army officers and blamed on Chinese soldiers.
Why it matters It gave the Kwantung Army a pretext to occupy all of Manchuria. It is the starting point of the IB case study on Japanese expansion and a clear example of military insubordination shaping policy.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
The agreement by Germany, Italy, Britain and France that Germany should occupy the Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia was not consulted.
Why it matters The high point of appeasement. Hitler's occupation of Prague in March 1939 showed it had failed and ended the policy.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion See also: Appeasement , Sudetenland
The idea that neither superpower would start a nuclear war because both would be destroyed in the retaliation.
Why it matters It underpinned nuclear deterrence and made direct war between the superpowers unthinkable, shifting their rivalry to arms races and proxy conflicts.
Appears in: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The mass killing of Chinese prisoners and civilians and widespread rape by Japanese troops after the capture of Nanjing, the Chinese Nationalist capital.
Why it matters It hardened Chinese resistance, damaged Japan's international reputation, and remains a source of tension between China and Japan. Estimates of the dead vary widely and are themselves part of the historical debate.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
The Afrikaner nationalist party that governed South Africa from 1948 and introduced apartheid.
Why it matters Its victory in 1948, won with a minority of the (white) vote, began four decades of apartheid rule.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
The coalition that rebelled against the Republic — the army, monarchists, the fascist Falange and the Catholic right — led from 1936 by General Franco.
Why it matters Franco forced its factions into a single movement in 1937, giving the Nationalists a unity the Republic never achieved.
Appears in: The Spanish Civil War
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance of the USA, Canada and Western European states, pledging that an attack on one is an attack on all.
Why it matters It committed the United States to Europe's defence in peacetime. The Soviet bloc responded with the Warsaw Pact in 1955.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War
A non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR, with a secret protocol dividing Poland and the Baltic region into spheres of influence.
Why it matters It freed Hitler to invade Poland without fear of a war on two fronts, and gave Stalin territory and time.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion
Lenin's partial return to a market economy — peasants could sell surplus grain and small businesses could trade privately.
Why it matters It revived the economy but divided the party, and the debate over whether to continue it shaped the power struggle after Lenin's death.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924 See also: War Communism
Laws issued by Charles I (Emperor Charles V) banning the enslavement of Indigenous people and ordering the phasing out of encomiendas.
Why it matters They showed the Crown's concern — driven by reformers such as Las Casas and by the wish to control the colonists — but settler resistance forced key provisions to be withdrawn in 1545.
Appears in: The conquest of Mexico
The Soviet ministry of internal affairs, which included the secret police, under Yagoda, Yezhov and then Beria.
Why it matters It carried out arrests, executions and deportations during the Terror and ran the Gulag. Its leaders were themselves purged when Stalin needed scapegoats.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union
Spanish for "the sad night" — the Spaniards' disastrous night-time escape from Tenochtitlan, in which many were killed on the causeways.
Why it matters The Mexica had defeated the invaders. Cortés's survival depended on retreating to Tlaxcala, whose loyalty — and the smallpox epidemic that followed — allowed him to return.
Appears in: The conquest of Mexico
A committee in London through which European powers, including Germany, Italy and the USSR, agreed not to send arms or troops to Spain.
Why it matters Britain and France kept to it; Germany, Italy and the USSR did not. It became a symbol of the democracies' reluctance to confront the dictators.
Appears in: The Spanish Civil War
Peaceful but confrontational protest — boycotts, sit-ins, marches, deliberate law-breaking — that forces a response from authorities.
Why it matters The civil rights movement used it to expose the violence of segregation to a national audience. Its effectiveness depended on media coverage and on opponents' reactions.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
The Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd, organised by the Military Revolutionary Committee under Trotsky.
Why it matters Whether it was a popular revolution or a coup by a small party is one of the central debates of twentieth-century history.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924
NATO's 78-day bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia over Kosovo.
Why it matters It forced the withdrawal of Serbian forces, but without UN authorisation — a landmark case in the debate on humanitarian intervention.
Appears in: Kosovo — conflict and NATO intervention See also: Humanitarian intervention
A covert US programme of sabotage and plots against Castro's government in Cuba.
Why it matters It reinforced Soviet and Cuban fears of an invasion, which revisionist historians see as a cause of the crisis.
Appears in: The Cuban Missile Crisis
A French-led, UN-authorised military operation that created a "safe humanitarian zone" in south-western Rwanda.
Why it matters It saved some lives but came late and was controversial, since it also allowed génocidaires to escape to Zaire.
Appears in: Rwanda — civil war and genocide
The massacre of a Mongol trade caravan by the Khwarazmian governor of Otrar, followed by the shah's execution of a Mongol envoy sent to demand justice.
Why it matters It gave Genghis Khan his reason for invading Khwarazm — an example of how the Mongols treated attacks on merchants and envoys as grounds for war.
Appears in: Genghis Khan and the Mongol conquests
A movement founded by Robert Sobukwe and others who broke from the ANC, rejecting its multiracial alliances in favour of African leadership.
Why it matters Its anti-pass campaign led to the Sharpeville massacre, and it was banned alongside the ANC in 1960.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
An agreement between the USA, the USSR and Britain banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in space and under water.
Why it matters It was the first arms-control agreement of the Cold War and a sign of improved relations after the missile crisis.
Appears in: The Cuban Missile Crisis
Laws requiring Black Africans to carry reference books ("passes") showing where they were allowed to live and work.
Why it matters They controlled movement and labour and led to millions of arrests. Protests against them sparked the women's march of 1956 and the Sharpeville demonstration of 1960.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
The "Mongol Peace" — the period when Mongol control of much of Eurasia made overland trade and travel relatively safe.
Why it matters It encouraged exchange of goods, technologies and ideas between China, the Islamic world and Europe — Marco Polo's travels belong to this period — but it may also have helped the Black Death spread.
Appears in: Genghis Khan and the Mongol conquests
Huge rural units, often of thousands of households, that ran farming, industry, education and communal dining.
Why it matters They removed private plots and incentives and made the disastrous grain requisitions of the Great Leap Forward possible.
Appears in: Mao's China
A large, poorly organised wave of crusaders, many of them non-combatants, led by preachers such as Peter the Hermit, who set out before the main armies.
Why it matters It was destroyed by the Seljuks in Anatolia in October 1096. It shows how Urban's call spread beyond the knightly class he intended — and how uncontrollable popular enthusiasm could be.
Appears in: The First Crusade
The council of workers' and soldiers' deputies elected in Petrograd in February 1917.
Why it matters It rivalled the Provisional Government for authority. Once the Bolsheviks won a majority in September, it became the base from which they seized power.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924 See also: Dual power
An electoral alliance of left-wing and liberal parties that won Spain's February 1936 election (a similar Popular Front governed France in 1936–38).
Why it matters Its victory alarmed the right, the Church and the army, and the violence that followed was used to justify the military rising.
Appears in: The Spanish Civil War
The law requiring every South African to be classified by race — for example as White, Coloured, or Native (Black African).
Why it matters It was the foundation of apartheid — every other racial law depended on this classification, which was often arbitrary and split families.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
The last wartime conference, with Truman and (from mid-conference) Attlee replacing Roosevelt and Churchill. It settled Germany's occupation and Poland's new western border.
Why it matters Disputes over reparations and Poland, and Truman's hint about a powerful new weapon, showed the alliance fraying.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War
The temporary government formed from Duma politicians after the tsar's abdication, later led by Alexander Kerensky.
Why it matters Its decisions to continue the war and delay land reform and elections cost it support and opened the way for the Bolsheviks.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924 See also: Dual power , Petrograd Soviet
The US naval blockade of offensive weapons shipments to Cuba, called a "quarantine" to avoid the legal implications of a blockade.
Why it matters It showed American resolve without an immediate attack, giving Khrushchev time to choose a peaceful way out.
Appears in: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The killing of 45 Kosovo Albanians in the village of Račak by Serbian forces.
Why it matters International monitors called it a massacre; it hardened Western opinion and led to the Rambouillet talks and, when they failed, NATO action.
Appears in: Kosovo — conflict and NATO intervention
Groups of students mobilised by Mao at the start of the Cultural Revolution to attack his enemies and "old" culture.
Why it matters They showed Mao's ability to bypass the party and mobilise the young directly — until factional violence forced him to disband them and send millions to the countryside.
Appears in: Mao's China
Hitler's movement of troops into the demilitarised Rhineland, breaking the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno.
Why it matters A gamble that paid off when Britain and France did nothing; it boosted Hitler's confidence and prestige and weakened France's position.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion
The UN Security Council resolution that ended the Kosovo war, establishing a UN administration and a NATO-led security force.
Why it matters It brought the UN back into the settlement after NATO acted without it, but left Kosovo's final status unresolved.
Appears in: Kosovo — conflict and NATO intervention
Attacks on Jewish communities in towns such as Speyer, Worms and Mainz by crusading bands on their way east.
Why it matters They show that crusading zeal could turn against "enemies of Christ" at home, and they began a long association between crusades and anti-Jewish violence in Europe.
Appears in: The First Crusade
The trial of Nelson Mandela and other ANC and MK leaders for sabotage, which ended with sentences of life imprisonment.
Why it matters It silenced the internal leadership of the liberation movement for years, while Mandela's speech from the dock made him an international symbol.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
The alignment between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany announced in 1936, later formalised by the Pact of Steel (May 1939).
Why it matters It ended Italy's role as a guarantor of Austria and left Britain and France facing hostile powers in both Central Europe and the Mediterranean.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion
Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, a privately owned radio station linked to Hutu extremists.
Why it matters It spread dehumanising propaganda and during the genocide broadcast names and locations of people to be killed. Its founders were later convicted by the ICTR.
Appears in: Rwanda — civil war and genocide
A rebel movement founded by Tutsi refugees in Uganda, led from 1990 by Paul Kagame.
Why it matters Its invasion in 1990 started the civil war; its military victory in July 1994 ended the genocide, and it has governed Rwanda since.
Appears in: Rwanda — civil war and genocide
Germany's war plan for fighting France and Russia at once — defeat France in about six weeks by sweeping through Belgium, then turn east.
Why it matters It made mobilisation against Russia mean war with France and invasion of Belgium, which brought Britain in. Its failure at the Marne in 1914 led to trench stalemate.
Appears in: The outbreak of the First World War
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by Martin Luther King Jr. and other ministers to coordinate nonviolent protest.
Why it matters It led major campaigns in Birmingham and Selma, using Black churches as its base and national publicity as its weapon.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
The democratic republic proclaimed when King Alfonso XIII left Spain in 1931.
Why it matters Its reforms to land, religion, the army and regional autonomy polarised Spanish politics and created the coalitions that fought the civil war.
Appears in: The Spanish Civil War
A Turkic Sunni Muslim dynasty that conquered Persia, Iraq and much of Anatolia, defeating the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071.
Why it matters Their advance prompted the Byzantine appeal for help that led to the First Crusade — and their fragmentation after 1092 helped the crusaders succeed.
Appears in: The First Crusade
The killing of 69 unarmed protesters by police at a PAC demonstration against the pass laws.
Why it matters It caused international outrage and led to the banning of the ANC and PAC and their turn to armed struggle.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
Public trials in Moscow in which leading Old Bolsheviks such as Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin confessed to invented crimes and were sentenced to death.
Why it matters They destroyed Stalin's former rivals and taught the public that enemies were everywhere. Confessions were obtained through threats and torture.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union
The crusaders' eight-month siege of Antioch, followed by their own encirclement in the city by the army of Kerbogha of Mosul, whom they defeated on 28 June 1098.
Why it matters The turning point of the crusade. Starvation and desertion nearly destroyed the army, while victory — helped by Kerbogha's divided coalition — opened the road to Jerusalem.
Appears in: The First Crusade
Nonviolent protests in which activists sat at segregated lunch counters and refused to leave, beginning in Greensboro, North Carolina, in February 1960.
Why it matters They spread rapidly across the South, desegregated many businesses, and brought a new generation of students into the movement.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, founded after the sit-ins with the support of Ella Baker.
Why it matters It led grassroots organising and voter registration in the Deep South, and later turned towards Black Power under Stokely Carmichael.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
A campaign celebrating workers who exceeded their production quotas, named after the miner Alexei Stakhanov.
Why it matters It was propaganda for the Five-Year Plans and a way to raise targets for everyone — resented by many workers as a result.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union
The US policy, announced by Secretary of State Henry Stimson, of refusing to recognise any territorial change brought about by force in breach of the Kellogg–Briand Pact.
Why it matters It condemned Japan's conquest of Manchuria in principle but committed the United States to nothing — typical of Western responses that were moral rather than practical.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
An agreement between Britain, France and Italy to oppose German breaches of Versailles and to guarantee Austrian independence.
Why it matters It collapsed within months — undermined by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and then the Abyssinian Crisis — pushing Mussolini towards Hitler.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion
The border regions of Czechoslovakia with large German-speaking populations and the country's main fortifications.
Why it matters Hitler's demand for it produced the crisis resolved at Munich. Its loss left the rest of Czechoslovakia defenceless.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion See also: Munich Agreement
The Mexica capital, built on an island in Lake Texcoco, with causeways, canals and a great temple precinct.
Why it matters One of the largest cities in the world in 1519. Its fall in August 1521 marked the collapse of Mexica power, and Mexico City was built on its ruins as the capital of New Spain.
Appears in: The conquest of Mexico
The people of Tlaxcala, an independent Nahua state that had resisted Mexica conquest.
Why it matters Their alliance with Cortés supplied the bulk of the fighting force against Tenochtitlan. They show that the "Spanish" conquest was also an Indigenous war — and they were rewarded with privileges under colonial rule.
Appears in: The conquest of Mexico
The peace treaty between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers, under which Russia gave up Poland, the Baltic lands, Finland and Ukraine.
Why it matters Lenin accepted it to save the revolution. It cost Russia much of its population and industry and helped provoke the Civil War.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924
The peace treaty with Germany after the First World War — it took territory, limited the army to 100,000 men, demilitarised the Rhineland and imposed reparations.
Why it matters German resentment of the treaty was a powerful force that Hitler exploited; breaking its terms one by one was the first stage of his foreign policy.
Appears in: German and Italian expansion See also: War guilt clause
A defensive alliance between Germany, Italy and Japan, pledging mutual assistance if any of them was attacked by a power not already in the war — aimed chiefly at the United States.
Why it matters Intended to deter the US, it instead convinced American leaders that Japan was part of a single Axis threat, stiffening US opposition to Japanese expansion.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia See also: Anti-Comintern Pact
The defensive alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.
Why it matters It bound Germany to Austria-Hungary's fate in the Balkans. Italy stayed neutral in 1914 and joined the other side in 1915, showing the limits of pre-war alliances.
Appears in: The outbreak of the First World War See also: Triple Entente
The informal alignment of France, Russia and Britain, built from the Franco-Russian alliance (1894), the Entente Cordiale (1904) and the Anglo-Russian Entente (1907).
Why it matters Germany saw it as encirclement. Britain's commitments were looser than a formal alliance — which is why Belgium, not the Entente, decided its entry into the war.
Appears in: The outbreak of the First World War See also: Triple Alliance
President Truman's promise to support "free peoples" resisting subversion or outside pressure, first applied as aid to Greece and Turkey.
Why it matters It turned containment into public policy and framed the Cold War as a global ideological struggle.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War See also: Containment
An American high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft.
Why it matters U-2 photographs revealed the missile sites in Cuba on 14 October 1962; the shooting down of a U-2 over Cuba on 27 October made that day the most dangerous of the crisis.
Appears in: The Cuban Missile Crisis
The armed wing ("Spear of the Nation") co-founded by Nelson Mandela, which began a sabotage campaign in December 1961.
Why it matters It marked the ANC's move from nonviolence to armed struggle; the capture of its leaders at Rivonia in 1963 crippled resistance inside South Africa.
Appears in: Apartheid South Africa
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, a peacekeeping force commanded by General Roméo Dallaire, sent to support the Arusha Accords.
Why it matters Its weak mandate and the Security Council's decision to cut it during the genocide symbolise the international community's failure.
Appears in: Rwanda — civil war and genocide
The freezing of Japanese assets in the United States and the halt of oil exports to Japan after Japan occupied southern French Indochina; Britain and the Netherlands followed suit.
Why it matters Japan imported most of its oil from the US. The embargo forced its leaders to choose between retreating from China or seizing the oil of the Dutch East Indies — the decision that led to Pearl Harbor.
Appears in: Japanese expansion in East Asia
A formal debate in Spain between Bartolomé de las Casas, who defended the full humanity and rights of Indigenous peoples, and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who argued that conquest was justified.
Why it matters It was one of the first European debates about the rights of colonised peoples. It produced no clear verdict, but shaped later arguments about empire and human rights.
Appears in: The conquest of Mexico
The federal law that banned literacy tests and allowed federal oversight of voter registration in areas with a history of discrimination.
Why it matters It transformed Black voter registration in the South, following the brutal response to the Selma marches.
Appears in: The civil rights movement in the United States
The Bolsheviks' Civil War economic policies — nationalisation of industry, forced grain requisitioning and a ban on private trade.
Why it matters It kept the Red Army supplied but caused famine and peasant revolts, and the Kronstadt rising forced its abandonment.
Appears in: The Russian revolutions, 1917–1924 See also: New Economic Policy (NEP)
Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles, in which Germany accepted responsibility for the loss and damage caused by the war, as the legal basis for reparations.
Why it matters Germans of all political views resented it as a national humiliation, and it fuelled the nationalist campaign against the Versailles settlement that Hitler exploited.
Appears in: The outbreak of the First World War
"World policy" — Germany's pursuit of colonies, naval power and global influence under Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Why it matters It alarmed Britain, damaged relations with the other powers, and contributed to Germany's sense of encirclement.
Appears in: The outbreak of the First World War
The meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin that agreed to divide Germany into zones, to hold free elections in liberated Eastern Europe, and that the USSR would join the war against Japan.
Why it matters Different interpretations of its promises — especially on Poland — fuelled mistrust once the war ended.
Appears in: The origins of the Cold War
The body of laws and decrees attributed to Genghis Khan, covering military discipline, conduct and succession.
Why it matters It supported the discipline that made the Mongol army effective and gave the empire a common legal framework. No complete text survives, so its contents are reconstructed from later sources.
Appears in: Genghis Khan and the Mongol conquests
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Stalin's doctrine that the USSR could build socialism on its own without waiting for world revolution.
Why it matters It appealed to party members' patriotism and weariness of revolutionary adventures, and cast Trotsky's "permanent revolution" as reckless.
Appears in: Stalin's Soviet Union