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Absolutism: A political doctrine stating that the ruler of a monarchy holds exclusive and indisputable power by divine authority.

Afroeurasia: The “supercontinent” of Africa, Eurasia, and adjacent islands as a single geographical unit.

Anthropocene: The era beginning as early as the nineteenth century in which humans have become the primary agents of change in the earth’s biosphere.

Apartheid: The legal system of segregation and discrimination in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 designed to ensure the political domination of the white minority population.

Autarky: A national policy that aims to achieve economic self-reliance, including freedom from dependence on external trade or assistance.

Baby boom: A period of increased birthrates, especially in Western countries, from the end of World War II to about 1957.

Biodiversity loss: The decline or disappearance of the numbers of different species of plants or animals within an ecosystem, a geographical area, or the planet as a whole.

Biological old regime: Human history before the nineteenth century, when economic production depended almost entirely on capturing flows of solar energy.

Biomass: Plant matter, including wood, brush, and animal waste, used as fuel.

Bourgeoisie: In modern usage, the middle class; from the French word bourg, or town-dweller; to Karl Marx it is the dominant capitalist class.

Boyars: Hereditary, land-owning nobles who formed Russia’s aristocratic class.

Business cycle: A sequence of economic activity typically characterized by recession, recovery, growth, and repeated recession.

Capitalism: An economic system in which private individuals or businesses own the means of producing and distributing goods with the purpose of gaining profit.

Capitulations: International agreements by which one sovereign state surrenders legal or customary jurisdiction within its borders over the subjects or citizens of another state.

Cash crops: Agricultural crops grown mainly to sell rather than to feed the farmer’s family or livestock.

Caudillo Autocratic political boss or dictator, especially in Latin America’s post-independence period.

Chartered company: A type of corporate body in which the state granted specific rights and obligations to private investors to engage in exploration, commerce, or colonization.

Cold War: The state of distrust and rivalry that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective allies, from the end of World War II to the late 1980s.

Collaborationist: A government, a group, or an individual that cooperates with a foreign enemy, usually an occupying power.

Columbian exchange: The transfer of living organisms, including plants, animals, microorganisms, and humans between Afroeurasia and the Americas starting in 1492.

Communism: A variety of socialism that advocates revolution to eradicate capitalism and establish the universal triumph of the working class.

Constitutional monarchy: A type of government in which a monarch serves as head of state but surrenders part of his or her governing power to a legislature and judiciary under the terms of a constitution or body of laws.

Consumerism: Social and cultural values centered on the accumulation and consumption of material goods.

Coronavirus: Any of a family of viruses (Coronaviridae) that causes respiratory or gastrointestinal diseases in birds and mammals, including humans.

Coup d’état: The illegal and often violent overthrow of an existing government, usually by an opposing political or military faction. The French phrase means a “stroke of state.”

Creole: In the context of the Americas from the sixteenth century, a person of European or African descent born in North or South America.

Debt peon: A farmer or laborer who works under obligation to pay off loans.

Deindustrialization: A process in which a state or region loses at least part of its capacity to manufacture goods, especially because of foreign competition or intervention.

Demographic transition: The stabilization of a society’s population level resulting from the decline of both fertility rates and death rates.

Détente: The easing of strained relations, especially between countries; from the French word meaning “relaxation.”

Embargo: A legal restriction or prohibition imposed on trade.

Encomienda A grant of authority from the Spanish crown to conquistadors and other Spanish residents in the Americas to demand labor services or tribute payments from an Indigenous group in return for protection and Christian instruction.

Energy revolution: The great increase of useful heat energy made available by extracting and burning fossil fuels.

Evangelism: The practice of propagating the Christian gospel by preaching, personal witnessing, and missionary work.

Fascism: A political ideology that advocates authoritarian leadership, intense nationalism, cultural renewal, and rejection of both liberal democracy and socialism; the term derives from the Latin word fasces, an ancient Roman emblem symbolizing imperial authority.

Financialization: A process by which financial institutions, services, markets, and executive elites achieve increasing influence over national or international economic policies and outcomes.

Fordism: A system of technology and organization, named after Henry Ford, which aims both to produce goods at minimal cost through standardization and mass production and to pay wageworkers rates that allow them to consume the products they make.

Free trade: The economic doctrine that trade among states should be unrestricted, mainly by lowering or elimi-nating tariffs on imported goods; factors of supply and demand should largely determine price.

Genocide: The premeditated, purposeful killing of large numbers of members of a particular national, racial, ethnic, or religious group.

Great world convergence: The establishment, starting at the end of the fifteenth century CE, of permanent transoceanic links between peoples of Afroeurasia and the Americas; by the late eighteenth century these connections extended to Australia and many Pacific islands.

Green Revolution: Acceleration of world agricultural production resulting from use of high-yielding crop vari-eties, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and expanded irrigation.

Gross domestic product: The total market value of the goods and services that a country produces during a specific period of time; per capita GDP is the total value of goods and services divided by the country’s population.

Holocaust: The Nazi-sponsored attempt to exterminate Europe’s Jews, along with other groups regarded as racially inferior.

Imam: The supreme leader of the Muslim community; the leader of prayer in mosques; in Shi’a Islam the divinely appointed successor of Muhammad.

Import substitution industrialization (ISI): Government policies to encourage national industries to provide citizens with finished goods that would otherwise be imported.

Indentured servitude: A type of social bondage in which an individual contracts to labor without compensation for a specified period to repay a loan or the cost of transport to the place of work.

Indirect rule: A theory and practice of colonial government favoring the appointment of local leaders as political intermediaries between the colonizer and the Indigenous population.

Industrial revolution: The technological and economic processes whereby industrialization based on fossil-fuel energy, steam engines, and complex machines led to worldwide economic, social, and environmental transformations.

Industrious revolution: A period in the 1600s and 1700s when in Britain and some other countries ordinary families consumed more commercially produced goods and worked longer hours to pay for them; this rep-resented an important change in economic behavior before the start of the industrial revolution.

Inflation: A rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in a society. Rising inflation means that the purchasing power of a given unit of currency declines.

Informal empire: A political situation in which one country exerts political and economic domination or influ-ence over another country without assuming the risks and costs of territorial control.

International nongovernmental organization: An association of private individuals or groups that operates across national borders to provide services or promote policies, especially to improve social or economic conditions.

Internet: A global computer network that connects smaller networks, all of which use the same set of commu-nication formats and rules.

Isolationism: The national policy or political attitude of avoiding complex relations with foreign countries.

Junta: A committee or council that seizes control of a government, especially following civil upheaval or revolution.

Keynesianism: Economic theories of John Maynard Keynes that promote government monetary and financial policies to increase employment and stimulate economic growth.

LGBTQ+: An acronym (or initialism) for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning intersex, or asexual; the + represents additional sexual orientations or gender identities that individuals may affirm.

Liberalism: A doctrine advocating individual rights and freedoms, free trade, constitutional government, and confidence in human progress; sometimes called “classical liberalism.”

Lingua franca: A spoken or written language that facilitates commercial or diplomatic communication across cultural frontiers.

Mandate system: The political transfer under League of Nations authority of German or Ottoman colonial dependencies to victorious Allied states; the League determined that these territories were not yet capable of governing themselves.

Matrilineal succession: The practice of tracing descent or the transmission of property or authority primarily through female relatives.

Mercantilism: An economic doctrine based on the idea that the world’s exploitable wealth cannot expand and therefore that one country’s wealth can only grow at the expense of others; states should therefore block or restrict rival states from trading with its colonies.

Middle Passage: The forced voyage of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas.

Modernism: A cultural movement to celebrate innovation and experimentation and to reject adherence to traditional forms and values.

Monocropping: The practice of growing a single crop repeatedly on a given acreage of land.

Multidimensional poverty: A state of poverty that involves not only income but also other factors that affect the quality of life.

Multinational corporation: A private business that has its headquarters in one country but that owns affiliate companies in other countries.

Mysticism: The individual pursuit of knowledge or consciousness of spiritual truth through meditation, prayer, study, or ecstatic experience.

Nationalism: An ideology centered on the natural rights of a people or “nation” to constitute a sovereign state.

Nation-state: A sovereign state whose inhabitants share, or are ideally expected to share, common language, cultural traditions, history, and aspirations for the future.

Natural rights: Universal and inherent rights of humans bestowed by nature or divine power.

Neoliberalism: An economic and political ideology advocating limited government intervention in economic affairs, privatization of state-owned enterprises, deregulation of business, free trade, and flexible migration policies.

New imperialism: The campaigns of colonial empire building that several European countries plus Japan and the United States undertook in the late nineteenth century against other societies.

Old Regime: The political and social system in France and other European monarchies up to the late eighteenth century; characterized by a strict class hierarchy, elite privilege, and rulers’ claims to absolute authority; ancien régime in French.

Oligarch: A member of a government or organization in which a relatively small number of individuals or fami-lies hold supreme power; in recent Russian history a term associated with wealthy individuals who achieved extensive political influence following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Patriotism: An emotional or sentimental attachment to a place, an ethnic people, or a way of life; in modern times often to one’s national homeland.

Pogrom: An organized, violent attack on a minority community; most commonly refers to assaults on Jews; from Russian meaning “riot” or “devastation.”

Popular sovereignty: The doctrine that the sovereignty or independence of the state is vested in the people and that the government is responsible to the will of the citizenry.

Populism: A political ideology or program whose leaders represent, or claim to represent, the interests of ordi-nary people against established and privileged elites.

Price revolution: A period of sustained inflation in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Proletariat: The working class or industrial wage earners; from the Latin word proletarius, the lowest social class. Protectorate: A type of colonial relationship in which a foreign power takes control of the top levels of government in the colonized territory but permits it to retain formal if limited sovereignty.

Putting-out system: A production method in which employers distributed raw materials to individuals or fam-ilies, who then made finished goods, typically woolen or cotton yarn or cloth, and returned these goods to the employer for payment.

Real wages: Wages estimated in the amount of goods those earnings will buy rather than in the face value of the money paid to workers.

Regent: A person who administers the affairs of a state when the ruler is absent, disabled, or has not reached adulthood.

Reparations: The act of making amends or giving satisfaction for an injustice or injury.

Repartimiento An authorization from the Spanish crown to a colonist to recruit Indigenous people for forced labor.

Republic: A type of government in which supreme authority rests with a body of citizens possessing rights to approve laws and select public officials.

Self-determination: The idea that a society sharing common language, history, and cultural traditions should have the right to decide its own political future.

Serfdom: A system of labor in which people were legally bound to work for and pay fees to a particular landlord in return for protection and rights to cultivate land.

Social bondage: A condition in which an individual or group holds right to a person’s labor or services, whether for a limited period or a lifetime; social bondage may take a variety of forms, including slavery, serfdom, temporary forced labor, or indentured servitude.

Socialism: Ideologies that advocate social equality and justice and the community’s collective control and man-agement of economic institutions.

Southern Seas: The China seas and the Indian Ocean, including the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.

Soviet: Russian revolutionary workers’ councils that served as local units of government and civil order.; the term was applied later to the hierarchy of representative bodies within the communist government.

Subprime mortgage: A type of home loan that financial institutions offer to individuals with poor or nonexistent credit histories, often at elevated interest rates.

Sultanate: Monarchy; derived from the Arabic “sultan,” meaning “holder of authority.”

Syncretism: In religion the blending of beliefs or practices from two or more different beliefs systems; also the incorporation of beliefs or practices of one religion by another.

Tax farming: A system in which a government awards the right of tax collection to a private individual or group in return for a fee or a percentage of the revenue gathered.

Three estates: The principal social categories or orders constituting societies in premodern Europe: the clergy, the titled nobility, and everyone else.

Totalitarianism: A political ideology that mandates strong central regulation of both public institutions and private thought and behavior.

Trade diaspora: Merchants who share cultural identity but who live among foreign communities to operate networks of trade.

Trading post empire: A network of fortified trading stations or ports that a state controls with the principal aim of dominating commerce in a region.

Tribe: The largest social group in a region whose members claim descent from a shared ancestor.

Tsar: The supreme ruler or monarch of Russia, a variant of the Roman imperial title “caesar”; also spelled “tzar” or “czar.”

Vernacular language: A language commonly spoken by the population of a particular region or country.

Viceroy: An official appointed by a monarch to govern a colonial dependency as the sovereign’s representative; vice is a Latin prefix meaning “in place of,” and “roy” means king.

Welfare state: An approach to government in which the state uses public funds to ensure basic economic security for its citizens.