Public
This specialized field involves preserving, cataloging, and making accessible historical manuscripts, photographs, and government records.
What is Archival Science?
This French peasant girl claimed divine guidance and led the French army to a momentous victory at Orléans during the Hundred Years' War.
Who is Joan of Arc?
This was the main cash crop of the American South from 1830 until 1930.
What was Cotton?
This final imperial dynasty of China was overthrown during the Xinhai Revolution in 1911.
What is the Qing Dynasty?
This is the term for a document or artifact that was created later by someone who did not experience the event firsthand, yet relies on primary sources.
What is a Secondary Source?
This subfield of public history analyzes how societies remember, misremember, or manipulate the past through statues, holidays, and museums.
What is this study of Collective Memory? (or Public Memory)
This socio-economic system structured medieval society around holding land in exchange for service and labor.
What is Feudalism?
This person is credited with inventing the cotton gin.
Who is Eli Whitney?
The 1842 Treaty of Nanking, which ended the First Opium War, ceded this island territory to Great Britain "in perpetuity."
What is Hong Kong?
This term describes the study of historical writing.
What is Historiography?
This group has 21 museums across multiple states, and is nicknamed “the nation’s attic.”
What is The Smithsonian?
Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in 1095 with the primary goal of capturing this holy city.
What is Jerusalem?
This city was the location of Fort Sumter where the first shots of the American Civil War were fired.
What is Charleston (South Carolina)?
This massive 19th-century civil war in China, led by a man claiming to be the brother of Jesus, resulted in an estimated 20 million deaths and severely weakened the Qing Empire.
What is the Taiping Rebellion?
A "turn" in historical research that centers the lived experiences, culture, and agency of ordinary working-class people rather than elites.
What is History from Below? (or Social History)
This 11-letter term refers to the documented history of an object's ownership, which is crucial for proving its authenticity and legal origin.
What is Provenance?
Known for his military prowess during the Third Crusade, this English king spent less than a year of his decade-long reign in England.
Who is Richard the Lionheart? (or Richard I)
This Supreme Court Chief Justice wrote the majority opinion for the Dred Scott case.
Who is (Robert) Taney? [pronounced Tawney]
Launched by Mao Zedong in 1958, this economic and social campaign aimed to rapidly transform China from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization, but resulted in a devastating famine.
What is the Great Leap Forward?
The practice of cross-referencing multiple disparate types of evidence (e .g., archaeology, official transcripts, and statistical data) to verify a historical claim.
What is Triangulation? (or Corroboration)
Before modern museums, wealthy Europeans displayed their eclectic collections of art, natural history, and antiquities in these rooms, from the German for "room of wonders."
What are Cabinets of Curiosities? (or Curious Cabinets, Curiocabinets, Wunderkammern)
This 900-word document, commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085, was a massive survey of England's land and resources.
What is the Doomesday Book?
These three politicians were known as the "Great Triumvirate" during the antebellum era.
Who were (John C.) Calhoun, (Henry) Clay, and (Daniel) Webster?
This pivotal 1868 political event restored practical imperial rule to Japan under a young emperor, sparking rapid modernization and industrialization.
Who are the Red Guards?
Derived from Greek words meaning "against time," this is the logical fallacy of placing a person, event, or language style into a historical period where it does not belong.
What is an Anachronism?