Faith & Feudalism
This monotheistic religion, alongside Judaism and Christianity, heavily shaped the political and cultural landscape of the Middle East and Africa between 1200 and 1450.
What is Islam?
This historical era's name literally translates to "rebirth," marking a period where European learning shifted away from strictly religious orders toward secular art, science, and philosophy.
What is the Renaissance?
This global transfer of plants, animals, culture, and human populations between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres completely reshaped world agriculture.
What is the Columbian Exchange?
This intellectual movement rejected old political ideas, encouraged people to rethink the role of government, and ultimately sparked the American and French Revolutions.
What is the Enlightenment?
The deployment of machine guns, poison gas, tanks, and heavy artillery forced soldiers into this specific, agonizing style of warfare on the Western Front in WWI.
What is trench warfare?
This West African trade network thrived by exchanging two main commodities: gold mined in the south for this essential dietary mineral mined in the Sahara.
What is the gold-salt trade?
During the chaos of the European Middle Ages, this powerful institution was the primary source of stability, unity, and social order.
What is the Roman Catholic Church?
Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of this device revolutionized Europe by making books cheaper, increasing literacy, and rapidly spreading new ideas.
What is the movable-type printing press?
During the Age of Exploration, this was the absolute most significant, devastating impact that European arrival had on the native populations of the Americas.
What is the spread of European diseases (like smallpox)?
Before the revolution in 1789, French society was divided into three unequal social classes known by this term.
What are the Estates?
Driven by widespread anger over wartime starvation and poverty, this 1917 political upheaval successfully overthrew the Russian czar and established the world's first communist state.
What is the Russian Revolution (or Bolshevik Revolution)?
This traditional Chinese political concept, which granted emperors the right to rule based on virtue, heavily resembled the European idea of the "divine right of kings."
What is the Mandate of Heaven?
This political and military system emerged in Europe primarily because weak central governments could not protect their people from outside invasions.
What is Feudalism?
This major historical turning point and shift in religious unity began because Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses to protest corruption in the Catholic Church.
What is the Protestant Reformation?
This economic policy drove European nations to acquire colonies so they could strictly control trade, accumulate gold and silver, and maintain a favorable balance of trade.
What is mercantilism?
This massive economic shift led to a massive growth of the middle class, increased international trade, and a rapid migration of people from rural areas into cities.
What is the Industrial Revolution?
This disastrous diplomatic policy of giving in to Adolf Hitler's early aggressive demands failed to stop the outbreak of World War II.
What is appeasement?
Nomadic horsemanship, the utilization of the stirrup, and the fierce leadership of Genghis Khan allowed this empire to swiftly conquer the largest contiguous land mass in history.
What is the Mongol Empire?
Although they failed to maintain permanent military control of the Holy Land, these holy wars drastically expanded trade and cultural exchange between Europe and the Middle East.
What are the Crusades?
Unlike medieval thinkers who relied on Church law, thinkers of the Scientific Revolution insisted that all new knowledge must be based on these two things.
What are observation and experimentation (or the scientific method)?
European colonists turned to importing enslaved Africans to the Americas primarily due to a severe shortage of this group of workers, who had been decimated by disease.
Who are Native Americans (or Indigenous peoples)?
This late 19th-century political and economic practice involved powerful industrial nations taking over weaker, "barbarian" lands to compete for global dominance.
What is imperialism?
This dramatic military event on December 7, 1941, instantly ended American neutrality and pulled the United States directly into World War II.
What is the bombing of Pearl Harbor?
This specific geopolitical belief argued that if one country in a region fell to communism, its neighbors would inevitably fall as well, eventually threatening the United States.
What is the Domino Theory?
Carried along trade routes in the 14th century, this devastating pandemic swept across Europe, drastically reducing the population in a matter of years.
What is the Black Death (or Bubonic Plague)?
Nicolas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei challenged traditional Church teachings by proving this theory, which states that the planets revolve around the sun.
What is the heliocentric theory?
This term refers to the brutal, forced maritime journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.
What is the Middle Passage?
European imperialists frequently used this pseudo-scientific theory—which applied "survival of the fittest" to human societies—to justify their conquest of Africa and Asia.
What is Social Darwinism?
This famous metaphorical phrase, coined by Winston Churchill, described the sharp ideological and physical division of Europe into democratic and communist blocs.
What is the Iron Curtain?
This phrase, popularized by a Rudyard Kipling poem, was used by Europeans to claim they had a moral obligation to civilize non-white populations.
What is "The White Man's Burden"?