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Terms
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- bourgeoisie
- In early modern Europe, the class of well-off town dwellers whose wealth came from manufacturing finance, commerce, and allied professionals.
- Atlantic system
- The network of trading links after 1500 that moved goods, wealth, people, and cultures around the Atlantic Ocean Basin.
- Bornu
- A powerful West African kingdom at the southern edge of the Sahara in the Central Sudan, which was important in trans-Saharan trade and in the spread of Islam. Also known as Kanem-Bornu, it endured from the ninth century to the end of the nineteenth.
- Black Death
- An outbreak of bubonic plague that spread across Asia, North Africa, and Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, killing off a third of western Europeans.
- Aztecs
- Also known as Mexica, the Aztecs created a powerful empire in central Mexico (1315-1521 B.C.). The forced defeated peoples to provide goods and labor as a tax.
- Bantu
- Collective name of a large group of sub-Saharan African languages and of the peoples speaking these languages.
- Bengal
- Region of northeastern India. It was the first part of India to be conquered by the British in the eighteeth century and remained the political and economic center of British India throughout the nineteenth century. The 1905 split of the province into predominantly Hindu West Bengal and predominantly Muslim East Bengal (now Bangladesh) sparked anti-British riots.
- Battle of Midway
- U.S. naval victory over the Japanese fleet in June 1942, in which the Japanese lost four of their best aircraft carriers. It marked a turning point in World War II.
- Bannermen
- Hereditary military servants of the Qing Empire, in large part descendants of peoples of various origins who had fought for the founders of the empire.
- Balfour Declaration
- Statement issued by Britain's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in 1917 favorin the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.
- Atahualpa (1502-1533)
- Last ruling INca emperor of Peru. He was executed by the Spanish.
- bin Laden, Usama
- Saudi-born Muslim extremist who funded the al Qaeda organization that was responsible for several terrorist attacks, including those on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.
- Bolsheviks
- Radical Marxist political party founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1903. Under Lenin's leadership, the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917 during the Russian Revolution.
- Bhagavad-Gita
- The most importanat work of Indian sacred literature, a dialogue between the the great warrior Arjuna and the god Krishna on duty and the fate of the spirit.
- Beijing
- China's northern capital, first used as an imperial capital in 906 and now the capital of the People's Republic of China.
- Bolivar, Simon (1738-1830)
- The most important military leader in the struggle for independence in South America, killing off a third of western Europeans.
- Ataturk, Kemal (1880-1938)
- The founder of modern Turkey. An army officer, he distinguished himself in the defense of Gallipli in WOrld War I and expelled a Greek expeditionary army from Anatolia in 1921-1922). He abolished the sultanate and replaced the Ottoman Empire with the Turkish Republic in 1923. As president until his death in 1938, he pushed through a radical Westernization and reform of Turksih society.
- Atlantic Circuit
- The network of trade routes connecting Europe, Africa, and the Americas that underlay the Atlantic system.
- Ashoka
- Third ruler of the Mauryan Empire in India (273-232 A.D.). He converted to Buddhism and broadcast his precepts on inscribed stones and pillars, the earliest surviving Indian writing.
- Battle of Omdurman
- British victory over the Mahdi in the Sudan in 1898. General kitchener led a mixed force of British and Egyptian troops armed with rapid-firing rifles and machine guns.
- Bismark, Otto von (1815-1898)
- Chancellor (prime minister) of Prussia from 1862 until 1871, when he became chancellor of Germany. A conservative nationalist, he led Prussia to victory against Austria (1866) and France (1870) and was respobsible for the creation of the German Empire in 1871.
- Asian Tigers
- Collective name for South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore--nations that became economic powers in the 1970s and 1980s.
- Ashikaga Shogunate (1336-1573)
- The second of Japan's military governments headed by a shogun (a military ruler). Sometimes called the Muromachi Shogunate.
- Auschwitz
- Nazi extermination camp in Poland, the largest center of mass murder during the Holocaust. Close to a million Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and others were killed there.
- Augustus (63-14 A.D.)
- Honorific name of Octavian, founder of the Roman Principate, the military dictatorship that replaced the failing rule of the Roman Senate. After defeating all rivals, between 31 A.d. and 14 A.D. he laid the groundwork for several centuries of stability and prosperity in the Roman Empire.
- Babylon
- The largest and most important city in Mesopotamia. It achieved particular eminence as the capital of the Amorite king Hammurabi in the eighteenth century B.C. and the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century B.C.
- Batavia
- Fort established 1619 as headquarters of Dutch East India Company operations in Indonesia; today the city of Jakarta.
- Berlin Conference (1884-1885)
- Conference that German chancellor Otto von Bismarck called to set rules for the partition of Africa. It led to the creation of the Congo Free State under King Leopold II of Belgium.
- balance of power
- The policy in international relations by which, beginning in the eighteenth century, the major European states acted together to prevent any one of them from becoming too powerful.
- ayllu
- Andean lineage group or kin-based community.