World History (Exam Canon) — Glossary

The Battle of Adwa, fought on 1 March 1896, was the decisive engagement in which Emperor Menelik II's Ethiopian forces routed an invading Italian army, securing Ethiopian independence.

The Battle of Adwa on 1 March 1896 was the decisive engagement in which Emperor Menelik II's Ethiopian forces defeated invading Italy, securing Ethiopian independence.

Afghanistan 2001 refers to the US-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime following the September 11 attacks, launched under Operation Enduring Freedom on 7 October 2001.

The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 was a conflict between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom that ended Zulu independence and advanced British supremacy in southern Africa.

The ABM Treaty was a 1972 US–Soviet arms-control accord limiting each side's deployment of defensive systems against strategic ballistic missiles to preserve mutual deterrence.

The Asian Financial Crisis was a 1997–98 currency and banking collapse that spread from Thailand across East and Southeast Asia, triggering recessions and IMF bailouts.

AUKUS is a 2021 trilateral security partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, centred on supplying Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and advanced defence technologies.

The Berlin West Africa Conference (1884–85) was a meeting of European powers that codified the rules for the partition and colonisation of Africa.

BRIC is the acronym coined in 2001 for the four major emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India and China—that later formalised cooperation, adding South Africa in 2010 to become BRICS.

BRICS expansion is the enlargement of the BRICS grouping beyond its five founders, beginning with the 2023 Johannesburg invitations that admitted new members from January 2024.

A causal chain is a sequenced linkage of historical events in which each cause produces an effect that becomes the cause of the next, explaining how outcomes arise from antecedents.

Causation and linkage is the historical method of distinguishing immediate triggers from underlying long-term forces and tracing chains of cause and effect across events.

Causation essays are analytical historical answers that explain why an event occurred by identifying, classifying, and weighing its multiple causes against one another.

A causation framework is an analytical scheme for classifying and weighing the multiple causes of a historical event into ordered categories such as long-term, immediate, and contributory factors.

Causation over chronology is the analytical principle of organising historical understanding around cause-and-effect relationships rather than mere temporal sequence of dated events.

Cause-and-consequence analysis is a historical-method skill that identifies why an event occurred and traces its short- and long-term effects across political, economic, and social domains.

The Chiang Mai Initiative is a regional currency-swap arrangement among ASEAN+3 states designed to provide short-term liquidity support and avert balance-of-payments crises.

China formally acceded to the World Trade Organization on 11 December 2001 as its 143rd member, after fifteen years of negotiations begun in 1986.

Comecon was the Soviet-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, founded in 1949 to coordinate economic planning and trade among socialist states of the Eastern Bloc.

The Cominform was the Communist Information Bureau established by the Soviet Union in 1947 to coordinate the policies of European communist parties during the early Cold War.

Comparison is the analytical method of systematically juxtaposing two or more cases, institutions, or processes to identify similarities, differences, and causal patterns.

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme written law of the American federal republic, adopted in 1787 and ratified in 1788, establishing a presidential system based on separation of powers and federalism.

The Eurozone sovereign-debt crisis was a 2009–2015 financial emergency in which several euro-area states faced unsustainable government borrowing costs and threatened the single currency's survival.

Factual recall is the cognitive ability to retrieve specific, discrete pieces of stored information—names, dates, articles, definitions—accurately and rapidly from memory under examination conditions.

The Government of India Act 1858 abolished the East India Company's rule and transferred the governance of India directly to the British Crown.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was a 1964 U.S. congressional joint resolution authorizing President Lyndon Johnson to use military force in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war.

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) was independent India's first and longest-serving Prime Minister, holding office from 15 August 1947 until his death in May 1964.

The Mahdist state was the Islamic theocratic regime that ruled most of Sudan from 1885 to 1898, founded by the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad after revolt against Egyptian-Turkish rule.

The New Economic Policy (NEP) was Lenin's 1921 economic programme that partially restored market mechanisms and private trade in Soviet Russia after the failure of War Communism.

The North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington on 4 April 1949, is the founding instrument of NATO, binding member states to collective defence.

NSC-68 was a 1950 classified U.S. National Security Council policy paper that established military containment of the Soviet Union as the cornerstone of American Cold War strategy.

The People's Republic of China is the socialist state founded by the Chinese Communist Party on 1 October 1949, governing mainland China under single-party rule.

The Petrograd Soviet was the council of workers' and soldiers' deputies formed in Russia's capital in March 1917 that became the chief rival power to the Provisional Government.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) is a strategic forum of the United States, India, Japan, and Australia coordinating on a free and open Indo-Pacific.

SALT I was the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement, signed by the United States and Soviet Union in 1972, freezing offensive missile launchers and restricting missile defences.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was the December 1979 military intervention by the USSR to prop up a Marxist government, triggering a decade-long war that ended with Soviet withdrawal in 1989.

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were two rounds of US–Soviet negotiations (1969–1979) that produced the first treaties capping strategic nuclear delivery vehicles.

The Tehran Conference was the first wartime meeting of the Allied "Big Three"—Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin—held in Iran from 28 November to 1 December 1943.

UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted unanimously on 22 November 1967, set the land-for-peace framework for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict after the Six-Day War.

War Communism was the coercive economic system imposed by Bolshevik Russia from 1918 to 1921 to supply the Red Army during the Civil War through requisitioning, nationalisation, and labour conscription.