Glossary

An administrative system in which officials carry out government functions.

An ethical and political tradition emphasizing social roles, education, responsibility, and orderly relationships.

A population living outside its ancestral homeland.

The blending of elements from different cultural or religious traditions.

Payment or goods given by one state or people to another, often recognizing political authority.

A seasonal wind pattern that strongly affects rainfall and sailing conditions in the Indian Ocean.

A stopping place where traveling merchants and caravans could rest and resupply.

A community of people living away from their homeland while maintaining parts of their cultural identity.

The spread of ideas, customs, technologies, or cultural practices from one society to another.

Transfer of plants, animals, people, and disease between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after sustained contact.

A state policy that treated colonies and trade controls as tools for building the parent country's wealth.

An intellectual movement that used reason and natural-rights arguments to criticize unchecked traditional authority.

A shift to machine production and new energy sources that raised output and remade work, cities, and empire.

The process by which colonized territories gained political independence from imperial rulers.

A Cold War strategy in which a state avoided becoming a permanent client of either superpower.

A large agricultural enterprise organized to produce a cash crop, often with coerced labor.

Work extracted through force, legal bondage, or severe constraint, including slavery and other unfree systems.

The claim that legitimate political authority comes from the people rather than from dynasty alone.

The idea that a people who share identity should have their own political community or state.

A political unit that claims to represent a particular nation as its main source of legitimacy.