AQA GCSE History key terms

The improvement of relations between countries after a period of hostility.

Formal approval of a proposed constitutional amendment. The ERA required approval by at least 38 states.

Government limits on the quantities of scarce goods that individuals can buy, intended to share available supplies more fairly.

The purchasing power of earnings: how much workers can buy with their wages.

The expansion or rebuilding of a country’s armed forces and weapons.

A period in which economic activity contracts, often bringing falling production and rising unemployment.

The issue of new coins to replace existing coinage.

Gathering information about an enemy’s positions and forces, for example by observing them from aircraft.

The rebuilding of damaged or destroyed buildings and infrastructure after a disaster.

A return towards economic activity and employment after an economic crisis.

Refusal to attend the legally required Church of England services; in Elizabethan England, it was particularly associated with Catholics.

Payments former Russian serfs were required to make to the state for land allocated after emancipation in 1861.

Armed workers who supported the revolution and provided an important part of the force used in the Bolshevik takeover of Petrograd.

A discriminatory lending practice in which banks denied mortgages or other loans in particular neighbourhoods, often because of their racial composition.

A period of widespread fear that communists were infiltrating American institutions and threatening the country.

The organised campaign of Bolshevik political repression launched in 1918, involving arrests, executions and intimidation of suspected enemies.

A local official who supervised agricultural work and ensured that peasants fulfilled their obligations to the lord.

A change intended to improve an institution, law or practice without necessarily replacing the whole political system.

A person who has fled their country because of dangers such as war or persecution.

People forced to leave their homes because of dangers such as war or persecution.

A person appointed to govern on behalf of a monarch, especially during the monarch’s absence.

A person involved in the killing of a monarch; at the Restoration, the term particularly referred to those responsible for Charles I’s trial and execution.

The removal and replacement of a country’s ruling government or leadership.

The German currency introduced in 1924, backed by gold and stable foreign currencies; it circulated alongside the Rentenmark at equal value.

Germany’s national parliament, whose elected seats reflected the strength of political parties.

An emergency order signed by President Hindenburg on 28 February 1933 that suspended civil liberties and enabled the Nazis to imprison political opponents.

A payment an heir made to take possession of inherited land.