Edexcel GCSE History key terms

Work involving very low pay, long hours and poor conditions, often carried out in small workshops.

A workplace where workers produce goods for low wages in poor conditions, often working long hours.

A name associated with the fashion, music and cultural changes of the 1960s, especially in London; it does not mean that everyone enjoyed prosperity.

The methods used to position and employ troops during a battle.

Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, including communities on Cuba and Hispaniola, who initially traded and cooperated with Columbus’s expedition.

To make a religious vow to go on crusade.

Making a formal religious commitment to join a crusade, symbolised by wearing a cross.

A tax imposed by the king on groups including townspeople and Jewish communities. Jewish communities could be required to pay special tallages whenever the king demanded.

A plantation labour system in which enslaved people received individual daily assignments. Completing these could leave some time for their own subsistence activities, without ending their enslavement.

A tax paid in goods rather than money. Under the early NEP, peasants supplied an agreed amount of produce to the state instead of having grain requisitioned.

Tools, equipment and practical processes used to carry out tasks or apply knowledge.

Movement to live somewhere for a limited period rather than to settle permanently.

A landholder who held land directly from the king in return for loyalty and service.

The use of fear, violence and threats of punishment to intimidate people and discourage opposition.

Violence or threats, particularly against civilians, intended to create fear and pressure governments or societies into political change.

A bacterial infection that can enter through a wound and cause severe muscle stiffness and spasms.

The coordinated attacks launched by the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army across South Vietnam during the Lunar New Year holiday in 1968.

A wetland region in eastern England which, in the eleventh century, contained marshes, waterways and islands of higher ground.

A landowning member of the Anglo-Saxon nobility, below an earl in rank.

Anglo-Saxon landholding nobles below earls in rank; they exercised local influence and provided military service.

Galen’s approach to restoring the balance of the humours by using treatments with opposite qualities, such as hot treatment for an excess of a cold humour.

The theory that illness resulted from an imbalance of four bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.

A Viking assembly where free men discussed laws, settled disputes and made decisions.

A supporting frame used to hold a fractured leg steady and prevent complications caused by movement.

Attempts to make people adopt officially approved beliefs and reject competing ideas, using education, pressure and punishment.

A portable dwelling that could be dismantled and moved, making it suitable for people following buffalo herds.

An annual payment to the Church of one tenth of a person’s produce.