OCR GCSE History B key terms

Decorative, carefully formed handwriting, valued as an art form and collected alongside paintings in Mughal albums.

A community of families connected by ancestry or long association, whose elders managed communal land and allocated plots to members.

An Aztec community organisation which managed local affairs and education; in Tenochtitlán, these became neighbourhood divisions rather than necessarily groups of related families.

The city that serves as the main centre of a ruler’s government.

A crime for which the law allows the death penalty.

A punishment in which the state executes a person convicted of a crime; also called the death penalty.

Goods carried by a ship or another form of transport.

A hereditary social group within Indian society, often associated with a traditional occupation.

A fortified residence housing a lord, his household and armed followers, which also provided a base for controlling the surrounding area.

An estate organised to provide the resources needed to sustain a castle.

The nickname for the 1913 law allowing prisoners weakened by hunger strikes to be temporarily released and then rearrested after recovering.

A Christian who belongs to the Catholic Church, which recognises the Pope’s religious authority.

A branch of Christianity recognising the authority of the pope in Rome; its clergy and religious orders organised missionary work in New Spain.

A raised route across water or wet ground. Causeways connected Tenochtitlan to the mainland.

Soldiers who fight on horseback.

Closed-circuit television: a camera system used to monitor places and record footage that can help deter crime and provide evidence.

To formally transfer control of territory to another country.

The control or suppression of information before it reaches the public.

Government in which authority is concentrated in the ruler and central administration rather than widely shared with local powers.

An ordinary free person in Anglo-Saxon society, often a peasant farmer. Ceorls could still owe rent or work to a lord.

A pit that collected human waste and had to be emptied rather than flushed.

The head of the German government, appointed by the president under the Weimar constitution.

An alteration between one period and another, such as a difference in a building's size, layout or appearance.

A young person employed or compelled to serve in a household. Some wealthy households in early modern Britain kept African or Indian child servants.

Productive raised agricultural fields constructed in shallow lake or wetland areas, with canals between them.

The expected qualities and conduct of a knight. In the late eleventh century, loyalty and belonging to a brotherhood of warriors were particularly important.

A bacterial disease spread through contaminated food or water, causing severe diarrhoea and potentially fatal dehydration.