History key terms

An uprising against Bolshevik rule by sailors at the Kronstadt naval base near Petrograd in March 1921.

Kru migrants from Liberia who found seafaring work through Freetown in Sierra Leone; some subsequently settled in Liverpool.

A racist organisation which promoted white Protestant supremacy and used intimidation and violence against African Americans and other targeted groups.

A white supremacist organisation that used intimidation and violence against Black Americans and supporters of civil rights.

A relatively prosperous peasant. Under Stalin, the label was also applied to many ordinary peasants who resisted collectivisation.

An ethnic group whose population lives across several Middle Eastern states, including Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Kurdish movements sought self-government or an independent state.

A male guardian who represented a woman’s interests in legal and family matters in ancient Athens, such as her father or another male relative.

A government office that helped people seeking work find employers with vacancies.

People who depended on physical work for wages and had little wealth or security.

The organisation founded in 1900 by trade unions and socialist groups to secure independent Labour representation in Parliament; it adopted the Labour Party name in 1906.

Work that an unfree peasant owed on a lord’s land in return for land and protection.

A shortage of available workers to fill jobs.

A policy of limited government interference in the running of businesses.

Members of a religious community who are not ordained clergy.

The western division of the wider Sioux nation, whose nineteenth-century culture centred on horse riding, bison hunting and life on the Great Plains.

The small Spanish settlement founded on the northern coast of Hispaniola in 1492 after the wreck of the Santa María; Columbus left 39 men there.

The removal of water from marshland to create land suitable for farming or other uses.

The first arrival on land after a sea journey.

Peasants’ desire for land, or more land, to support themselves and their families.

A person who owns land and receives rent from others who farm it.

A system in which landlords own land that peasants farm, benefiting from the peasants’ labour through payments such as rent.

A Norse term meaning ‘land taking’: claiming land and establishing the first farms and households in a new settlement area.

Taking land from its existing owners and allocating it to others; in early Communist China, land was taken from landlords and given to peasants.

Changes to the ownership or distribution of agricultural land. Communist promises and redistribution of land to peasants helped win rural support during the Civil War.

Income collected by the state through taxation of agricultural land and its production.

Buying land in the expectation of selling it later at a profit.

The Chinese system of ‘Reform Through Labour’, which used imprisonment and compulsory work to punish prisoners and attempt to change their thinking.

A sailor from Asia employed on European ships, including ships connecting Britain with its empire.

The language of Church worship and much formal learning in medieval western Europe.

The western European Christian community linked by the Latin Church and its recognition of the pope’s religious leadership; it was not a single country.