Western Colonialism Glossary

abolition: the ending of the practice of slavery.

aboriginal: an original inhabitant or native of a region or country. In the eighteenth century this term came to be associated with a native of a country colonized by European countries.

absolutist: characterizing a form of government in which the ruler or rulers have complete and unrestricted power to govern. Absolute power is vested in the authorities.

acculturation: the process by which one’s culture is influenced by prolonged contact with a different culture. In the process of colonization, a composite culture emerges.

aldeias: a Portuguese term referring to mission villages of native Americans supervised by Portuguese clergy, generally, Jesuits; similar to Spanish reducciOnes and French reserves.

anarchy: the lack of any formal system of government; political and social disorder created by the absence of government or law.

Ancien Regime: the dominant political and social order in France before the French Revolution. The Ancien Regime was characterized by absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings.

Annexation: the act by which one governmental entity asserts its sovereignty over another previously outside its boundaries.

Apartheid: Afrikaans word meaning “separation” or literally “apartness,” Apartheid was the system of laws and policy implemented and enforced by the “White” minority governments in South Africa from 1948 until it was repealed in the early 1990s. As the idea of Apartheid developed in South Africa, it grew into a tool for racial, cultural, and national survival.

apologist: derived from the Greek word apologia, meaning defense of a position against an attack, an apologist is someone who participates in apologetics, the systematic defense of a position.

archipelago: a group or cluster of islands, sometimes including the body of water surrounding the islands.

asiento: a Spanish term referring to the trading contract and official license awarded to kingdoms and charter companies to supply African slaves to Spanish America.

assimilation: the integration of one entity into another entity. Assimilation as a colonial policy sought the integration of colonized peoples into the colonizer’s cultural, social, and political institutions. The philosophy that drove this practice emphasized the Enlightenment ideas of such thinkers as the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who wrote in his The Social Contract and Discourses that men ”who may be unequal in strength and intelligence, become every one equal by convention and equal right.”

autarchy: a national policy aimed at economic independence and self-sufficiency. Under this system foreign economic aid and imports are relied on as little as possible.

Ayatollah: a religious leader of Shiite Muslims, often carrying political as well as religious importance.

Baathism: belief system of the Arab Socialist Baath Party founded in 1945. Baathism is a mostly secular ideology combining Arab socialism, nationalism, and Pan-Arabism.

balance of trade: the difference between the value of a nation’s merchandise exports and imports.

Balfour Declaration: The Balfour Declaration of November 1917 was a letter from the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Lord Rothschild, a prominent British member of the Zionist movement. On behalf of the British government, Balfour declared that ”His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people.”

Balkans, Balkan: the Balkans are the major mountain range running through the center of Bulgaria into eastern Serbia. The history of the Balkan region is one dominated by wars, rebellions, invasions and clashes between empires, from the Roman Empire to the Yugoslav wars of the twentieth century. The term Balkan has a broader meaning associated with its fragmented and often violent history.

Berber: an ethnic group indigenous to northwest Africa, speaking the Berber languages and principally concentrated in present-day Morocco and Algeria.

betel: evergreen climbing plant indigenous to parts of Asia and cultivated as a commercial crop in Madagascar, Bourbon and the West Indies; its leaves contain a stimulant and digestive aid.

Boer: The Dutch word for farmer, Boer refers to Dutch colonists settling in the Cape region of South Africa since the seventeenth century.

bossaUbozal: a slave brought directly to the New World from Africa and therefore speaks no European language, has no knowledge of Christianity, and is outside of civilization.

British Raj: historical period during which most of the Indian subcontinent (present-day India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar) was under the colonial authority of the British Empire.

bull, papal: Bulls are papal letters or edicts during the Middle Ages, the name of which derives from the Latin bulla or leaden seal, which most often sealed the documents. Papal bulls were bulls of donation. These letters gathered more weight as the Middle Ages progressed. Donations were gifts or endowment of lands.

bullion: uncoined silver or gold in the form of ingots or bars. In the early modern period, bullion, silver in particular, was the most essential commodity of European-Asian trade.

bureaucracy: the hierarchical administrative structure of a large organization.

cabal: a small group of persons united to promote a common scheme, often operating in secrecy.

cacao: Theobroma cacao, known as ”the food of the gods,” and its main byproduct, chocolate, come from the seeds or nibs of a pod, the fruit of a tree native to tropical America. The cacao tree usually requires shade trees, often the so-called madre de cacao (mother of cacao), also an American native.

caliph: term or title for an Islamic leader; Anglicized/ Latinized version of the Arabic word meaning ”successor” or ”representative,” and sometimes referred to as a successor to the prophet of God, or representative of God.

canon law: body of laws governing the faith and practice of a Christian church, also called ecclesiastical law.

capitalism: an economic system based on private ownership of property in general, capital in particular. Production decisions are made and income is distributed as a result of a system of markets.

captaincy: a grant of dominion in the overseas territorial empire of Portugal to a private individual, a donatorio, who is given the authority to govern, assign land, and profit from the territory.

Carib: the name or language of a group of American Indian peoples of the Lesser Antilles, northern South America, and the eastern coast of Central America. The Caribbean Sea was named after the Caribs.

cartel: an alliance of producers of a similar or identical product formed to control pricing and competition.

casbah: the older section of a North African city, sometimes a walled citadel, castle, or palace.

casta: a term for all persons of mixed blood including freed blacks in Spanish America.

chartered company: a firm founded under a government grant (charter) giving it specified rights and privileges to trade to and in a certain region. Chartered companies were often given monopolies in their trade area, and were frequently established to compete with foreign businesses.

Cold War: the term used to describe the state of hostility, political tension, and military rivalry characterizing the struggle for supremacy between the Western powers and the Communist bloc from the end of World War II until the collapse of Communism in 1989.

Columbian Exchange: the widespread exchange of agricultural products, livestock, slave labor, communicable diseases, and related ideologies between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres (the Old World and the New World) that occurred in the decades following Christopher Columbus’s first voyage to the New World in 1492.

commonwealth: originally a small group of self-governing white dominions within the British Empire. The evolution of the Commonwealth paralleled the deconstruction of the British Empire through the twentieth century, and the changing meaning and purpose of the Commonwealth reflected British efforts to maintain some influence as formal empire declined. The Commonwealth is now a voluntary association of over fifty nations, independent of British control, but linked by the culture of a common colonial heritage.

Communist: characterizing a political and economic system in which all property is owned by the community and the distribution of income is to each according to his or her need. This put the State in charge of organizing every aspect of the economy. The Communist movement, or Communism, is based on the ideas of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (18201895).

conquistador: Spanish for conqueror, a term referring to sixteenth-century conquerors (military leaders) of Mexico, Peru, and Central America. Within just a few years of landing on the coasts of Mexico (1519) and Peru (1532), Spanish conquistadores under the leadership of Hernan Cortes (ca. 1484-1547) and Francisco Pizarro (ca. 1475-1541) respectively, had taken possession on behalf of the Spanish Crown of the large, rich, and densely populated empires of the Aztecs and the Incas.

coup d’etat: the sudden, often violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group of subversives.

crown colony: a British overseas territory under the direct authority of the British Crown. As such, a Crown Colony does not possess its own representative government and is not represented in the British Parliament. The colony is administered by a governor appointed by the Crown and responsible to the colonial office (or its forerunners) and, from 1966 onward, to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London.

decolonization: a term referring to the European imperial retreat from sub-Saharan Africa in the aftermath of World War II and one of the most sudden and momentous transformations in the history of the modern world. Although the granting of self-government was not entirely novel prior to the end of the war in 1945, given the independence of Liberia in 1848, South Africa in 1910, and Ethiopia in 1943, the postwar imperial transformation was nevertheless unprecedented. Between 1945 and 1965, almost all European African colonies—except the former Portuguese territories, Zimbabwe and Namibia—regained their independence.

demography: branch of sociology that studies the characteristics of human populations.

coureurs de bois: a French term for backwoodsmen who traveled into the interior of New France to trade with Native Americans.

criollo: a Spanish term for a Spaniard born in America; the English equivalent is creole; the Spanish also used this term to refer to African American slaves who were American born and acculturated into Spanish American society. The equivalent Portuguese word is crioulo.

dependency (as form of colonial governance): emphasizing informal imperialism, dependency theory focuses on the subjugation by core nations of peripheral and semi-peripheral economies through new forms of domination, such as financial coercion (dollar diplomacy) and, at times, military action. Since the 1940s international organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund, have been created by core powers to continue this dependency. Any economic development was primarily in the service of the core nations.

despotism: rule by a despot or tyrant; a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution, laws or opposition).

diaspora: the out-migration of peoples from traditional homelands, often in times of crisis. Among the best-known modern example are African slaves, persons of Jewish descent (who have been forced to move at many times throughout history), and persons of Irish descent (who settled in places like the United States and Australia after the great famine of 1847-1851).

direct rule: a system of government wherein the central or national government is in direct control of the regional governmental entities.

divide-and-rule system: Roman system of colonization whereby the Romans willingly and freely incorporated newly conquered people into their own society, freely giving citizenship to outsiders in order to Romanize them and make them willing participants (instead of unwilling subjects or enemies) in the Roman imperial system. egalitarianrelating to the doctrine that all people are equal and should be treated on equal terms, such as legally, economically, politically, and socially.

emancipation: setting free from slavery or oppression; for example, in the Emancipation Proclamation, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln set free all slaves in the Confederate States in 1863.

encomienda: a Spanish term for a royal grant of the tribute or labor of a population of native Americans to a private individual, an Encomendero, usually as a reward for service to the crown in a military campaign.

endemic: relating to a limited geographic region; native or restricted to a limited geographic region.

engage-, a French term referring to an indentured servant who contracted to work a certain number of years for payment of passage to New France or another French colony.

entrepot: a center of trade, often a port, to which goods are shipped for storage and distribution to buyers in other areas. In the nineteenth century Liverpool was an important entrepot for Britain’s west coast.

ethnocentric: perceiving one’s own culture as the center of everything and other cultures as its periphery; relating to the inherent superiority of one’s cultural or ethnic group.

exogamy: the custom of marrying outside one’s social group.

extraterritoriality: the practice of exempting certain foreign nationals from the jurisdiction of their country of residence. The most common application of extraterritoriality is the custom of exempting foreign heads of state and diplomats from local jurisdiction. Another form of extraterritoriality is the limited immunity from local jurisdiction that U.S. servicemen on overseas duty enjoy under the Status of Force Agreements. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, extraterritoriality was often used synonymously with consular jurisdiction, which was the practice of consuls exercising jurisdiction over their nationals in certain non-Western countries.

fascism: a political movement characterized by rabid nationalism, authoritarianism, and opposition to Communism. It insisted on state control of the economy.

Fertile Crescent: the historic, fertile region of the Middle East including all or parts of Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq; spans the northern part of the Syrian desert, bordered on the west by the Mediterranean Sea and on the east by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

feudalism: the form of political and social organization characteristic of Western Europe in the Middle Ages whereby a king rewarded chosen nobles with land in return for their loyalty and military service, and the nobility’s subsequent use of the peasantry to farm the land in return for labor and a portion of the produce.

free trade: a system of trade that gradually replaced mercantilism in the nineteenth century. In theory it allows for the international exchange of commodities without imposition of tariffs or duties.

galleon: large oceangoing vessel used by Spanish and Portuguese from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries for commerce and warfare. Their size and weight distribution gave them a military disadvantage.

globalization: worldwide exchange of technology, economics, politics, and culture facilitated by modern technological advances.

Glorious Revolution: events of 1688-1689 in English history resulting in the deposition of James II and the ascension of William III also referred to as the Bloodless Revolution because there was little armed resistance, the Glorious Revolution established the power of parliament over the monarch.

guerrilla: Spanish for ”little war,” a small unofficial military group and its members.

hacienda: a Spanish word referring to a diversified agricultural estate in Spanish America.

hegemony: a degree of informal control exerted by a country with the economic, political, and military power to set and enforce the prevailing rules of the international system. Unlike an empire, the hegemon does not have to exert formal control over other states or powers in the global arena; instead, it exercises a degree of informal control known as hegemony. The power and influence of the United States on world affairs in the twentieth century is often cited as an example of hegemony.

Hispaniola: an island in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean, home to the largest of the first Spanish settlements in North America. Today Hispaniola is shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

home rule: self-government by a local jurisdiction in their own matters; originated in the nineteenth century as a political term used by Irish nationalists in their fight for self-government for Ireland.

Huguenot: French Protestants and the Protestant movement in the sixteenth century. French Huguenots expanded into the Atlantic and attempted to create colonies in Florida and Brazil without success. Although Protestants formed a majority of the population in the sixteenth century, French Catholics with support from the King of Spain gained power and in the Edict of Nantes in the late sixteenth century, freedom of worship was proclaimed. Huguenot revolts in La Rochelle and other centers in the early seventeenth century were repressed.

imam: title of a Muslim leader; successor to Muhammad as the leader of Shiite Islam.

imperialism: assumption of control by one society or nation over others, often by force; creating an empire. Because of the use of power, imperialism is often considered to be an objectionable foreign policy.

ingenio: a Spanish term for a sugar plantation and mill.

isolationist: referring to a country’s policy of isolation by refraining from participating in alliances or international relations.

jihad: Islam for holy war of some type, a war ordained by God.

ladino: a Christianized Africian slave who spoke Spanish or had some knowledge of Spanish of culture.

League of Nations: international organization established after World War I under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles to promote cooperation and peace among nations; forerunner of the United Nations.

Leninism: modification of Marxism by Lenin; political and economic theories stressing imperialism as the highest form of capitalism letter of marque and reprisal: a government’s official warrant or commission authorizing a designated agent to search, seize, or destroy specified assets or personnel belonging to foreign or hostile parties. Often used to authorize private ships to raid and capture an enemy’s merchant vessels.

Levant: from the French lever, (to rise), the countries bordering the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. This term first came into use with the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon from 1920 until the mid-1940s, which were called the Levant States.

lingua franca: a common language used between speakers of different native languages.

Madrasa: a term derived from the Arabic word for Islamic institution of higher learning.

malaria: disease caused by a blood parasite transmitted through the bite of an infected Anopheles mosquito, most often in tropical and subtropical regions. Characterized by recurring chills and fever.

mameluco: a Portuguese term referring to the offspring of Portuguese and Indian parents.

mandate: defined in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919) as a new form of political supervision created after World War; the mandate system gave broad authority to the victorious Allies over the former colonial empires of Imperial Germany and the Ottoman Turks. The mandated territories were divided into three classes and were assigned to individual powers to govern until they were deemed capable of self-rule.

manumission: the act of liberating a slave from bondage.

Marshall Plan: the program by which the United States helped European countries rebuild after the devastation of World War II by giving them significant economic aid. Named after its proponent, U.S. secretary of state General George C. Marshall, the Marshall Plan was a comprehensive program of targeted investments, run by American economic advisers, aimed at rebuilding the European economies on the basis of free market policies.

maroon: from the Spanish word cimarrom (wild) for runaway slave, a Maroon is both a runaway slave and a community of runaway slaves.

martial law: temporary rule and control by domestic military authorities when war or civil crisis prevents civil authorities from enforcing the law.

Marxism: the political and economic theories of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) in which economic determinism (the theory that political and social institutions are economically determined) figures prominently and class struggle is central to social change.

mercantilism: a term encompassing the diverse trade practices followed by European states from the sixteenth until the late eighteenth century; a collection of policies designed to keep the state prosperous through economic regulation. Mercantilism assumed that wealth is an absolutely indispensable means to achieve geopolitical power; that such power is valuable as a means to acquire or retain wealth; that wealth and power constitute the dual ends of national policy; and that these two ends are compatible and, indeed, complementary.

Mercator projection: created by Gerardus Mercator in 1569, a method of showing the three-dimensional world on a two-dimensional map that satisfied many of the requirements of explorers and other mariners.

mercenary: soldiers hired into foreign service. For example, the most renowned mercenaries in colonial Asia were those hired by both sides of the momentous military campaigns during China’s Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864).

Mesoamerica: the pre-Columbian region of Central America and southern North America in which diverse civilizations flourished, including the Mayan and the Olmec.

mestizo: Hispanic for a person of mixed or combined racial ancestry, especially referring to a person in Latin America with both Native American and European ancestry.

metropole: a developed urban center, often associated with the provision of financial/industrial goods and services to associated rural areas (hinterlands) from which they receive raw materials.

Middle Passage: term for the journey of slaves in slave ships from Africa across the Atlantic to the Caribbean or the Americas; a horrific experience marked by inhuman conditions of transport, insufficient food, and disease.

miscegenation: intermarriage between people of different races.

Moors: Muslim North Africans; nomadic people of the northern shores of Africa, largely Arab and Berber.

most favored nation: status accorded by one nation to another in international trade whereby the nation receiving most favored nation status will be awarded all trade advantages that other trading nations receive.

mulatto: a derivation of the word mulo, which refers to the hybrid offspring of a horse and a mule. It became a term used to designate a person of mixed blood, usually someone with a Caucasian father and an African or African-American mother.

multilateral: involving multiple nations or groups.

nationalism: assertion of a nation’s right to independence and self-government. Nations were normally those groups with a shared culture, religion, language and history. A frequent nationalist goal has been the creation of a “nation-state,” or country, in which to realize cultural aspirations.

negritude: an African diasporic, self-affirming idea that evolved into an artistic and cultural movement and later became a lightening rod for controversy and ideological disputes. The (re)valorization of the black world, the affirmation of the humanity of black people, and the glorification of the richness of black culture had antecedents in the works of earlier thinkers and scholars such as Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), Martin Delany (1812-1885), and W. E. B. Du Bois (18681963), and writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Claude McKay (1890-1948) and Langston Hughes (1902-1967), who reclaimed “blackness” with pride, reinvested it with positive meanings, and rejected the negativity heaped on it by racism, slavery, colonialism, and imperialism.

new imperialism: a sophisticated manifestation of free trade imperialism resulting from the rising European appetite for conquest and the willingness of European governments to pay for imperialist ventures; distinguished from older traditions of colonialism before 1850, which focused more on seeking commercial influence than formal occupation.

Occidentalism: scholarly study of the characteristics of Western civilizations; Occidentalism has become associated with Eastern views of Western culture, peoples, and languages.

Oceania: geographic region usually considered to include the central and southern Pacific, but excluding the North Pacific and Australia. Oceania consists of three principal areas: Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia.

oligarchy: system of government in which power is held by a small group. When referring to governments, the classical definition of oligarchy, as given for example by Aristotle, is of government by a few, usually the rich, for their own advantage.

open door policy: a policy proposed by U.S. secretary of state John Hay in September 1899 in which all nations would have equal trading and development rights throughout all of China, as an effort by the U.S. government to preserve China’s territorial and administrative integrity at a time when it seemed the major imperial powers intended to carve China into a series of concessions, perhaps presaging the end of a unified China.

Pacific Rim: the term used to describe the nations bordering the Pacific Ocean, but not always the island countries. situated in it. In the post-World War II era, the Pacific Rim became an increasingly important and interconnected economic region. The socioeconomic concept of a “Pacific Rim” exploits the region’s sea-lanes and sea resources, including fishing rights.

pass law: a reference to the Pass Laws Act of 1952, which required all black South Africans over the age of 16 to carry a pass book, the terms and conditions of which effectually controlled the movement of black people within South Africa.

Penal colonies: colonies created for detaining prisoners for penal labor. Penal colonies were located at a substantial distance from the homeland to discourage prisoners from returning to their native country once their terms expired.

patroonship: an Anglicized Dutch term referring to a grant of land and political authority (a fief) awarded to an individual, a patroon, who had the obligation to settle fifty colonists within four years. In New Netherland, Rensselaerswijck was a patroonship founded by Kiliaen van Rensselaer that measured nearly one million acres in what are today the counties of Albany and Rensselaer, New York.

Persia: conventional European designation of the country now known as Iran. This name was in general use in the West until 1935, although the Iranians themselves had long called their country Iran. The name of Persia is often employed for that part of the country’s history concerned with the ancient Persian Empire until the Arab conquest in the seventh century c.e.

pidgin: a non-native language of simplified grammar and vocabulary, used between people speaking different languages.

pre-Columbian: relating to North, Central, or South America before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492; generally referring to the cultures indigenous to the New World, in the era before significant European influence.

privateer: private ship of war. Issued a “Letter of Marque” authorizing it to attack enemy vessels. Privateers earned profits by capturing ships, then selling the vessel and its cargo. Remained important until after the War of 1812.

protectionism: the economic policy of restricting import trade to protect domestic producers from competition.

Quilombos: remote Brazilian settlements of runaway slaves (Maroons) and free-born African slaves. These settlements were active in helping slaves escape and fighting groups commissioned to recapture escaped slaves. One well-known quilombo was Palmares, or Quilombo dos Palmares, a large, independent, and self-sustaining settlement founded about 1600 in northeastern Brazil.

raj: Indian word for prince or royalty; empire.

reconquista: Spanish and Portuguese word meaning ”reconquest,” often referring to the reestablishment of Christian rule in the Iberian Peninsula between 718 and 1492, the seven-century-long process of reconquest of much of Iberia (the peninsula now occupied by Spain and Portugal) from Muslims who first invaded the region in 711.

repatriate: referring to someone who has been returned to his or her country of birth, or an artifact which has been returned to its country of origin (or the act of returning someone or something to its country of birth or origin).

revisionism: a socialist movement arguing for the revision of revolutionary Marxist theory, toward nonviolent achievement of social progress through reform.

Royal African Company: founded in 1672, one of many joint-stock companies of the English Atlantic from the mid-sixteenth through the seventeenth century. A good number of these companies lasted only decades, but they laid the foundations for the English slave trade, Atlantic commerce, and ”foreign plantations” in the Americas.

royal charter: a written grant by royalty creating an entity such as a university or organization.

Safavid Empire: an empire reaching from southern Iraq to the borders of Herat in modern Afghanistan, from Baku in present-day Azerbaijan to Kandahar in Afghanistan, and from the Caspian Sea to Bahrain. The Safavid Empire’s boundaries have come to define where Iran is (or ought to be) in the contemporary Iranian national imagination.

satellite state: an independent country dominated by a larger power; initially coined during the Cold War era in reference to Central and Eastern European countries of the Warsaw Pact being ”satellites” of the Soviet Union.

scorched-earth (adj, as in scorched-earth tactics): referring to a policy whereby armed forces destroy anything of use in an area to prevent its use by enemy forces.

scurvy: illness or deficiency disorder resulting from the lack of vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, characterized by gums becoming spongy, anemia, and skin hemorrhag-ing. Scurvy became especially common among sailors when ready sources of vitamin C, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, could not be stocked aboard ship.

secession: withdrawal from an established union, such as when the eleven southern states withdrew from the Union at the onset of the U.S. Civil War.

Self-Determination: the power of a nation to decide how it will be governed. Self-Determination was integral to ”Wilsonianism,” named for U.S. president Woodrow Wilson.

sepoy: Derived from the Persian word sipahi, meaning ”regular soldier,” the term sepoy designates Indian infantrymen trained and equipped to European standards and employed in the armies of the East India Company and later the British Crown. A significant majority of the East India Company’s armed forces from the middle decades of the eighteenth century, sepoys were absolutely crucial to the expansion, consolidation, and maintenance of the company’s interests in India and Asia.

sericulture: the manufacture of raw silk, originating from the Greek word serikos.

shogunate, shogun: A shogunate was the Japanese military administrative system between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries; the shogun was an emporer’s military deputy and the practical ruler of Japan.

Silk Road: a land route from China to Europe actively used in the trading of silk textiles until the age of sail, dating from about the second century b.c.e.

Slave Coast: European trading term for the coast bordering the Bight of Benin on the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa; served as the principal source of West African slaves from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

socialism: theories calling for a more fair and egalitarian society usually to be attainted through government action. By 1900 socialism was the major force representing working-class interests. From Socialist ideals have sprung reforms like social security benefits, national health care, and worker representation through trade unions.

sovereignty: referring to a nation or state’s supreme power within its borders.

trust territory: United Nations Trust Territories were the successors of the League of Nations mandates and came into being when the League of Nations ceased to exist in 1946. All of the trust territories were administered through the UN Trusteeship Council.

vassal state: a state that is dependent on or subordinate to another, often involving military support or protection.

Voortrekkers: Afrikaans word for pioneers; Voortrekkers were Boers (Afrikaner farmers) who emigrated from Cape Colony in the 1830s and 1840s to what is now South Africa.

welfare state: a political system in which a government assumes the primary responsibility for assuring the basic health, education, and financial well-being of all its citizens through programs and direct assistance.

Zionist: pertaining to the political movement begun in the late nineteenth century for reconstituting a Jewish national state in Palestine.

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