TASC Modern History Level 3 flashcards

33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Columbian Exchange

The transatlantic transfer of crops, animals, people, and diseases after 1492, which reshaped diets and populations worldwide and caused catastrophic Indigenous mortality from Eurasian disease.

Protestant Reformation

The sixteenth-century movement begun by Martin Luther's challenges to Catholic doctrine and practice, which split Western Christianity and encouraged literacy, printing, and new state-church arrangements.

Absolutism

A system in which a monarch claims sole and undivided sovereignty, centralizing administration and standing armies while limiting representative bodies and noble independence, as under Louis XIV.

Enlightenment

An eighteenth-century intellectual movement stressing reason, natural rights, toleration, and government by consent, whose ideas shaped the American and French revolutions and later constitutional design.

Industrial Revolution

The late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century shift from handcraft and agrarian production to machine industry, steam power, factories, and urban wage labor, beginning in Britain.

Urbanization

Rapid population growth in cities driven by rural migration and industrial jobs, which produced crowded housing, sanitation crises, and new forms of municipal and public-health administration.

Nationalism

The belief that a people sharing language, culture, or history should form a sovereign state, a force that built nations like Italy and Germany and fractured empires like Austria-Hungary.

Imperialism

The extension of political or economic control by one state over another territory, peaking in the late nineteenth-century scramble for Africa and Asia and justified by markets and civilizing claims.

American Revolution

The 1775-1783 colonial revolt against British rule, justified by taxation without representation and natural-rights arguments, ending in independence and a federal constitutional republic.

French Revolution

The 1789 upheaval that overthrew the Bourbon monarchy, abolished feudal privilege, and proclaimed liberty and equality, passing through radical, imperial, and restoration phases by 1815.

Revolutions of 1848

A wave of liberal and nationalist uprisings across Europe, sparked by food shortages and repression; most were suppressed, but they ended serfdom and advanced constitutional demands.

Unification of Germany

The 1860s-1871 process led by Prussia and Bismarck that joined German states into an empire through war and diplomacy, creating a powerful new state in central Europe.

Meiji Restoration

The 1868 return of imperial rule in Japan that launched rapid industrial, military, and educational modernization, enabling Japan to become an imperial power by the early twentieth century.

Causes of World War I

Alliance blocs, militarism, imperial rivalry, and Balkan nationalism set the conditions; the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand triggered escalation through alliance commitments.

Treaty of Versailles

The 1919 settlement ending World War I, imposing reparations, territorial losses, and military limits on Germany and creating the League of Nations, which the United States never joined.

Russian Revolution

The 1917 collapse of the tsarist regime amid war and food shortages, followed by Bolshevik seizure of power and the creation of the Soviet state and a communist party monopoly.

Great Depression

The severe worldwide economic contraction after the 1929 U.S. stock crash, marked by bank failures, mass unemployment, falling trade, and expanded government intervention in economies.

Fascism

A twentieth-century authoritarian ideology glorifying the nation and a strong leader, rejecting liberal democracy and communism, and using paramilitary violence, as in Mussolini's Italy and Nazi Germany.

Appeasement

The 1930s policy of conceding to aggressive demands to avoid war, exemplified by the 1938 Munich Agreement, which failed to stop German expansion and discredited the approach.

Holocaust

The Nazi state's systematic persecution and murder of six million Jews and millions of Roma, disabled people, and others, organized through ghettos, mass shootings, and industrial killing camps.

Total War

Warfare mobilizing entire societies, including civilian industry, labor, and morale as targets, seen in both world wars through conscription, rationing, and strategic bombing.

Cold War

The post-1945 rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union, waged through alliances, arms races, propaganda, and proxy conflicts rather than direct large-scale war between the superpowers.

Containment

The U.S. Cold War strategy of limiting Soviet expansion through economic aid, alliances, and military commitments, articulated by George Kennan and applied in Europe and Asia.

Marshall Plan

A U.S. program of economic aid to rebuild Western Europe after 1948, intended to stabilize economies, block communist gains, and integrate Europe into a U.S.-led order.

Decolonization

The post-1945 process by which Asian and African colonies gained independence from European empires, often through nationalist movements and sometimes through violent or partitioned transitions.

Non-Aligned Movement

A grouping of states, formalized in 1961, that sought independence from both Cold War blocs and promoted anticolonial solidarity among newly independent Asian and African nations.

United Nations

Founded in 1945 to maintain international peace and security, it provides a General Assembly of member states and a Security Council with permanent veto-holding powers.

Berlin Wall Fall

The 1989 opening of the wall dividing East and West Berlin, a symbol of communist collapse in Eastern Europe that preceded German reunification and Soviet dissolution.

Soviet Collapse

The 1991 dissolution of the USSR into independent republics after economic stagnation, nationalist movements, and failed reform, ending the Cold War bipolar order.

Primary Source

Evidence created during the period under study, such as letters, treaties, photographs, or artifacts, valued for proximity to events but still subject to bias and provenance checks.

Secondary Source

An account produced after the events by someone interpreting evidence, such as a textbook or scholarly article, useful for synthesis but dependent on the sources it cites.

Historical Causation

The analysis of why events occurred, distinguishing long-term structural conditions from short-term triggers and separating necessary from sufficient causes in an explanation.

Periodization

The practice of dividing the past into named eras using selected criteria, such as technology or politics, recognizing that boundaries are interpretive choices rather than natural facts.