MATSEC AM History flashcards

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

Primary source

A document or artefact produced at the time of the events by a participant or contemporary witness, such as a charter, register, letter or coin. It still requires criticism for bias and purpose.

External criticism

Verification of a source's authenticity: provenance, date, handwriting, seal, ink and archival chain. It establishes whether the document is genuine before its content is assessed.

Internal criticism

Assessment of a source's content once authenticity is established, testing consistency, the author's motives, intended audience and whether the claims are plausible given other evidence.

Corroboration

Confirmation of a claim by independent witnesses. Two texts copied from a single lost archetype count as one witness, so independence of testimony must be established first.

Annales school

French historiographical movement associated with Bloch and Braudel, emphasising long-term structures (geography, climate, demography) and the longue durée over short-term political events and individual actors.

Leopold von Ranke

Nineteenth-century German historian who championed archive-based empiricism and the ideal of recounting the past as it actually happened, shaping professional history's emphasis on documentary evidence.

Periodisation

The division of the past into named eras such as Middle Ages or early modern. It is a scholarly convention with contested boundaries, so answers should state and justify the scheme used.

Historiography

The study of how history has been written: changing interpretations, methods and assumptions of historians. It supplies the evaluative dimension expected in advanced-level essays.

Hearth tax limits

Hearth or household taxes record assessable dwellings, not people. The poor, exempt households and lodgers are under-recorded, so totals understate population and require correction.

Parish register bias

Baptism, marriage and burial registers under-record infants who died before baptism, dissenters outside the established church, and migrants. Demographic totals derived from them need explicit adjustment.

Fief

A grant from a lord conferring rights over land and jurisdiction in return for service and loyalty. It generated revenue and authority, not merely agricultural use.

Homage and fealty

The rituals binding a vassal to a lord: homage enacted personal submission, fealty swore fidelity. Together they created enforceable obligations including military service and counsel.

Relief and wardship

Feudal incidents: relief was a payment by an heir to inherit a fief; wardship gave the lord control of a minor heir and his estate until majority, often including marriage rights.

Demesne

The lord's own land within a manor, farmed directly for his profit using peasant labour services or hired workers, as distinct from land held by tenants.

Commutation of labour

The conversion of unpaid labour services into money rents, which gave peasants more control over their time and tied lords' incomes to cash and prices rather than direct farming.

Black Death consequences

The 1347–1351 pandemic caused severe mortality, labour scarcity and rising wages. Authorities tried to freeze wages by statute, and rural grievances contributed to later peasant revolts.

Bills of exchange

Credit instruments allowing payment in one place and currency to be settled in another, avoiding the physical transport of coin. They underpinned long-distance trade and Italian banking.

Commenda contract

A commercial partnership in which a staying investor supplied capital and a travelling merchant supplied labour and risk, sharing profits. It spread risk and mobilised capital in Mediterranean trade.

Marine insurance

A contract transferring the risk of loss at sea from merchant to insurer for a premium. Its growth in Italian cities made long-distance ventures financeable and reduced individual ruin.

Knights of St John in Malta

A sovereign military-religious order ruling Malta from 1530 to 1798, organised in langues under a Grand Master, with a treasury and a licensed corsair economy.

Great Siege of 1565

The Ottoman siege of Malta under Mustafa Pasha and Piali Pasha, resisted at Fort St Elmo, St Angelo and Senglea, and lifted by Don García de Toledo's relief force in September.

Fort St Elmo

The star fort on the tip of Mount Sciberras, taken by the Ottomans in June 1565 after a costly siege. Its fall preceded assaults on St Angelo and Senglea.

Valletta founding

The city begun in 1566 on Mount Sciberras, planned by Francesco Laparelli for the Order, combining Renaissance grid planning with bastioned fortification facing the sea approaches.

French occupation of Malta

Napoleon's forces took Malta in 1798 and abolished the Order and feudal privileges, but taxation and church measures provoked a revolt; the British assumed control by 1800.

Treaty of Amiens 1802

The peace between Britain and France that stipulated the evacuation of British troops from Malta, a term Britain did not fulfil. The 1814 Treaty of Paris later confirmed British possession.

Longue durée

Braudel's concept of historical time measured over centuries, in which geography, climate and deep social structures change slowly beneath the faster rhythms of politics and events.

Marxist historiography

Interpretation of the past through modes of production and class conflict, treating economic relations as fundamental and political and cultural forms as shaped by them.

History from below

An approach recovering the experience of ordinary people - workers, peasants, women - using sources such as court records, wills and folklore rather than elite political documents.

Necessary versus sufficient cause

A necessary cause must be present for an outcome; a sufficient cause is enough on its own to produce it. Distinguishing them sharpens causal arguments in essays.

Conjuncture

In Annales usage, a medium-term cycle of prices, trade or population lasting decades, sitting between slow structures and short-term events.

Navigation Acts

English statutes from 1651 restricting colonial trade to English or colonial shipping. They illustrate mercantilist policy and are often cited in explanations of Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry.

Enclosure

The consolidation and fencing of open fields and commons, increasing agricultural output and private property while displacing commoners' customary access rights and provoking rural protest.

Demographic transition

The shift from high birth and death rates to low ones, passing through a phase of rapid population growth as mortality falls before fertility. It frames industrialisation's social effects.