MTEL History/Social Science (73) key terms

The study of how history has been written-how historians select evidence, frame questions, and interpret the past-and how interpretations change over time as new sources and perspectives emerge.

A document, artifact, or record created during the period being studied, such as a diary, treaty, photograph, or census. Historians analyze such sources for bias, audience, and purpose.

An account or analysis produced after the events by someone who did not witness them, such as a textbook, scholarly article, or documentary. It interprets primary evidence and reflects the author's own framework.

The practice of dividing the past into named eras, such as the Middle Ages or the Progressive Era, to make change easier to study. Historians debate where boundaries fall and whose experience they represent.

Explaining why events happened by distinguishing long-term conditions, immediate triggers, and contributing factors, and by weighing the relative influence of each rather than assuming a single cause.

Placing a source or event within the political, economic, social, and cultural circumstances of its time so that it can be understood on its own terms rather than judged only by present-day standards.

The transition beginning around 10,000 BCE from hunting and gathering to settled farming and herding. It produced surplus food, permanent villages, specialized labor, and eventually cities and written records.

The blended Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and Indian culture that spread after Alexander the Great's conquests from 323 BCE onward, marked by Greek as a common language, new cities, and advances in science and philosophy.

A medieval European system in which lords granted land, called fiefs, to vassals in exchange for military service while peasants worked the land. It organized political power around personal loyalty and local control.

A network of overland trade routes linking China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Beyond goods, it carried religions, technologies, and diseases such as the plague.

A cultural movement in Europe from roughly the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries that revived classical learning and emphasized human potential, producing new art, literature, and science and spreading through printing and patronage.

The sixteenth-century movement, launched by Martin Luther's challenges to Catholic doctrine and practice, that split Western Christianity and reshaped politics, literacy, and warfare in Europe.

The transatlantic transfer of plants, animals, people, and diseases after 1492. It transformed diets and populations worldwide, while Old World diseases devastated Indigenous American communities.

The shift from handcraft to machine production that began in late eighteenth-century Britain and spread across Europe and North America, driving urbanization, new social classes, and debates over labor conditions.

The extension of a nation's power over other territories through conquest, settlement, or economic and political control. Nineteenth-century European imperialism reshaped Africa and Asia and left lasting borders and conflicts.

An ideology holding that a people sharing language, culture, or history should form a distinct nation and often a sovereign state. It has driven unification and independence but also exclusion and conflict.

The post-1945 process by which colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean gained independence, often through nationalist movements, negotiations, or armed struggle, creating many new states and ongoing economic ties.

The prolonged geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union from roughly 1947 to 1991, fought through alliances, nuclear deterrence, propaganda, and proxy wars rather than direct combat between the two powers.

The nineteenth-century American belief that the nation was destined to expand across the continent. It justified westward settlement, war with Mexico, and the displacement of Native peoples.

The period after the Civil War, 1865 to 1877, when the federal government rebuilt the South, amended the Constitution, and protected freedpeople's rights before political compromise ended federal intervention.

State and local laws in the South, upheld by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, that enforced racial segregation and disfranchisement of Black Americans until the civil rights era.

The movement of millions of African Americans from the rural South to northern and western cities during the twentieth century, reshaping urban life, culture, and national politics.

President Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression, a set of federal programs and reforms from 1933 to 1939 that created relief, public works, financial regulation, and Social Security.

The mid-twentieth-century campaign by Black Americans and allies to end segregation and secure voting and equal rights, using litigation, boycotts, sit-ins, and marches that produced the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act.

The U.S. Cold War strategy of preventing the spread of communism beyond existing borders through economic aid, alliances, and military commitments, associated with diplomat George Kennan.

The division of government into legislative, executive, and judicial branches, each with distinct functions, designed by the Framers to prevent any one group from controlling all governing authority.

Constitutional tools that let each branch limit the others, such as vetoes, veto overrides, Senate confirmation, and judicial review, so that power is shared and abuse is harder.

The power of courts to declare laws or executive actions unconstitutional, established in Marbury v. Madison in 1803. It makes the judiciary an interpreter of constitutional meaning.

A system dividing authority between a national government and state governments, each with defined powers. In the United States, the Tenth Amendment reserves unspecified powers to the states or the people.

The body of electors chosen by each state that formally elects the president and vice president. States generally award all electoral votes to the winner of the state's popular vote.

The condition in which limited resources cannot satisfy all human wants. It forces individuals and societies to make choices about what to produce and consume.

The value of the next best alternative given up when a choice is made. It is the real cost of any decision, whether buying, producing, or spending time.

The interaction of how much producers offer at each price and how much buyers will purchase. Their intersection sets market price and quantity, and shifts in either curve change both.

Government decisions about taxation and spending, used to influence economic growth, employment, and inflation. It is set by the legislature and executive rather than by the central bank.

Actions by a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve, to manage the money supply and interest rates in order to influence inflation, employment, and economic growth.

The principle that a country gains from trade by specializing in goods it can produce at a lower opportunity cost than trading partners, even if it is less efficient at everything.

Conditions that drive people away from a place, such as war or unemployment, and conditions that attract them elsewhere, such as jobs or safety. They explain migration patterns.

A model describing population change as societies industrialize: death rates fall first, then birth rates, shifting the population from high growth to low growth and aging.

The spread of ideas, technologies, religions, or customs from one society to another through trade, migration, conquest, or communication, often producing blended or adapted forms.