NY Regents Global History and Geography II key terms

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

A large, complex society marked by cities, organized government, specialized labor, social classes, and usually writing and monumental building. Examples include Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, Shang China, and Mesoamerican societies.

A region where early cities grew beside a major river whose floods renewed fertile soil and supplied water and transport. Key examples are the Tigris-Euphrates, Nile, Indus, and Huang He.

Deliberately moving water to farmland through canals, dikes, or channels. It raised harvests but required cooperation and centralized management, which strengthened early states and sometimes caused soil salinization.

The spread of ideas, technologies, religions, and customs from one society to another through trade, migration, conquest, or travel. Writing systems, crops, and faiths all moved along such routes.

Belief in and worship of many gods, often linked to natural forces and to state power. It was typical of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and early India before monotheistic faiths expanded.

Belief in a single god. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all developed in the Middle East and spread widely, shaping law, ethics, and political authority across empires.

The blending of beliefs and practices from different traditions into something new. Examples include Roman adoption of Greek gods, West African and Christian mixing in the Americas, and Buddhism adapting to local cultures.

A Chinese political idea holding that rulers govern with divine approval but lose it when they misrule. Floods, famine, and rebellion were read as signs that a dynasty should fall and be replaced.

The pattern in Chinese history of a dynasty rising, peaking, declining through corruption and unrest, then being overthrown. Historians use it to explain repeated changes of ruling houses over centuries.

A system in which salaried officials, chosen by examination or appointment, administer an empire from a capital. It helped Han China, the Abbasid Caliphate, and later states collect taxes and enforce law.

A network of overland trade routes linking China, Central Asia, India, Persia, and the Mediterranean. Goods moved alongside religions, technologies, and diseases, including the plague that struck Eurasia in the 1300s.

Maritime commerce across the Indian Ocean using monsoon winds, linking East Africa, Arabia, India, and Southeast Asia. It spread Islam, Arabic and Swahili culture, and goods such as spices, textiles, and gold.

A decentralized political and social order in medieval Europe and Japan in which land was exchanged for military service. Lords, vassals, and peasants were bound by obligations, with local power replacing a strong central state.

The economic side of medieval European life: a lord's estate farmed by dependent peasants who owed labor and produce. It kept wealth local and limited the growth of trade and towns.

A plague pandemic that swept Eurasia in the mid-1300s, killing a large share of Europe's population. Labor shortages raised peasant bargaining power, weakened serfdom, and shook confidence in authorities.

A cultural revival in Europe from roughly the 1300s to the 1500s that drew on classical Greek and Roman learning. It emphasized human potential, realistic art, and printing, and helped spark the Reformation and Scientific Revolution.

The 1500s movement that split Western Christianity into Catholic and Protestant branches. It began with criticism of church corruption, was spread by printing, and led to religious wars and to state control of churches.

A form of monarchy in which the ruler claims sole authority, often justified by divine right, and builds a standing army and bureaucracy to control nobles and subjects. Louis XIV of France is the classic example.

The claim that a monarch's authority comes directly from God, so resisting the ruler is a sin. It was used to justify absolutism in France and elsewhere, and was attacked by Enlightenment writers.

An 18th-century European intellectual movement emphasizing reason, natural rights, and limits on government. Thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Voltaire influenced revolutions in America, France, and Latin America.

Rights believed to belong to all people by birth, such as life, liberty, and property. John Locke's version shaped the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.

The idea that government rests on an agreement among the people, who give up some freedom in exchange for protection of their rights. If rulers break the agreement, the people may change the government.

The shift beginning in late 1700s Britain from hand production to machine and factory production powered by coal and steam. It transformed work, cities, class structure, and global trade.

The rapid growth of cities as people move from countryside to town. It accompanied industrialization, producing crowded housing, disease, new factory jobs, and eventually reform movements.

The extension of one country's power over another region, often through conquest, settlement, or economic control. In the late 1800s European powers and Japan partitioned Africa and Asia, driven by industry, nationalism, and racism.

Loyalty and devotion to a nation, often based on shared language, culture, or history. It fueled 1800s unification movements, imperial rivalry, and both world wars, and later drove anti-colonial independence.

Warfare in which a society mobilizes all resources, including civilians and industry, and attacks the enemy's economy and population. Both world wars used conscription, rationing, propaganda, and bombing of cities.

The deliberate, systematic destruction of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The Holocaust is the central example; the term was coined in 1944 and later defined by a 1948 UN convention.

The decades-long rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union after 1945, fought through arms races, alliances, propaganda, and proxy wars rather than direct combat. It ended with the Soviet collapse in 1991.

U.S. policy of limiting the spread of communism, announced in the late 1940s and applied through aid programs, alliances, and interventions. It shaped the Marshall Plan, NATO, and wars in Korea and Vietnam.

The process by which colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean won independence, mostly between 1945 and 1975. It produced dozens of new states and conflicts rooted in arbitrary colonial borders.

The growing interconnection of economies and societies through trade, investment, technology, and migration. It spreads goods and ideas quickly but can widen inequality and pressure local cultures.

Basic entitlements held by all people regardless of nationality, codified in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The concept grew from responses to wartime atrocities and supports international courts and monitoring.

Conditions that drive people from a place (war, famine, persecution) and attractions that draw them to another (jobs, safety, freedom). Together they explain migration patterns and their effects on both regions.

The historical skill of asking who made a document, when, where, for what audience, and why. It helps a reader judge reliability and detect bias before using a source as evidence.

Placing a document or event in its broader historical setting, such as the political, economic, or social conditions of the time. It explains meaning that is lost when a source is read in isolation.

Explaining why something happened by identifying short-term and long-term causes and distinguishing them from mere coincidence. Strong answers rank causes and show the links between them.

Recurring problems in human history, such as conflict, inequality, scarcity, or migration, that appear across eras and regions. Students compare examples over time and argue which issue a set of documents best illustrates.

A slant in a source that favors one side or leaves out information, often because of the author's position or purpose. Historians do not simply discard biased sources; they use them as evidence of the author's viewpoint.