OSAT History (OK117) key terms

The transatlantic transfer of crops, animals, people, and diseases that began with Columbus's 1492 voyages, reshaping diets and populations in both hemispheres and devastating Indigenous communities through epidemic disease.

A Spanish colonial labor arrangement granting colonists the right to extract tribute and labor from Native peoples in exchange for claimed protection and Christian instruction, functioning in practice as forced labor.

An economic doctrine holding that national power rests on accumulated bullion and a favorable trade balance, which justified colonies existing to supply raw materials and buy the mother country's manufactures.

A series of English statutes requiring colonial trade to be carried in English or colonial ships and funneled through English ports, tightening enforcement of which became a colonial grievance before the Revolution.

The longstanding practice of loosely enforcing parliamentary trade regulations in the North American colonies, allowing considerable self-government and later cited to argue that Britain had broken an implicit bargain.

The 1765 British law taxing printed materials in the colonies with a required revenue stamp, the first direct internal tax on colonists and a spark for coordinated protest and the Stamp Act Congress.

Loose networks of colonial activists, prominent in the 1760s and 1770s, who organized boycotts, intimidation, and public demonstrations against British taxation measures, especially the Stamp Act.

Colonial and later revolutionary bodies that circulated information among towns and colonies, coordinating resistance to British policy and helping build the intercolonial networks that sustained the independence movement.

The first United States constitution, in force from 1781 to 1789, creating a weak confederation with a one-house Congress lacking power to tax or regulate commerce directly.

An armed protest in 1786–1787 by indebted Massachusetts farmers led by Daniel Shays, which alarmed elites and strengthened arguments for a stronger national government at the Constitutional Convention.

The 1787 Constitutional Convention agreement creating a bicameral Congress with representation by population in the House and equal state representation in the Senate, bridging large- and small-state demands.

A constitutional provision counting enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning House seats and direct taxes, magnifying slaveholders' political power without granting the enslaved any rights.

The 1820 agreement admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as free, and banning slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory north of the 36°30′ parallel, establishing a sectional precedent.

A package of laws admitting California as free, organizing Utah and New Mexico territories under popular sovereignty, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and strengthening the Fugitive Slave Act.

The doctrine that territorial residents should decide whether to permit slavery themselves, promoted in the 1850s as a compromise position but denounced by critics as inviting violent contests over slavery.

The 1854 law organizing those territories and repealing the Missouri Compromise line in favor of popular sovereignty, triggering violent conflict in Kansas and helping destroy the Whig Party.

The period of violent clashes in the mid-1850s between proslavery and antislavery settlers in Kansas, including raids and political fraud, which previewed the Civil War's sectional violence.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments abolishing slavery, guaranteeing citizenship, due process, and equal protection, and barring voting discrimination by race, respectively.

The era after the Civil War, roughly 1865 to 1877, during which federal policy sought to rebuild the South, define citizenship for freedpeople, and reincorporate rebel states into the Union.

Laws enacted by southern legislatures after the Civil War restricting freedpeople's movement, labor, and civil rights, provoking congressional Republicans to impose stricter federal Reconstruction requirements.

The late nineteenth-century period of rapid industrial growth, railroad expansion, and political corruption, marked by sharp class conflict and laissez-faire ideology amid conspicuous displays of wealth.

The application of evolutionary ideas to society, claiming that competition and inequality reflect natural selection, used to justify minimal regulation and resistance to labor reforms in the industrial era.

Andrew Carnegie's argument that wealthy industrialists hold riches as a trust for society and should distribute surplus through philanthropy, an alternative to radical redistribution or state welfare.

A farmers' political movement of the 1890s demanding free silver, railroad regulation, and direct democracy measures, which fused with Democrats in 1896 and influenced later progressive reforms.

A diverse reform coalition of the early twentieth century seeking to curb corporate power, improve urban conditions, expand democracy, and use expertise and government regulation to address industrial problems.

Franklin Roosevelt's program of federal legislation from 1933 onward creating relief, recovery, and reform measures such as Social Security and labor rights, permanently expanding national government responsibilities.

Lyndon Johnson's domestic agenda of the 1960s, including Medicare, Medicaid, federal education aid, and civil rights laws, aimed at eliminating poverty and racial injustice.

Federal legislation prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in public accommodations and employment, and enabling federal enforcement of desegregation.

The 1954 Supreme Court decision holding racially segregated public schools unconstitutional, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson's separate-but-equal doctrine and energizing the civil rights movement.

A Babylonian legal compilation from around the eighteenth century BCE inscribed on a stele, notable for graded penalties by social class and the principle of retaliatory justice in many cases.

One of the earliest writing systems, developed in ancient Mesopotamia using wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay tablets, used for administration, law, literature, and record keeping.

A Chinese political doctrine holding that rulers govern with divine sanction but lose it through misrule, justifying dynastic change and framing rebellion as restoration of proper order.

A medieval European social and political order of hierarchical obligations among monarchs, lords, and vassals, tied to land tenure and military service, though historians debate its coherence as a model.

The medieval rural economic system organizing land into estates worked by dependent peasants who owed labor and dues to a lord in exchange for protection and use of land.

The mid-fourteenth-century pandemic of plague that killed a large share of Europe's population, disrupting labor systems, weakening serfdom, and unsettling religious and social authority.

An intellectual movement reviving classical Greek and Roman texts and emphasizing human potential, rhetoric, and historical study, shaping art, education, and later scientific inquiry in Europe.

The sixteenth-century movement challenging papal authority and Catholic doctrine, beginning with Luther's critiques, producing new churches and reshaping European politics, literacy, and warfare.

A network of Eurasian trade routes linking China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, carrying goods, technologies, religions, and diseases across long distances over many centuries.

A document, artifact, or record created by participants or witnesses in the period under study, valued for direct evidence but requiring analysis of authorship, purpose, audience, and bias.

The study of how history has been written, including changing interpretations, methods, and schools of thought, and an awareness of how present concerns shape questions historians ask.

The practice of situating a source or event within its political, social, economic, and cultural setting to interpret meaning accurately rather than judging it by present standards.