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65 Cards in this Set
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Long March
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An important event in the history of the Chinese communists. Driven from southern and eastern China by Chiang Kai-shek at the end of the 1920s, the communist leader Mao Zedong led his forces on a long march to safety in the northwest part of China. From there, they staged attacks on the Japanese invaders and eventually on Chinese government troops—attacks that led to their conquest of China in 1949.
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Maginot line
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A chain of defensive fortifications built by France on its eastern border between World War I and World War II. The Maginot line was designed to stop any future invasion by Germany, but it was never completed. In World War II, the Germans conquered France by going around the Maginot line to the north. The expression Maginot mentality refers to any military strategy that is exclusively defensive and therefore flawed. It also refers to military planning that is aimed at the past.
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Golda Meir
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An Israeli political leader of the twentieth century. Meir served as prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974 and was known for her efforts to lessen the Arab-Israeli conflict through diplomacy. Arab forces, attacking in 1973, caught her country by surprise and inflicted heavy losses.
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Munich Pact
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An agreement between Britain and Germany in 1938, under which Germany was allowed to extend its territory into parts of Czechoslovakia in which German-speaking peoples lived. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain negotiated on behalf of Britain, and Chancellor Adolf Hitler on behalf of Germany. Chamberlain returned to London proclaiming that the Munich Pact had secured “peace in our time.” The Germans invaded Poland less than a year later, and World War II began. In later years, the Munich Pact was denounced as pure appeasement of Hitler.
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Gamal Abdel Nasser
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An Egyptian military and political leader of the twentieth century. Nasser overthrew King Farouk of Egypt in the early 1950s and soon became president. He urged Arab nations to unify against both Israel and European and American influence in the Middle East. He took control of the Suez Canal for Egypt in 1956, provoking a British military attack. In 1967, he provoked a brief and unsuccessful war against Israel, the Six-Day War. Upon his death in 1970, he was succeeded by Anwar Sadat.
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Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
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A treaty made by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 that opened the way for both nations to invade Poland.
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Jawaharlal Nehru
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An Indian political leader of the twentieth century. Nehru was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi in the struggle for independence from Britain in India during the 1930s and 1940s. After independence, he served as the country’s first prime minister, steering Indian foreign policy toward nonalignment. Nehru died in 1964.
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Kwame Nkrumah
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The president of Ghana in the 1960s and a leader of the Pan-African movement, which opposed white domination of Africa and promoted a feeling of shared identity among black Africans. He was deposed by a military coup in Ghana in 1966.
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October Revolution
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The revolution in October 1917 in Russia that brought the Bolsheviks to power.
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Juan Perón
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An Argentine political leader of the twentieth century. Perón, an intense nationalist, was dictator of Argentina in the 1940s and 1950s and again, briefly, in the 1970s. His wife, Eva Perón, became the most powerful woman in Argentina before her early death.
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Vidkun Quisling
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A Norwegian military officer and politician of the twentieth century. He collaborated with the Germans in their conquest of Norway in World War II; the Germans rewarded him by making him leader of the German-controlled government of the country. After the German defeat, the Norwegian government had Quisling tried for treason and executed.
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Erwin Rommel
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A German military commander of the twentieth century. A master of the blitzkrieg, he saw much action in World War II, leading campaigns in France and North Africa, where he became known as the “Desert Fox.” He attained the rank of field marshal but was implicated in a plot to assassinate the German leader, Adolf Hitler. On Hitler’s orders, he killed himself.
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Russian Revolution
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A revolution in Russia in 1917–1918, also called the October Revolution, that overthrew the czar and brought the Bolsheviks, a Communist party led by Lenin, to power. The revolution was encouraged by Russian setbacks in World War I.
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Anwar Sadat
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An Egyptian political leader of the twentieth century. He succeeded Gamal Abdel Nasser as president of Egypt on Nasser’s death in 1970. In a bold effort to bring peace to the Middle East, he visited Israel in 1977 and signed a peace agreement with that country in 1979. He was assassinated in Egypt in 1981.
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Andrei Sakharov
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A nuclear physicist in the Soviet Union, Sakharov helped develop their first hydrogen bomb. In the late 1960s, he became an outspoken critic of the arms race and of Soviet repression. He and his wife were exiled within the Soviet Union for protesting. In 1975, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace.
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Albert Schweitzer
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A French theologian, student of music, and physician of the twentieth century. Schweitzer received many awards for his humanitarian missionary work in Africa, including the Nobel Prize for peace.
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Six-Day War
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A war fought in 1967 by Israel on one side and Egypt, Syria, and Jordan on the other. Israel, victorious, took over the Golan Heights, the Jordanian portion of Jerusalem, the Jordanian West Bank of the Jordan River, and a large piece of territory in northeastern Egypt, including the Sinai Peninsula, which contains Mount Sinai. Israel still occupies all of these territories except the Sinai Peninsula, which it gave back to Egypt in 1982. Israel maintains that its security would be enormously endangered if it withdrew from the other places.
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Battle of Stalingrad
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A major battle between German and Soviet troops in World War II. The battle was fought in the winter of 1942–1943 and ended with the surrender of an entire German army. Stalingrad is considered a major turning point of the war in favor of the Allies.
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Suez Canal crisis
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A major international incident that arose in 1956 from the decision by Gamal A. Nasser of Egypt to nationalize the Suez Canal, which long had been controlled by Great Britain. After Nasser took over the canal, Britain and France induced Israel to provoke a conflict with Egypt that would serve as a pretext for an Anglo-French invasion of Egypt. The United States, which had been excluded from the planned invasion, denounced it. The incident severely damaged Anglo-American relations.
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Leon Trotsky
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A Russian revolutionary leader of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Trotsky rose to power alongside Lenin after the Russian Revolution, taking charge of foreign affairs. In favoring world communist revolution, Trotsky found himself in opposition to Lenin and to Lenin’s successor, Joseph Stalin, both of whom insisted that the development of communism within the Soviet Union came first. Stalin exiled Trotsky in the late 1920s and had him assassinated in Mexico City in 1940.
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Pierre Elliott Trudeau
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A Canadian statesman and prime minister of the twentieth century. Faced with secessionist sentiment from the French-speaking majority in Quebec, Trudeau as prime minister oversaw the passage of the Official Languages Act in the 1970s, which made French and English the official languages of Canada.
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Pancho Villa
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A Mexican revolutionary leader of the twentieth century. He was defeated in the struggle for the presidency of Mexico after the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and was eventually assassinated. At one point, Villa raided a town in New Mexico, hoping to embarrass his opposition back home. The United States sent troops under General John Pershing in pursuit of Villa, and the United States and Mexico nearly went to war.
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Emiliano Zapata
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A Mexican revolutionary leader of the twentieth century. He overran plantations in the Mexican Revolution of 1910, dividing the land among peasants. He did not accept the new government’s promises of reform in 1915 and lived as an outlaw until he was killed in 1919.
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Zhou En-lai
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A Chinese political leader of the twentieth century. Zhou was a founder of the Chinese Communist party and an ally of Mao Zedong. As China’s premier, he helped establish closer relations between his country and Western nations in the 1970s.
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Good Neighbor policy
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A United States foreign policy doctrine, adopted by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, designed to improve relations with Latin America. A reaction to the exploitative dollar diplomacy of the early 1900s, the Good Neighbor policy encouraged interaction between the United States and Latin America as equals. In the post–World War II era, however, the United States has often reverted to dollar diplomacy and gunboat diplomacy to impose its will on the countries of Latin America.
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grand jury
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A jury that decides whether the evidence warrants bringing an accused person to trial. Once indicted by a grand jury, a person must stand trial.
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habeas corpus
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A legal term meaning that an accused person must be presented physically before the court with a statement demonstrating sufficient cause for arrest. Thus, no accuser may imprison someone indefinitely without bringing that person and the charges against him or her into a courtroom. In Latin, habeas corpus literally means “you shall have the body.”
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logrolling
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In politics, advance agreement by legislators to vote for one another’s bills. Logrolling is most common when legislators are trying to secure votes for bills that will benefit their home districts.
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most-favored-nation
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Status in an international trading arrangement whereby agreements between two nations on tariffs are then extended to other nations. Every nation involved in such an arrangement will have most-favored-nation status. This policy is used, particularly by the United States, to lower tariffs, extend cooperative trading agreements, and protect nations from discriminatory treatment. Most-favored-nation agreements can also be used to apply economic pressure on nations by deliberately excluding them from international trade.
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political action committees
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Committees formed by interest groups to funnel donations to political candidates who are likely to support their position on various issues. Because of current campaign laws, PACs are allowed to make much larger donations than can individuals.
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rider
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A provision, usually controversial and unlikely to pass on its own merits, that is attached to a popular bill in the hopes that it will “ride” to passage on the back of the popular bill.
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Selective Service System
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The system used in the United States to draft young people into armed service. Though the United States at present has no draft, young men are required by law to register with the Selective Service when they reach the age of eighteen.
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United States Information Agency
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A federal agency responsible for spreading information favorable to the United States around the world.
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Ways and Means Committee
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A permanent committee of the House of Representatives, which makes recommendations to the House on all bills for raising revenue. The committee is the principal source of legislation concerning issues such as taxation, customs duties, and international trade agreements.
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ABM Treaty
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The popular name for part of the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between the United States and the former Soviet Union; it restricts the number and locations of antiballistic missiles (ABM) that each nation can deploy.
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Geneva Conventions
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A set of international rules that govern the treatment of prisoners, the sick and wounded, and civilians during war. Under the Geneva Conventions, for example, ambulances and military hospitals and their staff are officially neutral and are not to be fired upon. Nearly all countries of the world have agreed to the Geneva Conventions. The first Geneva Convention was drawn up in the late nineteenth century and concerned only the sick and wounded in war. It has been revised several times since to accommodate new wartime conditions.
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Northern Ireland
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Political division of the United Kingdom, located in northeastern Ireland. Northern Ireland was created in 1920, when Britain established separate parliaments for the parts of Ireland dominated by Protestants and by Roman Catholics. The Protestant portion remained in union with Britain. Demands for equal civil and economic rights by the Catholic minority, beginning in the late 1960s, led to a renewal of violence between Catholics and Protestants. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), a nationalist organization dedicated to the unification of Ireland, has staged terrorist attacks on British troops in Northern Ireland, as well as other random terrorist attacks in Britain. A peace accord reached on Good Friday, 1998, provided for the restoration of home rule, which Britain had suspended in 1972 when it assumed direct control of Northern Ireland. By the terms of this accord, both Britain and the Republic of Ireland agreed to give up their constitutional claims on Northern Ireland. Voters in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland approved the accord later in 1998. The failure of the IRA to disarm threw this accord into jeopardy until recently.
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Marxism-Leninism
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The doctrines of Marxism as applied by Lenin, a founder of the Soviet Union, to the building of Marxist nations. With Karl Marx, Lenin called for a classless society in which all means of production would be commonly owned (communism). Unlike some Marxists, however, Lenin stressed bold, revolutionary action and insisted that a strong Communist party would be needed in a Marxist nation to direct the efforts of the workers. Lenin also argued that capitalist nations resort to aggressive imperialist moves as they decline and that Marxist nations must therefore be prepared for war. Eventually, according to Marxism-Leninism, the rigid governmental structures that have characterized the former Soviet Union and other Marxist nations will not be necessary; the “withering away of the state” will occur. A major problem for Marxism-Leninism has been the difficulty of abandoning these governmental structures.
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natural law
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The doctrine that human affairs should be governed by ethical principles that are part of the very nature of things and that can be understood by reason. The first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence contain a clear statement of the doctrine.
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New Labour
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A movement to update Britain’s Labour Party by discarding the traditional Labour platform calling for state ownership of the means of production. The movement has been led by Tony Blair, who became prime minister in 1997 after guiding the Labour Party to victory.
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Nonproliferation Treaty
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An agreement made in 1968 to discourage the spread of nuclear weapons. It has been ratified by ninety-two countries, but not by all countries with the potential to develop nuclear weapons. Neither India nor Pakistan, each of which subsequently developed nuclear weapons, ratified it.
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Organization of American States
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An international organization that includes the United States and over thirty nations in Latin America. It was founded in the 1940s to promote the peaceful settlement of disputes and economic cooperation among members.
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Oslo Accord
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An agreement brokered by Norway after months of secret negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993. By its terms, Israel and the PLO recognized each other. The PLO renounced terrorism, and Israel agreed to withdraw its military and civil authorities from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho, granting self-rule to Palestinians in these areas and a lesser degree of self-rule to other parts of the Occupied Territories. Although the accord put off consideration of the thorny issues of Israeli settlements on the West Bank and the status of Jerusalem, it set 1999 as a deadline for a final agreement. Subsequent negotiations to resolve these issues failed, however.
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sedition
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Acts that incite rebellion or civil disorder against an established government.
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Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
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Negotiations started in Helsinki, Finland, in 1969 between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit the countries’ stock of nuclear weapons. The treaties resulting from these negotiations are called SALT I and SALT II. SALT II was never ratified, but its terms were respected until Reagan withdrew in 1986. These treaties have led to START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks). START I (a 1991 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union) and START II (a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia) placed specific caps on each side’s stock of nuclear weapons.
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Trotskyism
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The doctrines of the twentieth-century Russian political leader Leon Trotsky, who believed that communism should depend on the cooperation of the proletariats of all nations rather than on domination by the Soviet Union. Trotsky’s ideas were opposed by Joseph Stalin, the Soviet premier, who sent Trotsky into exile, made him a nonperson, and eventually had him assassinated.
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The Roosevelt Corollary
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An addition to the Monroe Doctrine by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Roosevelt's extension of the Monroe Doctrine asserted the right of the United States to intervene to stabilize the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts. The alternative was intervention by European powers, especially Britain and Germany, which loaned money to the countries that did not repay. The catalyst of the new policy was Germany's aggressiveness in the Venezuela affair of 1902-03.
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Threshold Test Ban Treaty
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The Treaty on the Limitation of Underground Nuclear Weapon Tests, which establishes a nuclear "threshold," by prohibiting nuclear tests of devices having a yield exceeding 150 kilotons (equivalent to 150,000 tons of TNT). It was signed in July 1974 by the USA and the USSR.
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Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
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A 1988 treaty between the United States and the USSR to eliminate nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with intermediate ranges, defined as between 300-3,400 miles.
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Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
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Treaty negotiated in 1989 establishing comprehensive limits on key categories of conventional military equipment in Europe (from the Atlantic to the Urals) and mandating the destruction of excess weaponry. The treaty proposed equal limits for the two "groups of states-parties", NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
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fundamental attribution error
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A theory describing the cognitive tendency to overvalue personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others, thus undervaluing situational explanations. Also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect.
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self-serving bias
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A situation in which people attribute their successes to internal or personal factors but attribute their failures to situational factors beyond their control.
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actor-observer bias
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A tendency to attribute one's own behavior to one's circumstances (i.e., situational causes) and the behaviors of others to their dispositions.
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ad hominem argument
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A reply to an argument or factual claim made by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the source rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim.
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Charlie Parker
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A twentieth-century American jazz saxophonist and composer. Parker is widely considered one of the most influential of jazz musicians, Parker played a leading role in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and improvisation based on harmonic structure.
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James Brown
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An American entertainer. He is recognized as one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century popular music. He is known as "The Godfather of Soul".
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Duke Ellington
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A twentieth-century African-American jazz composer, songwriter, and bandleader. Ellington’s most popular songs include “Mood Indigo,” “Satin Doll,” “Sophisticated Lady,” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”
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Tommy Dorsey
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An American jazz trombonist, trumpeter, composer, and bandleader of the Big Band era.
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Louis Armstrong
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A twentieth-century African-American jazz trumpet player and singer. Armstrong, whose career spanned five decades, was celebrated for his trumpet solos and the gravelly voice in which he sang songs such as “Hello, Dolly” and “It’s a Wonderful World.”
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Equal Pay Act
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Law protecting men and women who perform substantially equal work in the same establishment from sex-based wage discrimination. Passed in 1963.
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Age Discrimination in Employment Act
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Law protecting individuals who are 40 years of age or older from discrimination in employment. Passed in 1967.
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Americans with Disabilities Act
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Law passed in 1990. Title I and Title V prohibit employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities in the private sector, and in state and local governments.
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Rehabilitation Act
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Law passed in 1973. Sections 501 and 505 prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities who work in the federal government.
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Civil Rights Act of 1991
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Among other things, provides monetary damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination.
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Civil Service Reform Act
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Law containing a number of prohibitions designed to promote overall fairness in federal personnel actions. Passed in 1978, the CSRA prohibits any employee who has authority to take certain personnel actions from discriminating for or against employees or applicants for employment on the bases of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age or disability. It also provides that certain personnel actions can not be based on attributes or conduct that do not adversely affect employee performance, such as marital status and political affiliation.
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