Frequently Used Terms

With contributions by Patrick Manning, Deborah Johnston,
Eric Martin, and David Kalivas

This is a list of key terms used in the study of history, and particularly world history, with brief definitions and discussion.

Analysis - critical examination of a historical problem, event, or fact.

Area Studies - studies of the world focusing on large areas defined by continents or culture areas: Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Western Europe, Russia & Eastern Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia. Western Civilization or the U.S. could also be considered to be "areas" in this sense.

Argument - in history, an interpretive conclusion on the past, and the reasoning and evidence to support it.

BC/AD, BCE/CE - world historians have tended to relabel calendar years to give less emphasis to the religious aspect of the Christian calendar - "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini - year of our lord." The revised terminology is BCE ("Before the Common Era" and CE ("Common Era").

Big History - History from the big bang until today. An approach setting the history of humankind in the context of the history of our physical and biological environment.

Big Picture - an emphasis on placing events in relation to one another to gain a better understanding of how they might be part of a larger historical process. For example, we can examine the Cuban missile crisis as an individual event, or relate the Cuban missile crisis to the creation of the Berlin Wall and see a bigger picture of the Cold War.

Change over time -nothing remains the same with the unfolding of time. "Change over time" is a constant in world history that is illustrated with ethnicity and language. On the surface ethnic identification and language seem fairly static, but each change over time as migration, conquest and commerce result in movements of people across the globe. This constancy of human migrations results in the creation of new ethnic identities and new languages as/ people intermingle over the vast expanse of time. For instance, the migrations of Indo-European speaking peoples out of Central Eurasia into Northern India and Southeastern Europe during the second millennium BCE created conditions for the eventual development of ethnic groups and their languages in both, by age and sex, and movements of people among regions and conditions of life.

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Diffusion - the spread of an item or a pattern from one area to another, without changing in the process. "Diffusion" refers to a one-way street of historical change, and may be contrasted with more complex processes of change.

Dilemma - world history confronts both the teacher and the student with difficult choices on what to address and what to neglect: how much detail, how much generalization, and which topics. The field of world history gives one practice in facing such predicaments, and develops skill in finding the balance among topics in developing a broad interpretation of the past.

Diversity - this term refers to the multiplicity of cultures, languages, ethnic groups, trade relations, and lifestyles in most societies around the globe. Diversity refers to the norms of existence on the planet and challenges ethnocentric notions of human history. It has usually been when societies are most diverse and cosmopolitan that they have also been in their "golden ages." For example the following places were at their zenith point during moments of historical diversity: 5th Century Hellas, Tang China, Timbuktu, Baghdad, and Kilwa.

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Dominance - the establishment or maintenance of control of one region of the world or one aspect of society by another. Much of world history has focused on dominance: determining which groups have what type of power over whom, and how they attained that position, for instance in analyses of the rise of the West. But one may also ask whether history of the dominant is sufficient, or whether historians should focus on the connections of dominant and subordinate influences in the operation of a world including them all.

Dynasty - a royal family remaining in power for more than one generation.

Ecumene - as developed by William McNeill, this term identifies the periodic interconnection of large areas of the world into commercial, intellectual, and political contact with each other. For McNeill, one major "opening of the Eurasian ecumene" was in the period 200 BCE to 200 CE

Empire - a political structure governing both a homeland and outlying areas. The homeland is the region from which the ruling power emerged, and where its power is most legitimate. The outlying areas are typically conquered or otherwise incorporated, and are typically marginal in their loyalty to the central power. People of the home area generally have more rights than those in outlying areas. Empires have been ruled as monarchies, as republics, as military dictatorships, or as bureaucracies.

Entrepot - a trading post or port serving as a place for warehousing, bulking, and trading goods among merchants of different societies.

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colonization. Globalization is usually seen as a new phenomenon, but one may also argue that globalization has taken place at a slower pace over a very long time. .

Global patterns - this term focuses attention on events that happened over time and space across different parts of the globe. For instance, Bubonic Plague outbreaks in the fourteenth century could be studied as part of a wider Global Pattern connected to movements of people in Afro-Eurasia and the Americas from the 5th to the 20th centuries. During this fifteen hundred year period we could study the virulence rate and local conditions conducive to plague in relation to increased periods of regional and intercontinental trade and determine a global pattern for plague outbreaks in world history associated with increases in trade and the development of land and sea trade routes during a specific period of time.

Habits of mind - this term refers to perceptions of societal values, the interpretation of social-cultural norms, and the way individuals reflect those values and norms in everyday life. In the AP World History course, an effort is made to develop habits of mind in which students seek out comparisons, connections, and broad patterns in the past, and note the diversity of viewpoints and interpretations of the past.

Hypothesis - in history, an interpretive statement purporting to explain past events. A hypothesis is set explicitly or implicitly in contrast to an alternative interpretation, and is based on a certain logic.

Imperialism, Colonialism, and Decolonization - These three terms refer to a world historical process that many argue began in the fifteenth century. Essentially, Imperialism represents the territorial, economic, political and cultural expansion and domination of a kingdom, or polity of some kind, over another area of the world. Traditionally, Imperialism has been viewed as a process for securing the territorial claims over an area of the world by military occupation, which then leads to the development of Colonialism. Colonialism is the actual settling or governing of the new territory, which usually results in the development of a bureaucratic administration to govern the "colony." Decolonization is the process which occurs when the indigenous population of the "colony" begins formal resistance and rebellion against foreign, imperial control of their land, which results in the end of colonial rule either through a revolutionary war, or some form of mutually agreed process for securing independence of a colony to create a new nation-state.

Independent invention - creation of a new artifact, process or institution based on local resources and needs, and independent of connections to other regions. Other innovations come from the spread, borrowing, or revisions of previous inventions.

Interaction - a term used to signal a two-way street of contact and change. Many times interaction is opposed to diffusion.

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ordering events and processes. Narratives range from simple listings of events to nuanced presentations ranging from chronology to philosophy.

Nation - in the 19th and 20th centuries, nations are societies unified by a common government, a set of national institutions, and a shared national culture. In earlier centuries, the term "nation" applied to people of a common identity, such-as an ethnic group, regardless of whether they had a national government.

National History - the history of nations, their governments and societies. For the past century, most history has been written as national history. One approach to world history has been to treat it as an accumulation of separate national histories.

Nationalism - an ideology that gradually emerged with the development of nation-states beginning in the 18th Century, but really taking clear shape in the 19th and 20th centuries. As an ideology, Nationalism levels class differences and assumes common "national" goals regardless of individual socio-economic conditions. Nationalism refers to the cultural, linguistic, and political identity of a nation-state with an emotional support system - patriotism - that can foster a cohesive bond between individuals and the national government in the pursuit of public policy.

Nomads - people whose life style requires moving from place to place, usually on an annual calendar. Pastoral nomads of Asia and Africa, living from cattle, camels, sheep, goats, and horses, have been sometimes dominant and other times subordinate in history.. Most historians, centered in cities, have treated nomads as barbaric and marginal peoples.

Orientalism - this term, coined in the 19th century, referred to European study of societies of the East, and particularly to study of the Muslim world by scholars with strong Christian beliefs. Edward Said's critique of orientalism emphasized that this scholarship, though sophisticated, was prejudicial to the peoples and societies labeled as the Orient.

People - a term used in many ways by historians, from the simple use as the plural of person to the use of "people" to mean an ethnic group ("the Igbo people"), a national group ("the Iranian people") or to distinguish commoners from the elite.

Periodization - choices made by historians to segment history. Varying schemes of periodization lead to widely different interpretations of the past.

Perspective - in history, the outlook of a participant in or interpreter of history. The same facts of a battle may look different to a warrior on the field, to an observing child of that warrior, to a historian celebrating the victory a century later, and to a historian in still later times, after the victory had been reversed.

the scholarly disciplines: politics, economics, social life, culture, and environment More specific themes include the impact of disease in human history, industrialization in the modern world, or changing conceptions of the relations between man and God. Teachers face the choice of whether to organize their world history courses by theme, rather than simply by period and by region.

Theory - a logically consistent system of explanation which, given the necessary evidence, results in predictions of outcomes over time. Price theory in economics is one example; Marx's theory of social change through class conflict is another. The term "theory" is also used in an everyday sense to refer to any idea or conclusion. Historians may do best by using such terms as "interpretation" most of the time, and using the term "theory" only to apply to a fully developed theory.

Trait - a distinguishing characteristic. The term is often used in cultural studies to identify elements of culture, such as particular hair styles or means of food preparation. This approach tends to entail the assumption that traits are coherent and independent of each other - atoms of culture, as it were. Debate continues as to whether culture may be seen as composed of independent traits.

Tribe - a group of people claiming descent from an individual or group of common ancestors. Smaller such groups may be known as lineages or clans; larger such groups may be known as ethnic groups or nations. The term "tribe" is often used arbitrarily to imply that the "tribesmen" are primitive. Our newspapers use the term "tribe" when describing Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda, but do not use that term in describing Serbs, Croatians, and Muslims in Yugoslavia - in each case, the groups share the same language.

Units of analysis - Units are the frameworks used for studying history. Commonly used "units of analysis" are regions, continents, zones of interactions, frontiers, nation-states, localities, oceans, seas, river systems, and themes. For instance, Braudel used the Mediterranean Sea as the overall unit of analysis for his classic study, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, and Owen Lattimore used the frontier regions between China and Inner Asia in his classic study Inner Asian Frontiers of China. Another example is Jerry Bentley's Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in PreModern Times where the unit of analysis is the theme of "encounters and interactions across regions."

Universal History - this term was coined centuries ago by historians of Christianity, for whom the history of God's plan, of the Christian community and of those who might be saved seemed to be a full and universal history.

Universal standards - This phrase refers to values and norms determined to be fairly common across all cultures and societies. For instance, the scientific method is argued to be a universal standard for proving the validity scientific research. In terms of human values, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) established a list of living