Essential Political and Economic History Terms

Economic and Political Ideologies

• Anarchism (n): A doctrine stating that there should be no government and that people should work together.
• Capitalism (n): A system in which property, businesses, and industry are owned privately, not by the state.
• Classless society (n): A society where there are no social classes and everyone is equal in rank.
• Marxism (n): A radical form of socialism originated by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
• Private property (n): Something owned by an individual, not by the community as a whole.
• Proletariat (n): The class of people who work for wages and own little or no property.
• Socialism (n): The belief that all people should be treated equally and the means of production should be owned by the community.

The Industrial Revolution

• Enclosure Acts (n): Laws which converted common land into private property and stopped poor people from using it.
• Factory system (n): A system where goods are produced mechanically on a large scale in factories.
• Free trade (n): International commerce without intervention from governments.
• Industrial Revolution (n): The change from an agricultural to an industrial society with machines and factories.
• Law of supply and demand (n): The idea that the price of a product depends on availability and consumer demand.
• Luddism (n): Violent opposition by some workers to the mechanization of industry.
• Market economy (n): An economy where goods are produced on a large scale for sale.

Colonialism and Imperialism

• Acculturation (n): Adoption of the ways of a different culture.
• Colonial exploitation (n): Unfairly using colonies to obtain power or wealth.
• Colonization (n): Settling in a place and taking control over it.
• Colony (n): A country occupied and controlled by another country (the metropole).
• Dominion (n): A self-governing colony whose population came mainly from the metropole.
• Economic interests (n): Policies or practices which tend to make a person or country richer.
• Expand (v): To make larger or to become larger.
• Export (v): To sell products to another country.
• Imperialism (n): Increasing a country's wealth and power by colonizing other countries.
• Import (v): To buy products from another country.
• Indigenous population (n): The native people in a colonized country.
• Metropole (n): The parent state of a colony.
• Protectorate (n): A colonized country with its own indigenous government, but where the metropole is in control of defense and foreign policy.
• Social segregation (n): When people of different classes in society are forced to live separately and cannot mix.