The Great War
Another name for World War I, used by Europeans until the advent of World War II.
Kaiser Wilhelm II
German emperor in World War I; his aggressive foreign policy is often blamed for starting the war.
Triple Alliance
Military and political alliance formed before World War I to counter moves by potential rivals England, France, and Russia; consisted of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.
Triple Entente
Military and political alliance formed before World War I by England, France, and Russia; created to challenge moves made by the Triple Alliance.
The Great Powers
The industrialized, colonizing nations of Europe before World War I; includes England, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy; their rivalries led to the war.
Allied Forces
Name used by countries fighting the Central Powers; major members were Britain, France, Russia, and Italy; later in the war, the United States and Japan joined their cause.
Central Powers
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire were the chief powers at war with the Allies.
Jingoism
Warlike nationalist sentiment spread to and among the middle and working classes in Europe before the war.
Dreadnought
Class of modern battleship launched by Britain before the war; triggered naval rivalry, especially with Germany.
Gavriel Princip
Serbian nationalist, assassin of Archduke Ferdinand.
Archduke Ferdinand
Heir to Austro-Hungarian throne; his assassination precipitated the events that developed into World War I.
Sarajevo
Capital of the Bosnian province in Austria-Hungary; site of Ferdinand's assassination.
Blank check
Promise of support from Germany to Austria-Hungary after Ferdinand's assassination; Austria-Hungary sought reprisals against Serbia; one of many events that cascaded into global war.
White dominions
Britain's territories consisting of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who sent soldiers into World War I.
Western Front
War zone that ran from Belgium to Switzerland during World War I; featured trench warfare and massive casualties among the combatants, including Britain, France, Russia, and Belgium; later included the United States.
Marne River
Site near Paris, France, where Germany's early offensive was halted and thrown back; set the stage for four years of trench warfare on the Western Front.
Eastern Front
War zone that ran from the Baltic to the Balkans where Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkan nations fought.
Tsar Nicholas II
Last emperor of Russia whose poor military and political decisions led to his downfall and Russia's loss in the war; he and Kaiser Wilhelm II made many moves that led to the start of the war.
Propaganda
Government-sponsored media coverage of the war designed to disseminate onesided versions of "friendly" and enemy conduct; used to gin up support for the war among its citizenry.
Bolsheviks
Socialists in Russia who promoted overthrow of the tsar and the establishment of a socialist state; means "majority" in Russian.
New women
Term used to describe career-oriented women in western Europe and the United States in the 1920s; they sought increased social and political rights.
Jutland
Site of the war's major sea battle between Germany and Britain off Denmark's coast; German sea prowess was limited after this encounter.
Gallipoli
Australian soldiers in support of the British were decimated by Turkish and German soldiers at this battle near the Dardanelles.
German East Africa
Fighting occurred in Africa between British-led Indian and South African troops on one side, and German-trained east African troops on the other; today's Tanzania.
Treaty Of Versailles
Wide-ranging postwar conference that promoted much of Wilson's idealistic plan for peace but at the same time blamed and punished Germany for starting the war; included creation of a League of Nations, an international organization designed to prevent further war.
Woodrow Wilson
American president who initially claimed neutrality in the war but later joined the Allied cause; his Fourteen Points and American fighting forces hastened an Allied victory; one of the Big Four at Versailles.
George Clemenceau
French premier at Versailles peace conference who insisted on punishing Germany after the war; one of the Big Four.
David Lloyd George
British prime minister at Versailles who attempted to mediate between Wilson's "peace without victory" stand and Clemenceau's, but with only partial success.
Armistice
All sides agreed to lay down their weapons without declaring victory; promoted by Woodrow Wilson to end the fighting; concept later rejected by France and Britain.
Stab in the back
Myth promoted in Germany after the war that, on the brink of victory, socialists and Jewish politicians conspired to surrender to the Allies; used by Nazis as part of their drive to power in the 1920s.
Self-determination
Wilson called for national independence from colonial rule before Versailles; this encouraged colonial subjects in Asia and Africa until they discovered Wilson intended his rhetoric only for Europe.
Ho Chi Minh
Young nationalist from Vietnam seeking self-determination for his country at Versailles; was ignored, like many representatives from Asian and African colonies who were there.
Indian Congress Party
Nationalist group in India that called for independence from Britain; led by Western-educated Indian elites; led India in the early postcolonial era.
B. G. Tilak
Nationalist leader who promoted a reactionary sort of Hinduism to gain independence for India; influence faded after Britain exiled him.
Morely-Minto reforms
In 1909, British colonial authorities expanded political opportunities for educated Indians.
Mohandas Gandhi
Successful leader of the Indian nationalist movement who combined religious, social, and political know-how into a massive nonviolent campaign.
Satyagraha
"Truth force," a term used by Gandhi to describe peaceful boycotts, strikes, noncooperation, and mass demonstrations to promote Indian independence.
Lord Cromer
British High Commissioner of Egypt at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries; implemented many, but apparently not enough, social and economic reforms.
Effendi
Prosperous Egyptian families who made up the middle class; leaders of the Egyptian nationalist movement came largely from this group.
Dinshawai
Egyptian village where British violence came to represent the heavy-handed nature of colonial rule and united nationalists in their cause.
Mandates
The Treaty of Versailles established British or French control over territories formerly held by Germany and the Ottoman Empire; especially important in regard to Arab areas after the war.
Ataturk (a.k.a. Mustafa Kemal)
Postwar leader of Turkey who launched sweeping reforms, including women's suffrage and a Latin-based alphabet.
Hussein, Sherif of Morocco
Convinced Arab leaders to support the French and British during the war because of their pledges of Arab independence.
Zionists
Supporters of Jewish nationalism, especially a creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Lord Balfour
British foreign secretary who pledged in a declaration the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which encouraged Jewish nationalists and angered Arabs.
Pogroms
Violent assaults against Jewish communities, especially in Russia and Romania in the latter half of the 19th century.
Theodor Herzl
Prominent journalist who led the cause of Zionism in the late 19th century.
Alfred Dreyfus
French officer and Jew who was falsely accused of spying for Germany in the late 19th century; his mistreatment spurred Herzl and other Zionists to increase their call for a Jewish homeland.
World Zionist Organization
Formed by Herzl and other prominent European Jewish leaders to promote Jewish migration to Palestine in advance of the creation of a Zionist state in Palestine.
Sa'd Zaghlul
Energetic leader of the nationalist-leaning Wafd Party in Egypt.
Liberal Constitutionalist Party; Labor Party
Rivals to Egypt's Wafd Party; once in control of their own government, these three parties did little to help the peasantry.
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Led a military coup in Egypt in 1952; ruled until 1970; established himself as a major Arab force in the Middle East.
Lord Lugard
Influential British colonial administrator who predicted the rise of African nationalism.
Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois
Americans who promoted African nationalism and unity.
Pan-Africanism
Movement begun in the 1920s to promote African nationalism and unity; did much to arouse anticolonial sentiment.
Negritude
Literary movement in France that argued precolonial African societies were superior in many ways to European colonial societies in Africa; writers included L.S. Senghor, Leon Damas, and Aime Cesaire.
National Congress of British West Africa
Regionalized version of the pan-African movement.
Armenian genocide
Assault carried out by mainly Turkish military forces against Armenian population in Anatolia in 1915; over a million Armenians perished and thousands fled to Russia and the Middle East.
Adolf Hitler
Nazi leader of fascist Germany from 1933 to his suicide in 1945; created a strongly centralized state in Germany; eliminated all rivals; launched Germany on aggressive foreign policy leading to World War II; responsible for attempted genocide of European Jews.
League Of Nations
International diplomatic and peace organization created with the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I; one of the chief goals of President Woodrow Wilson of the United States in the peace negotiations; the United States was never a member.
Montagu-Chelmsford reforms
Increased the powers of Indian legislators at the all-India level and placed much of the provincial administration of India under local ministries controlled by legislative bodies with substantial numbers of elected Indians; passed in 1919.
Rowlatt Act
Placed restrictions on key Indian civil rights such as freedom of the press; acted to offset the concessions granted under Montagu-Chelmsford reforms of 1919.
Hussein
Sherif of Mecca from 1908 to 1917; used British promise of independence to convince Arabs to support Britain against the Turks in World War I; angered by Britain's failure to keep promise; died 1931.
Leon Pinsker
(1821 - 1891) European Zionist who believed that Jewish assimilation into Christian European nations was impossible; argued for return to Middle Eastern Holy Land.
Wafd party
Egyptian nationalist party that emerged after an Egyptian delegation was refused a hearing at the Versailles treaty negotiations following World War I; led by Sa'd Zaghlul; negotiations eventually led to limited Egyptian independence beginning in 1922.
Leópold Sédar Senghor
(1906 - 2001) One of the post-World War I writers of the negritude literary movement that urged pride in African values; president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980.