KS3 History key terms

147 terms with short definitions you can learn for the exam. Type to filter the list.

Key terms glossary 105

Abolition: Ending something by law, such as the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807 and of slavery in most of the empire by the Act of 1833.
Act of Parliament: A law passed by Parliament and agreed by the monarch.
AD and BC: AD dates count forward from year 1; BC dates count back before it. Some books use CE and BCE instead. There is no year 0.
Alliance: An agreement between countries to support each other, especially in war.
Anachronism: Something placed in the wrong time, such as a Norman knight holding a mobile phone.
Annul: To declare that a marriage was never valid. Henry VIII wanted the Pope to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Antisemitism: Hostility to, or prejudice against, Jewish people. It had a long history in Europe; the Nazis made it government policy.
Appeasement: Giving a rival some of what they want to avoid war. Britain and France followed it towards Hitler in the 1930s.
Archbishop of Canterbury: The most senior bishop in England, based at Canterbury Cathedral.
Armistice: An agreement to stop fighting. The First World War armistice began at 11am on 11 November 1918.
Baron: A powerful noble who held land from the king in return for loyalty and soldiers.
Bias: A one-sided view, often because of who made a source or why. A biased source can still be useful evidence of opinions.
Blitz: The German bombing of British cities, September 1940 to May 1941.
Boycott: Refusing to buy from, use or deal with someone as a protest or punishment.
Catholic: A Christian who accepts the Pope in Rome as head of the Church.
Cause and consequence: Why something happened (causes) and what happened as a result (consequences).
Census: An official count of everyone in a country, taken every 10 years in Britain since 1801.
Century: A period of 100 years. The years 1901 to 2000 are the 20th century.
Change and continuity: What changed over time and what stayed the same.
Chartists: A working-class movement that demanded the vote for all men over 21 and other reforms in the People's Charter of 1838.
Chronology: Putting events in the order in which they happened.
Civil war: A war between groups in the same country, such as Royalists against Parliamentarians from 1642.
Colony: A land ruled by another country, often settled by people from that country.
Commonwealth (1649 to 1660): The name for England as a republic after Charles I was executed.
Commonwealth of Nations: A voluntary association of independent countries, most of them once part of the British Empire.
Conscription: A law making people join the armed forces. Britain brought it in during 1916 and again in 1939.
Constitutional monarchy: A system where the monarch's power is limited by laws and Parliament, as in Britain after 1689.
Cross-reference: Checking one source against others to see whether they agree.
Crusades: Wars from 1095 in which Christian armies tried to take Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule.
Decolonisation: The process of colonies becoming independent countries, especially after 1945.
Democracy: Government by the people, usually through elected representatives.
Dictator: A ruler with total power who does not allow free elections or opposition.
Dissolution of the monasteries: Henry VIII's closing of the monasteries, 1536 to 1541, taking their land and wealth.
Divine Right of Kings: The belief that God chooses kings, so they answer only to God, not to Parliament or the people.
Domesday Book: William I's survey of land and property in England, made in 1086, so he knew what he could tax.
Emancipation: Being set free from legal restrictions, for example Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
Empire: A group of lands or peoples ruled by one country or ruler.
Enlightenment: A movement of ideas in the late 1600s and 1700s that valued reason, evidence and questioning.
Evacuation: Moving people, especially children, away from danger, as from British cities from September 1939.
Excommunication: Being thrown out of the Church by the Pope, cut off from its services.
Factory Act: A law controlling working conditions in factories, such as the 1833 Act that banned children under 9 in textile mills.
Fascism: A movement that puts the nation above the individual, rejects democracy and follows one leader. Mussolini's Italy was the first fascist state.
Feudal system: The medieval way of holding land: the king gave land to barons, barons to knights, and peasants worked it, each owing service.
Franchise: The right to vote. Extending the franchise means giving more people the vote.
Genocide: Acts carried out to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The word was created in 1944.
Ghetto: In the Holocaust, a sealed-off, overcrowded part of a town where Nazis forced Jews to live.
Heresy: Beliefs that go against the official teaching of the Church. Heretics could be burned.
Holocaust: The systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of about six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators, 1933 to 1945.
Home Front: Life and work in Britain during a war, away from the fighting.
Home Rule: A plan for Ireland to have its own parliament for Irish affairs while staying in the United Kingdom.
Imperialism: Building or supporting an empire by taking control of other lands.
Indulgence: A payment to the Church said to reduce punishment for sins. Luther attacked their sale in 1517.
Industrial Revolution: The change from making goods by hand at home to making them by machines in factories, from about 1750.
Interpretation: A later view of the past, such as a historian's book or a film, built from the evidence.
Interregnum: The period 1649 to 1660 when England had no monarch.
Jacobites: Supporters of James II and his Catholic descendants. Their last rising ended at Culloden in 1746.
Kindertransport: The rescue of about 10,000 mainly Jewish children from Nazi-controlled Europe to Britain in 1938 and 1939.
Kristallnacht: 'Night of Broken Glass', 9 to 10 November 1938, when Nazis attacked synagogues, Jewish homes and shops across Germany and Austria.
League of Nations: An international organisation set up after the First World War to keep peace.
Magna Carta: The 'Great Charter' that King John agreed to in 1215. It said the king had to follow the law.
Middle Passage: The voyage across the Atlantic in which enslaved Africans were transported in terrible conditions.
Militarism: Building up armed forces and believing in military strength.
Monarch: A king or queen.
Monastery: A community where monks lived, prayed and worked.
Motte and bailey: An early Norman castle: a wooden tower on an earth mound (motte) above a fenced yard (bailey).
Nationalism: Strong pride in your nation, or the wish for your people to have their own country.
Nazi: A member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, led by Adolf Hitler, which ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945.
Parliament: The assembly that makes laws. In Britain it is the monarch, the House of Lords and the elected House of Commons.
Partition: Dividing a country, such as British India into India and Pakistan in 1947.
Peasant: A poor farm worker in the Middle Ages. Many were villeins, tied to their lord's land.
Persecution: Cruel and unfair treatment of people because of who they are or what they believe.
Petition: A written request signed by many people and sent to someone in power, such as Parliament.
Pilgrimage: A journey to a holy place for religious reasons.
Plantation: A large farm growing one crop such as sugar, cotton or tobacco, worked by enslaved people in the colonies.
Poll tax: A tax on every person. Poll taxes in 1377 to 1380 helped cause the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.
Pope: The head of the Catholic Church, based in Rome.
Primary source: Evidence from the time being studied, such as a letter, diary, photograph or object.
Propaganda: Information designed to persuade people to think a certain way, often one-sided or false.
Protestant: A Christian whose church broke away from the Pope at the Reformation.
Provenance: Where a source comes from: who made it, when, and why.
Puritan: A strict Protestant who wanted a simpler church and a godly way of life.
Raj: British rule in India, 1858 to 1947.
Rationing: Limiting how much of certain goods each person can buy, as with food in Britain from January 1940.
Reformation: The movement in the 1500s that split the Western Church into Catholics and Protestants.
Renaissance: The 'rebirth' of interest in ancient Greek and Roman learning, art and science, from the 1300s to the 1600s.
Reparations: Money a defeated country is made to pay for war damage, as Germany was after 1919.
Republic: A country with no monarch, led by elected or chosen leaders.
Restoration: The return of the monarchy in 1660, when Charles II became king.
Revolution: A sudden, major change, especially the overthrow of a government.
Rotten borough: Before 1832, a place with very few voters that still elected MPs.
Secondary source: A source made later by someone looking back, such as a textbook or documentary.
Secret ballot: Voting in private so no one can see or pressure your choice. It came to Britain in 1872.
Shoah: The Hebrew word for the Holocaust, meaning 'catastrophe'.
Significance: How important a person or event was: how many people it affected, how deeply and for how long.
Suffrage: The right to vote in elections.
Suffragette: A member of the WSPU, led by Emmeline Pankhurst from 1903, which used direct action to win votes for women.
Suffragist: A member of the NUWSS, led by Millicent Fawcett, which campaigned peacefully for votes for women.
Tithe: A tenth of what people produced, paid to the Church.
Treason: Betraying your country or monarch, for example by plotting against them.
Treaty: A formal agreement between countries, such as the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
Trench warfare: Fighting from long lines of dug-in trenches, as on the Western Front, 1914 to 1918.
Triangular trade: The trade route linking Britain, West Africa and the Americas, at the heart of the transatlantic slave trade.
Welfare state: A system where the government looks after people's basic needs, such as health care, pensions and benefits.
Witan: The council of nobles and churchmen who advised Anglo-Saxon kings.
Workhouse: A place where the poorest people got food and shelter in return for hard work, under strict rules.

Dates to know 42

1066: Battle of Hastings, 14 October: William of Normandy defeats Harold Godwinson.
1086: The Domesday Book survey.
1170: Thomas Becket is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral.
1215: King John agrees to Magna Carta at Runnymede.
1265: Simon de Montfort's Parliament includes knights and townspeople.
1314: Robert the Bruce wins the Battle of Bannockburn.
1348: The Black Death reaches England.
1381: The Peasants' Revolt.
1415: Henry V wins the Battle of Agincourt.
1485: Henry Tudor wins the Battle of Bosworth and becomes Henry VII.
1517: Martin Luther's protest begins the Reformation.
1534: Act of Supremacy: Henry VIII becomes head of the Church of England.
1588: The Spanish Armada is defeated.
1603: James VI of Scotland becomes James I of England.
1649: Charles I is executed on 30 January.
1660: The Restoration: Charles II becomes king.
1688: The Glorious Revolution: James II flees; William and Mary take the throne.
1707: Act of Union joins England and Scotland as Great Britain.
1746: The Jacobites are defeated at Culloden.
1776: American Declaration of Independence, 4 July.
1789: The French Revolution begins.
1807: Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.
1815: Battle of Waterloo.
1832: Great Reform Act.
1833: Slavery Abolition Act (in force 1834).
1845: Potato blight starts the Great Famine in Ireland.
1859: Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1914: Britain declares war on Germany, 4 August.
1918: Armistice, 11 November. Some women over 30 get the vote.
1928: Women get the vote on the same terms as men, at 21.
1933: Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany, 30 January.
1938: Kristallnacht, 9 to 10 November.
1939: Britain and France declare war on Germany, 3 September.
1942: Wannsee Conference, 20 January.
1944: D-Day, 6 June.
1945: Auschwitz liberated, 27 January. VE Day, 8 May.
1947: India and Pakistan become independent, 15 August.
1948: The NHS begins, 5 July. Empire Windrush arrives, 22 June.
1973: The UK joins the European Economic Community.
2020: The UK leaves the European Union, 31 January.
927: Athelstan becomes the first king of all England.
AD 43: The Romans invade Britain under Emperor Claudius.

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