Peoples, places & terms
Every name that recurs across the shelves, defined once, in plain English.
- BCE / CE
- Before Common Era / Common Era — the same dates as BC/AD, without the Christian framing. See Beginnings
- Cuneiform
- Wedge-shaped script pressed into clay; humanity’s first writing, born as Sumerian bookkeeping. See First cities
- Satrap
- A provincial governor of the Persian Empire — the administrative unit that let Persia rule millions. See Iron-age empires
- Mandate of Heaven
- The Zhou doctrine that rulers hold power while just; tyranny justifies rebellion. See Iron-age empires
- Polis
- A Greek city-state — Athens, Sparta, Corinth — independent, competitive, and fiercely local. See Classical worlds
- Pax Romana
- The two centuries of relative peace across the Roman Empire after Augustus — peace at liberty’s price. See Classical worlds
- Silk Roads
- The braided caravan and sea routes linking China to the Mediterranean; carriers of faiths, paper, and plague. See Faiths & trade roads
- Caliphate
- The Islamic state led by a caliph, successor to Muhammad — Umayyad, then Abbasid from Baghdad. See Faiths & trade roads
- Pax Mongolica
- The Mongol peace: guarded continent-wide routes that moved merchants, envoys — and germs. See Mongols & plague
- Columbian Exchange
- The two-way traffic after 1492: American crops and silver east, wheat, horses, and disease west. See The ocean age
- Middle Passage
- The Atlantic crossing of the slave trade; twelve million shipped, millions dead, immeasurable wealth extracted. See The ocean age
- Scramble for Africa
- The 1880s–1914 carve-up of nearly the whole continent by European powers, sealed at Berlin. See The modern world
- Decolonisation
- The post-1945 unwinding of empires, driven by anti-colonial movements and bankrupt metropoles. See The modern world
- Cold War
- The 1945–1991 US–Soviet rivalry, kept from direct war by nuclear deterrence and fought through proxies. See The modern world