Key Terms

Boxers

members of the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, an anti-foreign secret society in northern China

Congo Free State

a personal colony of Belgium’s King Leopold II where infamous abuse of African laborers took place

deindustrialization

a decline in a nation’s or region’s industrial activity

export economy

an economy that primarily provides raw materials for use by other nations

Force Publique

a native army commanded by European officers to enforce brutal discipline in the Congo Free State

imperialism

the policy of gaining direct or indirect control over parts of the world with low-cost resources and no competing mass-produced goods

Meiji Restoration

the period beginning in 1868 when, under Emperor Meiji, Japan began to industrialize

Scramble for Africa

the competition among European countries to establish colonies in Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

shogunate

a Japanese system in which a military leader, the shogun, and an aristocratic military elite, the samurai, ruled in place of the emperor

The Great Game

the contest between Britain and Russia to dominate central Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries