Decorum-Propriety in manners and conduct.
Universal agent-Someone authorized to transact every kind of business for the principal
Tyranny-A form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution, laws or opposition etc.)
Cobwebs-A fabric so delicate and transparent as to resemble a web of a spider
Cobbler-A person who makes or repairs shoes
Endowed-Provided or supplied or equipped with (especially as by inheritance or nature)
Wane-Grow smaller
willy-nilly-Without having a choice, In a random manner
manner-How something is done or how it happens
conduct-You cannot conduct business like this, Direct the course of; manage or control
emancipation-Freeing someone from the control of another person or from legal or political restrictions
gimmick-A drawback or difficulty that is not readily evident
confligration-A very intense and uncontrolled fire.
Domicile-(law) the residence where you have your permanent home or principal establishment and to where, whenever you are absent, you intend to return; every person is compelled to have one and only one domicile.
Elite-A group or class of persons enjoying superior intellectual or social or economic status
Pervasiveness-The quality of filling or spreading throughout.
Dissemination-The opening of a subject to widespread discussion and debate
Adoption-The act of accepting with approval; favorable reception
Adaption-The process of adapting to something (such as environmental conditions), adjustment.
Suffragette- A woman advocate of women's right to vote (especially a militant advocate in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 20th century)
About france;
Among the patriotic songs they sang was the Marseillaise,
composed by the poet Roget de L’Isle. It was sung for the first time by
volunteers from Marseilles as they marched into Paris and so got its
name. The Marseillaise is now the national anthem of France.
Some important dates
1774
Louis XVI becomes king of France, faces
empty treasury and growing discontent
within society of the Old Regime.
1789
Convocation of Estates General, Third
Estate forms National Assembly, the
Bastille is stormed, peasant revolts in the
countryside.
1791
A constitution is framed to limit the powers
of the king and to guarantee basic rights to
all human beings.
1792-93
France becomes a republic, the king is
beheaded.
Overthrow of the Jacobin republic, a
Directory rules France.
1804
Napoleon becomes emperor of France,
annexes large parts of Europe.
1815
Napoleon defeated at Waterloo.
Blue-white-red: The
national colours of France.
Clergy
Nobility
Big businessmen,
merchants, court
officials, lawyers etc.
Peasants and
Artisans
Small peasants,
landless labour,
servants
Fig.2 – A Society of Estates.
Note that within the Third Estate some were
rich and others poor.
21 September 1792 it abolished the monarchy and declared France
a republic.
Louis XVI was sentenced to death by a court on the charge of
treason. On 21 January 1793 he was executed publicly at the
Place de la Concorde. The queen Marie Antoinette met with the
same fate shortly after.(1774-1792)
The period from 1793 to 1794 is referred to as the Reign of
Terror.-
Robespierre followed a policy of severe control and
punishment. All those whom he saw as being ‘enemies’ of the
republic – ex-nobles and clergy, members of other political
parties, even members of his own party who did not agree with
his methods – were arrested, imprisoned and then tried by a
revolutionary tribunal. If the court found them ‘guilty’ they
were guillotined. The guillotine is a device consisting of two
poles and a blade with which a person is beheaded. It was named
after Dr Guillotin who invented it.
The life of a revolutionary woman – Olympe de Gouges
(1748-1793)
Socialists were against private property, and saw it as the root of all social ills
of the time.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) added other ideas
to this body of arguments. Marx argued that industrial society was ‘capitalist’.
Capitalists owned the capital invested in factories, and the profit of capitalists
was produced by workers. The conditions of workers could not improve
as long as this profit was accumulated by private capitalists.
A communist society was the natural
society of the future.
The Russian Revolution
In one of the least industrialised of European states this situation was
reversed. Socialists took over the government in Russia through the
October Revolution of 1917. The fall of monarchy in February 1917
and the events of October are normally called the Russian Revolution.
The Russian Empire in 1914
In 1914, Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia and its empire. Besides the
territory around Moscow, the Russian empire included current-day
Finland, Lativia, Lithuania, Estonia, parts of Poland, Ukraine and
Belarus. It stretched to the Pacific and comprised today’s Central
Asian states, as well as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The majority
religion was Russian Orthodox Christianity – which had grown out
of the Greek Orthodox Church – but the empire also included
Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and Buddhists.
When the procession of workers led by Father Gapon reached the
Winter Palace it was attacked by the police and the Cossacks. Over
100 workers were killed and about 300 wounded. The incident,
known as Bloody Sunday, started a series of events that became known
as the 1905 Revolution. Strikes took place all over the country and
universities closed down when student bodies staged walkouts,
complaining about the lack of civil liberties. Lawyers, doctors,
engineers and other middle-class workers established the Union of
Unions and demanded a constituent assembly.
The First World War and the Russian Empire
In 1914, war broke out between two European alliances – Germany,
Austria and Turkey (the Central powers) and France, Britain and
Russia (later Italy and Romania)
Some important dates
1850s -1880s
Debates over socialism in Russsia.
1898
Formation of the Russian Social Democratic
Workers Party.
1905
The Bloody Sunday and the Revolution of
1905.
1917
2nd March - Abdication of the Tsar.
24th October - Bolshevik unprising in
Petrograd.
1918-20
The Civil War.
1919
Formation of Comintern.
1929
Beginning of Collectivization.
Stalinism and Collectivisation
The period of the early Planned Economy was linked to
the disasters of the collectivisation of agriculture. By 1927-
1928, the towns in Soviet Russia were facing an acute
problem of grain supplies. The government fixed prices
at which grain must be sold, but the peasants refused to sell their
grain to government buyers at these prices.
Stalin, who headed the party after the death of Lenin, introduced
firm emergency measures. He believed that rich peasants and traders
in the countryside were holding stocks in the hope of higher prices.
Speculation had to be stopped and supplies confiscated.
In 1928, Party members toured the grain-producing areas, supervising
enforced grain collections, and raiding ‘kulaks’ – the name for wellto-
do peasants. As shortages continued, the decision was taken to
collectivise farms. It was argued that grain shortages were partly due
to the small size of holdings. After 1917, land had been given over to
peasants. These small-sized peasant farms could not be modernised.
To develop modern farms, and run them along industrial lines with
machinery, it was necessary to ‘eliminate kulaks’, take away land
from peasants, and establish state-controlled large farms.
What followed was Stalin’s collectivisation programme. From 1929,
the Party forced all peasants to cultivate in collective farms (kolkhoz).
The bulk of land and implements were transferred to the ownership
of collective farms. Peasants worked on the land, and the kolkhoz
profit was shared. Enraged peasants resisted the authorities and
destroyed their livestock. Between 1929 and 1931, the number of
cattle fell by one-third. Those who resisted collectivisation were
severely punished. Many were deported and exiled. As they resisted
collectivisation, peasants argued that they were not rich and they
were not against socialism. They merely did not want to work in
collective farms for a variety of reasons. Stalin’s government allowed
some independent cultivation, but treated such cultivators
unsympathetically.
In spite of collectivisation, production did not increase immediately.
In fact, the bad harvests of 1930-1933 led to one of most devastating
famines in Soviet history when over 4 million died.
Geography
Adolescence : Adolescence is a period in which a person is no longer a child and
not yet an adult. Such persons are grouped in the age group of
10 to 19 years.
Alluvial plain : A level tract of land made up of alluvium or fine rock material
brought down by a river.
Base population : The total population of an area at the beginning of a given time
period.
Biome : Plant communities occuring in distinct groups in areas having
similar climatic conditions.
Birth rate : The number of live births for every 1000 persons in a year.
Climate : The average weathr conditions of a sizeable area of the Earth’s
surface over a period of time.
Depression : In meteorology; it denotes an area of relatively low atmospheric
pressure, which is found mainly in temperate regions. In geology,
it refers to a hollow sunken area of the earth’s surface.
Death rate : The number of deaths per 1000 persons in year.
Density of population : The average number of persons per unit area, such as a square
kilometre.
Dependency ratio : The ratio of people of dependent age (below 15 and above 60 years)
to people of economically active ages (15-59 years).
Ecosystem : A system which comprises the physical environment and the
organisms living therein.
Environment : Surroundings or the conditions under which a person or thing
exists and develops his or its character. It covers both physical
and cultural elements.
Fault : A linear break in rocks of the earth’s crust along which there has
been displacement in a horizontal, vertical or oblique direction.
Fauna : The animal life of a given area.
Flora : The total vegetatin or plant cover of a region.
Fold : A bend in the rock strata resulting from compression of an area of
the earth’s crust.
Geosyncline : A narrow, shallow, elongated basin with a sinking bottom in which
a considerable thickness of sediments was deposited by the rivers
coming from Angara and Gondwanaland.
Glacier : A mass of snow and ice that moves slowly under the influence of
gravity along a confined course away from its place of accumulation.
Growth rate of population : The growth rate of population indicates the rate at which the
population is grwing. In estimating the growth rate the increase in
population is compared with the base population. It can be
measured annually or over a decade.
Indian Mainland : It refers to the contiguous stretch of landmass from Jammu and
Kashmir to Kanniyakumari and from Gujarat to Arunachal
Pradesh.
Indian Standard Time : The local time along the Standard Meridian of India (82°30'E).
Inland drainage : A drainage system in which the waters of the rivers do not reach
the oceans but fall into an inland sea or lake.
Igneous rocks : Rocks formed as a result of solidification of magma either below
the earth’s surface or above it.
Lagoon : A salt-water lake separated from the sea by the sandbars and spits.
Lake : A body of water that lies in a hollow in the earht’s surface and is
entirely surrounded by land.
Lithospheric Plates : Large segments of the earth’s crust composed of continental and
oceanic lithospheric parts, floating above the asthenosphere.
Life expectancy : The average number of years one is expected to live.
Local Time : The time of a place determined by the midday sun is called the
local time.
Metamorphic rocks : Deformation and alteration of pre-existing igneous and
sedimentary rocks as a result of changes in physical and chemical
conditions due to intense heat or pressure.
Migration : Movement of people from one place to another. Internal migration
means movement of people within a country and external migration
means movement of people between countries. When people come
to a country from another country, it is called immigration and
when they leave that contry, it is called emigration.
Million Plus cities : Cities with a population of more than one million or 10 lakh.
Monsson : A complete reversal of winds over a large area leading to a change
of seasons.
Mountain : An upward projected features of the earth’s surface that rises to
high altitude and usually possesses steep slopes.
National park : A reserved area for preserving its natural vegetaion, wild life and
the natural environment.
Plain : An extensive area of flat or gently undulating land.
Plateau : An extensive elevated area of relatively flat land.
Plate Tectonics : The scientific concept that explains the movements of the crustal
plates.
Relief : The differences in elevation or the physical outline of the land surfac
or ocean floor.
Subsidence : In meteorology, it is the downward movement of the air. In geology,
it refers to the sinking of a portion of the earth’s surface.
Sedimentary rocks : Rocks composed of sediments and generally having a layered
structure.
Sex-ratio : Sex-ratio is defined as the number of females per thousands males.
Sub-Continent : A big landmass, which stands out as a distinct geographicl unit
from the rest of the continent.
Tectonic : Forces originating within the earth and responsible for bringing
widespread changes in the landform features.
Young mountains : The fold mountains formed during the most recent major phase
of folding in the earth’s curst
