The Nation-State and Global Order: A Historical Introduction to Contemporary Politics, by Walter C. Opello, Jr. and Stephen J. Rosow

 

Glossary

 

Arquebus. A primitive handheld firearm.

Astrolabe. An ancient instrument for observing the position of celestial bodies.

Bailiff. The official in charge of a portion of the lord’s demesne called a bailiwick.

Bailiwick. The portion of the lord’s demesne under the jurisdiction of a bailiff.

Bolsheviks. The working-class party in Russia that seized power on November 6, 1917, declaring the new communist state in Russia.

Bourgeoisie. The estate in medieval Europe composed principally of merchants and artisans dwelling in towns. In modern capitalism it refers to the class that owns capital.

Bushido. The feudal Japanese code of chivalry that valued honor above life.

Canon law. Law of the Catholic Church.

Capitalism. The economic system based on the inviolability of individual private property, profit, wage labor, and the primacy of market exchange.

Chancellor. An official, usually a high-ranking clergyman, who wrote the king’s business letters and directed the work of his scribes, clerks, and messengers.

Christendom. The imagined community of Christian believers under the authority of the Catholic Church.

City-state. A territorially small, independent urban conurbation that constituted an autonomous political entity, such as ancient Athens and Sparta, the Hanseatic League cities, and the republican cities of northern Italy during the Renaissance.

Civic virtue. In Rome, the aristocratic idea that virtue involved looking after the affairs of the city of Rome in such a way as to transcend private interests. In modern republican theory, civic virtue refers to the obligation to put the public good ahead of private interests.

Civil law. Law that regulates the informal relationships of contract and exchange between private parties.

Cold War. The political, military, and economic competition for global hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991.

Comitatus. A Germanic band of warriors attached to a famous warrior to whom they pledged unswerving loyalty in exchange for gifts.

Common law. The body of law developed in England primarily from judicial decisions based on custom and precedent.

Communitarianism. A comporarary theory that certain states have overemphasized individualism and that politics should be based on shared values.

Conquistador. A leader of the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

Consul. Highest executive office of the Roman republic.

Cosmopolitanism. A movement that developed in the eighteenth century among intellectuals who believed that there exist universal principles of humanistic solidarity that transcend the borders of states, which are held to be responsible for ignorance, violence, and war.

Criollos (Creoles). Locally born administrators of the Spanish colonial empire in the Americas.

Crusades. Military expeditions instigated by popes and undertaken by Christian kings from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims.

Dioceses. The units of territorial administration into which the Roman Empire was divided by the Emperor Diocletian.

Diplomacy. The art and practice of conducting affairs among states through embassies and ambassadors.

Effective occupation. The doctrine set forth at the Berlin Conference (1884–1885) requiring that a colonial claim be occupied physically to be valid.

Enlightenment. The philosophical movement of the eighteenth century that questioned traditional doctrines and values through the use of reason and the scientific method.

Estates. Juridical groups during the medieval period to which rights, duties, and privileges were attached.

Extraterritoriality. The legal fiction that one state’s embassy located in another state is on the former’s sovereign territory.

Fief. An estate granted by a lord to a vassal from which sufficient income could be derived to clothe, arm, and sustain himself.

Fiscal policy. Policy relating to taxation, public revenue, or public debt.

Fronde. The rebellion of the nobility in France from 1648 to 1652, which sought to restore its feudal rights and privileges abolished by the crown.

Functionalism. An approach to political science that sees society as a balanced system in which roles, norms, and individual psychology function to create social and political order.

Gerrymandering. The manipulation of voting district boundaries in order to increase one outcome over another.

Guild. A medieval association of merchants and artisans created for protection, mutual aid, self-governance, and the regulation of occupations.

Heraldry. The practice of devising, blazoning, and granting of armorial bearings, and tracing and recording genealogies.

Homage. A ceremony by which a man acknowledges himself to be the vassal of another man by offering him fealty and military service in return for protection and the use of a fief.

Host. A medieval army composed of a temporary coalescence of armed knights called into military service by the king.

Immunities. The right to collect taxes, to dispense justice, and to coin money delegated by a king to his vassals.

Infrastructure. The permanent aspects of a state’s economy such as roads, bridges, canals, railroads, and airports.

Intendents. The administrative agents of fifteenth and sixteenth century France who collected taxes, supervised local administration, enforced the law, and provided justice.

Ius gentium (law of the nations). The customary law that regulated economic and political relations within the Roman Empire used to judge the various non-Roman peoples.

Jacobins. French radicals who placed the claims of equality for all citizens above all else.

Junkers. The landowning aristocracy in Prussia that formed the officer corps of the army.

Knight-errant. A knight who traveled in search of adventure in order to gain land, income, and a wife.

Latifundia. Large agricultural estates of the late Roman republic and early empire worked by slave labor; they were the precursors of the medieval manor.

Longbow. A bow about six feet long first used by the Welsh and capable of shooting 10 arrows per minute at targets 300 yards distant with great accuracy and penetrating power.

Magyars. A nomadic people from the steppes of Central Asia who attacked Europe in the ninth century.

Mercantilism. An economic system that developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that sought to increase the power of a state by strict state regulations of the entire economy and by policies designed to accumulate gold and silver, create a favorable balance of trade, and develop manufacturing.

Merchant law. Law that traveling merchants devised during the medieval period to facilitate and normalize trade across multiple feudal jurisdictions.

Monarchical absolutism. A variety of the absolutist state in which the power and authority of the crown are supreme.

Monetary policy. Policy relating to the money supply.

Nationalization. To grant control or ownership of industrial production to the state.

Natural law. The body of law derived by human reason from nature and binding on human society.

Natural rights. Rights considered to be rooted in the natural order of the world and ordained by God.

Pain du roi. Bread provided by the king of France to the beggars and vagabonds of Paris during the Middle Ages.

Pan-Africanism. A movement of the 1920s through the 1960s instigated by Afro-Caribbean and African intellectuals that encouraged unity among African peoples.

Parliamentary absolutism. A variety of the absolutist state in which the power and authority of the parliament are supreme.

Patria potestas. The nearly absolute power of the father that committed women to male guardianship as perpetual minors under Roman law.

Patriarchy. Social organization characterized by the supremacy of the father in the family, the legal subordination of wives and children, and the tracing of descent through the male line.

Patricians. Persons of wealth and cultivation who could trace their ancestry to one of the original clan heads appointed by Rome’s mythical founder, Romulus, to govern the city of Rome.

Pax Romana (Roman Peace). The order established by the Roman army throughout the Roman Empire.

Peninsulares. Administrators of the Spanish colonial empire in the Americas who were born in Spain.

Phalanx. A body of heavily armed infantry formed into close and deep ranks and files.

Pike. A weapon formed of a long wooden shaft with a steel point used by foot soldiers during the medieval period.

Plebeians. Common people of Rome.

Pluralism. An approach to political science that sees society as a diversity of social interests organized into pressure groups that produce an ordered and fair distribution of collective goods and services by pressuring the state to do what such groups want it to do.

Policy analysis. An approach to political science that draws on theories of organizational behavior and bureaucratic politics in order to understand governmental decisionmaking so that state programs can be more effectively and efficiently managed.

Poor relief. The system of relieving destitution in England by giving the poor money to supplement wages.

Positive law. The body of law made by the state.

Prefects. Roman provincial governors and officials appointed by Napoléon to govern the administrative départements of France.

Primogeniture law. Law that requires the oldest male child to inherit his father’s hereditary lands and title.

Proportional representation. An electoral system designed to represent in a legislature each political party in proportion to its actual voting strength in the electorate.

Public law. Law that establishes the rights and duties of the individual toward the state.

Rationalism. The theory that reason is in itself a basis for knowledge superior to and independent of all other ways of knowing.

Realist international theory. An approach to international relations that argues all states seek to maintain their sovereign territoriality against other states in a balance of power.

Reeve. A medieval English estate manager responsible for collecting revenue from the lord’s demesne.

Reformation. The sixteenth-century religious revolt against the Catholic Church that established the Protestant denominations.

Risorgimento. The nineteenth-century movement that created the Italian state.

Saracens. A derogatory term used by Europeans to refer to nomadic Muslim peoples from North Africa who invaded Europe in the eighth century.

Senate (Roman). The supreme governing body of the Roman Republic that represented the ruling aristocracy (patricians).

Serfs. Unfree tenants who tilled plots of land on the lord’s manor in return for military protection paid for by an annual rent in produce, labor, or money.

Shire reeve (sheriff). The medieval English official responsible for collecting the king’s revenue and maintaining his justice within a shire or county.

Social contract. A theory arising in the seventeenth century that argues all legitimate authority of the state derives from an original agreement among the people to accept the power of the sovereign.

Squire. Apprentice knight responsible for the maintenance of the knight’s equipment and the care of his horses.

Stare decisis. The legal doctrine developed in England of following precedents laid down in previous judicial decisions unless they contravene ordinary principles of justice.

State of nature. The supposed simple original condition of human beings. An element of social contract theory.

Statist theory. An approach to political science that views the state as an agent in itself, as an autonomous entity, institutionally separate from society, which can take independent action even against society’s wishes.

Steward. The official in charge of the great hall of the lord’s castle or manor house and the management of his demesne.

Stoicism. A philosophical doctrine developed by the Greeks that taught people to live in conformity to the natural order of the cosmos; this meant peacefully accepting one’s duties and responsibilities even if such acceptance involved great personal pain and sacrifice.

Total war. War that targets the entire social and economic infrastructure of a state and kills civilians indiscriminately.

Trace italienne. A low profile, thick, earthen-wall fortification capable of absorbing the shock of concentrated artillery fire.

Traditional societies. In modernization theory, societies characterized by small villages, subsistence agriculture, simple social structure, and particularistic behavior.

Transnational corporation (TNC). A corporation that, while maintaining its headquarters in one state, invests in other states where it builds factories and/or establishes subsidiaries in order to penetrate foreign markets.

Tribunate. A parallel executive to the consul composed of tribal representatives and designed to give the plebeians a voice in governing Rome by giving them veto power.

Vassal. A person under the protection of another who is his feudal lord and to whom he has vowed homage, fealty, and military support.

Vikings (Norsemen). Seafaring peoples from Scandinavia who attacked Europe in the ninth century.

Virtus. Roman political ideal of manliness as demonstrated by great deeds and accomplishments of the patrician class, especially in the Roman army.

 

The Nation-State and Global Order: A Historical Introduction to Contemporary Politics