Key Economic and Historical Terms of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Key Economic and Historical Terms
Economic Terms
Cartel: A temporary association between several companies in the same industry with the aim of eliminating competition and monopolizing the market.
Trust: A concentration or merger of several companies engaged in the same economic activity, creating a giant corporation. Its goal is to eliminate competition and dominate the market.
Holding: A finance company that controls the activities of other firms through the acquisition of all or a majority of their shares.
Monopoly: In the market, a company controls all or most of the product offering. The consumer is harmed because product prices are higher.
Public Corporation: A corporation whose owners are under social equity through securities or shares. Shares can differentiate themselves by their different values or by the different privileges associated with them, such as the perception of a minimum dividend. The shareholders do not respond with their personal assets to the company’s debts, but only to the amount of capital.
Business Banking: Institutions principally engaged in long-term operations and providing companies with the capital they need to create and develop. They are essentially funding bodies.
Historical Terms
Zaibatsu: Large corporations controlled by a few families (Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Mitsui) through a bank and leading companies in various industries (industrial, metallurgical, textile, and mining) and the construction of railroads.
Meiji: Means “light” or “bright.” It is used to designate the illuminated or enlightened government of Mutsu-Hito, from 1868 to 1912.
Anglo-Boer War: Armed conflict that pitted the British Empire against settlers of Dutch origin (called Boers) in South Africa and resulted in the extinction of the two independent republics that the latter had founded. The first took place between December 1880 and March 1881, and the second between October 11, 1899, and May 31, 1902. The Boers referred to the two wars as “wars of liberation.”
Moroccan Question: French pretension to establish a protectorate in Morocco and German opposition to it was a source of constant tension between the two powers, becoming one of the causes of the First World War.
Sepoy: Indian soldiers in the British army.
Acculturation: The missions and the spread of education imposed the primacy of the metropolitan language and threatened the indigenous culture, trying to raise awareness of identity.
Armed Peace: The continuing tensions between states through national and imperialist conflicts led each state to allocate a large amount of state capital to investment in the arms industry and army building. That led to a complex system of alliances in which nations were in conflict without being at war.
Eastern Question: The name given to the set of problems that arose during the 18th and 19th centuries as a consequence of the gradual weakening up to the final fall of the Ottoman Empire. The situation, particularly in the late 19th century, is presented under three aspects:
- The decline of the Ottoman Empire
- Christians in the Balkans
- Great empires
Weltpolitik: World politics. The strategy that was adopted in Germany in the late 19th century by Emperor Wilhelm II to replace the Realpolitik (politics of reality). It aimed to rank Germany as a major world power, equal to the rest of the imperialist powers.
Triple Alliance: Formed in 1882. The coalition was initially formed by the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the initiative of Bismarck, and Italy joined later. Its aim was to achieve a balance in Europe favorable to Germany, to isolate France diplomatically and avoid revenge for what happened in 1871, to protect the southern border of Austria, while Italy received assurances against a French attack.
Triple Entente: Formed by France, Russia, and the United Kingdom, it was established in 1907 through a series of agreements (Entente Cordiale, 1904). France and Russia signed a military pact in 1903, in which they agreed to mobilize their troops if any of the Triple Alliance attacked. In 1904, the United Kingdom and France signed the Entente Cordiale; France abandoned its ambitions in Egypt in return for British support for the aspiration of establishing a French protectorate over Morocco. This settled colonial rivalries between France and the United Kingdom, and in 1907, Russia joined, forming the Triple Entente.