Abdicate: to step down from the throne or from other high office
Abolition: the end of legal acceptance of slavery
Absolute Monarch: a ruler who governs alone, unrestrained by laws or constitution
Affiliated unions: unions linked with other unions through a wider umbrella organisation
Animal Husbandry: Breeding and caring for livestock, usually in a farm environment.
Annex: to take possession of a territory
Artefact: an object made by humans
Artillery: large-callibre guns
Patents: a legally enforceable right tot make or sell an invention. Patents, usually granted by government, protect an inventor's idea from being copied.
Rural Population: people living in the countryside rather than in towns or cities
Urban population: people living in cities or larger towns
Subsistence farming: farming that provides only enough to satisfy the basic needs of life of the farmer or community.
Fallow: land left unplanted
Enclosure: consolidation of open fields and common land into single farms owned by one farmer or landowner
Black Death: a deadly disease that ravaged Europe, killing between a quarter and a half of the population. It continued to occur periodically over the next three hundred years
Famine: a severe shortage of food, leading to starvation, usually due to crop failures over a sustained period of time.
Scurvy: a disease caused by a poor diet, especially a deficiency of vitamin C.
Rickets: a softening of the bones, leading to the deformity of the limbs caused by a deficiency of calcium and vitamin D.
Infant mortality rate: a means of measuring the percentage of babies who fail to survive their first birthday
Cottage industry: small-scale manufacturing in which raw materials are processed in workers' homes.
Bell pit: a traditional form of coal mining in which a shaft is dug down to a seam of coal and then excavated outwards, with the coal raised to the surface using a winch and buckets
Blast furnace: a type of furnace into which air is forced to raise the temperature sufficiently to carry out the smelting of iron ore
Pig iron: the initial p