front 1 Capitalism | back 1 An economic system where businesses are privately owned, and competition and supply-and-demand determine prices and production. |
front 2 Laissez-faire | back 2 A government policy of not interfering in business; letting the economy run on its own with little or no regulation. |
front 3 Marxism | back 3 A political and economic theory created by Karl Marx that argues that history is shaped by class struggle and that workers should overthrow capitalism and create a classless society. |
front 4 Proletariat | back 4 In Marxism, the working class—people who work in factories or do labor for wages. |
front 5 Bourgeois (Bourgeoisie, in Marxist context) | back 5 The middle/upper class that owns factories, land, and businesses. In Marxism, they are the group that exploits the workers. |
front 6 Utopian Socialism | back 6 An early form of socialism that imagined creating perfect, peaceful communities where people share property and cooperate instead of competing. |
front 7 Richard Arkwright | back 7 Inventor of the water frame, a machine that made spinning thread faster. He helped start factory-style production. |
front 8 James Watt | back 8 Improved the steam engine, making it more efficient. His invention helped power factories, trains, and ships. |
front 9 Adam Smith | back 9 Economist who wrote The Wealth of Nations. He supported capitalism and laissez-faire economics. |
front 10 Karl Marx | back 10 German philosopher who wrote The Communist Manifesto. He criticized capitalism and created the ideas of Marxism and communism. |
front 11 Friedrich Engels | back 11 Co-author of The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx. He helped explain how workers were mistreated during the Industrial Revolution. |
front 12 Robert Owen | back 12 A Utopian socialist who tried to build model communities with good working conditions, education, and shared responsibility. |
front 13 Thomas Malthus | back 13 Economist who believed population grows faster than food supply and predicted that famine and poverty were unavoidable unless population slowed. |
front 14 John Snow | back 14 A doctor who discovered that cholera was spread through contaminated water, not “bad air.” His work improved public health in cities. |
front 15 Michael Sadler | back 15 A British reformer who investigated child labor in factories. His “Sadler Report” helped lead to new child labor laws. |
front 16 Monoculture | back 16 Growing only one type of crop in a large area. This can be risky because if that crop fails, there is no backup. |
front 17 Potato blight | back 17 A plant disease that destroys potatoes. It caused massive crop failure in Ireland in the 1840s. |
front 18 Famine | back 18 A severe shortage of food that leads to widespread hunger and death. |
front 19 Emigration | back 19 Leaving one’s country to move to another. Many Irish emigrated to the United States during the potato famine. |