P

• Pacific Rim vast region of nations, including countries in Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Americas, that border the Pacific Ocean

• pacifism opposition to all war

• paddy rice field

• pagoda multistoried Buddhist temple with eaves that curve up at the corners

• Paleolithic Period the era of prehistory that lasted from at least 2 million B.C. to about 9000 B.C.; also called the Old Stone Age

• Pan-Africanism movement which began in the 1920s that emphasized the unity and strength of Africans and people of African descent around the world

• Panama Canal man-made waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans

• Pan-Arabism movement in which Arabs sought to unite all Arabs into one state

• pandemic spread of a disease across a large area, country, continent, or the entire world

• papal supremacy the claim of medieval popes that they had authority over all secular rulers

• Parthenon the chief temple of the Greek goddess Athena on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece

• papyrus plant used to make a paper-like writing material in ancient Egypt

• Parliament the legislature of England, and later of Great Britain

• parliamentary democracy a form of government in which the executive leaders are chosen by and responsible to the legislature, are also members of it

• partition a division into pieces

• partnership a group of merchants who joined together to finance a large-scale venture that would have been too costly for any individual trader

• pasha provincial ruler in the Ottoman empire

• paternalistic the system of governing a country as a father would a child

• patriarch in the Roman and Byzantine empires, highest church official in a major city

• patriarchal relating to a society in which men hold the greatest legal and moral authority

• patrician in ancient Rome, member of the landholding upper class

• patrilineal term for a family organization in which kinship ties are traced through the father

• patron a person who provides financial support for the arts

• Peace of Westphalia series of treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War

• penal colony place where people convicted of crimes are sent

• peninsulare member of the highest class in Spain's colonies in the Americas

• peon worker forced to labor for a landlord in order to pay off a debt

• peonage system by which workers owe labor to pay their debts

• perestroika a Soviet policy of democratic and free-market reforms introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s

• personal computer a small computer meant to be used by individuals or small businesses

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