Glossary — T

Glossary terms beginning with T.

Taean Work System: An industrial management system that grew out of the Ch’ngsan- ni Method (q.v.). Introduced in December 1961 by Kim Il Sung while on a visit to the Taean Electrical Appliance Plant, the Taean Work System applied and refined agricultural management techniques to industry. Higher level functionaries assist lower level functionaries and workers in a spirit of close consultation and comradery. Party committees control the general management of factories and enterprises and stress political or ideological work as well as technological expertise. The system allows for material incentives to production.
Tagalog: Large ethnolinguistic group indigenous to central and southern Luzon, particularly around Manila. The Tagalog language is the basis for Pilipino, the national language of the Philippines.
taiga: The extensive, sub-Arctic evergreen forest of the Soviet Union. The taiga, the largest of the five primary natural zones, lies south of the tundra (q.v.).
Tajikistani ruble: Beginning in 1995, currency of Tajikistan. In January 1996, exchange rate 284 rubles per US$1.
taka: Bangladesh’s unit of currency adopted in 1971, derives from the word tonka, the Iranian coinage used during the Delhi Sultanate (q.v.). In September 1988, the official exchange rate was US$1 equals Tk34.20. One hundred paisas constitute 1 taka; there are 1-, 5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, and 100-paisa coins and banknotes in 1-, 10-, 20-, 50-, 100-, and 500-taka denominations. Ten million takas equals 1 crore (q.v.) takas.; Source: Library of Congress
Talmud: Literally, teaching. Compendium of discussions on the Mishnah (the earliest codification of Jewish religious law, largely complete by 200 A.D.), by generations of scholars and jurists in many academies over a period of several centuries. The Jerusalem (or Palestinian) Talmud mainly contains the discussion of the Palestinian sages. The Babylonian Talmud incorporates the parallel discussions in the Babylonian academies.
Tamils: Ethnic group, predominantly Hindu, whose language is Tamil, a Dravidian language spoken by the Tamil minority in the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka; and which is the major regional language spoken in Tamil Nadu State, southeast India. Sri Lankan Tamils are descendants of settlers and invaders and are a native minority that represented approximately 12.6 percent of the population in 1981. Indian Tamils are descendants of estate laborers imported under British sponsorship to the island primarily in the nineteenth century, and represented approximately 5.5 percent of the population in 1981. The Indian Tamil population has been shrinking because of repatriation programs to Tamil Nadu.
Tannu Tuva: Uriankhai region of northwestern Outer Mongolia (q.v.); in December 1921, as a result of Soviet insistence, it became the Tannu Tuva People’s Republic, the independence of which was later recognized by Mongolia in the Mongolian-Soviet Treaty of Friendship of 1926. In 1944 it was annexed by the Soviet Union as the Tuvinian Oblast of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, and in 1961 it became the Tuvinskaya Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Tuvins (q.v.).
tariff: A tax levied by a government in accordance with its tariff schedule, usually on imported products, but sometimes also on exported goods. May be imposed to protect domestic industries from competitive imported goods and/or to generate revenue. Types include ad valorem, variable, or some combination.; Source: Library of Congress
Tariff Schedule 807 program: Refers to items 806.3 and 807 of the Tariff Schedules of the United States that allow the duty-free entry of goods whose final product contains a certain portion of raw material or labor value added in the Caribbean Basin.; Source: Library of Congress
tarikat (pl., tarikatlar): A Sufi order or lodge, usually headed by a teacher or master known as a seyh, in which devotees undertake a path of instruction toward spiritual perfection.
Tariqa: Muslim brotherhood.
tasseng: Administrative unit; territorial subdivision of muang (q.v.), subdistrict grouping of ten to twenty villages.
Tatar: Name of unknown origin, which first appeared in the eighth century. In the thirteenth century it became the European appellation for the Mongols, although the Mongols themselves had been fighting against the Tatars. From the fourteenth century, the name was applied to Turks living in the European parts of Russia, mainly in the khanates of Kazan and of the Crimea.
TBA.: Traditional Birth Attendant.
teff (eragrostis abyssinica): A cereal indigenous to Ethiopia, to which its consumption is almost entirely confined. It is the most widely grown grain in the highlands, where its flour is preferred in the making of the unleavened bread injera, the traditional form of cereal intake.
Tendaana: Mole-Dagbane Earth cult and shrine.
tenentismo: A reform movement among junior army officers that began in the early 1920s and played a significant role in bringing Getúlio Dorneles Vargas (president, 1930-45, 1951-54) to power.; Source: Library of Congress
tenge: Beginning in 1993, currency of Kazakstan. In January 1996, exchange rate sixty-four tenge to US$1.
terms of trade: Number of units that must be given up for one unit of goods by each party, e.g., nation, to a transaction. The terms of trade are said to move in favor of the party that gives up fewer units of goods than it did previously for one unit of goods received, and against the party that gives up more units of goods for one unit of goods received. In international economics, the concept of ""terms of trade"" plays an important role in evaluating exchange relationships between nations.; Source: Library of Congress
territory: See kray.
Teutonic Knights: In full, Knights of the Teutonic Order, an organization of German crusaders founded in Palestine in 1190. From their base in Prussia, consolidated the Eastern Baltic into a powerful feudal state in the fourteenth century, nominally as agents of the Roman Catholic Church. Expansion aroused hostility and revolts, which with Polish and Lithuanian support defeated the knights decisively at Grunwald in 1410. After rapid decline of military power and influence in the fifteenth century, disbanded in 1525.
That Luang: Most sacred Buddhist stupa in Vientiane and site of annual festival on the full moon of the twelfth month.
the Sudan: Historic term for the geographical region stretching across Africa from Cape Verde on the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea between 8o and 16o north latitude; characterized by savanna and semiarid steppe. Term derived from Arabic bilad as sudan (literally, land of the blacks). Not to be confused with Sudan, the country.
Theravada Buddhism: Literally, the Buddhism that is ""the way"" or ""doctrine of the elders."" Sinhalese called their beliefs Theravada. Their tradition, frequently described as Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle), preserves a clear understanding of the Buddha as a man who achieved enlightenment and developed monks as accomplished followers of his teachings. This is in contradistinction to the Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) Buddhism, which often treats the Buddha as a superhuman and fills the universe with a pantheon of enlightened figures (bodhisattvas) who help others achieve enlightenment. The Sri Lankans, with rare exception, speak only of Theravada Buddhism, of which there is no central religious authority.
Third International Theory: Major tenet of Qadhafi’s revolutionary ideology, which purports to offer nonaligned states what is regarded as the Third World political, economic, and social alternatives to Western capitalism and East European communism. Frequently seen as the Third Universal Theory, or simply the Third Theory.
Third Worldism: An ideology that began in 1947 in which mostly developing nations not committed to either the East or the West in the Cold War professed policies of ""neutralism"" and ""nonalignment."" Since the 1970s, Latin American states have moved increasingly from a position of political and economic alignment with the United States to one of sympathy with Third Worldism.; Source: Library of Congress
Thirty Years' War: Conventional name for a fifty-year struggle (1610-60) of various factions including Protestant nobles and French kings against the Holy Roman Empire (q.v.) and its ruling Habsburg Dynasty for control of parts of Europe, including the Baltic coast. The fiercest period of the war was 1618-48, hence the misnomer Thirty Years’ War.
Three Revolutions Team Movement: Inaugurated February 1973 as ""a powerful revolutionary method of guidance"" for the Three Revolutions (q.v.)-- ideological, technical, and cultural--stressed since the early 1960s. Under this method, the Three Revolutions teams are sent to factories, enterprises, and rural and fishing villages for on-the- spot guidance and problem solving in close consultation with local personnel.
Three Towns: Sudanese reference to the cities of Khartoum, Khartoum North, and Omdurman. Located in close proximity to the juncture of the White Nile and Blue Nile rivers, they form a single metropolitan area.
Titoist: A follower of the political, economic, and social policies associated with Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav prime minister from 1943 and later president until his death in 1980, whose nationalistic policies and practices were independent of and often in opposition to those of the Soviet Union.; Source: Library of Congress
to (do): Province, used in combined form, as Kangwoon-do for Kangwon Province, or Chungch’ong-pukto for North Ch’ungch’ong Province. There are eight mainland provinces and one island province in the Republic of Korea. Do, or to also means island, as in Cheju-do.
to dang: A party cell, the lowest organizational echelon of the Indochinese and later the Vietnamese Communist Party.
ton kilometers: The total number of tons of cargo conveyed via a given mode of transportation in a specified period of time.; Source: Library of Congress
Tonghak: Literally, Eastern learning, an indigenous religious movement founded by Ch’oe Che-u in the early 1860s, which spearheaded a popular, anti-foreign rebellion in 1894-95. Later renamed Ch’ondogyo (q.v.).
Tonghak (Eastern Learning) Movement: Refers to an indigenous religious movement founded by Ch’oe Che-u in the early 1860s that brought together elements of traditional Korean and Christian religious beliefs and was the antecedent of Ch’ndogyo (q.v.).
topping plant: A plant that removes only the lightest commodity from crude oil.
Torah: The first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; often called the Pentateuch or the Law of Moses. In a broader sense, the entire body of traditional religious teaching and study.
Total Defence: Singaporean national defense strategy calling for a small but well-equipped military force backed by trained reserves and an extensive civil defense organization.
township (xiang): The basic government administrative unit below the county level in rural areas. Townships existed before people’s communes were organized in 1958 and were reconstituted when production brigades and communes were disbanded during the period 1982-85. Each township has a people’s congress and an elected chairman. In the mid-1980s, townships were about the same size as the communes they had replaced. (See also county, people’s communes, productions brigades.)
transhumant: Transhumance is the seasonal movement of livestock along well-established routes by herders or by an ethnic group as a whole.
Transjordanian: Narrowly, a citizen of the Amirate of Transjordan (1921-46). Generally, a Muslim or Christian native of the region east of the Jordan River-Dead Sea-Gulf of Aqaba line and within the approximate boundaries of the contemporary state of Jordan, that is, of the East Bank (q.v.).
transmigration program: A voluntary rural resettlement plan that seeks to move large numbers of Javanese to Indonesia’s underpopulated Outer Islands (q.v.). Transmagrasi in Bahasa Indonesia (q.v.).
Transnistria (Transdnestria in English): From 1941 to 1944, a Romanian judet (province) encompassing the land between the Nistru and Pivdennyy Buh rivers in the German-occupied Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Currently, the region between the Nistru River and Moldova’s eastern border. In September 1990, Slavs in Transnistria proclaimed it the ""Dnestr Moldavian Republic"" (q.v.).
Transylvania (var., Transilvania): Region of northwestern and central Romania of triangular shape, bounded on the north, east, and south by the Carpathian Mountains and Transylvanian Alps and the homeland of roughly two million ethnic Hungarians.
Treaty of Rome 1957: Established the European Economic Community (EEC--also known as the Common Market).
Treaty of San Stefano: A treaty signed by Russia and the Ottoman Empire on March 3, 1878, concluding the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. If implemented, would have greatly reduced Ottoman holdings in Europe and created a large, independent Bulgarian state under Russian protection. Assigned Albanian-populated lands to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. Substantially revised at Congress of Berlin (q.v.), after strong opposition from Great Britain and Austria-Hungary.; Source: Library of Congress
Treaty of Tlatelolco: On being ratified by Cuba in April 1995, the treaty took effect, binding the thirty-three Latin American and Caribbean signatory nations to the peaceful use of nuclear power. Under the treaty, Latin America became the world’s first region to prohibit nuclear weapons. The treaty covers all of Latin America, including the Caribbean, from the Mexican border with the United States to Antarctica. It bans the testing, use, manufacture, production, or acquisition of nuclear weapons. Each participating country must negotiate accords with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to facilitate verification.; Source: Library of Congress
Treaty of Tordesillas: Under a papal bull issued in 1493, Spain was awarded lands west and south of the line of demarcation, and Portugal received lands east and south. Dissatisfied with this arrangement, however, Portugal and Spain concluded the Treaty of Tordesillas of June 4, 1494, to establish a new line of demarcation 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, placing all of Africa, India, and later, Brazil, within Portugal’s sphere.; Source: Library of Congress
Treaty of Versailles: Signed at the Paris Peace Conference, June 1919, dictating peace terms ending World War I. Harsh terms imposed by the Allies on Germany were cited as a major factor in the rise of Adolf Hitler and genesis of World War II.