Feudal System or Feudalism, in which people were given land and protection by people of

higher rank, and worked and fought for them in return. For structuring society around
relationships derived from the holding of land in return for services. A military hierarchy in
which a ruler or lord offers mounted fighters a fief (medieval beneficium), a unit of land to
control in exchange for a military service. The individual who accepted this land became a
vassal, and the man who granted the land became known as his liege or his lord.

The Industrial Revolution, in modern history, is the process of change from an agrarian
and handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. These
technological changes introduced novel ways of working and living and fundamentally
transformed society.

Democratization, the process through which a political regime becomes democratic. The
explosive spread of democracy around the world beginning in the mid-20th century radically
transformed the international political landscape from one in which democracies were the
exception to one in which they were the rule.

Nation-state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise
concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group.