Sans-culottes(without knee-breeches) - Term referring to the ill-clad and ill-equipped volunteers of the French Revolutionary army.
Schleswig-Holstein - A region of northern Germany which Denmark surrendered to Otto von Bismarck in 1865.
Schutzstaffel (SS)(Protective Squadron) - A large paramilitary organization that belonged to the Nazi party.
Secularism - Concern with worldly ideas, as science and rationalism, instead of religion and superstition (Renaissance).
Self-denying Ordinance(1645) - A Bill passed by English Parliament, depriving members of Parliament from holding command in the army or navy, to promote professionalism in the armed forces; aided creation of the New Model Army (English Civil War).
Sepoy mutiny(1857?1858) - Rebellions against British colonial rule in India; caused the end of the British East India Company's rule in India, and led to a century of direct rule of India by Britain.
Sigmund Freud(1856-1939) - Austrian neurologist credited for psychoanalysis and the theory of unconscious motives.
Simony - The ecclesiastical crime of paying for offices or positions in the hierarchy of a church (Protestant Reformation).
Sir Richard Arkwright(1732-1792) - English inventor of the Water Frame, a water-powered cotton mill.
Sir Thomas More - Author of Utopia, a novel which extols the hypothetical ideal society, by the Northern Renaissance ideals of humanism and Christianity.
Social Darwinism - The application of Darwinism to the study of human society, specifically a theory in sociology that individuals or groups achieve advantage over others as the result of genetic or biological superiority.
Society of Jesus - A Roman Catholic Order founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola (Protestant Reformation).
Spanish Civil War(1936?1939) - The result of the complex political and even cultural rift in Spain.
Sphere of Influence - A territorial area over which political or economic influence is wielded by one nation.
Stalin, Joseph(1879-1953) - Bolshevik revolutionary who ruled the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin; responsible for the Great Purge and five year plans.
Subsistence - Production of food only in quantities needed for survival, without the creation of surpluses.
Sudetenland - The region inhabited mostly by Sudeten Germans in various places of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia; became part of Czechoslovakia in 1945.
Suez Canal(constructed 1854-1869) - A canal in Egypt between the Mediterranean and Red Seas, allowing access between Europe and Asia.
