History glossary
collectives
shared agricultural or production units created by socialist reorganization of rural life.
- Category
- Economic unit
- Region
- China
- Date range
- especially 1950s-1970s
What it means
Collectives were shared agricultural or production units created as the Communist state reorganized rural life. In Mao's China, peasants were pushed from private farming into cooperatives, collectives, and later larger commune systems.
Related terms
Stories using this term
The Ethiopian Empire
From Tewodros II's reunification drive to Haile Selassie's overthrow, Ethiopia defended independence, expanded imperial power, modernised unevenly and held a unique place in modern African history.
The Rise and Spread of Buddhism
From the Buddha's awakening to Ashoka's patronage and missions to Sri Lanka, Buddhism grew from a northern Indian path into a faith with foundations across Asia.
The Abbasid Golden Age
From revolution and Baghdad to the House of Wisdom, science, medicine, trade and the fall of the city, the Abbasid Golden Age reshaped global knowledge.
The Holocaust
From legal discrimination to genocide, the Holocaust traces twelve years of escalating persecution that killed six million Jews and millions of others across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Nazi Germany
From Weimar collapse to WWII, Nazi Germany imposed totalitarian rule, expansion, and genocide.
Operation Barbarossa
From Hitler's ideological war in the east to Soviet survival before Moscow, Barbarossa turned expected blitzkrieg into prolonged attritional catastrophe.
The Roman Republic
From the expulsion of Rome’s kings to the rise of Augustus, the Roman Republic built a powerful mixed constitution, expanded across the Mediterranean, and ultimately collapsed into civil war and one-man rule.
The American Revolution and Early Republic
From colonial tensions to independence, this traces the birth and early struggles of the United States of America.
