Glossary

American Passages: A History of the United States, Brief, 1st Edition
Ayers, Gould, Oshinsky, Soderlund

OPEC: Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a group dominated by the oil-rich nations of the Middle East. Members raised the price of oil that precipitated the acute shortages in the industrialized world in the 1970s.

Okies: Dispossessed migrant tenant farmers and sharecroppers who left the Great Plains for the West Coast, mainly California. Known as Okies because so many of them were driven from Oklahoma by the harsh conditions of the Dust Bowl, they numbered several million.

Old Guard: The conservative group within the Republican Party, led by Senator Nelson Aldrich and Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon. They were closely tied to big business and were devoted to a nineteenth-century style of back-room politics.

Old Northwest: The region west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River.

Onontio: The term used by the Algonquian Indians to designate the governor of New France.

oligarchy: A society dominated by a few persons or families.

omnibus bill: Grouping a number of items together in an attempt to get them passed. Often used to enact controversial legislation.

open skies: Eisenhower's proposal that U.S. and Soviet disarmament be verified by reconnaissance flights over each other's territory.

open-door notes: A series of diplomatic notes sent to major powers asking each to open its sphere of influence in regions inside China to merchants of other countries and to respect China's sovereignty. In the second series of open-door notes, these countries were to respect China's political independence and territorial integrity.

open-field agriculture: A medieval system of land distribution used only in New England. Farmers owned scattered strips of land within a common field, and the town as a whole decided what crops to produce.