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The History Channel - Encyclopedia Category: History and Culture > History Date & country: 02/12/2007, UK Words: 25833

Iron Cross
Medal awarded for valour in the German armed forces. Instituted in Prussia in 1813, it consists of a Maltese cross of iron, edged with silver. ...

Iron Curtain
In Europe after World War II, the symbolic boundary between capitalist West and communist East during the Cold War. The term was popularized by the UK prime minister Winston Churchill from 1946. An...

Iron Division
Name commonly given to elite troops of continental armies in World War I. The French Iron Division distinguished itself in the Battle of the Somme in 1916; the German Iron Division was composed of...

Iron Guard
Profascist group controlling Romania in the 1930s. To counter its influence, King Carol II established a dictatorship in 1938 but the Iron Guard forced him to abdicate in 1940. ...

Iron Triangle
In the Vietnam War, US name for a triangular area some 48 km/30 mi north of Saigon. By 1967 the Triangle had been overrun by Vietcong guerrillas, threatening Saigon and severely limiting US and...

Iron, Ralph
Pseudonym of the South African writer Olive Schreiner when she published her novel The Story of an African Farm (1883). ...

ironclad
Wooden warship covered with armour plate. The first to be constructed was the French Gloire in 1858, but the first to be launched was the British HMS Warrior in 1859. The first battle between...

Ironsides
Nickname of regiment raised by Cromwell in 1643 during the Civil War. It was noted for its discipline and religious fanaticism, and first won fame at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644. The nickname...

Iroquoian
Branch of the American Indian Macro-Siouan language family, formerly one of the dominant language groups of the northeast region of the USA and Canada. Iroquoian dialects were spoken in the lower...

Iroquois
Member of a confederation of American Indian peoples of northeastern North America formed about 1570. Known originally as the Five Nations, it included the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and...

Iroquois religion
Religion of the Iroquois American Indian peoples. They believe in twin forces, good and evil created by the birth of two twins, Ioskeha (good) and Tawiscara (bad). Humanity was created by Ioskeha...

irrationalism
Feature of many philosophies rather than a philosophical movement. Irrationalists deny that the world can be comprehended by conceptual thought, and often see the human mind as determined by...

irredentist
Person who wishes to reclaim the lost territories of a state. The term derives from an Italian political party founded in about 1878 intending to incorporate Italian-speaking areas into the newly...

Irving, David John Caldwell
(1938) English military historian, discredited for his denial of Nazi atrocities against European Jews in World War II. Arrested in November 2005 in Austria, w ...

Irving, Edward
(1792-1834) Scottish cleric. In 1823 he published For the Oracles of God and For Judgment to Come, in which he declared his belief in the second personal advent of Jesus Christ. His popularity waned as his...

Irving, Henry
(1838-1905) English actor. He established his reputation from 1871, chiefly at the Lyceum Theatre in London, where he became manager in 1878. He staged a series of successful Shakespearean productions,...

Irving, John Winslow
(1942) US novelist. His novels, usually set in the northeastern USA, incorporate themes of family, sexuality, alienation, and religion. His novels include The World According to Garp (1978, filmed 1982), a...

Irwin, James Benson
(1930-1991) US astronaut. As pilot of the lunar module during the Apollo 15 mission in 1971, he drove the first lunar roving vehicle, spending 18 hours on the Moon, travelling over 25 km/16 mi. He and David...

Irwin, Will (William Henry)
(1873-1948) US journalist who was an outstanding reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Sun, and McClure's Magazine 1901-07. He won renown for his knowledgeable coverage of the San Francisco...

Isa
Muslim Arabic name for the New Testament figure Jesus, regarded as a prophet in Islam. Muslims believe...

Isaac
In the Old Testament, a Hebrew patriarch, son of Abraham and Sarah, and father of Esau and Jacob. ...

Isaac (II) Angelus
(c. 1135-1204) Byzantine Emperor (1185-95 and 1203-04). He deposed Andronicus I to gain the throne. In 1195 his brother, Alexius, seized the throne and Isaac...

Isaacs, Jeremy
(1932) English television producer and television and opera administrator. His television career began with ITV in current affairs, and from there he went on to produce the historical documentary series...

Isaacs, Jorge
(1837-1895) Colombian writer. Son of an English Jew, he settled in Bogotá 1864 and began to publish poetry and fiction. Despite a career in public life, he is chiefly remembered for the famous romantic novel...

Isaacs, Rufus Daniel
(1860-1935) British Liberal lawyer and politician. As Lord Chief Justice he tried the Irish nationalist Roger Casement in 1916. He was viceroy of India 1921-26, and foreign secretary in 1931. ...

Isaacs, Susan
(1943) US novelist and screenwriter. The plots of her popular mysteries and adventure stories put women (usually suburban housewives) in the leading roles. Her novels Compromising Positions (1978) and...

Isaacs, Susan Brierley
(1885-1948) English educationist. A disciple of Sigmund Freud and believer in the enduring effects of early childhood experience, she was a powerful influence in the education of young children between the...

Isabella (I) the Catholic
(1451-1504) Queen of Castile from 1474, after the death of her brother Henry IV. By her marriage with Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469, the crowns of two of the Christian states in the Spanish peninsula cemented...

Isabella II
(1830-1904) Queen of Spain from 1833, when she succeeded her father Ferdinand VII (1784-1833). The Salic Law banning a female sovereign had been repealed by the Cortes (parliament), but her succession was...

Isabella of Angoulême
(died 1246) Queen of England 1200-16, as the second wife of King John. His loss of Normandy was popularly blamed on his infatuation with her, but this did not last. She was imprisoned in Gloucester 1214 until...

Isabella of France
(1292-1358) Daughter of King Philip IV of France, she married King Edward II of England in 1308, but he slighted and neglected her for his favourites, first Piers Gaveston (died 1312) and later the Despenser...

Isabey, Jean Baptiste
(1767-1855) French portrait painter. He was employed at Versailles, where he painted the portraits of many of the celebrities of his time. He later painted many leaders of the French Revolution, Napoleon and...

Isabey, Louis Gabriel Eugène
(1803-1886) French painter and lithographer. His landscapes and seascapes link him with the Barbizon School. He was the son of the miniature painter Jean Baptiste Isabey. ...

Isaeus
(c. 420-350 BC) One of the ten Attic Orators, born probably at Chalcis in Euboea. Having studied under Lysias he became `logographos`, a writer of forensic speeches for delivery by others, and in 366 he helped...

Isandhlwana, Battle of
In the Anglo-Zulu War, Zulu victory over British forces on 22 January 1879 about 160 km/100 mi north of Durban. Only about 350 troops of the original contingent...

Isard, Walter
(1919) US economist. He was the first modern economist to apply the economics of location, also known as `regional science`, to industry. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania 1956-71 before...

Isauria
Ancient district of Asia Minor. In Roman times it was a centre of piracy. Subdued by the Roman soldier and politician Publius Servilius in 78 BC, Isauria soon rebelled and was not thoroughly...

Isaurian
8th-century Byzantine imperial dynasty, originating in Asia Minor. Members of the family had been employed as military leaders by the Byzantines, and they gained great influence and prestige as a...

ISBN
Code number used for ordering or classifying book titles. Every book printed now has a number on its back cover or jacket, preceded by the letters ISBN. It is a code to the country of origin and the...

Isenbrant, Adriaen
(died 1551) Flemish painter, active in Bruges. Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows (church of Notre Dame, Bruges) is a work attributed to him in which Renaissance detail conjoins with Netherl ...

Isenheim Altar
Altarpiece by the German painter Matthias Grünewald (1510-15), executed for the convent of the order of St Anthony at Isenheim, Alsace. It is a polyptych showing in its original complete form a...

Isham, Ralph Hayward
(1890-1955) US manuscript collector. A business executive, he devoted his leisure time to tracking down and acquiring manuscripts and papers of the English author James Boswell. He published an 18-volume...

Ishi
(c. 1860-1916) Yahi tribesman. The sole survivor of his tribe, he was found barely alive in 1911 and taken to live at the Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley, California. He was the subject of a book by the...

Ishiguro, Kazuo
(1954) Japanese-born British novelist. His novel An Artist of the Floating World won the 1986 Whitbread Prize, and The Remains of the Day, about an English butler coming to realize the extent of his...

Ishmael
In the Old Testament, the son of Abraham and his wife Sarah's Egyptian maid Hagar; traditional ancestor of Muhammad and the Arab people. He and his mother were driven away by Sarah's jealousy....

Ishtar
Mesopotamian goddess of fertility, sexual love, wedlock, maternity, and war, worshipped by the Babylonians and Assyrians, and personified as the legendary queen ...

Isidore of Seville
(c. 560-636) Spanish philosopher, theologian, writer, and missionary. His Etymologiae was the model for later medieval encyclopedias and helped to preserve classical thought during the Middle Ages. As archbishop...

Isis
Principal goddess of ancient Egypt; the daughter of Geb and Nut (Earth and Sky); and the personification of the throne of her brother-husband Osiris. She searched for the body of Osiris after he...

Iskander, Fazil Abdulovich
(1929) Georgian satirical writer. He attracted attention with Sozvezdie kozlotura/The Goatibex Constellation (1966), an effective satire on the bureaucratic control of agriculture....

Iskra
Unofficial organization within the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party, set up in 1900 by Vladimir Lenin, Yuly Martov, and Aleksander Potresov for the purpose of uniting the more orthodox...

Isla, José Francisco de
(1703-1781) Spanish satirist and Jesuit priest. He lampooned the ignorance of the Spanish priesthood in his novel Historia del famoso predicador Fray Gerundio de Campazas. The book was prohibited 1758 because...

Islam
Religion founded in the Arabian peninsula in the early AD 600s. It emphasizes the `oneness of God` (Arabic tauhid), his omnipotence, beneficence, and inscrutability. Its sacred book is the...

Islam ethics
Questions of right and wrong considered according to Islam. Islam teaches that the only God is Allah, and that it is a sin (known as shirk) to make other things or people equal to Allah by admiring...

Islamic architecture
The architecture of the Muslim world, highly diverse but unified by climate, culture, and a love of geometric and arabesque ornament, as well as by the mobility of ideas, artisans, and architects...

Islamic art
Art and design of the Muslim world, dating from the foundation of the Islamic faith in the 7th century AD. Having developed few artistic traditions...

Islamic medicine
Medicine of the Arab-speaking world (Spain, North Africa, Arabia, Turkey, and Persia, now Iran) from the foundation of Islam in the early 7th century to the beg ...

Islands of the Blessed
In Greek mythology, lands situated at the western end of the world, near Oceanus (the river believed to encircle the Earth), where heroes and other mortals favoured by the gods were sent to enjoy a...

Isles, Lord of the
Title adopted by successive heads of the MacDonald clan to assert their dominance over the Scottish highlands and the Western Isles, and independence from the king of Scots. James IV acquired their...

Isma'ili
Member of an Islamic group, the second-largest Shiite community in Islam (after the Twelver Shi'is)....

Ismail
(1830-1895) Khedive (governor) of Egypt 1866-79. A grandson of Mehmet Ali, he became viceroy of Egypt in 1863, and in 1866 received the title of khedive from the Ottoman sultan. He amassed huge foreign debts...

Ismene
In Greek mythology, the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta. ...

Isocrates
(436-338 BC) Greek rhetorician and one of the ten Attic orators. His fame principally rests on a political pamphlet, the `Panegyric`, in which he advocates Greek unity and supremacy. He was a professional...

isolationism
In politics, concentration on internal rather than foreign affairs; a foreign policy having no interest in international affairs that do not affect the country's own interests. In the USA,...

Isolde
In Celtic and medieval legend, the wife of King Mark of Cornwall who was brought from Ireland by King Mark's nephew Tristan. She and Tristan accidentally drank the aphrodisiac given to her by her...

Isonzo, Battles of the
Series of battles between Italian and Austrian forces 1915-17 on the front established along the Isonzo River. Despite repeated attacks and major operations by both sides, the front remained...

isotopic analysis
The analysis of ratios of the principal isotopes preserved in human bone in order to reconstruct ancient diet, based on the principle that different food categories (for example, marine resources)...

Isozaki, Arata
(1931) Japanese architect. One of Kenzo Tange's team 1954-63, his approach blends Western postmodernism with elements of traditional Japanese architecture. His works include Ochanomizu Square, Tokyo...

Israel
Country in Southwest Asia, bounded north by Lebanon, east by Syria and Jordan, south by the Gulf of Aqaba, and west by Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. Government Israel has no written constitution....

Israel
Ancient kingdom of northern Palestine, formed after the death of Solomon by Jewish peoples seceding from the rule of his son Rehoboam and electing Jeroboam as their leader. It is named after the...

Israel-Palestine peace process
Ongoing talks between Israel...

Israeli Labour Party
Moderate, left-of-centre Zionist party, which supports territorial compromise as a means of achieving peace with Israel's Arab neighbours. The party's roots go back to Mapai (the Israel Workers'...

Israeli Occupied Territories
Arab territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently occupied. These territories comprised the Gaza Strip and Sinai peninsula (captured from Egypt), the West Bank and...

Israëls, Jozef
(1824-1911) Dutch painter. In 1870 he settled in The Hague and became a leader of the Hague School of landscape painters, who shared some of the ideals of the Barbizon School in France. His low-keyed and...

issued capital
The nominal value of those shares in a company that have been allotted. The issued capital is equivalent to the amount invested, provided the issue has not been at a premium price. ...

Issus
Ancient town of Cilicia, Asia Minor, near the province's border with Syria. Here Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Persians under King Darius III 333 BC. ...

Issus, Battle of
Battle 333 BC in which Alexander the Great defeated the Persian king Darius III at the ancient port of Issus in Cilicia, about 80 km/50 mi west of present-day Adana, Turkey. Darius' family were...

Iswa
Alternative name for a member of the American Indian Catawba people. ...

Itagaki, Taisuke
(1837-1919) Japanese military and political leader. Involved in the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji restoration of 1868, Itagaki became leader of the people's rights movement. He was the...

Italia
Italian name of Italy. The ancient Greeks gave it first to the territory occupied by the Oenotri, the southern part of the `toe` of modern Italy, and later (after 272 BC)...

Italian
People who are native to inhabitants of Italy and their descendants, culture, and language. The language belongs to the Romance group of Indo-European languages. Italian is spoken in southern...

Italian architecture
Architecture of the Italian peninsula after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the earliest styles - Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic - the surviving buildings are mostly churches. From the...

Italian art
Painting and sculpture of Italy from the early Middle Ages to the present. In the 4th century AD Christian art emerged from Roman art, which was adapted to give expression to religious beliefs and...

Italian art museums
The great art collections of Italy are: in Florence, the Uffizi and Pitti galleries; in Rome, the Vatican and the gallery of the Palazzo Borghese; in Venice, the Accademia delle Belle Arti; and in...

Italian literature
The literature of Italy originated in the 13th century with the Sicilian school, which imitated Provençal poetry. Medieval The works of St Francis of Assisi and Jacopone da Todi reflect the...

Italian Wars
A series of conflicts from 1494 to 1559 between the leading European powers for control of the Italian states. The wars involved most of the Italian states, the papacy, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire,...

italic
Style of printing in which the letters slope to the right like this, introduced by the printer Aldus Manutius of Venice in 1501. It is usually used side by side with the erect Roman type to...

Italy
Country in southern Europe, bounded north by Switzerland and Austria, east by Slovenia, Croatia, and the Adriatic Sea, south by the Ionian and Mediterranean seas, and west by the Tyrrhenian and...

ITC
Abbreviation for Independent Television Commission. ...

Itford Hill
English Late Bronze Age settlement, near Newhaven, Sussex. Dating to approximately 1000 BC, it is one of the earliest settlements in Britain where the structure of the dwellings has been...

Ithaca
Greek island in the Ionian Sea, area 93 sq km/36 sq mi; population (1996 est) 3,700. Important in pre-classical Greece, Ithaca was (in Homer's poem) the birthplace of Odysseus, though this is...

Ithome
Fortress and mountain in Messenia, southern Greece. The fortress played an important part in the Messenian wars and rebellions waged against Sparta during the 8th, 7th, and 5th centuries BC. ...

itinerary
In ancient Rome, a list of the stopping places, with the distances from one to another, between two places of importance. An itinerary was made either in the form of a book or a...

Ito, Hirobumi
(1841-1909) Japanese politician, prime minister 1885-88, 1892-96, 1898, and 1900-01. He was a key figure in the modernization of Japan and was involved in the Meiji restoration of 1868 and in official...

Iturbide, Agustín de
(1783-1824) Mexican military leader (caudillo) who led the conservative faction in the nation's struggle for independence from Spain. In 1822 he crowned himself Emperor Agustín I. His extravagance and failure...

Iturea
District in ancient Syria, between Damascus in the south and the Lake of Tiberias in the northeast. Before the time of the emperor ...

Itzamna
In the religion of the Mayas, son of the supreme god Hunab-ku, and benefactor of humanity, to whom he introduced writing and cultivation. ...

Iulus
In Roman mythology, alternative name for Ascanius. ...

Ivan (III) the Great
(1440-1505) Grand Duke of Muscovy from 1462. He revolted against Tatar overlordship by refusing tribute to Grand Khan Ahmed in 1480. He claimed the title of tsar (Caesar), and used...

Ivan (IV) the Terrible
(1530-1584) Grand Duke of Muscovy from 1533. He assumed power in 1544 and was crowned as first tsar of Russia in 1547. He conquered Kazan in 1552, Astrakhan in 1556, and Siberia in 1581. He reformed the legal...

Ivan I
(1301-1341) Prince of Moscow from 1305, and grand prince from 1328. Cunning and economical, he began the process of consolidating Russian territories. Under him Moscow became the metropolitan see of the Russian...