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

Janata
Alliance of political parties in India formed in 1971 to oppose Indira Gandhi's Congress Party. Victory in...

Janata Dal
Indian centre-left coalition, formed in October 1988 under the leadership of V P Singh and comprising the Janata, Lok Dal (B), Congress (S), and Jan Morcha parties. In a loose alliance with the...

Jane Eyre
Novel (1847) by Charlotte Brontë. The orphan Jane becomes governess to the ward of...

Janin, Jules-Gabriel
(1804-1874) French critic and novelist. He made his reputation by dramatic criticisms in the Journal des débats. His L'Ane mort et la femme guillotinée 1829 was a clever parody of Victor Hugo. This was...

Janis, Sidney
(1896-1989) US art dealer and author. From 1939 and devoted himself to collecting contemporary and primitive art. Later he specialized in the work of abstract expressionists and established the Sidney Janis...

janissary
Bodyguard of the Ottoman sultan, the Turkish standing army from the late 14th century until 1826. Until the 16th century janissaries were Christian boys forcibly converted to Islam; after this time...

Janmashtami
Hindu festival held in celebration of the birth of Krishna, the eighth avatar (incarnation) of the Hindu god Vishnu. The festival falls on the eighth day of the dark half of the month Bhadrapada...

Janmastami
In the Hindu calendar, the birthday of Krishna. One of the major Hindu festivals, it falls in the Hindu month of Julan (around August) and is a time of fasting followed by feasting, often...

Jansenism
Christian teaching of Cornelius Jansen, which divided the Roman Catholic Church in France in the mid-17th century. Emphasizing the more predestinatory approach of St Augustine of Hippo's teaching,...

Janssens van Nuyssen, Abraham
(1575-1632) Flemish painter. He worked in the style of Peter Paul Rubens, painting religious and allegorical subjects. In Rome (1598-1601), he developed a dramatic use of light and...

Januarius, St
Early Christian martyr and patron saint of Naples, Italy. Legend relates that he was bishop of Benevento and that he suffered martyrdom under the Roman emperor Diocletian. Two phials of his blood...

Janus
In Roman mythology, the god of all openings, including doorways and passageways, and the beginning of the day, month, and year. January was dedicated to him. He is represented as having two faces,...

Japan
Country in northeast Asia, occupying a group of islands of which the four main ones are Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku. Japan is situated between the Sea of Japan (to the west) and the north...

Japanese
Inhabitants of Japan; people of Japanese culture or descent. Japan is an unusually homogeneous society, which has always been adept at assimilating influences from other cultures but has not readily...

Japanese architecture
The buildings of Japan, notably domestic housing, temples and shrines, castles, and modern high-rises. Traditional Japanese buildings were made of wood with sliding doors, screens, and paper...

Japanese art
Early Japanese art was heavily influenced by China and Korea. Like other Far Eastern countries, Japanese art represented nature from a more spiritual perspective rather than pursuing scientific...

Japanese literature
Prose, poetry, and drama of Japan. Characteristic of the classical literature is the intermingling of prose and poetry, the forms of the latter being determined by the number...

Japanese print
See ukiyo-e (Japanese `pictures of the floating world`). ...

Japanese religions
Japan is dominated by two religions:Shinto and various forms of Japanese Buddhism. Most Japanese, while saying they are not religious, will practise elements of both religions at appropriate times...

Jarash
Modern name of ancient Gerasa, an ancient city 90 km/56 mi from Jerusalem. ...

Jarmo
Prehistoric village site near Sulaimaniya, Iraq. Excavation at the site has revealed an important Neolithic culture dated by radiocarbon to between 4950 BC and 7090 BC. Traces of domestic goats and...

Jarrell, Randall
(1914-1965) US poet and literary critic. His war poems attracted national attention in the 1940s;The Woman at the Washington Zoo 1960 won a National Book Award. Poetry and the Age 1953, a reevaluation of modern...

Jarrow Crusade
In Britain, march in 1936 from Jarrow to London, protesting at the high level of unemployment following the closure of Palmer's shipyard in the town. The march was led by Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson,...

Jarry, Alfred
(1873-1907) French satiric dramatist. His grossly farcical Ubu Roi (1896) foreshadowed the Theatre of the Absurd and the French Surrealist movement in its freedom of staging and subversive humour. ...

Jaruzelski, Wojciech Witold
(1923) Polish army general, appointed first secretary of the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) in 1981. He was responsible for the imposition of martial law in Poland in December 1981. He was prime...

Jarves, James Jackson
(1818-1888) US editor, art critic, and collector. He was the editor of the first weekly newspaper in the Hawaiian Islands, Polynesian 1840-48. In the 1850s he settled in Florence, Italy, where he collected...

Jashar
Lost poetical work of national songs twice quoted in the Old Testament (in Joshua 10:13, which tells of Joshua commanding the Sun and Moon to stand still, and in 2 Samuel 1:18, David's lament over...

Jason
In Greek mythology, the leader of the Argonauts who sailed in the Argo to Colchis in search of the Jaspers, Karl Theodor
(1883-1969) German philosopher, often described as an existentialist. His voluminous writings are filled with highly subjective paraphrases of the great philosophers, followed by appeals to the readers to be...

Jastrow, Marcus (Mordechai)
(1829-1903) Polish-born US rabbi and scholar. He went to the USA in 1866 as rabbi of the Rodeph Shalom congregation in Philadelphia. In 1867, in support of Conservative Judaism, he helped found and then...

Jat
An ethnic group living in Pakistan and northern India, and numbering about 11 million; they are the largest group in northern India. The Jat are predominantly farmers. They speak Punjabi, a language...

Jataka
Collections of Buddhist legends compiled at various dates in several countries; the oldest and most complete has 547 stories. They were collected before AD 400. They give an account of previous...

jati
In Hinduism, caste into which a Hindu is born. ...

Java Sea, Battle of the
In World War II, Japanese naval victory over Allied forces attempting to prevent the invasion of Java in 27 February 1942. Their victory allowed the Japanese a free run in the waters around Java and...

Javanese
The largest ethnic group in the Republic of Indonesia. There are more than 50 million speakers of Javanese, which belongs to the western branch of the Austronesi ...

Javits, Jacob Koppel
(1904-1986) US senator. A liberal Republican, he served a district of New York City in the US House of Representatives 1947-54, as New York state attorney general 1954-57, and in the US Senate 1957-81....

Jawara, Dawda Kairaba
(1924) Gambian politician, prime minister 1965-70 and president 1970-94. After entering politics in 1960 he progressed rapidly, becoming minister of education and then premier in 1962. Following full...

Jawlensky, Alexei von
(1864-1941) Russian painter. He was a major figure in German expressionism. Like his close friend Kandinsky, he was influenced by fauvism and Russian folk art. He reached his most distinctive style in 1908-10...

Jaworski, Leon
(1905-1982) US lawyer who in 1925 was the youngest person ever admitted to the Texas bar. In 1931 he joined the Houston firm that became Fulbright & Jaworski. During and after World War II, as chief of the war...

Jay, John
(1745-1829) US diplomat and jurist, a member of the Continental Congress 1774-89 and its president in 1779. With Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, he negotiated the Peace of Paris in 1783, which concluded the...

Jay, Margaret Ann
(1939) British Labour minister for women and leader of the House of Lords 1998-2001. Jay, created a life peer in 1992, was principal opposition spokesperson on health in the House of Lords 1995-97 and...

Jayawardene, Junius Richard
(1906-1996) Sri Lankan politician. Leader of the United Nationalist Party from 1973, he became prime minister in 1977 and the country's first president 1978-88. Jayawardene embarked on a free-market...

jayhawk
During the American Civil War, a pro-Union, anti-slavery guerrilla. Especially active in Kansas and Missouri, the jayhawks were notorious for their ruthless methods, especially thieving,...

Jazz Age
The hectic and exciting 1920s in the USA, when `hot jazz` became fashionable as part of the general rage for spontaneity and social freedom. The phrase is attributed to the...

Jeanne d'Albret
(1528-1572) Queen of Navarre. She married Antoine de Bourbon, duke of Vendôme, and their son, Henry, became Henry IV, king of France. ...

Jefferies, (John) Richard
(1848-1887) English naturalist and writer. His books on the countryside include Gamekeeper at Home (1878), The Life of the Fields (1884), and his best-known collection of essays,...

Jeffers, (John) Robinson
(1887-1962) US poet. He wrote free verse and demonstrated an antagonism to human society. His collected volumes include Tamar and Other Poems 1924, The Double Axe 1948, and Hungerfield and Other Poems 1954. ...

Jefferson, Joseph
(1829-1905) US actor. In a career that spanned 71 years he became America's preeminent comedian, describing his own profile as `pure nutcracker type`. In 1856 he visited Europe, then returned to join Laura...

Jefferson, Martha
(1748-1782) US first lady. She was the wife of Thomas Jefferson, being a young widow when she married him in 1772. Her premature death left Jefferson devastated; it was said he promised her he would never marry...

Jeffrey, Richard (Carl)
(1926) US philosopher and logician. He taught engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1959-60 and philosophy at Stanford 1960-64, City College of New York 1964-67, and the University of...

Jeffrey, William
(1896-1946) Scottish poet. At first a Romantic, his work has a mystical vein reminiscent of William Blake. Later he associated himself with the modern Scottish renaissance. The best-known of his works include...

Jehosophat
4th king of Judah c. 873-c. 849 BC; he allied himself with Ahab, king of Israel, in the war against Syria. ...

Jehovah
In the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the name of God, revealed to Moses; in Hebrew texts it is represented by the letters YHVH (without the vowels `a o a`) because it was regarded as...

Jehovah's Witness
Member of a religious organization originating in the USA in 1872 under Charles Taze Russell (1852-1916). Jehovah's Witnesses attach great importance to Christ's second coming, which Russell...

Jehu
(c. 842-815 BC) King of Israel. He led a successful rebellion against the family of Ahab and was responsible for the death of Jezebel. ...

Jekyll and Hyde
Two conflicting sides of a personality, as in the novel by the Scottish writer R L Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), where the good Jekyll, by means of a potion,...

Jekyll, Gertrude
(1843-1932) English landscape gardener and writer. She created over 300 gardens, many in collaboration with the architect Edwin Lutyens. In her books, she advocated colour design in garden planning and natural...

Jelavich, Charles
(1922) US historian. Working both nationally and internationally to promote Slavic studies, he served on the US Committee on International Exchange of Persons 1971-74, was on...

Jellacic, Josef, Baron Jellacic
(1801-1859) Croatian general and administrator. An ardent nationalist, he was appointed Ban of Croatia in 1848 and led his troops against the Hungarians at a critical point during the revolution. He proved an...

Jellalabad, Battle of
Afghan siege in 1841 of isolated British outpost at Jellalabad (now Jalalabad) about 130 km/80 mi east of Kabul. The siege was lifted after five months when a British counterattack routed the...

Jellett, Mainie
(1897-1944) Irish painter, a pioneer and key figure in the promotion of modern art in Ireland. In an international context she is remarkable for being a woman in this role. Born in Dublin, Jellett developed her...

Jellicoe, Geoffrey Alan
(1900-1996) English architect, landscape architect, and historian. His contribution to 20th-century thinking on landscapes and gardens has been mainly through his writings, notably The Landscape of Man...

Jellicoe, John Rushworth
(1859-1935) British admiral who commanded the Grand Fleet 1914-16 during World War I; the only action he fought was the inconclusive battle of ...

Jena, Battle of
In the Napoleonic Wars, comprehensive French victory over the combined Prussian and Saxon armies on 14 October 1806 at Jena, Germany, 90 km/56 mi southwest of Leipzig. Prussian and Saxon losses...

Jencks, Charles
(1939) US architect and architectural theorist. He popularized the term `postmodern architecture` through his book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1984). He is the author of many other...

Jenkins, (David) Clive
(1926-1999) Welsh trade union leader. Jenkins was well known as a militant negotiator and a fluent controversialist, and as an advocate of British withdrawal from the European Economic Community. He was a...

Jenkins, Robert
(lived 1731) British sea captain. He appeared before the House of Commons and produced what he claimed was his ear which, he alleged, had been cut off by the Spaniards who had boarded his vessel off Havana in...

Jenkins's Ear, War of
War in 1739 between Britain and Spain, arising from Britain's illicit trade in Spanish America; it merged into the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). The name derives from the claim of...

Jenkinson, Anthony
(died 1611) English merchant and sea captain. He visited Asia Minor and North Africa in 1546, and in 1557 was appointed agent of the Muscovy Company. He travelled to Bokhara (1558-59), and was commissioned to...

Jenkinson, Charles Hilary
(1882-1961) British archivist. He entered the public record office in 1906 and was Deputy Keeper of the Records and Keeper of the Land Revenue Records (1947-54). As adviser on archives to the War Office, he...

Jenner, Edward
(1749-1823) English physician who pioneered vaccination. In Jenner's day, Jenner, Henry (Gwas Myhal)
(1849-1934) English poet. He attempted to revive Cornish as a literary language, and in 1904 published a handbook of the Cornish language. ...

Jennewein, Carl Paul
(1890-1980) German-born US sculptor who specialized in stylized and decorative sculptures, such as The Greek Dance 1926. In 1963 he became president of Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina, a sculpture garden...

Jenney, William Le Baron
(1832-1907) US architect and engineer. He founded the Chicago school of architecture, pioneering the development of steel-frame construction in prototype skyscrapers like the Home Insurance Building 1884-85...

Jennings, Elizabeth Joan
(1926) English poet. Her poems are concerned with personal subjects, written in a plain, traditional style. Particularly well known are those which describe her experiences of a nervous breakdown, while...

Jennings, William Ivor
(1903-1965) English lawyer. He was called to the Bar in 1925 and took silk in 1949. His published works on the British constitution include The Law and the Constitution, Cabinet Government, Parliament, and...

Jensen, Jens
(1860-1951) Danish-born US landscape architect. He was superintendent of Humboldt Park, a position he held until 1900. Creating the `prairie style of landscape design`, he distributed local plants along...

Jensen, Johannes Vilhelm
(1873-1950) Danish novelist, poet, and essayist. His most important works are the short stories of rural life collected in Himmerlands historier (1898-1910); the historical novel interwoven with poetry and...

Jenson, Nicolas
(1420-1480) French printer, active in Venice from about 1470. He experimented with a roman typeface (first used in Strasbourg and Rome by 1467) following a littera antiqua script. In the following decade he...

Jerablus
Ancient Syrian city, adjacent to Carchemish on the River Euphrates. ...

Jerash
Town in Jordan, 48 km/30 mi north of Amman; population (2001 est) 25,600. One of the best preserved Roman provincial cities, it is a 2nd-century Greco-Roman frontier town complete with original...

Jeremiah
(lived 7th-6th century BC) Old Testament Hebrew prophet, whose ministry continued from 626 to 586 BC. He was imprisoned during Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem on suspicion of intending to desert to the enemy. On the...

Jericho
Town in the Jordan valley, west of the River Jordan and north of the Dead Sea, 24 km/15 mi northeast of Jerusalem; population (1995 est) 25,000. The site of the old city is the centre of a fertile...

Jeroboam
(lived 10th century BC) First king of Israel (c. 922-901 BC) after it split away from the kingdom of Judah. ...

Jerome of Prague
(c. 1370-1416) Bohemian Church reformer. Little is known of his early years; he is said to have belonged to a noble Bohemian family and to have been a little younger than his friend, fellow reformer John Huss. He...

Jerome, Jerome K(lapka)
(1859-1927) English journalist and writer. His works include the novel Three Men in a Boat (1889), a humorous account of a trip on the Thames from Kingston to Oxford; the humorous essays ` ...

Jerome, St
(c. 340-420) One of the early Christian leaders and scholars known as the Fathers of the Church. His Latin versions of the Old and New Testaments form the basis of the Roman Catholic Vulgate. He is usually...

Jerpoint Abbey
One of the best-preserved abbey ruins in Ireland and the most interesting of the early Cistercian houses, near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Republic of Ireland. It has the tallest tower of any...

Jerrold, Douglas
(1893-1964) English author and editor. He was editor of the English Review 1930-36 and the New English Review from 1945. His books include two novels, The Truth About Quex 1927...

Jerrold, Douglas William
(1803-1857) English author and dramatist. His nautical play Black-eyed Susan 1829 was followed by many others, including Time Works Wonders 1845. When Punch was founded he joined the staff and wrote Mrs...

Jerusalem
Ancient city of Palestine, 762 m/2,500 ft above sea level, situated in hills 55 km/34 mi from the Mediterranean, divided in 1948 between Jordan and the new republic of Israel; area (pre-1967) 37.5...

Jervis Bay
Armed British merchant ship of World War II, sunk by the German battleship Admiral Scheer while protecting a convoy of merchant ships in the North Atlantic in November 1940. The Jervis Bay's Captain...

Jervis, John
(1735-1823) English admiral who secured the blockage of Toulon, France, in 1795 during the Revolutionary Wars, and the defeat of the Spanish fleet off Cape St Vincent in 1797, in which Admiral Nelson played a...

Jeschonneck, Hans
(1899-1943) German air force general. Selected by Goering to help establish the Luftwaffe in the 1930s, he became Chief of Air Staff 1939, but turned out to have been over-promoted. A sound enough pilot and...

Jesse window
Stained glass window displaying the `Tree of Jesse`, a genealogical tree showing the descent of Christ from the house of David, the son of Jesse. There are medieval examples in the cathedrals of...

Jesse, F(riniwyd) Tennyson
(1889-1958) English novelist. Her books include The Milky Way 1913, The White Riband 1921, Moonraker 1927 (about a female pirate), Tom Fool 1926 (a Cornish historical novel), and A Pin to See the Peepshow 1934....

Jessup, Philip Caryl
(1897-1986) US lawyer and government official. He helped in planning post-World War II relief, in founding the United Nations and Israel, and in ending the Berlin blockade. He was accused by Joseph McCarthy...

jest book
Compilation of witty sayings and practical jokes. These might be ascribed to a particular person or collected from various sources. Jest books were popular in England from the 16th century, and some...

Jesuit
Member of the largest and most influential Roman Catholic religious order founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534, with the aims of protecting Catholicism against the Reformation and carrying out...

Jesus
(c. 6 BC-c.AD 30) Hebrew religious teacher on whose teachings Christianity...