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

machine politics
Organization of a local political party to ensure its own election by influencing the electorate, and then to retain power through control of key committees and offices. The idea of machine politics...

machismo
In Latin American culture, the idea of a tough, swaggering masculinity or virility. Since the resurgence of feminism in the 1970s, it has been applied to any man who projects an invulnerable and...

Machtpolitik
(German) power politics. ...

Machu Picchu
Ruined Inca city in the Peruvian Andes, northwest of Cuzco. This settlement and stronghold stands at the top of 300-m/1,000-ft-high cliffs above the Urabamba River and covers an area of 13 sq...

MacInnes, Colin
(1914-1976) English novelist. His work is characterized by sharp depictions of London youth and subcultures of the 1950s, as in City of Spades 1957, about West Indians and Africans in Britain, and Absolute...

Macintosh, Douglas Clyde
(1877-1948) US Protestant theologian. His modernist `empirical theology` sought to use scientific and philosophical methods to preserve the essence of Christian belief. His Theology as an Empirical Science...

MacIntyre, Alasdair (Chalmers)
(1929) Scottish philosopher. After holding several positions at British universities, he moved to the USA in 1969, teaching at Brandeis (1969-72), Wellesley (1972-82), Vanderbilt (1982-88), and Notre...

MacIntyre, Tom
(1931) Irish playwright. His drama is best known for its experimentation with dance, mime, and surrealistic imagery. Born in County Cavan, MacIntyre was educated at University College, Dublin, and first...

Mack, Julian (William)
(1866-1943) US jurist and community leader. He earned his law degree at Harvard University, and taught law at Northwestern University (1895-1902) and at the University of Chicago (1902-11). He served as a...

Mackail, Denis George
(1892-1971) English novelist and biographer. Among his best-known books are Bill the Bachelor 1922, Another Part of the Wood 1929, Life with Topsy 1942, Tales for a Godchild 1944, and It Makes the World Go...

Mackail, John William
(1859-1945) Scottish classical scholar. His works include a prose translation of the Eclogues and Georgics, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology 1890, and Latin Literature 1895. His lectures at Oxford were...

Mackay, Hugh
(c. 1640-1692) Scottish general. He fought for Charles II after the Restoration (1660), and then for France against Holland. He later attached himself to William of Orange (1689), accompanying him to England. Sent...

MacKaye, Percy (Wallace)
(1875-1956) US playwright and poet. He had a strong interest in pageants and in amateur community theatre. His pageant The Canterbury Pilgrims (1903) was made into an opera by Reginald De Koven in 1917. Several...

Macke, August
(1887-1914) German expressionist painter. He was a founding member of the Blaue Reiter group in Munich. With Franz Marc he developed a semi-abstract style, and became noted for his simple, brightly coloured...

Mackendrick, Paul Lachlan
(1914-1996) US classicist. He became widely known for a series of books -The Mute Stones Speak (1960), The Greek Stones Speak (1962), Roman France (1972), The Dacian...

Mackenzie, (Kenneth) Seaforth
(1913-1954) Australian novelist and poet. His novels include The Young Desire It 1937, Chosen People 1938, Dead Men Rising 1951, and The Refuge 1954. A collection of verse, Selected Poems, appeared in 1961. ...

Mackenzie, Alexander
(1822-1892) Canadian politician. In 1867, on the union of Canada, he was elected to the Dominion parliament, and became leader of the opposition in 1868. In 1873 he succeeded John...

Mackenzie, Alexander
(1764-1820) British explorer and fur trader. In 1789, he was the first European to see the river, now part of northern Canada, named after him. In 1792-93 he crossed the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast...

Mackenzie, Compton
(1883-1972) Scottish writer. He published his first novel, The Passionate Elopement, in 1911. Subsequent novels included Carnival (1912), a melodrama of stage life, the semi-autobiographical Sinister Street...

Mackenzie, George
(1636-1691) Scottish lawyer, author, and politician. He became king's advocate in 1677. As criminal prosecutor in the days of the Covenanters, he earned the nickname `bluidy Mackenzie`. He published works...

Mackenzie, Henry
(1745-1831) Scottish novelist and essayist. The Man of Feeling, an important sentimental novel, was published anonymously 1771 and attracted much attention. It was followed by...

MacKinnon, Catharine A(lice)
(1946) US legal scholar. Even before graduating from law school, she had begun to focus on women's social and legal inequality; expanding a student paper, she published a landmark study, Sexual Harassment...

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie
(1868-1928) Scottish architect, designer, and painter, whose highly original work represents a dramatic break with the late Victorian style. He worked initially in the Art Nouveau idiom but later developed a...

Mackintosh, Elizabeth
(1896-1952) Scottish novelist, dramatist, and biographer. As Gordon Daviot she wrote the plays Richard of Bordeaux (1933), which John Gielgud directed and starred in;Queen of Scots (1934), with Laurence...

Mackintosh, James
(1765-1832) Scottish philosopher. He wrote Vindiciae Gallicae (a reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France), a History of England (1830-32), a History of the Revolution in England in 1688...

Macklin (or M'Laughlin), Charles
(c. 1700-1797) Irish actor and dramatist. His portrayal of Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice at Drury Lane, London, in 1741 was significant. The part had long been played by a comedian, and Macklin...

Mackmurdo, Arthur Heygate
(1851-1942) English designer and architect. He founded the Century Guild in 1882, a group of architects, artists, and designers inspired by William Maclaren, Ian
Pen-name of Scottish writer John Watson. ...

MacLaverty, Bernard
(1942) Irish writer. Born in Belfast, MacLaverty worked there as a medical technician before studying English and eventually settling in Glasgow. His prose is often dedicated to vexed relationships between...

Maclay, William
(1765-1825) US politician. A Republican member of the Pennsylvania house (1807-08), he was the associate judge for the Cumberland District before going to the US House of Representatives (1815-19). Maclay...

Maclean, Alistair
(1922-1987) Scottish adventure novelist. His first novel, HMS Ulysses (1955), was based on wartime experience. It was followed by The Guns of Navarone (1957) and several other best-selling adventure novels....

Maclean, Donald Duart
(1913-1983) English spy who worked for the USSR while in the UK civil service. He defected to the USSR in 1951 together with Guy Burgess. Maclean, brought up in a strict Presbyterian family, was educated at...

Maclean, Fitzroy Hew
(1911-1996) Scottish writer and diplomat whose travels in the USSR and Central Asia inspired his books Eastern Approaches (1949) and A Person from England (1958). His other works include To the Back of Beyond...

MacLeish, Archibald
(1892-1982) US poet. He made his name with the long narrative poem Conquistador (1932), which describes Cortés' march to the Aztec capital, but his later plays in verse, Panic (1935) and Air Raid (1938), deal...

MacLellan, Robert
(1907) Scottish playwright. His plays are well constructed with a strong historical sense and good characterization, but because they are written in Scots have had only a limited readership. They include...

MacLennan, (John) Hugh
(1907-1990) Canadian novelist and essayist. He has explored the theme of an emerging Canadian identity in realist novels such as Barometer Rising (1941) and Two Solitudes (1945), which confronts the problems of...

Macleod, Fiona
Pseudonym of Scottish novelist William Sharp. ...

MacLeod, George
(1895-1991) Scottish minister. He served with distinction in World War I. MacLeod became a Presbyterian minister and from 1938 was leader of the Iona Community, which became a centre of Christian unity. He was...

Macleod, Iain Norman
(1913-1970) British Conservative politician. As colonial secretary 1959-61, he forwarded the independence of former British territories in Africa; he died in office as chancellor of the Exchequer. ...

Maclise, Daniel
(1806-1870) Irish painter of historical subjects. He is remembered mainly for his series of portrait drawings of eminent literary men and women, 1830-38, and for the two frescoes in the House of Lords of the...

Macmahon, Arthur W
(1881-1980) US political scientist. A longtime teacher at Columbia University (1913-58), he cultivated the acceptance of public administration as an academic discipline. He served as an adviser on the Council...

Macmillan, (Maurice) Harold
(1894-1986) British Conservative politician, prime minister 1957-63; foreign secretary 1955 and chancellor of the Exchequer 1955-57. In 1963 he attempted to negotiate British entry into the European...

Macmillan, Daniel
(1813-1857) Scottish publisher. He became senior partner of a business founded in 1843, which was carried on successfully after his death by his younger brother Alexander (1818-1896). He was apprenticed and...

MacMullen, Ramsay
(1928) US historian. He taught at Yale University (from 1967). His many publications concentrated on social history and the period of late antiquity. They include Soldier and Civilian in the Later Roman...

MacMurrough, Dermot
(1110-1171) Irish ruler, king of Leinster 1126-66. He sought the help of the English king Henry II to return to power when he was deposed in a feud in 1166, and was instrumental in organizing the...

MacNamara, Brinsley
(1890-1963) Irish writer and dramatist. Born in Devlin, County Westmeath, MacNamara lived most of his life in Dublin and was long associated with the Abbey Theatre as an actor and director. His first novel The...

MacNeill, John (Eoin)
(1885-1945) Irish scholar and politician. He was minister of finance in the first Dáil (Irish parliament) in 1919 and minister for industries 1919-21. He supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty partitioning...

MacNeill, John Gordon Swift
(1849-1926) Irish politician. He secured the abolition of flogging in the Royal Navy. He also succeeded in obtaining recognition of the principle that a minister of the Crown must not be a director of a public...

Macomb, Alexander
(1782-1841) US soldier. He received a regular army commission in 1799, and then became one of the first to train at West Point and was promoted to the rank of captain after graduation. He served with the Corps...

Macon, Nathaniel
(1757-1837) US politician. A Republican, he represented the state of North Carolina in the US House of Representatives (1791-1815) and the US Senate (1815-28). A defender of slavery, he led the Republican...

MacOrlan
(1883-1970) French writer. He published volumes of stories, such as La Bête conquérante 1914; poems, collected in his Euvres poétiques 1946; and numerous novels, including La Cavalière Elsa 1921, La Vénus...

Macphail, Agnes
(1890-1954) Canadian politician. The first female member of the Canadian parliament, she championed the rights of farmers and worked hard for social and prison reform. Defeated at the polls after 19 years in...

Macpherson, James
(1736-1796) Scottish writer. He published Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland in 1760, followed by the epics Fingal in 1761 and Temora in 1763, which he claimed as the work of the...

MacQuaid, John Charles
(1895-1973) Irish churchman, Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin 1940-72. An influential commentator on social and moral questions, he had close links with the Irish prime minister Éamon de Valera. He took a...

macramé
Craft technique in which threads, yarns, or cords are knotted together to form an open textile structure. Traditionally practised by sailors, it is thought to have originated in the 13th century,...

Macready, William Charles
(1793-1873) English actor. He made his debut at Covent Garden, London, in 1816. Noted for his roles as Shakespeare's tragic heroes (Macbeth, Lear, and Hamlet), he was partly responsible for persuading the...

Macro-Siouan
Major American Indian language family of the USA and Canada. Its branches include the Caddoan and Siouan languages of the Great Plains, and the Iroquoian languages of the northeast. ...

macrobiotics
Dietary system of organically grown foods. It originates in Zen Buddhism, and attempts to balance the principles of yin and yang, thought to be present in foods in different proportions. ...

macroeconomics
Division of economics concerned with the study of whole (aggregate) economies or systems, including such aspects as government income and expenditure, the balance of payments, fiscal policy,...

MacRory, Joseph
(1861-1945) Catholic archbishop of Armagh, Northern Ireland, from 1928 and cardinal from 1931. He supported the creation of a Catholic Irish state and officially opposed the Irish Republican Army. Although...

MacSwiney, Mary
(1872-1942) Irish republican politician. Born in England, MacSwiney spent most of her life in Ireland. Following the death of her brother, Terence MacSwiney, Mary became a prominent republican leader and was...

MacSwiney, Terence
(1879-1920) Irish writer and revolutionary. In March 1920 he was elected Lord Mayor of Cork, following the murder of his predecessor by police. In August he was arrested for possession of a Royal Irish...

MacVeagh, Lincoln
(1890-1972) US publisher and diplomat. He entered publishing in 1915 and founded the Dial Press in 1923. He was ambassador to Greece (1933-41, 1944-47) and the first US ambassador to Iceland (1941-42),...

MacWhirter, John
(1839-1911) Scottish landscape painter. His works include June in the Austrian Tyrol, Spindrift (Tate Gallery, London), and various watercolours of Highland landscapes. Born in Slatford, near Edinburgh, he...

MAD
Abbreviation for mutual assured destruction, the basis of the theory of deterrence by possession of nuclear weapons. ...

Madaba
Historic town in Jordan, 32 km/19 mi southwest of Amman; population (1993 est) 74,900. It has a Byzantine mosaic depicting a map of the `Holy Land` (Israel). Northwest of Madaba is Mount Nebo,...

Madách, Imre
(1823-1864) Hungarian writer. Madách had a melancholy cast of mind, reinforced by the failure of the revolution of 1848. His greatest achievement is `Az ember tragédiája/The Tragedy of Man`, 1862, an...

Madagascar
Island country in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa, about 400 km/280 mi from Mozambique. Government The 1992 constitution provides for a president, elected by universal suffrage for a...

Madame Bovary
Novel by Gustave Flaubert, published in France in 1857. It aroused controversy by its portrayal of a country doctor's wife driven to suicide by a series of unhappy love affairs. ...

Madame Récamier
Unfinished portrait by the French neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David, begun in 1800. Juliette Récamier, wife of a rich banker, was then 23. The interior detail depicted reflects the...

Madani, Abassi
(1931) Algerian academic and politician. In 1989 he formed the Front Islamique du Salut (FIS), which was outlawed in the aftermath of the cancellation of the 1991 legislative elections. Accused of...

Madariaga, Salvador de
(1886-1978) Spanish author and diplomat. His works include Shelley and Calderón and other Essays 1920;`Don Quixote` 1934, an introductory essay;The World's Design 1938;Christopher Columbus 1939;Hernán...

Madden, Charles Edward
(1862-1935) British admiral. He took a prominent part in naval design under Lord Fisher when the Dreadnought was laid down. On the outbreak of World War I, he was appointed chief of staff to Admiral Jellicoe,...

Madden, Martin (Barnaby)
(1855-1928) English-born US politician. He was a self-made quarryman who opposed machine politics in Chicago, Illinois. He represented the state as a Republican in congress (1905-28), where he created the...

Maddox, Lester (Garfield)
(1915-2003) US state governor. A high school dropout, he ran the Pickrick Restaurant in Atlanta (1947-64), closing it rather than serve African-Americans. As Democratic governor of Georgia (1967-71), he...

maddrassah
In Islamic architecture, a theological school comprising a prayer hall, classrooms, and lodgings, often arranged around a central courtyard. ...

Madero, Francisco Indalecio
(1873-1913) Mexican liberal politician, president 1911-13. He took over the presidency from Porfirio Díaz after his resignation following political unrest. However, internal divisions and the continuing...

Madison, Dolley
(1768-1849) US first lady. After her first husband died, she married future US president James Madison in 1794. Extremely popular as first lady, she was a great asset to Madison's political career. In 1814 she...

Madison, James
(1751-1836) 4th president of the USA 1809-17. In 1787 he became a member of the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention and took a leading part in drawing up the US Constitution, earning him the title...

Madoc, Prince
Legendary prince of Gwynedd, Wales, supposed to have discovered the Americas and to have been an ancestor of a group of light-skinned, Welsh-speaking Indians in the American West. ...

Madog (fl. 1170)
Welsh prince. According to legend, he discovered America in about 1170, after he had fled Wales during a rebellion against his dynasty. A 15th-century poem first refers to him, but his discovery...

Madonna
Italian name for the Virgin Mary, meaning `my lady`. ...

Madonna of the Rocks
Title of two paintings, both of which have been attributed to...

Madrid, Siege of
In the Spanish Civil War, Nationalist siege of...

Maecenas, Gaius Cilnius
(c. 69-8 BC) Roman patron of the arts, and close friend and diplomatic agent of Augustus. He was influential in providing encouragement and material support for the Augustan poets Horace and Virgil. ...

Maecianus, Lucius Volusius
(lived 2nd century AD) Roman jurist. He held many offices under the emperor Antoninus Pius, and also under Marcus Aurelius, whose law tutor he had been. As governor of Alexandria he took part in the rebellion of Avidius...

Maekawa, Kunio
(1905-1986) Japanese architect. One of the pioneers of modern architecture in Japan, he was strongly influenced by the international style of the French architect Le Corbusier and placed a Brutalist emphasis on...

maenad
In Greek mythology, one of the women participants in the orgiastic rites of Dionysus; maenads were also known as Bacchae. ...

Maerlant, Jacob van
(1225-1291) Flemish poet. His translations of courtly romances reveal an artistry and technique superior to that of most renderings. Later he compiled encyclopedic manuals in verse on natural history, the...

Maes, Nicolaes
(1634-1693) Dutch painter. He painted scenes of everyday life and portraits. His early and most distinctive work, in the style of Rembrandt, includes The Idle Servant (National Gallery, London). Later, with a...

Mafeking, Siege of
Boer siege, during the South African War, of the British-held town (now Mafikeng) from 12 October 1899 to 17 May 1900. The British commander Col Robert Baden-Powell held the Boers off and kept...

Maffei, Scipione
(1675-1755) Italian tragedian and writer. His tragedy Merope 1713 was highly esteemed. He also wrote historical and literary works, notably Verona illustrata 1731-32. He was one of the founders of the...

Mafia
Secret society reputed to control organized crime such as gambling, loansharking, drug traffic, prostitution, and protection; connected with the Camorra of Naples. It originated in Sicily in the...

Magadha
Kingdom of ancient northeastern India, roughly corresponding to the middle and southern parts of modern Bihar. It was the scene of many incidents in the life of the Buddha and was the seat of the...

magazine
Publication brought out periodically, typically containing articles, essays, short stories, reviews, and illustrations. It is thought that the first magazine was Le Journal des savants, published in...

Magdala, Battle of
British victory on 13 April 1868 during the Abyssinian War at Magdala, a fortress on a mountain top (now known as Amba Maryam, Ethiopia) about 190 km/120 mi southeast of Gonder. The Abyssinian...

Magdalenian
Final cultural phase of the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) in Western Europe, best known for its art, and lasting from c. 16,000-10,000 BC. It was named after the rock-shelter of La Madeleine in...

Magdeburg
German cruiser. It was run aground by a Russian naval force in the Gulf of Finland in August 1914 and its code books retrieved intact. The salvage of these code books allowed the Allies to read...

Magdeburg, Sack of
During the Thirty Years' War, Imperial victory over the Swedes on 20 May 1631 at Magdeburg, Germany. The Swedes had captured Magdeburg in 1629, holding the city with a small garrison until an...

Magellan, Ferdinand
(c. 1480-1521) Portuguese navigator. In 1519 he set sail in the Victoria from Seville with the intention of reaching the East Indies by a westerly route. He sailed through the Strait of Magellan at the tip of...