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

Neizvestny, Ernst Iosifovich
(1925) Russian artist and sculptor. He famously challenged the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 about the nature of fine art and eventually left the country in 1976, emigrating to the USA. His...

Nekrasov, Nikolai Alekseevich
(1821-1878) Russian poet and publisher. He espoused the cause of the freeing of the serfs and identified himself with the peasants in such poems as `Who Can Live Happy in Russia?` 1876. ...

Nelligan, Emile
(1879-1941) French-Canadian poet. He wrote all his poetry between the ages of 16 and 20, and spent the last 42 years of his life in lunatic asylums, where he continued writing, but only fragments and...

Nelson, George
(1907-1986) US industrial designer. Among his original concepts were the pedestrian mall (1942), storage wall (1946), and office work station (1947). He edited Architectural Forum (1935-44), Design Journal...

Nelson, Horatio
(1758-1805) English admiral. He joined the navy in 1770 at the age of 12. During the Revolutionary Wars against France he lost the sight in his right eye in 1794, and lost his right arm in 1797. He became a...

Nelson, Nels Christian
(1875-1964) Danish-born anthropologist. He pioneered stratigraphic excavation techniques in his extensive international fieldwork and promoted the hypothesis of age-and-area, the outward diffusion of...

Nelson, Samuel
(1792-1873) US Supreme Court justice. A supporter of women's suffrage and a long-time friend of James Fenimore Cooper, he sat as a judge on the Circuit Court (1823-31) and Supreme Court (1831-45) of New...

Nelson, Thomas
(1780-1861) Scottish publisher. The company of the same name that he founded in 1798 was a pioneer in the use of the rotary press and of half-tone blocks, for which it developed a new type of surfaced paper....

Nemea
Ancient site in Argolis, in the northeastern Peloponnese, with a grove and temple of Zeus. It was the scene of the Nemean Games and of Heracles' legendary killing of the Nemean Lion. ...

Nemerov, Howard Stanley
(1920-1991) US poet, critic, and novelist. He published a poetry collection Guide to the Ruins (1950), a short-story collection A Commodity of Dreams (1959), and Collected Poems (1977), which won both the...

Nemesis
In late Greek mythology, the goddess of retribution, who especially punished hubris (Greek hybris), violent acts carried through in defiance of the gods and human custom. Nemesis was originally a...

Nena, Jacob
(1941) Micronesian politician, president 1997-99. In May 1991 he became vice president of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and took over as acting president in November 1996, after President...

Nenni, Pietro
(1891-1980) Italian Socialist politician. He was secretary general of the Italian Socialist party 1944-63 and in 1947 became leader of the main body of the party which refused to participate in the Christian...

Nennius
(lived c. 800) Welsh historian, believed to be the author of a Latin Historia Britonum, which contains the earliest reference to King Arthur's wars against the Saxons. ...

neo-Confucianism
Vigorous intellectual response by Confucian scholars to the rise of Buddhism and Taoism in China, beginning during the Sung dynasty (960-1126 AD). Its cosmology and philosophy were set out by Chou...

neo-expressionism
Style of modern painting in which the artist handles the materials in a rough and raw way, typically expressing violent emotion. It developed in the late 1970s as a reaction against conceptual art...

Neo-Impressionism
Movement in French painting that developed from Impressionism in the 1880s and flourished until the early years of the 20th century. The name was coined in 1886 in a review of the eighth and last...

neo-Kantianism
Philosophical movement started about 1865 in Germany by Otto Liebmann (1840-1912), which lasted until the 1920s. Neo-Kantianism abandoned the wild speculations of the followers of G W F Hegel...

neo-Nazism
The upsurge in racial and political intolerance in Eastern and Western Europe from the late 20th century. In Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Russia, and Italy, the growth of extreme right-wing...

neo-populism
Ideological trend in Soviet Russia in the 1920s which insisted on the basis of empirical studies that Marxist theory was not applicable to the peasant economy and that the best course in...

Neo-Rationalism
In architecture, a movement originating in Italy in the 1960s which rejected the functionalist and technological preoccupations of mainstream Modernism, advocating a rationalist approach to design...

neo-Thomism
The revival of the medieval philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, following Pope Leo XIII's declaration 1879 that...

neoclassical economics
School of economic thought based on the work of 19th-century economists such as Alfred Marshall, using marginal theory to modify classical economic theories, and placing greater emphasis on...

neocolonialism
Disguised form of imperialism, by which a country may grant independence to another country but continue to dominate it by control of markets for goods or raw materials. Examples of countries that...

neoconservatism
Version of conservatism that emerged in the USA in opposition to the liberal social and political attitudes of the 1960s. It advocates a narrow, patriarchal approach to morality and family life,...

Neolithic
Literally `New Stone`, the last period of the Stone Age. It was characterized by settled agricultural communities who kept domesticated animals, and made pottery and sophisticated, finely...

neopaganism
The rise of interest in and practice of supposedly pagan ideas, festivals, and rituals since the mid-19th century. Often inspired by a dislike of both modern industrial society and traditional...

neoplasticism
Term used by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian for both the severely geometrical style...

neoplatonism
School of philosophy that flourished during the declining centuries of the Roman Empire (3rd-6th centuries AD). Neoplatonists argued that the highest stage of philosophy is attained not through...

Neoptolemus
In Greek mythology, son of Achilles and Deidamia. After the death of his father, he and Odysseus conducted the...

NEP
Abbreviation for the Soviet leader Lenin's New Economic Policy. ...

Nepal
Landlocked country in the Himalayan mountain range in Central Asia, bounded north by Tibet (an autonomous region of China), east, south, and west by India. Government Nepal is a parliamentary...

nepenth
In Greek mythology, a drug that makes people forget cares or worries, used by Helen of Troy in Homer's Odyssey. ...

Nephthys
In Egyptian mythology, the goddess wife of Set and sister of Isis. She mourned for Osiris in the form of a kite (bird of prey). One of the four goddesses who protected sarcophagi and Canopic jars,...

Nepos, Cornelius
(c. 99-c. 24 BC) Roman biographer. He was a friend of the orator Cicero and the publisher Atticus. His De Viris Illustribus/On Famous Men is the earliest surviving example of Latin biographical writing. Of this...

Neptune
In Roman mythology, god of water, who became god of the sea only after his identification with the Greek Poseidon. ...

ner tamid
In a synagogue or Jewish temple, the light that hangs above the ark containing the Torah scrolls. The ner tamid, which is never allowed to go out, is a reminder of God's eternal presence and the...

Nereid
In Greek mythology, any of 50 sea goddesses, or nymphs, who sometimes mated with mortals. Their father was Nereus, a sea god, and their mother was Doris. ...

Nereus
In Greek mythology, a sea god. He was the husband of Doris and father of the Nereids. Nereus was believed to have...

Nergal
Assyrio-Babylonian god of war and hunting, identified with the Sun in its adverse effects as the bringer of pestilence and fire, and ruler of the underworld with his consort Ereskigal, `mistress...

Neri, Philip, St
Florentine cleric; see Philip Neri, St ...

Nerinckx, Charles
(1761-1824) Belgian-born religious leader. Ordained in 1785 and forced underground after the French Revolution, he emigrated to the USA in 1804 and became a missionary in the wilderness frontier of Kentucky....

Nero
(AD 37-68) Roman emperor from 54. In 59 he had his mother Agrippina and his wife Octavia put to death. The great fire at Rome in 64 was blamed on the Christians, whom he subsequently persecuted. In 65 a plot...

Nero, Gaius Claudius
(lived 3rd century BC) Roman consul 207 BC. In that year he defeated Hannibal's brother Hasdrubal Barca in the Metaurus valley, northeastern Italy. He was a distant ancestor of the emperor Tiberius. ...

Nero, Tiberius Claudius
(lived 1st century AD) Roman noble. He was the first husband of Livia Drusilla (who later married the emperor Augustus). Their son became the emperor Tiberius. There is good reason to suspect that Nero's younger son,...

Neroccio di Bartolommeo Landi
(1447-1500) Sienese sculptor and painter who worked in the tradition of Simone Martini. He was the brother-in-law of the painter Francesco di Giorgio Martini, with whom he conducted a workshop. ...

Nerthus
In northern European mythology, a Germanic goddess of fertility. In Norse legend, the god Njord's incestuous union with his sister (presumably Nerthus) resulted in the birth of Frey and Freya. ...

Neruda, Jan
(1834-1891) Czech short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was the leader of the May group of poetic realists, and his six volumes of poetry are regarded as the foundation of modern Czech poetry. Neruda's...

Neruda, Pablo
(1904-1973) Chilean poet and diplomat. His work includes lyrics and the epic poem of the American continent Canto General (1950). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He served as consul and...

Nerva, Marcus Cocceius
(ADc. 30-98) Roman emperor. He was proclaimed emperor on Domitian's death in AD 96, and introduced state loans for farmers, family allowances, and allotments of land to poor citizens...

Nerval, Gérard de
(1808-1855) French writer and poet. He was a precursor of French symbolism and surrealism. His writings include the travelogue Le Voyage en Orient (1851); short stories, including the collection Les Filles du...

Nervi, Pier Luigi
(1891-1979) Italian engineer. He used soft steel mesh within concrete to give it flowing form; for example, the Turin exhibition hall 1948-49, consisting of a single undulating large-span roof, the UNESCO...

Néry, Battle of
In World War I, desperate action to hold off attacking Germans by `L` Battery of the British Royal Horse Artillery while retreating from Mons September 1914. During their heroic stand, `L`...

Nesbit, E(dith)
(1858-1924) English author of children's books. She wrote The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) and The Railway Children (1906). Her stories often have a humorous magical element, as in Five Children and It...

Nesselrode, Karl Robert
(1780-1862) Russian foreign minister 1814-56, a firm anti-revolutionist. He took part in the congresses of Vienna, Aachen, Troppau, Laibach, and Verona, checking popular reform or independence. His policy...

Nestor
In Greek mythology, a wise old king of Pylos who accompanied the Greeks to and from Troy and offered them valuable advice. ...

Nestor, Agnes
(1880-1948) US labour leader. A gloveworker in Chicago, she led her sister gloveworkers in a drive for a union shop in 1898 and became president of the all-female local in 1902. She rose through the ranks to...

Nestorianism
Christian doctrine held by the Syrian ecclesiastic Nestorius (died c. 451), patriarch of Constantinople 428-431. He asserted that Jesus had two natures, human and divine. He was banished for...

Nestorius
(died c. 451) Syrian ecclesiastic, patriarch of Constantinople 428-31. He developed the controversial Christine doctrine of Nestorianism, which distinguished two natures in Jesus, the...

Nestroy, Johann Nepomuk
(1801-1862) Austrian playwright and comic actor. Combining excellent characterization and pungent social comment in ambiguous word play, Nestroy's parodies are witty and sad commentaries. His plays include Der...

net
Of a particular figure or price, calculated after the deduction of specific items such as commission, discounts, interest, and taxes. The opposite is gross. ...

net assets
Either the total assets of a company less its current liabilities (that is, the capital employed) or the total assets less current liabilities, debt capital, long-term loans and provisions, which...

net profit
Measure of profit over a period of time. It is calculated by subtracting all costs of the business from all receipts. In accounting terms, this means taking all...

net worth
The total assets of a company less its total liabilities, equivalent to the interest of the ordinary shareholders in the company. ...

Netanyahu, Binyamin
(1949) Israeli right-wing politician and diplomat, leader of the Likud (Consolidation) party 1993-99 and prime minister 1996-99. A hard-line politician, he succeeded Yitzhak Shamir to the Likud...

Nether Stowey
Village in Somerset, England, 14 km/9 mi from Bridgwater, in the Quantock Hills; population (2001) 1,300. Coleridge lived here 1796-98, and wrote many of his best-known poems during that period;...

Netherlands, The
Country in Western Europe on the North Sea, bounded east by Germany and south by Belgium. Government The Netherlands is a hereditary monarchy. Its 1983 constitution, based on that of 1814, provides...

Neto, (Antonio) Agostinho
(1922-1979) Angolan nationalist and politician, president 1974-79. A member of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (...

Netscher, Caspar
(1639-1684) Dutch painter and engraver. He produced delicate portraits of women. Netscher studied under Gerard Terborch. In 1659 he tried to settle in Bordeaux but the persecution of Protestants then in...

netsuke
Toggle of ivory, wood, or other materials, made to secure a purse or tobacco pouch, for men wearing Japanese traditional costume. Made especially in the Edo period in Japan 1601-1867, the...

Neuberger, Richard Lewis
(1912-1960) US journalist, author, and senator. He worked as a journalist for the Portland Oregonian and as Pacific Northwest correspondent for the New York Times and wrote several books and many articles about...

Neue Sachlichkeit
Group of German artists in the 1920s who rejected prevalent expressionist and abstract trends to paint in a harsh, realist style. Prominent members were George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Max Beckmann....

Neuhaus, Richard John
(1936) Minister and author. Active in the protest movements of the 1960s, he became more conservative in response to later events, maintaining that the Moral Majority groups were correct in their emphasis,...

Neuhoff, Theodor von
(1694-1756) German adventurer who became king of Corsica in 1736. He served in the army of Charles XII of Sweden, and was an ardent Jacobite. He helped the Corsicans against...

Neumann, (Johann) Balthasar
(1687-1753) German rococo architect and military engineer. Neumann's work is distinguished by the fusion of baroque architectural principles with rococo ornamentation. Thus his designs attempt...

Neumann, Franz Leopold
(1900-1954) Political scientist. Born in Katowice, Upper Silesia (now Poland), he escaped Nazi persecution in Germany and emigrated to New York in 1936. He served as an adviser to the State Department during...

Neumann, John (Nepomucene)
(1811-1860) Bohemian-born Catholic prelate and saint. As bishop of Philadelphia (from 1852), he built many schools and churches, wrote doctrinal books in German for children, and was well known as a preacher,...

Neumann, Terese
(1898-1962) Bavarian stigmatic and visionary. She began to have visions of the Passion and received the marks of the five wounds of Christ during Lent 1926, and from that time...

Neurath, Baron Konstantin von
(1873-1956) German politician and diplomat. In 1939 he became Reichsprotektor (governor) of Bohemia and Moravia, and set up an administration similar to that in Germany, but he was considered too lenient by...

Neutra, Richard Joseph
(1892-1970) Austrian-born architect and author, a US citizen from 1929. Influenced by Adolf Loos and Erich Mendelsohn, he worked with Rudolph Schindler in Los Angeles from 1926 and became a leading exponent...

neutrality
Cornerstone of Irish foreign policy in the Irish Free State/Eire/Republic of Ireland, adopted following the outbreak of World War II. From the 1960s Irish neutrality was usefully combined with a...

neutrality
The legal status of a country that decides not to choose sides in a war. Certain states, notably Switzerland and Austria, have opted for permanent neutrality. Neutrality always has a legal...

neutron activation analysis
Chemical analysis used to determine the composition of a wide range of materials found in archaeological contexts. A specimen is bombarded with neutrons, which interact with nuclei in the sample to...

Neuve Chapelle
In World War I, inconclusive battle between British and German forces March 1915 over Neuve Chapelle, a French village in the département of Nord, southwest of Armentières. The British decided to...

Nevelson, Louise
(1900-1988) Russian-born US sculptor and printmaker. A major exponent of assemblage sculpture, she was renowned for her room-sized wall-like reliefs consisting of stacked tiers of shallow open boxes...

Neves, Tancredo de Almeida
(1910-1985) Brazilian politician. He was elected Brazil's first civilian president in 21 years in 1985 but died before his inauguration. Neves was an ex-minister of justice and a member of the Movimento...

Nevi'im
In Judaism, collective term for the books of the prophets in the Hebrew Bible. The Nevi'im contain the prophets' interpretation of history as a means of expressing God's will for the people....

Neville-Jones, (Lilian) Pauline
(1939) English diplomat. In 1994 she became the second-highest official in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) as political director and deputy under-secretary of state - a higher rank than any...

Neville, Richard
(1400-1460) English noble, a Yorkist. He persuaded Richard, Duke of York, to lay down his arms in 1452 and became chancellor when the latter gained control of the government during Henry VI's temporary...

Nevins, Allan
(1890-1971) US historian. He became professor of American history at Columbia University, New York, 1931, and contributed much to the study of 19th-century US history. His life of President Grover Cleveland...

Nevinson, Christopher Richard Wynne
(1889-1946) English painter and graphic artist. He made striking use of a Futurist style in paintings of the Western Front during World War I. His later paintings and etchings, which often employ elaborate...

Nevinson, Henry Woodd
(1865-1941) English journalist. During World War I he was correspondent for the Manchester Guardian on the Western front, and later at the Dardanelles, Salonika, and Versailles. His publications...

new age
Movement of the late 1980s characterized by an emphasis on the holistic view of body and mind, alternative (or complementary) medicines, personal growth therapies, and a loose mix of theosophy,...

New Apocalypse
In English literature, a movement that developed from surrealism in the 1940s and included G S Fraser, Henry Treece, J F Hendry, Nicholas Moore, and Tom Scott. Influenced by the work of Dylan...

New Armies
Alternative name for the Kitchener Armies of World War I. ...

new art
Vague term used to describe recent trends in art if a more precise label does not apply. It was, for example, used as the title of an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1972. Formerly it...

New Ash Green
Village in Kent, England, on the North Downs. It was created in the mid-1960s as a self-sufficient town, designed to accommodate 6,000 people. It has a pedestrian shopping centre, and all other...

New Criticism
In literature, a US movement dominant in the 1930s and 1940s, stressing the autonomy of the text without biographical and other external interpolation, but instead requiring close readings of its...

New Deal
In US history, the programme introduced by President Franklin D Roosevelt in 1933 to tackle the Great Depression, including employment on public works, farm loans at low rates, and social reforms...

New Democratic Party
Canadian political party, moderately socialist, formed in 1961 by a merger of the Labour Congress and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. Its leader is Alexa McDonough. There are also...