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

bailie
Former senior officer or magistrate of a municipal corporation in Scotland. Bailies had judicial and administrative authority within the city or burgh for which they were appointed and served a term...

bailiff
Officer of the court whose job, usually in the county courts, is to serve notices and enforce the court's orders involving seizure of the goods of a debtor. In France, the royal bailli or bayle was...

baillie
Alternative spelling of bailie. ...

Baillie Scott, Hugh Mackay
(1865-1945) British architect who enjoyed an impressive reputation in Europe as a rational art nouveau designer, and executed projects in Poland, Russia, and Switzerland in addition to the Royal Palace of...

Baillie, Grizel
(1665-1746) Scottish poet. Her songs include `And werena my heart licht I wad dee`. She was the daughter of the Covenanter Patrick Hume, 1st Earl of Marchmont. In 1684 she supplied her father with food...

Baillie, Joanna
(1762-1851) Scottish poet and dramatist. Her series of Plays on the Passions (1798-1836) are written with vigour and were admired by the novelist Walter Scott. One of them was the tragedy De Montfort, made...

Baillie, Robert
(1599-1662) Scottish Presbyterian cleric. He was one of the commissioners appointed to prepare charges 1640 against Archbishop Laud, whose political and religious attitudes helped precipitate...

Baillie, Robert, of Jerviswood
(c. 1634-1684) Scottish political activist. From 1676 he was involved in political and religious disaffection in Scotland and, although he denied involvement in the Rye House Plot, he was tried for complicity,...

Bailly, Jean Sylvain
(1736-1793) French statesman and astronomer. He wrote about the satellites of Jupiter and the history of astronomy. Early in the French Revolution he was president of the third estate and of the national...

Baily, Edward Hodges
(1788-1867) English sculptor. He executed a number of busts and statues of public persons, including the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square, London. Born in Bristol, he moved to London in 1807 and entered John ...

Bailyn, Bernard
(1922) US historian. Bailyn's Ideological Ideological Origins of the American Revolution received Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes in 1968, and Voyagers to the West received a Pulitzer Prize in 1986. An...

Bain, Alexander
(1818-1903) Scottish philosopher. He was professor of philosophy at Aberdeen from 1860 onwards, and founded the journal Mind in 1876. Although Bain was sympa ...

Bain, Joe S
(1912) US economist. He identified and quantified barriers to entry into noncompetitive industries by measuring factors such as initial capital requirements, threat of price-cutting by established firms,...

Bainbridge, Beryl
(1934) English novelist. Her writing has dramatic economy and pace, is acutely observed, and peppered with ironic black humour, and often deals with the tragedy and comedy of human self-delusion....

Bainbridge, William
(1774-1833) American naval officer. In the War of 1812 he was appointed commodore, in command of the Constitution, and captured the British frigate Java after a fierce engagement. Bainbridge was born in...

Baines, Peter Augustine
(1786-1843) English churchman and educator. A Roman Catholic, he was first a monk in the Benedictine order before becoming a religious teacher and founding a school and seminary. Baines was born at Kirkby in...

Baird, David
(1757-1829) British general during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In 1801 he commanded an expedition to Egypt for the expulsion of the French. He led an army to recapture the Cape of Good Hope, South...

Bairnsfather, (Charles) Bruce
(1888-1959) British cartoonist, artist, and writer. His `Old Bill` cartoons - grimly humourous depictions of British soldiers in the trenches of World War I - were at first censured. In World War II he...

Baius, Michael
(1513-1589) Flemish Roman Catholic theologian. Professor of biblical studies and chancellor of the University of Louvain, he came to prominence for his highly controversial claims...

Bajazet I (or Bayazid I)
(1347-1403) Sultan of Turkey 1389-1403. A gifted military commander, Bajazet brought Bulgaria under Ottoman control in 1396, and laid siege to Constantinople. However, he was captured by the Mongol leader...

Bajazet II (or Bayazid II)
(1447-1513) Sultan of Turkey 1481-1513. His reign was marked by continuous warfare with Hungary, Poland, Persia, Venice, and Egypt. Bajazet II succeeded his father Muhammad II. His military exploits won few...

Bajer, Fredrik
(1837-1922) Danish soldier, writer, teacher, and politician. He shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1908 with Swedish politician Klas Pontus Arnoldson for his political work and his writ ...

Bakacs, Thomas
(1442-1521) Hungarian churchman and politician. He became bishop of Erlau (1491), archbishop of Gran (1497), and cardinal and titular patriarch of Constantinople, 1510, but failed in his candidacy for the...

Baker v. Carr
US Supreme Court decision of 1962 dealing with the responsibility of federal courts to hear suits against unconstitutional electoral apportionment. The petitioner filed suit against the Tennessee...

Baker, Augusta Braxton
(1911) US librarian and storyteller. Baker was the children's librarian and storytelling specialist of the New York Public Library and the public library of Trinidad. Her numerous anthologies of children's...

Baker, David (Augustine)
(1575-1641) English monk and writer. He was the author of two famous mystical works, Sancta Sophia, which was published in 1657, and Confessions, published in 1922. Baker was educated at Christ's Hospital and...

Baker, Edward Dickinson
(1811-1861) English-born US representative, senator, and soldier. Throughout the 1840s, Baker and Abraham Lincoln alternated as the representative for Springfield, Illinois - Baker resigning 1846-47 to...

Baker, George Pierce
(1866-1935) US teacher and director. A professor of drama at Harvard, his course in playwrighting led to the formation of the influential 47 Workshop. His students included Eugene O'Neill. ...

Baker, Henry
(1698-1774) English scientist. He wrote two popular instructional books on the use of the microscope in natural history, and made observations on the crystallization of salts in 1744. He also introduced the...

Baker, Herbert
(1862-1946) English architect, born at Cobham, Kent. In 1892 he went to South Africa, and after the Boer War designed many important buildings there. Later he was associated with Edwin Lutyens in the planning...

Baker, Howard Henry
(1925-1994) US Republican politician. He was senator for Tennessee 1967-85, Senate minority leader 1977-81, and majority leader 1981-85. As White House chief of staff 1987-88, he helped the...

Baker, James Addison III
(1930) US Republican politician and lawyer. Under President Ronald Reagan, he was White House chief of staff 1981-85 and treasury secretary 1985-88. After managing George H W Bush's presidential...

Baker, Josephine
(1906-1975) US-born dancer and entertainer. Baker achieved international fame for her daring stage act which involved lively dancing, scat singing, and scanty costume. After appearing in the Paris Folies...

Baker, Kenneth Wilfrid
(1934) British Conservative politician, home secretary 1990-92. He was environment secretary 1985-86, education secretary 1986-89, and chair of the Conservative Party 1989-90, retaining his cabinet...

Baker, Nicholson
(1957) US novelist. His first novel, The Mezzanine (1988), was followed by Room Temperature (1990), Vox (1992), and The Fermata (1994). Often pornographic, his novels are notable for their attention to...

Baker, Paul T(hornell)
(1927) US physical anthropologist. Baker was the professor at the Pennsylvania State University, 1957-88, and a UN and US government advisor. He wrote extensively on demographic variables, especially...

Baker, Ray Stannard
(1870-1946) US writer. Among his numerous publications are Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, a History of the Peace Conference (1922). He co-edited The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1925-26), and his...

Baker, Richard Douglas James
(1925) English newsreader and classical music presenter who, in 1954, became one of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC)'s first `in-vision` newsreaders, a position he held until 1982. He began his...

Baker, Russell (Wayne)
(1925) US journalist. In 1962, based in Washington, DC, Baker launched his `Observer` column, with its wide-ranging observations on politics and life. Baker won a 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary...

Baker, Samuel White
(1821-1893) English explorer, in 1864 the first European to sight Lake Albert Nyanza in central Africa, and discover that the River Nile flowed through it. He founded an agricultural colony in Ceylon (now Sri...

Bakewell, Robert
(1725-1795) British pioneer improver of farm livestock. From his home in Leicestershire, England, he developed the Dishley or New Leicester breed of sheep and worked on raising the beef-producing qualities of...

Bakhtiar, Shahpur
(1914-1991) Iranian politician, the last prime minister under Shah Pahlavi, in 1979. He was a supporter of...

Bakhuyzen, Ludolf
(1631-1708) Dutch marine painter and etcher, the pupil of van Everdingen at Amsterdam, where his life was mainly spent. He worked for Peter the Great, and in his own day was as highly...

Bakke, Allan
(1940) US student who, in 1978, gave his name to a test case claiming `reverse discrimination` when appealing against his exclusion from medical school, since less well-qualified African-Americans...

Bakst, Leon
(1866-1924) Russian painter and theatrical designer. He combined intense colours and fantastic images adapted from Oriental and folk art with an art nouveau tendency toward graceful surface pattern. His designs...

bakufu
In Japanese history, the government of the shogun. Originally meaning the headquarters of an army in the field, the term was adopted by Minamoto Yoritomo for his administration in Kamakura from...

Bakunin, Mikhail
(1814-1876) Russian anarchist, active in Europe. In 1848 he was expelled from France as a revolutionary agitator. In Switzerland in the 1860s he became recognized as the leader of the anarchist movement. In...

Balaclava, Battle of
A Russian attack on 25 October 1854, during the Crimean War, on British positions, near a town in Ukraine, 10 km/6 mi southeast of Sevastopol. It was the scene of the ill-timed Charge of the Light...

Balaguer Ricardo, Joaquín Videla
(1906-2002) Dominican Republic centre-right politician, president 1960-62, 1966-78, and 1986-96. The country's figurehead president in 1960 under the dictator Rafael Trujillo Molina, he formed the...

Balan
One of the brothers Balin and Balan. ...

balance of payments
In economics, an account of a country's debit and credit transactions with other countries. Items are divided into the current account, which includes both visible trade (imports and exports of...

balance of power
In politics, the theory that the best way of ensuring international order is to have power so distributed among states that no single state is able to achieve a dominant position. The term, which...

balance of trade
The balance of trade transactions of a country recorded in its current account; it forms one component of the country's balance of payments. ...

balance sheet
Statement of the financial position of a company or individual at a point in time, showing current assets and fixed assets, and current liabilities and long-term liabilities. A balance sheet must...

Balbinus, Decimus Caelius
(died 238) Roman emperor AD 238. When the emperor Gordian I and his son Gordian II died in Africa, Balbinus and Pupienus were elected joint emperors by the Senate. Both were murdered by the Praetorian Guard...

Balbo, Count Italo
(1896-1940) Italian aviator and politician. He was one of the main figures in Mussolini's `March on Rome` but later quarrelled with him over the alliance with Germany. A well-known aviator, famed for his...

Balboa, Vasco Núñez de
(1475-1519) Spanish conquistador. He founded a settlement at Darien (now Panama) in 1511 and crossed the Isthmus in search of gold, reaching the Pacific Ocean (which he called the South Sea) on 25 September...

Balbus, Lucius Cornelius
(lived 1st century BC) Spanish-born Roman soldier and politician. He was quartermaster general to Julius Caesar in Gaul, looked after his affairs in Rome during the civil war, and in 40 BC became the first...

Balcescu, Nicolae
(1819-1852) Romanian historian and nationalist revolutionary. He took part in the revolution of 1848 that overthrew the Russian puppet government in the Principality of Wallachia. He held minor office in the...

Balchen, Bernt
(1899-1973) Norwegian-born US air force officer and aviator. Balchen became a US citizen in 1931. He piloted Admiral Richard Byrd's first flight over the South Pole in 1929. During World War II, flying from...

Balchin, Nigel (Marlin)
(1908-1970) English writer. During World War II he was engaged on scientific work for the army, reaching the rank of brigadier, and wrote The Small Back Room 1943, a novel dealing with the psychology of the...

Balder
In Norse mythology, the best, wisest, and most loved of all the gods; son of Odin and Frigga; husband of Nanna. He was one of the Aesir (principal gods), but was killed unwittingly with a twig of...

Baldovinetti, Alesso
(1426-1499) Italian artist and designer. He was an eminent master of the early Florentine Renaissance, his formative influences being Domenico Veneziano, Fra Angelico, and Andrea del Castagno. His frescoes are...

Baldung Grien, Hans
(1484/85-1545) German Renaissance painter, engraver, and designer. A prolific and accomplished artist, he designed tapestries and stained glass, produced many graphic works, and painted religious subjects,...

Baldwin
(died 1190) English cleric, archbishop of Canterbury 1184-90. By forbidding bishops from being consecrated at any other cathedral, he established Canterbury as the foremost archbishopric in England. He...

Baldwin
Name of several counts of Flanders. Baldwin I (died 879), called `Bras de fer` (Iron Arm), married Judith, the daughter of Charles II (the Bald), without her father's knowledge, which brought...

Baldwin I
(1172-1205) Count of Flanders (as Baldwin IX), and Emperor of the Constantinople 1204-05. He joined the Fourth Crusade in 1202, which never reached the Holy Land, but became embroiled in conflict over rival...

Baldwin I
(1058-1118) King of Jerusalem from 1100. A French nobleman, he joined his brother Godfrey de Bouillon on the First Crusade 1096 and established the kingdom of Jerusalem 1100. It was destroyed by Islamic...

Baldwin II
(1217-1273) Last Latin Emperor of Constantinople 1228-61, and nephew of Baldwin I. In 1261 he was driven from Constantinople by Michael (VIII) Palaeologus, Emperor of Nicea, and took refuge in Italy. ...

Baldwin II
King of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem from 1118. During his reign Tyre became the seat of a Latin archbishop. ...

Baldwin III
(1129-1162) King of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem from 1144, succeeding his father, Fulk of Anjou. Baldwin III ruled Jerusalem during the ill-fated 2nd Crusade. ...

Baldwin IV, the Leper
(1160-1185) King of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem from 1173. ...

Baldwin, Billy
(1903-1984) US interior decorator. In 1935 he joined the New York firm of Ruby Ross Wood, assuming control in 1952. Glossy dark walls and mixed patterns were among his hallmarks. ...

Baldwin, Evelyn Briggs
(1862-1933) US Arctic explorer. Balchen was the superintendent of city schools in Kansas, 1887-91, and an observer for the US Weather Bureau (1892-1900). In 1901 he made a daring but unsuccessful attempt to...

Baldwin, Henry
(1780-1844) US Supreme Court justice. A Federal representative, Baldwin was appointed to the US Supreme Court by President Jackson in 1830. ...

Baldwin, James Arthur
(1924-1987) US writer and civil-rights activist. He portrayed with vivid intensity the suffering and despair of African-Americans in contemporary society. After his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain...

Baldwin, Loammi
(1745-1807) US engineer, soldier, and judge. A self-educated cabinet-maker, land surveyor, and civil engineer. Baldwin was an opponent of British rule, fighting briefly in the American Revolution. He...

Baldwin, Stanley
(1867-1947) British Conservative politician, prime minister 1923-24, 1924-29, and 1935-37. He weathered the general strike of 1926, secured complete adult suffrage in 1928, and handled the Baldwin, William
(lived c. 1560) English poet. He edited and contributed to the first edition of A Mirror for Magistrates (1559), a collection of tales on the downfall of illustrious men which was highly influential in the 16th...

Bale, John
(1495-1563) English writer and cleric. His King John provides a link between religious drama and the Elizabethan chronicle history play; it is considered to be the first English historical play. He was also the...

Balewa
Alternative title of Nigerian politician Tafawa Balewa. ...

Balfour Declaration
Letter, dated 2 November 1917, from British foreign secretary A J Balfour to Lord Rothschild (chair, British Zionist Federation) stating:`HM government view with favour the establishment in...

Balfour, James, of Pittendreich
(c. 1525-1584) Scottish lawyer and politician, notorious for the frequency with which he changed sides. He was implicated in the murder of Cardinal Beaton, and in 1547 was sent with other conspirators to the...

Balin and Balan
Two brothers in Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur about 1470. During his adventures Balin meets his brother Balan; they fail to recognize each other, fight, and both are killed. There is also an...

Baliol (or Balliol), John de
(c. 1249-1315) King of Scotland 1292-96. As an heir to the Scottish throne on the death of Margaret, the Maid of Norway, he had the support of the English king, Edward I, against 12 other claimants. Baliol was...

Balkan Wars
Two wars 1912-13 and 1913 (preceding World War I) which resulted in the expulsion by the Balkan states of Ottoman Turkey from Europe, except for a small area around Istanbul. The First Balkan War,...

Balkans
Peninsula of southeastern Europe, stretching into Slovenia between the Adriatic and Aegean seas, comprising Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, Romania,...

Balkars
A Turkic-speaking people living on the northern slopes of the Caucasus mountains. In 1943 the Balkars were deported to Asiatic Russia for alleged collaboration with the Germans. They were...

ball-flower
An ornament in English Gothic architecture, resembling a ball placed within a circular flower, usually with either three or four petals. It is characteristic of the Decorated style of the first...

Ball, Albert
(1896-1917) British fighter pilot and air ace. He was awarded the MC, DSO and Bar, and, posthumously, the Victoria Cross. At the time of his death May 1917 he had attained the rank of captain and was credited...

Ball, Alexander John
(1756-1809) British naval officer and administrator. He served in the Mediterranean under Horatio Nelson during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In 1799 he was elected by the Maltese as their president...

Ball, John
(died c. 1381) English priest. He was one of the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, known as `the mad priest of Kent`. A follower of John Wycliffe and a believer in social equality, he was imprisoned for...

Balla, Giacomo
(1871-1958) Italian painter. A leading member of the Futurist group, his work is concerned with themes of time and movement. Influenced by photographic techniques, he developed a style using multiple images and...

ballad
Literary genre of traditional narrative poetry, widespread in Europe and the USA. Ballads are simple in metre, sometimes (as in Russia) without regular lines and rhymes or (as in Denmark) dependent...

ballade
In literature, a poetic form developed in France in the later Middle Ages from the ballad, generally consisting of one or more groups of three stanzas of seven or eight lines each, followed by a...

Balladur, Edouard
(1929) French Conservative politician, prime minister 1993-95. During his first year of `co-habitation` with socialist president François Mitterrand he demonstrated the sureness of his political...

Ballance, John
(1839-1893) Irish-born New Zealand Liberal politician; prime minister 1891-93. After entering politics in 1875, he held a number of cabinet posts. He is especially remembered for passing pioneering social...

Ballantyne, James
(1772-1833) Scottish editor and publisher, born at Kelso. Together with his younger brother John (1774-1821), he founded a publishing house and printers that produced the highly popular novels of Sir Walter...

Ballantyne, R(obert) M(ichael)
(1825-1894) Scottish writer of children's books. Six years with the Hudson's Bay Company provided material for The Young Fur Traders (1856), after which he produced numerous moral adventure tales set in various...

Ballard, J(ames) G(raham)
(1930) English novelist. He became prominent in the 1960s for his science fiction works on the theme of catastrophe and collapse of the urban landscape. His fundamentally moral vision is expressed with an...