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

Robinson, Henry Crabb
(1775-1867) English writer. His diaries, journals, and letters are a valuable source of information on his literary friends Charles Lamb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William...

Robinson, James Harvey
(1863-1936) US historian whose popular Mind in the Making 1921 displays his innovative historical methodology, emphasizing the development of human understanding as opposed to conventional political and...

Robinson, Jancis
(1950) English wine writer and broadcaster. In 1984 she was the first journalist to become a member of the Institute of Masters of Wine, and in 1986 she was declared Wine Writer of...

Robinson, Joan Violet
(1903-1983) English economist who, by 2001, was the only woman ever to have achieved outstanding eminence in economic theory. Her Economics of Imperfect Competition (1933) taught an entire generation of...

Robinson, John Arthur Thomas
(1919-1983) British Anglican cleric, bishop of Woolwich 1959-69. A left-wing modernist, he wrote Honest to God 1963, which was interpreted as denying a personal God. ...

Robinson, Joseph Taylor
(1872-1937) US senator. After serving in the US House of Representatives (Democrat, Arkansas) 1903-12, he was elected governor but resigned after serving a few weeks to fill an expired term in the US Senate...

Robinson, Mary
(1944) Irish Labour politician, president 1990-97. She became a professor of law at the age of 25. A strong supporter of women's rights, she campaigned for the liberalization of Ireland's laws...

Robinson, Randall
(1946) US lawyer and lobbyist. In 1986 he became executive director of TransAfrica, a Washington-based organization (founded in 1977) dedicated to protecting and advancing the political, social, and...

Robinson, Roland
(1912-1992) Irish-born Australian poet and writer. His poetry collections include Beyond the Grass-Tree Spears 1944 and Grendel 1967. He wrote about the folklore of the Aborig ...

Robinson, Theodore
(1852-1896) US painter. He painted in a conventional realistic manner, but after a stay in France 1884-88 - particularly after meeting Claude Monet in 1887 - he embraced and promoted the Impressionist...

Robinson, W(illiam) Heath
(1872-1944) English cartoonist and illustrator. He made humorous drawings of bizarre machinery for performing simple tasks, such as raising one's hat. A clumsily designed apparatus is often described as a...

Robinson, William
(1838-1935) British gardener. He moved to England in 1859, was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society at the age of 29, and revolutionized British gardening by his advocacy of natural informal design and...

Robinson, William Leefe
(1895-1919) British fighter pilot. During an air-raid September 1916, he shot down the first German airship to be brought down over the UK, for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross. ...

Robsart, Amy
(c. 1532-1560) Wife of Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. ...

Robson, Flora (McKenzie)
(1902-1984) English actor. A stalwart of both stage and screen, she excelled as Queen Elizabeth I in the film Fire Over England (1937) and as Mrs Alving in Ghosts (1958), a film adaptation of the play by the...

roc
In Arabian legend, a fabulous bird of enormous size and strength, said to carry off elephants and other creatures to feed its young. The legend of the roc appears in the Arabian Nights. ...

Rocard, Michel
(1930) French socialist politician, prime minister 1988-91. Widely popular as the exponent of a moderate and modernizing social democracy, he was leader of the Parti Socialiste (PS; English Socialist...

Rocco, Alfredo
(1875-1935) Italian Nationalist theorist and later Fascist politician. An academic lawyer, he achieved prominence within the Italian Nationalist Association on the eve of World War I. The association merged...

ROCE
Abbreviation for return on capital employed. ...

Rochdale Pioneers
In Britain, the founders of the cooperative movement; a group of Lancashire workers who opened a cooperative shop in Rochdale in 1844 inspired by the ideas of Robert Owen. The profits were divided...

Roche Abbey
Ruined Cistercian abbey in South Yorkshire, England, 10 km/6 mi east of Rotherham. Roche was founded from Fountains Abbey in 1147. Parts of the gateway, chancel and transepts remain, in a setting...

Roche, Mazo de la
Canadian novelist; see de la Roche, Mazo. ...

Roche, Regina Maria
(1764-1845) Irish writer. Born in County Waterford where she remained throughout her life, Roche wrote romantic novels that bordered on the Gothic. Her most successful work was the four-volume Children of the...

Rochefort, Joseph J(ohn)
(1898-1976) US naval officer. By June 1941, he was in charge of the Combat Intelligence Unit located at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian territory. He broke the Japanese coded messages and relayed them to Admiral...

rochet
In the Christian church, vestment worn mainly by Catholic and Anglican bishops and abbots. The Catholic rochet reaches to the knee, while the Anglican rochet is ankle length. ...

Rock, John Swett
(1825-1866) US lawyer, teacher, and physician. Presented as a potential US Supreme Court lawyer by Senator Charles Sumner in 1865 before Chief Justice Salmon P Chase, he...

Rockefeller, Abby (Greene) Aldrich
(1874-1948) US philanthropist and art patron. She directed much of her generous philanthropy toward art. She was instrumental in founding, in 1929, the Museum of Modern Art, of which she was a major benefactor....

Rockefeller, Nelson (Aldrich)
(1908-1979) US Republican politician, vice president 1974-77. He was an official in the administrations of Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower, and governor of New York 1958-73. He gained a reputation as a...

Rockefeller, Winthrop
(1912-1973) US state governor. As Republican governor of Arkansas 1967-71, he advanced school desegregation and promoted penal reform. He also chaired the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. He was...

Rockhill, William Woodville
(1854-1914) US orientalist and diplomat. He served in the US embassies in China and Korea 1884-87, published a French translation of The Life of the Buddha 1884, and made journeys to Mongolia and Tibet for...

Rockwell, George Lincoln
(1918-1967) US political extremist who founded the American Nazi Party in 1958. A white supremacist who blamed Jews for the worldwide communist movement, he called for their extermination along with the...

Rockwell, Norman
(1894-1978) US painter and illustrator. He designed magazine covers, mainly for The Saturday Evening Post, and cartoons portraying American life. His whimsical view of the ordinary activities of the nation at...

rococo
Movement in the arts and architecture in 18th-century Europe, particularly in France, that tended towards lightness, elegance, delicacy, and decorative charm. The term `rococo` is derived from...

Rocroi, Battle of
During the Thirty Years' War, French victory over the Spanish 19 May 1643 at Rocroi, a French fortified town 3 km/2 mi from the Belgian frontier. Their defeat marked the beginning of the decline of...

Rode, Helge
(1870-1937) Danish poet and writer. His poetry has a religious quality and reveals him as a champion of modern mysticism. He was an opponent of materialism and of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection....

Rodenbach, Georges
(1855-1898) Belgian writer. The two great influences on his work were the ideals of Symbolism and his affection for the cities and countryside of Flanders. Characteristic collections of verse are Le Règne du...

Rodgers, John
(1812-1882) US naval officer. His naval career 1828-82 encompassed service in the Seminole War and the US Civil War. He commanded the Asiatic Squadron 1870-72 and the Mare Island navy yard 1873-77. He was...

Rodgers, John
(1773-1838) US naval officer. He commanded the USS President in its defeat of the British Little Belt in 1811 and became a popular hero. He performed effectively in the War of 1812 and was head of the Board of...

Rodia, Simon
(1879-1965) Italian-born US tile setter and craftsman. He began his life work, the 99-foot-high `Watts Towers` in Los Angeles, in 1924. He worked on the triple spire of steel rods, chicken wire, and...

Rodin, (René François) Auguste
(1840-1917) French sculptor. He is considered by many the greatest of his day. Rodin freed sculpture from the idealizing conventions of the time by his realistic treatment of the human form and his emphasis on...

Rodney, Caesar
(1728-1784) American patriot and politician. A member of the Continental Congress 1774-76, he rode 80 miles on horseback and arrived in Philadelphia on 2 July 1776, just in time to cast a decisive vote in...

Rodríguez, Andrés
(1923) Paraguayan military leader and president 1991-93. He was responsible for deposing president Alfredo Stroessner in 1989, ending one of the most corrupt and repressive dictatorships the nation had...

Roe v. Wade
US Supreme Court decision of 1973 dealing with the constitutionality of state anti-abortion laws. The case challenged a Texas statute prohibiting...

Roe, Thomas
(c. 1581-1644) English traveller and diplomat. In 1610 he sailed up the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, and made other voyages to this area in later years, searching for gold. In 1615 he went as English ambassador to...

Roebuck, John Arthur
(1801-1879) Indian-born British politician. He held radical views, and among his projects was a forerunner of the Asquith Parliament Act, limiting the veto of the House of Lords. He was an independent member,...

Roelants, Maurice
(1895-1966) Flemish novelist and poet. He was one of the few outstanding Flemish writers of the period between the two world wars. His psychological novels, for example Komen en gaan 1927 and De Jazz-speler...

Roelas, Juan de las
(c. 1558-1625) Castilian painter. He worked in Seville, using a style strongly influenced by Venetian art. Among his principal religious paintings are Death of St Isidore and Martyrdom of St Andrew (1609, Seville...

Roethke, Theodore Huebner
(1908-1963) US poet. His lyrical, visionary, and exclusively personal poetry drew on theological and mystical sources. It derived much of its detail and imagery from the greenhouses and plants in his father's...

Rogation Day
In the Christian calendar, one of the three days before Ascension Day which used to be marked by processions round the parish boundaries (`beating the bounds`) and blessing of crops; now only...

Roger II
(1095-1154) King of Sicily from 1130, the second son of Count Roger I of Sicily (1031-1101). By the time he was crowned king on the authority of Pope Innocent II (died 1143), he had achieved mastery over the...

Roger of Salisbury
English cleric and politician. He was appointed chancellor under Henry II 1100 and bishop of Salisbury 1101. He was next in power to the king and ruled in his absence, introducing many reforms. On...

Rogers, Bruce
(1870-1957) US book designer. A longtime designer of limited editions for Riverside Press, Harvard University Press 1895-1934, and others, he designed over 400 books, including a 1909 edition of The Compleat...

Rogers, Edith
(1881-1960) US representative who served (Republican, Massachusetts) 1925-60. She championed veterans' rights to pensions and disability allowances, sponsoring the GI Bill of Rights after World War II. She...

Rogers, Grace Rainey
(1867-1943) US art collector and philanthropist. She collected French paintings and Persian art, and was involved in many philanthropic activities. She served on the boards of the Metropolitan and Cleveland...

Rogers, John
(1648-1721) American religious reformer who developed his own small sect, known as the Rogerenes. He wrote The Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ 1720. Persecuted intensely for his persuasions, he was...

Rogers, Richard George
(1933) English high-tech architect. His works include the Pompidou Centre in Paris (1972-76), with Renzo Piano; the Lloyd's of London building in London (1979-84); the Reuters building at Blackwall...

Rogers, Robert
(1731-1795) American soldier. In the French and Indian War (the North American arm of the Seven Years' War, 1756-63), those under his command were known as Rogers' Rangers. In 1766 he was appointed governor...

Rogers, Roy
(1912-1998) US actor who moved to Hollywood from radio. He was a singing cowboy of the 1930s and 1940s, forming the group Sons of the Pioneers in 1934. His first Roy Rogers film was Under Western Stars (1938)....

Rogers, Samuel
(1763-1855) English poet and wit. He was highly esteemed as a poet in his lifetime but his verse is little read today. He is remembered chiefly as a conversationalist; his breakfast parties were famous. He was...

Rogers, Will
(1879-1935) US humorist. As columnist for the New York Times from 1922, his wry comments on current affairs won him national popularity. A former cowboy and lariat-twirler, he specialized in aphorisms and...

Rogers, William P(ierce)
(1913-2001) US lawyer and cabinet officer. He was chief counsel of the US Senate Committee investigating corruption in government expenditures 1947-50. He served as US attorney-general 1957-61, and as US...

Roh Tae-woo
(1932) South Korean right-wing politician and general, president 1988-93. He held ministerial office from 1981 under President Chun, and became chair of the ruling Democratic Justice Party in 1985. He...

Rohde, Gilbert
(1894-1944) US furniture/industrial designer. An innovator in modernist furniture and interior design, he concentrated on progressive designs utilizing new materials and manufacturing techniques; he also...

Rohde, Ruth Bryan (Owen)
(1885-1954) US representative, diplomat, and feminist. She served in the US House of Representatives (Democrat, Florida) 1929-33, the first congresswoman from the deep South, where she lobbied for women's...

Roheim, Geza
(1891-1953) Hungarian-born US anthropologist and psychoanalyst. His study of psychoanalysis informed his theories of myth, ritual, and dream life, and made him a pioneer in the convergence of this discipline...

Rohilla
Member of a hill people of Afghanistan. In the middle of the 18th century, the Rohilla raided and settled in Rohikhand, India. The ruler of Oudh, with the assistance of the East India Company,...

Rohlfs, Charles
(1853-1936) US furniture maker. He produced furniture, first in the simpler arts and crafts, then in the more ornate art nouveau styles. International exhibits brought fame and commissions...

Rohmer, Sax
(1883-1959) English crime writer. He specialized in exotic thrillers featuring the sinister Chinese character Fu Manchu, such as The Devil Doctor 1916. ...

Rohwedder, Detler
(1932-1991) German Social Democrat politician and business executive. In August 1990 he became chief executive of Treuhand, the body concerned with the privatization or liquidation of some 8,000 East German...

Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo
(1900-1975) Colombian dictator and president 1953-57. His administration was oppressive and highly corrupt, and his attempts at fiscal reforms failed. Rojas was head of the armed forces that ousted President...

Rojas Zorrilla, Francisco de
(1607-1648) Spanish dramatist. His play Del rey abajo ninguno 1650 is an honour play reminiscent of Calderón de la Barca, whereas Entre bobos anda el juego 1645 is a comedy which defends a woman's right to...

Rojas, Fernando de
(c. 1473/6-1541) Castilian Spanish author. His continuation of an earlier, anonymous prose fiction was published, probably in 1499, as the Comedia de Calisto y Melibea/Comedy of Calisto...

Rokeby Venus
Painting by the Spanish artist Diego Velázquez about 1648 (National Gallery, London). It was painted at the time of the artist's second visit to Italy, in emulation of Titian. It is the earliest...

Roland
(died c. 778) French hero. His real and legendary deeds of valour and chivalry inspired many medieval and later romances, including the 11th-century Chanson de Roland and Ariosto's Orlando furioso. A knight of...

Roland de la Platière, Jean-Marie
(1734-1793) French politician. He became minister of the interior in 1792, during the French Revolution. His views were less extreme than those of the leading revolutionaries and he attacked Robespierre and...

Roland, Chanson de
See Chanson de Roland. ...

Roldós Aquilera, Jaime
(1940-1981) Ecuadorean politician and president 1979-81 whose election marked an important milestone in Ecuador's political history - that of democratic rule after decades of dominance by military rule. He...

role
In theatre, an alternative word for character, a person in a play portrayed by an actor. ...

Rolfe, Frederick (William)
(1860-1913) English writer. He claimed to be Baron Corvo. A Roman Catholic convert, frustrated in his desire to enter the priesthood, he wrote the novel Hadrian VII 1904, in which the protagonist rises from...

Rolfe, John
(1585-1622) English-born American colonist. His successful cultivation of tobacco led to its becoming the staple crop of Virginia. He married Pocahontas in 1614; the union maintained peace with the Indians...

Rolica, Battle of
During the Peninsular War, French defeat by the Duke of Wellington 17 August 1808 at Rolica, a village 65 km/40 mi north of Lisbon, Portugal. A relatively small action in itself, it was the first...

Roll, Alfred Philippe
(1847-1919) French painter. A realist indebted to Gustave Courbet, he was noted for his pictures of peasant and urban working-class life, and some studies of the nude in the open air. His pictures include The...

Rolle de Hampole, Richard
(c. 1300-1349) English hermit, poet, and mystic. His works include lyrics, treatises, and the prose work The Form of Living in English, and mystical works in Latin, such as Incendium Amoris/The Fire of Love. His...

roller printing
Method of printing used to decorate large quantities of fabric on a commercial basis. The design is engraved on...

Rollin, Charles
(1661-1741) French historian. In 1688 he became professor of eloquence in the Collège de France, and in 1694 rector of the University of Paris, to which post he was re-elected in 1720. He exercised great...

Rollins, Carl Purington
(1880-1960) US printer who worked for Yale University 1928-48 where he designed over 2,000 volumes and lectured on typography. He wrote a column for the Saturday Review of Literature...

Rollo
(c. 860-c. 932) First Viking ruler and Duke of Normandy (although he never used the title). He founded the duchy of Normandy and established the dynasty of William (I) the Conqueror. The city of Rouen is named...

Rolls, Master of the
British judge; see Master of the Rolls. ...

Roma
In Roman mythology, the goddess personifying the power of Rome. Temples of Roma were built throughout the empire, and the Romaia was a feast held in her honour. ...

Romains, Jules
(1885-1972) French novelist, playwright, and poet. His plays include the farce Knock, ou le triomphe de la médecine/Dr Knock (1923) and Donogoo (1930), and his novels include Mort de quelqu'un/Death of a...

romalla
In Sikhism, a square of silk used to cover the Guru Granth Sahib in the gurdwara (Sikh temple) when it is not being read. Romallas are sometimes brought as gifts when people attend the services. ...

Roman architecture, ancient
Architecture of the Roman Empire, spanning the period 4th century BC-5th century AD. The Romans' mastery of concrete (used in combination with bricks) freed the orders (column and entablature)...

Roman art
Sculpture and painting of ancient Rome, from the 4th century BC to the fall of the Western Empire in the 5th century AD. Much Roman art was intended for public education, notably the sculpted...

Roman Britain
Period in British history from the two expeditions by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC to the early 5th century AD. Roman relations with Britain began with Caesar's expeditions, but the actual conquest...

Roman Catholicism
One of the main divisions of the Christian religion, separate from the Eastern Orthodox Church from 1054. It is headed by the pope, who traces his authority back through St Peter (the first bishop...

Roman de la Rose
French allegorical poem of courtly love written in the 13th century, begun by Guillaume de Lorris (lived eary 13th century) and completed in a more expansively erudite and satirical vein by Jean de...

Roman Empire
From 27 BC to the 5th century AD; see Rome, ancient. ...

Roman law
Legal system of ancient Rome that is now the basis of civil law, one of the main European legal systems. It began under the republic, was developed under the empire, and continued in use in the...

Roman medicine
Medicine of ancient Rome; a civilization founded on the city of Rome that lasted from 753 BC to AD 476, and stretched at its peak in the 1st century AD from Britain to Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and...

Roman plays, the
The three Shakespeare tragedies based on events in Roman history. They are:Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. Though it has a Roman setting, the tragedy Titus Andronicus is not...