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

Bartas, Guillaume de Saluste du
(1544-1590) French poet. His religious poem La Semaine, ou Création du monde/The Week, or Creation of the World (1578), an epic on the Creation, probably inspired by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso's Sette...

barter
Exchange of goods or services without the use of money. Exchanging ships for oil would be an example of barter. Children swapping cards is another example. On an international level, there are many...

Barth, John Simmons
(1930) US novelist and short-story writer. He was influential in the `academic` experimental movement of the 1960s. His works, typically encyclopedic in scale, are usually interwoven ficti ...

Barth, Karl
(1886-1968) Swiss Protestant theologian. A socialist in his political views, he attacked the Nazis. His Church Dogmatics (1932-62) makes the resurrection of Jesus the focal point of Christianity. Barth is...

Barthelme, Donald
(1931-1989) US writer. His innovative short stories, often first published in the New Yorker magazine, display a minimalist economy and a playful sense of the absurd and irrational, as in the collection Sixty...

Barthes, Roland
(1915-1980) French critic and theorist of semiology, the science of signs and symbols. One of the French `new critics` and an exponent of structuralism, he attacked traditional literary criticism in his...

Bartholdi, Frédéric Auguste
(1834-1904) French sculptor. He designed the Statue of Liberty overlooking New York harbour, 1884-86. ...

Bartholomew Fair
Comedy by Ben Jonson 1614. In a satirical panorama of one of Jacobean London's great fairs, the representatives of morality, Justice Overdo and Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, are pitted against the...

Bartholomew, Harry Guy
(1885-1962) English journalist. Bartholomew spent his life working on the popular British daily newspaper, the Daily Mirror. As its editor, he turned it into a mass-circulation tabloid paper with a readership...

Bartholomew, St
In the New Testament, one of the apostles. Some legends relate that after the Crucifixion he took Christianity to India; others that he was a missionary in Anatolia and Armenia, where he suffered...

Bartlett, (Edward Lewis) `Bob`
(1904-1968) US public official. A newspaper reporter from 1925, he later became a goldminer. He was secretary of Alaska before becoming Alaska's territorial delegate to Congress in 1949. He was one of the new...

Bartlett, John
(1820-1905) US bookseller. He compiled Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1855) and published his authoritative Concordance to Shakespeare (1894). He was the owner of the University Book Store in Cambridge,...

Bartlett, Josiah
(1729-1795) US physician and governor. A self-taught, Bartlett reformed medical diagnosis and treatment. A member of the Continental Congress (1775-76, 1778-79), he signed the Declaration of Independence,...

Bartlett, Paul Wayland
(1865-1925) US sculptor. His works include a statue of the French revolutionary Lafayette in the square of the Louvre, Paris; a pediment at the Capitol, Washington, DC; and six figures in front of the New York...

Bartlett, Robert
(1875-1946) Canadian-born explorer. Bartlett became a US citizen in 1911 and a lieutenant commander in the US naval reserves in 1920. He began his Arctic explorations in 1897 and was especially noted for his...

Bartoli (or di Bartolo), Domenico
(lived late 14th-early 15th century) Italian painter of the Sienese School. His principal works are the fresco paintings in the Scala hospital, Siena. His art, while retaining the charm...

Bartoli (or di Bartolo), Taddeo
(1363-1436) Italian painter, active mainly in Siena. He worked mainly in fresco in the style of Simone Martini. Examples of his frescoes can be found in...

Bartoli, Adolfo
(1833-1894) Italian writer. He published editions of old Italian texts and catalogues of manuscripts, as well as a seven-volume critical history of Italian literature from the 14th century, Storia della...

Bartoli, Daniello
(1608-1685) Italian writer and Jesuit monk. His main work is his Istoria della Compagnia di Gesù/History of the Society of Jesus (1650-73), though his writings also include moral, apologetic, scientific, and...

Bartolommeo, Fra
(c. 1472-1517) Italian religious painter of the High Renaissance, active in Florence. He introduced Venetian artists to the Florentine High Renaissance style during a visit to Venice in 1508, and took back with...

Bartolozzi, Francesco
(1727-1815) Italian engraver. He popularized stipple engraving, introducing colour and softness into the medium. He worked for a while in Rome but settled in England 1764 under the patronage of George III,...

Barton, Bruce (Fairchild)
(1886-1967) US advertising executive, author, and US representative. Barton was a magazine editor before founding a New York advertising agency with George Batten, Roy Durstine, and Alex Osborn (1919), heading...

Barton, Edmund
(1849-1920) Australian politician. He was leader of the Federation Movement from 1896 and first prime minister of Australia 1901-03. Educated at Sidney University, he worked as a barrister before entering the...

Barton, Elizabeth
(1506-1534) English prophet. After an illness in 1525, she began to go into trances and make prophecies against the authorities. She denounced Henry VIII's divorce and marriage to Anne Boleyn, and was hanged...

Barton, Glenys
(1944) English sculptor. While artist-in-residence at the Wedgwood factory 1976-77, she experimented with clay and ceramic figure design techniques. Showing particular interest in the shape of the...

Barton, John
(1928) English theatre director and playwright. He became associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 and directed and devised numerous productions for the company, including The Hollow...

Baruch, Bernard Mannes
(1870-1965) US financier. He was a friend of the British prime minister Winston Churchill and a self-appointed, unpaid adviser to US presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. He...

Barudi, Mahmud Sami al-
(1839-1904) Egyptian nationalist activist and poet. He was a leading figure of the modern Arabic literary renaissance. Much of his work was modelled on classical Abbasid poetry, of which he compiled an...

Barye, Antoine Louis
(1796-1875) French sculptor and painter. Although primarily a sculptor of animals, he also made watercolours and drawings of wild animals, especially beasts of prey, in which there is the Romantic energy that...

Barzun, Jacques Martin
(1907) French-born US historian and educator whose speciality was 19th-century European intellectual life. His book The Modern Researcher 1970 is recognized as a classic study of historical method....

Basawan
(1556-1605) Mogul painter. He contributed paintings to many of the albums of miniatures that were a feature of the Mogul courts, in particular the Akbar-nama. His works are renowned for their subtle...

base rate
In economics, interest rate set by banks to determine the cost of borrowing. In the UK the base rate is the rate at which the Bank of England lends to other financial institutions. The base rate is...

Basel, Confessions of
The two earliest Protestant confessions of faith: the Basel Confession of 1534 (sometimes called the Confession of Mühlhausen) and the First Helvetic Confession of 1536 (sometimes called the Second...

Basel, Council of
A General Council of the Church that sat intermittently between 1431 and 1449. The council was urged upon Pope Martin V by Emperor Sigismund in the hope of making a settlement with the Hussites (see...

Bashir, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-
(1944) Sudanese president and prime minister from 1989. An army officer, he came to power after overthrowing the democratically elected government of Sadiq al-Mahdi in 1989 and initiating what has been...

Bashkir
The majority ethnic group of the autonomous republic of Bashkir in Russia. The Bashkirs are agriculturalists and have been Muslims since the 13th century. The Bashkir language belongs to the Turkic...

Bashkirtseff, Marie
(1860-1884) Russian diarist and painter. Her intimate diaries, written in French from the age of 13, were cited by the French feminist Simone de Beauvoir as the archetypal example of `self-centred female...

Basho
(1644-1694) Japanese poet. He was a master of the haiku, a 17-syllable poetic form with lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, which he infused with subtle allusiveness. His Oku-no-hosomichi/The Narrow Road to...

basic economic problem
In economics, the problem posed by the fact that human wants are infinite but resources are scarce. Resources therefore have to be allocated, which then involves an opportunity cost. ...

Basil II
(c. 958-1025) Byzantine emperor 976-1025. He completed the work of his predecessors Nicephorus (II) Phocas and John Zimisces and expanded the borders of the Byzantine Empire to their greatest extent since the...

basilica
Roman public building; a large, roofed hall flanked by columns, generally with an aisle on each side, used for judicial or other public business. The earliest known basilica, at Pompeii, dates from...

basilisk
In classical Greek and Roman mythology, a reptile whose gaze and breath were lethal. It was said to be hatched by a toad or serpent from the eggs of a cock, and to die if it saw...

Baskerville, John
(1706-1775) English printer and typographer. He experimented in casting types from 1750 onwards. The Baskerville typeface is named after him. He m ...

basketry
Ancient craft (Mesolithic-Neolithic) used to make a wide range of objects (from baskets to furniture) by interweaving or braiding rushes, cane, or other equally strong and supple natural fibres....

Baskin, Leonard
(1922-2000) US artist and sculptor. Baskin's major work is the long-delayed F D Roosevelt Memorial for Washington, DC, which was begun in 1990. His sculptures show a dedication to social humanism, and his...

basoche (or bazoche)
Corporation of the clerks of the parlement of Paris, which existed from about 1302 until the Revolution 1789. Philip the Fair is said to have been the founder, and to have granted the members...

Basque
The people inhabiting the Basque Country of central northern Spain and the extreme southwest of France. The Basques are a pre-Indo-European people whose language (Euskara) is unrelated to any...

Basquiat, Jean-Michel
(1960-1988) US artist. A pioneer of graffiti art, his combinations of childlike images and eclectic literary quotations were highly successful in the 1980s. Basquiat began as a teenage graffiti artist in New...

Bass, George
(1763-c. 1808) English naval surgeon who with Matthew Flinders explored the coast of New South Wales and the strait that bears his name between Tasmania and Australia from 1795 to 1799. ...

Bassa, Ferrer
(1290-1348) Spanish painter of the early Catalan School. He is known by his one surviving work, the fresco decoration of the chapel of the Franciscan convent of Pedralbes, painted for the king of Aragón...

Bassus Caesius
(lived 1st century) Roman lyric poet of Nero's reign. He was a friend of Perseus, whose works he edited and whose sixth satire is addressed to him. Fragments of his works survive, and he is generally identified as the...

bastard feudalism
Late medieval development of feudalism in which grants of land were replaced by money as rewards for service. Conditions of service were specified in a contract, or indenture, between lord and...

Bastet
Ancient Egyptian cat-headed goddess. Her cult centre was Bubastis (modern Tell Basta), the second-largest ancient site in the Nile delta after Tanis; it includes a large temple and a burial site...

bastide
New town founded in Gascony, France, by Edw ...

bastide
One of the small fortified towns deliberately constructed to a rectilinear plan during the Middle Ages, especially in the second half of the 13th century under Edward I. Bastides were sited for...

Bastille
Castle of St Antoine, built about 1370 as part of the fortifications of Paris. It was made a state prison by Cardinal Richelieu and was stormed by the mob that set the French Revolution in motion on...

Basu, Jyoti
(1914) Indian politician, chief minister of West Bengal from 1977. He is the longest-serving chief minister of any Indian state and also the leader of the longest-running democratically elected...

bat mitzvah
In Judaism, the female equivalent to a boy's bar mitzvah (initiation into the adult Jewish community). ...

Bataan
Peninsula in Luzon, the Philippines, which was defended against the Japanese in World War II by US and Filipino troops under Gen MacArthur from 1 January to 9 April 1942. MacArthur was evacuated,...

Bataan Death March
In World War II, brutal forced march of US and Filipino troops captured by the Japanese after the fall of Bataan April 1942. Following the surrender of Bataan, General MacArthur was evacuated, but...

Bataille, Georges
(1897-1962) French journalist, economist, poet, and prose writer. His fiction includes Madame Edwarda (1937), L'Abbé C (1950), Le Bleu du ciel/Blue of Noon (1957), and Ma Mère/My Mother (1966). He also...

Bataille, Henri
(1872-1922) French writer. Apart from two volumes of poetry -La Chambre blanche/The White Chamber (1895) and Le beau Voyage/The Beautiful Trip (1905) - he wrote for the theatre. Among his plays, which...

Batak
Several distinct but related peoples of northern Sumatra in Indonesia. Numbering approximately 2.5 million, the Batak speak languages belonging to the Austronesian family. The most numerous and most...

Batavian Republic
Name given to the Netherlands by the French in 1795; it lasted until the establishment of the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1814 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. ...

Bateman, H(enry) M(ayo)
(1887-1970) Australian cartoonist who lived in England. His cartoons were based on themes of social embarrassment and confusion, in such series as The Man who ...

Bateman's
Jacobean farmhouse, 1 km/0.6 mi south of Burwash, East Sussex, England. It is built in local stone and was Rudyard Kipling's home from 1902 to 1936. The house and 120 ha/296 acres, including the...

Bates, (Theodore Lewis) Ted
(1901-1972) US advertising executive. Bates worked in advertising agencies after graduating from Yale, then founded his own New York advertising agency (1940). The agency became the fifth largest in the world...

Bates, Alan Arthur
(1934-2003) English actor. He proved himself a versatile male lead in over 60 plays and films. His films include Zorba the Greek (1965), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Women in Love (1970), The Go-Between...

Bates, Edward
(1793-1869) US public official and cabinet minister. A moderate voice in prewar politics, he unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1860, becoming Abraham Lincoln's...

Bates, H(erbert) E(rnest)
(1905-1974) English writer. Of his many novels and short stories, The Jacaranda Tree (1949) and The Darling Buds of May (1958) particularly demonstrate the fineness of his natural observation and compassionate...

Bateson, Gregory
(1904-1980) English-born US anthropologist and cyberneticist. His interests were wide-ranging - from the study of ritual in a New Guinea people to the exploration of communication methods in...

Bath, Order of the
British order of knighthood (see knighthood, orders of), believed to have been founded in 1399 by Henry IV. The order now consists of three classes: Knights of the Grand Cross (GCB), Knights...

Báthory, Stephen
(1533-1586) King of Poland, elected by a diet convened in 1575 and crowned in 1576. Báthory succeeded in driving the Russian troops of Ivan the Terrible out of his country. His military successes brought...

batik
Javanese technique used to dye fabrics. Areas of material are sealed with wax, which resists dye. Designs are applied using hot liquid wax and a tjanting or brush, and then the fabric is dipped in...

Batista (y Zaldívar), Fulgencio
(1901-1973) Cuban right-wing dictator, dictator-president 1934-44 and 1952-59. Having led the September 1933 coup to install Ramón Grau San Martín in power, he forced Grau's resignation in 1934 to...

Batlle y Ordóñez, José
(1856-1929) Uruguayan statesman, political reformer, and president 1903-07 and 1911-15. Many industries were nationalized by the state during his administration and significant improvements were made in the...

Batman
Comic-strip character created in 1939 by US cartoonist Bob Kane (real name Robert Kahn, 1915-98) and his collaborator Bill Finger. A crime-busting superhero, disguised by a black bat-like...

Batoni, Pompeo Girolamo
(1708-1787) Italian painter. He made detailed portraits of princes and British visitors to Rome on the Grand Tour. Most of his portraits are painted with a Roman antiquity in the background;Portrait of Henry...

Batsford, Bradley Thomas
(1821-1904) English publisher. After working as a bookseller for many years, he founded a family publishing firm with his three sons in 1874. Batsford soon established a reputation for well-produced books on...

Batt, Philip
(1927) US politician and governor of Idaho from 1995. A strong fiscal conservative, Batt is an outspoken critic of high taxation and regulation. His special interests are in agriculture and he is a member...

battalion
Basic personnel unit in the military system, usually consisting of four or five companies. A battalion is commanded by a lieutenant colonel. Several battalions form a brigade. ...

Battenberg
Title (conferred 1851) of German noble family; its members included Louis, Prince of Battenberg, and Louis Alexander, Prince of Battenberg, the father of Louis Batthyány
Prominent Hungarian family that includes some of the most illustrious figures in the country's history. Its most famous member was the politician Count Louis (or Lajos) Batthyány (1806-49), one...

Battleaxe, Operation
In World War II, unsuccessful British offensive in the Western Desert 15 June 1941, intended to relieve Tobruk and recapture Cyrenaica. Three columns were used in...

battleship
Class of large warships with the biggest guns and heaviest armour. The Dreadnought class of battleship, built by the British Navy after 1906, revolutionized battleship design, as it was an...

Battye grenade
Simple hand grenade issued to British troops in 1915. It consisted of a cast-iron cylinder with an open end, filled with ammonia and closed with a wooden plug. A hole bored through the plug...

Bauchant, André
(1873-1958) French naive painter. He was a farm labourer who started to draw when serving as a soldier in World War I. After 1922 he devoted himself entirely to painting, becoming noted for landscapes and...

Baucis and Philemon
In classical mythology, an elderly Phrygian country couple whose names were symbolic of married love. They entertained Zeus and Hermes, messenger of the gods, when all others had refused them...

Baudart, Willem
(1565-1640) Dutch scholar and Calvinist minister. A leading biblical scholar, he was chosen as one of the translators of the Old Testament for the Dutch Bible commissioned by the Synod of Dort in 1619. He also...

Baudelaire, Charles Pierre
(1821-1867) French poet. His immensely influential work combined rhythmical and musical perfection with a morbid romanticism and eroticism, finding beauty in decadence and evil. His first and best-known book...

Baudouin
(1930-1993) King of the Belgians 1951-93. In 1950 his father, Leopold III, abdicated and Baudouin was known until his succession in 1951 as Le Prince Royal. During his reign he succeeded in holding together a...

Baudrillard, Jean
(1929-2007) French cultural theorist. Originally influenced by Marxism and structuralism in works such as The System of Objects (1968), Baudrillard evolved a critique of consumer society and of an information...

Bauernfeld, Eduard von
(1802-1890) Austrian dramatist. His drawing-room comedies elegantly portrayed Viennese life and the political and social issues of the time. They include Leichtsinn aus Liebe 1831, Bürgerlich und Romantisch...

Bauhaus
German school of art, design, and architecture founded in 1919 in Weimar by the architect Walter Gropius, who aimed to fuse art, design, architecture, and crafts into a unified whole. By 1923, as...

Baul
Member of a Bengali mystical sect that emphasizes freedom from compulsion, from doctrine, and from social caste; they avoid all outward forms of religious worship. Not ascetic, they aim for harmony...

Baum, L(yman) Frank
(1856-1919) US writer. He was the author of the children's fantasy The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) and its 13 sequels. The series was continued by another author after his death. The film The Wizard of Oz...

Baumeister, Willi
(1889-1955) German painter. He was a leading exponent of abstract art in Germany. Baumeister studied in Stuttgart, and during the 1920s developed a style of geometric design influenced by his association with...

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb
(1714-1762) German philosopher who established aesthetics as a distinct branch...

Baur, Ferdinand Christian
(1792-1860) German Protestant theologian who founded the Tübingen School of biblical criticism in 1835-47. As professor of theology at Tübingen University, he was influenced by the writings of Georg Hegel,...

Bautzen, Battle of
French victory in the Napoleonic Wars over a combined Russian and Prussian force 20-21 May 1813, at Bautzen, about 40 km/25 mi northwest of Dresden. The victory was the result of Napoleon's...