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

Central Powers
Originally the signatories of the Triple Alliance of 1882: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy; the name derived from the geographical position of the Germans and Austrians in Central Europe....

Central Treaty Organization
Military alliance that replaced the Baghdad Pact in 1959; it collapsed when the withdrawal of Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey in 1979 left the UK as the only member. ...

centralization
System of concentrating administrative functions in the hands of the principal departments of the state. Centralization seeks to establish uniformity in institutions and standards of services...

centralization
In business, a form of organization where decisionmaking for the whole business is taken by individuals or groups of people at the centre of the business. This compares with `decentralization`,...

centumviri
In ancient Rome, a panel from which juries were chosen to form a civil court. The panel numbered 105 under the republic and 180 under the empire. Sometimes the court sat as a whole body, but usually...

Centuriators of Magdeburg
The collective name for the authors of Historia ecclesiae Christi/History of the Church of Christ (1559-74), a Protestant history of the church century by century until 1400. The book's main aim...

ceorl
Freeman of the lowest class in Anglo-Saxon England. ...

Cepheus
In Greek mythology, a king of Ethiopia, husband of Cassiopeia, and father of Andromeda. After their deaths both he and his wife were placed among the stars. ...

ceramic
Object made from clay, hardened into a permanent form by baking (firing) at very high temperatures in a kiln. Once clay has been turned into ceramic, it can no longer be recycled in water. Ceramics...

Cerberus
In Greek mythology, the three-headed dog which guarded the entrance to Hades, the underworld. Some early representations endow him with 50 or 100 heads, and he is often depicted with a mane and...

Cercamon
(lived c. 1135-45) Provençal troubadour. Half a dozen of his lyrics survive, simple in language and archaic in form. Marcabru is said to have been his pupil. ...

Cerdic
Saxon king of Wessex. He is said to have come to Britain about AD 495, landing near Southampton. He defeated the British in Hampshire and founded Wessex...

Cerezo Arévalo, Mario Vinicio
(1942) Guatemalan politician, president 1986-91. He led the centre-left Guatemalan Christian Democratic Party (PDCG) to victory in congressional and presidential elections in 1985, to become the...

Cerf, Bennett Alfred
(1898-1971) US editor and publisher. In 1925 he co-purchased the rights to the Modern Library series, and subsequently founded Random House 1927. The company grew to be one of the...

Cermak, Anton (Joseph)
(1873-1933) Czech-born US Democrat mayor who was brought to the USA as an infant. He served four terms as a Chicago state legislator, beginning in 1903, as well as other state and city offices. He was elected...

Cernuda, Luis
(1902-1963) Spanish poet. He produced a single volume of poetry, La realidad y el deseo, composed between 1930 and the end of his life; it is a sad but dignified, austere record of his...

Cernunnos
In Celtic mythology, the antler-horned god, associated with wild and domesticated animals and serpents, often represented sitting cross-legged. A fertility deity, Cernunnos was worshipped in...

certiorari
In UK administrative law, a remedy available by judicial review whereby a superior court may quash an order or decision made by an inferior body. It has become less important in recent years...

Cervantes, Saavedra, Miguel de
(1547-1616) Spanish novelist, dramatist, and poet. His masterpiece Don Quixote de la Mancha (in full El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha) was published in 1605. In 1613 his Novelas...

Césaire, Aimé Fernand
(1913) Martinique left-wing politician, poet, and playwright. He represented Martinique in the French National Assembly from 1946, was mayor of Fort-de-France 1945-83, and became president of the...

César
(1921-1998) French sculptor. He created imaginary insects and animals using iron and scrap metal and, in the 1960s, crushed car bodies. From the late 1960s he experimented with works...

Cesariano, Cesare
(c. 1477-1553) Italian architect and painter, mainly active in Milan. He considered Bramante, whom he met at the Milanese court, his main teacher. His early works were frescoes in Reggio Emilia and Parma; he had...

Cesarotti, Melchiorre
(1730-1808) Italian writer. His Filosofia delle lingue/Philosophy of Language (1785) advocates a free development of language, as opposed to the teaching of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence. He also wrote...

Cesnola, Luigi Palma di (Count)
(1832-1904) Italian-born US archaeologist who took US citizenship in 1865. He became US consul in Cyprus. There he conducted many archaeological excavations. His outstanding collection of antiquities, the...

Céspedes, Carlos Manuel de
(1871-1939) Cuban revolutionary and politician, president in 1933. He participated in the revolution of 1895 and the Spanish-American War of 1898. Céspedes became provisional president in August 1933,...

Cetewayo, Cetshwayo
(c. 1826-1884) King of Zululand, South Africa, 1873-83, whose rule was threatened by British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877. Although he defeated the British at Isandhlwana in 1879, he was later that year...

Cézanne, Paul
(1839-1906) French post-Impressionist painter. He was a leading figure in the development of modern art. He broke away from the Impressionists' concern with the ever-changing effects of light to develop a...

Ch'ang O
In Chinese mythology, the moon goddess, associated with the passive principle in yin and yang. ...

Ch'en I
(1901-1972) Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister of the People's Republic of China. In 1941 Ch'en was given command of the New Fourth Army in the war against Japan. In the civil war which followed he was...

Chaadayev, Petr Yakovlevich
(1793-1856) Russian philosopher. In his `Philosophic Letter` (1836) he maintained that Russia had no past, no present, and no future save in reunion with the great body of European civilization and with the...

Chabon, Michael
(1963) US writer, author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Born in Washington, DC, his other works of fiction include The Mysteries of...

Chabrias
(c. 420-357 BC) Athenian general and mercenary. He drove the Spartan king Agesilaus from Boeotia, central Greece, using a new tactical manoeuvre, 378 BC, and repulsed the Theban general Epaminondas before Corinth....

Chaco War
War between Bolivia and Paraguay (1932-35) over boundaries in the north of Gran Chaco, settled by arbitration in 1938. ...

Chad
Landlocked country in central North Africa, bounded north by Libya, east by Sudan, south by the Central African Republic, and west by Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger. Government A transitional charter...

Chadli, Benjedid
(1929) Algerian politician, president 1979-92. An army colonel, he supported Houari Boumédienne in the overthrow of Mohammed Ben Bella in 1965, and succeeded Boumédienne in 1979, pursuing more moderate...

chador
All-enveloping black garment for women worn by some Muslims and Hindus. The origin of the chador dates to the 6th century BC under Cyrus the Great and the Achaemenian Empire in Persia. Together...

Chadwick, Helen
(1953-1996) English photographer, installation, and performance artist. Her work, often autobiographical, tended to question stereotypical attitudes in society, particularly her series of meat abstracts such as...

Chaeronea, Battle of
Battle in which the Macedonian army, under Philip II, won a decisive victory over the confederated Greek army (mainly Athenians and Thebans) in 338 BC. The battle marked the end of Greek...

Chaffee, John H (Hubbard)
(1922) US Republican governor, senator, and secretary of the navy. He was governor of Rhode Island 1963-69, and the secretary of the navy in the first Nixon administration 1969-72. He was senator for...

Chaffee, Zechariah
(1885-1957) US lawyer and educator. He joined the law faculty at Harvard in 1916. His book Freedom of Speech (1920) established him as a leading legal thinker on civil liberties issues. He later served on...

Chagall, Marc
(1887-1985) Belorussian-born French painter and designer. Much of his highly coloured, fantastic imagery was inspired by the village life of his boyhood and by Jewish...

Chagga
Bantu-speaking tribe living on the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Traditionally they were divided into autonomous chiefdoms. After World War I they took over many of the former...

Chahta
Alternative name for a member of the American Indian Choctaw people. ...

Chaillu, Paul Belloni du
(1835-1903) French-born US explorer. In 1855 he began a four-year journey of exploration in West Africa, covering 8,000 miles on foot. His Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa 1861 describes his...

Chain Home
System of radar stations built around the east and south coasts of the UK 1938-39 to give early warning of German air attacks. The first system could only detect aircraft flying at average...

chain of being
In metaphysics, an ancient principle with many variations, originating in neo-Platonism. Essentially, the principle asserts the unity, continuity, and perfection of the universe. The principle...

Chain, Ernst Boris
(1906-1979) German-born British biochemist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945, together with Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey (Fleming for his discovery of the bactericidal...

Chaka
Alternative spelling of Shaka, Zulu chief. ...

Chalabi, Ahmed Abdel Hadi
(1944) Iraqi industrialist and politician. A Shia Muslim from a wealthy banking family that left Iraq in 1956, he founded the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in 1992 to oppose Iraqi president Saddam Hussein,...

Chalcedon
Ancient Greek city in Bithynia on the Bosphorus, opposite Byzantium. In the classical period it lent its support alternately to Athens and Sparta. About 140 BC it was included in the kingdom of...

Chalcedon, Council of
Ecumenical council of the early Christian church, convoked in 451 by the Roman emperor Marcian, and held at Chalcedon (now Kadiköy, Turkey). The council, attended by over 500 bishops, resulted in...

Chalcidice
Ancient name of the three-pronged peninsula of Macedonia. The promontories from west to east were called Pallene, Sithonia, and Acte. The region was heavily colonized by Chalcis in Euboea in the...

Chaldaea
Ancient region of Babylonia. ...

chalice
Cup, usually of precious metal, used in celebrating the Eucharist in the Christian church. Chalices can take many forms, and may be extremely elaborate in design and decoration or very plain. In...

chalk
Soft limestone (made from gypsum) used in stick form as a drawing medium; mixed with pigment and a binding agent it is an ingredient used to make crayons. Chalk drawings exist from prehistoric times...

Chalker, Lynda
(1942) British Conservative politician. After her appointment as minister of state for transport in 1983, she moved to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1986, and as minister for overseas development...

challah
In Judaism, traditional plaited bread used in the celebration of the Sabbath or a holy festival. It symbolizes the food for body and spirit provided by God. Two loaves are blessed, representing the...

Challoner, Richard
(1691-1781) English Roman Catholic prelate. He was educated at the English Roman Catholic College, Douai, in France, where he was ordained in 1716 and later, in 1720, appointed vice-president and professor of...

Chalmers, Alexander
(1759-1834) Scottish biographer and editor. His Glossary to Shakespeare appeared 1797 and British Essayists (45 volumes) 1817. His reputation rests chiefly on his General Biographical Dictionary...

Chalmers, James
(1841-1901) British missionary. He served in Glasgow City Mission, and was appointed by the London Missionary Society in 1866 to work in Raratonga Island in the South Pacific. He was then transferred to New...

Chalmers, Judith
(1935) English presenter who hosted the Independent Television (ITV) holiday programme Wish You Were Here for over 20 years. ...

Chalmers, Thomas
(1780-1847) Scottish theologian. At the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843, Chalmers withdrew from the church along with a large number of other priests, and became principal of the Free Church...

chamberlain
Officer appointed by a king, nobleman, or corporation to perform domestic and ceremonial duties. In England the office of chamberlain at the royal court dates from very early times; the chamberlain...

Chamberlain, (Arthur) Neville
(1869-1940) British Conservative politician, son of Joseph Chamberlain. He was prime minister 1937-40; his policy of appeasement toward the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and German Nazi Adolf...

Chamberlain, (Joseph) Austen
(1863-1937) British Conservative politician, elder son of Joseph Chamberlain; foreign secretary 1924-29. He shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1925 with Charles G Dawes for his work in negotiating and...

Chamberlain, Joseph
(1836-1914) British politician, reformist mayor of and member of Parliament for Birmingham. In 1886 he resigned from the cabinet over William Gladstone's policy of home rule for Ireland, and led...

Chamberlain, Joshua (Lawrence)
(1828-1914) US soldier and educator. The defender of Little Round Top at Gettysburg in 1863, he commanded the force that accepted the formal surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1865. He served as...

Chamberlain, Lord
In the UK, the chief officer of the royal household; see Lord Chamberlain. ...

Chamberlin, Edward Hastings
(1899-1967) US economist. He wrote particularly on monopolistic competition. He concluded that monopolistic ventures lack long-term advantages to the sellers in the industry and that only normal profits will...

chambers
In the UK, rented offices used by a group of barristers. Chambers in London are usually within the precincts of one of the four law courts. ...

chambers of rhetoric
Amateur literary societies in the Netherlands and France during the 15th and 16th centuries. The members were mainly middle-class townspeople who formed associations similar to guilds in order to...

Chambers, E(dmund) K(erchever)
(1866-1954) English scholar and drama historian. His principal works are The Medieval Stage (1903) and The Elizabethan Stage (1923), in which he shows the connection between the political and social history of...

Chambers, Ephraim
(1680-1740) English encyclopedist. In 1728 he published his Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences in competition with John Harris's Lexicon Technicum/Technical Lexicon (1704). A French...

Chambers, George Michael
(1930) Trinidad and Tobago centre-left politician, prime minister 1981-86. A member of the People's National Movement (PNM), he took over as PNM leader and prime minister after the sudden death of Eric...

Chambers, Julius L (Levonne)
(1936) US lawyer and civil-rights advocate. He was named director-counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1984 and was a...

Chambers, Robert
(1802-1871) Scottish publisher and writer. With his brother, William Chambers, he founded the publishing firm of W & R Chambers. He was at first only a contributor to Chambers's Edinburgh Journal started by his...

Chambers, William
(1800-1883) Scottish publisher. In 1832 he issued the first number of Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. This led to the founding of the firm of W & R Chambers, and the issue...

Chambers, William
(1723-1796) English architect born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a Scottish merchant. Although he worked in the neo-Palladian style, he was also a popularizer of Chinese influence (for example, the pagoda in Kew...

Chambord
French château of the Renaissance period, situated in the département of Loir-et-Cher, 19 km/12 mi east of Blois. The castle was begun by Francis I in 1519, and was completed by his...

Chambord, Château de
A royal château near Blois in the Loire Valley, central France. Begun by Francis I in 1519 and completed in about 1540, it was probably designed by ...

Chambre Ardente
Court organized in about 1535 by the French king Francis I for the suppression of Protestant heresy. The rooms were draped with black and lit by torches. It was abolished in 1682. ...

Chambre Introuvable
Popular name for the French Chamber of Deputies convened in 1815, after the second recall of Louis XVIII. This parliament roused indignation and alarm throughout France by...

Chamfort, Sébastien Roch Nicolas
(1741-1794) French writer and moralist. His comedies, ballets, and critical writings, as well as his brilliant conversation, attracted a wide circle of admirers of every class. He is now best remembered for his...

Chamisso, Adelbert von
(1781-1838) French-born German biologist and writer, author of the fairy tale Peter Schlemihl's wundersame Geschichte/Peter Schlemihl's Remarkable Story (1814). One of t ...

Chamorro Vargas, Emiliano
(1871-1966) Nicaraguan soldier and right-wing politician, president 1917-21 and in 1926. Following the withdrawal of US troops from Nicaragua in 1925, Chamorro seized power in a coup. However, US refusal of...

Chamorro, Barrios de, Violeta
President of Nicaragua from 1990; see Barrios de Chamorro. ...

Chamorro, Violeta
(1929) Nicaraguan newspaper publisher and politician, president 1990-96. With strong US support, she was elected to be the candidate for the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO) in 1989, winning the...

Chamoun, Camille (Nimer)
(1900-1987) Lebanese Maronite Christian politician, president 1952-58. As president, he pursued pro-Western policies, antagonizing leftist-Nasserists, and, after being accused of rigging the 1957...

Champagne, Battles of
In World War I, two battles December 1914-March 1915 and September-October 1915 in the Champagne region of northeast France between French and German forces. The French attacks were intended to...

Champaigne, Philippe de
(1602-1674) French artist. He was the leading portrait painter of the court of Louis XIII. Of Flemish origin, he went to Paris in 1621 and gained the patronage of Cardinal Richelieu. His style is elegant, cool,...

Champfleury
(1821-1889) French novelist. He joined the bohemian circle of Charles Baudelaire and Henri Murger, and was an acknowledged leader of the realistic school. Among his novels are Les Bourgeois de Molinchart...

Champion v. Ames
US Supreme Court decision of 1903 that gave judicial sanction to the use of federal police power. Champion, arrested for shipping lottery tickets across state lines, in violation of the Federal...

Champlain, Samuel de
(1567-1635) French pioneer, soldier, and explorer in Canada. Having served in the army of Henry IV and on an expedition to the West Indies, he began his exploration of Canada in 1603. In a third expedition in...

Champney, Benjamin
(1817-1907) US painter. He worked as a lithographer in Boston, Massachusetts andbecame a portraitist in 1841.He painted landscapes, such as Picnic on Artist's Ledge Overlooking Conway...

Chan Chan
Capital of the pre-Inca Chimú kingdom in Peru. ...

Chan, Julius
(1939) Papua New Guinean right-of-centre politician, prime minister 1980-82 and 1994-97. He negotiated a ceasefire in the six-year-long separatist conflict on Bougainville island in 1994, but...

chancel
In architecture, the eastern part of a Christian church where the choir and clergy sit, formerly kept separate from the nave by an open-work screen or rail. In some medieval churches the screen is...

chancellor of the Exchequer
In the UK, senior cabinet minister responsible for the national economy. The office, established under Henry III, originally entailed keeping the Exchequer seal. The chancellor of the Exchequer,...

Chancellor, Lord
UK state official; see Lord Chancellor. ...

Chancellor, Richard
(died 1555) English navigator. While searching for the Northeast Passage he reached Moscow; there he met Tsar Ivan (IV) the Terrible and negotiated trade agreements which led to the establishment of the Muscovy...