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

Ganda
Member of the majority ethnic group in Uganda; the Baganda also live in Kenya. Traditionally farmers, the Ganda are a Bantu people, many of whom now work in cities. Most are Christians. Their...

Gandhara
Ancient state situated in the region of modern northern Pakistan and India, founded by Greeks who had settled in the area following Alexander the Great's conquests of the 4th century BC. By 100 BC...

Gandhi, Indira Priyadarshani
(1917-1984) Indian politician, prime minister of India 1966-77 and 1980-84, and leader of the Congress Party 1966-77 and subsequently of the Congress (I) party. She was assassinated in 1984 by members of...

Gandhi, Mahatma
(1869-1948) Indian nationalist leader. A pacifist, he led the struggle for Indian independence from the UK by advocating non-violent non-cooperation (satyagraha`truth and firmness`) from 1915. He was...

Gandhi, Rajiv
(1944-1991) Indian politician, prime minister from 1984 (following his mother Indira Gandhi's assassination) to November 1989. As prime minister, he faced growing discontent with his party's elitism and lack of...

Gandon, James
(1743-1823) English-born Classical architect; one of the most important Georgian architects working in Ireland. Gandon moved from London to Dublin in 1781 to supervise the building of the new Custom House...

Ganesh
Hindu god of prophecy, son of Shiva and Parvati; he is represented as elephant-headed and is worshipped as a remover of obstacles. Hindus seek his aid before difficult undertakings, such as an...

Gang of Four
In the UK, term referring to four members of the Labour Party who in 1981 resigned to form the Social Democratic Party: Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams, and William Rodgers. ...

Gang of Four
In Chinese history, the chief members of the radical faction that played a key role in directing the Cultural Revolution and tried to seize power after the death of the communist leader Mao Zedong...

gangsterism
Organized crime, particularly in the USA as a result of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) in 1919. Bootlegging activities (importing or making illegal liquor) and speakeasies (where alcohol...

Ganilau, Ratu Penaia
(1918-1993) Fijian politician, governor general 1983-87 and president 1987-93. As governor general, he took the controversial decision to dissolve parliament in May 1987 after Major General Sitiveni Rabuka...

Ganymede
In Greek mythology according to Homer, a youth so beautiful he was taken as cupbearer to Zeus, king of the gods. He was deemed responsible for the annual flooding of the Nile, and was later...

Garamond, Claude
(1480-1561) French typecutter. In about 1541 he co-designed the Greek type named Grecs du roi (in recognition of the patronage of Francis I), which was first used in Alphabetum Graecum, printed in 1543. ...

Garand rifle
Standard US military rifle from 1936 until the late 1950s. The first automatic rifle to be adopted as standard by any major power, its undoubted success in combat led to a reappraisal...

Garang, John
(1945-2005) Sudanese guerrilla leader of the southern rebels in the country's civil war. He defected from the army in 1970 and joined the Anya Nya rebels. In 1983 he set up the Sudanese People's Liberation Army...

Garat, Dominique Joseph
(1749-1833) French politician and writer. He became minister of justice during the early days of the French Revolution. Under Napoleon he was ennobled and also became a senator and president of the institute,...

Garbett, Cyril Foster
(1875-1955) English prelate. He was appointed bishop of Southwark in 1919, bishop of Winchester in 1932, and archbishop of York in 1942. He was one of the church's leading spokespeople in the House of Lords on...

Garborg, Arne
(1851-1924) Norwegian novelist, playwright, and poet. He was a leading figure in the movement to establish a new Norwegian literary language (LandsmÃÂ¥l; later called Nynorsk, `New Norwegian`). His first...

Garbus, Martin
(1930) US lawyer specializing in civil-liberty cases. His clients included Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, Nelson Mandela, and Václav Havel, for whom he drafted the section on civil liberties in the...

García Calderón, Ventura
(1886-1959) Peruvian writer. The son of an exiled president, he lived a large part of his life in France and Spain. His novels and stories, written in both Spanish and French, concern the social inequalities of...

García Lorca, Federico
Spanish poet. See Lorca, Federico García. ...

García Márquez, Gabriel (Gabo)
(1928) Colombian novelist. His sweeping novel Cien años de soledad/One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) (which tells the story of a family over a period of six gener ...

García Perez, Alan
(1949) Peruvian politician and president 1985-90 and from 2006; leader of the moderate, reformist left-wing American Popular Revolutionary Alliance party (APRA; Aprista Party). He inherited an ailing...

García Robles, Alfonso
(1911-1991) Mexican politician and peace negotiator, `father of the Tlatelolco Agreement`. Alfonso García Robles was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1982 with Swedish politician Alva Myrdal for twenty...

Garcia, Hector P(erez)
(1914-1996) Mexican-born US physician, humanitarian, civil-rights activist, and founder in 1948 of the American GI Forum (AGIF), a national organization that addresses the health, education, and civil...

Garcilaso de la Vega
(c. 1539-c. 1616) Spanish writer, called el Inca. Son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess, he wrote an account of the conquest of Florida and Comentarios reales de los Incas on the history of Peru. ...

Garcilaso de la Vega
(1503-1536) Spanish poet. A soldier, he was a member of Charles V's expedition in 1535 to Tunis; he was killed in battle at Nice. He is one of Spain's finest pastoral poets and his verse, some...

garden
Plot of land, usually belonging to a householder. It can be cultivated to produce food or to create pleasant surroundings. Pleasure gardens were common in all ancient civilizations. In medieval...

garden city
In the UK, a town built in a rural area and designed to combine town and country advantages, with its own industries, controlled developments, private and public gardens, and cultural centre. The...

garderobe
Medieval lavatory. Garderobes were often built into the thickness of a castle wall, with an open drop to the moat below. ...

Gardiner, Alfred George
(1865-1946) English journalist and essayist. He wrote under the pseudonym `Alpha of the Plough` and was editor of the Daily News 1902-19. His Prophets, Priests and Kings 1908 is a series of caustic...

Gardiner, Gerald Austin
(1900-1990) English lawyer. As Lord Chancellor in the 1964-70 Labour governments, Gardiner introduced the office of ombudsman to the UK, and played a major role in the movement for the abolition of capital...

Gardiner, Stephen
(c. 1493-1555) English priest and politician. After being secretary to Cardinal Wolsey, he became bishop of Winchester in 1531. An opponent of Protestantism, he was imprisoned under Edward VI, and as Lord...

Gardner, Erle Stanley
(1889-1970) US author of best-selling crime fiction. He created the character of the lawyer-detective Perry Mason, who was later featured in film and on television. Originally a lawyer, Gardner gave up his...

Gardner, Helen Louise
(1908-1986) English scholar and critic. She edited the poetry and prose of Donne and other metaphysical poets and the New Oxford Book of English Verse 1972. She was Merton Professor of English Literature at...

Gardner, Isabella Stewart
(1840-1924) US art collector. She founded the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, USA. As an art collector, she specialized in the works of the Renaissance and of the Dutch masters. Her private art...

Gardner, John (Champlin), Jr
(1933-1982) US writer and educator. He wrote a number of scholarly works, principally medieval translations and academic editions of classic texts. In addition he wrote poetry, criticism, and fiction, including...

Gardner, O Max (Oliver Maxwell)
(1882-1947) US politician. A lawyer and wealthy investor, he served in the state legislature before becoming North Carolina's lieutenant governor as a Democrat candidate (1916-21). As governor of North...

Garfield, James A(bram)
(1831-1881) 20th president of the USA 1881, a Republican. A compromise candidate for the presidency, he held office for only four months before being assassinated in a Washington, DC, railway station by a...

Garfield, John
(1913-1952) US stage and screen actor. A one-time juvenile delinquent, he gained a reputation acting with the leftist Group Theater in New York City, then enjoyed both critical and popular acclaim for his...

Garfield, Lucretia
(1832-1918) US first lady. A former student of James Garfield while studying at Hiram College, she married the future US president in 1858. She was a great believer in education and was more interested in the...

Gargantua and Pantagruel
Cycle of four (or five) satirical novels by the French writer François Rabelais, published 1532-64. The novels are written in mock-heroic style and reveal...

gargoyle
In architecture, a lead or stone spout projecting from the roof gutter of a building with the purpose of directing water away from the wall. The term is usually applied to the ornamental forms found...

Garibaldi, Giuseppe
(1807-1882) Italian soldier who played a central role in the unification of Italy by conquering Sicily and Naples in 1860. From 1834 a member of the nationalist Mazzini's Young Italy society, he was forced into...

Garland, Hamlin
(1860-1940) US writer. In his realistic novels and short stories he depicted the life of the people on the prairie farms as a monotonous struggle for survival. Among his many volumes are Main Travelled Roads...

Garn, Stanley M(arion)
(1922) US physical anthropologist. An evolutionist and specialist on human races, he has made a major contribution to pediatrics and gerontology, specifically researching the interaction of genetics with...

Garner, Helen
(1942) Australian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer. Her early experience as a secondary-school teacher has helped her to engage realistically with the inner-city life of Melbourne. She...

Garner, John Nance
(1868-1967) US political leader and vice president of the USA 1933-41. He served in the US House of Representatives 1903-33. A Democratic leader in the House, he w ...

Garnet, Henry
(1555-1606) English Jesuit priest. He joined the Society of Jesus in Italy and acquired a reputation for scholarship, then returned as provost of the Jesuits in England. He was tried on suspicion of being...

Garnett, David
(1892-1981) English novelist. His second novel, Lady into Fox 1922, made his reputation: it is a striking story of a woman who turns into a vixen, and the effect it has upon her husband. Other novels include A...

Garnett, Richard
(1835-1906) English man of letters and librarian. He was keeper of printed books at the British Museum 1890-99. His most important works are The Twilight of the Gods and other Tales 1888 and Relics of Shelley...

Garnier, Robert
(c. 1545-1590) French dramatist and poet. Following the example of Etienne Jodelle, he wrote Classically styled tragedies (in particular following the example of Seneca). These include:Porcie (1568), Hippolyte...

Garnier, Tony (Antoine)
(1869-1948) French architect whose prophetic designs for an imaginary industrial city (1901-04) were profoundly influential. Afterwards many of his ideas were realized in concrete form while he was architect...

Garretson, A(ustin) B(ruce)
(1856-1931) US labour leader. He apprenticed as a wheelright but then became a railroad brakeman and eventually a conductor. Garretson joined the Order of Railway Conductors in 1884 and served as chief...

Garrett, Almeida
(1799-1854) Portuguese poet, novelist, and dramatist. As a liberal, in 1823 he was forced into 14 years of exile. His works, which he saw as a single-handed attempt to create a national literature, include...

Garrett, Finis (James)
(1875-1956) US politician. A newspaperman and lawyer before going to the US House of Representatives as the Democrat representative of Tennessee (1905-29), he was a fiscal conservative but an internationalist...

Garrick Theatre
Theatre in Charing Cross Road, London. Associated mostly with comedies, it was commissioned by the librettist W S Gilbert (1836-1911), designed by Walter Emden (1847-1913), and opened by the...

Garrick, David
(1717-1779) English actor and theatre manager. From 1747 he became joint licensee of the Drury Lane Theatre, London, with his own company, and instituted a number of significant theatrical conventions including...

Garrison, William Lloyd
(1805-1879) US editor and abolitionist. An immediatist (campaigner for an immediate rather than gradual end to slavery), he was an uncompromising opponent of slavery. He founded the abolitionist journal The...

Garrity, (Wendell) Arthur, Jr
(1920) US judge. He became US attorney for Massachusetts (1961-66) and was appointed to the federal bench for Massachusetts in 1966. In 1974 he came to national prominence when he ruled that Boston's...

Garrod, Dorothy Annie Elizabeth
(1892-1968) English archaeologist. She directed expeditions to Kurdistan in 1928 and Palestine 1929-34, and took part in excavations in the Lebanon 1958-64. An expert on the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age,...

Garrod, Heathcote William
(1878-1960) English scholar. He was professor of poetry at Oxford 1923-28 and Norton professor at Harvard 1929, his lectures being published as Poetry and Criticism of Life 1931. He edited the Oxford Book of...

Garros, Roland
(1888-1918) French fighter pilot in World War I. He held several aviation records 1911-12 and made his name with a 800 km/500 mi flight across the Mediterranean from St Raphael to Bizerte. He had some success...

Garshin, Vsevolod Mikhailovich
(1855-1888) Russian short-story writer. He served in the Russo-Turkish War and was invalided home 1878. His stories, fewer than 20, include allegories, fairy tales, and war stories, among them `The Red...

Garstang, John
(1876-1956) British archaeologist. He led an archaeological expedition to Jericho, Jordan, 1930-36, which revealed successive layers of occupation from Neolithic (New Stone Age) times, and also conducted...

Garter, Order of the
Senior British order of knighthood (see knighthood, order of), founded by Edward III in about 1347. Its distinctive badge is a garter of dark-blue velvet, with the motto of the order -Honi soit...

Garuda
In Hindu mythology, the eagle-like divine bird, carrier of Vishnu. ...

Garvey, Marcus (Moziah)
(1887-1940) Jamaican political thinker and activist, an early advocate of black nationalism. He led a Back to Africa movement for black Americans to establish a black-governed country in Africa. The Jamaican...

Gary, Elbert Henry
(1846-1927) US lawyer and financier. A practising lawyer, county magistrate, and latterly president of the Chicago Bar Association (1893-94), he moved to New York City in 1898 to become president of the...

gas lighting
The lighting of private or public premises by gas derived from coal by distillation. Gas was first used in Britain in 1792 to light the office of the Scottish steam engineer William Murdoch. Gas...

gas shell
Artillery projectile carrying a chemical agent, first used during World War I. The explosive is contained in a central cylinder and the remaining space filled with liquefied gas so that the...

gas warfare
Military use of gas to produce a toxic effect on the human body. See chemical warfare. ...

Gascoigne, Bamber
(1935) English author and broadcaster who chaired the student quiz show University Challenge from 1962 to 1987. He has written and presented The Christians, Victorian Values, Man and Music, and The Great...

Gascoigne, George
(1525-1577) English poet and dramatist. He is the author of Supposes (1573), a translation of I suppositi by Ludovico Ariosto, and the earliest extant comedy in English prose;Jocasta (1573), a version of the...

Gascoigne, William
(c. 1350-1419) English lawyer. In 1397 he became one of the King's serjeants and was appointed attorney to the banished Duke of Hereford, who was later to become Henry IV. He was made chief justice of the King's...

Gascony
Ancient province of southwest France. With Guienne it formed the duchy of Aquitaine in the 12th century. Henry II of England gained possession of it through his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine in...

Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
(1810-1865) English novelist. Her most popular book, Cranford (1853), is the study of a small, close-knit circle in a small town, modelled on Knutsford, Cheshire, where she was brought up. Her other books,...

Gasparri, Pietro
(1852-1934) Italian cardinal who was chiefly responsible for negotiating the Lateran Treaties between the Vatican and the Italian fascist government of Benito Mussolini, which were signed...

Gasquet, Francis Aidan
(1846-1929) English cardinal and historian. A Benedictine, he was prior of Downside Abbey, Somerset, 1878-85. He served as president of the papal commission for revision of the Vulgate from 1907 until his...

Gass, William Howard
(1924) US experimental writer and theoretician. His novels, which parody genres and use typography and layout variations to emphasize the physical reality of the book, include Omensetter's Luck (1966) and...

Gassendi, Pierre
(1592-1655) French physicist and philosopher who played a crucial role in the revival of atomism (the theory that the world is made of small, indivisible particles), and the rejection of Aristotelianism so...

Gassman, Vittorio
(1922-2000) Italian film and theatre actor of German descent. In 1950 he founded the Italian Popular Theatre, with which he came to London in 1963, appearing in excerpts from his repertoire under the title The...

Gate Theatre
Theatre in Dublin, Republic of Ireland, founded in 1928 by Mícheál Mac Liammóir and his partner Hilton Edwards (1903-1982) as a complement to the Abbey Theatre's Irish literary revival...

Gates, Daryl F
(1926) US police chief. He rose through the ranks of the Los Angeles police force to become its chief (1978-92). An adviser on crime to presidents and top government officials, he pioneered both the...

Gates, Frederick T(aylor)
(1853-1929) US clergyman and businessman. A Baptist minister, his first church was in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1881). In 1888 he resigned and became secretary of the American Baptist Education Society, in which...

Gates, Henry Louis
(1950) US academic and social activist. A scholar of African-American studies, he has republished such forgotten works as Our Nig (1859) by Harriet E Wilson (c.1828-c.1863), the e ...

Gates, Horatio
(c. 1727-1806) British-born American military leader. George Washington appointed him brigadier general in the Continental Army in 1775 at the outbreak of the American Revolution. In command of the Northern...

Gates, Robert Michael
(1943) US intelligence officer and administrator, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 1991-93 and defence secretary from 2006. An intelligence expert, he served for 26 years...

Gath
One of the five royal cities of the Philistines, situated near the borders of Judah, and the birthplace of Goliath. During the early years of the Kingdom of Jerusalem Gath was fortified by the...

GATT
Acronym for General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. ...

Gattamelata, Il
(1370-1443) Condottiere from Padua, whose name in Italian means `honeyed cat`. He learnt his trade with Braccio da Montone and Niccolò Piccinnio (1386-1444). He was first employed by the Florentine and...

gaucho
Part American Indian, part Spanish cattle herder of the Argentine and Uruguayan pampas. The gauchos supported the Argentine ruler, Ortiz de Rosas, 1835-52. ...

Gauden, John
(1605-1662) English writer and bishop. He became bishop of Exeter in 1660 and bishop of Worcester in 1662. He claimed authorship of the ...

Gaudin, Juliet
(1808-1887) US nun. She cofounded with Henriette Delille the Sisters of the Holy Family (1842), a community of African-American Catholic nuns. Born in Cuba, she emigrated to New Orleans,...

Gaugamela, Battle of
Decisive defeat in 331 BC of the Persians under Darius III (ruled about 380-330 BC) by the Macedonian king Alexander the Great. Alexander's tactical superiority enabled his troops to defeat the...

Gauguin, (Eugène Henri) Paul
(1848-1903) French post-Impressionist painter. Going beyond the Impressionists' concern with ever-changing appearances, he developed a heavily symbolic and decorative style characterized by his sensuous use...

Gaul
The Celtic-speaking peoples who inhabited France and Belgium in Roman times; also their territory. Certain Gauls invaded Italy around 400 BC, sacked Rome 387 BC, and settled between...

Gaulle, Charles de
French politician, see Charles de Gaulle. ...

Gaulli Baciccio, Giovanni Battista
(1639-1709) Italian baroque painter. He decorated many Roman churches with dazzling flamboyance, his principal work being the ceiling of the church of the Gesù, Rome, 1668-83, where figures floating in...

gaullism
Political philosophy deriving from the views of Charles de Gaulle but not necessarily confined to Gaullist parties, or even to France. Its basic tenets are the creation and preservation of a...