From 1849 onward Marx lived in London and was supported financially by Engels. In 1864 he founded the International Working Men\'s Association, also known as the First International, to help coordinate socialist activity. Marx\'s greatest contribution to society, however, was as a writer, particularly in his multi-volume work Capital (1867-1894), which laid out his original yet complex critique of capitalism and his view of history driven by economic forces. Long after his death, Marx\'s writings ensured his continuing influence on revolutionary movements throughout the world. '); bio[31433] = new Biography('Hobson, J.A. (1858-1940)','An English economist. Particularly influenced by the ideas of John Stuart Mill, Hobson devoted most of his work to the troubling social issues of poverty and unemployment and their relation to imperialism. In books such as The Evolution of Modern Capitalism (1894), Hobson argued that the concentration of wealth in too few hands resulted in underconsumption, or a lack of buying power among the lower classes of a population. His views of imperialism were in many ways an extension of this argument. In Hobson\'s best-known book, Imperialism: A Study (1902), he held that underconsumption at home forced businesses and governments to ruthlessly search out new markets through imperialism. For Hobson, the solution to these related problems was a redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation and social services, thereby increasing the purchasing power of the masses and reducing the need for overseas imperial markets. While not popular at the time, Hobson\'s ideas would influence liberal and socialist policies in the 20th century.'); bio[31434] = new Biography('Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich (1870-1924)','The communist leader of the Russian Revolution. Born Vladimir Ulyanov, Lenin came from a middle-class Russian family. As a young man he studied law and became involved in leftist politics against the repressive tsarist regime. His political actions resulted in imprisonment in 1895 and exile to Siberia two years later. After escaping to Western Europe in 1900, Lenin wrote numerous articles for socialist periodicals and books, such as What is to be Done? (1902) - a book that outlined his vision of an immediate revolution in Russia. Beginning in 1912 he led the Bolshevik Party of Russian communist exiles who opposed the more orthodox Marxist views of the other exiled communists, called "Mensheviks." Unlike more orthodox Marxists, Lenin argued that revolution could not wait for the proper historical circumstances but rather should come when the opportunity presented itself. Lenin found his opportunity when Russian failures in World War I and economic hardship caused the downfall of Tsar Nicholas II\'s regime in early 1917. Lenin arrived in Russia in the spring of 1917 and promised land to the peasants and an end to the war. He also quickly organized Russian workers and soldiers to undermine the new, unpopular liberal government. By November 1917 Lenin was able to take control with very little violence.
As leader of the new communist government, Lenin\'s first priority was not democracy but the security of the state. In the Russian Civil War (1918-1920) against counter-revolutionary forces, the power of Lenin\'s state grew with the introduction of a secret police, a reformed army, and government requisitioning of supplies. While Lenin argued that these measures were necessary during a time of emergency, such powers proved difficult to relinquish in peacetime. Despite his reputation as an ideologue, Lenin was always a pragmatic politician. Facing economic hardship in the wake of the civil war, he began a New Economic Policy in 1921 that reintroduced limited capitalism into the Russian economy - an action that was extremely controversial among other revolutionaries. When he died in 1924, Lenin left neither a firm successor nor a clear direction for the new nation, creating circumstances that would lead to much conflict in coming years.'); bio[31435] = new Biography('Darwin, Charles (1809-1882)','An English scientist whose theory of evolution changed the nature of biological investigation. Soon after graduating from Cambridge, where he developed an enthusiasm for botany, Darwin joined an expedition in 1831 to South America and the Pacific on the H.M.S. Beagle. During the five-year voyage, Darwin collected the extensive plant and animal specimens that would form the basis of his later studies. After returning to England in 1836, Darwin settled in rural Kent, where he spent the next decade developing his ideas of natural selection. His theory held that species survive by changing and adapting to their environment.
At first Darwin only hinted at his ideas in articles. In 1858, however, when he received an essay by scientist Alfred Wallace that contained similar ideas, Darwin decided to publish his theory more extensively. On the Origin of Species (1859) was a groundbreaking scientific work. Almost immediately it encountered major attacks from those who were particularly scandalized by the notion of humans descending from apes rather than from Adam and Eve. To Darwin\'s critics he was another example of the dangerous secularization of modern society. Yet his work also gained many supporters, including not only scientists but social theorists such as Herbert Spencer, who attempted to use Darwin\'s theory to justify social and racial inequality among humans. Thus, in addition to his long-term influence over the study of biology, Darwin had an indirect yet powerful effect on contemporary questions of poverty and imperialism.'); bio[31436] = new Biography('Rhodes, Cecil (1853-1902)','A South African statesman and supporter of British imperialism. Though born in Britain, Rhodes lived much of his life in South Africa, where he became wealthy from diamond mining. In the 1880s he enthusiastically worked to develop the area north of the Transvaal (a territory later known as Rhodesia), forming the British South Africa Company in 1887 and the Debeers company in 1888. Already active in South African politics as a member of the Cape Colony legislature, Rhodes had ambitions to lead the unification of the entire region under the British flag. The major obstacle to this plan was the neighboring Transvaal, which was then controlled by a Dutch colonist known as Boers. As prime minister of the Cape Colony (1890-1896), Rhodes engineered the Jameson Raid against the Transvaal in 1895. This failed, forcing Rhodes from office, and the resulting tensions led to the Boer War (1899-1902). The war, which Rhodes wholeheartedly supported, ended with the defeat of the Boers and the British dominance that he had hoped for all along.'); bio[31437] = new Biography('Roosevelt, Theodore (1858-1919)','The 26th president of the United States (1901-1909). Famous for his competitive nature both inside and outside of politics, Roosevelt entered government at the age of 23, when he was elected to the New York State Assembly. He served as assistant secretary of the navy under President William McKinley and he became a strong and flamboyant leader in the 1898 Spanish-American War. During that war he led a volunteer unit called "The Rough Riders" and earned national fame as a war hero.
In 1899 Roosevelt was elected governor of New York, a post he left the next year to become McKinley\'s vice president. Upon McKinley\'s assassination on September 14, 1901, Roosevelt assumed the presidency and brought a new and unique spirit to the office. He was noted for his foreign policy, which he based on the motto "speak softly and carry a big stick." This attitude toward diplomacy enabled him to acquire the Canal Zone, which later became the Panama Canal. As blunt as his diplomacy may appear, he won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1906 for his mediation in the Russo-Japanese War.
In domestic affairs, Roosevelt championed many aspects of the still-nascent Progressive movement. Realizing that Congress was still unreceptive to passing antitrust laws, Roosevelt used his powers as head of the executive branch to sue large trusts in the railroad, mining, meatpacking, and oil industries for using illegal monopoly powers. After winning reelection by a wide margin in 1904, Roosevelt pressed harder for legislative action against trusts. In 1906 he helped pass the Hepburn Act, which strengthened the power of the Interstate Commerce Committee to regulate trusts; he also approved the Pure Food and Drug Act that same year.
Roosevelt\'s desired successor as president, William Howard Taft, won election in 1908, and Roosevelt retired from politics. Within a few years, however, he had condemned Taft\'s drift toward conservatism. Roosevelt ran for president on the Progressive ("Bull Moose") ticket in 1912 against Taft and democrat Woodrow Wilson, calling for a vigorous program of government intervention in regulating the economy (the "New Nationalism"). Roosevelt outpolled Taft and split the Republican vote, handing Wilson the election. In 1915 Roosevelt again entered the public spotlight, making a series of prominent speeches that called for American "preparedness" for possible entry into World War I, and warned against what he called the "hyphenated Americanism" of disloyal immigrants. After the war\'s end, he stated his opposition to United States membership in the League of Nations.'); bio[31438] = new Biography('Gordon, Charles George (1833-1885)','A British general, also known as "Chinese" Gordon. Gordon entered the British army as a very young man and served in the Crimean War during the 1850s. In 1860 he went to China, where he led Chinese troops in putting down the Taiping Rebellion, bringing him public acclaim in Britain and earning him his nickname. He returned to England in 1865 and remained there until the early 1870s. On two different occasions (1874-1876, 1877-1880), Gordon was appointed by the ruler of Egypt (who often employed Europeans in his government) to be the governor of Sudan, where he worked toward economic development and an end to the slave trade.
Following a short retirement, Gordon was called back into service in Sudan in 1884 to evacuate Egyptian troops threatened by a growing Muslim rebellion led by the Mahdi. Gordon, however, soon found himself trapped in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, under siege by the rebels. After 10 months of waiting and fighting, Gordon was killed shortly before a relief army reached Khartoum. While his last endeavor was spectacularly unsuccessful, Gordon became a national hero in Britain and was seen as a martyr to the cause of civilizing the world. '); } buildBio ();