Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) boat people, term used to describe the Indochinese refugees who fled Communist rule after the Vietnam War (1975) in small boats and the many ethnic Chinese who left Vietnam similarly after China's inv...

(Encyclopedia) Peculiar People, an alternate rendering for the biblical phrase “chosen people” (of Israel), applied to numerous Protestant dissenting sects such as the Plumstead peculiars. This group, founded in...

(Encyclopedia) People's Charter: see Chartism.

(Encyclopedia) Roma, people: see Romani.

(Encyclopedia) People's party: see Populist party. ...

(Encyclopedia) People's Temple: see Jones, Jim.

(Encyclopedia) Representation of the People Acts, statutes enacted by the British Parliament to continue the extension of the franchise begun by the Reform Bills (see under Reform Acts). As a result of the governmen...

(Encyclopedia) Veneti, people of ancient Italy. They occupied the shore of the Adriatic from Trieste to the mouth of the Po River and spoke an Illyrian language. Friendly toward Rome, they came under Roman rule in t...

(Encyclopedia) Veneti vĕnˈətī [key], Celtic people of ancient Gaul, who inhabited an area of NW France, now in Morbihan dept. Forming the most important of the Gallic maritime states, they rebelled in 57 b.c. ag...

(Encyclopedia) Natchez năchˈĭz [key], indigenous North American people who lived along St. Catherine's Creek east of the present-day city of Natchez in Mississippi. At the time of contact with the French in 1682,...