Wriothesley, Thomas See 1st Earl of Southampton
writ In common law, an order issued in the name of a sovereign or court commanding a person to perform or refrain from performing a specified act. It was a vital official instrument in Old English law. A plaintiff would
Sir Christopher Wren, detail of an oil painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1711; in the National Portrait Gallery, Lon¬ don.
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON
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2082 I writing ► Wupatki National Monument
commence a suit by choosing the proper form of action and obtaining a writ appropriate to the remedy sought; its issuance forced the defendant to comply or to appear in court. Writs were also constantly in use for financial and political purposes of government. Though the writ no longer governs civil pleading and has lost many of its applications, the extraor¬ dinary writs, especially of habeas corpus, mandamus (commanding the performance of a ministerial act), prohibition (commanding an inferior court to stay within its jurisdiction), and certiorari, reflect its historical importance as an instrument of judicial authority.
writing System of human visual communication using signs or symbols associated by convention with units of language —meanings or sounds— and recorded on materials such as paper, stone, or clay. Its precursor was pictography. Logography, in which symbols stand for individual words, typically develops from pictography. Logography requires thousands of symbols for all possible words and names. In phonographic systems, the symbol associated with a word also stands for similar- or identical- sounding words. Phonographic systems may evolve to the point where symbols represent syllables, constituting a syllabary. An alphabet provides symbols for all the consonants and vowels.
Writs of Assistance See Writs of Assistance
Wroctaw \'vr6t-,swaf\ German Breslau City (pop., 2000 est.: 633,857), southwestern Poland. Located on the Oder River, it originated in the 10th century at the crossroads of the trade route linking the Black Sea to western Europe. In 1138 it became the first capital of Silesia. The Tartars destroyed Wroclaw in 1241. Rebuilt, it passed to Bohemia with the rest of Silesia in 1335 and to the Habsburgs in 1526. In 1741 it fell to Prussia under the rule of Frederick II (the Great), and it eventually became part of Germany. During World War II Wroclaw was besieged (1945) by Soviet troops. The city was assigned to Poland by the Potsdam Confer¬ ence of 1945. Heavily damaged during the war, it was rebuilt and is now a major commercial city.
wrought iron One of the two forms in which iron is obtained by smelt¬ ing. Wrought iron is a soft, easily worked, fibrous metal. It usually contains less than 0.1% carbon and 1-2% slag. It is superior for most purposes to cast iron, which is hard and brittle because of its higher carbon content. In antiquity, iron was smelted directly by heating ore in a forge with charcoal, which served both as fuel and reducing agent. While still hot, the iron-and- slag mixture was removed as a lump and worked (wrought) with a hammer to expel most of the slag and weld the iron into a coherent mass. Wrought iron began to take the place of bronze (being far more available) in Asia Minor in the 2nd millennium bc; its use for tools and weapons was estab¬ lished in China, India, and the Mediterranean by the 3rd century bc. Later, in Europe, wrought iron was produced indirectly from cast iron (see pud¬ dling process). With the invention of the Bessemer process and open-hearth process, steel supplanted wrought iron for structural purposes, and its use in the 20th century has been principally decorative.
wu Fundamental Daoist philosophical concept. Wu (“not-being”), you (“being”), wuming (“the nameless”), and youming (“the named”) are inter¬ dependent and grow out of one another. Wu and you are two aspects of the DAO. Not-being does not mean nothingness but rather the absence of perceptible qualities; in Laozi’s view, it is superior to being. It is the void that harbours in itself all potentialities and without which even being lacks its efficacy. According to the scholar He Yan (d. 249), wu is beyond name and form and hence is absolute, complete, and capable of accomplishing anything. See also Daoism.
Wu Cheng'en or Wu Ch'eng-en Vwu-'chsq-'onX (b. c. 1500, Shan- yang, Huaian, China—d. c. 1582, Huaian) Chinese novelist and poet. He received a traditional Confucian education and became known for his clever poetry and prose composition in the classical style. Interested in bizarre stories, he used oral and written folktales as the basis of the novel Xiyouji (Journey to the West, also partially translated as Monkey), pub¬ lished anonymously in 1592. It relates the comic mishaps and adventures of the 7th-century monk Xuanzang, who traveled to India looking for sacred texts, and his entourage of three animal spirits: a monkey, a pig, and a fish. It satirizes Chinese society and government and contains religious and philosophical elements drawn from Buddhism, Daoism, and Neo- Confucianism. Only two volumes of his other writings have survived.
Wu-lu-mu-ch'i See Urumqi
Wu Sangui or Wu San-kuei Vwii-'san-’gwaX (b. 1612, Liaodong, China—d. Oct. 2, 1678, Hengzhou, Hunan province) Chinese general who
invited the Manchu into China and helped them establish the Qing dynasty. Though he had for many years battled the Manchu on China’s northeast¬ ern frontier, he turned to them for aid when the Ming-dynasty capital at Beijing fell to rebel leader L Zicheng. The Manchu forces defeated Li and then set up their own dynasty, in which Wu served many years. Only when he was put in charge of eliminating the remnants of Ming resistance in southwestern China did he break away, creating his own state in the area of Yunnan and Guizhou. Two other commanders had set up similar states in neighbouring southern provinces; in 1673 Wu led the three in rebel¬ lion. After Wu’s death, his grandson continued the rebellion until 1681, when it was finally crushed. See also Dorgon.
Wu-ti See Wudi Wu Zetian See Wuhou
Wuchang Ywii-'chaqV or Wu-ch'ang Industrial city (pop., 1999 est.: 227,856), part of the tri-city conurbation of Wuhan, Hubei province, cen¬ tral China. It is the oldest of the Wuhan cities, probably dating from the Han dynasty. It was the capital of the kingdom of Wu in the 3rd century ad, as well as capital of an administrative district under the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and later capital of Hubei province (until 1950). In 1911 it was the starting point of the revolution against the imperial regime. The Japanese occupied the city in 1938—45; the Chinese communists took it in 1949. It became part of Wuhan in 1950.
Wudi or Wu-ti Vwu-'de\ orig. Liu Che (b. 156 bc —d. March 29, 87 bc) Emperor of the Chinese Han dynasty who vastly increased its author¬ ity and its influence abroad and made Confucianism China’s state religion. Under Wudi, China’s armies drove back the nomadic Xiongnu tribes that plagued the northern border, incorporated southern China and northern and central Vietnam into the empire, and reconquered Korea. Their far¬ thest expedition was to Fergana (in modern Uzbekistan). Wudi’s military campaigns strained the state’s reserves; seeking new income, he decreed new taxes and established state monopolies on salt, iron, and wine.