Victoria (redirected from Alexandrina Victoria)

Victoria, city, Hong Kong

Victoria: see Hong Kong.

---

Victoria, city, Mexico

Victoria, Mexico see: Ciudad Victoria.

---

Victoria, queen of Great Britain and Ireland

Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria) (ăl'ĭgzăndrē`nə), 1819–1901, queen of Great Britain and Ireland (1837–1901) and empress of India (1876–1901). She was the daughter of Edward, duke of Kent (fourth son of George III), and Princess Mary Louise Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

Early Reign

Victoria's father died before she was a year old. Upon the death (1830) of George IV, she was recognized as heir to the British throne, and in 1837, at the age of 18, she succeeded her uncle, William IV, to the throne. With the accession of a woman, the connection between the English and Hanoverian thrones ceased in accordance with the Salic law of Hanover. One of the young queen's advisers was Baron Stockmar, sent by her uncle, King Leopold I of the Belgians.

Her first prime minister, Viscount Melbourne, became her close friend and adviser. In 1839, when Melbourne's Whig cabinet resigned, Victoria refused to dismiss her Whig ladies of the bedchamber, the accepted gesture of confidence in the incoming party. The Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel, declined to form a cabinet, and Melbourne remained in office.

Marriage to Albert

In 1840, Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Albert, with whom she was very much in love, became the dominant influence in her life. Her first child, Victoria, later empress of Germany, was born in 1840, and the prince of Wales, later Edward VII, in 1841. Victoria had nine children. Their marriages and those of her grandchildren allied the British royal house with those of Russia, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Romania, and several of the German states.

Through Albert's efforts, Victoria was reconciled with the Tories, and she became very fond of Peel during his second ministry (1841–46). She was less happy with the Whig ministry that followed, taking particular exception to the adventurous foreign policy of Viscount Palmerston. The resulting friction was a factor in Palmerston's dismissal from office in 1851. The queen and Albert also influenced the formation of Lord Aberdeen's coalition government in 1852. Royal popularity was increased by the success of the Crystal Palace exposition (1851), planned and carried through by Albert.

It began to wane again, however, when it was rumored on the eve of the Crimean War that the royal couple was pro-Russian. After the outbreak (1854) of the war, Victoria took part in the organization of relief for the wounded and instituted the Victoria Cross for bravery. She also reconciled herself to Palmerston, who became prime minister in 1855 and proved a vigorous war leader.

Widowhood and Later Years

In 1861, Albert (who had been named prince consort in 1857) died. Victoria's grief was so great that she did not appear in public for three years and did not open Parliament until 1866; her prolonged seclusion damaged her popularity. Her reappearance was largely the work of Benjamin Disraeli, who, together with William Gladstone, dominated the politics of the latter part of Victoria's reign.

Disraeli, adroit in his personal relations with Victoria, became the queen's great favorite. In 1876 he secured for her the title empress of India, which pleased her greatly; she was ardently imperialistic and intensely interested in the welfare of her colonial subjects, particularly the Indians. Victoria's relations with Gladstone, on the other hand, were very stiff; she disliked him personally and disapproved of many of his policies, especially Irish Home Rule.

In her old age, Victoria was enormously popular. Jubilees were held in 1887 and 1897 to celebrate the 50th and 60th years of the longest English reign. The queen was not highly intelligent, but her conscientiousness and strict morals helped to restore the prestige of the crown and to establish it as a symbol of public service and imperial unity.

Bibliography

See her letters (9 vol., 1907–30); The Girlhood of Queen Victoria (extracts from her journal, ed. by Lord Esher, 1912); biographies by L. Strachey (1921, repr. 1960), S. Weintraub (1987), and D. Thompson (1990); C. Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History (2001).

---

Victoria, empress of Germany

Victoria (Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa), 1840–1901, empress of Germany, daughter of Victoria of England. In 1858 she married the German crown prince (later Emperor Frederick III). After her husband's death in 1888, she was generally known as Empress Frederick. An English liberal, she was bitterly hostile to the imperial chancellor Otto von Bismarck but was unable to make her dislike effective. Her letters were published in English in 1928.

Bibliography

See biographies by R. Barkeley (1956) and H. Pakula (1995).

---

Victoria, city, Canada

Victoria, city (1991 pop. 71,228), capital of British Columbia, SW Canada, on Vancouver Island and Juan de Fuca Strait. It is the largest city on the island and its major port and business center. In addition to its importance as the seat of provincial government, Victoria is noted as a residential city because of its mild climate, beautiful scenery, many parks (including Beacon Hill Park) and drives. It is also a popular center for American and Canadian tourists. It has sawmills and woodworking plants, fish-processing factories, grain elevators, and cold-storage plants. The city is the base of a deep-sea fishing fleet; a large naval installation is nearby. Founded (1843) as Fort Camosun, a Hudson's Bay Company post, the city was later called Fort Victoria. When Vancouver Island became a crown colony, a town was laid out on the site (1851–52), named Victoria, and made the capital of the colony. With the discovery (1858) of gold on the British Columbia mainland, Victoria became the port, supply base, and outfitting center for miners on their way to the Cariboo gold fields. In 1866, when the island was administratively united with the mainland, Victoria remained the capital of the colony and became the provincial capital in 1871. It is the seat of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory and the Univ. of Victoria.

---

Victoria or Port Victoria, town (1987 pop. 24,325), capital of the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean. A port on the NE coast of Mahé Island, Victoria is an administrative, commercial, tourist, and shipping center. Copra, essential oils and spices, and fish products are exported. Victoria has a botanic garden and a polytechnic institute; Seychelles International airport is to the southeast.

---

Victoria, state, Australia

Victoria (vĭktô`rēə), state (1991 pop. 3,770,684), 87,884 sq mi (227,620 sq km), SE Australia. It is bounded on the S and E by the Indian Ocean, Bass Strait, and the Tasman Sea. Melbourne is the capital. Other important cities are Geelong, Ballarat, and Bendigo. Australia's second smallest state, Victoria is the most densely populated. The Australian Alps and other mountains of the Eastern Highlands traverse it; the highest point is Mt. Bogong (6,508 ft/1,984 m). The climate is generally temperate and pleasant. The large, but frequently dry, rivers such as the Campaspe and the Mitta Mitta are important for irrigation; a large portion of the irrigated land in Australia is in Victoria. Hume Reservoir, on the New South Wales border, irrigates an extensive agricultural and pastoral area in the north. Despite its size, Victoria is one of Australia's leading agricultural states. Wheat, grown largely in the northeast, is the most important crop, followed by oats, barley, fruits, and vegetables. Livestock and dairying are also important. Sheep are raised in the southwest and dairy cattle in the south. Victoria was the first state in Australia to develop industry. Major industries include automobile manufacturing, textiles, clothing, food processing, and service industries. Gold mining has declined sharply; however, the mining of brown coal, mainly in the Latrobe Valley E of Melbourne, has increased dramatically. Until the introduction of tariff reforms in the 1980s, much of the labor force worked in retail and wholesale trade. Unsuccessful attempts at settlement were made in 1803 and 1826 on the site of the present Melbourne. Settlement began in the 1830s when sheep ranchers from Tasmania came looking for pasture. Known as the Port Phillip District, the area that is now Victoria became part of the colony of New South Wales in 1836. In 1851, Victoria was made a separate British colony, which was granted full constitutional self-government in 1855. The discovery of gold in 1851 led to a rapid population increase. Victoria was federated as a state of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Executive power rests nominally in the governor, who is appointed by the crown on advice of the cabinet. The premier and the cabinet are responsible to the bicameral state parliament.

---

Victoria, city, United States

Victoria, city (1990 pop. 55,076), seat of Victoria co., S Tex., on the Guadalupe River, in a prosperous farm, cattle, and oil area. The Victoria Barge Canal (completed in 1962) connects the city with the Intracoastal Waterway. Victoria has food-processing plants, aircraft shops, and factories manufacturing petrochemicals, concrete, metal, machinery, clothing, and boats. It is the seat of Victoria College and the Univ. of Houston at Victoria. A zoo and museums of history and fine arts are also in the city. To the south are the Padre Island National Seashore and a national wildlife refuge.

---

Victoria

 orig. Alexandrina Victoria

(born May 24, 1819, Kensington Palace, London, Eng.—died Jan. 22, 1901, Osborne, near Cowes, Isle of Wight) Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1837–1901) and Empress of India (from 1876). The only child of Edward, duke of Kent, she succeeded her uncle, William IV, in 1837. She was first guided as queen by the Whig prime minister Lord Melbourne and then by her husband, Prince Albert, whom she married in 1840. Devoted to him, she accepted his decisions on all issues in the period sometimes called the “Albertine monarchy.” They had nine children, through whose marriages descended many of the royal families of Europe. From 1861 Victoria deeply mourned Albert's death and thereafter made royal decisions as she believed he would have advised. She was frequently at odds with Prime Minister William E. Gladstone and welcomed his replacement by Benjamin Disraeli in 1874. Her reign, called the Victorian age, was marked by a period of British expansion and a restoration of dignity and popularity to the monarchy, as shown by her Jubilees of 1887 and 1897. She remains the longest reigning monarch in British history.

---

Victoria

State (pop., 2006: 4,932,422), southeastern Australia. It covers an area of 87,806 sq mi (227,416 sq km); its capital is Melbourne. The state's western and northwestern parts are sandy desert and lowland, while the central and eastern parts are highlands forming the southern end of the Australian Alps. The southwestern coastal region is known as Gippsland. The Murray River forms almost the entire boundary between the state and New South Wales. Australian Aboriginal peoples had lived in the region for at least 40,000 years before contact with Europeans. Some 60 years after Capt. James Cook first sighted its coastline (1770), the area was settled by immigrants from Tasmania. European diseases decimated much of the Aboriginal population. Victoria became a separate colony in 1851. In 1901 it became a state of the Commonwealth of Australia. Boosting its economy is a highly productive agricultural hinterland.

---

Victoria

City (pop., 2001: metro. area, 311,902), capital of British Columbia, Canada. It is located on the southeastern tip of Vancouver Island, overlooking Juan de Fuca Strait. It was founded in 1843 by the Hudson's Bay Co. as a fur-trading post known as Fort Camosun; it was later renamed Fort Victoria to honour the English queen. It was selected as the capital in 1866 when Vancouver Island united with British Columbia. It is now one of the province's largest business centres and a tourist resort and retirement community. A major port, it is the Pacific headquarters of the Canadian navy.

---

Victoria

Seaport, urban district, administrative centre of Hong Kong special administrative region, China. It lies on the northern shore of Hong Kong Island (pop., 2001: 1,335,469). It has extensive wharves and is connected to the mainland by ferry and by automobile and railway tunnels. It is the chief administrative, commercial, and cultural centre of Hong Kong and is the headquarters for numerous international banks and corporations.

---

Victoria

Town (pop., 1997: metro. area, 24,701), capital of the Republic of Seychelles. Located on the northeastern coast of Mahé Island in the Indian Ocean, it is the only port of the archipelago and the only town of any size in Seychelles. It is the country's business and cultural centre.

---

victoria

1. Brit a large sweet variety of plum, red and yellow in colour

2. any South American giant water lily of the genus Victoria, having very large floating leaves and large white, red, or pink fragrant flowers: family Nymphaeaceae

---

Victoria¹

1. 1819--1901, queen of the United Kingdom (1837--1901) and empress of India (1876--1901). She married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1840). Her sense of vocation did much to restore the prestige of the British monarchy

2. Tom?s Luis de. ?1548--1611, Spanish composer of motets and masses in the polyphonic style

---

Victoria²

1. a state of SE Australia: part of New South Wales colony until 1851; semiarid in the northwest, with the Great Dividing Range in the centre and east and the Murray River along the N border. Capital: Melbourne. Pop.: 4 947 985 (2003 est.). Area: 227 620 sq. km (87 884 sq. miles)

2. Lake a lake in East Africa, in Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya, at an altitude of 1134 m (3720 ft.): the largest lake in Africa and second largest in the world; drained by the Victoria Nile. Area: 69 485 sq. km (26 828 sq. miles)

3. a port in SW Canada, capital of British Columbia, on Vancouver Island: founded in 1843 by the Hudson's Bay Company; made capital of British Columbia in 1868; university (1963). Pop.: 288 346 (2001)

4. the capital of the Seychelles, a port on NE Mah?. Pop.: 24 701 (1997)

5. an urban area in S China, part of Hong Kong, on N Hong Kong Island: financial and administrative district; university (1911). Pop.: 595 000 (latest est.)

6. Mount. a mountain in SE Papua New Guinea: the highest peak of the Owen Stanley Range. Height: 4073 m (13 363 ft.)

---

Victoria 

Born May 24, 1819, in London; died Jan. 22, 1901, in Osborne. Queen of England from 1837. Last representative of the Hanoverian dynasty. Proclaimed empress of India in 1876.

The beginning of Victoria’s reign coincided with the establishment of Great Britain’s world hegemony in trade and industry, and its second half coincided with the creation of a vast British colonial empire. The queen’s role in state affairs was very insignificant. Nevertheless, in British bourgeois literature Victoria’s name (even during her lifetime) became a symbol of the prosperity and complacency of the British ruling classes, and the period of her reign came to be called the Victorian age (hence the epithet “Victorian” as applied to British art, daily life, and morals during the 19th century). The name Victoria was given to a number of cities, rivers, islands, and territories within the British Empire.

---

Victoria 

a state in the southeastern part of the Australian Commonwealth, with an area of 227,600 sq km and a population of 3.4 million (1969). The capital is Melbourne. In the south there are the Australian Alps, which border a narrow strip of fertile and densely populated coastal plain with a subtropical climate and evergreen vegetation. On the southern and southeastern slopes of the mountains (with precipitation to 2,000 mm per year) are dense evergreen forests, whereas on the northern, more arid slopes are parklands alternating with arid steppes. In the north and northwest is the alluvial plain of the Murray River.

After New South Wales, Victoria is the second state of Australia in terms of economic importance; it produces about one-third of the nation’s manufactures (by value). Victoria receives its electric power basically from the thermal electric power plants of Melbourne, Yallourn, and Geelong (total capacity, 2.1 million kilowatts in 1968); the plants operate chiefly on brown coal. It also receives energy from the hydroelectric system in the Snowy Mountains. Total production is 12.9 billion kilowatt-hours (1968-69). Victoria is a center of metalworking, machine-building, chemical, oil-refining, and military aviation industries; of the light industry sectors, there is footwear (around one-half of the nation’s output) and the clothing and woolen industry, as well as the food industry (wine-making, canning, dairy industry., and so forth). Melbourne is the main industrial center.

About one-fifth of all the planted area of the nation is concentrated in Victoria. Almost 50 percent of the arable land is owned by large landowners with farms over 400 hectares (ha); 3 percent of the land is in farms of up to 40 ha in size, and these make up 40 percent of all the farms in the state. The main crops are wheat, oats, barley, and potatoes. There are also numerous vineyards and orchards. Livestock raising includes milk, meat, and wool production. There are 3.9 mil-lion head of cattle and 31 million head of sheep (1969). In 1966-67, Victoria held first place in the nation for the production of butter (109,000 tons) and cheese (33,500 tons) and second place (after New South Wales) in terms of the wool clip (151,000 tons in 1967-68). The most important ports are Melbourne and Geelong. There are two universities in Mel-bourne.

---

Victoria 

(Victoria Nyanza, Ukerewe), a lake in East Af-rica, located on the territories of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Altitude, 1,134 m; area, 68,000 sq km (the second largest freshwater lake in the world after Lake Superior). Maximum length, 320 km; maximum width, 275 km. The average depth is 40 m (maximum, 80 m). The northern, eastern, and southern shores are low-lying and sandy, with many bays. The western bank is more elevated and even. The total length of the shoreline is over 7,000 km. The largest gulfs are Kavirondo and Speke. There are numerous islands, with a total area of 6,000 sq km; the largest are Ukerewe and the Sese Islands.

The lake occupies a gentle tectonic trough, plugged in the north by a lava flow, in the northern part of the east African uplands. The lake arose in the middle of the Anthropogenic Age with the formation of the basins of lakes Albert and Edward in the central branch of the East African Rift Zone. The faults that formed disrupted the previous drainage system, which had emptied into the Congo basin. The new drainage system was diverted eastward to the trough in the uplands where an enormous body of water was formed. The area of this lake was particularly great during the pluvial epochs. The ancient lake released its drainage to the west; this drainage flowed into Lake Albert and then into the system of the Nile through the Victoria Nile River, forming the Murchison Falls. Lake Victoria and Lake Kyoga, which lies to the north, are the relics of this ancient body of water.

Lake Victoria is surrounded by savannas, and in the northwest a deciduous-evergreen equatorial rain forest (chiefly second-growth) runs down to the shores. Victoria is fed chiefly from atmospheric precipitation and by the waters of numerous rivers, among which the largest is the Kagera River, the source of the Nile. The average annual influx is 114 cu km (16 cu km from the rivers and 98 cu km from atmospheric precipitation); annual evaporation from the lake surface is 93 cu km. The lake empties through the Victoria Nile (the drainage is 21 cu km); the flow is controlled by the dam of the Owen Falls hydroelectric plant, which is located 2.5 km downstream from the outflux of the river from the lake. The annual mean fluctuation of the water level in the lake is 0.3 m (the annual maximum over 45 years of observation was 1.74 m). There are characteristic strong storms that are caused by hurricane winds during tropical thunderstorms.

The basic commercial fish is the Tilapia. The tsetse fly inhabits the shoreline and islands. Gold and diamonds are mined close to the eastern shores. The lake is navigable, with the basic ports being Entebbe (Uganda), Mwanza and Bukoba (Tanzania), and Kisumu (Kenya). Lake Victoria is connected to the coast of the Indian Ocean via the KisumuMombasa and Mwanza-Tabora-Dar es Salam railways. The lake was discovered in 1858 by the English explorer J. Speke and was named after the British queen.

---

Victoria 

a river in northern Australia. It is 570 km long and its basin area is 78,000 sq km. It rises in the Kimberley Plateau, flows through a desert region, and empties into the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf of the Timor Sea, forming an estuary of up to 25 km wide that eventually becomes the Queens Channel. The average annual discharge is about 140 cu m per sec. During the monsoon rains, from December to February-March, the river is in high water; in the dry season, from April-May to November, it becomes very shallow and its channel splits up into separate stretches of water. It is navigable for a distance of 150 km from its mouth.

---

Victoria 

a genus of perennial aquatic plants of the family Nymphaeaceae. The plants have round, floating leaves with upturned edges, up to 2 m in diameter; their undersides are covered with a network of thick veins with well-developed air-breathing tissue that can support a load of up to 50 kg on the water. The leaf stalks, lower surface of the leaves, flower stalks, and sepals are covered with sharp thorns. The flowers of Victoria are 25-40 cm in diameter, aromatic, and open at night; toward morning the white petals turn rose-colored and close, and toward the end of the day they open again, but by then they have a crimson color. During the second night they become darker, and in the morning they close and go under the water; from these flowers develop fruits with edible black seeds the size of peas. There are two species, both found in South America. The best-known is the royal water lily (V’. amazonica, V. regia), which grows in the backwaters of the Amazon River and its tributaries. A second species, V. cruziana, is found in the Parana River. Both species are cultivated in botanical gardens (at water temperatures of 25-30° C).

S. S. MORSHCHIKHINA

---

Victoria 

(Hsiang-kang), a city and capital of the British possession of Hong Kong. Population, 1.2 million (1975). Victoria is situated on the northwestern coast of the island of Hong Kong (Hsiang-kang), across the water from Kowloon. The two cities, Victoria and Kowloon, are jointly administered as two municipal districts; they are connected by a railroad ferry. With its large harbor, Victoria is a commercial, industrial, and financial center. A university was founded in the city in 1911. [25–452–l]