ITO, HIROBUMI, Prince (1841-1909), Japanese statesman, was born in 1841, being the son of Ito Jūzō, and (like his father) began life as a retainer of the lord of Choshu, one of the most powerful nobles of Japan. Choshu, in common with many of his fellow Daimyos, was bitterly opposed to the rule of the shôgun or tycoon, and when this rule resulted in the conclusion of the treaty with Commodore M. C. Perry in 1854, the smouldering discontent broke out into open hostility against both parties to the compact. In these views Ito cordially agreed with his chieftain, and was sent on a secret mission to Yedo to report to his lord on the doings of the government. This visit had the effect of causing Ito to turn his attention seriously to the study of the British and of other military systems. As a result he persuaded Choshu to remodel his army, and to exchange the bows and arrows of his men for guns and rifles. But Ito felt that his knowledge of foreigners, if it was to be thorough, should be sought for in Europe, and with the connivance of Choshu he, in company with Inouye and three other young men of the same rank as himself, determined to risk their lives by committing the then capital offence of visiting a foreign country. With great secrecy they made their way to Nagasaki, where they concluded an arrangement with the agent of Messrs Jardine, Matheson & Co. for passages on board a vessel which was about to sail for Shanghai (1863). At that port the adventurers separated, three of their number taking ship as passengers to London, while Ito and Inouye preferred to work their passages before the mast in the “Pegasus,” bound for the same destination. For a year these two friends remained in London studying English methods, but then events occurred in Japan which recalled them to their country. The treaties lately concluded by the shôgun with the foreign powers conceded the right to navigate the strait of Shimonoseki, leading to the Inland Sea. On the northern shores of this strait stretched the feudal state ruled over by Prince Choshu, who refused to recognize the clause opening the strait, and erected batteries on the shore, from which he opened fire on all ships which attempted to force the passage. The shôgun having declared himself unable in the circumstances to give effect to the provision, the treaty powers determined to take the matter into their own hands. Ito, who was better aware than his chief of the disproportion between the fighting powers of Europe and Japan, memorialized the cabinets, begging that hostilities should be suspended until he should have had time to use his influence with Choshu in the interests of peace. With this object Ito hurried back to Japan. But his efforts were futile. Choshu refused to give way, and suffered the consequences of his obstinacy in the destruction of his batteries and in the infliction of a heavy fine. The part played by Ito in these negotiations aroused the animosity of the more reactionary of his fellow-clansmen, who made repeated attempts to assassinate him. On one notable occasion he was pursued by his enemies into a tea-house, where he was concealed by a young lady beneath the floor of her room. Thus began a romantic acquaintance, which ended in the lady becoming the wife of the fugitive. Subsequently (1868) Ito was made governor of Hiogo, and in the course of the following year became vice-minister of finance. In 1871 he accompanied Iwakura on an important mission to Europe, which, though diplomatically a failure, resulted in the enlistment of the services of European authorities on military, naval and educational systems.
After his return to Japan Ito served in several cabinets as head of the bureau of engineering and mines, and in 1886 he accepted office as prime minister, a post which, when he resigned in 1901, he had held four times. In 1882 he was sent on a mission to Europe to study the various forms of constitutional government; on this occasion he attended the coronation of the tsar Alexander III. On his return to Japan he was entrusted with the arduous duty of drafting a constitution. In 1890 he reaped the fruits of his labours, and nine years later he was destined to witness the abrogation of the old treaties, and the substitution in their place of conventions which place Japan on terms of equality with the European states. In all the great reforms in the Land of the Rising Sun Ito played a leading part. It was mainly due to his active interest in military and naval affairs that he was able to meet Li Hung-chang at the end of the Chinese and Japanese War (1895) as the representative of the conquering state, and the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902 testified to his triumphant success in raising Japan to the first rank among civilized powers. As a reward for his conspicuous services in connexion with the Chinese War Ito was made a marquis, and in 1897 he accompanied Prince Arisugawa as a joint representative of the Mikado at the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. At the close of 1901 he again, though in an unofficial capacity, visited Europe and the United States; and in England he was created a G.C.B. After the Russo-Japanese War (1905) he was appointed resident general in Korea, and in that capacity he was responsible for the steps taken to increase Japanese influence in that country. In September 1907 he was advanced to the rank of prince. He retired from his post in Korea in July 1909, and became president of the privy council in Japan. But on the 26th of October, when on a visit to Harbin, he was shot dead by a Korean assassin.
He is to be distinguished from Admiral Count Yuko Ito (b. 1843), the distinguished naval commander.
ITRI, a town of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta, 6 m. by road N.W. of Formia. Pop. (1901) 5797. The town is picturesquely situated 690 ft. above sea-level, in the mountains which the Via Appia traverses between Fondi and Formia. Interesting remains of the substruction wall supporting the ancient road are preserved in Itri itself; and there are many remains of ancient buildings near it. The brigand Fra Diavolo, the hero of Auber’s opera, was a native of Itri, and the place was once noted for brigandage.
ITURBIDE (or Yturbide), AUGUSTIN DE (1783-1824), emperor of Mexico from May 1822 to March 1823, was born on the 27th of September 1783, at Valladolid, now Morelia, in Mexico, where his father, an Old Spaniard from Pampeluna, had settled with his creole wife. After enjoying a better education than was then usual in Mexico, Iturbide entered the military service, and in 1810 held the post of lieutenant in the provincial regiment of his native city. In that year the insurrection under Hidalgo broke out, and Iturbide, more from policy, it would seem, than from principle, served in the royal army. Possessed of splendid courage and brilliant military talents, which fitted him especially for guerilla warfare, the young creole did signal service, and rapidly rose in military rank. In December 1813 Colonel Iturbide, along with General Llano, dealt a crushing blow to the revolt by defeating Morelos, the successor of Hidalgo, in the battle of Valladolid; and the former followed it up by another decisive victory at Puruaran in January 1814. Next year Don Augustin was appointed to the command of the army of the north and to the governorship of the provinces of Valladolid and Guanajuato, but in 1816 grave charges of extortion and violence were brought against him, which led to his recall. Although the general was acquitted, or at least although the inquiry was dropped, he did not resume his commands, but retired into private life for four years, which, we are told, he spent in a rigid course of penance for his former excesses. In 1820 Apodaca, viceroy of Mexico, received instructions from the Spanish cortes to proclaim the constitution promulgated in Spain in 1812, but although obliged at first to submit to an order by which his power was much curtailed, he secretly cherished the design of reviving the absolute power for Ferdinand VII. in Mexico. Under pretext of putting down the lingering remains of revolt, he levied troops, and, placing Iturbide at their head, instructed him to proclaim the absolute power of the king. Four years of reflection, however, had modified the general’s views, and now, led both by personal ambition and by patriotic regard for his country, Iturbide resolved to espouse the cause of national independence. His subsequent proceedings—how he issued the Plan of Iguala, on the 24th of February 1821, how by the refusal of the Spanish cortes to ratify the treaty of Cordova, which he had signed with O’Donoju, he was transformed from a mere champion of monarchy into a candidate for the crown, and how, hailed by the soldiers as Emperor Augustin I. on the 18th of May 1822, he was compelled within ten months, by his arrogant neglect of constitutional restraints, to tender his abdication to a congress which he had forcibly dissolved—will be found detailed under Mexico. Although the congress refused to accept his abdication on the ground that to do so would be to recognize the validity of his election, it permitted the ex-emperor to retire to Leghorn in Italy, while in consideration of his services in 1820 a yearly pension of £5000 was conferred upon him. But Iturbide resolved to make one more bid for power; and in 1824, passing from Leghorn to London, he published a Statement, and on the 11th of May set sail for Mexico. The congress immediately issued an act of outlawry against him, forbidding him to set foot on Mexican soil on pain of death. Ignorant of this, the ex-emperor landed in disguise at Soto la Marina on the 14th of July. He was almost immediately recognized and arrested, and on the 19th of July 1824 was shot at Padilla, by order of the state of Tamaulipas, without being permitted an appeal to the general congress. Don Augustin de Iturbide is described by his contemporaries as being of handsome figure and ingratiating manner. His brilliant courage and wonderful success made him the idol of his soldiers, though towards his prisoners he displayed the most cold-blooded cruelty, boasting in one of his despatches of having honoured Good Friday by shooting three hundred excommunicated wretches. Though described as amiable in his private life, he seems in his public career to have been ambitious and unscrupulous, and by his haughty Spanish temper, impatient of all resistance or control, to have forfeited the opportunity of founding a secure imperial dynasty. His grandson Augustin was chosen by the ill-fated emperor Maximilian as his successor.
See Statement of some of the principal events in the public life of Augustin de Iturbide, written by himself (Eng. trans., 1824).
ITZA, an American-Indian people of Mayan stock, inhabiting the country around Lake Peten in northern Guatemala. Chichen-Itza, among the most wonderful of the ruined cities of Yucatan, was the capital of the Itzas. Thence, according to their traditions they removed, on the breaking up of the Mayan kingdom in 1420, to an island in the lake where another city was built. Cortes met them in 1525, but they preserved their independence till 1697, when the Spaniards destroyed the city and temples, and a library of sacred books, written in hieroglyphics on bark fibre. The Itzas were one of the eighteen semi-independent Maya states, whose incessant internecine wars at length brought about the dismemberment of the empire of Xibalba and the destruction of Mayan civilization.