title: Islamic extremism

text: According to Qutb, the Muslim community ("Ummah") has been extinct for several centuries and reverted to "jahiliyah" (the pre-Islamic age of ignorance) because those who call themselves Muslims have failed to follow the "sharia" law. In order to restore Islam, bring back its days of glory, and free the Muslims from the clasps of ignorance, Qutb proposed the shunning of modern society, establishing a vanguard modeled after the early Muslims, preaching, and bracing oneself for poverty or even death as preparation for "jihad" against what he perceived as "jahili" government/society, and overthrow them. Qutbism, the radical Islamist ideology derived from the ideas of Qutb, was denounced by many prominent Muslim scholars as well as other members of the Muslim Brotherhood, like Yusuf al-Qaradawi.


title: Islamic extremism

text: According to the British historian Mark Curtis, in his book , Britain has been accused of consistently supporting radical Islam to combat secular nationalism. Because the secular nationalists threatened to seize the resources of their countries and use it for internal development, which was not accepted by England.


title: Islamic extremism

text: The United States, like Britain before it, has been accused of historically supporting radical Islam in the face of secular nationalism, seen as a major threat to Western colonial dominance. Chomsky and coauthors accuse Israel of destroying Egypt and Syria in 1967, two bastions of secular Arab nationalism opposed to Saudi Arabia, which they view as the leader of radical Islam.


title: Alexandra Krosney

text: Alexandra Benjamin Krosney is an American actress and voice actor. She is best known for her role as Kristin Baxter on the ABC sitcom "Last Man Standing" during the show's first season.


title: Alexandra Krosney

text: Some of Krosney's television roles include "Bones", "Lost", "Cory in the House", "ER", "Nikita", "Numb3rs", "NCIS" and the computer animated series "".


title: Alexandra Krosney

text: Krosney also appeared in television films such as the Disney Channel Original Movie "Read It and Weep", Nickelodeon original movies "Shredderman Rules" and "The Last Day of Summer".


title: Alexandra Krosney

text: From 2011 to 2012, she co-starred in the ABC sitcom "Last Man Standing" starring Tim Allen. On June 11, 2012, it was announced that Krosney was let go from the sitcom for unspecified creative reasons. The role has been played by Amanda Fuller from season 2 onward.


title: White Latin Americans

text: White Latin Americans, or European Latin Americans, are Latin Americans who are considered white, typically due to European descent. Latin American countries have often tolerated intermarriage between different ethnic groups since the beginning of the colonial period.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Direct descendants of European settlers who arrived in the Americas during the colonial and post-colonial periods can be found throughout Latin America. Most immigrants who settled the region for the past five centuries were Spanish and Portuguese; after independence, the most numerous non-Iberian immigrants were French, Italians, and Germans, followed by other Europeans as well as West Asians (such as Levantine Arabs and Armenians).


title: White Latin Americans

text: Composing from 33% of the population , according to some sources, White Latin Americans constitute the second largest racial-ethnic group after mixed race people in the region. "White" is the self-identification of many Latin Americans in some national censuses. According to a survey conducted by "Cohesión Social" in Latin America, conducted on a sample of 10,000 people from seven countries of the region, 34% of those interviewed identified themselves as white.


title: White Latin Americans

text: "Being white" is a term that emerged from a tradition of racial classification that developed as many Europeans colonized large parts of the world and employed classificatory systems to distinguish themselves from the local inhabitants. However, while most present-day racial classifications include a concept of being white that is ideologically connected to European heritage and specific phenotypic and biological features associated with European heritage, there are differences in how people are classified. These differences arise from the various historical processes and social contexts in which a given racial classification is used. As Latin America is characterized by differing histories and social contexts, there is also variance in the perception of whiteness throughout Latin America.


title: White Latin Americans

text: ...racial categories and racial ideologies are not simply those that elaborate social constructions on the basis of phenotypical variation or ideas about innate difference but those that do so using the particular aspects of phenotypical variation that were worked into vital signifiers of difference during European colonial encounters with others.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In many parts of Latin America being white is more a matter of socio-economic status than specific phenotypic traits, and it is often said that in Latin America "money whitens". Within Latin America there are variations in how racial boundaries have been defined. In Argentina, for example, the notion of mixture has been downplayed. Alternately, in countries like Mexico and Brazil mixture has been emphasized as fundamental for nation-building, resulting in a large group of bi-racial "mestizos", in Mexico, or tri-racial "pardos", in Brazil, who are considered neither fully white nor fully non-white.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Unlike in the United States where ancestry may be used exclusively to define race, by the 1970s, Latin American scholars came to agree that race in Latin America could not be understood as the "genetic composition of individuals" but instead must be "based upon a combination of cultural, social, and somatic considerations". In Latin America, a person's ancestry may not be decisive in racial classification. For example, full-blooded siblings can often be classified as belonging to different races (Harris 1964).


title: White Latin Americans

text: For these reasons the distinction between "white" and "mixed", and between "mixed" and "black" and "indigenous", is largely subjective and situational, meaning that any attempt to classify by discrete racial categories is fraught with problems.


title: White Latin Americans

text: People of European origin began to arrive in the Americas in the 15th century since the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. Most early migrants were male, but by the early and mid 16th century, more and more women also began to arrive from Europe.


title: White Latin Americans

text: After the Wars of Independence, the elites of most of the countries of the region concluded that their underdevelopment was caused by their populations being mostly Amerindian, Mestizo or Mulatto; so a major process of "whitening" was required, or at least desirable. Most Latin American countries then implemented blanqueamiento policies to promote European immigration, and some were quite successful, especially Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the number of European immigrants who arrived far surpassed the number of original colonists. Between 1821 and 1932, of a total 15 million immigrants who arrived in Latin America, Argentina received 6.4 million, and Brazil 5.5 million.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The following table shows estimates (in thousands) of white, black/mulatto, Amerindian, and mestizo populations of Latin America, from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The figures shown are, for the years between 1650 and 1980, from the Arias' "The Cry of My People...", for 2000, from Lizcano's "Composición Étnica...". Percentages are by the editor.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Since European colonization, Latin America's population has had a long history of intermixing. Today, many Latin Americans who have Indigenous or Sub-Saharan African ancestry may have varying degrees of European ancestry as well. The "casta" categories used in 18th-century colonial Latin America designated people according to their ethnic or racial background, with the main classifications being "indio" (used to refer to Native American people), Spaniard, and "mestizo", although the categories were rather fluid and inconsistently used.


title: White Latin Americans

text: As in Spain, persons of Moorish or Jewish ancestry within two generations were generally not allowed to enroll in the Spanish Army or the Catholic Church in the colonies, although this prohibition was inconsistently applied. Applicants to both institutions, and their spouses, had to obtain a "Limpieza de sangre" (purity of blood) certificate that proved that they had no Jewish or Moorish ancestors, in the same way as those in the Peninsula did. However, being a medieval concept that was more of a religious issue rather than a racial issue, it was never a problem for the native or slave populations in the colonies of the Spanish Empire, and by law people from all races were to join the army, with openly practicing Roman Catholicism being the only prerequisite. One notable example was that of Francisco Menendez, a freed-black military officer of the Spanish Army during the 18th century at the Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose fort in St. Augustine, Florida.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The country with the largest number of white inhabitants in Latin America is Brazil, with 91 million out of 190.7 million total Brazilians, or 47.7% of the total population, as of the 2010 census. Brazil's southern region contains the highest concentration, at 79% of the population. Argentina received the largest number of European immigrants, with more than 7 million, second only to the United States, which received 24 million, and ahead of Canada and Australia. In terms of percentage of the total population, Uruguay has the highest concentrations of whites, who constitute 92% of their total population, while Honduras has the smallest white population, with only 1%.


title: White Latin Americans

text: White Mexicans are for the most part descendants of Spanish immigrants who arrived mainly from northern regions of Spain such as Cantabria, Navarra, Asturias, Burgos, Galicia and the Basque Country; however in the 19th and 20th century many non-Iberian immigrants arrived to the country, either motivated by economic opportunity (Americans, Canadians, English), government programs (Italians, Irish, Germans) or political motives such as the French during the Second Mexican Empire. In the 20th century, international political instability was a key factor to drive immigration to Mexico; in this era Greeks, Armenians, Poles, Russians, Lebanese, Palestinians and Jews, along with many Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War, also settled in Mexico whereas in the 21st century, due to Mexico's economic growth, immigration from Europe has increased (mainly France and Spain), people from the United States have arrived as well, nowadays making up more than three-quarters of Mexico's roughly one million legal migrants. In that time, more people from the United States have been added to the population of Mexico than Mexicans to that of the United States, according to government data in both nations.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Mexico's northern and western regions have the highest percentages of European population, according to the American historian Howard F. Cline the majority of Mexicans in these regions have no native admixture and their aspect resemble that of northern Spaniards. In the north and west of Mexico, the indigenous tribes were substantially smaller than those found in central and southern Mexico, and also much less organized, thus they remained isolated from the rest of the population or even in some cases were hostile towards Mexican colonists. Because of this, Europeans often were the most numerous ethnic group within colonial cities in northern and western Mexico (albeit this trend is also seen in large central Mexican cities such as Mexico City) and became the regions with the highest proportion of whites during the Spanish colonial period. However, recent immigrants from southern Mexico have been changing, to some degree, its demographic trends.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Estimates of Mexico's white population differ greatly in both, methodology and percentages given, extra-official sources such as the World factbook and Encyclopædia Britannica, which use the 1921 census results as the base of their estimations calculate Mexico's White population as only 9% or between one tenth to one fifth (the results of the 1921 census, however, have been contested by various historians and deemed inaccurate). Surveys that account for phenotypical traits and have performed actual field research suggest rather higher percentages: using the presence of blond hair as reference to classify a Mexican as white, the Metropolitan Autonomous University of Mexico calculated the percentage of said ethnic group at 23%. With a similar methodology, the American Sociological Association obtained a percentage of 18.8% having its higher frequency on the North region (22.3%–23.9%) followed by the Center region (18.4%–21.3%) and the South region (11.9%). Another study made by the University College London in collaboration with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History found that the frequencies of blond hair and light eyes in Mexicans are of 18% and 28% respectively, surveys that use as reference skin color such as those made by Mexico's National Council to Prevent Discrimination and Mexico's National Institute of Statistics and Geography reported a percentages of 47% in 2010 and 49% in 2017 respectively. Another survey published in 2018 reported a percentage significantly lower at 29%, this time however, the surveying of Mexicans from "vulnerable groups" was prioritized, which among other measures meant that states known to have high numbers of people from said groups surveyed more people.


title: White Latin Americans

text: A study performed in hospitals of Mexico City reported that an average 51.8% of Mexican newborns presented the congenital skin birthmark known as the Mongolian spot whilst it was absent in 48.2% of the analyzed babies. The Mongolian spot appears with a very high frequency (85-95%) in Asian, Native American, African children, but can be present in some individuals in the Mediterranean populations. The skin lesion reportedly almost always appears on South American and Mexican children who are racially Mestizos, while having a very low frequency (5–10%) in European children. According to the Mexican Social Security Institute (shortened as IMSS) nationwide, around half of Mexican babies have the Mongolian spot.


title: White Latin Americans

text: White people in Cuba make up 64.1% of the total population, according to the census of 2012, with the majority being of Spanish descent. However, after the mass exodus resulting from the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Cuba's white population diminished. Today, the various records that claim to show the percentage of whites in Cuba are conflicting and uncertain; some reports (usually coming from Cuba) still report a similar-to-pre-1959 number of 65%, and others (usually from outside observers) report 40–45%. Although most white Cubans are of Spanish descent, others may have French, Portuguese, German, Italian, or Russian ancestry. During the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, large waves of Canarians, Catalans, Andalusians, Castilians, and Galicians immigrated to Cuba. Between 1901 and 1958, more than a million Spaniards arrived in Cuba from Spain; many of these and their descendants left after Castro's Communist regime took power. The country also saw Jewish immigrants coming to the country. Historically, Chinese descendants in Cuba were classified as white. Though more recent censuses would add a yellow (or amarilla) racial category before its removal in 21st century census results.


title: White Latin Americans

text: An autosomal study from 2014 found the genetic makeup in Cuba to be 72% European, 20% African, and 8% Native American with different proportions depending on the self-reported ancestry (White, Mulatto or Mestizo, and Black). According to this study Whites are on average 86% European, 6.7% African and 7.8% Native American with European ancestry ranging from 65% to 99%. 75% of whites are over 80% European and 50% are over 88% European According to a study in 2011 Whites are on average 5.8% African with African ancestry ranging from 0% to 13%. 75% of whites are under 8% African and 50% are under 5% African. A study from 2009 analysed the genetic structure of the three principal ethnic groups from Havana City (209 individuals), and the contribution of parental populations to its genetic pool. A contribution from Indigenous peoples of the Americas was not detectable in the studied sample.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The 1750 estimates show that there were 30,863 whites, out of a total population of 70,625, in the colony of Santo Domingo. The census of 1920 was the first national enumeration. The second census, taken in 1935, covered race, religion, literacy, nationality, labor force, and urban–rural residence.


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to the CIA World Factbook, white persons in the Dominican Republic are 16% of the total population, with the vast majority being of Spanish descent. Notable other ancestries includes French, Italian, Lebanese, German, and Portuguese.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The government of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo made a point of increasing the white population, or "whitening" the racial composition of the country, by rejecting black immigrants from Haiti and local blacks as foreigners. He also welcomed Jewish refugees in 1938 and Spanish farmers in the 1950s as part of this plan. The country's German minority is the largest in the Caribbean.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The white and the mulatto population of Haiti make up about 5% of its population, while 95% is of African descent.


title: White Latin Americans

text: That 5% minority group comprises people of many different ethnic and national backgrounds, who are French, Spanish, Polish and other European ancestry, as well as the Jewish diaspora, arriving from the Polish legion and during the Holocaust, Germans (18th century and ), and Italian.


title: White Latin Americans

text: White people in Martinique are estimated to be 5% of the population. Most of them are of French background.


title: White Latin Americans

text: An early census on the island was conducted by Governor Francisco Manuel de Lando in 1530. An exhaustive 1765 census was taken by Lieutenant General Alexander O'Reilly, which, according to some sources, showed 17,572 whites out of a total population of 44,883. The censuses from 1765 to 1887 were taken by the Spanish government who conducted them at irregular intervals. The 1899 census was taken by the United States War Department. Since 1910, Puerto Rico has been included in every decennial census taken by the United States.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In 2010, White Puerto Ricans are said to comprise the majority of the island's population, with 75.8% of the population identifying as white. Though in the 2020 U.S. census, this percentage dropped to 17.1%. People of self-identified multiracial descent are now the largest demographic in the country, at 49.8%.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In 1899, one year after the U.S invaded and took control of the island, 61.8% identified as white. In 2000, for the first time in fifty years, the census asked people to define their race and found the percentage of whites had risen to 80.5% (3,064,862); not because there has been an influx of whites to the island (or an exodus of non-White people), but a change of race perceptions, mainly because Puerto Rican elites wished to portray Puerto Rico as the "white island of the Antilles", partly as a response to scientific racism.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Geologist Robert T. Hill wrote that the island was "notable among the West Indian group for the reason that its preponderant population is of the white race" and "Porto Rico, at least, has not become Africanized".


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to a genetic research by the University of Brasilia, Puerto Rican genetic admixture consists in a 60.3% European, 26.4% African, and 13.2% Amerindian ancestry.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Most of the population in Saint Barthélemy are French-speaking descendants of the first settlers from Normandy and Brittany.


title: White Latin Americans

text: From the late 19th century to when the Panama Canal opened, European migrants used Costa Rica to get across the isthmus of Central America to reach the west coast of the United States (California).


title: White Latin Americans

text: In Costa Rica, estimates of the percentage of white people vary between 77% and 82%, or about 3.1–3.5 million people. The white and mestizo populations combined equal 83%, according to the CIA World Factbook.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Many of the first Spanish colonists in Costa Rica may have been Jewish converts to Christianity. The first sizable group of self-identified Jews immigrated from diaspora communities in Poland, beginning in 1929. From the 1930s to the early 1950s, journalistic and official anti-Semitic campaigns fueled harassment of Jews; however, by the 1950s and 1960s, the immigrants won greater acceptance. Most of the 3,500 Costa Rican Jews today are not highly observant, but they remain largely endogamous.


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to the official 2007 Census in El Salvador, 12.7% of Salvadorans identified as being "white", and 86.3% as mestizo.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Before the conquest it was the Central American nation with the lowest Amerindian population, due to diseases and hostility from Europeans, the Amerindian population fell precipitously. This was due to the small indigenous population in the area and colonial governors wanting to repopulate the land with Europeans. Spaniards, mainly from Galicia and Asturias emigrated to El Salvador. Later, the country would experience other waves of other European immigrants, mainly Italian and Spaniards. The immigration of the time had a great demographic impact, since by 1880 there were 480,000 inhabitants in El Salvador, 40 years later in 1920, there were 1.2 million Salvadorans. During World War II, El Salvador gave documents to Jews from Hungary, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Switzerland. It is estimated that they were up to 40,000 immigrants, and even up to 50,000.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Genetic study of the publication "Genomic Components in America's demography", in which geneticists from all over the continent and Japan participated, that the average genetic composition of the average Salvadoran is: 52% European, 40% Amerindian, 6% African and 2% Middle Eastern.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In the recent 2018 Census, those mestizos and whites are included in one category (Ladinos), accounting 56% of population. Into the category Ladino, include part of Amerindians culturally Hispanic along people of mixed heritage, part of mixed Guatemalans could have important European ancestry or being castizo (mixed+white), specially in Metropolitan Areas and the East.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The most common European ancestry in Guatemalans mixed is Spanish descent, but there were German migration throughout Nineteen and Twenty Century in the country


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to a 2014 research published in the journal "Genetics and Molecular Biology" and to a 2010 research published in the journal "Physical Anthropology", European ancestry predominates in majority of Nicaraguans at 69% genetic contribution, followed by Native American ancestry at 20%, and lastly Northwest African ancestry at 11%, making Nicaragua the country with one of the highest proportion of European ancestry in Latin America. Non-genetic self-reported data from the "CIA World Factbook" consider that Nicaragua's population averages phenotypically at 69% Mestizo/Castizo, 17% White, 9% Afro-Latino and 5% Native American. This fluctuates with changes in migration patterns. The population is 58% urban .


title: White Latin Americans

text: In the 19th century, Nicaragua experienced a wave of immigration, primarily from Western Europe. In particular, families moved to Nicaragua to set up businesses with the money they brought from Europe. They established many agricultural businesses, such as coffee and sugarcane plantations, as well as newspapers, hotels, and banks.


title: White Latin Americans

text: A study called "Genomic Components in America's demography" published in 2017, estimates that the average Nicaraguan is of 58-62% European genetic background, primarily of Spanish (43.63%) but also of German, French, and Italian ancestry; 28% of indigenous American ancestry; and 14% of West African origin.


title: White Latin Americans

text: White Panamanians are 6.7% of the population, with those of Spanish ancestry being in the majority. Other ancestries includes Dutch, English, French, German, Swiss, Danish, Irish, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. There is also a sizable and influential Jewish community.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Honduras contains perhaps one of the smallest percentages of whites in Latin America, according some census with only about 3% classified in this group. Another census indicates that only a 7.8% of the total population is white in Honduras. During the 19th century several immigrants from Catalonia, Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe arrived to Honduras.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Of these the majority are people of Spanish descent. There is an important Spanish community mostly located in the city of San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. There are also people from The Bay Islands who descend from British settlers (either English, Irish, or Scottish). However, most Hondurans consider themselves as mestizos, regardless of their ethnic category, which is why it is difficult to determine the actual white population of Honduras. According to "Admixture and genetic relationships of Mexican Mestizos regarding Latin American and Caribbean populations based on 13 CODIS-STRs", the genetic composition of Hondurans is 58.4% European, 36.2% Amerindian, and 5.4% African.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The ancestry of Argentines is mostly European, with both Native American and African contributions. A 2009 autosomal DNA study found the Argentine population to average 78.5 percent European, 17.3 percent Native American, and 4.2 percent sub-Saharan African, in which 63.6% of the tested group had at least one ancestor who was Indigenous. A 2012 autosomal DNA study found the genetic composition of Argentines to be 65% European, 31% Native American, and 4% African.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Argentina's National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) does not conduct ethnic/racial censuses; so, no official data exist on the percentage of white Argentines today.


title: White Latin Americans

text: White Argentines are dispersed throughout the country, but their greatest concentration is in the east-central region of Pampas, the southern region of Patagonia, and in the west-central region of Cuyo. Their concentration is smaller in the north-eastern region of Litoral, and is much smaller in the north-western provinces of Salta, Jujuy, Tucumán, Catamarca, La Rioja, and Santiago del Estero, which was the most densely populated region of the country (mainly by Amerindian and Mestizo people) before the wave of immigration of 1857-1940 and was the area where European newcomers settled the least. During the last few decades, due to internal migration from the northern provinces—as well as to immigration from Bolivia, Peru, and Paraguay—the percentage of white Argentines in certain areas of Greater Buenos Aires and the provinces of Salta and Jujuy has decreased significantly.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The white population in Argentina is mostly descended from immigrants arriving from Europe between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a smaller proportion from Spaniards of the colonial period. From 1506 to 1650—according to M. Möner, Peter Muschamp, and Boyd-Bowman—out of a total of 437,669 Spaniards who settled in the American Spanish colonies, between 10,500 and 13,125 "Peninsulares" settled in the Río de la Plata region. The colonial censuses conducted after the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata showed that the proportion of Spaniards and Criollos was significant in the cities and surrounding countryside, but not so much in the rural areas. The 1778 census of Buenos Aires, ordered by Viceroy Juan José de Vértiz, revealed that, of a total population of 37,130 inhabitants (in both the city and surrounding countryside), the Spaniards and Criollos numbered 25,451, or 68.55% of the total. Another census, carried out in the Corregimiento de Cuyo in 1777, showed that the Spaniards and Criollos numbered 4,491 (or 51.24%) out of a population of 8,765 inhabitants. In Córdoba (city and countryside) the Spanish/Criollo people comprised a 39.36% (about 14,170) of 36,000 inhabitants.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Data provided by Argentina's "Dirección Nacional de Migraciones" (National Bureau of Migrations) states that the country received a total of 6,611,000 immigrants during the period from 1857 to 1940. The main immigrant group was 2,970,000 Italians (44.9% of the total), who came initially from Piedmont, Veneto, and Lombardy, and later from Campania, Calabria, and Sicily. The second group in importance was Spaniards, some 2,080,000 (31.4% of the total), who were mostly Galicians and Basques, but also Asturians, Cantabrians, Catalans, and Andalucians. In smaller but significant numbers came Frenchmen from Occitania (239,000, 3.6% of the total) and Poles (180,000 – 2.7%). From the Russian Empire came some 177,000 people (2.6%), who were not only ethnic Russians, but also Ukrainians, Belarusians, Volga Germans, Lithuanians, etc. From the Ottoman Empire the contribution was mainly Armenians, Lebanese, and Syrians, some 174,000 in all (2.6%). Then come the immigrants from the German Empire, some 152,000 (2.2%). From the Austro-Hungarian Empire came 111,000 people (1.6%), among them Austríans, Hungarians, Croatians, Bosniaks, Serbs, Ruthenians, and Montenegrins. Roughly 75,000 people came from what was then the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with the majority of these being Irish immigrants arriving via "coffin ships" escaping the Great Famine. Other minor groups were the Portuguese (65,000), Slavic peoples from the Balkans (48,000), Swiss (44,000), Belgians (26,000), Danes (18,000), white Americans (12,000), the Dutch (10,000), and the Swedish (7,000). 223,000 came from other countries not listed above. Even colonists from Australia, and Boers from South Africa, can be found in the Argentine immigration records. The city's motto is "Crespo: melting pot, culture of faith and hard work", referring to the Volga Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and other ethnicities that comprise its population.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In the 1910s, when immigration reached its peak, more than 30% of Argentina's population had been born in Europe, and over half of the population of the city of Buenos Aires had been born abroad. According to the 1914 national census, 80% out of a total population of 7,903,662 were people who were either European, or the children and grandchildren of same. Among the remaining 20% (the descendants of the population previous to the immigratory wave), about one third were white. That makes for 86.6%, or about 6.8 million whites residing in Argentina. European immigration continued to account for over half the population growth during the 1920s, and for smaller percentages after World War II, many Europeans migrating to Argentina after the great conflict to escape hunger and destitution. According to Argentine records, 392,603 people from the Old World entered the country in the 1940s. In the following decade, the flow diminished because the Marshall Plan improved Europe's economy, and emigration was not such a necessity; but even then, between 1951 and 1970 another 256,252 Europeans entered Argentina. From the 1960s—when whites were 76.1% of the total—onward, increasing immigration from countries on Argentina's northern border (Bolivia, Peru, and Paraguay) significantly increased the process of Mestizaje in certain areas of Argentina, especially Greater Buenos Aires, because those countries have Amerindian and Mestizo majorities.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In 1992, after the fall of the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and its allies, the governments of Western Europe were worried about a possible mass exodus from Central Europe and Russia. President Carlos Menem offered to receive part of that emigratory wave in Argentina. On December 19, 1994, Resolution 4632/94 was enacted, allowing "special treatment" for applicants who wished to emigrate from the republics of the ex-Soviet Union. From January 1994 until December 2000, a total 9,399 Central and Eastern Europeans traveled and settled in Argentina. Of the total, 6,720 were Ukrainians (71.5%), 1,598 Russians (17%), 526 Romanians, Bulgarians, Armenians, Georgians, Moldovans, and Poles, and 555 (5.9%) traveled with a Soviet passport. 85% of the newcomers were under age 45 and 51% had tertiary-level education, so most of them integrated quite rapidly into Argentine society, although some had to work for lower wages than expected at the beginning.


title: White Latin Americans

text: White people in Bolivia make up 5% of the nation's population. The white population consists mostly of "criollos", which consist of families of unmixed Spanish ancestry descended from the Spanish colonists and Spanish refugees fleeing the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War. These two groups have constituted much of the aristocracy since independence. Other groups within the white population are Germans, who founded the national airline Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano, as well as Italians, Americans, Basques, Croats, Russians, Polish, English, Irish, and other minorities, many of whose members descend from families that have lived in Bolivia for several generations.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Brazil is one of the few countries in Latin America that includes racial categories in its censuses: "Branco" (White), "Negro" (Black), "Pardo" (Multiracial), "Amarelo" (Yellow) and "Indígena" (Amerindian), with categorization being by self-identification. Taking into account the data provided by the last National Household Survey, conducted in 2010, Brazil would possess the most numerous white population in Latin America, given that a 47.7% – 91 million people – of Brazilians self-declared as "Brancos". Comparing this survey with previous censuses, a slow but constant decrease in the percentage of self-identified white Brazilians can be seen: in the 2000 Census it was 53.7%, in the 2006 Household Survey it was 49.9%, and in the last, 2008, survey it decreased to the current 48.4%. Some analysts believe that this decrease is evidence that more Brazilians have come to appreciate their mixed ancestry, re-classifying themselves as "Pardos". Furthermore, some demographers estimate that a 9% of the self-declared white Brazilians have a certain degree of African and Amerindian ancestry, which, if the "one-drop rule" were applied, would classify them as "Pardos".


title: White Latin Americans

text: The white Brazilian population is spread throughout the country, but it is concentrated in the four southernmost states, where 79.8% of the population self-identify as white. The states with the highest percentage of white people are Santa Catarina (86.9%), Rio Grande do Sul (82.3%), Paraná (77.2%) and São Paulo (70.4%). Another five states that have significant proportions of whites are Rio de Janeiro (55.8%), Mato Grosso do Sul (51.7%), Espírito Santo (50.4%), Minas Gerais (47.2%) and Goiás (43.6%). São Paulo has the largest population in absolute numbers with 30 million whites.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In the 18th century, an estimated 600,000 Portuguese arrived, including wealthy immigrants, as well as poor peasants, attracted by the Brazil Gold Rush in Minas Gerais. By the time of Brazilian independence, declared by emperor Pedro I in 1822, an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 Europeans had come to Brazil, most of them male settlers from Portugal. Rich immigrants who established the first sugarcane plantations in Pernambuco and Bahia, and New Christians and Gypsies fleeing from religious persecution, were among the early settlers.


title: White Latin Americans

text: After independence, Brazil saw several campaigns to attract European immigrants, which were prompted by a policy of "Branqueamento" (Whitening). During the 19th century, the slave labor force was gradually replaced by European immigrants, especially Italians. This mostly took place after 1850, as a result of the end of the slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean and the growth of coffee plantations in the São Paulo region. European immigration was at its peak between the mid-19th and the mid-20th centuries, when nearly five million Europeans immigrated to Brazil, most of them Italians (58.5%), Portuguese (20%), Germans, Spaniards, Poles, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians. Between 1877 and 1903, 1,927,992 immigrants entered Brazil, an average of 71,000 people per year, with the peak year being 1891, when 215,239 Europeans arrived.


title: White Latin Americans

text: After the First World War, the Portuguese once more became the main immigrant group, and Italians fell to third place. Spanish immigrants rose to second place because of the poverty that was affecting millions of rural workers. Germans were fourth place on the list; they arrived especially during the Weimar Republic, due to poverty and unemployment caused by the First World War. The numbers of Europeans of other ethnicities increased; among them were people from Poland, Russia, and Romania, who emigrated in the 1920s, probably because of politic persecution. Other peoples emigrated from the Middle East, especially from what now are Syria and Lebanon. During the period 1821–1932, Brazil received an estimated 4,431,000 European immigrants.


title: White Latin Americans

text: After the end of the Second World War, European immigration diminished significantly, although between 1931 and 1963 1.1 million immigrants entered Brazil, mostly Portuguese. By the mid-1970s, some Portuguese immigrated to Brazil after the independence of Portugal's African colonies—from Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau.


title: White Latin Americans

text: A 2015 autosomal genetic study, which also analysed data of 25 studies of 38 different Brazilian populations, concluded the following: "European (EUR) ancestry is the major contributor to the genetic background of Brazilians, followed by African (AFR), and Amerindian (AMR) ancestries. The pooled ancestry contributions were 0.62 EUR, 0.21 AFR, and 0.17AMR. The Southern region had a greater EUR contribution (0.77) than other regions. Individuals from the Northeast (NE) region had the highest AFR contribution (0.27) whereas individuals from the North regions had more AMR contribution (0.32)".


title: White Latin Americans

text: An autosomal study from 2013, of nearly 1,300 samples from all regions of Brazil, found predominantly European ancestry, combined with African and Native American contributions in varying degrees:


title: White Latin Americans

text: Following an increasing North to South gradient, European ancestry was the most prevalent in all urban populations (with values up to 74%). The populations in the North consisted of a significant proportion of Native American ancestry that was about two times higher than the African contribution. Conversely, in the Northeast, Center-West and Southeast, African ancestry was the second most prevalent. At an intrapopulation level, all urban populations were highly admixed, and most of the variation in ancestry proportions was observed between individuals within each population rather than among population.


title: White Latin Americans

text: A 2015 autosomal DNA study found Chile to be 55.16% European, 42.38% Native American and 2.44% African, using LAMP-LD modeling; and 54.38% European, 43.22% Native American, and 2.40% African, using RFMix. An autosomal DNA study from 2014 found the results to be 51.85% (± 5.44%) European, 44.34% (± 3.9%) Native American, and 3.81% (± 0.45%) African.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Studies estimates the white population at 20%, to 52.7% of the Chilean population. According to genetic research by the University of Brasilia, Chilean genetic admixture consists of 51.6% European, 42.1% Amerindian, and 6.3% African ancestry. According to an autosomal genetic study of 2014 carried out among soldiers in the city of Arica, Northern Chile, the European admixture goes from 56.8% in soldiers born in Magallanes to 41.2% for the ones who were born in Tarapacá. According to a study from 2013, conducted by the "Candela Project" in Northern Chile as well, the genetic admixture of Chile is 52% European, 44% Native American, and 4% African.


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to a study performed in 2014, 37.9% of Chileans self-identified as white, a subsequent DNA tests showed that the average self identifying white was genetically 54% European.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Genotype and phenotype in Chileans vary according to social class. 13% of lower-class Chileans have at least one non-Spanish surname, compared to 72% of those who belong to the upper-middle-class. Phenotypically, only 9.6% of lower-class girls have light-colored eyes—either green or blue—where 31.6% of upper-middle-class girls have such eyes. Blonde hair is present in 2.2% and 21.3%, of lower-class and upper-middle girls respectively, whilst black hair is more common among lower-class girls (24.5%) than upper-middle class ones (9.0%).


title: White Latin Americans

text: Chile was initially an unattractive place for migrants, because it was far from Europe and relatively difficult to reach. However, during the 18th century an influx of emigrants from Spain moved to Chile. They were mostly Basques, who rose rapidly up the social ladder, becoming part of the political elite that still dominates the country. An estimated 1.6 million (10%) to 3.2 million (20%) Chileans have a surname (one or both) of Basque origin. The Basques liked Chile because of its similarity to their native land: cool climate, with similar geography, fruits, seafood, and wine.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The Spanish was the most significant European immigration to Chile, although there was never a massive immigration, such as happened in neighboring Argentina and Uruguay, and, therefore, the Chilean population wasn't "whitened" to the same extent. However, it is undeniable that immigrants have played a role in Chilean society. Between 1851 and 1924, Chile received only 0.5% of the total European immigration to Latin America, compared to 46% for Argentina, 33% for Brazil, 14% for Cuba, and 4% for Uruguay. This was because such migrants came across the Atlantic, not the Pacific, and before the construction of the Panama Canal, Europeans preferring to settle in countries close to their homelands, instead of taking the long route through the Straits of Magellan or across the Andes. In 1907, the European-born reached a peak of 2.4% of the Chilean population, decreasing to 1.8% in 1920, and 1.5% in 1930.


title: White Latin Americans

text: About 5% of the Chilean population has some French ancestry. Over 700,000 (4.5%) Chileans may be of British (English, Scottish and Welsh) or Irish origin. Another significant immigrant group is Croatian. The number of their descendants today is estimated to be 380,000, or 2.4% of the population. Other authors claim that close to 4.6% of the Chilean population must have some Croatian ancestry.


title: White Latin Americans

text: After the failed liberal revolution of 1848 in the German states, a significant German immigration took place, laying the foundation for the German-Chilean community. Sponsored by the Chilean government, to "unbarbarize" and colonize the southern region, these Germans (including German-speaking Swiss, Silesians, Alsatians and Austrians) settled mainly in Valdivia, Llanquihue, Chiloé, and Los Ángeles. The Chilean Embassy in Germany estimated that 150,000 to 200,000 Chileans are of German origin.


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to the 2005 Census 86% of Colombians are considered either White or Mestizo, which are not categorized separately. Though the census does not identify the number of white Colombians, Lizcano and the CIA World Factbook estimates 20% of White population, while Hudson estimates 37%, a figure that also coincides with the research done by Schwartzman, forming the second largest racial group after Mestizo Colombians (at 49%). Genetic studies estimate that the ethnic composition of Colombia varies between 45.9% European, 33.8% Amerindian, and 20.3% African ancestry; and 62.5% European, 27.4% Amerindian, and 9.2% African ancestry.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Between 1540 and 1559, 8.9 percent of the residents of Colombia were of Basque origin. It has been suggested that the present day incidence of business entrepreneurship in the region of Antioquia is attributable to the Basque immigration and character traits. Today many Colombians of the Department of Antioquia region preserve their Basque ethnic heritage. In Bogota, there is a small district/colonies of Basque families who emigrated as a consequence of Spain's Civil War or because of better opportunities. Basque priests were the ones that introduced handball into Colombia. Basque immigrants in Colombia were devoted to teaching and public administration. In the first years of the Andean Multinational Company, Basque sailors navigated as captains and pilots on the majority of the ships until the country was able to train its own crews.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The first and largest wave of immigration from the Middle East began around 1880, and continued during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The immigrants were mainly Maronite Christians from Greater Syria (Syria and Lebanon) and Palestine, fleeing those then Ottoman territories. Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese have continued to settle in Colombia. Due to a lack of information, it is impossible to know the exact number of Lebanese and Syrians that immigrated to Colombia; but for 1880 to 1930, 5,000–10,000 is estimated. Syrians and Lebanese are perhaps the biggest immigrant group next to the Spanish since independence. Those who left their homeland in the Middle East to settle in Colombia left for different religious, economic, and political reasons. In 1945, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Cali, and Bogota are the cities with the largest numbers of Arabic-speakers in Colombia. The Arabs that went to Maicao were mostly Sunni Muslim, with some Druze and Shiites, as well as Orthodox and Maronite Christians. The mosque of Maicao is the second largest mosque in Latin America. Middle Easterns are generally called "Turcos" (Turkish).


title: White Latin Americans

text: In December 1941 the United States government estimated that there were 4,000 Germans living in Colombia. There were some Nazi agitators in Colombia, such as Barranquilla businessman Emil Prufurt. Colombia invited Germans who were on the U.S. blacklist to leave. SCADTA, a Colombian-German air transport corporation, which was established by German expatriates in 1919, was the first commercial airline in the western hemisphere. In recent years, the celebration of Colombian-German heritage has grown increasingly popular in Bogota, Cartagena, and Bucaramanga. There are many annual festivals that focus German cuisine, specially pastry arts and beer. Since 2009, there has been a considerable increase in collaborative research through advanced business and educational exchanges, such as those promoted by COLCIENCIAS and AIESEC. There are many Colombian-German companies focused on finance, science, education, technology and innovation, and engineering.


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to the 2010 National Population Census, 6.1% of the population self-identified as white, down from 10.5% in 2001.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In Ecuador, being white is more an indication of social class than of ethnicity. Classifying oneself as white is often done to claim membership to the middle class and to distance oneself from the lower class, which is associated being "Indian". For this reason the status of "blanco" is claimed by people who are not primarily of European heritage. According to genetic research done in 2008 by the University of Brasilia, the average Ecuadorian genetic admixture is 64.6% Amerindian, 31.0% European, and 4.4% African. In 2015, another study showed the average Ecuadorian is estimated to be 52.96% Amerindian, 41.77% European, and 5.26% Sub-Saharan African overall.


title: White Latin Americans

text: White Ecuadorians, mostly "criollos", are descendants of Spanish colonists and also Spanish refugees fleeing the 1936–1939 Spanish Civil War. Most still hold large amounts of lands, mainly in the northern "Sierra", and live in Quito or Guayaquil. There is also a large number of white people in Cuenca, a city in the southern Andes of Ecuador, due to the arrival of Frenchmen in the area, who came to measure the arc of the Earth. Cuenca, Loja, and the Galápagos attracted German immigration during the early 20th century. The Galápagos also had a small Norwegian fishing community until they were asked to leave. There are large populations of Italian, French, German, Basque, Portuguese, and Greek descent, as well as a small Ecuadorian Jewish population. Ecuador's Jews consists of Sephardic Jews arriving in the South of the country in the 16th and 17th centuries and Ashkenazi Jews during the 1930s in the main cities of Quito and Cuenca.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Ethnically, culturally, and socially, Paraguay has one of the most homogeneous populations in South America. Because of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia's 1814 policy that no Spaniards and other Europeans could intermarry among themselves (they could only marry blacks, mulattoes, mestizos or the native Guaraní), a measure taken to avoid a white majority occurring in Paraguay (De Francia believed that all men were equal as well), it was within little more than one generation that most of the population were of mixed racial origin.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The exact percentage of the white Paraguayan population is not known because the Paraguayan census does not include racial or ethnic identification, save for the indigenous population, which was 1.7% of the country's total in the 2002 census. Other sources estimate the sizes of other groups, the mestizo population being estimated at 95% by the CIA World Factbook, with all other groups totaling 5%. Thus, whites and the remaining groups (such as those of African descent) make up approximately 3.3% of the total population. According to Carlos Pastore, 30% are white and 70% approximately is mestizo. Such a reading is complicated, because, as elsewhere in Latin America, "white" and "mestizo" are not mutually exclusive (people may identify as both).


title: White Latin Americans

text: Due to the European migration in the 19th and 20th centuries, the majority of Paraguay's white population are of German descent (including Mennonites), with others being of French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese descent. Many are southern and southeastern Brazilians ("brasiguayos"), as well as Argentines and Uruguayans, and their descendants. People from such regions are generally descendants of colonial settlers and/or more recent immigrants.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In 2005, 600 families of Volga Germans who migrated to Germany after the fall of the Soviet Union, re-migrated and established a new colony, "Neufeld", near Yuty (Caazapá Department), in southeastern Paraguay.


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to the 2017 census 5.9% or 1.3 million people self-identified as white of the population. This was the first time the census had asked an ancestral identity question. The highest proportion was in the La Libertad Region with 10% identifying as white. They are descendants primarily of Spanish colonists, and also of Spanish refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War. After World War II, many German refugees fled to Peru and settled in large cities, while others descend from Italian, French (mainly Basques), Austrian or German, Portuguese, British, Russians and Croatian immigrant families.


title: White Latin Americans

text: This was the first time a question for ethnic origins had been asked. The regions with the highest proportion of self-identified whites were in La Libertad Region (10.5%), Tumbes Region and Lambayeque Region (9.0% each), Piura Region (8.1%), Callao (7.7%), Cajamarca Region (7.5%), Lima Province (7.2%) and Lima Region (6.0%).


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to a genetic research by the University of Brasilia, Peruvian genetic admixture indicates 73.0% Amerindian, 15.1% European, and 11.9% African ancestry.


title: White Latin Americans

text: A 2009 DNA study in the "American Journal of Human Biology" showed the genetic composition of Uruguay as primarily European, with Native American ancestry ranging from one to 20 percent and sub-Saharan African from seven to 15 percent, depending on the region.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Between the mid-19th and the early 20th centuries, Uruguay received part of the same migratory influx as Argentina, although the process started a bit earlier. During 1850–1900, the country welcomed four waves of European immigrants, mainly Spaniards, Italians and Frenchmen. In smaller numbers came British, Germans, Swiss, Russians, Portuguese, Poles, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Dutch, Belgians, Croatians, Lebanese, Armenians, Greeks, Scandinavians, and Irish. The demographic impact of these migratory waves was greater than in Argentina, Uruguay going from having 70,000 inhabitants in 1830, to 450,000 in 1875, and a million inhabitants by 1900, its population thus increasing fourteen-fold in only 70 years. Between 1840 and 1890, 50%–60% of Montevideo's population was born abroad, almost all in Europe. The Census conducted in 1860 showed that 35% of the country's population was made up by foreigners, although by the time of the 1908 Census this figure had dropped to 17%.


title: White Latin Americans

text: From 1996 to 1997, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) of Uruguay conducted a Continuous Household Survey, of 40,000 homes, that included the topic of race in the country. Its results were based on "the explicit statements of the interviewee about the race they consider they belong themselves". These results were extrapolated, and the INE estimated that out of 2,790,600 inhabitants, some 2,602,200 were white (93.2%), some 164,200 (5.9%) were totally or partially black, some 12,100 were totally or partially Amerindian (0.4%), and the remaining 12,000 considered themselves Yellow.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In 2006, a new Enhanced National Household Survey touched on the topic again, but this time emphasizing ancestry, not race; the results revealed 5.8% more Uruguayans stated having total or partial black and/or Amerindian ancestry. This reduction in the percentage of self-declared "pure whites" between surveys could be caused by the phenomenon of the interviewee giving new value to their African heritage, similar to what has happened in Brazil in the last three censuses. Anyway, it is worth noting that 2,897,525 interviewées declared having only white ancestry (87.4%), 302,460 declared having total or partial black ancestry (9.1%), 106,368 total or partial Amerindian ancestry (2.9%) and 6,549 total or partial Yellow ancestry (0.2%). This figure matches external estimates for white population in Uruguay of 87.4%, 88%, or 90%.


title: White Latin Americans

text: In 1997, the Uruguayan government granted residence rights to only 200 European/American citizens; in 2008 the number of residence rights granted increased to 927.


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to the official Venezuelan census, although "white" literally involves external issues such as light skin, shape and color of hair and eyes, among others, the term "white" has been used in different ways in different historical periods and places, so its precise definition is somewhat confusing. Though the 2011 Venezuelan Census states that "White" in Venezuela is used to describe the Venezuelans of European origin.


title: White Latin Americans

text: According to the 2011 National Population and Housing Census, 43.6% of the population identified themselves as white people. A genomic study shows that about 60.6% of the Venezuelan gene pool has European origin. Among the Latin American countries in the study (Argentina, Bahamas, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, El Salvador, Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela), Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, and Argentina exhibit the highest European contribution.


title: White Latin Americans

text: The Venezuelan gene pool indicates a 60.6% European, 23.0% Amerindian, and 16.3% African ancestry. Spaniards were introduced into Venezuela during the colonial period. Most of them were from Andalusia, Galicia, Basque Country and from the Canary Islands. Until the last years of World War II, a large part of European immigrants to Venezuela came from the Canary Islands, and their cultural impact was significant, influencing its gastronomy, customs and the development of Castilian in the country. With the beginning of oil production during the first decades of the 20th century, employees of oil companies from the United States, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands established themselves in Venezuela. Later, in the middle of the century, there was a new wave of immigrants originating from Spain (mainly from Galicia, Andalucia, and Basque country, some being refugees from the Spanish Civil War), Italy (mainly from southern Italy and the Veneto region), and Portugal (from Madeira), as well as from Germany, France, England, Croatia, the Netherlands, and other European countries encouraged by a welcoming immigration policy to a prosperous, rapidly developing country where educated and skilled immigrants were needed.


title: White Latin Americans

text: Some media outlets in the United States have criticized Latin American media for allegedly featuring a disproportionate number of blond and blue-eyed actors and actresses in telenovelas, relative to the overall population.


title: Desert island

text: A desert island, deserted island, or uninhabited island, is an island, islet or atoll that is not permanently populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes for the idea of "paradise". Some uninhabited islands are protected as nature reserves, and some are privately owned. Devon Island in Canada's far north is the largest uninhabited island in the world.


title: Desert island

text: Small coral atolls or islands usually have no source of fresh water, but occasionally a freshwater lens can be reached with a well.


title: Desert island

text: Uninhabited islands are sometimes also called "deserted islands" or "desert islands". In the latter, the adjective "desert" connotes not desert climate conditions, but rather "desolate and sparsely occupied or unoccupied". The word "desert" has been "formerly applied more widely to any wild, uninhabited region, including forest-land", and it is this archaic meaning that appears in the phrase "desert island".


title: Desert island

text: The term "desert island" is also commonly used figuratively to refer to objects or behavior in conditions of social isolation and limited material means. Behavior on a desert island is a common thought experiment, for example, "desert island morality".


title: Desert island

text: Desert islands are partly sheltered from humans, making them havens of peace for a number of fragile wildlife species such as sea turtles and ground-nesting seabirds. Many species of seabirds use them as stopovers on their way or especially for nesting, taking advantage of the (supposed) absence of terrestrial predators such as cats or rats.


title: Desert island

text: However, tons of waste from far away countries accumulates on their beaches from the sea, and the absence of surveillance also makes them important spots for poachers of protected species.


title: Desert island

text: Most of the largest uninhabited islands are many miles inside the Arctic or Antarctic circles, indicating that the reason for their desertedness is the freezing climate.


title: Desert island

text: The first known novels to be set on a desert island were "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" written by Ibn Tufail (1105–1185), followed by "Theologus Autodidactus" written by Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288). The protagonists in both (Hayy in "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" and Kamil in "Theologus Autodidactus") are feral children living in seclusion on a deserted island, until they eventually come in contact with castaways from the outside world who are stranded on the island. The story of "Theologus Autodidactus", however, extends beyond the deserted island setting when the castaways take Kamil back to civilization with them.


title: Desert island

text: William Shakespeare's 1610–11 play, "The Tempest", uses the idea of being stranded on a desert island as a pretext for the action of the play. Prospero and his daughter Miranda are set adrift by Prospero's treacherous brother Antonio, seeking to become Duke of Milan, and Prospero in turn shipwrecks his brother and other men of sin onto the island.


title: Desert island

text: A Latin translation of Ibn Tufail's "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger, followed by an English translation by Simon Ockley in 1708, as well as German and Dutch translations. In the late 17th century, "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" inspired Robert Boyle, an acquaintance of Pococke, to write his own philosophical novel set on a deserted island, "The Aspiring Naturalist". Ibn al-Nafis' "Theologus Autodidactus" was also eventually translated into English in the early 20th century.


title: Desert island

text: Published in 1719, Daniel Defoe's novel "Robinson Crusoe" about a castaway on a desert island has spawned so many imitations in film, television and radio that its name was used to define a genre, Robinsonade. The novel features Man Friday, Crusoe's personal assistant. It is likely that Defoe took inspiration for Crusoe from a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk, who was rescued in 1709 after four years on the otherwise uninhabited Juan Fernández Islands; Defoe usually made use of current events for his plots. It is also likely that he was inspired by the Latin or English translations of Ibn Tufail's "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan".


title: Desert island

text: Noel Paul Stookey sang a song about living on a desert island called "On a Desert Island (With You in My Dreams)" on Peter, Paul & Mary's 1965 album: "See What Tomorrow Brings".


title: Desert island

text: Tom Neale was a New Zealander who voluntarily spent 16 years in three sessions in the 1950s and 1960s living alone on the island of Suwarrow in the Northern Cook Islands group. His time there is documented in his autobiography, "An Island To Oneself".


title: Desert island

text: In the popular conception, such islands are often located in the Pacific, tropical, uninhabited and usually uncharted. They are remote locales that offer escape and force people marooned or stranded as castaways to become self-sufficient and essentially create a new society. This society can either be utopian, based on an ingenious re-creation of society's comforts (as in "Swiss Family Robinson" and, in a humorous form, "Gilligan's Island") or a regression into savagery (the major theme of both "Lord of the Flies" and "The Beach").


title: Desert island

text: Desert islands are also a hugely popular image for gag cartoons, the island being conventionally depicted as just a few yards across with a single palm tree (probably due to the visual constraints of the medium). 17 such cartoons appeared in "The New Yorker" in 1957 alone.


title: Desert island

text: A special variation of the desert island theme appears in H.G.Wells's "The War in the Air". As part of the cataclysmic global war depicted, the bridges linking Goat Island in the middle of the Niagara Falls to the mainland are cut, and with civilization fast breaking down a few survivors stranded on the island can't expect rescue and must rely on their own resources - embarking on a grim life and death struggle.


title: Desert island

text: The top "dream vacation" for heterosexual men surveyed by "Psychology Today" was "marooned on a tropical island with several members of the opposite sex".


title: Desert island

text: In 1820, the crew of the whaler "Essex" spent time on uninhabited Henderson Island. There they gorged on birds, fish, and vegetation and found a small freshwater spring. After one week, they had depleted the island's resources and most of the crew left on three whaleboats, while three of the men decided to remain on the island and survived there for four months until their rescue.


title: William Godwin

text: William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is most famous for two books that he published within the space of a year: "An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice", an attack on political institutions, and "Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams", an early mystery novel which attacks aristocratic privilege. Based on the success of both, Godwin featured prominently in the radical circles of London in the 1790s. He wrote prolifically in the genres of novels, history and demography throughout his life.


title: William Godwin

text: In the conservative reaction to British radicalism, Godwin was attacked, in part because of his marriage to the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797 and his candid biography of her after her death from childbirth. Their daughter, later known as Mary Shelley, would go on to write "Frankenstein" and marry the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. With his second wife, Mary Jane Clairmont, Godwin set up The Juvenile Library, allowing the family to write their own works for children (sometimes using "noms de plume") and translate and publish many other books, some of enduring significance. Godwin has had considerable influence on British literature and literary culture.


title: William Godwin

text: Godwin was born in Wisbech, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, to John and Anne Godwin, becoming the seventh of his parents' thirteen children. Godwin's family on both sides were middle-class and his parents adhered to a strict form of Calvinism. Godwin's mother came from a wealthy family but due to her uncle's frivolities the family wealth was squandered. Fortunately for the family, her father was a successful merchant involved in the Baltic Sea trade. Shortly following William's birth, his father John, a Nonconformist minister, moved the family to Debenham in Suffolk and later to Guestwick in Norfolk, which had a radical history as a Roundhead stronghold during the English Civil War. At the local meeting house, John Godwin often found himself sitting in "Cromwell's Chair", which had been a gift to the town by the Lord Protector. John never inspired love or much regret in his son; but in spite of wide differences of opinion, tender affection always subsisted between William Godwin and his mother, until her death at an advanced age.


title: William Godwin

text: William Godwin came from a long line of English Dissenters, who faced religious discrimination by the British government, and was inspired by his grandfather and father to take up the dissenting tradition and become a minister himself. At eleven years old, he became the sole pupil of Samuel Newton, a hard-line Calvinist and a disciple of Robert Sandeman. Although Newton's strict method of discipline left Godwin with a lasting anti-authoritarianism, Godwin internalized the Sandemanian creed, which emphasised rationalism, egalitarianism and consensus decision-making. Despite Godwin's later renunciation of Christianity, he maintained his Sandemanian roots, which he held responsible for his commitment to rationalism, as well as his stoic personality. Godwin later characterised Newton as, "... a celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, has contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin." In 1771, Godwin was finally dismissed by Newton and returned home, but his father died the following year, which prompted his mother to urge him to continue his education.


title: William Godwin

text: At seventeen years old, Godwin began higher education at the Dissenting Academy in Hoxton, where he studied under Andrew Kippis, the biographer, and Dr. Abraham Rees, who was responsible for the "Cyclopaedia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences". A hotspot for classical liberalism, at the Academy, Godwin familiarized himself with John Locke's approach to psychology, Isaac Newton's scientific method and Francis Hutcheson's ethical system, which all informed Godwin's philosophies of determinism and immaterialism. Although Godwin had joined the Academy as a committed Tory, the outbreak of the American Revolution led him to support the Whig opposition and, after reading the works of Jonathan Swift, he became a staunch republican. He soon familiarised himself with the French "philosophes", learning of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's belief in the inherent goodness of human nature and opposition to private property, as well as Claude Adrien Helvétius's utilitarianism and Paul-Henri Thiry's materialism.


title: William Godwin

text: In 1778, Godwin graduated from the academy and was quickly appointed as a minister in Ware, where he met Joseph Fawcett, one of his main direct influences. By 1780, he had been reassigned to Stowmarket, where he first read Paul-Henri Thiry's "System of Nature", adopting his philosophies of determinism and materialism. But after a conflict with other dissenting ministers of Suffolk over the administration of the eucharist, he stepped down and left for London in April 1782, resigning his career as a minister to become a writer.


title: William Godwin

text: Throughout 1783, Godwin published a series of written works, beginning with an anonymously-published biography of William Pitt the Elder, followed by a couple of pro-Whig political pamphlets. He also briefly attempted to return to ministerial work in Beaconsfield, where he preached that "faith should be subordinated to reason". A few months later, during the opening of a seminary in Epsom, Godwin gave a politically-charged speech in which he denounced state power as "artificial" and exalted the libertarian potential of education, which he believed could bring an end to authoritarian governments. Godwin then worked for a spell as a satirical literary critic, publishing "The Herald of Literature", in which he reviewed non-existent works by real authors, imitating their writing styles in lengthy quotations.


title: William Godwin

text: His work on the "Herald" secured him further work as a critic for John Murray's "English Review" and a commission to translated Simon Fraser's memoirs. In 1784, he published the romantic novels "Damon and Delia" and "Imogen", the latter of which was framed as a translation of a found manuscript from ancient Wales. That same year, he also published "Sketches of History", which compiled six of his sermons about the characters of Aaron, Hazael and Jesus. Drawing from John Milton's "Paradise Lost", which depicted Satan as a rebel against his creator, Godwin denounced the Christian God as a theocrat and a tyrant that had no right to rule.


title: William Godwin

text: As his early works were financially unsuccessful, Godwin started writing for well-paying Whig journals on Grub Street, starting work as a political journalist for the "New Annual Register" after being introduced to Georgie Robinson by Andrew Kippis. Godwin's work was then picked up by the "Political Herald", where he wrote under the pseudonym of "Mucius" in order to attack the Tories. He subsequently reported on the Pitt ministry's colonial rule in Ireland and India; penned a history of the Dutch Revolt and predicted the outbreak of a revolutionary wave in Europe.


title: William Godwin

text: After the death of the "Political Herald's" editor, Godwin turned down Richard Brinsley Sheridan's offer of succeeding to the editorship, out of concern that his editorial independence would be compromised by a direct financial connection to the Whig Party. But it was through Sheridan that Godwin became acquainted with a life-long friend Thomas Holcroft, whose arguments convinced Godwin to finally reject Christianity and embrace atheism. At the same time, Godwin took up a side job as a tutor for the young Thomas Abthorpe Cooper. After a fractious relationship between the two, Godwin eventually became the orphaned boy's adoptive father, which altered his style of pedagogy to one that emphasised "an open and honest relationship between tutor and pupil."


title: William Godwin

text: With the outbreak of the French Revolution, Godwin was among the Radicals that enthusiastically welcomed the events as the spiritual successor to Britain's own Glorious Revolution of 1688. As a member of the Revolution Society, Godwin met the political activist Richard Price, whose "Discourse on the Love of Our Country" espoused a radical form of patriotism that controversially upheld freedom of religion, representative democracy and the right of revolution. Price's "Discourse" ignited a pamphlet war, beginning with Edmund Burke's publication of his "Reflections on the Revolution in France", which defended traditionalist conservatism and opposed revolution. In response to Burke, Thomas Paine published his "Rights of Man" with the help of Godwin, who declared that "the seeds of revolution it contains are so vigorous in their stamina, that nothing can overpower them."


title: William Godwin

text: But Godwin's voice remained largely absent from the Revolution Controversy, as he had started writing a work of political philosophy that developed on his radical principles. With George Robinson's financial support, Godwin quit his work at the "New Annual Register" and committed himself wholly to his "magnum opus", which he hoped would condense the "best and most liberal in the science of politics into a coherent system". After sixteen months' work, while the revolution in France had culminated with the execution of Louis XVI and the outbreak of war, Godwin published his "Enquiry Concerning Political Justice" in February 1793.


title: William Godwin

text: Godwin first met Mary Wollstonecraft at the home of their mutual publisher. Joseph Johnson was hosting a dinner for another of his authors, Thomas Paine, and Godwin remarked years later that on that evening he heard too little of Paine and too much of Wollstonecraft; he did not see her again for some years. In the interim, Wollstonecraft went to live in France to witness the Revolution for herself, and had a child, Fanny Imlay, with an American adventurer named Gilbert Imlay. In pursuit of Gilbert Imlay's business affairs, Wollstonecraft travelled to Scandinavia, and soon afterwards published a book based on the voyage. Godwin read it, and later wrote that "If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book."


title: William Godwin

text: When Godwin and Wollstonecraft were reintroduced in 1796, their respect for each other soon grew into friendship, sexual attraction, and love. Once Wollstonecraft became pregnant, they decided to marry so that their child would be considered legitimate by society. Their marriage revealed the fact that Wollstonecraft had never been married to Imlay, and as a result she and Godwin lost many friends. Godwin received further criticism because he had advocated the abolition of marriage in "Political Justice". After their marriage at St. Pancras on 29 March 1797, they moved into two adjoining houses in Somers Town so that they could both still retain their independence; they often communicated by notes delivered by servants.


title: William Godwin

text: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in Somers Town on 30 August 1797, the couple's only child. Godwin had hoped for a son and had been planning on naming the child "William." On 10 September 1797 Wollstonecraft died of complications following the birth. By all accounts, it had been a happy and stable, though brief, relationship. Now Godwin, who had been a bachelor until a few months before, was distraught at the loss of the love of his life. Simultaneously, he became responsible for the care of these two young girls, the new-born Mary and toddler Fanny.


title: William Godwin

text: When Mary was three years old, Godwin left his daughters in the care of James Marshall while he travelled to Ireland. Godwin's tone in his letters demonstrates how much he cared about them. His letters show the stress he placed on giving his two daughters a sense of security. "And now what shall I say for my poor little girls? I hope they have not forgot me. I think of them every day, and should be glad, if the wind was more favourable, to blow them a kiss a-piece from Dublin to the Polygon.. but I have seen none that I love so well or think half so good as my own."


title: William Godwin

text: In December 1800 his play "Antonio, or the Soldier's Return" was put on at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane without success.


title: William Godwin

text: In 1801, Godwin married his neighbour Mary Jane Clairmont. She brought two of her own children into the household, Charles and Claire. Journalist H.N. Brailsford wrote in 1913, "She was a vulgar and worldly woman, thoroughly feminine, and rather inclined to boast of her total ignorance of philosophy." While Fanny eventually learned to live with Clairmont, Mary's relationship with her stepmother was tense. Mary writes, "As to Mrs Godwin, something very analogous to disgust arises whenever I mention her", "A woman I shudder to think of".


title: William Godwin

text: In 1805, the Godwins set up a shop and publishing house called the Juvenile Library, significant in the history of children's literature. Through this, Godwin wrote children's primers on Biblical and classical history, and using the pseudonym "Edward Baldwin", he wrote a variety of books for children, including a version of Jack and the Beanstalk, and a biography of the Irish artist William Mulready, who illustrated works for them. They kept alive family ties, publishing the first book by Margaret King (then Lady Mount Cashell), who had been a favoured pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft. They published works never since out of print, such as Charles and Mary Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare". The Juvenile Library also translated European authors. The first English edition of "Swiss Family Robinson" was translated (from the French, not the German) and edited by them. The business was the family's mainstay for decades.


title: William Godwin

text: In 1807 his Tragedy "Faulkner" was performed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane without more success than his earlier play.


title: William Godwin

text: The eldest of Godwin's children was Fanny Imlay (1794–1816), who committed suicide as a young woman. Charles Gaulis Clairmont ended up as Chair of English literature at Vienna University and taught sons of the royal family; news of his sudden death in 1849 distressed Maximilian. Mary Godwin (1797–1851) gained fame as Mary Shelley, author of "Frankenstein". Half a year younger than her was Claire Clairmont, Mary Jane's only daughter, to whom she showed favouritism. The youngest, and the only child of the second marriage, was William Godwin the Younger (1803–1832). Godwin sent him first to Charterhouse School and then to various other establishments of a practical bent. Nonetheless, he eventually earned his living by the pen. He died at 29, leaving the manuscript of a novel, which Godwin saw into print. All of Godwin's children who lived into adulthood worked as writers or educators, carrying on his legacy and that of his wives. Only two of them had children who in turn survived: Percy Florence Shelley, and the son and daughter of Charles. Godwin did not welcome the birth of Allegra Byron, but Claire's only child died aged five.


title: William Godwin

text: Godwin had high hopes for Mary, giving her a more rigorous intellectual experience than most women of her period, and describing her as "very intelligent." He wished to give his daughter a more "masculine education" and prepared her to be a writer. However, Godwin withdrew his support as Mary became a woman and pursued her relationship with Percy Shelley. Mary's first two novels, "Frankenstein" and "Mathilda", may be seen as a reaction to her childhood. Both explore the role of the father in the child's socialisation and the control the father has on the child's future. Shelley's last two novels, "Lodore" and "Falkner", re-evaluate the father-daughter relationship. They were written at a time when Shelley was raising her only surviving child alone and supporting her ageing father. In both novels, the daughter eludes the father's control by giving him the traditional maternal figure he asks for. This relationship gives the daughter control of the father.


title: William Godwin

text: Godwin was awarded a sinecure position as Office Keeper and Yeoman Usher of the Receipt of the Exchequer, which came with grace and favour accommodation in New Palace Yard, part of the complex of the Palace of Westminster, i.e. the Houses of Parliament. One of his duties was to oversee the sweeping of the chimneys of these extensive buildings. On 16 October 1832, a fire broke out and most of the Palace burned down. Literary critic Marilyn Butler concluded her review of a 1980 biography of Godwin by comparing him favourably to Guy Fawkes: Godwin was more successful in his opposition to the status quo.


title: William Godwin

text: In later years, Godwin came to expect support and consolation from his daughter. Two of the five children he had raised had pre-deceased him, and two more lived abroad. Mary responded to his expectations and she cared for him until he died in 1836.


title: William Godwin

text: Godwin was buried next to Mary Wollstonecraft in the graveyard of St Pancras, the church where they had married in 1797. His second wife outlived him, and eventually was buried there too. The three share a gravestone. In the 1850s, Mary Shelley's only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley, had the remains of Godwin and Wollstonecraft moved from what had become a run-down area of the capital to the more salubrious surroundings of Bournemouth, to his family tomb at St Peter's Church.


title: William Godwin

text: The surviving manuscripts for many of Godwin's best-known works are held in the Forster Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. The V&A's manuscripts for "Political Justice" and "Caleb Williams" were both digitised in 2017 and are now included in the Shelley-Godwin Archive.


title: William Godwin

text: His birthplace, Wisbech, has two memorials to him. A cul-de-sac was named in his honour Godwin Close, and a wall plaque adorns a building adjacent to the Angles Theatre in Alexandra Road.


title: William Godwin

text: In 1793, while the French Revolution was in full swing, Godwin published his great work on political science, "Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness". The first part of this book was largely a recap of Edmund Burke's "A Vindication of Natural Society" – a critique of the state. Godwin acknowledged the influence of Burke for this portion. The rest of the book is Godwin's positive vision of how an anarchist (or minarchist) society might work. "Political Justice" was extremely influential in its time: after the writings of Burke and Paine, Godwin's was the most popular written response to the French Revolution. Godwin's work was seen by many as illuminating a middle way between the fiery extremes of Burke and Paine. Prime Minister William Pitt famously said that there was no need to censor it, because at over £1 it was too costly for the average Briton to buy. However, as was the practice at the time, numerous "corresponding societies" took up "Political Justice", either sharing it or having it read to the illiterate members. Eventually, it sold over 4000 copies and brought literary fame to Godwin.


title: William Godwin

text: Godwin augmented the influence of "Political Justice" with the publication of a novel that proved equally popular, "Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams". This tells the story of a servant who finds out a dark secret about Falkland, his aristocratic master, and is forced to flee because of his knowledge. "Caleb Williams" is essentially the first thriller: Godwin wryly remarked that some readers were consuming in a night what took him over a year to write. Not the least of its merits is a portrait of the justice system of England and Wales at the time and a prescient picture of domestic espionage. His literary method, as he described it in the introduction to the novel, also proved influential: Godwin began with the conclusion of Caleb being chased through Britain, and developed the plot backwards. Dickens and Poe both commented on Godwin's ingenuity in doing this.


title: William Godwin

text: In response to a treason trial of some of his fellow British Jacobins, among them Thomas Holcroft, Godwin wrote "Cursory Strictures on the Charge Delivered by Lord Chief Justice Eyre to the Grand Jury, 2 October 1794" in which he forcefully argued that the prosecution's concept of "constructive treason" allowed a judge to construe "any" behaviour as treasonous. It paved the way for a major victory for the Jacobins, as they were acquitted.


title: William Godwin

text: However, Godwin's own reputation was eventually besmirched after 1798 by the conservative press, in part because he chose to write a candid biography of his late wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, entitled "Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman", including accounts of her two suicide attempts and her affair (before her relationship with Godwin) with the American adventurer Gilbert Imlay, which resulted in the birth of Fanny Imlay.


title: William Godwin

text: Godwin, stubborn in his practice, practically lived in secret for 30 years because of his reputation. However, in its influence on writers such as Shelley, who read the work on multiple occasions between 1810 and 1820, and Kropotkin, "Political Justice" takes its place with Milton's "Areopagitica" and Rousseau's "" as a defining anarchist and libertarian text.


title: William Godwin

text: By the words "political justice" the author meant "the adoption of any principle of morality and truth into the practice of a community," and the work was therefore an inquiry into the principles of society, government, and morals. For many years Godwin had been "satisfied that monarchy was a species of government unavoidably corrupt," and from desiring a government of the simplest construction, he gradually came to consider that "government by its very nature counteracts the improvement of original mind," demonstrating anti-statist beliefs that would later be considered anarchist.


title: William Godwin

text: Believing in the perfectibility of the race, that there are no innate principles, and therefore no original propensity to evil, he considered that "our virtues and our vices may be traced to the incidents which make the history of our lives, and if these incidents could be divested of every improper tendency, vice would be extirpated from the world." All control of man by man was more or less intolerable, and the day would come when each man, doing what seems right in his own eyes, would also be doing what is in fact best for the community, because all will be guided by principles of pure reason.


title: William Godwin

text: Such optimism was combined with a strong empiricism to support Godwin's belief that the evil actions of men are solely reliant on the corrupting influence of social conditions, and that changing these conditions could remove the evil in man. This is similar to the ideas of his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, concerning the shortcomings of women as due to discouragement during their upbringing.


title: William Godwin

text: Peter Kropotkin remarked of Godwin that when "speaking of property, he stated that the rights of every one 'to every substance capable of contributing to the benefit of a human being' must be regulated by justice alone: the substance must go 'to him who most wants it'. His conclusion was communism."


title: William Godwin

text: In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus wrote "An Essay on the Principle of Population" in response to Godwin's views on the "perfectibility of society." Malthus wrote that populations are inclined to increase in times of plenty, and that only distress, from causes such as food shortages, disease, or war, serves to stem population growth. Populations in his view are therefore always doomed to grow until distress is felt, at least by the poorer segment of the society. Consequently, poverty was felt to be an inevitable phenomenon of society.Let us imagine for a moment Mr. Godwin's beautiful system of equality realized in its utmost purity, and see how soon this difficulty might be expected to press under so perfect a form of society... Let us suppose all the causes of misery and vice in this island removed. War and contention cease. Unwholesome trades and manufactories do not exist. Crowds no longer collect together in great and pestilent cities... Every house is clean, airy, sufficiently roomy, and in a healthy situation... And the necessary labours of agriculture are shared amicably among all. The number of persons, and the produce of the island, we suppose to be the same as at present. The spirit of benevolence, guided by impartial justice, will divide this produce among all the members of the society according to their wants...With these extraordinary encouragements to population, and every cause of depopulation, as we have supposed, removed, the numbers would necessarily increase faster than in any society that has ever yet been known...


title: William Godwin

text: Malthus went on to argue that under such ideal conditions, the population could conceivably double every 25 years. However, the food supply could not continue doubling at this rate for even 50 years. The food supply would become inadequate for the growing population, and then:...the mighty law of self-preservation expels all the softer and more exalted emotions of the soul... The corn is plucked before it is ripe, or secreted in unfair proportions; and the whole black train of vices that belong to falsehood are immediately generated. Provisions no longer flow in for the support of the mother with a large family. The children are sickly from insufficient food... No human institutions here existed, to the perverseness of which Mr. Godwin ascribes the original sin of the worst men. No opposition had been produced by them between public and private good. No monopoly had been created of those advantages which reason directs to be left in common. No man had been goaded to the breach of order by unjust laws. Benevolence had established her reign in all hearts: and yet in so short a period as within fifty years, violence, oppression, falsehood, misery, every hateful vice, and every form of distress, which degrade and sadden the present state of society, seem to have been generated by the most imperious circumstances, by laws inherent in the nature of man, and absolutely independent of it human regulations.


title: William Godwin

text: In "Political Justice" Godwin had acknowledged that an increase in the standard of living as he envisioned could cause population pressures, but he saw an obvious solution to avoiding distress: "project a change in the structure of human action, if not of human nature, specifically the eclipsing of the desire for sex by the development of intellectual pleasures". In the 1798 version of his essay, Malthus specifically rejected this possible change in human nature. In the second and subsequent editions, however, he wrote that widespread "moral restraint," i.e., postponement of marriage and pre-nuptial celibacy (sexual abstinence), could reduce the tendency of a population to grow until distress was felt.


title: William Godwin

text: Godwin also saw new technology as being partly responsible for the future change in human nature into more intellectually developed beings. He reasoned that increasing technological advances would lead to a decrease in the amount of time individuals spent on production and labour, and thereby, to more time spent on developing "their intellectual and moral faculties". Instead of population growing exponentially, Godwin believed that this moral improvement would outrun the growth of population. Godwin pictured a social utopia where society would reach a level of sustainability and engage in "voluntary communism".


title: William Godwin

text: In July 1820, Godwin published "Of Population: An Enquiry Concerning the Power of Increase in the Numbers of Mankind" as a rebuttal to Malthus' essays. Godwin's main argument was against Malthus' notion that population tends to grow exponentially. Godwin believed that for population to double every twenty-five years (as Malthus had asserted had occurred in the United States, due to the expanse of resources available there), every married couple would have to have at least eight children, given the rate of childhood deaths. Godwin himself was one of thirteen children, but he did not observe the majority of couples in his day having eight children. He therefore concluded:In reality, if I had not taken up the pen with the express purpose of confuting all the errors of Mr Malthus's book, and of endeavouring to introduce other principles, more cheering, more favourable to the best interests of mankind, and better prepared to resist the inroads of vice and misery, I might close my argument here, and lay down the pen with this brief remark, that, when this author shall have produced from any country, the United States of North America not excepted, a register of marriages and births, from which it shall appear that there are on an average eight births to a marriage, then, and not till then, can I have any just reason to admit his doctrine of the geometrical ratio.


title: William Godwin

text: In his first edition of "Political Justice" Godwin included arguments favouring the possibility of "earthly immortality" (what would now be called physical immortality), but later editions of the book omitted this topic. Although the belief in such a possibility is consistent with his philosophy regarding perfectibility and human progress, he probably dropped the subject because of political expedience when he realised that it might discredit his other views.


title: African forest elephant

text: The African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) is one of the two living African elephant species. It is native to humid forests in West Africa and the Congo Basin. It is the smallest of the three living elephant species, reaching a shoulder height of . Both sexes have straight, down-pointing tusks, which erupt when they are 1–3 years old. It lives in family groups of up to 20 individuals. Since it forages on leaves, seeds, fruit, and tree bark, it has been referred to as the 'megagardener of the forest'. It contributes significantly to maintain the composition and structure of the Guinean Forests of West Africa and the Congolese rainforests.


title: African forest elephant

text: The first scientific description of the species was published in 1900. During the 20th century, overhunting caused a sharp decline in population, and by 2013 it was estimated that less than 30,000 individuals remained. It is threatened by habitat loss, fragmentation, and poaching. The conservation status of populations varies across range countries. Since 2021, the species has been listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List.


title: African forest elephant

text: "Loxodonte" was proposed as the generic name for African elephants by Frédéric Cuvier in 1825. This name refers to the lozenge-shaped enamel of the molar teeth, which differs significantly from the shape of the Asian elephant's molar enamel.


title: African forest elephant

text: "Elephas" ("Loxodonta") "cyclotis" was the scientific name proposed by Paul Matschie in 1900 who described the skulls of a female and a male specimen collected by the Sanaga River in southern Cameroon.


title: African forest elephant

text: The African forest elephant was long considered to be a subspecies of the African elephant, together with the African bush elephant. Morphological and DNA analysis showed that they are two distinct species.


title: African forest elephant

text: The taxonomic status of the African pygmy elephant ("Loxodonta pumilio") was uncertain for a long time. Phylogenetic analysis of the mitochondrial genome of nine specimens from museum collections indicates that it is an African forest elephant whose diminutive size or early maturity is due to environmental conditions.


title: African forest elephant

text: Phylogenetic analysis of nuclear DNA of African bush and forest elephants, Asian elephants, woolly mammoths and American mastodons revealed that the African forest elephant and African bush elephant form a sister group that genetically diverged at least 1.9 million years ago. They are therefore considered distinct species. Gene flow between the two species might have occurred after the split, though.


title: African forest elephant

text: Analysis of ancient DNA from living and extinct elephantids indicates that the African forest elephant is one of three ancestors of the straight-tusked elephant ("Palaeoloxodon antiquus").