title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: Aside from raiding, slaves could also be obtained by purchasing them from local black rulers. The 9th century Arab historian Ya'qubi states:


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: Indeed it was rare that African rulers would resist the slave trade and usually they would act as middlemen, rounding up members of nearby villages to be sold to visiting merchants. The 12th century Arab geographer al-Idrisi noted that black Africans would also participate in slave raiding stating that:


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: Al-Idrisi would also describe the different methods Muslim merchants would use to enslave blacks, recording that some would "steal the children of the Zanj using dates...lure them with dates and lead them from place to place, until they seize them, take them out of the country and transport them to their own countries". In 1353 the Berber explorer Ibn Battuta would record accompanying a trade caravan to Morocco which carried 600 black female slaves who were to be used as domestic servants and concubines. When Battuta visited the ancient African kingdom of Mali he recounted that the local inhabitants vied with each other in the number of slaves and servants they had, and was himself given a slave boy as a "hospitality gift."


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: The routes taken by slave caravans transporting slaves depended on their destination. Slaves headed to Egypt would be carried by boat down the Nile and slaves headed to Arabia would be sent to ports on the Red Sea such as Suakin and Assab. Slaves headed to North Africa would have to take the Saharan trade routes which had been in use since around 1000 BC. These include routes such as the ones from Tripoli-Ghadames-Ghat-Hoggar-Gao connecting modern day Libya to Nigeria, the Tripoli-Fezzan-Bornu route, connecting Libya to areas of what are today Chad, Niger, and Cameroon, and the east-west route connecting Egypt to Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. Kanem-Bornu-Zawila was another route to North Africa as the Kanem–Bornu Empire in the eastern part of Niger was an active part of the trans-Saharan slave trade for centuries, and the trade formed the basis of the empire's prosperity.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: Passage through the Sahara required the expertise of ethnic groups whose lifestyles were uniquely adapted for survival in scorching, arid environments, namely the local Berber tribes and the foreign Bedouins from Arabia. For example, the Tuareg and others who are indigenous to Libya facilitated, taxed and partly organized the trade from the south along the trans-Saharan trade routes. These various nomadic peoples were also critical as the guards, guides, and camel drivers, who aided the trade caravans and resultingly they were granted autonomy and treated as allies by governments of North Africa. Oases were vital waystations for caravans and those such as Awjila, Ghadames, and Kufra in Libya allowed both north-south and east-west travel. Even with expert help the passage could still prove deadly to merchants and slaves. Sometimes whole caravans of thousands of people could disappear without a trace.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: The goods exchanged in the Trans-Saharan slave trade varied. In the 10th century, the Muslim scholar Mutahhar ibn Tahir al-Maqdisi described the trade between the Islamic world and Africa as consisting of food and clothing being imported into Africa while slaves, gold, and coconuts were exported out of Africa. Later the 16th century Andalusian writer Leo Africanus wrote that traders from Morocco would bring horses, European cloth, clothing, sugar, books, and brass vessels to Sudan in order to exchange them for slaves, civets and gold. According to Africanus, the sultan of Bornu would accept payment for slaves only in horses, with an exchange rate of up to one slave per twenty horses.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: The range of tasks given to slaves was varied and included servile labor utilized for "irrigation, pastoralism, mining, transport, public works, proto-industry, and construction." In general black slaves were used as laborers, servants and eunuchs. Some female slaves could be used for labor, but most would be used for domestic chores and concubinage. Eunuchs, who were around seven times more expensive than non-castrated males due to their rarity, could be used as harem guards, administrators, tutor, secretaries, commercial agents, and even concubines. Due to strictures within Islamic Law slaves would not usually be castrated within Muslim territory and therefore would be castrated before being sent across the Sahara, although sometimes slaves were castrated after purchase in North African slave markets. Conditions within the mining industry were notoriously harsh especially the salt mines of Basra where tens of thousands of black slaves toiled in extremely miserable conditions living on insufficient amounts of food. This poor treatment led to the bloody Zanj Rebellion or "black revolution". Ya'qubi records that both male and female slaves were employed in the copper mines of Upper Egypt. The Carmarthian Republic of eastern Arabia is said to have employed 30,000 blacks slaves to perform all difficult labor. Some black slaves served in the military forces of North Africa. For example the Zirid Dynasty used black slaves imported from Sudan via Zawila.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: In some instances, Christians in Africa would acquiesce to Muslims demands that they be provided with slaves. In 641 AD during the treaty known as the Baqt was signed establishing an agreement between the Nubian Christian state of Makuria and the new Muslim rulers of Egypt, in which the Nubians agreed to give Muslim traders more privileges of trade in addition to sending 442 slaves every year to Cairo as tribute. This treaty remained intact for 600 years all while the slave trade within Nubia continued unimpeded.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: In the Muslim culture of the middle ages blackness became increasingly identified with slavery. This was justified by appeals to a specific interpretation of the biblical story of Curse of Ham that posited Ham had been cursed by Noah in two ways, the first, the turning of his skin black, and the second, that his descendants would be doomed to slavery. Muslim slave traders would use this as a pretext to enslave blacks, including black Muslims. In the late 14th century a black king of Bornu wrote a letter to the sultan of Egypt complaining of the continual slave raids perpetrated by Arab tribesmen, which were devastating his lands and resulting in the mass enslavement of the black Muslim population of the region. In Al-Andalus, the area of medieval Iberia under Islamic control, black Muslims could be legally held as slaves. This all occurred despite the orthodox Muslim jurist position that no Muslim, regardless of race, could be enslaved. Even as late as the 19th century many of the common people in Islamic society still believed that enslavement based on skin color, rather than based on religion, was approved by the religious laws of Islam.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: In 1416, al-Maqrizi told how pilgrims coming from Takrur (near the Senegal River) brought 1,700 slaves with them to Mecca. In the late 16th century access to slaves in the areas of the former Songhai Empire in West Africa were cut off due to the anarchy in the area caused by the Moroccan armies' invasion of Songhai headed by al-Mansur. This necessitated the substitution of the former Songhai route with the Benghazi-Wadai route and others through Sudan. After Europeans had settled in the Gulf of Guinea, the trans-Saharan slave trade became less important.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: Arabs were sometimes made into slaves in the trans-Saharan slave trade. Sometimes castration was done on Arab slaves. In Mecca, Arab women were sold as slaves according to Ibn Butlan, and certain rulers in West Africa had slave girls of Arab origin. According to al-Maqrizi, slave girls with lighter skin were sold to West Africans on hajj. Ibn Battuta met an Arab slave girl near Timbuktu in Mali in 1353. Battuta wrote that the slave girl was fluent in Arabic, from Damascus, and her master's name was Farbá Sulaymán. Besides his Damascus slave girl and a secretary fluent in Arabic, Arabic was also understood by Farbá himself. The West African states also imported highly trained slave soldiers.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: Under the Saadi dynasty, Morocco's sugar industry was dependent on black African slave labor. According to Paul Berthier, the need for slave labor on Moroccan sugar plantations was a major reason for the 17th century Saadian invasion of the Songhai Empire.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: In Central Africa during the 16th and 17th centuries, slave traders continued to raid the region as part of the expansion of the Saharan and Nile River slave routes. It is estimated that, in the 17th and 18th centuries, 1.4 million slaves were compelled to make the trek through the Sahara Captives were enslaved and shipped to the Mediterranean coast, Europe, Arabia, the Western Hemisphere, or to the slave ports and factories along the West and North Africa coasts or South along the Ubanqui and Congo rivers.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: 1.2 million slaves are estimated to have been sent through the Sahara in the 19th century. In the 1830s, a period when slave trade flourished, Ghadames was handling 2,500 slaves a year. Even though the slave trade was officially abolished in Tripoli in 1853, in practice it continued until the 1890s. One witness to the behavior of the slave dealers, G.F. Lyon, described their behavior in Libya thusly:


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: Other 19th century European explorers also recorded their perilous experiences traveling through the deadly Saharan Desert alongside slave caravans. The explorer Gustav Nachtigal reported finding numerous bones at desert springs that had run dry. Nachtigal estimated that for every one slave that successfully arrived at the market three or four had either died or escaped. Cold could also kill in the desert as the explorer Heinrich Barth relayed a story that the vizier of Bornu had lost forty slaves in a single night in Libya. A British account described happening upon an abandoned caravan surrounded by one hundred skeletons.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: By 1858 the British consul in Tripoli had recorded that more than 66% of the value shipped across the Sahara was made up by slaves. The British Consul in Benghazi wrote in 1875 that the slave trade had reached an enormous scale and that the slaves who were sold in Alexandria and Constantinople had quadrupled in price. This trade, he wrote, was encouraged by the local government. By the mid 19th century it's possible that nearly 10,000 slaves were being transported to North Africa yearly. The Muslim historian Ahmad ibn Khalid an-Nasiri bemoaned the "unlimited enslavement of blacks" in 19th century North Africa "where men traffic them like beasts or worse" and where the majority of slaves were Muslims who should have been exempt from slavery because of their religious status.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: Adolf Vischer wrote in an article published in 1911 that: "...it has been said that slave traffic is still going on on the Benghazi-Wadai route, but it is difficult to test the truth of such an assertion as, in any case, the traffic is carried on secretly". At Kufra, the Egyptian traveller Ahmed Hassanein Bey found out in 1916 that he could buy a girl slave for five pounds sterling while in 1923 he found that the price had risen to 30 to 40 pounds sterling. Another traveler, the Danish convert to Islam Knud Holmboe, crossed the Italian Libyan desert in 1930, and was told that slavery is still practiced in Kufra and that he could buy a slave girl for 30 pounds sterling at the Thursday slave market. According to James Richardson's testimony, when he visited Ghadames, most slaves were from Bornu. According to Raëd Bader, based on estimates of the Trans-Saharan trade, between 1700 and 1880 Tunisia received 100,000 black slaves, compared to only 65,000 entering Algeria, 400,000 in Libya, 515,000 in Morocco and 800,000 in Egypt.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: After the establishment of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 to fight slave trading in the Mediterranean, Ahmad I ibn Mustafa, Bey of Tunis, agreed to outlaw exporting, importing, and selling slaves in 1842, and he made slavery illegal in 1846. In 1848, France outlawed slavery in Algeria. Slavery was not abolished in Mauritania until 1981.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: Since the United Nations-backed and NATO-led overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime in 2011, Libya has been plagued by disorder and migrants with little cash and no papers have become vulnerable. Libya is a major exit point for African migrants heading to Europe. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) published a report in April 2017 showing that many of the migrants from West-Africa heading to Europe are sold as slaves after being detained by people smugglers or militia groups. African countries south of Libya were targeted for slave trading and transferred to Libyan slave markets instead. According to the victims, the price is higher for migrants with skills like painting and tiling. Slaves are often ransomed to their families and in the meantime until ransom can be tortured, forced to work, sometimes to death and eventually executed or left to starve if they can't pay for too long. Women are often raped and used as sex slaves and sold to brothels and private Libyan clients. Many child migrants also suffer from abuse and child rape in Libya.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: After receiving unverified CNN video of a November 2017 slave auction in Libya, a human trafficker told Al-Jazeera (a Qatari TV station with interests in Libya) that hundreds of migrants are bought and sold across the country every week. Migrants who have gone through Libyan detention centres have shown signs of many human rights abuses such as severe abuse, including electric shocks, burns, lashes and even skinning, stated the director of health services on the Italian island of Lampedusa to Euronews.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: A Libyan group known as the Asma Boys have antagonized migrants from other parts of Africa from at least as early as 2000, destroying their property. Nigerian migrants in January 2018 gave accounts of abuses in detention centres, including being leased or sold as slaves. Videos of Sudanese migrants being burnt and whipped for ransom, were released later on by their families on social media. In June 2018, the United Nations applied sanctions against four Libyans (including a Coast Guard commander) and two Eritreans for their criminal leadership of slave trade networks.


title: Trans-Saharan slave trade

text: According to professor Ibrahima Baba Kaké there were four main slavery routes to north Africa, from east to west of Africa, from the Maghreb to the Sudan, from Tripolitania to central Sudan and from Egypt to the Middle East. Caravan trails, set up in the 9th century, went past the oasis of the Sahara; travel was difficult and uncomfortable for reasons of climate and distance. Since Roman times, long convoys had transported slaves as well as all sorts of products to be used for barter.


title: Engraving

text: Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations; these images are also called "engravings". Engraving is one of the oldest and most important techniques in printmaking.


title: Engraving

text: Wood engraving is a form of relief printing and is not covered in this article, same with rock engravings like petroglyphs.


title: Engraving

text: Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper in artistic printmaking, in mapmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines. It has long been replaced by various photographic processes in its commercial applications and, partly because of the difficulty of learning the technique, is much less common in printmaking, where it has been largely replaced by etching and other techniques.


title: Engraving

text: "Engraving" is also loosely but incorrectly used for any old black and white print; it requires a degree of expertise to distinguish engravings from prints using other techniques such as etching in particular, but also mezzotint and other techniques. Many old master prints also combine techniques on the same plate, further confusing matters. Line engraving and steel engraving cover use for reproductive prints, illustrations in books and magazines, and similar uses, mostly in the 19th century, and often not actually using engraving.


title: Engraving

text: Traditional engraving, by burin or with the use of machines, continues to be practised by goldsmiths, glass engravers, gunsmiths and others, while modern industrial techniques such as photoengraving and laser engraving have many important applications. Engraved gems were an important art in the ancient world, revived at the Renaissance, although the term traditionally covers relief as well as intaglio carvings, and is essentially a branch of sculpture rather than engraving, as drills were the usual tools.


title: Engraving

text: Other terms often used for printed engravings are copper engraving, copper-plate engraving or "line engraving". Steel engraving is the same technique, on steel or steel-faced plates, and was mostly used for banknotes, illustrations for books, magazines and reproductive prints, letterheads and similar uses from about 1790 to the early 20th century, when the technique became less popular, except for banknotes and other forms of security printing. Especially in the past, "engraving" was often used very loosely to cover several printmaking techniques, so that many so-called engravings were in fact produced by totally different techniques, such as etching or mezzotint. "Hand engraving" is a term sometimes used for engraving objects other than printing plates, to inscribe or decorate jewellery, firearms, trophies, knives and other fine metal goods. Traditional engravings in printmaking are also "hand engraved", using just the same techniques to make the lines in the plate.


title: Engraving

text: Each graver is different and has its own use. Engravers use a hardened steel tool called a burin, or graver, to cut the design into the surface, most traditionally a copper plate. However, modern hand engraving artists use burins or gravers to cut a variety of metals such as silver, nickel, steel, brass, gold, titanium, and more, in applications from weaponry to jewellery to motorcycles to found objects. Modern professional engravers can engrave with a resolution of up to 40 lines per mm in high grade work creating game scenes and scrollwork. Dies used in mass production of molded parts are sometimes hand engraved to add special touches or certain information such as part numbers.


title: Engraving

text: In addition to hand engraving, there are engraving machines that require less human finesse and are not directly controlled by hand. They are usually used for lettering, using a pantographic system. There are versions for the insides of rings and also the outsides of larger pieces. Such machines are commonly used for inscriptions on rings, lockets and presentation pieces.


title: Engraving

text: Gravers come in a variety of shapes and sizes that yield different line types. The burin produces a unique and recognizable quality of line that is characterized by its steady, deliberate appearance and clean edges. The angle tint tool has a slightly curved tip that is commonly used in printmaking. Florentine liners are flat-bottomed tools with multiple lines incised into them, used to do fill work on larger areas or to create uniform shade lines that are fast to execute. Ring gravers are made with particular shapes that are used by jewelry engravers in order to cut inscriptions inside rings. Flat gravers are used for fill work on letters, as well as "wriggle" cuts on most musical instrument engraving work, remove background, or create bright cuts. Knife gravers are for line engraving and very deep cuts. Round gravers, and flat gravers with a radius, are commonly used on silver to create bright cuts (also called bright-cut engraving), as well as other hard-to-cut metals such as nickel and steel. Square or V-point gravers are typically square or elongated diamond-shaped and used for cutting straight lines. V-point can be anywhere from 60 to 130 degrees, depending on purpose and effect. These gravers have very small cutting points. Other tools such as mezzotint rockers, roulets and burnishers are used for texturing effects. Burnishing tools can also be used for certain stone setting techniques.Musical instrument engraving on American-made brass instruments flourished in the 1920s and utilizes a specialized engraving technique where a flat graver is "walked" across the surface of the instrument to make zig-zag lines and patterns. The method for "walking" the graver may also be referred to as "wriggle" or "wiggle" cuts. This technique is necessary due to the thinness of metal used to make musical instruments versus firearms or jewelry. Wriggle cuts are commonly found on silver Western jewelry and other Western metal work.


title: Engraving

text: Tool geometry is extremely important for accuracy in hand engraving. When sharpened for most applications, a graver has a "face", which is the top of the graver, and a "heel", which is the bottom of the graver; not all tools or application require a heel. These two surfaces meet to form a point that cuts the metal. The geometry and length of the heel helps to guide the graver smoothly as it cuts the surface of the metal. When the tool's point breaks or chips, even on a microscopic level, the graver can become hard to control and produces unexpected results. Modern innovations have brought about new types of carbide that resist chipping and breakage, which hold a very sharp point longer between resharpening than traditional metal tools.


title: Engraving

text: Sharpening a graver or burin requires either a sharpening stone or wheel. Harder carbide and steel gravers require diamond-grade sharpening wheels; these gravers can be polished to a mirror finish using a ceramic or cast iron lap, which is essential in creating bright cuts. Several low-speed, reversible sharpening systems made specifically for hand engravers are available that reduce sharpening time. Fixtures that secure the tool in place at certain angles and geometries are also available to take the guesswork from sharpening to produce accurate points. Very few master engravers exist today who rely solely on "feel" and muscle memory to sharpen tools. These master engravers typically worked for many years as an apprentice, most often learning techniques decades before modern machinery was available for hand engravers. These engravers typically trained in such countries as Italy and Belgium, where hand engraving has a rich and long heritage of masters.


title: Engraving

text: Design or artwork is generally prepared in advance, although some professional and highly experienced hand engravers are able to draw out minimal outlines either on paper or directly on the metal surface just prior to engraving. The work to be engraved may be lightly scribed on the surface with a sharp point, laser marked, drawn with a fine permanent marker (removable with acetone) or pencil, transferred using various chemicals in conjunction with inkjet or laser printouts, or stippled. Engraving artists may rely on hand drawing skills, copyright-free designs and images, computer-generated artwork, or common design elements when creating artwork.


title: Engraving

text: Originally, handpieces varied little in design as the common use was to push with the handle placed firmly in the center of the palm. With modern pneumatic engraving systems, handpieces are designed and created in a variety of shapes and power ranges. Handpieces are made using various methods and materials. Knobs may be handmade from wood, molded and engineered from plastic, or machine-made from brass, steel, or other metals.


title: Engraving

text: The actual engraving is traditionally done by a combination of pressure and manipulating the work-piece. The traditional "hand push" process is still practiced today, but modern technology has brought various mechanically assisted engraving systems. Most pneumatic engraving systems require an air source that drives air through a hose into a handpiece, which resembles a traditional engraving handle in many cases, that powers a mechanism (usually a piston). The air is actuated by either a foot control (like a gas pedal or sewing machine) or newer palm / hand control. This mechanism replaces either the "hand push" effort or the effects of a hammer. The internal mechanisms move at speeds up to 15,000 strokes per minute, thereby greatly reducing the effort needed in traditional hand engraving. These types of pneumatic systems are used for power assistance only and do not guide or control the engraving artist. One of the major benefits of using a pneumatic system for hand engraving is the reduction of fatigue and decrease in time spent working.


title: Engraving

text: Hand engraving artists today employ a combination of hand push, pneumatic, rotary, or hammer and chisel methods. Hand push is still commonly used by modern hand engraving artists who create "bulino" style work, which is highly detailed and delicate, fine work; a great majority, if not all, traditional printmakers today rely solely upon hand push methods. Pneumatic systems greatly reduce the effort required for removing large amounts of metal, such as in deep relief engraving or Western bright cut techniques.


title: Engraving

text: Finishing the work is often necessary when working in metal that may rust or where a colored finish is desirable, such as a firearm. A variety of spray lacquers and finishing techniques exist to seal and protect the work from exposure to the elements and time. Finishing also may include lightly sanding the surface to remove small chips of metal called "burrs" that are very sharp and unsightly. Some engravers prefer high contrast to the work or design, using black paints or inks to darken removed (and lower) areas of exposed metal. The excess paint or ink is wiped away and allowed to dry before lacquering or sealing, which may or may not be desired by the artist.


title: Engraving

text: Because of the high level of microscopic detail that can be achieved by a master engraver, counterfeiting of engraved designs is almost impossible, and modern banknotes are almost always engraved, as are plates for printing money, checks, bonds and other security-sensitive papers. The engraving is so fine that a normal printer cannot recreate the detail of hand-engraved images, nor can it be scanned. At the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing, more than one hand engraver will work on the same plate, making it nearly impossible for one person to duplicate all the engraving on a particular banknote or document.


title: Engraving

text: The modern discipline of hand engraving, as it is called in a metalworking context, survives largely in a few specialized fields. The highest levels of the art are found on firearms and other metal weaponry, jewellery, silverware and musical instruments.


title: Engraving

text: In most commercial markets today, hand engraving has been replaced with milling using CNC engraving or milling machines. Still, there are certain applications where use of hand engraving tools cannot be replaced.


title: Engraving

text: In some instances, images or designs can be transferred to metal surfaces via mechanical process. One such process is roll stamping or roller-die engraving. In this process, a hardened image die is pressed against the destination surface using extreme pressure to impart the image. In the 1800s pistol cylinders were often decorated via this process to impart a continuous scene around the surface.


title: Engraving

text: Engraving machines such as the K500 (packaging) or K6 (publication) by Hell Gravure Systems use a diamond stylus to cut cells. Each cell creates one printing dot later in the process. A K6 can have up to 18 engraving heads each cutting 8.000 cells per second to an accuracy of .1 µm and below. They are fully computer-controlled and the whole process of cylinder-making is fully automated.


title: Engraving

text: It is now common place for retail stores (mostly jewellery, silverware or award stores) to have a small computer controlled engrave on site. This enables them to personalise the products they sell. Retail engraving machines tend to be focused around ease of use for the operator and the ability to do a wide variety of items including flat metal plates, jewelry of different shapes and sizes, as well as cylindrical items such as mugs and tankards. They will typically be equipped with a computer dedicated to graphic design that will enable the operator to easily design a text or picture graphic which the software will translate into digital signals telling the engraver machine what to do. Unlike industrial engravers, retail machines are smaller and only use one diamond head. This is interchangeable so the operator can use differently shaped diamonds for different finishing effects. They will typically be able to do a variety of metals and plastics. Glass and crystal engraving is possible, but the brittle nature of the material makes the process more time-consuming.


title: Engraving

text: Retail engravers mainly use two different processes. The first and most common 'Diamond Drag' pushes the diamond cutter through the surface of the material and then pulls to create scratches. These direction and depth are controlled by the computer input. The second is 'Spindle Cutter'. This is similar to Diamond Drag, but the engraving head is shaped in a flat V shape, with a small diamond and the base. The machine uses an electronic spindle to quickly rotate the head as it pushes it into the material, then pulls it along whilst it continues to spin. This creates a much bolder impression than diamond drag. It is used mainly for brass plaques and pet tags.


title: Engraving

text: With state-of-the-art machinery it is easy to have a simple, single item complete in under ten minutes.


title: Engraving

text: Today laser engraving machines are in development but still mechanical cutting has proven its strength in economical terms and quality. More than 4,000 engravers make approx. 8 Mio printing cylinders worldwide per year.


title: Engraving

text: The first evidence for humans engraving patterns is a chiselled shell, dating back between 540,000 and 430,000 years, from Trinil, in Java, Indonesia, where the first Homo erectus was discovered. Hatched banding upon ostrich eggshells used as water containers found in South Africa in the Diepkloof Rock Shelter and dated to the Middle Stone Age around 60,000 BC are the next documented case of human engraving. Engraving on bone and ivory is an important technique for the Art of the Upper Paleolithic, and larger engraved petroglyphs on rocks are found from many prehistoric periods and cultures around the world.


title: Engraving

text: In antiquity, the only engraving on metal that could be carried out is the shallow grooves found in some jewellery after the beginning of the 1st Millennium B.C. The majority of so-called engraved designs on ancient gold rings or other items were produced by chasing or sometimes a combination of lost-wax casting and chasing. Engraved gem is a term for any carved or engraved semi-precious stone; this was an important small-scale art form in the ancient world, and remained popular until the 19th century.


title: Engraving

text: However the use of glass engraving, usually using a wheel, to cut decorative scenes or figures into glass vessels, in imitation of hardstone carvings, appears as early as the first century AD, continuing into the fourth century CE at urban centers such as Cologne and Rome, and appears to have ceased sometime in the fifth century. Decoration was first based on Greek mythology, before hunting and circus scenes became popular, as well as imagery drawn from the Old and New Testament. It appears to have been used to mimic the appearance of precious metal wares during the same period, including the application of gold leaf, and could be cut free-hand or with lathes. As many as twenty separate stylistic workshops have been identified, and it seems likely that the engraver and vessel producer were separate craftsmen.In the European Middle Ages goldsmiths used engraving to decorate and inscribe metalwork. It is thought that they began to print impressions of their designs to record them. From this grew the engraving of copper printing plates to produce artistic images on paper, known as old master prints, in Germany in the 1430s. Italy soon followed. Many early engravers came from a goldsmithing background. The first and greatest period of the engraving was from about 1470 to 1530, with such masters as Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, and Lucas van Leiden.


title: Engraving

text: Thereafter engraving tended to lose ground to etching, which was a much easier technique for the artist to learn. But many prints combined the two techniques: although Rembrandt's prints are generally all called etchings for convenience, many of them have some burin or drypoint work, and some have nothing else. By the nineteenth century, most engraving was for commercial illustration.


title: Engraving

text: Before the advent of photography, engraving was used to reproduce other forms of art, for example paintings. Engravings continued to be common in newspapers and many books into the early 20th century, as they were cheaper to use in printing than photographic images.


title: Engraving

text: Many classic postage stamps were engraved, although the practice is now mostly confined to particular countries, or used when a more "elegant" design is desired and a limited color range is acceptable.


title: Engraving

text: Modifying the relief designs on coins is a craft dating back to the 18th century and today modified coins are known colloquially as hobo nickels. In the United States, especially during the Great Depression, coin engraving on the large-faced Indian Head nickel became a way to help make ends meet. The craft continues today, and with modern equipment often produces stunning miniature sculptural artworks and floral scrollwork.


title: Engraving

text: During the mid-20th century, a renaissance in hand-engraving began to take place. With the inventions of pneumatic hand-engraving systems that aided hand-engravers, the art and techniques of hand-engraving became more accessible.


title: Engraving

text: The first music printed from engraved plates dates from 1446 and most printed music was produced through engraving from roughly 1700–1860. From 1860 to 1990 most printed music was produced through a combination of engraved master plates reproduced through offset lithography.


title: Engraving

text: The first comprehensive account is given by Mme Delusse in her article "Gravure en lettres, en géographie et en musique" in Diderot's Encyclopedia. The technique involved a five-pointed raster to score staff lines, various punches in the shapes of notes and standard musical symbols, and various burins and scorers for lines and slurs. For correction, the plate was held on a bench by callipers, hit with a dot punch on the opposite side, and burnished to remove any signs of the defective work. The process involved intensive pre-planning of the layout, and many manuscript scores with engraver's planning marks survive from the 18th and 19th centuries.


title: Engraving

text: By 1837 pewter had replaced copper as a medium, and Berthiaud gives an account with an entire chapter devoted to music ("Novel manuel complet de l'imprimeur en taille douce", 1837). Printing from such plates required a separate inking to be carried out cold, and the printing press used less pressure. Generally, four pages of music were engraved on a single plate. Because music engraving houses trained engravers through years of apprenticeship, very little is known about the practice. Fewer than one dozen sets of tools survive in libraries and museums. By 1900 music engravers were established in several hundred cities in the world, but the art of storing plates was usually concentrated with publishers. Extensive bombing of Leipzig in 1944, the home of most German engraving and printing firms, destroyed roughly half the world's engraved music plates.


title: Engraving

text: Examples of contemporary uses for engraving include creating text on jewellery, such as pendants or on the inside of engagement- and wedding rings to include text such as the name of the partner, or adding a winner's name to a sports trophy. Another application of modern engraving is found in the printing industry. There, every day thousands of pages are mechanically engraved onto rotogravure cylinders, typically a steel base with a copper layer of about 0.1 mm in which the image is transferred. After engraving the image is protected with an approximately 6 µm chrome layer. Using this process the image will survive for over a million copies in high speed printing presses. Engraving machines such as GUN BOW (one of the leading engraving brands) are the best examples of hand engraving tools, although this type of machine is typically not used for fine hand engraving.


title: Engraving

text: Some schools throughout the world are renowned for their teaching of engraving, like the École Estienne in Paris.


title: Engraving

text: In traditional engraving, which is a purely linear medium, the impression of half-tones was created by making many very thin parallel lines, a technique called hatching. When two sets of parallel-line "hatchings" intersected each other for higher density, the resulting pattern was known as "cross-hatching". Patterns of dots were also used in a technique called stippling, first used around 1505 by Giulio Campagnola. Claude Mellan was one of many 17th-century engravers with a very well-developed technique of using parallel lines of varying thickness (known as the "swelling line") to give subtle effects of tone (as was Goltzius) – see picture below. One famous example is his "Sudarium of Saint Veronica" (1649), an engraving of the face of Jesus made from a single spiraling line that starts at the tip of Jesus's nose.


title: Engraving

text: Surface tone is achieved during the printing process, by selectively leaving a thin layer of ink on parts of the printing plate.


title: Engraving

text: The earliest allusion to engraving in the Bible may be the reference to Judah's seal ring (Ge 38:18), followed by (Ex 39.30). Engraving was commonly done with pointed tools of iron or even with diamond points. (Jer 17:1).


title: Engraving

text: Each of the two onyx stones on the shoulder-pieces of the high priest's ephod was engraved with the names of six different tribes of Israel, and each of the 12 precious stones that adorned his breastpiece was engraved with the name of one of the tribes. The holy sign of dedication, the shining gold plate on the high priest's turban, was engraved with the words: "Holiness belongs to Adonai." Bezalel, along with Oholiab, was qualified to do this specialized engraving work as well as to train others.—Ex 35:30–35; 28:9–12; 39:6–14, 30.


title: Grace Kelly (song)

text: "Grace Kelly" is the second single by the British singer Mika. It is the opening track on Mika's debut studio album "Life in Cartoon Motion" (2007). Produced and mixed by Greg Wells, the song entered the UK Singles Chart at number three and the UK Official Download Chart at number one. One week later, it jumped to the top of the UK Singles Chart on download sales alone. The track was number one on the UK Singles Chart for five weeks, and ended 2007 as the year's third biggest-selling single in that country. In the US, "Grace Kelly" was made available for digital download on 16 January 2007. This song was also No. 89 on "MTV Asia"s list of Top 100 Hits of 2007. It was designed to be a mocking satire of musicians who try to reinvent themselves to be popular.


title: Grace Kelly (song)

text: The song is titled after Academy Award-winning American film and stage actress, and Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly. The bit of dialogue used in the song is from the film "The Country Girl", which stars Kelly. Mika claims the song was inspired after a bad experience with a record company executive, in which he was told to be more like Craig David. The lyric "So I tried a little Freddie" is a reference to Queen's Freddie Mercury, to whose singing voice Mika's has been compared. On at least one occasion, Mika confirmed that he used the main melody from Figaro's famous aria "Largo al factotum", from the opera "The Barber of Seville" by Gioachino Rossini. Mika performed the song at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2007 in Munich and at the 2008 BRIT Awards at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre, London, where it was nominated for Best British Single, but lost to "Shine" by Take That. The song has sold over 630,000 copies in the UK, as stated by the Official Charts Company.


title: Grace Kelly (song)

text: Mika wrote the song after he felt frustrated with record label executives that wanted him to change his sound to fit the common pop mold. In the song, Mika points out how he can pretend to be anyone he likes to win approval – in this case the glamorous actress Grace Kelly. He wrote the song after the record company told him that they wanted to model his look and sound on Craig David, who was popular at the time in the UK. Mika rejected this idea and wrote "Grace Kelly" as a way of expressing his individuality. The song's melody is based on the aria "Largo al factotum", from the opera "The Barber of Seville" by Gioachino Rossini.


title: Grace Kelly (song)

text: The song received positive reviews from music critics. Heather Phares from AllMusic wrote a positive review for the song, stating that "Mika's singles are his most charming moments, including the instant sunshine of "Grace Kelly," which crams tap-dancing rhythms, filmic dialogue, Elton's pianos, Freddie's vocal harmonies, and Brian May's guitars into just over three minutes." Christian John Wikane from PopMatters wrote an extensive article about the comparisons between Mika and Freddie Mercury, writing that "he sounds a lot like Mercury and wears the influence like a badge of honor, even name-checking the late front man of Queen in the first verse. Mika vacillates between the affected theatricality of Mercury's full-throttled voice and his own strong falsetto, where he earnestly implores "Why don't you like me?" no less than 12 times.


title: Grace Kelly (song)

text: Beth Johnson from "Entertainment Weekly" wrote that "Nothing quite matches the crystal-shattering exuberance of hit Grace Kelly." John Murphy from musicOMH wrote that "It's big, joyous, dumb pop, and the only danger with it is that you'll be utterly sick of it fast." Lizzie Enever from BBC Music was direct, writing that "Grace Kelly is a great pop song – it's catchy, you can't help singing along and it grates on you after a few days when you can't get it out of your head but you still go back for more – flawless credentials." Graham Griffith, also from About.com, wrote that the song "is an outrageously irresistible and infectious pop gem." Dom Passantino from "Stylus Magazine" criticized the track, writing that "it seems to suggest the boy has some level for musicals, being as it is all Broadway flittering and hackneyed attempts at conveying a story with its lyrics. But here's the problem: he's got no tales to tell, just a tab at his local make-up supplier. "Am I too dirty, am I too flirty?" he sings at one point."


title: Grace Kelly (song)

text: At the 2007 World Music Awards, Mika won for Best Selling British Artist, Best Selling New Artist, Best Selling Male Entertainer, and World's Best Selling Pop Rock Male Artist.


title: Grace Kelly (song)

text: The music video for the song "Grace Kelly" was directed by Sophie Muller and starred Mika and now-singer-songwriter Mae Muller (no relation to the director). The video was filmed in early November 2006 and has been nominated for numerous worldwide awards. The instrumental introduction in the video is an extract of the acoustic version of the song found on certain releases of the album.


title: Grace Kelly (song)

text: It reached number one in the United Kingdom and in Ireland. The song was only the second single ever to top the UK chart without selling a physical copy ("Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley was the first). In the US market, it peaked at number 57 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. The December 2007 "Observer Music Monthly" asked Mika how it felt getting to No. 1 in the UK with this song. He replied: "Very unreal. It still feels unreal. It's just a song I wrote in my room. By the time I'd written 'Grace Kelly' everything in my life had been called into question. Trying to find out what I was going to do with my life, trying to be a musician, to be independent, to give myself the remote chance of any kind of a relationship. I was just sorting every thing out in my head. That song sums it all up." It went to #1 on the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Turkey singles charts. The song was 82 in the French physical charts but number 2 in digital ones, and has more than 50,000 sales in the country. The song has more than 5 million sales.


title: Manhua

text: The word was originally an 18th-century term used in Chinese literati painting. It became popular in Japan as "manga" in the late 19th century. Feng Zikai reintroduced the word to Chinese, in the modern sense, with his 1925 series of political cartoons entitled "Zikai Manhua" in the "Wenxue Zhoubao" (Literature Weekly). While terms other than had existed before, this particular publication took precedence over the many other descriptions for cartoon art that were used previously and came to be associated with all Chinese comic materials.


title: Manhua

text: The Chinese characters for are identical to those used for the Japanese "manga" and Korean manhwa. Someone who draws or writes is referred to as a ().


title: Manhua

text: The oldest surviving examples of Chinese drawings are stone reliefs from the 11th century BC and pottery from 5000 to 3000 BC. Other examples include symbolic brush drawings from the Ming Dynasty, a satirical drawing titled "Peacocks" by the early Qing Dynasty artist Zhu Da, and a work called "Ghosts' Farce Pictures" from around 1771 by Luo Liang-feng. Chinese was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, roughly during the years 1867 to 1927.


title: Manhua

text: The introduction of lithographic printing methods derived from the West was a critical step in expanding the art in the early 20th century. Beginning in the 1870s, satirical drawings appeared in newspapers and periodicals. By the 1920s palm-sized picture books like Lianhuanhua were popular in Shanghai. They are considered the predecessor of modern-day .


title: Manhua

text: One of the first magazines of satirical cartoons came from the United Kingdom entitled "The China Punch". The first piece drawn by a person of Chinese nationality was "The Situation in the Far East" from Tse Tsan-tai in 1899, printed in Japan. Sun Yat-Sen established the Republic of China in 1911 using Hong Kong's manhua to circulate anti-Qing propaganda. Some of the that mirrored the early struggles of the transitional political and war periods were "The True Record" and "Renjian Pictorial".


title: Manhua

text: Up until the establishment of the Shanghai Sketch Society in 1927, all prior works were Lianhuanhua or loose collections of materials. The first successful magazine, "Shanghai Sketch" (or "Shanghai Manhua") appeared in 1928. Between 1934 and 1937 about 17 magazines were published in Shanghai. This format would once again be put to propaganda use with the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. By the time the Japanese occupied Hong Kong in 1941, all activities had stopped. With the surrender of the Japanese in 1945, political mayhem between Chinese Nationalists and Communists took place. One of the critical , "This Is a Cartoon Era" by Renjian Huahui made note of the political backdrop at the time.


title: Manhua

text: One of the most popular and enduring comics of this period was Zhang Leping's "Sanmao", first published in 1935.


title: Manhua

text: During the Anti-Japanese War, begun in 1937, many Chinese cartoonists, including Ye Qianyu, fled Shanghai and other major cities and waged "cartoon guerilla warfare" against the Japanese invaders by mounting roving cartoon exhibitions and publishing cartoon magazines in inland cities like Hankou.


title: Manhua

text: The rise of Chinese immigration turned Hong Kong into the main -ready market, especially with the baby boom generation of children. The most influential magazine for adults was the 1956 "Cartoons World", which fueled the best-selling Uncle Choi. The availability of Japanese and Taiwanese comics challenged the local industry, selling at a pirated bargain price of 10 cents. -like "Old Master Q" were needed to revitalize the local industry.


title: Manhua

text: The arrival of television in the 1970s was a changing point. Bruce Lee's films dominated the era and his popularity launched a new wave of Kung Fu . The explicit violence helped sell comic books, and the Government of Hong Kong intervened with the Indecent Publication Law in 1975. "Little Rascals" was one of the pieces which absorbed all the social changes.


title: Manhua

text: The materials would also bloom in the 90s with work like McMug and three-part stories like "Teddy Boy", "Portland Street" and "Red Light District".


title: Manhua

text: "Si loin et si proche", by Chinese writer and illustrator Xiao Bai, won the Gold Award at the 4th International Manga Award in 2011. Several other have also won the Silver and Bronze Awards at the International Manga Award.


title: Manhua

text: In the second half of the 2000s and early 2010s, various Chinese cartoonists began using social media to spread satirical strips and cartoons online. Print publishing, being strictly controlled in China, is slowly being traded in for microblogging websites such as Sina Weibo and Douban, where can reach a wide audience while subject to less editorial control.


title: Manhua

text: Despite China being a major consumer of comics for decades, the medium has never been taken as "serious works of art". R. Martin of "The Comics Journal" describes the Chinese outlook on comics as "pulpy imitations of films". Furthermore, China strictly controls the publishing of comics, and as a result, cartoonists faced difficulty reaching a large audience. Many cartoonists in the late 2000s began self-publishing their work on social media instead of attempting to issue paper editions. Websites such as Douban (2005) and Sina Weibo (2009) are popular venues for web manhua and webcomics.


title: Manhua

text: The Taipei International Comics and Animation Festival celebrated the coming of a "webcomics era" in 2015. With increased smartphone usage with a younger generation, web , webcomics, and webtoons are expected to become more popular. With an increasing prevalence of Chinese-language online comic platforms, young artists have more opportunities to publish their work and gain a reputation. In the second half of the 2010s, South Korean webtoons and webtoon platforms have become increasingly popular in China.


title: Manhua

text: In 2016, two have been adapted into anime television series: "Yi Ren Zhi Xia" and "Soul Buster". Another series, "Bloodivores", based on a web , will start airing on October 1, 2016. Another series, "The Silver Guardian", is scheduled to premiere in 2017.


title: Manhua

text: Modern Chinese-style characteristics is credited to the breakthrough art work of the 1982 "". Unlike manga, it had more realistic drawings with details resembling real people. Most also comes in full color with some panels rendered entirely in painting for the single issue format.


title: Manhua

text: Most work from the 1800s to the 1930s contained characters that appeared serious. The cultural openness in Hong Kong brought the translation of American Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Pinocchio in the 1950s, demonstrating western influence in local work like "Little Angeli" in 1954. The influx of translated Japanese manga of the 60s, as well as televised anime in Hong Kong also made a significant impression.


title: Manhua

text: Depending on where they are created, can have differences in the way they are formatted and presented. Besides the use of traditional and simplified Chinese characters, may also need to be read differently depending on where they are from. Their original Chinese text is placed horizontally in from mainland China and read from left-to-right (like Western comics and Korean manhwa), while Taiwanese and Hong Kongese have the characters rendered vertically top-to-bottom and sentences are read from right-to-left.


title: Manhua

text: These are due to differences in the style prescribed by the governments of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.


title: Manhua

text: Digital , known as web , are a growing art form in China. Web are posted on social media and web portals, which serve as a lower bar of entry than the strictly controlled print publication outlets in the country. Though little money is currently made through online in China, the medium has become popular due to ease of uploading and publishing titles, color publication, and free reading access. Some popular web sites include QQ Comic and U17. In recent years, several Chinese web have been adapted into animated series, with some in co-production with the Japanese animation industry.


title: Manhua

text: As microblogging and webcomics were gaining popularity in China, the form was increasingly used for political activism and satire. Despite China being a major consumer of comics for decades, the medium has never been taken as "serious works of art". R. Martin of "The Comics Journal" describes the Chinese outlook on comics as "pulpy imitations of films". Furthermore, China strictly controls the publishing of comics, and as a result, cartoonists faced difficulty reaching a large audience. Many cartoonists in the late 2000s began self-publishing their work on social media instead of attempting to issue paper editions. Websites such as Douban (2005) and Sina Weibo (2009) are popular venues for webcomics. he Taipei International Comics and Animation Festival celebrated a coming "webcomics era" in 2015. With increased smartphone usage with a younger generation, webcomics featuring a scrollable infinite canvas are expected to become more popular. With an increasing prevalence of Chinese-language webcomic portals, young artists have more opportunities to publish their work and gain a reputation. In the second half of the 2010s, South Korean webcomics and webtoon platforms have become increasingly popular in China.


title: Manhua

text: Cartoonists such as Kuang Biao and Rebel Pepper make use of the Internet to criticize the Communist Party and its leaders. Communist propaganda and figures such as Lei Feng are openly mocked on microblogs and in online cartoons, despite efforts of censorship by the Chinese government. David Bandurski, a researcher with the University of Hong Kong's China Media Project, stated that social media has "dramatically changed the environment for cartoonists [as] they now have a really good platform to find an audience." Chinese animator Pi San criticized internet companies and web portals for being "pretty cowardly" and "too sensitive", as they take on the role of first line of defense through self-censorship. Rebel Pepper's account on Sina Weibo, where he posts his satiral cartoons, had been deleted over 180 times by 2012.


title: Manhua

text: Blogging websites such as Sina Weibo are also highly censored by the Chinese government. Reuters reported in September 2013 that about 150 graduates, all male, were employed to censor Sina Weibo day and night, and automatic censors processed around three million posts per day. A research team from Rice University, Texas, stated that they saw "a fairly sophisticated system, where human power is amplified by computer automation, capable of removing sensitive posts within minutes." Images censored from Sina Weibo include a portrait of Mao Zedong wearing a pollution mask, a photo compilation identifying the expensive watches on the wrists of supposedly low-waged local officials, and criticism on police action, censorship in education, and the one child policy.


title: Manhua

text: Webtoons have grown in popularity in China as another form to consume and produce in the country thanks in part to the popularity of South Korean webtoons. Microblogging platforms Sina Weibo and Tencent have also offered webtoons on their digital sites alongside web . Also Beijing-based platform Kuaikan specialises in artwork targeting young readers. Several of these s have later been translated into various languages. While webtoon portals in mainland China are mainly run by the big internet companies, webtoon portals in Taiwan are offered and operated by big webtoon publishers outside the country like Comico, and Naver (under the Line brand).


title: Manhua

text: Political cartoonist Liu "Big Corpse Brother" Jun had over 130,000 followers on Sina Weibo in December 2013, and Kuang Biao has his work appear both online and in various print journals.


title: Manhua

text: The Taiwanese comics industry expects webcomics to prosper financially, though no accurate figures exist as of yet. Prize-winning cartoonists such as Chung Yun-de and Yeh Yu-tung were forced to turn to webcomics as their monthly income was too low to live from.


title: Manhua

text: Beijing cartoonist Bu Er Miao sells her webcomic "Electric Cat and Lightning Dog" on Douban's eBook service for 1.99 CNY (roughly 0.30 USD). When asked about whether she makes a profit off of her webcomic, Miao described the 1.79 CNY she makes per comic sold as "an amount of money that if you saw it on the street, no one would bother to pick it up."


title: Manhua

text: The Chinese webcomic "One Hundred Thousand Bad Jokes" received a film adaptation of the same name released in 2014. In 2016, two anime series based on Chinese web were broadcast: "", based on "Yi Ren Zhi Xia" by Dong Man Tang and "Bloodivores", based on a web by Bai Xiao. A donghua series adaptation of a web by Pingzi, "Spiritpact", has been released in China. A Chinese-Japanese animated series based on "Chōyū Sekai" is scheduled to air in 2017. Another series, "The Silver Guardian", based on "Yín Zhī Shǒu Mù Rén", premiered in 2017. Chang Ge Xing, a live-action adaptation of the of the same name by Xia Da, began filming in 2019.


title: Manhua

text: Kakao, operating the Korean webtoon portal Daum Webtoon, has collaborated with the Chinese Huace Group in order to produce live-action, Chinese language films and television dramas based on South Korean webtoons.


title: Collective noun

text: In linguistics, a collective noun is a word referring to a collection of things taken as a whole. Most collective nouns in everyday speech are not specific to one kind of thing. For example, the collective noun "group" can be applied to people ("a group of people"), or dogs ("a group of dogs"), or objects ("a group of stones").


title: Collective noun

text: Some collective nouns are specific to one kind of thing, especially terms of venery, which identify groups of specific animals. For example, "pride" as a term of venery always refers to lions, never to dogs or cows. Other examples come from popular culture such as a group of owls, which is called a "parliament".


title: Collective noun

text: Different forms of English handle verb agreement with collective count nouns differently. For example, users of British English generally accept that collective nouns take either singular or plural verb forms depending on context and the metonymic shift that it implies.


title: Collective noun

text: Morphological derivation accounts for many collective words and various languages have common affixes for denoting collective nouns. Because derivation is a slower and less productive word formation process than the more overtly syntactical morphological methods, there are fewer collectives formed this way. As with all derived words, derivational collectives often differ semantically from the original words, acquiring new connotations and even new denotations.


title: Collective noun

text: Early Proto-Indo-European used the suffix *eh₂ to form collective nouns, which evolved into the Latin neuter plural ending -a. Late Proto-Indo-European used the ending *t, which evolved into the English ending -th, as in "youth".


title: Collective noun

text: The English endings "-age" and "-ade" often signify a collective. Sometimes, the relationship is easily recognizable: "baggage, drainage, blockade". Though the etymology is plain to see, the derived words take on a distinct meaning. This is a productive ending, as evidenced in the recent coin, "signage".


title: Collective noun

text: German uses the prefix "ge-" to create collectives. The root word often undergoes umlaut and suffixation as well as receiving the "ge-" prefix. Nearly all nouns created in that way are of neuter gender:


title: Collective noun

text: Two examples of collective nouns are "team" and "government", which are both words referring to groups of (usually) people. Both "team" and "government" are "countable" nouns (consider: "one team", "two teams", "most teams"; "one government", "two governments", "many governments").


title: Collective noun

text: Confusion often stems from the way that different forms of English handle agreement with collective nouns—specifically, whether or not to use the collective singular: the singular verb form with a collective noun. The plural verb forms are often used in British English with the singular forms of these countable nouns (e.g., "The team "have" finished the project."). Conversely, in the English language as a whole, singular verb forms can often be used with nouns ending in "-s" that were once considered plural (e.g., "Physics "is" my favorite academic subject"). This apparent "number mismatch" is a natural and logical feature of human language, and its mechanism is a subtle metonymic shift in the concepts underlying the words.


title: Collective noun

text: In British English, it is generally accepted that collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms depending on the context and the metonymic shift that it implies. For example, "the team "is" in the dressing room" ("formal agreement") refers to "the team" as an ensemble, while "the team "are" fighting among themselves" ("notional agreement") refers to "the team" as individuals. That is also the British English practice with names of countries and cities in sports contexts (e.g., "Newcastle "have" won the competition.").


title: Collective noun

text: In American English, collective nouns almost always take singular verb forms (formal agreement). In cases that a metonymic shift would be revealed nearby, the whole sentence should be recast to avoid the metonymy. (For example, "The team are fighting among themselves" may become "the team "members" are fighting among themselves" or simply "The team is infighting.") Collective proper nouns are usually taken as singular ("Apple is expected to release a new phone this year"), unless the plural is explicit in the proper noun itself, in which case it is taken as plural ("The Green Bay Packers are scheduled to play the Minnesota Vikings this weekend"). More explicit examples of collective proper nouns include "General Motors is once again the world's largest producer of vehicles," and "Texas Instruments is a large producer of electronics here," and "British Airways is an airline company in Europe." Furthermore, "American Telephone & Telegraph is a telecommunications company in North America." Such phrases might look plural, but they are not.


title: Collective noun

text: A good example of such a metonymic shift in the singular-to-plural direction (which exclusively takes place in British English) is the following sentence: "The team have finished the project." In that sentence, the underlying thought is of the individual members of the team working together to finish the project. Their accomplishment is collective, and the emphasis is not on their individual identities, but they are still discrete individuals; the word choice "team have" manages to convey both their collective and discrete identities simultaneously. Collective nouns that have a singular form but take a plural verb form are called collective plurals. A good example of such a metonymic shift in the plural-to-singular direction is the following sentence: "Mathematics is my favorite academic subject." The word "mathematics" may have originally been plural in concept, referring to mathematic endeavors, but metonymic shift (the shift in concept from "the endeavors" to "the whole set of endeavors") produced the usage of "mathematics" as a singular entity taking singular verb forms. (A true mass-noun sense of "mathematics" followed naturally.)


title: Collective noun

text: Nominally singular pronouns can be collective nouns taking plural verb forms, according to the same rules that apply to other collective nouns. For example, it is correct usage in both British English and American English usage to say: "None are so fallible as those who are sure they're right." In that case, the plural verb is used because the context for "none" suggests more than one thing or person. This also applies to the use of an adjective as a collective noun: "The British are coming!"; "The poor will always be with you."


title: Collective noun

text: The tradition of using "terms of venery" or "nouns of assembly," collective nouns that are specific to certain kinds of animals, stems from an English hunting tradition of the Late Middle Ages. The fashion of a consciously developed hunting language came to England from France. It was marked by an extensive proliferation of specialist vocabulary, applying different names to the same feature in different animals. The elements can be shown to have already been part of French and English hunting terminology by the beginning of the 14th century. In the course of the 14th century, it became a courtly fashion to extend the vocabulary, and by the 15th century, the tendency had reached exaggerated and even satirical proportions.


title: Collective noun

text: "The Treatise", written by Walter of Bibbesworth in the mid-1200s, is the earliest source for collective nouns of animals in any European vernacular (and also the earliest source for animal noises). The "Venerie" of Twiti (early 14th century) distinguished three types of droppings of animals, and three different terms for herds of animals. Gaston Phoebus (14th century) had five terms for droppings of animals, which were extended to seven in the "Master of the Game" (early 15th century). The focus on collective terms for groups of animals emerged in the later 15th century. Thus, a list of collective nouns in Egerton MS 1995, dated to under the heading of "termis of venery &c.", extends to 70 items, and the list in the "Book of Saint Albans" (1486) runs to 164 items, many of which, even though introduced by "the compaynys of beestys and fowlys", relate not to venery but to human groups and professions and are clearly humorous, such as "a Doctryne of doctoris"", ""a Sentence of Juges"", ""a Fightyng of beggers"", ""an uncredibilite of Cocoldis"", ""a Melody of harpers"", ""a Gagle of women"", ""a Disworship of Scottis", etc.


title: Collective noun

text: The "Book of Saint Albans" became very popular during the 16th century and was reprinted frequently. Gervase Markham edited and commented on the list in his "The Gentleman's Academic", in 1595. The book's popularity had the effect of perpetuating many of these terms as part of the Standard English lexicon even if they were originally meant to be humorous and have long ceased to have any practical application.


title: Collective noun

text: Even in their original context of medieval venery, the terms were of the nature of kennings, intended as a mark of erudition of the gentlemen able to use them correctly rather than for practical communication. The popularity of the terms in the modern period has resulted in the addition of numerous lighthearted, humorous or facetious collective nouns.


title: Duḥkha

text: Duḥkha (; Sanskrit: दुःख; Pāli: dukkha), commonly translated as "suffering", "pain," or "unhappiness," is an important concept in Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism. Its meaning depends on the context, and may refer more specifically to the "unsatisfactoriness" or "unease" of mundane life when driven by craving/ grasping and ignorance.


title: Duḥkha

text: While the term "dukkha" has often been derived from the prefix "du" ("bad" or "difficult") and the root "kha", "empty," "hole," a badly fitting axle-hole of a cart or chariot giving "a very bumpy ride," it may actually be derived from "duḥ-stha", a "dis-/ bad- + stand-," that is, "standing badly , unsteady," "unstable."


title: Duḥkha

text: It is the first of the Four Noble Truths and it is one of the three marks of existence. The term also appears in scriptures of Hinduism, such as the Upanishads, in discussions of moksha (spiritual liberation).


title: Duḥkha

text: "Duḥkha" (Sanskrit: दुःख; Pali: "dukkha") is a term found in the Upanishads and Buddhist texts, meaning anything that is "uneasy, uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult, causing pain or sadness". It is also a concept in Indian religions about the nature of life that innately includes the "unpleasant", "suffering", "pain", "sorrow", "distress", "grief" or "misery." The term "duḥkha" does not have a one-word English translation, and embodies diverse aspects of unpleasant human experiences. It is often understood as the opposite of "sukha", meaning "happiness," "comfort" or "ease."


title: Duḥkha

text: The word has been explained in recent times as a derivation from Aryan terminology for an axle hole, referring to an axle hole which is not in the center and leads to a bumpy, uncomfortable ride. According to Winthrop Sargeant,


title: Duḥkha

text: However, according to Monier Monier-Williams, the actual roots of the Pali term "dukkha" appear to be Sanskrit दुस्- ("dus-", "bad") + स्था ("stha", "to stand"). Regular phonological changes in the development of Sanskrit into the various Prakrits led to a shift from "dus-sthā" to "duḥkha" to "dukkha".


title: Duḥkha

text: Analayo concurs, stating that "dukkha" as derived from "duh-stha", "standing badly," "conveys nuances of "uneasiness" or of being "uncomfortable."


title: Duḥkha

text: The literal meaning of "duhkha", as used in a general sense is "suffering" or "painful." Its exact translation depends on the context. Contemporary translators of Buddhist texts use a variety of English words to convey the aspects of "dukh". Early Western translators of Buddhist texts (before the 1970s) typically translated the Pali term "dukkha" as "suffering." Later translators have emphasized that "suffering" is a too limited translation for the term duḥkha, and have preferred to either leave the term untranslated, or to clarify that translation with terms such as anxiety, distress, frustration, unease, unsatisfactoriness, not having what one wants, having what one doesn't want, etc. In the sequence "birth is painfull," "dukhka" may be translated as "painfull." When related to vedana, "feeling," "dukkha" ("unpleasant," "painfull") is the opposite of "sukkha" ("pleasure," "pleasant"), yet all feelings are "dukkha" in that they are impermanent, conditioned phenomena, which are unsatisfactory, incapable of providing lasting satisfaction. The term "unsatisfactoriness" then is often used to emphasize the unsatisfactoriness of "life under the influence of afflictions and polluted karma."


title: Duḥkha

text: "Duḥkha" is one of the three marks of existence, namely "anitya" ("impermanent"), "duḥkha" ("unsatisfactory"), "anatman" (without a lasting essence).


title: Duḥkha

text: Various sutras sum up how life in this "mundane world" is regarded to be "duḥkha", starting with "samsara", the ongoing process of death and rebirth itself:


title: Duḥkha

text: The Buddhist tradition emphasizes the importance of developing insight into the nature of "duḥkha", the conditions that cause it, and how it can be overcome. This process is formulated in the teachings on the Four Noble Truths.


title: Duḥkha

text: In Hindu literature, the earliest Upaniads — the and the — in all likelihood predate the advent of Buddhism. In these scriptures of Hinduism, the Sanskrit word "dukha" (दुःख) appears in the sense of "suffering, sorrow, distress", and in the context of a spiritual pursuit and liberation through the knowledge of Atman (soul/self).


title: Duḥkha

text: The concept of sorrow and suffering, and self-knowledge as a means to overcome it, appears extensively with other terms in the pre-Buddhist Upanishads. The term "Duhkha" also appears in many other middle and later post-Buddhist Upanishads such as the verse 6.20 of Shvetashvatara Upanishad, as well as in the Bhagavada Gita, all in the context of moksha. The term also appears in the foundational Sutras of the six schools of Hindu philosophy, such as the opening lines of "Samkhya karika" of the Samkhya school.


title: Duḥkha

text: Both Hinduism and Buddhism emphasize that one overcomes "dukha" through the development of understanding and insight. However, the two religions widely differ in the nature of that understanding. Hinduism emphasizes the understanding and acceptance of "Atman" ("self", "soul") and "Brahman" ("the ultimate reality of the universe"). The connection is the distress and suffering caused by an individual situation that can counter a person's wishes and perception. "Duhkha", in particular, refers to the sense of disappointing feelings that come from the gulf between perception and desires and true experience. In Hindi, "duhkha" generally means "difficult to do" or "to have hardship in doing" as it is inflexible. By contrast, Buddhism emphasizes the understanding and acceptance of "anatta" ("anatman", "non-self", "non-soul"), the means to liberation from "duḥkha". The root meaning of "duhkha" is used in various ways in different schools of Indian thought and Buddhism.


title: Fast attack craft

text: A fast attack craft (FAC) is a small, fast, agile, offensive, often affordable warship armed with anti-ship missiles, gun or torpedoes. FACs are usually operated in close proximity to land as they lack both the seakeeping and all-round defensive capabilities to survive in blue water. The size of the vessel also limits the fuel, stores and water supplies. In size they are usually between 50–800 tonnes and can reach speeds of .


title: Fast attack craft

text: A fast attack craft's main advantage over other warship types is its affordability. Many FACs can be deployed at a relatively low cost, allowing a navy which is at a disadvantage to effectively defend itself against a larger adversary. A small boat, when equipped with the same weapons as its larger counterpart, can pose a serious threat to even the largest of capital ships. Their major disadvantages are poor seagoing qualities, cramped quarters and poor defence against aerial threats.


title: Fast attack craft

text: As early as the mid-19th century, the Jeune École's "poussiere navale" theory called for a great number of small, agile vessels to break up invading fleets of larger vessels. The idea was first put into action in the 1870s with the steam-powered torpedo boats, which were produced in large numbers by both the Royal Navy and the French Navy. These new vessels proved especially susceptible to rough seas and to have limited utility in scouting due to their short endurance and low bridges. The potential threat was entirely extinguished with the introduction of the torpedo boat destroyer (TBD) in 1893, a larger vessel which evolved into the modern destroyer. It could mount guns capable of destroying the torpedo boat before it was within range to use its own weapons.


title: Fast attack craft

text: The idea was revived shortly before World War I with the craft using new gasoline engines. Italy and Great Britain were at the forefront of this design, with the coastal motor boat (CMB) and the "motobarca armata silurante" (MAS) (Italian: "torpedo armed motorboat"). The outstanding achievement of the class was the sinking of the Austro-Hungarian battleship by "MAS. 15" on 10 June 1918. The equivalent achievement for the CMBs was a lesser success; during the Russian Civil War CMBs attacked the Red Fleet at anchor at Kronstadt on 18 June 1919, sinking the cruiser for the loss of four craft.


title: Fast attack craft

text: The design matured in the mid-1930s as the motor torpedo boats (MTBs) and motor gunboats (MGBs) of the Royal Navy, the PT boats of the US Navy, and the E-boats ("Schnellboote") of the "Kriegsmarine". All types saw extensive use during World War II but were limited in effectiveness due to the increasing threat of aircraft; however, some successes were achieved in favourable conditions, as showcased by the crippling of the cruiser (later scuttled), in the night of 13 August 1942, by Italian MS boats.


title: Fast attack craft

text: After World War II, the use of this kind of craft steadily declined in the United States and Britain, despite the introduction of safer diesel engines to replace the highly flammable gasoline ones, although the Soviet Union still had large numbers of MGBs and MTBs in service.


title: Fast attack craft

text: With the development of the anti-ship missile, FACs were reborn in the Soviet Union as "missile boats" or "missile cutters". The first few missile boats were originally torpedo boats, with the torpedo tubes replaced by missile launchers. Again, small fast craft could attack and destroy a major warship. The idea was first tested by the Soviet Union which, in August 1957, produced the which mounted two P-15 Termit missiles on a hull with a top speed of around . Endurance was limited to at and the vessels had supplies for only five days at sea. 110 Komar-class vessels were produced, while over 400 examples were built of the following with a significant portion of the total being sold to pro-Soviet nations.


title: Fast attack craft

text: The first combat use of missile boats was an attack by two Egyptian Soviet-built Komar-class boats on the Israeli destroyer "Eilat" on 20 October 1967, several months after the Six-Day War. The two boats launched a total of four P-15 missiles, three of which struck the "Eilat" and sank her with the loss of 47 crew dead or missing and over 90 wounded.


title: Fast attack craft

text: The Soviet FACs prompted a NATO response, which became more intense after the sinking of "Eilat". The Germans and French worked together to produce a new FAC, resulting in the class, first commissioned in 1968. Built on a hull with four MM-38 Exocet missiles, a 76 mm gun forward and 40 mm twin guns aft, these vessels have a top speed of . Built until 1974, a total of 68 Combattante IIs were launched. The design was immediately followed by the Combattante III, and a great many other shipyards produced their own versions of the Combattante, including the Israeli Sa'ar/"Reshef" variants.


title: Fast attack craft

text: Size has also increased, some designs reaching up to corvette size, 800 tonnes including a helicopter, giving them extended modes of operation. While the Israeli s, for example, had a 58 metre hull and 415 ton displacement, the is 85 metres in length and displaces 1,065 tons, and is officially rated as a corvette.


title: Fast attack craft

text: Iran and North Korea have some of the largest numbers of FACs in operation today. North Korea alone operates more than 300, while Iran has been seen developing "swarm boats" to be used as harassing vessels in the heavily contested littoral waters of the Persian Gulf. To counter the threat, the US Navy has been developing an ASUW Littoral Defensive Anti Surface Warfare doctrine, along with vessels such as the littoral combat ship.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: The Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), also known as the Khmer Communist Party, was a communist party in Cambodia. Its leader was Pol Pot and its members were generally known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmer). Originally founded in 1951, the party was split into pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet factions as a result of the Sino–Soviet split with the former being the Pol Pot faction, and the latter adopting a more revisionist approach to Marxism. As such, it claimed that 30 September 1960 was its founding date, then it was named the Workers' Party of Kampuchea before it was renamed the Communist Party in 1966.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: The party operated underground during most of its existence and it took control of the country in April 1975 and established the state which was known as Democratic Kampuchea. The party lost power in 1979 with the establishment of the People's Republic of Kampuchea by leftists who were dissatisfied with the Pol Pot regime because it perpetrated the Cambodian genocide and invaded Vietnamese territory, triggering the intervention of Vietnamese military forces. The party was officially dissolved in 1981, with the Party of Democratic Kampuchea claiming its legacy.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: The party was founded in 1951, when the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) was divided into separate Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese communist parties. The decision to form a separate Cambodian communist party had been taken at the ICP congress in February the same year. Different sources claim different dates for the exact founding and the first congress of the party. Son Ngoc Minh was appointed as acting Chairman of the party. The party congress did not elect a full Central Committee, but instead appointed a Party Propagation and Formation Committee.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: At the time of its formation, the Cambodian party was called the Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party (KPRP). The ICP had been heavily dominated by Vietnamese and the KPRP was actively supported by the Vietnamese party during its initial phase of existence. Due to the reliance on Vietnamese support in the joint struggle against French colonial rule, the history of the party would later be rewritten, stating 1960 as the year of foundation of the party.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: According to Democratic Kampuchea's version of party history, the Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the 1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement, which still controlled large areas of the countryside and which commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about 1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a Long March into North Vietnam, where they remained in exile. In late 1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the Krom Pracheachon, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National Assembly elections.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: In the September 1955 election, it won about 4% of the vote, but did not secure a seat in the legislature. Members of the Pracheachon were subject to constant harassment and to arrests because the party remained outside Prince Norodom Sihanouk's Sangkum. Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election and drove it underground. It is speculated that the decision of Pracheachon to file candidates for the election had not been approved by the now renamed "Workers' Party of Kampuchea" (WPK). Sihanouk habitually labeled local leftists the Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: During the mid-1950s, two KPRP factions, the "urban committee" (headed by Tou Samouth) and the "rural committee" (headed by Sieu Heng), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused divergent revolutionary lines. The prevalent "urban" line endorsed by North Vietnam recognized that Sihanouk by virtue of his success in winning independence from the French was a genuine national leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South Vietnam. Champions of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded to distance himself from the right-wing and to adopt leftist policies.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were familiar with the harsh realities of the countryside, advocated an immediate struggle to overthrow the "feudalist" Sihanouk. In 1959, Sieu Heng defected to the government and provided the security forces with information that enabled them to destroy as much as 90% of the party's rural apparatus. Although communist networks in Phnom Penh and in other towns under Tou Samouth's jurisdiction fared better, only a few hundred communists remained active in the country by 1960.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris organized their own communist movement which had little, if any, connection to the hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Sihanouk and Lon Nol from 1968 until 1975 and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the 1960s, was born in 1928 (some sources say in 1925) in Kampong Thum Province, northeast of Phnom Penh. He attended a technical high school in the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics (other sources say he attended a school for printers and typesetters and also studied civil engineering). Ieng Sary was a Chinese-Khmer born in 1930 in South Vietnam, he attended the elite Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh before beginning courses in commerce and politics at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (more widely known as Sciences Po) in France. Khieu Samphan, considered "one of the most brilliant intellects of his generation", was born in 1931 and specialized in economics and politics during his time in Paris. In talent, he was rivaled by Hou Yuon (born in 1930), who studied economics and law. Son Sen (born in 1930) studied education and literature while Hu Nim (born in 1932) studied law.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: Most members of the Paris student group came from landowner or civil servant families. Three of the Paris group forged a bond that survived years of revolutionary struggle and intraparty strife, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith (also known as Ieng Thirith), purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: At some time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French Communist Party. In 1951, the two men went to East Berlin to participate in a youth festival. This experience is considered to have been a turning point in their ideological development. Meeting with Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (and whom they subsequently judged to be too subservient to the Vietnamese), they became convinced that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for armed struggle could achieve revolution. They transformed the Khmer Students' Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer students in Paris belonged, into an organization for nationalist and leftist ideas.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: Inside the KSA and its successor organizations was a secret organization known as the Cercle Marxiste. The organization was composed of cells of three to six members with most members knowing nothing about the overall structure of the organization. In 1952, Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary and other leftists gained notoriety by sending an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the "strangler of infant democracy". A year later, the French authorities closed down the KSA, but Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan helped to establish in 1956 a new group, the Khmer Students' Union. Inside, the group was still run by the Cercle Marxiste.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: The doctoral dissertations written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan express basic themes that were later to become the cornerstones of the policy adopted by Democratic Kampuchea. The central role of the peasants in national development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his 1955 thesis, "The Cambodian Peasants and Their Prospects for Modernization" which challenged the conventional view that urbanization and industrialization are necessary precursors of development. The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis, "Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development", was that the country had to become self-reliant and end its economic dependency on the developed world. In its general contours, Khieu's work reflected the influence of a branch of the "dependency theory" school, which blamed lack of development in the Third World on the economic domination of the industrialized nations.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party work. At first, he went to join with forces allied to the Viet Minh operating in the rural areas of Kampong Cham Province (Kompong Cham). After the end of the war, he moved to Phnom Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee", where he became an important point of contact between above-ground parties of the left and the underground secret communist movement. His allies Ieng Sary and Hou Yuon became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: Khieu Samphan returned from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the University of Phnom Penh and started a left-wing French-language publication, "L'Observateur". The paper soon acquired a reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year, the government closed the paper and Sihanouk's police publicly humiliated Khieu by beating, undressing and photographing him in public—as Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or forget". Yet the experience did not prevent Khieu from advocating cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against United States activities in South Vietnam. As mentioned, Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon and Hu Nim were forced to "work through the system" by joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: From 28–30 September 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. It is estimated that 14 delegates represented the 'rural' faction and seven the 'urban' faction. This pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become an object of contention (and considerable historical rewriting) between pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions. At the meeting, the party was renamed as the Workers Party of Kampuchea. The question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly discussed. A new party structure was adopted and for the first time a permanent Central Committee was appointed with Tou Samouth (who advocated a policy of cooperation) as the general secretary of the party.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: His ally Nuon Chea, also known as Long Reth, became deputy general secretary while Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were named to the Central Committee to occupy the third and the fifth highest positions in the party hierarchy. Another committee member was veteran communist Keo Meas. In Democratic Kampuchea, this meeting would later be projected as the founding date of the party, consciously downplaying the history of the party prior to Pol Pot's ascent to leadership.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: On 20 July 1962, Tou Samouth was murdered by the Cambodian government. At the WPK's second congress in February 1963, Pol Pot was chosen to succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Tou's allies Nuon Chea and Keo Meas were removed from the Central Committee and replaced by Son Sen and Vorn Vet. From then on, Pol Pot and loyal allies from his Paris student days controlled the party center, edging out older veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee left Phnom Penh to establish an insurgent base in Ratanakiri Province in the northeast. Pol Pot had shortly before been put on a list of thirty-four leftists who were summoned by Sihanouk to join the government and sign statements saying Sihanouk was the only possible leader for the country. Pol Pot and Chou Chet were the only people on the list who escaped. All the others agreed to cooperate with the government and were afterward under 24-hour watch by the police.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: In the mid-1960s, the United States Department of State estimated the party membership to be approximately 100.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: The region Pol Pot and the others moved to was inhabited by tribal minorities, the Khmer Loeu, whose rough treatment (including resettlement and forced assimilation) at the hands of the central government made them willing recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965, Pol Pot made a visit of several months to North Vietnam and China. He probably received some training in China, which must have enhanced his prestige when he returned to the WPK's liberated areas. Despite friendly relations between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a secret from Sihanouk.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: In 1971, the party changed its name to the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK). The party statutes, published in mid-1970s, claims that the name change was approved by the party congress in 1971. The change in the name of the party was a closely guarded secret. Lower ranking members of the party and even the Vietnamese were not told of it and neither was the membership until many years later. The party leadership endorsed armed struggle against the government, then led by Sihanouk. In 1967, several small-scale attempts at insurgency were made by the CPK but they met with little success.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: In 1968, the Khmer Rouge launched a national insurgency across Cambodia. Though North Vietnam had not been informed of the decision, its forces provided shelter and weapons to the Khmer Rouge after the insurgency started. The guerrilla forces of the party were baptized as the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army. Vietnamese support for the insurgency made it impossible for the ineffective and poorly motivated Royal Cambodian Army to effectively counter it.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: The political appeal of the Khmer Rouge was increased as a result of the situation created by the removal of Sihanouk as head of state in 1970. Premier Lon Nol, with the support of the National Assembly, deposed Sihanouk. Sihanouk, in exile in Beijing, made an alliance with the Kampuchean Communist Party and became the nominal head of a Khmer Rouge-dominated government-in-exile (known by its French acronym GRUNK) backed by the People's Republic of China. Sihanouk's popular support in rural Cambodia allowed the Khmer Rouge to extend its power and influence to the point that by 1973 it exercised "de facto" control over the majority of Cambodian territory, although only a minority of its population.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: The relationship between the massive carpet bombing of Cambodia by the United States and the growth of the Khmer Rouge, in terms of recruitment and popular support, has been a matter of interest to historians. Some historians, including Michael Ignatieff, Adam Jones and Greg Grandin, have cited the United States intervention and bombing campaign (spanning 1965–1973) as a significant factor which led to increased support for the Khmer Rouge among the Cambodian peasantry. According to Ben Kiernan, the Khmer Rouge "would not have won power without U.S. economic and military destabilization of Cambodia. ... It used the bombing's devastation and massacre of civilians as recruitment propaganda and as an excuse for its brutal, radical policies and its purge of moderate communists and Sihanoukists."


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: Pol Pot biographer David P. Chandler writes that the bombing "had the effect the Americans wanted – it broke the Communist encirclement of Phnom Penh", but it also accelerated the collapse of rural society and increased social polarization. Peter Rodman and Michael Lind claimed that the United States intervention saved the Lon Nol regime from collapse in 1970 and 1973. Craig Etcheson acknowledged that U.S. intervention increased recruitment for the Khmer Rouge but disputed that it was a primary cause of the Khmer Rouge victory. William Shawcross wrote that the United States bombing and ground incursion plunged Cambodia into the chaos that Sihanouk had worked for years to avoid.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: By 1973, Vietnamese support of the Khmer Rouge had largely disappeared. China "armed and trained" the Khmer Rouge both during the civil war and the years afterward.


title: Communist Party of Kampuchea

text: When the United States Congress suspended military aid to the Lon Nol government in 1973, the Khmer Rouge made sweeping gains in the country, completely overwhelming the Khmer National Armed Forces. On 17 April 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and overthrew the Khmer Republic, executing all its officers.