title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: On 22 August 2016, gestational surrogacy was legalized in Portugal (Law 25/2016) for the cases in which there is an absence of the uterus or, due to lesions or disease, the uterus is unable to successfully carry a pregnancy to term. The article 8 of the 2006 law was revoked. In such cases, the surrogate mother must willingly enter the contract and accept to renounce any motherhood rights and duties. The gestational surrogacy requires a written contract that explicitly deals with the possibility of abortion in certain cases, the Ordem dos Médicos' opinion (which does not need to be positive) and the National Council of Medically Assisted Reproduction's (CNPMA) permission. The only payment/donation that the genetic parents can make in favor of the surrogate mother is her medical expenses and the surrogate mother cannot be economically dependent on the genetic parents. No behavioral restrictions can be imposed on the surrogate mother.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Single men and homosexual male couples cannot have access to gestational surrogacy. The law does not explicitly exclude single women, but requires that only one of the members of the couple has to contribute with genetic material, which may be interpreted as restricting the procedure to couples.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: The law does not restrict gestational surrogacy to residents, meaning that Portugal may become a fertility tourism destination.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Adoption of the law caused some debate within several Portuguese Christian Churches, though not among the once-dominant Roman Catholic Church. Representatives of Brazilian and US-based evangelical and Pentecostal churches condemn surrogacy and suggest that infertile couples can/must (depending on the Church) pursue conventional adoption (national or transnational even though the later is banned by law).


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: After the 2016 law was approved, a regulatory decree (6/2017) was created on 31 July 2017 to materialize the 2016 law that included, for example, the requirement that the surrogacy mother is accompanied by a psychologist during and after the birth.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: In February 2017, a petition with more than 4000 signatures (the legal requirement for the Parliament to be forced to discuss the matter of the petition), was submitted to Parliament, asking for a referendum on gestational surrogacy. At the same time, a group of members of CDS and PSD requested that the law was subject to a constitutional inspection. In April 2018, the Constitutional Court deliberated on the matter and declared that some of the law's articles were in fact unconstitutional. The effects of the decision did not apply to any processes that had initiated the therapeutic procedure. This meant that a single process was allowed, while a total of eight processes that were in different stages of progress were considered null and void.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: In July 2019, new changes were made to the 2016 law in Parliament in an attempt to revert the Constitutional Court's decisions, but one of the issues raised by the Court (regarding the right of the surrogate mother to choose to keep the baby) failed to make it to the final version of the law. The final version had the positive votes of PS, BE (the author of the proposal), PEV, PAN and 21 PSD members, as well as five abstentions from PSD members. PCP, CDS, and 63 PSD members voted against it. In August 2019, president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa sent the law to the Constitutional Court for review. In September 2019, the 2016 law, after the 2019 changes, was once again considered unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Gestational surrogacy, even commercial, is legal in Russia, being available to practically all adults willing to be parents. There must be one of several medical indications for surrogacy: absence of uterus, deformity of the uterine cavity or cervix, uterine cavity synechia, somatic diseases contraindicating child bearing, or repeated failure of IVF despite high-quality embryos.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: The first surrogacy program in Russia was successfully implemented in 1995 at the IVF centre of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Institute in St. Petersburg. Public opinion in general is surrogacy-friendly; recent cases of a famous singer and a well-known businesswoman who openly used services of gestational surrogates received positive news coverage. Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church has officially condemned surrogacy. As regards the baptism of the children born through surrogacy, the Russian Orthodox Church holds that a "child born with the assistance of “surrogate motherhood” can be Baptized according to the wishes of the party that will be raising it, if such are either its “biological parents” or its “surrogate mother,” only after they have recognized that, from the Christian point of view, such reproductive technology is morally reprehensible and have borne ecclesial repentance – regardless of whither they ignored the Church's position consciously or unconsciously".


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Registration of children born through surrogacy is regulated by the Family Code of Russia (art. 51–52) and the Law on Acts on Civil Status (art. 16). A surrogate's consent is needed for that. Apart from that consent, no adoption nor court decision is required. The surrogate's name is never listed on the birth certificate.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: There is no requirement for the child to be genetically related to at least one of the commissioning parents.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Children born to heterosexual couples who are not officially married or single intended parents through gestational surrogacy are registered in accordance to analogy of jus (art. 5 of the Family Code). A court decision may be needed in that case. On 5 August 2009 a St. Petersburg court definitely resolved a dispute as to whether single women could apply for surrogacy and obliged the State Registration Authority to register a 35-year=old single intended mother, Nataliya Gorskaya, as the mother of her surrogate son.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: On 4 August 2010 a Moscow court ruled that a single man who applied for gestational surrogacy (using donor eggs) could be registered as the only parent of his son, becoming the first man in Russia to defend his right to become a father through court proceedings. The surrogate mother's name was not listed on the birth certificate; the father was listed as the only parent. After that, a few more identical decisions concerning single men who became fathers through surrogacy were issued by different courts in Russia, listing men as the only parents of their surrogate children and confirming that prospective single parents, regardless of their sex or sexual orientation, can exercise their right to parenthood through surrogacy in Russia.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Liberal legislation makes Russia attractive for "reproductive tourists" looking for techniques not available in their countries. Intended parents go there for oocyte donation because of advanced age or marital status (single women and single men) and when surrogacy is considered. Foreigners have the same rights for assisted reproduction as Russian citizens. Within 3 days after the birth, the commissioning parents obtain a Russian birth certificate with both their names on it. Genetic relation to the child (in case of donation) does not matter.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Religious authorities in Saudi Arabia do not allow the use of gestational carriers, instead suggesting medical procedures to restore fertility and ability to deliver.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: All surrogacy arrangements (both commercial and altruistic) are illegal. A draft of the new civil law is said to allow gestational carriers, but Serbian Assembly still did not adopt this law yet. On 21 April 2017, the Serbian Assembly started a discussion a legislation on assisted reproductive technology that bans all forms of surrogacy. (The legislation is being discussed.)


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: The South Africa Children's Act of 2005 (which came fully into force in 2010) enabled the "commissioning parents" and the surrogate to have their surrogacy agreement validated by the High Court even before fertilization. This allows the commissioning parents to be recognized as legal parents from the outset of the process and helps prevent uncertainty – although if the surrogate mother is the genetic mother she has until 60 days after the birth of the child to change her mind. The law permits single people and gay couples to be commissioning parents. However, only those domiciled in South Africa benefit from the protection of the law, no non-validated agreements will be enforced, and agreements must be altruistic rather than commercial. If there is only one commissioning parent, s/he must be genetically related to the child. If there are two, they must both be genetically related to the child unless that is physically impossible due to infertility or sex (as in the case of a same-sex couple). The Commissioning parent or parents must be physically unable to birth a child independently. The surrogate mother must have had at least one pregnancy and viable delivery and have at least one living child. The surrogate mother has the right to unilaterally terminate the pregnancy, but she must consult with and inform the commissioning parents, and if she is terminating for a non-medical reason, may be obliged to refund any medical reimbursements she had received.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: As of mid-2010s, surrogacy was available and mostly unregulated in South Korea. The practice is often morally stigmatized. Surrogacy has declined since mid-2000s, as some aspects of commercial surrogacy became illegal.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Whereas surrogacy is not legal in Spain (the biological mother's renouncement contract is not legally valid), it is legal to perform the surrogacy in a country where it is legal, having the mother the nationality from that same country.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Surrogacy is illegal in Swedish healthcare, but there are no legal regulations/laws of surrogacy for it and it remains unregulated.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Surrogacy is regulated in the "Bundesgesetz über die medizinisch unterstützte Fortpflanzung (Fortpflanzungsmedizingesetz, FMedG) vom 18. Dezember 1998" and illegal in Switzerland. Art. 4 forbids surrogacy, Art. 31 regulates the punishment of clinicians who apply in vitro fertilisation for surrogacy or persons who arrange surrogacy. The surrogate mother is not punished by law. She will be the legal mother of the child.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: On 24 August 2014, the Administrative Court of the Canton of St. Gallen granted parentship to two men of a child born in the USA.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: In response to the controversial Baby Gammy incident in 2014, Thailand since 30 July 2015, has banned foreign people travelling to Thailand, to have commercial surrogacy contract arrangement, under the "Protection of Children Born from Assisted Reproductive Technologies Act". Only opposite-sex married couples as Thailand residents are allowed to have a commercial surrogacy contract arrangement. In the past Thailand was a popular destination for couples seeking surrogate mothers.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Ukraine is a major international surrogacy destination, given its very liberal laws, as well as the fact that prices are more affordable than in the United States.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Since 2002, surrogacy and surrogacy in combination with egg/sperm donation has been absolutely legal in Ukraine. According to the law a donor or a surrogate mother has no parental rights over the child born and the child born is legally the child of the prospective parents.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: In Ukraine the start of the introduction of methods of supporting reproductive medicine was given in the eighties of the preceding century. It was Kharkiv where the extracorporeal fertilization method was for the first time successfully applied in Ukraine, and in 1991 a girl named Katy was born. Kharkiv was also the first city in the former Soviet Union to realize surrogacy. Many clinics dealing with surrogacy have been opened in Kyiv. and Lviv.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Ukrainian surrogacy laws are very favorable and fully support the individual's reproductive rights. Surrogacy is officially regulated by Clause 123 of the Family Code of Ukraine and the order of the Ministry of health of Ukraine "On approval of the application of assisted reproductive technologies in Ukraine" from 09.09.2013 No. 787. You can choose between Gestational Surrogacy, Egg/sperm Donation, special Embryo adoption programs and their combinations. No specific permission from any regulatory body is required for that. A written informed consent of all parties (intended parents and surrogate) participating in the surrogacy program is mandatory. The intended mother has to demonstrate that there is, in fact, a medical reason that makes impossible for her to get pregnant, either because there is a risk for her or for the baby.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: However, Ukraine does not support surrogacy for family models different from the heterosexual one, leaving apart single parent families, lesbian couples, etc.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Ukrainian legislation allows intended parents to carry on a surrogacy program and their names will be on the birth certificate of the child born as a result of the surrogacy program from the very beginning. The child is considered to be legally "belonging" to the prospective parents from the very moment of conception. The surrogate's name is never listed on the birth certificate. The surrogate can't keep the child after the birth. Even if a donation program took place and there is no biological relation between the child and the intended mother, their names will be on the birth certificate (Clause 3 of article 123 of the Family Code of Ukraine).


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Embryo research is also allowed, gamete and embryo donation permitted on a commercial level. Single women can be treated by known or anonymous donor insemination. Gestational surrogacy is an option for officially married couples only (a man and a woman) if they are able to prove they cannot carry a baby themselves for medical reasons and at least one parent must have a genetic link to the newborn baby. Surrogacy in Ukraine is not regulated in law as commercial, it is more close to altruistic, as the so-called "payment" is not performed to the surrogate mother, it is called a compensation and is not under obligation to pay taxes.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Altruistic surrogacy is legal in the United Kingdom, however, commercial surrogacy arrangements are not: as they are prohibited by section 2 of the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985. Additionally, advertisement was made a criminal offense under section 3 of the Surrogacy Arrangement Act, however, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 adds an exception, allowing non-profit agency to advertise. Whilst it is illegal in the UK to pay more than reasonable expenses for a surrogacy, the relationship is recognised under section 30 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. However, in the case of parental orders applied for as a result of international surrogacy arrangements, the court has retroactively authorised payment for commercial arrangements when it is in the child's best interest, see "Re L (A Minor)" [2010] E.W.H.C. 3146 (Fam), "J" v "G" [2013] E.W.H.C. 1432 (Fam), "Re X and Y (Parental Order: Retrospective Authorisation of Payments)" [2012] E.W.H.C. 3147 (Fam) and "Re C (Parental Order)" [2013] E.W.H.C. 2413 (Fam). ‘It will only be in the clearest case of the abuse of public policy that the court will be able to withhold an order if otherwise welfare considerations support its making.’ Regardless of contractual or financial consideration for expenses, surrogacy arrangements are not legally enforceable under section 1A of the Surrogacy Arrangements Act; therefore, a surrogate mother maintains the legal right of determination for the child, even if they are genetically unrelated. Unless a parental order or adoption order is made, the surrogate mother remains the legal mother of the child. This is because under section 33 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 (HFEA 2008) ‘mother’ is the women who has, or is carrying the child. Additionally, if the surrogate is married, under section 42 HFEA 2008 their partner becomes the other legal parent, unless it can be shown they did not consent to the surrogate's insemination.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Legal Parenthood through a parental order can be obtained under section 54 HFEA 2008, for two applicants, and section 54A HFEA 2008, for single applicants. In order to meet the criteria under section 54 HFEA 2008, an application must be made by two people in an enduring family relationship, and one of their gametes were used in the insemination, subject to section 54(1) and section 54(2). In "X (A Child: Foreign Surrogacy)" [2018] E.W.F.C. 15 the couple openly acknowledged they were in a “sham marriage” however, this was unproblematic under section 54: as the court still considered them to be in a lasting relationship. Under section 54(3) the application must be made no later than 6 months after the child's birth. Under section 54(4)(a) and 54(4)(b) at the time of the application the child must be living with the applicants, at least one of which is domiciled in the UK. Both applicants when applying must be over the age of 18, as required by section 54(5). The surrogate and any other individual with parental rights must give their full and informed consent to the parental order, as required under section 54(6)(a) and 54(6)(b) unless, under section 54(7) they lack the capacity to consent. Moreover, under section 54(8) the court must be satisfied the no payment has been given, other than reasonable expenses, unless authorised by the court. Under section 54A HFEA 2008, the requirements are the same as under 54, except 54A(1) allows for one applicant, provided the child was not carried by them and their gametes were used in the insemination.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: In the first UK surrogacy case "Re C (A Minor) (Wardship: Surrogacy) (Baby Cotton Case)" [1985] F.L.R. 846. Latey J stated, ‘morals and ethics are irrelevant, what matters is what is in the child’s best interest.’ When considering if a parental order should be granted the primary consideration of the court is child welfare, pursuant to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Parental Orders) (Consequential, Transitional and Savings Provision) Order 2010, which imports the provisions of section 1 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 into section 54 of the HFEA 2008. The primacy of child welfare has resulted in a more flexible application of section 54(3), to accommodate the child's best interest. In Re "Re X (A Child) (Surrogacy: Time Limit)" [2014] E.W.H.C. 3135 (Fam) Munby P states, excluding parental orders made even a day late is ‘…the very antithesis of sensible; it is almost nonsensical.” Munby P states this is because of the large impact on, not just the applicants, but ‘…the innocent child, whose welfare is the courts paramount concern.’ This flexible approach was followed in "KB & RJ" v "RT" (Rev 1) [2016] E.W.H.C. 760 (Fam) where a parental order was granted to a two-year-old child.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Surrogacy and its attendant legal issues fall under state jurisdiction and the legal situation for surrogacy varies greatly from state to state. Some states have written legislation, while others have developed common law regimes for dealing with surrogacy issues. Some states facilitate surrogacy and surrogacy contracts, others simply refuse to enforce them, and some penalize commercial surrogacy. Surrogacy friendly states tend to enforce both commercial and altruistic surrogacy contracts and facilitate straightforward ways for the intended parents to be recognized as the child's legal parents. Some relatively surrogacy friendly states only offer support for married heterosexual couples. Generally, only gestational surrogacy is supported and traditional surrogacy finds little to no legal support.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: States generally considered to be surrogacy friendly include California, Illinois, Arkansas, Maryland, Washington D.C., Oregon, and New Hampshire among others. Both New Jersey and Washington state commercial surrogacy laws became effective from 1/1/2019.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: For legal purposes, key factors are where the contract is completed, where the gestational carrier resides, and where the birth takes place. Therefore, individuals living in a non-friendly state can still benefit from the policies of surrogacy friendly states by working with a surrogate who lives and will give birth in a friendly state.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: The variations in policy mean that employee surrogacy benefits, which an increasing number of employers offer, can only be enjoyed in certain jurisdictions.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Arkansas was one of the first states to enact surrogacy friendly laws. In 1989, under then-Governor Bill Clinton, it passed Act 647, which states that in a surrogacy arrangement, the biological father and his wife will be recognized as the child's legal parents from birth, even if his wife is not genetically related to the child (i.e., in a traditional surrogacy arrangement). If he is unmarried, he alone will be recognized as the legal parent. A woman may also be recognized as the legal mother of the surrogate's genetic child as long as that child was conceived with anonymous donor sperm. On the other hand, it is unclear how or whether same-sex couples could benefit these laws, since the 2008 ballot measure that made it illegal for unmarried, cohabiting individuals to adopt or provide foster care to minors. On 26 June 2015, the 2008 ballot issue is moot because of Obergefell v. Hodges.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: California is known to be a surrogacy-friendly state. It permits commercial surrogacy, regularly enforces gestational surrogacy contracts, and makes it possible for all intended parents, regardless of marital status or sexual orientation, to establish their legal parentage prior to the birth and without adoption proceedings (pre-birth orders).


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Louisiana restricts surrogacy to married, heterosexual couples who are using their own gametes. Surrogacy via egg and/or sperm donation is prohibited. No compensation of the surrogate is allowed, prohibiting commercial surrogacy statewide. All parties must have been Louisiana residents for at least six months at the time of entering the surrogacy contract. The surrogacy must be considered medically necessary, and court approval prior to embryo transfer is required.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Michigan forbids absolutely all surrogacy agreements, compensated or not. It is a felony to enter into such an agreement, punishable by a fine of up to $50,000 and up to five years in prison. The law makes surrogacy agreements unenforceable.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Since 2014, New Hampshire is recognized as a surrogacy friendly state, with laws in place to protect all parties to a surrogacy arrangement. All intended parents, irrespective of marital status, sexual orientation, or a genetic connection to the child, are able to establish their legal parental rights through pre-birth orders placing their names directly on the child's initial birth certificate. Reasonable compensation to the surrogate is permitted by statute.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: As of February 15, 2021, New York law allows for compensated gestational surrogacy agreements and provides a simple path to establish legal parental rights for parents who rely on assisted reproductive technology to have children. The law, the Child-Parent Security Act, also created a first-in-the-nation "Surrogate's Bill of Rights" governing all of the surrogacy arrangements under its auspices.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: On 23 May 2019, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed into law HB2468, which legalizes and recognizes the validity of both compensated and uncompensated gestational surrogacy agreements. Under the bill, a comprehensive court procedure is created to validate all gestational agreements. The bill also allows a court to enter pre-birth orders establishing parentage prior to the birth of the child. The bill applies to gestational agreements entered into by single individuals, as well as heterosexual and homosexual couples, who wish to become parents.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Rhode Island permits gestational surrogacy, as cited in the Uniform Parentage Act, which took effect January 1, 2021. This act allows couples, married or unmarried, or individuals, homosexual or heterosexual, to use their own gametes or those of an egg and/or sperm donor to conceive a child via surrogacy. It also allows pre-birth orders, as long as at least one intended parent is a US resident.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Baby M: New Jersey 1988. The surrogate mother in a traditional surrogacy arrangement decided to keep the resulting child. The intended parents sued to have themselves recognized as the legal parents. The New Jersey Supreme Court found that the surrogacy contract was invalid as a matter of New Jersey public policy. However, the intended parents were given custody of the child because the courts thought they would provide a better home for the baby than the surrogate mother, who was instead given visitation rights.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Surrogacy for humanitarian purposes has been allowed in Vietnam from 2015 after the amended Family and Marriage Law passed with nearly 60% of votes from the National Assembly.


title: Surrogacy laws by country

text: Under the new law, surrogacy will only be allowed among married couples, who do not have any common child, after doctors confirm the wife can not give birth even with technical support. The surrogate must be a relative of either the husband or wife, and have already given birth successfully. A woman is only allowed to be a surrogate once in her life and must produce her husband's approval if she's married. The embryo must be created by the intended parents' sperm and ovum. The process must be voluntary and follow in-vitro fertilization regulations.


title: Early modern France

text: The Kingdom of France () in the early modern period, from the Renaissance ("circa" 1500–1550) to the Revolution (1789–1804), was a monarchy ruled by the House of Bourbon (a Capetian cadet branch). This corresponds to the so-called "Ancien Régime" ("old rule"). The territory of France during this period increased until it included essentially the extent of the modern country, and it also included the territories of the first French colonial empire overseas.


title: Early modern France

text: The period is dominated by the figure of the "Sun King", Louis XIV (his reign of 1643–1715 being one of the longest in history), who managed to eliminate the remnants of medieval feudalism and established a centralized state under an absolute monarch, a system that would endure until the French Revolution and beyond.


title: Early modern France

text: In the mid 15th century, France was significantly smaller than it is today, and numerous border provinces (such as Roussillon, Cerdagne, Calais, Béarn, Navarre, County of Foix, Flanders, Artois, Lorraine, Alsace, Trois-Évêchés, Franche-Comté, Savoy, Bresse, Bugey, Gex, Nice, Provence, Corsica and Brittany) were autonomous or foreign-held (as by the Kingdom of England); there were also foreign enclaves, like the Comtat Venaissin. In addition, certain provinces within France were ostensibly personal fiefdoms of noble families (like the Bourbonnais, Marche, Forez and Auvergne provinces held by the House of Bourbon until the provinces were forcibly integrated into the royal domaine in 1527 after the fall of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon).


title: Early modern France

text: The late 15th, 16th and 17th centuries would see France undergo a massive territorial expansion and an attempt to better integrate its provinces into an administrative whole. During this period, France expanded to nearly its modern territorial extent through the acquisition of Picardy, Burgundy, Anjou, Maine, Provence, Brittany, Franche-Comté, French Flanders, Navarre, Roussillon, the Duchy of Lorraine, Alsace and Corsica.


title: Early modern France

text: Only the Duchy of Savoy, the city of Nice and some other small papal (e.g., Avignon) and foreign possessions would be acquired later. (For a map of historic French provinces, see Provinces of France). France also embarked on exploration, colonisation, and mercantile exchanges with the Americas (New France, Louisiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, French Guiana), India (Pondicherry), the Indian Ocean (Réunion), the Far East, and a few African trading posts.


title: Early modern France

text: Although Paris was the capital of France, the later Valois kings largely abandoned the city as their primary residence, preferring instead various châteaux of the Loire Valley and Parisian countryside. Henry IV made Paris his primary residence (promoting a major building boom in private mansions), but Louis XIV once again withdrew from the city in the last decades of his reign and Versailles became the primary seat of the French monarchy for much of the following century.


title: Early modern France

text: The Black Death had killed an estimated one-third of the population of France from its appearance in 1348. The concurrent Hundred Years' War slowed recovery. It would be the early 16th century before the population recovered to mid-14th-century levels.


title: Early modern France

text: With an estimated population of 11 million in 1400, 20 million in the 17th century, and 28 million in 1789, until 1795 France was the most populated country in Europe (even ahead of Tsardom of Russia and twice the size of Britain or the Dutch Republic) and the third most populous country in the world, behind only China and India.


title: Early modern France

text: These demographic changes also led to a massive increase in urban populations, although on the whole France remained a profoundly rural country. Paris was one of the most populated cities in Europe (estimated at 400,000 inhabitants in 1550; 650,000 at the end of the 18th century). Other major French cities include Lyon, Rouen, Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Marseille.


title: Early modern France

text: These centuries saw several periods of epidemics and crop failures due to wars and climatic change. (Historians speak of the period 1550–1850 as the "Little Ice Age".) Between 1693 and 1694, France lost 6% of its population. In the extremely harsh winter of 1709, France lost 3.5% of its population. In the past 300 years, no period has been so proportionally deadly for the French, both World Wars included.


title: Early modern France

text: Linguistically, the differences in France were extreme. Before the Renaissance, the language spoken in the north of France was a collection of different dialects called Oïl languages whereas the written and administrative language remained Latin. By the 16th century, there had developed a standardised form of French (called Middle French) which would be the basis of the standardised "modern" French of the 17th and 18th century which in turn became the lingua franca of the European continent. (In 1539, with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, Francis I of France made French alone the language for legal and juridical acts.) Nevertheless, in 1790, only half of the population spoke or understood standard French.


title: Early modern France

text: The southern half of the country continued to speak Occitan languages (such as Provençal), and other inhabitants spoke Breton, Catalan, Basque, Dutch (West Flemish), and Franco-Provençal. In the north of France, regional dialects of the various langues d'oïl continued to be spoken in rural communities. During the French revolution, the teaching of French was promoted in all the schools. The French used would be that of the legal system, which differed from the French spoken in the courts of France before the revolution. Like the orators during the French revolution, the pronunciation of every syllable would become the new language.


title: Early modern France

text: The Ancien Régime, the French term rendered in English as "Old Rule", "Old Kingdom", or simply "Old Regime", refers primarily to the aristocratic, social and political system established in France from (roughly) the 15th century to the 18th century under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties. The administrative and social structures of the Ancien Régime were the result of years of state-building, legislative acts (like the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts), internal conflicts and civil wars, but they remained a confusing patchwork of local privilege and historic differences until the French Revolution took place in a radical time suppression of administrative incoherence.


title: Early modern France

text: After the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), support on the Lancastrian side in The Wars of the Roses and the Treaty of Picquigny (1475)—its official end date—in 1492 and 1493, after support in the Battle of Bosworth Field, Charles VIII of France signed three additional treaties with Henry VII of England, Maximilian I of Habsburg, and Ferdinand II of Aragon respectively at Étaples (1492), Senlis (1493) and in Barcelona (1493). As the 15th century drew to a close, French kings could take confidence in the fact that England had been mostly driven from their territory and so they could now embark on an expansionist foreign policy. The invasion of Italy by Charles VIII in 1494 began 62 years of war with the Habsburgs (the Italian Wars).


title: Early modern France

text: Despite the beginnings of rapid demographic and economic recovery after the Black Death of the 14th century, the gains of the previous half-century were to be jeopardised by a further protracted series of conflicts, the Italian Wars (1494–1559), where French efforts to gain dominance ended in the increased power of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors of Germany.


title: Early modern France

text: In 1445, the first steps were made towards fashioning a regular army out of the poorly disciplined mercenary bands that French kings traditionally relied on. The medieval division of society into "those who fought (nobility), those who prayed (clergy), and those who worked (everyone else)" still held strong and warfare was considered a domain of the nobles. Charles VIII marched into Italy with a core force consisting of noble horsemen and non-noble foot soldiers, but in time the role of the latter grew stronger so that by the middle of the 16th century, France had a standing army of 5000 cavalry and 30,000 infantry. The military was reorganized from a system of legions recruited by province (Norman legion, Gascon legion, etc.) to regiments, an arrangement which persisted into the next century. However, the nobility and troops were often disloyal to the king, if not outright rebellious, and it took another army reform by Louis XIV to finally transform the French army into an obedient force.


title: Early modern France

text: Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, seeking an ally against the Republic of Venice, encouraged Charles VIII of France to invade Italy, using the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples, then under Aragonese control, as a pretext. When Ferdinand I of Naples died in 1494, Charles invaded the peninsula. For several months, French forces moved through Italy virtually unopposed, since the "condottieri" armies of the Italian city-states were unable to resist them. Their sack of Naples finally provoked a reaction, however, and the League of Venice was formed against them. Italian troops defeated the French at the Battle of Fornovo, forcing Charles to withdraw to France. Ludovico, having betrayed the French at Fornovo, retained his throne until 1499, when Charles's successor, Louis XII of France, invaded Lombardy and seized Milan.


title: Early modern France

text: In 1500, Louis XII, having reached an agreement with Ferdinand II of Aragon to divide Naples, marched south from Milan. By 1502, combined French and Aragonese forces had seized control of the Kingdom; disagreements about the terms of the partition led to a war between Louis and Ferdinand. By 1503, Louis, having been defeated at the Battle of Cerignola and Battle of Garigliano, was forced to withdraw from Naples, which was left under the control of the Spanish viceroy, Ramón de Cardona. French forces under Gaston de Foix inflicted an overwhelming defeat on a Spanish army at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512, but Foix was killed during the battle, and the French were forced to withdraw from Italy by an invasion of Milan by the Swiss, who reinstated Maximilian Sforza to the ducal throne. The Holy League, left victorious, fell apart over the subject of dividing the spoils, and in 1513 Venice allied with France, agreeing to partition Lombardy between them.


title: Early modern France

text: Louis mounted another invasion of Milan, but was defeated at the Battle of Novara, which was quickly followed by a series of Holy League victories at La Motta, Guinegate, and Flodden, in which the French, Venetian, and Scottish forces were decisively defeated. However, the death of Pope Julius left the League without effective leadership, and when Louis' successor, Francis I, defeated the Swiss at Marignano in 1515, the League collapsed, and by the treaties of Noyon and Brussels, surrendered to France and Venice the entirety of northern Italy.


title: Early modern France

text: The elevation of Charles of Spain to Holy Roman Emperor, a position that Francis had desired, led to a collapse of relations between France and the Habsburgs. In 1519, a Spanish invasion of Navarre, nominally a French fief, provided Francis with a pretext for starting a general war; French forces flooded into Italy and began a campaign to drive Charles from Naples. The French were outmatched, however, by the fully developed Spanish tercio tactics, and suffered a series of crippling defeats at Bicocca and Sesia against Spanish troops under Fernando d'Avalos. With Milan itself threatened, Francis personally led a French army into Lombardy in 1525, only to be defeated and captured at the Battle of Pavia; imprisoned in Madrid, Francis was forced to agree to extensive concessions over his Italian territories in the "Treaty of Madrid" (1526).


title: Early modern France

text: The inconclusive third war between Charles and Francis began with the death of Francesco II Sforza, the duke of Milan. When Charles' son Philip inherited the duchy, Francis invaded Italy, capturing Turin, but failed to take Milan. In response, Charles invaded Provence, advancing to Aix-en-Provence, but withdrew to Spain rather than attacking the heavily fortified Avignon. The Truce of Nice ended the war, leaving Turin in French hands but effecting no significant change in the map of Italy. Francis, allying himself with Suleiman I of the Ottoman Empire, launched a final invasion of Italy. A Franco-Ottoman fleet captured the city of Nice in August 1543, and laid siege to the citadel. The defenders were relieved within a month. The French, under François, Count d'Enghien, defeated an Imperial army at the Battle of Ceresole in 1544, but the French failed to penetrate further into Lombardy. Charles and Henry VIII of England then proceeded to invade northern France, seizing Boulogne and Soissons. A lack of cooperation between the Spanish and English armies, coupled with increasingly aggressive Ottoman attacks, led Charles to abandon these conquests, restoring the status quo once again.


title: Early modern France

text: In 1547, Henry II of France, who had succeeded Francis to the throne, declared war against Charles with the intent of recapturing Italy and ensuring French, rather than Habsburg, domination of European affairs. An early offensive against Lorraine was successful, but the attempted French invasion of Tuscany in 1553 was defeated at the Battle of Marciano. Charles's abdication in 1556 split the Habsburg empire between Philip II of Spain and Ferdinand I, and shifted the focus of the war to Flanders, where Philip, in conjunction with Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, defeated the French at St. Quentin. England's entry into the war later that year led to the French capture of Calais, England's last possession on the French mainland, and French armies plundered Spanish possessions in the Low Countries; but Henry was nonetheless forced to accept the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, in which he renounced any further claims to Italy.


title: Early modern France

text: Barely were the Italian Wars over, when France was plunged into a domestic crisis with far-reaching consequences. Despite the conclusion of a Concordat between France and the Papacy (1516), granting the crown unrivalled power in senior ecclesiastical appointments, France was deeply affected by the Protestant Reformation's attempt to break the unity of Roman Catholic Europe. A growing urban-based Protestant minority (later dubbed "Huguenots") faced ever harsher repression under the rule of Francis I's son King Henry II. After Henry II's unfortunate death in a joust, the country was ruled by his widow Catherine de' Medici and her sons Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III. Renewed Catholic reaction headed by the powerful dukes of Guise culminated in a massacre of Huguenots (1562), starting the first of the French Wars of Religion, during which English, German, and Spanish forces intervened on the side of rival Protestant and Catholic forces. Opposed to absolute monarchy, the Huguenots Monarchomachs theorized during this time the right of rebellion and the legitimacy of tyrannicide.


title: Early modern France

text: The Wars of Religion culminated in the War of the Three Henrys in which Henry III assassinated Henry de Guise, leader of the Spanish-backed Catholic league, and the king was murdered in return. After the assassination of both Henry of Guise (1588) and Henry III (1589), the conflict was ended by the accession of the Protestant king of Navarre as Henry IV (first king of the Bourbon dynasty) and his subsequent abandonment of Protestantism (Expedient of 1592) effective in 1593, his acceptance by most of the Catholic establishment (1594) and by the Pope (1595), and his issue of the toleration decree known as the Edict of Nantes (1598), which guaranteed freedom of private worship and civil equality.


title: Early modern France

text: France's pacification under Henry IV laid much of the ground for the beginnings of France's rise to European hegemony. One of the most admired French kings, Henry was fatally stabbed by a Catholic fanatic in 1610 as war with Spain threatened. Troubles gradually developed during the regency headed by his queen Marie de Medici. France was expansive during all but the end of the 17th century: the French began trading in India and Madagascar, founded Quebec and penetrated the North American Great Lakes and Mississippi, established plantation economies in the West Indies and extended their trade contacts in the Levant and enlarged their merchant marine.


title: Early modern France

text: Henry IV's son Louis XIII and his minister (1624–1642) Cardinal Richelieu, elaborated a policy against Spain and the German emperor during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) which had broken out among the lands of Germany's Holy Roman Empire. An English-backed Huguenot rebellion (1625–1628) defeated, France intervened directly (1635) in the wider European conflict following her ally (Protestant) Sweden's failure to build upon initial success.


title: Early modern France

text: After the death of both king and cardinal, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) secured universal acceptance of Germany's political and religious fragmentation, but the Regency of Anne of Austria and her minister Cardinal Mazarin experienced a civil uprising known as the Fronde (1648–1653) which expanded into a Franco-Spanish War (1653–1659). The Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) formalised France's seizure (1642) of the Spanish territory of Roussillon after the crushing of the ephemeral Catalan Republic and ushered a short period of peace.


title: Early modern France

text: For most of the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), France was the dominant power in Europe, aided by the diplomacy of Richelieu's successor (1642–1661) Cardinal Mazarin and the economic policies (1661–1683) of Colbert. Colbert's attempts to promote economic growth and the creation of new industries were not a great success, and France did not undergo any sort of industrial revolution during Louis XIV's reign. Indeed, much of the French countryside during this period remained poor and overpopulated. The resistance of peasants to adopt the potato, according to some monarchist apologists, and other new agricultural innovations while continuing to rely on cereal crops led to repeated catastrophic famines long after they had ceased in the rest of Western Europe. Prior to Louis XIV's reign, French soldiers frequently went into battle barefoot and with no weapons. On the other hand, France's high birthrate until the 18th century proved beneficial to its rulers since it meant the country could field larger armies than its neighbors. In fact, the king's foreign policy, as well as his lavish court and construction projects, left the country in enormous debt. The Palace of Versailles was criticized as overly extravagant even while it was still under construction, but dozens of imitations were built across Europe. Renewed war (the War of Devolution 1667–1668 and the Franco-Dutch War 1672–1678) brought further territorial gains (Artois and western Flanders and the free county of Burgundy, left to the Empire in 1482), but at the cost of the increasingly concerted opposition of rival powers.


title: Early modern France

text: French culture was part of French hegemony. In the early part of the century French painters had to go to Rome to shed their provinciality (Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain), but Simon Vouet brought home the taste for a classicized baroque that would characterise the French Baroque, epitomised in the Académie de peinture et de sculpture, in the painting of Charles Le Brun and the sculpture of François Girardon. With the Palais du Luxembourg, the Château de Maisons and Vaux-le-Vicomte, French classical architecture was admired abroad even before the creation of Versailles or Perrault's Louvre colonnade. Parisian salon culture set standards of discriminating taste from the 1630s, and with Pascal, Descartes, Bayle, Corneille, Racine and Molière, France became the cultural center of Europe. In an effort to prevent the nobility from revolting and challenging his authority, Louis implemented an extremely elaborate system of court etiquette with the idea that learning it would occupy most of the nobles' time and they could not plan rebellion. By the start of the 18th century, the nobility in France had been effectively neutered and would never again have more power than the crown. Also, Louis willingly granted titles of nobility to those who had performed distinguished service to the state so that it did not become a closed caste and it was possible for commoners to rise through the social ranks. The king sought to impose total religious uniformity on the country, repealing the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The infamous practice of dragonnades was adopted, whereby rough soldiers were quartered in the homes of Protestant families and allowed to have their way with them. Scores of Protestants fled France, costing the country a great many intellectuals, artisans, and other valuable people. Persecution extended to unorthodox Catholics like the Jansenists, a group that denied free will and had already been condemned by the popes. Louis was no theologian and understood little of the complex doctrines of Jansenism, satisfying himself with the fact that they threatened the unity of the state. In this, he garnered the friendship of the papacy, which had previously been hostile to France because of its policy of putting all church property in the country under the jurisdiction of the state rather than of Rome.


title: Early modern France

text: Cardinal Mazarin oversaw the creation of a French navy that rivaled England's, expanding it from 25 ships to almost 200. The size of the army was also considerably increased.


title: Early modern France

text: Starting in the 1670s, Louis XIV established the so-called Chambers of Reunion, courts in which judges would determine whether certain Habsburg territories belonged rightfully to France. The king was relying on the somewhat vague wording in the Treaty of Westphalia, while also dredging up older French claims, some dating back to medieval times. Through this, he concluded that the strategically important imperial city of Strassburg should have gone to France in 1648. In September 1681, French troops occupied the city, which was at once strongly fortified. As the imperial armies were then busy fighting the Ottoman Empire, they could not do anything about this for a number of years. The basic aim of Louis' foreign policy was to give France more easily defensible borders, and to eliminate weak spots (Strassburg had often been used by the Habsburgs as a gateway into France).


title: Early modern France

text: Following the Whig establishment on the English and Scottish thrones by the Dutch prince William of Orange in 1688, the anti-French "Grand Alliance" of 1689 was established. With the Turks now in retreat, the emperor Leopold could turn his attention to France. The ensuing War of the Grand Alliance lasted from 1688–1697. France's resources were stretched to the breaking point by the cost of fielding an army of over 300,000 men and two naval squadrons. Famine in 1692–1693 killed up to two million people. The exhaustion of the powers brought the fighting to an end in 1697, by which time the French were in control of the Spanish Netherlands and Catalonia. However, Louis gave back his conquests and gained only Haiti. The French people, feeling that their sacrifices in the war had been for nothing, never forgave him.


title: Early modern France

text: The Battle of La Hougue (1692) was the decisive naval battle in the war and confirmed the durable dominance of the Royal Navy of England.


title: Early modern France

text: In November 1700, the severely ill Spanish king Charles II died, ending the Habsburg line in that country. Louis had long waited for this moment, and now planned to put a Bourbon relative, Philip, Duke of Anjou, on the throne. Essentially, Spain was to become an obedient satellite of France, ruled by a king who would carry out orders from Versailles. Realizing how this would upset the balance of power, the other European rulers were outraged. However, most of the alternatives were equally undesirable. For example, putting another Habsburg on the throne would end up recreating the empire of Charles V, which would also grossly upset the power balance. After nine years of exhausting war, the last thing Louis wanted was another conflict. However, the rest of Europe would not stand for his ambitions in Spain, and so the War of the Spanish Succession began, a mere three years after the War of the Grand Alliance.


title: Early modern France

text: The disasters of the war (accompanied by another famine) were so great that France was on the verge of collapse by 1709. In desperation, the king appealed to the French people to save their country, and in doing so gained thousands of new army recruits. Afterwards, his general Marshal Villars managed to drive back the allied forces. In 1714, the war ended with the treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt. France did not lose any territory, and there was no discussion of returning Flanders or Alsace to the Habsburgs. While the Duke of Anjou was accepted as King Philip V of Spain, this was done under the condition that the French and Spanish thrones never be united. Finally, France agreed to stop supporting Jacobite pretenders to the English throne. Just after the war ended, Louis died, having ruled France for 72 years.


title: Early modern France

text: While often considered a tyrant and a warmonger (especially in England), Louis XIV was not in any way a despot in the 20th-century sense. The traditional customs and institutions of France limited his power and in any case, communications were poor and no national police force existed.


title: Early modern France

text: Overall, the discontent and revolts of 16th- and 17th-century France did not approach the conditions that led to 1789. Events such as the Frondes were a naïve, unrevolutionary discontent and the people did not challenge the right of the king to govern nor did they question the Church.


title: Early modern France

text: The reign (1715–1774) of Louis XV saw an initial return to peace and prosperity under the regency (1715–1723) of Philip II, Duke of Orléans, whose policies were largely continued (1726–1743) by Cardinal Fleury, prime minister in all but name. The exhaustion of Europe after two major wars resulted in a long period of peace, only interrupted by minor conflicts like the War of the Polish Succession from 1733–1735. Large-scale warfare resumed with the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). But alliance with the traditional Habsburg enemy (the "Diplomatic Revolution" of 1756) against the rising power of Britain and Prussia led to costly failure in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) and the loss of France's North American colonies.


title: Early modern France

text: On the whole, the 18th century saw growing discontent with the monarchy and the established order. Louis XV was a highly unpopular king for his sexual excesses, overall weakness, and for losing Canada to the British. A strong ruler like Louis XIV could enhance the position of the monarchy, while Louis XV weakened it. The writings of the philosophers such as Voltaire were a clear sign of discontent, but the king chose to ignore them. He died of smallpox in 1774, and the French people shed few tears at his passing. While France had not yet experienced the industrial revolution that was beginning in England, the rising middle class of the cities felt increasingly frustrated with a system and rulers that seemed silly, frivolous, aloof, and antiquated, even if true feudalism no longer existed in France.


title: Early modern France

text: Anti-establishment ideas fermented in 18th-century France in part due to the country's relative egalitarianism. While less liberal than England during the same period, the French monarchy never approached the absolutism of the eastern rulers in Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Constantinople in part because the country's traditional development as a decentralized, feudal society acted as a restraint on the power of the king. Different social classes in France each had their own unique set of privileges so that no one class could completely dominate the others.


title: Early modern France

text: Upon Louis XV's death, his grandson Louis XVI became king. Initially popular, he too came to be widely detested by the 1780s. Again a weak ruler, he was married to an Austrian archduchess, Marie Antoinette, whose naïvety and cloistered/alienated Versailles life permitted ignorance of the true extravagance and wasteful use of borrowed money (Marie Antoinette was significantly more frugal than her predecessors). French intervention in the US War of Independence was also very expensive.


title: Early modern France

text: With the country deeply in debt, Louis XVI permitted the radical reforms of Turgot and Malesherbes, but noble disaffection led to Turgot's dismissal and Malesherbes' resignation in 1776. They were replaced by Jacques Necker. Necker had resigned in 1781 to be replaced by Calonne and Brienne, before being restored in 1788. A harsh winter that year led to widespread food shortages, and by then France was a powder keg ready to explode.


title: Early modern France

text: On the eve of the French Revolution of 1789, France was in a profound institutional and financial crisis, but the ideas of the Enlightenment had begun to permeate the educated classes of society.


title: Early modern France

text: On 1792 September 21 the French monarchy was effectively abolished by the proclamation of the French First Republic.


title: Early modern France

text: "After Charles VIII the Affable, the last king in the direct Valois line, three other branches of the House of Capet reigned in France until the fall of the Ancien Régime in 1792:"


title: Early modern France

text: France in the Ancien Régime covered a territory of around , and supported 22 million people in 1700. At least 96% of the population were peasants. France had the largest population in Europe, with European Russia second at 20 million. Britain had nearly six million, Spain had eight million, and the Austrian Habsburgs had around eight million. France's lead slowly faded after 1700, as other countries grew faster.


title: Early modern France

text: In the 17th century rich peasants who had ties to the market economy provided much of the capital investment necessary for agricultural growth, and frequently moved from village to village (or town). Geographic mobility, directly tied to the market and the need for investment capital, was the main path to social mobility. The "stable" core of French society, town guilds people and village laboureurs, included cases of staggering social and geographic continuity, but even this core required regular renewal. Accepting the existence of these two societies, the constant tension between them, and extensive geographic and social mobility tied to a market economy holds the key to a clearer understanding of the evolution of the social structure, economy, and even political system of early modern France. Collins (1991) argues that the Annales School paradigm underestimated the role of the market economy; failed to explain the nature of capital investment in the rural economy; and grossly exaggerated social stability.


title: Early modern France

text: Very few women held any power—some queens did, as did the heads of Catholic convents. In the Enlightenment, the writings of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau gave a political program for reform of the Ancien Régime, founded on a reform of domestic mores. Rousseau's conception of the relations between private and public spheres is more unified than that found in modern sociology. Rousseau argued that the domestic role of women is a structural precondition for a "modern" society. Within early modern society, women of urban artisanal classes participated in a range of public activities and also shared work settings with men (even though they were generally disadvantaged in terms of tasks, wages and access to property.)


title: Early modern France

text: Salic law prohibited women from rule; however, the laws for the case of a regency, when the king was too young to govern by himself, brought the queen into the center of power. The queen could assure the passage of power from one king to another—from her late husband to her young son—while simultaneously assuring the continuity of the dynasty.


title: Early modern France

text: Educational aspirations were on the rise and were becoming increasingly institutionalized in order to supply the church and state with the functionaries to serve as their future administrators. Girls were schooled too, but not to assume political responsibility. Girls were ineligible for leadership positions and were generally considered to have an inferior intellect to their brothers. France had many small local schools where working-class children—both boys and girls—learned to read, the better "to know, love and serve God". The sons and daughters of the noble and bourgeois elites, however, were given quite distinct educations: boys were sent to upper school, perhaps a university, while their sisters (if they were lucky enough to leave the house) were sent for finishing at a convent. The Enlightenment challenged this model, but no real alternative presented itself for female education. Only through education at home were knowledgeable women formed, usually to the sole end of dazzling their salons.


title: Early modern France

text: A large proportion of children lived in broken homes or in blended families and had to cope with the presence of half-siblings and stepsiblings in the same residence. Brothers and sisters were often separated during the guardianship period and some of them were raised in different places for most of their childhood. Half-siblings and stepsiblings lived together for rather short periods of time because of their difference in age, their birth rank, or their gender. The lives of the children were closely linked to the administration of their heritage: when both their mothers and fathers were dead, another relative took charge of the guardianship and often removed the children from a stepparent's home, thus separating half-siblings.


title: Early modern France

text: The experience of step-motherhood was surrounded by negative stereotypes; the Cinderella story and many other jokes and stories made the second wife an object of ridicule. Language, theater, popular sayings, the position of the Church, and the writings of jurists all made stepmother a difficult identity to take up. However, the importance of male remarriage suggests that reconstitution of family units was a necessity and that individuals resisted negative perceptions circulating through their communities. Widowers did not hesitate to take a second wife, and they usually found quite soon a partner willing to become a stepmother. For these women, being a stepmother was not necessarily the experience of a lifetime or what defined their identity. Their experience depended greatly on factors such as the length of the union, changing family configuration, and financial dispositions taken by their husbands.


title: Early modern France

text: By a policy adopted at the beginning of the 16th century, adulterous women during the ancien régime were sentenced to a lifetime in a convent unless pardoned by their husbands and were rarely allowed to remarry even if widowed.


title: Early modern France

text: Prior to the French Revolution, the Catholic Church was the official state religion of the Kingdom of France. France was traditionally considered the Church's eldest daughter (French: "Fille aînée de l'Église"), and the King of France always maintained close links to the Pope. However, the French monarchy maintained a significant degree of autonomy, namely through its policy of "Gallicanism", whereby the king selected bishops rather than the papacy.


title: Early modern France

text: During the Protestant Reformation of the mid 16th century, France developed a large and influential Protestant population, primarily of Reformed confession; after French theologian and pastor John Calvin introduced the Reformation in France, the number of French Protestants (Huguenots) steadily swelled to 10 percent of the population, or roughly 1.8 million people. The ensuring French Wars of Religion, and particularly the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, decimated the Huguenot community; Protestants declined to seven to eight percent of the kingdom's population by the end of the 16th century. The Edict of Nantes brought decades of respite until its revocation in the late 17th century by Louis XIV. The resulting exodus of Huguenots from the Kingdom of France created a brain drain, as many of them had occupied important places in society.


The 2020 United States presidential election in South Carolina was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. South Carolina voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump, and running mate Vice President Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his running mate California Senator Kamala Harris. South Carolina has nine electoral votes in the Electoral College.


title: 2020 United States presidential election in South Carolina

text: Trump carried South Carolina by a margin of 11.68%, down from his 14.27% margin four years earlier. Prior to this election, all 12 news organizations considered this a state Trump would win, or a red state. Biden became the first Democrat to win the presidency without Chester and Dillon Counties since Harry Truman in 1948, when the state's governor, Strom Thurmond, carried all but two of the state's counties as the Dixiecrat nominee. As well as the first Democrat to win without Clarendon County since 1964.


text: On September 7, 2019, the South Carolina Republican Party became one of several state GOP affiliates to cancel their respective primaries and caucuses officially. Donald Trump's re-election campaign and GOP officials have cited the fact that Republicans canceled several state primaries when George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush sought second terms in 1992 and 2004, respectively, and Democrats scrapped some of their primaries when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were seeking re-election in 1996 and 2012, respectively.


text: In response to the cancellation, former U.S. Representative Bob Inglis and another South Carolina Republican voter filed a lawsuit against the South Carolina Republican Party on grounds that it denied their right to vote. On December 11, 2019, a state court judge dismissed the lawsuit, writing in his opinion that the law "does not give plaintiffs a legal right to presidential preference primary". Thus at the South Carolina State Republican Convention in May 2020, the state party will formally bind all 50 of its national pledged delegates to Trump.


text: South Carolina—a Deep Southern Bible Belt state that was once part of the Democratic Solid South—has had a Republican tendency since 1964. Since its narrow vote for Kennedy in 1960, it has voted Democratic only in 1976, for Jimmy Carter, the former governor of the neighboring state of Georgia. Accordingly, it has long been the most conservative state on the East Coast of the United States, although it has not been as conservative as its fellow Deep South states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, largely due to populous and fast-growing Charleston and Richland Counties' trending more Democratic in the 21st century. As in the case of other Deep Southern states, South Carolina also has a large African-American population that helps keep the state somewhat more competitive than much of the Upper South. (The final state in the Deep South, Georgia, has become much more competitive than any of its fellow Deep South states in recent years due to the explosive growth of the Atlanta area.)


text: Trump performed somewhat better than polls anticipated, as aggregate polls averaged him only 7 points ahead of Biden. He flipped Clarendon County for the first time since 1972 and Dillon County for the first time since 1988. Biden became the first Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 to win the presidency without Clarendon County and the first Democrat since Harry S. Truman to win without Dillon County.


text: Per exit polls by the Associated Press, Trump's strength in the Palmetto State came from White, born-again/Evangelical Christians, who supported Trump by 87%–9%. South Carolina is entirely in the Bible Belt. As is the case in many Southern states, there was a stark racial divide in voting for this election: White South Carolinians supported Trump by 69%–29%, while Black South Carolinians supported Biden by 92%–7%.


text: In other elections, longtime Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham won another term in the United States Senate by 10.27 percentage points over Democrat Jaime Harrison. While Harrison lost by a double-digit margin, he still slightly outperformed Biden.


text: This is the first time since 1992 that South Carolina and Georgia did not vote for the same presidential candidate—in 1992, Georgia voted for the victorious Democratic Party challenger, Bill Clinton, while South Carolina voted to re-elect the Republican president, George H. W. Bush.


text: South Carolina was the only East Coast state in 2020 to vote Republican by a double-digit margin. This was the first time that both main party candidates won more than one million votes in a statewide election in South Carolina, alongside the concurrent Senate election.


title: Single transverse palmar crease

text: In humans, a single transverse palmar crease is a single crease that extends across the palm of the hand, formed by the fusion of the two palmar creases (known in palmistry as the "heart line" and the "head line"). Although it is found more frequently in persons with several abnormal medical conditions, it is not predictive of any of these conditions since it is also found in perfectly healthy persons. It is found in 1.5% of the world population in at least one hand.


title: Single transverse palmar crease

text: Because it resembles the usual condition of non-human simians, it was, in the past, called the simian crease or simian line. These terms have widely fallen out of favor due to their pejorative connotation.


title: Single transverse palmar crease

text: The presence of a single transverse palmar crease has no medical significance. It is found in 1.5% of all people, and though it is found at a higher frequency in people with abnormal medical conditions, in every one of these conditions many people do not have a single transverse palmer crease, thus it has low predictive value.


title: Single transverse palmar crease

text: Males are twice as likely as females to have this characteristic, and it tends to run in families. In its non-symptomatic form, it is more common among Asians and Native Americans than among other populations, and in some families there is a tendency to inherit the condition unilaterally; that is, on one hand only.


title: Single transverse palmar crease

text: While it is often found in people with Down Syndrome, many who have this syndrome do not have this crease, and thus is not a diagnostic indicator of the Down Syndrome.


title: Single transverse palmar crease

text: The presence of a single transverse palmar has been associated with a number of abnormal medical conditions — that is, it is found at a higher than 1.5% frequency, but in all of these conditions many do not have this crease. Examples of conditions with such an association are fetal alcohol syndrome, and with the genetic chromosomal abnormalities Down syndrome (chromosome 21), cri du chat syndrome (chromosome 5), Klinefelter syndrome, Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome, Noonan syndrome (chromosome 12), Patau syndrome (chromosome 13), IDIC 15/Dup15q (chromosome 15), Edward's syndrome (chromosome 18), and Aarskog-Scott syndrome (X-linked recessive), or autosomal recessive disorder, such as Leukocyte adhesion deficiency-2 (LAD2). A unilateral single palmar crease was also reported in a case of chromosome 9 mutation causing Nevoid basal cell carcinoma syndrome and Robinow syndrome. It is also sometimes found on the hand of the affected side of patients with Poland syndrome, and craniosynostosis.


title: Single transverse palmar crease

text: A 1971 study refutes the hypothesis that the phenomenon is caused by fetal hand movement: the appearance of the crease occurs around the second month of gestation, before the digital movement phase in the womb begins.


title: 2014 Maharashtra Legislative Assembly election

text: The Indian state of Maharashtra has a bicameral legislature, comprising two houses. The lower house, known as the Legislative Assembly ("Vidhan Sabha" in Marathi), is directly elected by the people and is the more powerful of the two houses. The upper house, known as the Legislative Council ("Vidhan Parishad" in Marathi) is elected indirectly by several specially designated electorates.


text: The Legislative Assembly has a tenure of five years, at most, and it may be dissolved before time in case the government falls for lack of majority, and nobody else can cobble up a majority. The Assembly has a strength of 288 seats, each seat being a geographical constituency. This page is devoted to the assembly elections which were held in 2014.


text: The term of the Legislative Assembly of Maharashtra was due to expire on 8 November 2014. By virtue of its powers, duties and functions under Article 324 read with Article 172(1) of the Constitution of India and Section 15 of Representation of the People Act, 1951, the Election Commission of India is required to hold elections to constitute the new Legislative Assembly in the State of Maharashtra during a window of time which is: between six months before and six months after the date of expiry. Elections are almost invariably held before the expiry of the term, rather than afterwards.


text: The Model Code of Conduct comes into effect the day that the election commission announces the schedule of elections. This happened on 12 September 2014. The required Gazette Notification was issued on 20 September 2014. The legislative assembly election was held on 15 October 2014, in a single phase, to select the 288 members of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in India. The result was announced on 19 October, with the BJP getting a plurality. The term of the current 13th Legislative Assembly is to end on November 9, 2019, as the first meeting of the new house was held on November 10, 2014.


text: Following the 2009 Maharashtra State Assembly election, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)—Indian National Congress (INC) alliance won a majority and formed the government.


text: Following the NCP-INC alliance's performance in the 2014 Indian general election, the NCP demanded 144 seats to contest and a rotation of the Chief Minister's post between parties. Both parties held negotiations but failed to reach a conclusion. The INC declared its list of candidates for 118 seats on 25 September without consulting the NCP. Thus, the NCP unilaterally severed its 15-year-old alliance with the INC. The INC later reached out to the Samajwadi Party (SP) to form an alliance.


text: The Shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) were alliance partners for 25-years - including several smaller parties, such as Republican Party of India (Athavale), Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatna, Rashtriya Samaj Paksha, were also a part. After the general election, the BJP demanded additional seats to contest; initially they requested 144 seats but later reduced their demand to 130 seats. The Shiv Sena offered 119 seats to the BJP and 18 seats to four other allies, keeping 151 to contest itself. After several rounds of negotiations, the parties did not reach a conclusion. Thus the Shiv Sena - BJP alliance ended on the 25 September as well after 25 years of togetherness.


text: The incumbent Indian National Congress started its campaign on 1 September at Hutatma Chowk, Mumbai. Prithviraj Chavan, the incumbent Chief Minister led the campaign with Narayan Rane heading the Campaign Committee. The party's advertising campaign began on 20 September.


text: The Nationalist Congress Party began its campaign in Kolhapur on 16 September with national party President Sharad Pawar, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, Maharashtra party President Sunil Tatkare and MP from Kolhapur Dhananjay Mahadik attending the rally.


text: Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in South Mumbai's Mahalaxmi Racecourse after his return from the U.S. for the sixty-ninth session of the United Nations General Assembly.


text: Shiv Sena started its campaign at Mahalaxmi Racecourse in Mumbai on 27 September, where party leader Uddhav Thackeray addressed its supporters.


text: A total of 3255 candidates contested the election.voter turnout was 64%. Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) along with EVMs was used in 13 constituencies: Wardha, Amravati (2 pockets), Yavatmal, Chandrapur, Nashik (3 pockets), Aurangabad (3 pockets) and Ahmednagar (2 pockets).


text: With the BJP having won a plurality, the NCP offered outside support to the BJP, according to Praful Patel. The NCP offer was read as putting the Shiv Sena under pressure by saying it gave the BJP "mega-clout" in negotiations with the Shiv Sena. Amit Shah did not turn down the offer saying that the party's parliamentary board, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi would discuss options. Other unnamed BJP members said the Shiv Sena was "a natural fit" with the party. Other unnamed BJP members said they expected the Shiv Sena to seek the post of deputy chief minister as well as more ministers in the national government. Unnamed Shiv Sena spokespeople told "NDTV" that, as potential kingmaker, Uddhav Thackeray would decide the next steps "in Maharashtra's best interest." Finally, BJP and Shiv Sena agreed to come together and form the government.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The Tariff Act of 1930 (codified at ), commonly known as the Smoot–Hawley Tariff or Hawley–Smoot Tariff, was a law that implemented protectionist trade policies in the United States. Sponsored by Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis C. Hawley, it was signed by President Herbert Hoover on June 17, 1930. The act raised US tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The tariffs under the act, excluding duty-free imports (see Tariff levels below), were the second highest in United States history, exceeded by only the Tariff of 1828. The Act prompted retaliatory tariffs by affected states against the United States. The Act and tariffs imposed by America's trading partners in retaliation were major factors of the reduction of American exports and imports by 67% during the Depression. Economists and economic historians have a consensus view that the passage of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff worsened the effects of the Great Depression.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The League of Nations' World Economic Conference met at Geneva in 1927, concluding in its final report: "the time has come to put an end to tariffs, and to move in the opposite direction." Vast debts and reparations could be repaid only through gold, services, or goods, but the only items available on that scale were goods. However, many of the delegates' governments did the opposite; in 1928, France was the first by passing a new tariff law and quota system.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: By the late 1920s, the US economy had made exceptional gains in productivity because of electrification, which was a critical factor in mass production. Another contributing factor to economic growth was motorcars, trucks, and tractors replacing horses and mules. One sixth to one quarter of farmland, which had been devoted to feeding horses and mules, was freed up, contributing to a surplus in farm produce. Although nominal and real wages had increased, they did not keep up with the productivity gains. As a result, the ability to produce exceeded market demand, a condition that was variously termed overproduction and underconsumption.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Senator Smoot contended that raising the tariff on imports would alleviate the overproduction problem, but the United States had actually been running a trade account surplus, and although manufactured goods imports were rising, manufactured exports were rising even faster. Food exports had been falling and were in trade account deficit, but the value of food imports were a little over half of the value of manufactured imports.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: As the global economy entered the first stages of the Great Depression in late 1929, the main goal of the US was to protect its jobs and farmers from foreign competition. Smoot championed another tariff increase within the United States in 1929, which became the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Bill. In his memoirs, Smoot made it abundantly clear:The world is paying for its ruthless destruction of life and property in the World War and for its failure to adjust purchasing power to productive capacity during the industrial revolution of the decade following the war.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Smoot was a Republican from Utah and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Willis C. Hawley, a Republican from Oregon, was chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: During the 1928 presidential election, one of Herbert Hoover's promises was to help beleaguered farmers by increasing tariffs on agricultural products. Hoover won, and Republicans maintained comfortable majorities in the House and the Senate during 1928. Hoover then asked Congress for an increase of tariff rates for agricultural goods and a decrease of rates for industrial goods.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The House passed a version of the act in May 1929, increasing tariffs on agricultural and industrial goods alike. The House bill passed on a vote of 264 to 147, with 244 Republicans and 20 Democrats voting in favor of the bill.<ref name="irwin/1996"></ref> The Senate debated its bill until March 1930, with many members trading votes based on their states' industries. The Senate bill passed on a vote of 44 to 42, with 39 Republicans and 5 Democrats voting in favor of the bill. The conference committee then unified the two versions, largely by raising tariffs to the higher levels passed by the House. The House passed the conference bill on a vote of 222 to 153, with the support of 208 Republicans and 14 Democrats.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: In May 1930, a petition was signed by 1,028 economists in the United States asking President Hoover to veto the legislation, organized by Paul Douglas, Irving Fisher, James T.F.G. Wood, Frank Graham, Ernest Patterson, Henry Seager, Frank Taussig, and Clair Wilcox. Automobile executive Henry Ford also spent an evening at the White House trying to convince Hoover to veto the bill, calling it "an economic stupidity", while J. P. Morgan's Chief Executive Thomas W. Lamont said he "almost went down on [his] knees to beg Herbert Hoover to veto the asinine Hawley–Smoot tariff".


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: While Hoover joined the economists in opposing the bill, calling it "vicious, extortionate, and obnoxious" because he felt it would undermine the commitment he had pledged to international cooperation, he eventually signed the bill after he yielded to influence from his own party, his Cabinet (who had threatened to resign), and business leaders.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: In retaliation, Canada and other countries raised their own tariffs on American goods after the bill had become law.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Most of the decline in trade was due to a plunge in GDP in the US and worldwide. However beyond that was additional decline. Some countries protested and others also retaliated with trade restrictions and tariffs. American exports to the protesters fell 18% and exports to those who retaliated fell 31%.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Threats of retaliation by other countries began long before the bill was enacted into law in June 1930. As the House of Representatives passed it in May 1929, boycotts broke out, and foreign governments moved to increase rates against American products, although rates could be increased or decreased by the Senate or by the conference committee. By September 1929, Hoover's administration had received protest notes from 23 trading partners, but the threats of retaliatory actions were ignored.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: In May 1930, Canada, the country's most loyal trading partner, retaliated by imposing new tariffs on 16 products that accounted altogether for around 30% of US exports to Canada. Canada later also forged closer economic links with the British Empire via the British Empire Economic Conference of 1932, while France and Britain protested and developed new trade partners, and Germany developed a system of trade via clearing.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The depression worsened for workers and farmers despite Smoot and Hawley's promises of prosperity from high tariffs; consequently, Hawley lost re-nomination, while Smoot was one of 12 Republican Senators who lost their seats in the 1932 elections, with the swing being the largest in Senate history (being equalled in 1958 and 1980).


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: In the two-volume series published by the US Bureau of the Census, "The Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition", tariff rates have been represented in two forms. The dutiable tariff rate peak of 1932 was 59.1%, second only to the 61.7% rate of 1830.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: However, 63% of all imports in 1933 were not taxed, which the dutiable tariff rate does not reflect. The free and dutiable rate in 1929 was 13.5%, and peaked under Smoot–Hawley in 1933 at 19.8%, one-third below the average 29.7% "free and dutiable rate" in the United States from 1821 to 1900.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The average tariff rate on dutiable imports increased from 40.1% in 1929 to 59.1% in 1932 (+19%). However, it had already been consistently at high levels between 1865 and 1913 (from 38% to 52%), and it had also risen sharply in 1861 (from 18.61% to 36.2%; +17.59%), between 1863 and 1866 (from 32.62% to 48.33%; +15.71%), and between 1920 and 1922 (from 16.4% to 38.1%; +21.7%) without producing global depressions.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The years 1920 to 1929 are widely described, incorrectly, as years in which protectionism gained ground in Europe. In fact, from a general point of view, according to Paul Bairoch, the period before the crisis in Europe can be considered to have been preceded by trade liberalization. The weighted average of tariffs applied to manufactured products remained practically the same as in the years before the First World War: 24.6% in 1913, compared to 24.9% in 1927. In addition, in 1928 and 1929 , tariffs were reduced in almost all developed countries. Additionally, the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act was signed by Hoover on June 17, 1930, while the Wall Street Crash occurred in the fall of 1929.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Paul Krugman writes that protectionism does not lead to recessions. According to him, the decrease in imports (which can be obtained by introducing tariffs) has an expansive effect, that is, it is favorable to growth. Thus, in a trade war, since exports and imports will decrease equally, for everyone, the negative effect of a decrease in exports will be offset by the expansionary effect of a decrease in imports. Therefore, a trade war does not cause a recession. Furthermore, he points out that the Smoot-Hawley tariff did not cause the Great Depression. The decline in trade between 1929 and 1933 "was almost entirely a consequence of the Depression, not a cause. Trade barriers were a response to the Depression, partly as a consequence of deflation."


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Jacques Sapir explains that the crisis has other causes than protectionism. He points out that "domestic production in major industrialized countries is declining...faster than international trade is declining." If this decrease (in international trade) had been the cause of the depression that the countries have experienced, we would have seen the opposite". "Finally, the chronology of events does not correspond to the thesis of the free traders... The bulk of the contraction of trade occurred between January 1930 and July 1932, that is, before the introduction of protectionist measures, even self-sufficient, in some countries, with the exception of those applied in the United States in the summer of 1930, but with negative effects. very limited. He noted that "the credit crunch is one of the main causes of the trade crunch." "In fact, international liquidity is the cause of the trade contraction. This liquidity collapsed in 1930 (-35.7%) and 1931 (-26.7%). A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research highlights the predominant influence of currency instability (which led to the international liquidity crisis) and the sudden rise in transportation costs in the decline of trade during the 1930s .


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Milton Friedman was also of the opinion that the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff did not cause the Great Depression. Douglas A. Irwin writes: "Most economists, liberal and conservative alike, doubt that Smoot Hawley had much to do with the subsequent contraction."


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Peter Temin explains that a tariff is an expansive policy, like a devaluation, since it diverts demand from foreign to domestic producers. He points out that exports represented 7% of the GNP in 1929, fell by 1.5% of the GNP of 1929 in the following two years and the fall was offset by the increase in domestic demand due to tariffs. He concludes that, contrary to popular argument, the contractionary effect of the tariff was small (Temin, P. 1989. " Lessons from the Great Depression ", MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.)


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: At first, the tariff seemed to be a success. According to historian Robert Sobel, "Factory payrolls, construction contracts, and industrial production all increased sharply." However, larger economic problems loomed in the guise of weak banks. When the Creditanstalt of Austria failed in 1931, the global deficiencies of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff became apparent.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: US imports decreased 66% from $4.4 billion (1929) to $1.5 billion (1933), and exports decreased 61% from $5.4 billion to $2.1 billion. GNP fell from $103.1 billion in 1929 to $75.8 billion in 1931 and bottomed out at $55.6 billion in 1933. Imports from Europe decreased from a 1929 high of $1.3 billion to just $390 million during 1932, and US exports to Europe decreased from $2.3 billion in 1929 to $784 million in 1932. Overall, world trade decreased by some 66% between 1929 and 1934.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Using panel data estimates of export and import equations for 17 countries, Jakob B. Madsen (2002) estimated the effects of increasing tariff and non-tariff trade barriers on worldwide trade from 1929 to 1932. He concluded that real international trade contracted somewhere around 33% overall. His estimates of the impact of various factors included about 14% because of declining GNP in each country, 8% because of increases in tariff rates, 5% because of deflation-induced tariff increases, and 6% because of the imposition of non-tariff barriers.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The new tariff imposed an effective tax rate of 60% on more than 3,200 products and materials imported into the United States, quadrupling previous tariff rates on individual items but raising the average tariff rate to 19.2%, which was in line with average rates of that day.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Unemployment was 8% in 1930 when the Smoot–Hawley Act was passed, but the new law failed to lower it. The rate jumped to 16% in 1931 and 25% in 1932–1933. There is some contention about whether this can necessarily be attributed to the tariff, however.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: It was only during World War II, when "the American economy expanded at an unprecedented rate", that unemployment fell below 1930s levels.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Imports during 1929 were only 4.2% of the US GNP, and exports were only 5.0%. Monetarists, such as Milton Friedman, who emphasized the central role of the money supply in causing the depression, considered the Smoot–Hawley Act to be only a minor cause for the US Great Depression.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The 1932 Democratic campaign platform pledged to lower tariffs. After winning the election, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the now-Democratic Congress passed Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934. This act allowed the President to negotiate tariff reductions on a bilateral basis and treated such a tariff agreement as regular legislation, requiring a majority, rather than as a treaty requiring a two-thirds vote. This was one of the core components of the trade negotiating framework that developed after World War II. The tit-for-tat responses of other countries were understood to have contributed to a sharp reduction of trade in the 1930s.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: After World War II, that understanding supported a push towards multilateral trading agreements that would prevent similar situations in the future. While the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 focused on foreign exchange and did not directly address tariffs, those involved wanted a similar framework for international trade. President Harry S. Truman launched this process in November 1945 with negotiations for the creation of a proposed International Trade Organization (ITO).


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: As it happened, separate negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) moved more quickly, with an agreement signed in October 1947; in the end, the United States never signed the ITO agreement. Adding a multilateral "most-favored-nation" component to that of reciprocity, the GATT served as a framework for the gradual reduction of tariffs over the subsequent half century.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Postwar changes to the Smoot–Hawley tariffs reflected a general tendency of the United States to reduce its tariff levels unilaterally while its trading partners retained their high levels. The American Tariff League Study of 1951 compared the free and dutiable tariff rates of 43 countries. It found that only seven nations had a lower tariff level than the United States (5.1%), and eleven nations had free and dutiable tariff rates higher than the Smoot–Hawley peak of 19.8% including the United Kingdom (25.6%). The 43-country average was 14.4%, which was 0.9% higher than the U.S. level of 1929, demonstrating that few nations were reciprocating in reducing their levels as the United States reduced its own.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: In the discussion leading up to the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) then-Vice President Al Gore mentioned the Smoot–Hawley Tariff as a response to NAFTA objections voiced by Ross Perot during a debate in 1993 they had on "The Larry King Show". He gave Perot a framed picture of Smoot and Hawley shaking hands after its passage.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: In April 2009, then-Representative Michele Bachmann made news when, during a speech, she referred to the Smoot–Hawley Tariff as "the Hoot–Smalley Act", misattributed its signing to Franklin Roosevelt, and blamed it for the Great Depression.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: The act has been compared to the 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), with Andrew Quinlan from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity calling FATCA "the worst economic idea to come out of Congress since Smoot–Hawley".


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Prior to 2016, the Tariff Act provided that "[a]ll goods, wares, articles, and merchandise mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in any foreign country by convict labor or/and forced labor or/and indentured labor under penal sanctions shall not be entitled to entry at any of the ports of the United States" with a specific exception known as the "consumptive demand exception", which allowed forced labor-based imports of goods where United States domestic production was not sufficient to meet consumer demand. The exception was removed under Wisconsin Representative Ron Kind's amendment bill, which was incorporated into the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, signed by President Barack Obama on February 24, 2016.


title: Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

text: Heavily featured in the book "Dave Barry Slept Here: a sort of history of the United States" by Dave Barry.


title: Brian Harvey

text: Brian Lee Harvey (born 8 August 1974) is a British singer from London. He was the lead singer of pop band East 17. The later incarnation had two top 20 singles on the UK Singles Chart between 1998 and 1999, with the album "Resurrection" peaking within the top 50 of the UK Albums Chart. After leaving E-17, Harvey signed a record deal with Edel Records and had two singles released in 2001, "Straight Up (No Bends)" and "Loving You (Ole Ole Ole)".


title: Brian Harvey

text: Harvey's vocal style emulated R&B and new jack swing vocalists from the United States. His vocals put him into a position of the group's frontman, or main member, which was shared with the group's creator, songwriter, instrumentalist, rapper and singer Tony Mortimer.


title: Brian Harvey

text: In 1997, Harvey was sacked from East 17 after making comments in a radio interview that appeared to condone the use of the drug ecstasy, causing an uproar in the press and the matter being raised in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Mortimer left East 17 several months later. Harvey eventually rejoined the group under the rebranded name of E-17. As E-17, the group had two top 20 singles on the UK Singles Chart between 1998 and 1999, with the album "Resurrection" reaching the UK Top 50.


title: Brian Harvey

text: In 2000, Harvey collaborated with True Steppers with the song "True Step Tonight" featuring Donell Jones, which peaked at number 26 on the UK Singles Chart.


title: Brian Harvey

text: After E-17, he signed a record deal with Edel Records and had two singles released in 2001, "Straight Up (No Bends)" (No. 26 UK) and "Loving You (Ole Ole Ole)" (No. 20 UK).


title: Brian Harvey

text: In 2004, Harvey appeared in the fourth series of ""I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!"". Harvey walked out of the jungle after six days due to the passing of his grandmother.


title: Brian Harvey

text: On 17 March 2007, Harvey performed a song entitled "I Can" for "", the United Kingdom's national final for the Eurovision Song Contest. The song was written by singer Conner Reeves. Harvey was eliminated after the first round of voting and the eventual winners were Scooch.