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doc-en-2127 | Water politics in the Jordan River basin refers to political issues of water within the Jordan River drainage basin, including competing claims and water usage, and issues of riparian rights of surface water along transnational rivers, as well as the availability and usage of ground water. Water resources in the region are scarce, and these issues directly affect the five political subdivisions (Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan) located within and bordering the basin, which were created since the collapse, during World War I, of the former single controlling entity, the Ottoman Empire. Because of the scarcity of water and a unique political context, issues of both supply and usage outside the physical limits of the basin have been included historically.
The Jordan river basin and its water are central issues of both the Arab–Israeli conflict (including Israeli–Palestinian conflict), as well as the more recent Syrian civil war. The Jordan River is long and, over most of its distance, flows at elevations below sea level. Its waters originate from the high precipitation areas in and near the Anti-Lebanon mountains in the north, and flow through the Sea of Galilee and Jordan River Valley ending in the Dead Sea at an elevation of minus 400 metres, in the south.
Geography of Jordan basin
Downstream of the Sea of Galilee, where the main tributaries enter the Jordan Valley from the east, the valley bottom widens to about . This area is characterized by higher alluvial or beach terraces paralleling the river; this area is known as the Ghor (or Ghawr). These terraces are locally incised by side wadis or rivers forming a maze of ravines, alternating with sharp crests and rises, with towers, pinnacles and a badlands morphology.
At a lower elevation is the active Jordan River floodplain, the zhor (or Zur), with a wildly meandering course, which accounts for the excessive length of the river in comparison to the straight-line distance to reach the Dead Sea. Small dams were built along the river within the Zhor, turning the former thickets of reeds, tamarisk, willows, and white poplars into irrigated fields. After flowing through the Zur, the Jordan drains into the Dead Sea across a broad, gently sloping delta.
In the upper Jordan river basin, upstream of the Sea of Galilee, the tributaries include:
The Hasbani (), Snir (), which flows from Lebanon.
The Banias (), Hermon (), arising from a spring at Banias near the foot of Mount Hermon.
The Dan (), Leddan (), whose source is also at the base of Mount Hermon.
Berdara (), or Braghith (), The Iyon or Ayoun (), a smaller stream which also flows from Lebanon.
The lower Jordan River tributaries include:
The Jalud in the Beth Shean valley
The Yarmouk River, which originates on the south-eastern slopes of Mount Hermon and the Hauran Plateau, forms the southern limit of the Golan Heights and flows into the Jordan River below the Sea of Galilee. It also defines portions of the border between Jordan and Syria, as well as a shorter portion between Jordan and Israel.
The Zarqa River, the Biblical Jabbok
Jabesh (Wadi Yabis) named after Jabesh-Gilead
Hydrology of the Jordan River
The riparian rights to the Jordan River are shared by 4 different countries: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel as well as the Palestinian territories; although Israel as the occupying authority has refused to give up any of the water resources to the Palestinian National Authority. The Jordan River originates near the borders of three countries, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria, with most of the water derived from the Anti-Lebanon Mountains and Mount Hermon to the north and east. Three spring-fed headwater rivers converge to form the Jordan River in the north:
The Hasbani River, which rises in south Lebanon, with an average annual flow of 138 million cubic metres,
The Dan River, in Israel, averaging 245 million cubic metres per year, and
The Banias River flowing from the Golan Heights, averaging 121 million cubic metres per year.
These streams converge six kilometres inside Israel and flow south to the Sea of Galilee, wholly within Israel.
Water quality is variable in the river basin. The three tributaries of the upper Jordan have a low salinity of about 20 ppm. The salinity of water in Lake Tiberias ranges from 240 ppm in the upper end of the lake (marginal for irrigation water), to 350 ppm (too high for sensitive citrus fruits) where it discharges back into the Jordan River. The salt comes from the saline subterranean springs. These springs pass through the beds of ancient seas and then flow into Lake Tiberias, as well as the groundwater sources that feed into the lower Jordan. Downstream of Tiberias, the salinity of the tributary Yarmouk River is also satisfactory, at 100 ppm, but the lower Jordan river becomes progressively more saline as it flows south. It reaches twenty-five percent salinity (250,000 ppm) where it flows in the Dead Sea, which is about seven times saltier than the ocean.
As a resource for freshwater the Jordan River drainage system is vital for most of the population of Palestine, Israel and Jordan, and to a lesser extent in Lebanon and Syria who are able to use water from other national sources. (Although Syrian riparian rights to the Euphrates has been severely restricted by Turkey's dam building programme, a series of 21 dams and 17 hydroelectric stations built on the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, in the 1980s, 90s and projected to be completed in 2010, in order to provide irrigation water and hydroelectricity to the arid area of southeastern Turkey.) The CIA analysis in the 1980s placed the Middle East on the list of possible conflict zones because of water issues. Twenty per cent of the region’s population lack access to adequate potable water and 35% of the population lack appropriate sanitation.
Sharing water resources involves the issue of water use, water rights, and distribution of amounts. The Palestinian National Authority wished to expand and develop the agricultural sector in the West Bank to decrease their dependency on the Israeli labour market, while Israel have prevented an increase in the irrigation of the West bank. Jordan also wishes to expand its agricultural sector so as to be able to achieve food security.
On 21 May 1997 the UN General Assembly adopted a Convention on the Law of Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses.
The articles establish two principles for the use of international watercourses (other than navigation): "equitable and reasonable utilization". and "the 'due diligence' obligation not to cause significant harm." Equitable and reasonable utilization requires taking into account all relevant factors and circumstances, including:
(a) Geographic, hydrographic, hydrological, climatic, ecological and other factors of a natural character;
(b) The social and economic needs of the watercourse States concerned;
(c) The population dependent on the watercourse in each watercourse State;
(d) The effects of the use or uses of the watercourses in one watercourse State on other watercourse States;
(e) Existing and potential uses of the watercourse;
(f) Conservation, protection, development and economy of use of the water resources of the watercourse and the costs of measures taken to that effect;
(g) The availability of alternatives, of comparable value, to a particular planned or existing use.
Historical timeline
Ottoman and Mandatory periods
Studies of regional water resources and their development, in modern terms, date from the early 1900s during the period of Ottoman rule; they also follow in light of a significant engineering milestone and resource development achievement. Based largely on geographic, engineering and economic considerations many of these plans included common components, but political considerations and international events would soon follow.
After the First World War, the Jordan River Basin began to be seen as a problem of quantitative allocations. In the late 1930s and mid-1940s, Transjordan and the World Zionist Organization commissioned mutually exclusive competing water resource studies. The Transjordanian study, performed by Michael G. Ionides, concluded that the available water resources are not sufficient to sustain a Jewish state which would be the destination for Jewish immigration. The Zionist study, by the American engineer Walter Clay Lowdermilk, concluded that by diverting water from the Jordan basin to support agriculture and residential development in the Negev, a Jewish state supporting 4 million new immigrants would be sustainable.
Below is a brief timeline summarizing policy attempts related to sharing water in the Jordan River Basin between 1922 and 1940s.
Post-Mandatory period
At the end of the 1948 Arab Israeli War with the signing of the General Armistice Agreements in 1949, both Israel and Jordan embarked on implementing their competing initiatives to utilize the water resources in the areas under their control.
The first "Master Plan for Irrigation in Israel" was drafted in 1950 and approved by a Board of Consultants (of the USA) on 8 March 1956. The main features of the Master Plan was the construction of the Israeli National Water Carrier (NWC), a project for the integration of all major regional projects into the Israeli national grid. Tahal – Water Planning for Israel Ltd., an Israeli public corporate body, was established in 1952, being largely responsible for planning of water development, drainage, etc., at the national level within Israel, including the NWC project which was commissioned in 1965.
In 1952, the Bunger plan was issued by Jordan in collaboration with UNRWA and US Technical Cooperation Agency's Point IV program, aiming to provide water to 100,000 resettled Palestinian refugees, to be relocated into Northern Jordan. The plan included construction of major Maqarin dam over Yarmouk river to store some 500 million cubic meters of water and serve Jordan and Syria, allowing Jordan to avoid from storing water in the mostly Israeli-controlled Lake Tiberias. The Maqarin dam was also designated to provide electricity, while a smaller dam at Adasiya was supposed to divert Yarmouk-originated water to the Jordanian East Ghor Canal, aimed to irrigate Jordanian areas east to the Jordan river. A plan was also issued concerning the West Ghor Canal, envisioning a siphone to irrigate also the West Bank. In March 1953, Jordan and UNRWA signed a preliminary agreement to implement the Bunger plan. Shortly, on June 1953, Jordan and Syria signed a complementary treaty in this regard. Despite the expected objection of Israel, Jordan moved with the plan and in July 1953 allocated funding for the project in collaboration with UNRWA and US Government, pending later agreement with Israel. The Israeli government protested to US over the Maqarin dam plan, over not taking into account its rights on the Yarmouk waters downstream. While Israel convinced the US to pause the project until the issue is resolved, it also offered its eagerness to discuss it with the Arab governments.
In 1953, Israel began construction of a water carrier to take water from the Sea of Galilee to the populated center and agricultural south of the country, while Jordan concluded an agreement with Syria, known as the Bunger plan, to dam the Yarmouk River near Maqarin, and utilize its waters to irrigate Jordanian territory, before they could flow to the Sea of Galilee. Military clashes ensued, and US President Dwight Eisenhower dispatched ambassador Johnston to the region to work out a plan that would regulate water usage.
Below is a brief timeline summarizing policy attempts related to sharing water in the Jordan River Basin between 1951 and 1955.
Between 1955 and the beginning of the Oslo Process, there was little attempt at policy making in regards to shared bodies of water.
Six-Day War and aftermath
On 10 June 1967, the last day of the Six-Day War, Golani Brigade forces quickly invaded the village of Banias where a caliphate era Syrian fort stood. Eshkol's priority on the Syrian front was control of the water sources.
Regional stagnation (1980s)
In 1980, Syria unilaterally started a programme of dam building along the Yarmouk.
The southern slopes of Mount Hermon (Jebel esh-Sheikh) as well as the Western Golan Heights, were unilaterally annexed by Israel in 1981.
In 1988, the Syrian-Jordanian agreement on development of the Yarmouk was blocked when Israel, as a riparian right holder, refused to ratify the plan and the World Bank withheld funding. Israel's augmented its Johnson plan allocation of 25,000,000 m³/yr by a further 45,000,000–75,000,000 m³/yr.
Jordanian-Israeli peace deal and aftermath
The water agreement formed a part of the broader political treaty which was signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994, and the articles relating to water in this agreement did not correspond to Jordan’s rights to water as they had originally been claimed. The nature and significance of the wider 1994 treaty meant that the water aspect was forced to cede importance and priority in negotiations, giving way to areas such as borders and security in terms of armed force, which were perceived by decision-makers as being the most integral issues to the settlement. Main points from the water sharing in the Jordan/Israel Peace treaty.
Jordan being a country that borders on the Jordan has riparian rights to water from the Jordan basin and upper Jordan tributaries. Due to the water diversion projects the flow to the river Jordan has been reduced from 1,300 million–1,500 million cubic metres to 250 million–300 million cubic metres. Where the water quality has been further reduced as the flow of the river Jordan is made of run-off from agricultural irrigation and saline springs.
Problems can be seen to have emerged in 1999, when the treaty’s limitations were revealed by events concerning water shortages in the Jordan basin. A reduced supply of water to Israel due to drought meant that, in turn, Israel which is responsible for providing water to Jordan, decreased its water provisions to the country, provoking a diplomatic disagreement between the two and bringing the water component of the treaty back into question.
Israel's complaints that the reduction in water from the tributaries to the river Jordan caused by the Jordanian-Syrian dam look to go unheeded due to the conflict of interest between Israel and her neighbours.
Syrian Civil War and its effect on Jordan basin
The dramatic drought, which hit Levant between 1998 and 2012, was identified by scientists to be the most severe in 900 years. The dramatic effect of the drought on southern Syria is proposed as one of the factors which led to the eruption of the Syrian Civil War.
Historically, prior to the eruption of Syrian War in 2011, the Syrian government had developed a series of 21 dams in the Yarmouk drainage basin to divert water into large reservoirs used for irrigation of agricultural land. Jordan had built a large dam of its own on the Yarmouk, the Al-Wehda Dam, in order to exploit the water for its own agriculture. However, prior to the Syrian War, the amount of water it collected by Jordanian dam had fallen as Syria dammed the river upstream. While the Yarmouk flows into the Jordan River, most of its water has been used in Syria and Jordan before reaching the river. Since the civil war broke out, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled the area of southern Syria, many of whom were farmers. Most fled to refugee camps in Jordan. As a result, much more water now flows in the Yarmouk River and thus greater quantities of water are reaching the parts of the river that flow through Jordan, and later into Israel as well.
Jordan basin
Banias
The Syria-Lebanon-Palestine boundary was a product of the post-World War I Anglo-French partition of Ottoman Syria. British forces had advanced to a position at Tel Hazor against Turkish troops in 1918 and wished to incorporate all the sources of the Jordan River within the British controlled Palestine. Due to the French inability to establish administrative control, the frontier between Syria and Palestine was fluid. Following the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and the unratified and later annulled Treaty of Sèvres, stemming from the San Remo conference, the 1920 boundary extended the British controlled area to north of the Sykes Picot line, a straight line between the mid point of the Sea of Galilee and Nahariya. In 1920 the French managed to assert authority over the Arab nationalist movement and after the Battle of Maysalun, King Faisal was deposed. The international boundary between Palestine and Syria was finally agreed by Great Britain and France in 1923 in conjunction with the Treaty of Lausanne, after Britain had been given a League of Nations mandate for Palestine in 1922. Banyas (on the Quneitra/Tyre road) was within the French Mandate of Syria. The border was set 750 metres south of the spring.
In 1941 Australian forces occupied Banyas in the advance to the Litani during the Syria-Lebanon Campaign; Free French and Indian forces also invaded Syria in the Battle of Kissoué. Banias's fate in this period was left in a state of limbo since Syria had come under British military control. After the cessation of World War II hostilities, and at the time Syria was granted Independence (April 1946), the former mandate powers, France and Britain, bilaterally signed an agreement to pass control of Banias to the British mandate of Palestine. This was done against the expressed wishes of the Syrian government who declared France's signature to be invalid. While Syria maintained its claim on Banias in this period, it was administered from Jerusalem.
Following the 1948 Arab Israeli War, and the signing of the General Armistice Agreements in 1949, and DMZs included in the Armistice with Syria in July 1949, were "not to be interpreted as having any relation whatsoever to ultimate territorial arrangements." Israel claimed sovereignty over the Demilitarised zones (DMZs), on the basis that, "it was always part of the British Mandated Territory of Palestine." Moshe Dayan and Yosef Tekoah adopted a policy of Israeli control of the DMZ and water sources at the expense of Israel’s international image. The Banias spring remained under Syrian control, while the Banias River flowed through the contested Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and into Israel.
Hasbani
The Hasbani River derives most of its discharge from two springs in Lebanon the Wazzani and the Haqzbieh, the latter being a group of springs on the uppermost Hasbani. The Hasbani runs for in Lebanon before crossing the border and joining with the Banias and Dan Rivers at a point in northern Israel, to form the River Jordan. For about four kilometres downstream of Ghajar, the Hasbani forms the border between Lebanon and northern Israel.
The Wazzani's and the Haqzbieh's combined discharge averages 138 million m³ per year. About 20% of the Hasbani flow emerges from the Wazzani Spring at Ghajar, close to the Lebanese Israeli border, about 3 kilometres west of the base of Mount Hermon. The contribution of the spring is very important, because it is the only continuous year-round flow in the river in either Lebanon or Israel.
Utilization of water resources in the area, including the Hasbani, has been a source of conflict and was one of the factors leading to the 1967 Six-Day War. The Hasbani was included in the Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan, proposed in 1955 by special US envoy Eric Johnston. Under the plan, Lebanon was allocated usage of 35 million cubic metres annually from it. The plan was rejected by the Arab League.
In 2001 the Lebanese government installed a small pumping station with a 10 cm bore to extract water to supply Ghajar village. In March 2002 Lebanon also diverted part of the Hasbani to supply Wazzani village. An action that Ariel Sharon said was a "casus belli" and could lead to war.
Dan
The Dan River is the largest tributary of the Jordan river, whose source is located at the base of Mount Hermon. Until the 1967 Six-Day War, the Dan River was the only source of the river Jordan wholly within Israeli territory. Its flow provides up to 238 million cubic metres of water annually to the Hulah Valley. In 1966 this was a cause of dispute between water planners and conservationists, with the latter prevailing after three years of court adjudication and appeals. The result was a conservation project of about at the source of the river called the Tel Dan Reserve.
Huleh marshes
In 1951 the tensions in the area were raised when, in the lake Huleh area (10 km from Banias), Israel initiated a project to drain the marsh land to bring into cultivation. The project caused a conflict of interests between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Arab villages in the area and drew Syrian complaints to the United Nations. On 30 March in a meeting chaired by David Ben-Gurion the Israeli government decided to assert Israeli sovereignty over the DMZs, consequently 800 inhabitants of the villages were forcibly evacuated from the DMZ. From 1951 Israel refused to attend the meetings of the Israel/Syria Mixed Armistice Commission. This refusal on the part of Israel not only constituted a flagrant violation of the General Armistice Agreement, but also contributed to an increase of tension in the area. The Security Council itself strongly condemned the attitude of Israel, in its resolution of 18 May 1951, as being "inconsistent with the objectives and intent of the Armistice Agreement"
Under UN auspices and with encouragement from the Eisenhower administration 9 meetings took place between 15 and 27 January 1953, to regularise administration of the 3 DMZs. At the eighth meeting Syria offered to adjust the armistice lines, and cede to Israel's 70% of the DMZ, in exchange for a return to the pre 1946 international border in the Jordan basin area, with Banias water resources returning uncontested to Syrian sovereignty. On 26 April, the Israeli cabinet met to consider the Syrian suggestions; with head of Israel’s Water Planning Authority, Simha Blass, in attendance. Blass noted that while the land to be ceded to Syria was not suitable for cultivation, the Syrian map did not suit Israel’s water development plan. Blass explained that the movement of the international boundary in the area of Banias would affect Israel’s water rights. The Israeli cabinet rejected the Syrian proposals but decided to continue the negotiations by making changes to the accord and placing conditions on the Syrian proposals. The Israeli conditions took into account Blass’s position over water rights and Syria rejected the Israeli counteroffer.
On 4 June 1953 Jordan and Syria concluded a bilateral plan to store surface water at Maqarin (completed in 2006 as Al-Wehda Dam), so as to be able to use the water resources of the Yarmouk river in the Yarmouk-Jordan valley plan, funded through the Technical Cooperation Agency of the United States of America, the UNRWA and Jordan.
Part of the Hula marshes were re-flooded in 1994 due to the negative effects from the original drainage plan.
Regional projects
Israeli National Water Carrier project
In September 1953, Israel unilaterally started a water diversion project within the Jordan River basin to divert water from the Jordan River at Jacob's Ford (B'not Yacov) to help irrigate the coastal Sharon Plain and eventually the Negev desert. The diversion project consisted of a nine-mile (14 km) channel midway between the Huleh Marshes and Lake Galilee (Lake Tiberias) in the central DMZ to be rapidly constructed. Syria claimed that it would dry up of Syrian land. The UNTSO Chief of Staff Major General Vagn Bennike of Denmark noted that the project was denying water to two Palestinian water mills, was drying up Palestinian farm land and was a substantial military benefit to Israel against Syria. The US cut off aid to Israel. The Israeli response was to increase work. UN Security Council Resolution 100 "deemed it desirable" for Israel to suspend work started on 2 September "pending urgent examination of the question by the Council". Israel finally backed off by moving the intake out of the DMZ and for the next three years the US kept its economic sanctions by threatening to end aid channelled to Israel by the Foreign Operations Administration and insisting on tying the aid with Israel's behaviour. The Security Council ultimately rejected Syrian claims that the work was a violation of the Armistice Agreements and drainage works were resumed and the work was completed in 1957. This caused shelling from Syria and friction with the Eisenhower Administration; the diversion was moved to the southwest to Eshed Kinrot into the Israeli National Water Carrier project, designed by Tahal and constructed by Mekorot.
Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan
1955 US ambassador Eric Johnston negotiated the Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan. The plan was for the unified development of the Jordan Valley water resources based on an earlier plan commissioned by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Modeled upon the Tennessee Valley Authority development plan, it was approved by technical water committees of all the regional riparian countries – Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The plan was formally rejected by the Arab Higher Committee, but Nasser, the Egyptian president, assured the Americans that the Arabs would not exceed the water quotas prescribed by the Johnston plan. Jordan undertook to abide by their allocations under the plan. The plan was initially un-ratified by Israel, but after the US linked the Johnston plan to aid, also agreed to accept the allocation provisions.
except for the above withdrawals
*the waters of the Yarmouk River will be available for the unconditional use of the Kingdom of the [sic] Jordan
** and the waters of the Jordan River will be for unconditional use of Israel.
The East Ghor canal formed part of a larger project – the Greater Yarmouk project – which envisioned two storage dams on the Yarmouk, and a West Ghor Canal, on the West Bank of the Jordan. These projects were never built, due to Israel's occupation of the West Bank of the Jordan River during the Six-Day War. After the Six-Day War, The PLO operated from bases within Jordan, and launched several attacks on Israeli settlements in the Jordan valley, including attacks on water facilities. Israel responded with raids in Jordan, in an attempt to force Hussein of Jordan of Jordan to rein in the PLO. The canal was the target of at least 4 of these raids, and was virtually knocked out of commission. The United states intervened to resolve the conflict, and the canal was repaired after Hussein undertook to stop PLO activity in the area.
Headwater Diversion Plan
First summit of Arab Heads of State was convened in Cairo between 13 and 17 January 1964, called by Nasser the Egyptian president, to discuss a common policy to confront Israel's national water carrier project which was nearing completion. The second Arab League summit conference voted on a plan which would have circumvent and frustrated it. The Arab and North African states chose to divert the Jordan headwaters rather than the use of direct military intervention. The heads of State of the Arab League considered two options:
The diversion of the Hasbani to the Litani combined with the diversion of the Banias to the Yarmouk,
The diversion of both the Hasbani and the Banias to the Yarmouk.
The Arab league plan selected was for the Hasbani and Banias waters to be diverted to Mukhaiba and stored. The scheme was only marginally feasible, was technically difficult and expensive. Arab political considerations were cited to justify the diversion scheme. In January 1964 an Arab League summit meeting convened in Cairo and decided:
The establishment of Israel is the basic threat that the Arab nation in its entirety has agreed to forestall. And Since the existence of Israel is a danger that threatens the Arab nation, the diversion of the Jordan waters by it multiplies the dangers to Arab existence. Accordingly, the Arab states have to prepare the plans necessary for dealing with the political, economic and social aspects, so that if necessary results are not achieved, collective Arab military preparations, when they are not completed, will constitute the ultimate practical means for the final liquidation of Israel.
After the 2nd Arab summit conference in Cairo of January 1964 (with the backing of all 13 Arab League members), Syria in a joint project with Lebanon and Jordan, started the development of the water resources of Banias for a canal along the slopes of the Golan toward the Yarmouk River. While Lebanon was to construct a canal form the Hasbani River to Banias and complete the scheme. The project was to divert 20 to 30 million cubic metres of water from the river Jordan tributaries to Syria and Jordan for the development of Syria and Jordan. The Syrian construction of the Banias to Yarmouk canal got under way in 1965. Once completed, the diversion of the flow would have transported the water into a dam at Mukhaiba for use by Jordan and Syria before the waters of the Banias Stream entered Israel and the Sea of Galilee. Lebanon also started a canal to divert the waters of the Hasbani, whose source is in Lebanon, into the Banias. The Hasbani and Banias diversion works would have had the effect of reducing the capacity of Israel's carrier by about 35% and Israel's overall water supply by about 11%. Israel declared that it would regard such diversion as an infringement of its sovereign rights. The Finance of the project was through contributions by Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This led to military intervention from Israel, first with tank and artillery fire and then, as the Syrians shifted the works further southwards, with airstrikes.
Notes
Further reading
Spiegel, Steven L. (1985) The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America's Middle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan University of Chicago Press,
External links
Historical Developmental Plans of the Jordan River Basin
UN Document Flow rates of the Jordan River and its tributaries 1953, with estimation of costs for the "Jordan Valley Unified Water Plan".
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Jordan River | en |
doc-en-8201 | Drama was introduced to Britain from Europe by the Romans, and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose.
But England didn't exist until hundreds of years after the Romans left.
Medieval period
By the medieval period, the mummers' plays had developed, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood. These were folk tales re-telling old stories, and the actors travelled from town to town performing these for their audiences in return for money and hospitality.
English mystery plays
Mystery plays and miracle plays (sometimes distinguished as two different forms, although the terms are often used interchangeably) are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. They developed from the 10th to the 16th century, reaching the height of their popularity in the 15th century before being rendered obsolete by the rise of professional theatre. The name derives from mystery used in its sense of miracle, but an occasionally quoted derivation is from misterium, meaning craft, a play performed by the craft guilds.
There are four complete or nearly complete extant English biblical collections of plays from the late medieval period; although these collections are sometimes referred to as "cycles," it is now believed that this term may attribute to these collections more coherence than they in fact possess. The most complete is the York cycle of forty-eight pageants. They were performed in the city of York, from the middle of the fourteenth century until 1569. There are also the Towneley plays of thirty-two pageants, once thought to have been a true 'cycle' of plays and most likely performed around the Feast of Corpus Christi probably in the town of Wakefield, England during the late Middle Ages until 1576. The Ludus Coventriae (also called the N Town plays" or Hegge cycle), now generally agreed to be a redacted compilation of at least three older, unrelated plays, and the Chester cycle of twenty-four pageants, now generally agreed to be an Elizabethan reconstruction of older medieval traditions. Also extant are two pageants from a New Testament cycle acted at Coventry and one pageant each from Norwich and Newcastle upon Tyne. Additionally, a fifteenth-century play of the life of Mary Magdalene, The Brome Abraham and Isaac and a sixteenth-century play of the Conversion of Saint Paul exist, all hailing from East Anglia. Besides the Middle English drama, there are three surviving plays in Cornish known as the Ordinalia.
These biblical plays differ widely in content. Most contain episodes such as the Fall of Lucifer, the Creation and Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, the Nativity, the Raising of Lazarus, the Passion, and the Resurrection. Other pageants included the story of Moses, the Procession of the Prophets, Christ's Baptism, the Temptation in the Wilderness, and the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. In given cycles, the plays came to be sponsored by the newly emerging Medieval craft guilds. The York mercers, for example, sponsored the Doomsday pageant. Other guilds presented scenes appropriate to their trade: the building of the Ark from the carpenters' guild; the five loaves and fishes miracle from the bakers; and the visit of the Magi, with their offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh, from the goldsmiths. The guild associations are not, however, to be understood as the method of production for all towns. While the Chester pageants are associated with guilds, there is no indication that the N-Town plays are either associated with guilds or performed on pageant wagons. Perhaps the most famous of the mystery plays, at least to modern readers and audiences, are those of Wakefield. Unfortunately, we cannot know whether the plays of the Towneley manuscript are actually the plays performed at Wakefield but a reference in the Second Shepherds' Play to Horbery Shrogys ( line 454) is strongly suggestive
Morality plays
The morality play is a genre of Medieval and early Tudor theatrical entertainment. In their own time, these plays were known as "interludes", a broader term given to dramas with or without a moral theme. Morality plays are a type of allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a Godly life over one of evil. The plays were most popular in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. Having grown out of the religiously based mystery plays of the Middle Ages, they represented a shift towards a more secular base for European theatre.
The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century English morality play. Like John Bunyan's 1678 Christian novel Pilgrim's Progress, Everyman examines the question of Christian salvation by use of allegorical characters, and what Man must do to attain it. The premise is that the good and evil deeds of one's life will be tallied by God after death, as in a ledger book. The play is the allegorical accounting of the life of Everyman, who represents all mankind. In the course of the action, Everyman tries to convince other characters to accompany him in the hope of improving his account. All the characters are also allegorical, each personifying an abstract idea such as Fellowship, [material] Goods, and Knowledge. The conflict between good and evil is dramatized by the interactions between characters.
Renaissance: Elizabethan and Jacobean periods
The period known as the English Renaissance, approximately 1500–1660, saw a flowering of the drama and all the arts. The two candidates for the earliest comedy in English Nicholas Udall's Ralph Roister Doister (c. 1552) and the anonymous Gammer Gurton's Needle (c. 1566), belong to the 16th century.
During the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and then James I (1603–25), in the late 16th and early 17th century, a London-centred culture, that was both courtly and popular, produced great poetry and drama. The English playwrights were intrigued by Italian model: a conspicuous community of Italian actors had settled in London. The linguist and lexicographer John Florio (1553–1625), whose father was Italian, was a royal language tutor at the Court of James I, and a possible friend of and influence on William Shakespeare, had brought much of the Italian language and culture to England. He was also the translator of Montaigne into English. The earliest Elizabethan plays include Gorboduc (1561) by Sackville and Norton and Thomas Kyd's (1558–94) revenge tragedy The Spanish Tragedy (1592), that influenced Shakespeare's Hamlet.
William Shakespeare stands out in this period as a poet and playwright as yet unsurpassed. Shakespeare was not a man of letters by profession, and probably had only some grammar school education. He was neither a lawyer, nor an aristocrat as the "university wits" that had monopolised the English stage when he started writing. But he was very gifted and incredibly versatile, and he surpassed "professionals" as Robert Greene who mocked this "shake-scene" of low origins. He was himself an actor and deeply involved in the running of the theatre company that performed his plays. Most playwrights at this time tended to specialise in, either histories, or comedies, or tragedies. but Shakespeare is remarkable in that he produced all three types. His 38 plays include tragedies, comedies, and histories. In addition, he wrote his so-called "problem plays", or "bitter comedies", that includes, amongst others, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, A Winter's Tale and All's Well that Ends Well.
His early classical and Italianate comedies, like A Comedy of Errors, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his greatest comedies, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar, based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, which introduced a new kind of drama.
Though most of his plays met with success, it was in his later years, that Shakespeare wrote what have been considered his greatest plays: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra. In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher.
Other important playwrights of this period include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, John Fletcher Francis Beaumont, Ben Jonson, and John Webster.
Other important figures in Elizabethan theatre include Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593), Thomas Dekker (c. 1572 – 1632), John Fletcher (1579–1625) and Francis Beaumont (1584–1616). Marlowe (1564–1593) was born only a few weeks before Shakespeare and must have known him. Marlowe's subject matter is different from Shakespeare's as it focuses more on the moral drama of the renaissance man than any other thing. Marlowe was fascinated and terrified by the new frontiers opened by modern science. Drawing on German lore, he introduced the story of Faust to England in his play Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), a scientist and magician who is obsessed by the thirst of knowledge and the desire to push man's technological power to its limits. At the end of a twenty-four years' covenant with the devil he has to surrender his soul to him. Beaumont and Fletcher are less-known, but they may have helped Shakespeare write some of his best dramas, and were popular at the time. One of Beaumont and Fletcher's chief merits was that of realising how feudalism and chivalry had turned into snobbery and make-believe and that new social classes were on the rise. Beaumont's comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), satirises the rising middle class and especially of those nouveaux riches who pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much literature at all.
Ben Jonson (1572/3-1637) is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. He was also often engaged to write courtly masques, ornate plays where the actors wore masks. Ben Jonson's aesthetics have roots in the Middle Ages as his characters are based on the theory of humours. However, the stock types of Latin literature were an equal influence. Jonson therefore tends to create types or caricatures. However, in his best work, characters are "so vitally rendered as to take on a being that transcends the type". He is a master of style, and a brilliant satirist. Jonson's famous comedy Volpone (1605 or 1606) shows how a group of scammers are fooled by a top con-artist, vice being punished by vice, virtue meting out its reward. Others who followed Jonson's style include Beaumont and Fletcher, whose comedy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle (c. 1607–08), satirizes the rising middle class and especially of those nouveaux riches who pretend to dictate literary taste without knowing much about literature at all. In the story, a grocer and his wife wrangle with the professional actors to have their illiterate son play a leading role in the play.
A popular style of theatre during Jacobean times was the revenge play, which had been popularised earlier in the Elizabethan era by Thomas Kyd (1558–94), and then subsequently developed by John Webster (1578–1632) in the 17th century. Webster's major plays, The White Devil (c. 1609 – 1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (c. 1612/13), are macabre, disturbing works. Webster has received a reputation for being the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatist with the most unsparingly dark vision of human nature. Webster's tragedies present a horrific vision of mankind and in his poem "Whispers of Immortality," T. S. Eliot memorably says, that Webster always saw "the skull beneath the skin". While Webster's drama was generally dismissed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there has been "a strong revival of interest" in the 20th century.<ref>Margaret Drabble, 'The Oxford Companion to English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p.1063.</ref>
Other revenge tragedies include The Changeling written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Atheist's Tragedy by Cyril Tourneur, first published in 1611, Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois by George Chapman, The Malcontent (c. 1603) of John Marston and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. Besides Hamlet, other plays of Shakespeare's with at least some revenge elements, are Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth.
George Chapman (?1559-?1634) was a successful playwright who produced comedies (his collaboration on Eastward Hoe led to his brief imprisonment in 1605 as it offended the King with its anti-Scottish sentiment), tragedies (most notably Bussy D'Ambois) and court masques (The Memorable Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn), but who is now remembered chiefly for his translation in 1616 of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry, a closet drama written by Elizabeth Tanfield Cary (1585–1639) and first published in 1613, was the first original play in English known to have been written by a woman.
17th and 18th centuries
During the Interregnum 1649–1660, English theatres were kept closed by the Puritans for religious and ideological reasons. When the London theatres opened again with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, they flourished under the personal interest and support of Charles II. Wide and socially mixed audiences were attracted by topical writing and by the introduction of the first professional actresses (in Shakespeare's time, all female roles had been played by boys). New genres of the Restoration were heroic drama, pathetic drama, and Restoration comedy. Notable heroic tragedies of this period include John Dryden's All for Love (1677) and Aureng-zebe (1675), and Thomas Otway's Venice Preserved (1682). The Restoration plays that have best retained the interest of producers and audiences today are the comedies, such as George Etherege's The Man of Mode (1676), William Wycherley's The Country Wife (1676), John Vanbrugh's The Relapse (1696), and William Congreve's The Way of the World (1700). This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn, author of many comedies including The Rover (1677). Restoration comedy is famous or notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his court.
In the 18th century, the highbrow and provocative Restoration comedy lost favour, to be replaced by sentimental comedy, domestic tragedy such as George Lillo's The London Merchant (1731), and by an overwhelming interest in Italian opera. Popular entertainment became more dominant in this period than ever before. Fair-booth burlesque and musical entertainment, the ancestors of the English music hall, flourished at the expense of legitimate English drama. By the early 19th century, few English dramas were being written, except for closet drama, plays intended to be presented privately rather than on stage.
Victorian era
A change came in the Victorian era with a profusion on the London stage of farces, musical burlesques, extravaganzas and comic operas that competed with Shakespeare productions and serious drama by the likes of James Planché and Thomas William Robertson. In 1855, the German Reed Entertainments began a process of elevating the level of (formerly risqué) musical theatre in Britain that culminated in the famous series of comic operas by Gilbert and Sullivan and were followed by the 1890s with the first Edwardian musical comedies. W. S. Gilbert and Oscar Wilde were leading poets and dramatists of the late Victorian period. Wilde's plays, in particular, stand apart from the many now forgotten plays of Victorian times and have a much closer relationship to those of the Edwardian dramatists such as Irishman George Bernard Shaw and Norwegian Henrik Ibsen.
The length of runs in the theatre changed rapidly during the Victorian period. As transportation improved, poverty in London diminished, and street lighting made for safer travel at night, the number of potential patrons for the growing number of theatres increased enormously. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits and improved production values. The first play to achieve 500 consecutive performances was the London comedy Our Boys, opening in 1875. Its astonishing new record of 1,362 performances was bested in 1892 by Charley's Aunt. Several of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas broke the 500-performance barrier, beginning with H.M.S. Pinafore in 1878, and Alfred Cellier and B. C. Stephenson's 1886 hit, Dorothy, ran for 931 performances.
The theatre: 1901–45
Edwardian musical comedy held the London stage (not together with foreign operetta imports) until World War I and was then supplanted by increasingly popular American musical theatre and comedies by Noël Coward, Ivor Novello and their contemporaries. The motion picture mounted a challenge to the stage. At first, films were silent and presented only a limited challenge to theatre. But by the end of the 1920s, films like The Jazz Singer could be presented with synchronized sound, and critics wondered if the cinema would replace live theatre altogether. Some dramatists wrote for the new medium, but playwriting continued.
Irish playwrights George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) and J. M. Synge (1871–1909) were influential in British drama. Shaw's career began in the last decade of the nineteenth-century and he wrote more than 60 plays. Synge's plays belong to the first decade of the twentieth century. Synge's most famous play, The Playboy of the Western World, "caused outrage and riots when it was first performed" in Dublin in 1907. George Bernard Shaw turned the Edwardian theatre into an arena for debate about important political and social issues, like marriage, class, "the morality of armaments and war" and the rights of women. In the 1920s and later Noël Coward (1899–1973) achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever (1925), Private Lives (1930), Design for Living (1932), Present Laughter (1942) and Blithe Spirit (1941), have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. In the 1930s W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood co-authored verse dramas, of which The Ascent of F6 (1936) is the most notable, that owed much to Bertolt Brecht. T. S. Eliot had begun this attempt to revive poetic drama with Sweeney Agonistes in 1932, and this was followed by The Rock (1934), Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Family Reunion (1939). There were three further plays after the war.
The period 1945–2000
An important cultural movement in the British theatre which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s was Kitchen sink realism (or "kitchen sink drama"), a term coined to describe art (the term itself derives from an expressionist painting by John Bratby), novels, film and television plays. The term angry young men was often applied to members of this artistic movement. It used a style of social realism which depicts the domestic lives of the working class, to explore social issues and political issues. The drawing room plays of the post-war period, typical of dramatists like Terence Rattigan and Noël Coward were challenged in the 1950s by these Angry Young Men, in plays like John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956). Arnold Wesker and Nell Dunn also brought social concerns to the stage.
Again In the 1950s, the absurdist play Waiting for Godot (1955) (originally En attendant Godot, 1952), by the French resident Irishman Samuel Beckett profoundly affected British drama. The Theatre of the Absurd influenced Harold Pinter (1930-2008), (The Birthday Party, 1958), whose works are often characterised by menace or claustrophobia. Beckett also influenced Tom Stoppard (1937-) (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,1966). Stoppard's works are, however, also notable for their high-spirited wit and the great range of intellectual issues which he tackles in different plays. Both Pinter and Stoppard continued to have new plays produced into the 1990s. Michael Frayn (1933- ) is among other playwrights noted for their use of language and ideas. He is also a novelist.
Other Important playwrights whose careers began later in the century are: Caryl Churchill (Top Girls, 1982) and Alan Ayckbourn (Absurd Person Singular, 1972).
An important new element in the world of British drama, from the beginnings of radio in the 1920s, was the commissioning of plays, or the adaption of existing plays, by BBC radio. This was especially important in the 1950s and 1960s (and from the 1960s on for television). Many major British playwrights in fact, either effectively began their careers with the BBC, or had works adapted for radio. Most of playwright Caryl Churchill's early experiences with professional drama production were as a radio playwright and, starting in 1962 with The Ants, there were nine productions with BBC radio drama up until 1973 when her stage work began to be recognised at the Royal Court Theatre. Joe Orton's dramatic debut in 1963 was the radio play The Ruffian on the Stair, which was broadcast on 31 August 1964. Tom Stoppard's "first professional production was in the fifteen-minute Just Before Midnight programme on BBC Radio, which showcased new dramatists". John Mortimer made his radio debut as a dramatist in 1955, with his adaptation of his own novel Like Men Betrayed for the BBC Light Programme. But he made his debut as an original playwright with The Dock Brief, starring Michael Hordern as a hapless barrister, first broadcast in 1957 on BBC Radio's Third Programme, later televised with the same cast, and subsequently presented in a double bill with What Shall We Tell Caroline? at the Lyric Hammersmith in April 1958, before transferring to the Garrick Theatre. Mortimer is most famous for Rumpole of the Bailey a British television series which starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients. It has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.
Other notable radio dramatists included Brendan Behan, and novelist Angela Carter. Novelist Susan Hill also wrote for BBC radio, from the early 1970s. Irish playwright Brendan Behan, author of The Quare Fellow (1954), was commissioned by the BBC to write a radio play The Big House (1956); prior to this he had written two plays Moving Outand A Garden Party for Irish radio.
Among the most famous works created for radio, are Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood (1954), Samuel Beckett's All That Fall (1957), Harold Pinter's A Slight Ache (1959) and Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (1954). Samuel Beckett wrote a number of short radio plays in the 1950s and 1960s, and later for television. Beckett's radio play Embers was first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 24 June 1959, and won the RAI prize at the Prix Italia awards later that year.
21st century Three Girls'' is a three-part British television's real life drama series, written by screenwriter Nicole Taylor, and directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, that broadcast on three consecutive nights between 16 and 18 May 2017 on BBC One. the series is a dramatised version of the events surrounding the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, the mini series Three Girls attempts to create awareness about how complex criminal process of child grooming takes place while sexually abusing children and describes how the authorities failed to investigate allegations of rape because the victims were perceived as unreliable witnesses. The story is told from the viewpoint of three of the victims: fourteen-year-old Holly Winshaw (Molly Windsor), sixteen-year-old Amber Bowen (Ria Zmitrowicz) and her younger sister Ruby (Liv Hill) According to lawyers Richard Scorer & Nazir Afzal, the drama Three girls helps in building awareness around child protection issues of 21st century. While few critics including whistleblower Sara Rowbotham and few victims appreciated accuracy of depiction; Ben Lawrence in The Telegraph found it to be too timid and not going deep down to investigate & expose root causes surrounding inappropriate behavior of perpetrators of Pakistani descent fully enough.
See also
English literature
Irish theatre
Mummers Play
Notes
External links
Patrons and Performances, Records of Early English Drama
History of literature in the United Kingdom | en |
doc-en-10691 | The 2008 Lebanon conflict (Or the 7 May 2008 clashes, Arabic: أحداث 7 أيار) was a brief intrastate military conflict in May 2008 in Lebanon between opposition militias (mainly Shiite Hezbollah) and pro-government Sunnis, after the 18-month-long political crisis spiraled out of control, when the government's decision to dismantle Hezbollah's telecommunication system, which led to Hezbollah seizing control of west Beirut, and ended with the adoption of the Doha Accord in 2008.
The fighting between pro-government and opposition militias affiliated to respectively the Future Movement and PSP political parties on one side and Hezbollah, Amal, SSNP, LDP and the Arab Democratic Party on the other side, was sparked by a government move to shut down Hezbollah's telecommunication network and remove Beirut Airport's head of security after the discovery of a hidden remote-controlled camera monitoring one of the airport's runway and his alleged ties to Hezbollah. Clashes first occurred on May 7 after a general strike called for by the country's union federation to demand higher wages and decry high consumer prices became overshadowed by the government's decisions and escalated into low-level violence between pro-government and opposition protesters. Violence severely escalated the next morning on May 8 after a televised speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. In his speech, Nasrallah responded to the government's decision to declare the organization's telecommunication network illegal by calling it a declaration of war on the organization, shortly after which fighting between pro-government and opposition militias broke out in Beirut. Within two days, Hezbollah-led opposition fighters had seized control of several West Beirut neighbourhoods from pro-government Future Movement militiamen. In the following days, fighting between pro-government and opposition militias spread to other parts of the country with major clashes in the Aley District and Tripoli. On May 15, an intervention by the Arab League brokered an immediate end to hostilities and a pledge from warring parties to send emissaries to Doha for a mediation process. The resulting Doha Agreement, reached on May 21, 2008, brought an end to the 18-month political feud that exploded into fighting and nearly drove the country to a new civil war.
Background
On December 1, 2006, a series of protests and sit-ins began in Lebanon, led by the March 8 political coalition which opposed the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. Formed after the Cedar Revolution in 2005, the March 8 coalition was up of the Shiite Hezbollah and Amal, the Christian Free Patriotic Movement and a number of smaller parties such as the SSNP, LDP and the Arab Democratic Party. On the other side of the political divide stood the March 14 coalition, at the time holding the majority of cabinet and parliamentary seats. The March 14 coalition was made up of the primarily Sunni Future Movement and a number of smaller parties including the Druze Progressive Socialist Party and the Christian Lebanese Forces.
At the core of commencement of the protests was the unhappiness of Hezbollah with the division of power under the current status quo and the pro-Western course of the Lebanese government. It argued that too much executive power was in the hands of the Future Movement, the primary political party of March 14, which it in their view misused by too closely aligning with Western states, most notably the United States, thereby compromising Lebanon's sovereignty and security. In addition, the period was marked by political strife between the March 8 and March 14 coalitions over the international investigation on the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri, the creation of the future Lebanon Tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators this assassination and the question of Hezbollah's armed status. Hezbollah was the only organization allowed to retain its weapons after the ratification of the Taif Agreement, which brought an end to the Lebanese Civil War, although UN Security Council Resolution 1559 of September 2004 denied the organization the right to retain its arms. By 2008, the military strength of the organization had grown to such levels that it was widely considered to be stronger than the Lebanese Armed Forces. To ensure its interests, Hezbollah demanded a new national unity government in which March 8 would have at least a third plus one of the cabinet seats in order to grant them the ability to veto cabinet decisions.
After Shi'a ministers of Hezbollah and Amal had resigned from the cabinet in December 2006 in protest against a decision concerning the Lebanon Tribunal, the opposition demanded the immediate resignation of the cabinet as it now was unbalanced with regard to the proportional representation of religious groups as stipulated by the Lebanese Constitution and therefore was deemed illegitimate. When Prime Minister Siniora refused to resign his cabinet, Hezbollah and its allies on March 8 called on its supporters in early December 2006 to protest against the perceived illegitimacy of the cabinet of Siniora to increase pressure on it. In the face of massive protests, Siniora and the remaining ministers in his cabinet still refused to step down as long as they enjoyed the support of the majority of the parliament. As protestors kept up the pressure on the government with their encampment near the Grand Serail, the prime ministerial office in downtown Beirut, Siniora and his minister were under virtual house arrest due to security concerns since the assassination of Pierre Gemayel, one of Siniora's ministers, in late 2006. With Siniora not giving in, the opposition organized a general strike in January 2007, which ended in sectarian clashes leaving multiple dead and hundreds wounded. Political deadlock took a new turn with the end of term of President Émile Lahoud in late 2007 as the March 8 and March 14 blocs could not agree on his successor, leaving the country in a presidential vacuum further worsening the political crisis.
May 2008 controversies
In May 2008, the tensions between the pro-government and opposition parties escalated when the cabinet announced a series of security decisions. Tensions began with revelations on Friday May 2 made by Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt, a key politician in the ruling March 14 alliance. He announced that a remote-controlled camera had been set up in a container park overlooking Beirut international airport's runway 17, which was frequently being used by March 14 politicians. In March 14 circles, fear was that the monitoring could be used for a possible attack on its leaders, as Lebanon had faced a series of political assasIsinations in recent times. Although Jumblatt did not accuse the party directly, he made clear that he thought March 8's Hezbollah was behind the monitoring system's installment. Hezbollah dismissed the accusations, calling the allegation a product of Jumblatt's imagination and saying that those who leveled them were scaremongering and simply parroting a US campaign against it and other groups which are resisting Israel. In addition to the monitoring system, Jumblatt stated that Hezbollah had laid down a fiber optic telecommunication network connecting its powerbase in Dahiya in South Beirut with cities and towns in South and East Lebanon in predominantly Shiite areas. Although this was known to the government, it was now claimed that the network was being extended to the predominantly Christian and Druze areas of Mount Lebanon.
In its response to these allegations, the Lebanese cabinet announced that it regarded the telecommunication network and the monitoring system as a breach of law, undermining the state's sovereignty and the security of its citizens. Therefore, it declared that the matter would be referred not only to the Lebanese judicial system, but also to the Arab League and the United Nations. In addition to infringing state sovereignty, the network was regarded by the government as an infringement on public funds since it claimed that it competes with its own and used the Lebanese infrastructure. The cabinet announced that it would uproot the telecommunication network and in addition also ordered the removal Brigadier General Wafic Shkeir, head of security at Beirut's international airport and considered to be sympathetic to Hezbollah and Amal, on account of failing to deal with the monitoring system. These moves severely antagonized Hezbollah, bringing tensions between the March 8 and March 14 coalitions to a boiling point.
Armed clashes
May 7: Protests and minor clashes
Coincidentally, a day after the cabinet's decision, on Wednesday May 7, the Lebanese General Workers Union had planned a general strike to demand higher wages and decry high consumer prices. The strike turned violent as the opposition threw their weight behind the strike, paralyzing large parts of Lebanon's capital Beirut. Instigated by the recent developments and the strike, pro-government and opposition supporters took the streets coming into conflict with each other at multiple places. Clashes were first reported when government and opposition supporters in a pro-government sector of Beirut exchanged insults and began throwing stones at each other after Hezbollah supporters insisted on blocking the roads. Witnesses said security forces intervened and gunshots were heard, apparently troops firing in the air to disperse the crowds. In the afternoon, verbal violence and stone throwing turned into more violent clashes, with gunfire sporadically going off in the city. Around the city, armed opposition supporters blocked roads including the strategic road towards Beirut international airport, cutting it off from the rest of the city, and roads to the city's sea port.
May 8 - May 9: Takeover of Beirut
After a tense night with sporadic gunfire, Hezbollah's secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah addressed the country in a speech televised on Hezbollah affiliated al-Manar station in the morning of May 8. He referred to the cabinet's decisions of that week as "despotic" and having inaugurated a new phase in Lebanese history, similar to the assassination of former prime minister Rafic Hariri in 2005. He stated that the telecommunication network was not a simple commercial operation aimed merely at generating profit for the organization, but "integral and fundamental" as part of its military apparatus. He claimed that his opponents had already known about the existence of the telecommunication network years before and in drawing attention to the timing of the decision, insinuated that the cabinet's actions were aimed at obstructing the forces of the Resistance (against Israel) in the region. Hezbollah had the right to defend itself, he argued, and metaphorically stated that they would cut-off the hand of anyone that would touch the Resistance. "All red lines had been crossed", according to Nasrallah, and the actions therefore amounted to no mere than a "declaration of war."
Minutes after Nasrallah's speech, heavy street battles began between pro-government and opposition militias. Fighting erupted along Corniche Mazraa, an avenue separating Shiite and Sunni areas, later spreading to the western, southern and eastern parts of Beirut where Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods overlapped. Combat was also heard near the office of Lebanon's Sunni religious leader - an ally of the government - and the palatial compound of the Hariri family in Koreitem was hit by RPG fire. More barricades were set up, closing major highways. Opposition militants eventually overran the positions of pro-government militias in West Beirut and burnt-down three pro-government offices. Saad Hariri, leader of the Future Movement, quickly responded to the outbreak of violence, describing the events as a form of fitna, criticizing the actions of Hezbollah as a threat to the unity of the country and calling on Nasrallah to stop the descendance towards civil war. Faced with large-scale inter-communal violence erupting all over the city, the Lebanese Armed Forces decided not to intervene in the clashes for fear of sparking divisions in the army along sectarian lines, as had happened during the civil war. Other factors that as to why the army did not act in line with the cabinet are, according to political scientist Aram Nerguizian, the apprehension among army commanders at how the cabinet chose to address the issue of Hezbollah's telecommunication network. Secondly, the perception among them that cabinet also did not sufficiently consult the army prior to their decision to dismiss Beirut's airport head of security. Thirdly, the presidential ambitions of Army Commander Michel Suleiman - who would indeed within two weeks become the country's next president - and his resulting need not to antagonize the March 8 coalition and its Syrian allies may also have influenced his decision not to intervene against Hezbollah according to Nerguizian. The army's decision to refrain from intervention did spark objections from within however. Some saw it as a "missed opportunity" for the army to "signal its objection to domestic military action by any of the country's competing political/sectarian forces." Around 120 Sunni officers later even offered their resignation as response to "the humiliation felt from the military's conduct during the militias' invasion of Beirut" as their resignation letter stated. All of the officers except one later repealed their resignation however.
Fighting from the previous day lasted throughout the night and only stopped for a short time a little bit after dawn on May 9, 2008. However, fighting quickly resumed after the brief lull. Pro-government militias were however no match to the Hezbollah led opposition forces. All over West Beirut, pro-government militias had lost ground. Media outlets related to the pro-government Future Movement, amongst which Future TV, Al Mustaqbal Newspaper, Future News, Radio Orient and Future-owned Armenian radio station Sevan had been raided by opposition fighters and forced to close. Future TV and Al Mustaqbal were particularly targeted by opposition fighters. RPG missiles were launched from empty adjacent buildings under construction to Mustaqbal's offices, setting fire to two floors. Future TV offices were raided by Hezbollah members who subsequently cut all of its broadcasts. According to Habib Battah, a media analyst, shutting down Future TV was not only a psychological attack on Future Movement's supporters, but also gave the opposition a monopoly on propaganda messages.Overpowered by Hezbollah's military apparatus and besieged in his residence, Saad Hariri had by then ordered militia members loyal to his Future Movement to stand down. The opposition had now firmly moved in and taken over abandoned positions of pro-government fighters, seizing large parts of the capital's western neighbourhoods. The Lebanese Army also stepped in to take over position deserted by pro-government militiamen and in some instance were handed over control of recently conquered position by Hezbollah. In some neighbourhoods, the takeover had been peaceful with opposition fighters facing no resistance as they moved throughout West Beirut.
May 10 - May 12: Fighting spreads to Aley and the North
As fighting in Beirut dwindled down, violence began to spread to other parts of the country, in particular the Aley District south of Beirut and the north of the country. In the evening of May 9 sporadic clashes erupted in Sidon, where two civilians were killed; and in Bar Elias in the Bekaa Valley where a woman was killed. Also, eight people were killed near the town of Aley in clashes between government supporters and opponents. Seven people who were Hezbollah supporters were killed.
On May 10, 2008, a funeral procession was attacked by a shop-owner affiliated with the Amal Movement, whose shop was previously burned down by Sunni militants, leaving six people dead. An Associated Press photographer who witnessed the shooting said the attack came as a procession of 200 people headed toward a nearby cemetery to bury a 24-year-old pro-government supporter killed in previous fighting. At least 14 people were killed in the town of Halba, in the Akkar region of north Lebanon, as about 100 pro-Future Movement gunmen attacked an office of the SSNP. 10 of the dead were SSNP members, three were government loyalists and one was an Australian citizen of Lebanese descent on vacation in Lebanon, who was trying to get information at the SSNP offices about evacuating from the city. The Australian father of four, Fadi Sheikh, reportedly had his hands and feet cut off. The SSNP says Fadi Sheikh was a member of the party - but was not a militant. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. One other person was killed in fighting in Sidon and two soldiers died in fighting east of Beirut. Heavy fighting had also broken out between Alawite Hezbollah sympathizers and Sunni supporters of the government in the neighbourhoods of Jabal Mohsen and Bab al-Tabbaneh, two neighbourhoods in Tripoli notorious for its sectarian violence, leading thousands to flee their homes.
Faced with the escalated situation as a result of the cabinet's decisions, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora announced on May 10 that the cabinet would handover the issue of telecommunication network to the army and, in addition, announced the reinstatement of the head of security of Beirut's international airport. Subsequently, the Lebanese army took a more active stance in the events and announced it had frozen the measures taken by the government and called for all armed militants to withdraw from the streets. In response, Hezbollah announced that it would withdraw its fighters together with other opposition fighters from West Beirut in compliance with the Lebanese army's request, but that a civil disobedience campaign will continue until the group's political demands are met. The next day, Beirut was quiet as control of areas seized by the opposition was handed over to the Lebanese army. Many roads in the capital remained blockaded however, including the strategic airport road, as the opposition continued their campaign of civil disobedience.
Battle of Mount Barook and Aley District
On May 9, heavy fighting broke out in Mount Lebanon between pro-government Progressive Socialist Party fighters and Hezbollah. The clashes started in Aytat, near Kaifun and soon expanded to cover many spots in Mount Lebanon including the cities of Baisour, Choueifat and Aley. Most of the fighting was concentrated on Hill 888. Fighting started when four Druze members of the Aley municipal police were kidnapped by Hezbollah. Soon after the news of the kidnapping spread, the mayor of Aley assembled a group of PSP fighters and went up to Hill 888. As they reached the hill they were attacked by Hezbollah gunmen who wounded a few of the PSP and municipality members. PSP members retaliated by killing 3 of the kidnappers. The incident developed into a significant armed clash. Artillery and mortars were used for the first time during these battles. A ceasefire agreement was supposed to take place at 18:00 of the same day, but fighters from both sides continued to exchange fire. Negotiations were ongoing for the PSP members to give up the fight and surrender their positions to the Lebanese Army, but it never happened.
The battles at Aley stopped for several hours, but the two sides clashed again in Mount Barouk to the southeast shortly before midnight. Barook separates the Druze heartland of Shouf from the mainly Shi'ite southern end of the Bekaa Valley. That night Hezbollah's fighters deployed from southern Beirut to the Qmatiye area tried to attack the hills near Aley but they were beaten back. After that Hezbollah tried to go on the offensive again and attacked their rival's positions. The Druze fighters had fought the Hezbollah militants from dug-in positions left over from the 1975–90 Civil War. The Druze used hunting guns, AK 47s and other machine guns, RPGs and allegedly even 23mm anti-aircraft guns to blast at the advancing Hezbollah fighters. Opposition forces bombarded the pro-government Druze area with artillery while ground forces attacked Druze positions using rockets and machine guns. By morning, the Druze fighters agreed to cease hostilities and several villages loyal to Lebanon's pro-government Druze leader Walid Jumblatt had been handed over to the army. The kidnapped municipality police members were released by Hezbollah on May 12 in exchange of at least 30 Hezbollah members that were kidnapped by PSP in Mount Barook. Hezbollah were defeated.
Clashes in Hamra and Tripoli
After a day of relative quiet in Beirut renewed gunfire was heard in the commercial area of Hamra in the western part of the city shortly after midnight on May 12. The fighting occurred near the home of Future Movement leader Saad al-Hariri. A two-man Al Jazeera camera crew suffered injuries while trying to film the fighting and were evacuated by the Lebanese army. Meanwhile, in Tripoli, clashes left one person dead and at least six others wounded. Now taking a proactive role in the events, the Army stated that if the clashes did not end by Tuesday May 13, it would intervene and use force if necessary to end the fighting. The next days saw only limited and sporadic fighting.
Resolution process
Arab League intervention
As fighting was spreading to other parts of Lebanon, the Arab League, which had been involved as a mediator in Lebanese political crises since 2005, decided to intervene in Lebanon at an emergency meeting on May 11. The League Council mandated the formation of a Ministerial Committee headed by the Foreign Minister of Qatar and the League's Secretary General which was to go to Lebanon and mediate in the crisis. The League Council also called for a halt to the fighting, the withdrawal of militiamen from the streets, the facilitation of the Lebanese Army to restore calm and talks between the Lebanese political leaders. On May 15, after a round of talks with Lebanon's prime political leaders, the Ministerial Committee announced an initial agreement that marked a cessation of all hostilities and entailed that major Lebanese political leaders would enter into a national dialogue the next day in Doha for further mediation.
Doha Agreement
After half a week of deliberations in Doha, Lebanese political leaders signed an accord on May 21 that brought an immediate end to the 16-month political crisis that had been plaguing the country. Following the principle of "no victor, no vanquished", which entails that no political party or sect can eliminate one of the other political parties or sects, the Doha Agreement was regarded as a compromise deal between government and opposition demands. The accord stipulated (1) the immediate election of Army Commander Michel Suleiman as president; (2) the formation of a national unity government with a blocking third for the opposition; (3) adaption of the electoral law aimed at redistricting based on the 1960 electoral law; (4) a commitment by the signatories not to resort to violence for political gains; (5) initiation of a national dialogue on the promotion of Lebanon's internal sovereignty and (6) a commitment by signatories to abstain from resorting to rhetoric of treason or political and sectarian incitement. The accord was considered a victory for the Lebanese opposition as they secured their key demands for veto-wielding power in the new government and a new electoral law which could benefit the opposition in the upcoming 2009 parliamentary elections. In addition, the question of Hezbollah's weapons was postponed, to be dealt with in a future national dialogue. Nonetheless, the opposition had to give concessions regarding the reappointment of Fouad Siniora as Prime Minister, the distribution of ministerial portfolios and the distribution of parliamentary seats in certain electoral districts. Despite Hezbollah's tactical victory on the streets of Lebanon and the securing of it demands in the accord, analysts have pointed out that the events greatly reduced its legitimacy as a popular resistance movement and that it was seen more than ever as a "Shiite militia brutally defending its parochial interests." In addition, it increased the distrust and fear of it among other political parties and heightened domestic opposition to its armed status as a result of the use of its weapons against other Lebanese actors, despite its earlier pledge not to do so.
Reactions to the fighting
Domestic reactions
Many March 14 leaders decried the events as a coup, pointed towards the Hezbollah's intricate relationship to the Iranian government and assigned a role played in the events to the latter. Hani Hammoud, a senior adviser to Saad Hariri referred to the events as a "one-sided civil war" with the result that "Iran has taken over the country" Christian leaders Samir Geagea and Amine Gemayel also accused Hezbollah of staging a coup, with the former calling on moderate forces in the Arab world to intervene and asked the international community not to stand idly by. A US diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks also showed how on May 11, Gemayel, together with Social Affairs Minister Nayla Mouawad and Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh urged the US to provide more support to the March 14 coalition. Believing that a Hezbollah victory could be imminent, they proposed several ideas, including extending UN Security Council Resolution 1701 to Beirut's airport, sea port and access roads, an imposement of an air ban against Syria by the US and immediate US military aid to their own militias. PSP leader Walid Jumblatt stated that he still stood behind his support for the government's decisions that week, however he acknowledged that he had underestimated the response from Hezbollah. Regarding Hezbollah's next moves he told reporters to "ask [Iranian President] [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad", stating that "this situation goes beyond Lebanese borders." Furthermore, he linked the events to regional geopolitics stating that "the Iranians chose the moment America is weak in the Middle East. The balance of power has completely changed in Lebanon and now we wait to see what new rules Hezbollah, Syria and Iran will lay down."
Michel Aoun, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement and a Hezbollah ally whose supporters did not participate in the fighting, spoke in more neutral terms, calling for the return for normality on the streets.
International reactions
The White House condemned Hezbollah's actions with a spokesman denouncing the organization as a "destabilizing force" which had turned "its arms against the Lebanese people and challenged Lebanon's security forces for control of the streets." In addition, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pronounced the continuing support by the US for the Lebanese government.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal accused Iran of "backing what happened in Lebanon, a coup" and called for "all regional parties to respect the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon and to stop meddling in its affairs and inciting sectarian tensions". He further accused Hezbollah of taking "violent, offensive measures, which aim at an annihilation of people." A diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks two years later show, however, that Prince Saud al-Faisal had proposed to the US Ambassador in Saudi Arabia the creation of an "Arab force" to be supported by the US and NATO which was to restore order in Beirut in response to "Hezbollah's military challenge to the Government of Lebanon." Furthermore, he feared that a Hezbollah victory would lead to the fall of the Siniora cabinet and the "Iranian takeover of Lebanon."
Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini has called on national unity among the Lebanese adding that the situation can be "managed through talks and consensus-building." Hosseini blamed the U.S. and Israel for the ongoing hostilities in Lebanon.
Casualties
The exact total number of casualties as resulting from the fighting in May remains uncertain, but figures range from approximately 70 to 110 deaths. A UN report published in June 2008 reports 69 fatalities, among which civilians, and more than 180 wounded. A Human Rights Watch Report from 2009 states a minimum of 71 deaths. In an article from September 2008 entailing a series of interviews on the events, Beatriz Martínez and Francesco Volpicella note that the official number of casualties up to 15 May is 80 deaths and more than 200 wounded.
See also
2006–2008 Lebanese political protests
Lebanon bombings and assassinations (2004-present)#2008
References
Further reading
External links
Lebanon: Chronicles of an attempted suicide
Deal for Lebanese Factions Leaves Hezbollah Stronger
Doha Compromise is 'No Cave In to Hezbollah'
Lebanon civil war
civil war
Wars involving Lebanon
Wars involving Hezbollah | en |
doc-en-1494 | The Zanzibar Revolution ( Thawrat Zanjibār) occurred in 1964 and led to the overthrow of the Sultan of Zanzibar and his mainly Arab government by local African revolutionaries. Zanzibar was an ethnically diverse state consisting of a number of islands off the east coast of Tanganyika which had been granted independence by Britain in 1963. In a series of parliamentary elections preceding independence, the Arab minority succeeded in retaining the hold on power it had inherited from Zanzibar's former existence as an overseas territory of Oman. Frustrated by under-representation in Parliament despite winning 54% of the vote in the July 1963 election, the mainly African Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP) allied itself with the left-wing multiracial Umma Party, and early in the morning of 12 January 1964 ASP member John Okello mobilised around 600–800 revolutionaries on the main island of Unguja (Zanzibar Island). Having overrun the country's police force and appropriated their weaponry, the insurgents proceeded to Zanzibar Town where they overthrew the Sultan and his government. Reprisals against Arab and South Asian civilians on the island followed; the resulting death toll is disputed, with estimates ranging from several hundred to 20,000. The moderate ASP leader Abeid Karume became the country's new president and head of state, and positions of power were granted to Umma party members.
The new government's apparent communist ties concerned Western governments. As Zanzibar lay within the British sphere of influence, the British government drew up a number of intervention plans. However, the feared communist government never materialised, and because British and American citizens were successfully evacuated, these plans were not put into effect. Meanwhile, the Communist Bloc powers of East Germany and the Soviet Union, along with the anti-Soviet People's Republic of China, established friendly relations with the new government by recognising the country and sending advisors. Karume succeeded in negotiating a merger of Zanzibar with Tanganyika to form the new nation of Tanzania, an act judged by contemporary media to be an attempt to prevent communist subversion of Zanzibar. The revolution ended 200 years of Arab dominance in Zanzibar, and is commemorated on the island each year with anniversary celebrations and a public holiday.
Background
The Zanzibar Archipelago, now part of the Southeast African republic of Tanzania, is a group of islands lying in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Tanganyika. It comprises the main southern island of Unguja (also known as Zanzibar), the smaller northern island of Pemba, and numerous surrounding islets. With a long history of Arab rule dating back to 1698, Zanzibar was an overseas territory of Oman until it achieved independence in 1858 under its own Sultanate. In 1890 during Ali ibn Sa'id's reign, Zanzibar became a British protectorate, and although never formally under direct rule was considered part of the British Empire.
By 1964, the country was a constitutional monarchy ruled by Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah. Zanzibar had a population of around 230,000 Africans—some of whom claimed Persian ancestry and were known locally as Shirazis—and also contained significant minorities in the 50,000 Arabs and 20,000 South Asians, who were prominent in business and trade. The various ethnic groups were becoming mixed and the distinctions between them had blurred; according to one historian, an important reason for the general support for Sultan Jamshid was his family's ethnic diversity. However, the island's Arab inhabitants, as the major landowners, were generally wealthier than the Africans; the major political parties were organised largely along ethnic lines, with Arabs dominating the Zanzibar Nationalist Party (ZNP) and Africans the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP). The ZNP looked towards Egypt as its model, which caused some tensions with the British colonial officials, but Zanzibar had been for centuries dominated by its Arab elite, and the Colonial Office could not imagine a Zanzibar ruled by black Africans.
In January 1961, as part of the process of decolonisation, the island's British authorities drew up constituencies and held democratic elections. Both the ASP and the ZNP won 11 of the available 22 seats in Zanzibar's Parliament, so further elections were held in June with the number of seats increased to 23. The ZNP entered into a coalition with the Zanzibar and Pemba People's Party (ZPPP) and this time took 13 seats, while the ASP, despite receiving the most votes, won just 10. Electoral fraud was suspected by the ASP and civil disorder broke out, resulting in 68 deaths. To maintain control, the coalition government banned the more radical opposition parties, filled the civil service with its own appointees, and politicised the police.
In 1963, with the number of parliamentary seats increased to 31, another election saw a repeat of the 1961 votes. Due to the layout of the constituencies, which were gerrymandered by the ZNP, the ASP, led by Abeid Amani Karume, won 54 percent of the popular vote but only 13 seats, while the ZNP/ZPPP won the rest and set about strengthening its hold on power. The Umma Party, formed that year by disaffected radical Arab socialist supporters of the ZNP, was banned, and all policemen of African mainland origin were dismissed. This removed a large portion of the only security force on the island, and created an angry group of paramilitary-trained men with knowledge of police buildings, equipment and procedures. Furthermore, the new Arab-dominated government made it clear that in foreign policy, the Sultanate of Zanzibar would be seeking close links with the Arab world, especially Egypt and had no interest in forging relationships with the nations on the African mainland as the black majority wished. Slavery had been abolished in Zanzibar in 1897, but much of the Arab elite who dominated the island's politics made little effort to hide their racist views of the black majority as their inferiors, a people fit only for slavery. In Parliament, the Minister of Finance Juma Aley responded to questions from Karume by insultingly saying he need not answer questions from a mere "boatman". Aley further explained in another speech in Parliament that if Arabs were over-represented in the Cabinet, it was not because of racism, but rather it was only because the mental abilities of blacks were so abysmally low and the mental abilities of Arabs like himself were so high, a remark that enraged the black majority. Memories of Arab slave-trading in the past (some of the older blacks had been slaves in their youth) together with a distinctly patronizing view of the Arab elite towards the black majority in the present meant that much of the black population of Zanzibar had a ferocious hatred of the Arabs, viewing the new Arab-dominated government as illegitimate. The government did not help broaden its appeal to the black majority by drastically cutting spending in schools in areas with high concentrations of blacks. The government's budget with its draconian spending cuts in schools in black areas was widely seen as a sign that the Arab-dominated government was planning to lock the blacks in a permanent second-class status.
Complete independence from British rule was granted on 10 December 1963, with the ZNP/ZPPP coalition as the governing body. The government requested a defence agreement from the United Kingdom, asking for a battalion of British troops to be stationed on the island for internal security duties, but this was rejected as it was deemed inappropriate for British troops to be involved in the maintenance of law and order so soon after independence. Much of the cabinet which was seeking closer ties with Egypt (ruled by the radical, anti-Western nationalist Nasser) did not want British troops in Zanzibar anyway. British intelligence reports predicted that a civil disturbance, accompanied by increasing communist activity, was likely in the near future and that the arrival of British troops might cause the situation to deteriorate further. However, many foreign nationals remained on the island, including 130 Britons who were direct employees of the Zanzibar government.
In 1959, a charismatic Ugandan named John Okello arrived in Pemba, working as a bricklayer and in February 1963 moved to Zanzibar. Working as an official in the Zanzibar and Pemba Paint Workers' Union and as an activist in the ASP, Okello had built himself a following and almost from the moment that he arrived on Zanzibar had been organizing a revolution that he planned to take place shortly after independence.
Revolution
Around 3:00 am on 12 January 1964, 600–800 poorly armed, mainly African insurgents, aided by some of the recently dismissed ex-policemen, attacked Unguja's police stations, both of its police armouries, and the radio station. The attackers had no guns, being equipped only with spears, knives, machetes, and tire irons, having only the advantage of numbers and surprise. The Arab police replacements had received almost no training and, despite responding with a mobile force, were soon overcome. Okello himself led the attack on the Ziwani police HQ, which also happened to be the largest armory on the island. Several of the rebels were shot down, but the police were overwhelmed by sheer numbers, with Okello impressing his men with his courage by personally attacking a police sentry and having wrestled his rifle from him, used it to bayonet the policeman to death. Arming themselves with hundreds of captured automatic rifles, submachine guns and Bren guns, the insurgents took control of strategic buildings in the capital, Zanzibar Town. At about 7:00 am, Okello made his first radio broadcast from a local radio station his followers had captured two hours earlier, calling upon the Africans to rise up and overthrow the "imperialists". At the time, Okello only referred to himself as "the field marshal", which prompted much speculation on Zanzibar about the identity of this mysterious figure leading the revolution, who spoke his Swahili with a thick Acholi accent that was unfamiliar on Zanzibar.
Within six hours of the outbreak of hostilities, the town's telegraph office and main government buildings were under revolutionary control, and the island's only airstrip was captured at 2:18 pm. In the countryside, fighting had erupted between the Manga, as the rural Arabs were called, and the Africans. The Manga were armed mainly with hunting rifles, and once the arms seized from the police stations reached the rebels in the countryside, the Manga were doomed. In Stone Town, the fiercest resistance was at the Malindi police station, where under the command of Police Commissioner J.M. Sullivan (a British policeman who stayed on until a local replacement could be hired), all of the rebel attacks were repulsed, not least because the insurgents tended to retreat whenever they came under fire. Sullivan only surrendered the Melindi station late in the afternoon after running out of ammunition, and marched his entire force (not one policeman had been killed or wounded) down to the Stonetown wharf to board some boats that took them out to a ship, the Salama to take them away from Zanzibar. Throughout Stone Town, shops and homes owned by Arabs and South Asians had been looted while numerous Arab and South Asian women were gang-raped. The Sultan, together with Prime Minister Muhammad Shamte Hamadi and members of the cabinet, fled the island on the royal yacht Seyyid Khalifa, and the Sultan's palace and other property were seized by the revolutionary government. At least 80 people were killed and 200 injured, the majority of whom were Arabs, during the 12 hours of street fighting that followed. Sixty-one American citizens, including 16 men staffing a NASA satellite tracking station, sought sanctuary in the English Club in Zanzibar Town, and four US journalists were detained by the island's new government.
Not knowing that Okello had given orders to kill no whites, the Americans living in Stone Town fled to the English Club, where the point for evacuation was. Those travelling in the car convoy to the English Club were shocked to see the battered bodies of Arab men lying out on the streets of Stone Town with their severed penises and testicles shoved into their mouths. As part of Okello's carefully laid out plans, all over the island, gangs of Africans armed with knives, spears and pangas (machetes) went about systematically killing all the Arabs and South Asians they could find. The American diplomat Don Petterson described his horror as he watched from his house as he saw a gang of African men storm the house of an Arab, behead him in public with a panga, followed by screams from within his house as his wife and three children were raped and killed, followed by the same scene being repeated at the next house of an Arab, followed by yet another and another. After taking control of Stone Town on the first day, the revolutionaries continued to fight the Manga for control of the countryside for at least two days afterwards with whole families of Arabs being massacred after their homes had been stormed.
According to the official Zanzibari history, the revolution was planned and headed by the ASP leader Abeid Amani Karume. However, at the time Karume was on the African mainland as was the leader of the banned Umma Party, Abdulrahman Muhammad Babu. The ASP branch secretary for Pemba, Ugandan-born ex-policeman John Okello, had sent Karume to the mainland to ensure his safety. Okello had arrived in Zanzibar from Kenya in 1959, claiming to have been a field marshal for the Kenyan rebels during the Mau Mau uprising, although he actually had no military experience. He maintained that he heard a voice commanding him, as a Christian, to free the Zanzibari people from the Muslim Arabs, though Zanzibaris themselves were predominantly Muslim and it was Okello who led the revolutionaries—mainly unemployed members of the Afro-Shirazi Youth League—on 12 January. One commentator has further speculated that it was probably Okello, with the Youth League, who planned the revolution. There appears to have been three different plots to overthrow the government, led by Karume, Babu and Okello, but it was Okello's plan which was furthest advanced and it was he who struck the blow that brought down the Sultan's regime. Okello was not widely known in Zanzibar, and the government was more concerned with monitoring the ASP and Umma rather than a little-known and barely literate house painter and minor union official. Okello was a complete mystery to the world at the time of the revolution, and MI5 reported to Whitehall that he was an ex-policeman who fought with the Mau Mau in Kenya and had been trained in Cuba in the art of revolutionary violence. Okello himself at a press conference several days later angrily denied having ever been to Cuba or China, stating that he was a Christian whose motto was "Everything can be learned from the Bible".
During the revolution, there was an orgy of violence committed against the South Asian and Arab communities with thousands of women being raped by Okello's followers, and much looting and massacres of Arabs all over the island. The American diplomat Don Petterson described the killings of Arabs by the African majority as an act of genocide. Petterson wrote "Genocide was not a term that was as much in vogue then, as it came to be later, but it is fair to say that in parts of Zanzibar, the killing of Arabs was genocide, pure and simple". Okello frequently went on the radio to urge his followers in thunderous Old Testament language to kill as many Arabs as possible, with the maximum of brutality. As a Pan-African nationalist who made his followers sing "God Bless Africa" whenever he marched through the streets, Okello appealed to the black majority, but at the same time, as a militant Christian who claimed to hear the voice of God in his head, Okello's appeal on an island whose population was 95% Muslim was limited.
Aftermath
A Revolutionary Council was established by the ASP and Umma parties to act as an interim government, with Karume heading the council as President and Babu serving as the Minister of External Affairs. The country was renamed the People's Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba; the new government's first acts were to permanently banish the Sultan and to ban the ZNP and ZPPP. Seeking to distance himself from the volatile Okello, Karume quietly sidelined him from the political scene, although he was allowed to retain his self-bestowed title of field marshal. However, Okello's revolutionaries soon began reprisals against the Arab and Asian population of Unguja, carrying out beatings, rapes, murders, and attacks on property. He claimed in radio speeches to have killed or imprisoned tens of thousands of his "enemies and stooges", but actual estimates of the number of deaths vary greatly, from "hundreds" to 20,000. Some Western newspapers give figures of 2,000–4,000; but the higher numbers may be inflated by Okello's own broadcasts and exaggerated reports in some Western and Arab news media. The killing of Arab prisoners and their burial in mass graves was documented by an Italian film crew, filming from a helicopter, for Africa Addio and this sequence of film comprises the only known visual document of the killings. Many Arabs fled to safety in Oman, although by Okello's order no Europeans were harmed. The post-revolution violence did not spread to Pemba.
By 3 February Zanzibar was finally returning to normality, and Karume had been widely accepted by the people as their president. A police presence was back on the streets, looted shops were re-opening, and unlicensed arms were being surrendered by the civilian populace. The revolutionary government announced that its political prisoners, numbering 500, would be tried by special courts. Okello formed the Freedom Military Force (FMF), a paramilitary unit made up of his own supporters, which patrolled the streets and looted Arab property. The behaviour of Okello's supporters, his violent rhetoric, Ugandan accent, and Christian beliefs were alienating many in the largely moderate Zanzibari and Muslim ASP, and by March many members of his FMF had been disarmed by Karume's supporters and the Umma Party militia. On 11 March Okello was officially stripped of his rank of Field Marshal, and was denied entry when trying to return to Zanzibar from a trip to the mainland. He was deported to Tanganyika and then to Kenya, before returning destitute to his native Uganda.
In April the government formed the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and completed the disarmament of Okello's remaining FMF militia. On 26 April Karume announced that a union had been negotiated with Tanganyika to form the new country of Tanzania. The merger was seen by contemporary media as a means of preventing communist subversion of Zanzibar; at least one historian states that it may have been an attempt by Karume, a moderate socialist, to limit the influence of the radically left-wing Umma Party. Babu had become close to Chinese diplomats who had arranged for several shipments of arms to be sent to Zanzibar to allow the Umma Party to have a paramilitary wing. Both Karume and President Nyerere of Tanganyika were concerned that Zanzibar was starting to become a hot-spot of Cold War tensions as American and British diplomats competed for influence with Soviet, Chinese and East German diplomats, and having a union with the non-aligned Tanganyika was considered the best way of removing Zanzibar from the world spotlight. However, many of the Umma Party's socialist policies on health, education and social welfare were adopted by the government.
Foreign reaction
British military forces in Kenya were made aware of the revolution at 4:45 am on 12 January, and following a request from the Sultan were put on 15 minutes' standby to conduct an assault on Zanzibar's airfield. However, the British High Commissioner in Zanzibar, Timothy Crosthwait, reported no instances of British nationals being attacked and advised against intervention. As a result, the British troops in Kenya were reduced to four hours' standby later that evening. Crosthwait decided not to approve an immediate evacuation of British citizens, as many held key government positions and their sudden removal would further disrupt the country's economy and government.
Within hours of the revolution, the American ambassador had authorised the withdrawal of US citizens on the island, and a US Navy destroyer, the USS Manley, arrived on 13 January. The Manley docked at Zanzibar Town harbour, but the US had not sought the Revolutionary Council's permission for the evacuation, and the ship was met by a group of armed men. Permission was eventually granted on 15 January, but the British considered this confrontation to be the cause of much subsequent ill will against the Western powers in Zanzibar.
Western intelligence agencies believed that the revolution had been organised by communists supplied with weapons by the Warsaw Pact countries. This suspicion was strengthened by the appointment of Babu as Minister for External Affairs and Abdullah Kassim Hanga as Prime Minister, both known leftists with possible communist ties. Britain believed that these two were close associates of Oscar Kambona, the Foreign Affairs Minister of Tanganyika, and that former members of the Tanganyika Rifles had been made available to assist with the revolution. Some members of the Umma Party wore Cuban military fatigues and beards in the style of Fidel Castro, which was taken as an indication of Cuban support for the revolution. However this practice was started by those members who had staffed a ZNP branch office in Cuba and it became a common means of dress amongst opposition party members in the months leading up to the revolution. The new Zanzibar government's recognition of the German Democratic Republic (the first African government to do so) and of North Korea was further evidence to the Western powers that Zanzibar was aligning itself closely with the communist bloc. Just six days after the revolution the New York Times stated that Zanzibar was "on the verge of becoming the Cuba of Africa", but on 26 January denied that there was active communist involvement. Zanzibar continued to receive support from communist countries and by February was known to be receiving advisers from the Soviet Union, the GDR and China. Cuba also lent its support with Che Guevara stating on 15 August that "Zanzibar is our friend and we gave them our small bit of assistance, our fraternal assistance, our revolutionary assistance at the moment when it was necessary" but denying there were Cuban troops present during the revolution. At the same time, western influence was diminishing and by July 1964 just one Briton, a dentist, remained in the employ of the Zanzibari government. It has been alleged that Israeli spymaster David Kimche was a backer of the revolution with Kimche in Zanzibar on the day of the Revolution.
The deposed Sultan made an unsuccessful appeal to Kenya and Tanganyika for military assistance, although Tanganyika sent 100 paramilitary police officers to Zanzibar to contain rioting. Other than the Tanganyika Rifles (formerly the colonial King's African Rifles), the police were the only armed force in Tanganyika, and on 20 January the police absence led the entire Rifles regiment to mutiny. Dissatisfied with their low pay rates and with the slow progress of the replacement of their British officers with Africans, the soldiers' mutiny sparked similar uprisings in both Uganda and Kenya. However, order on the African mainland was rapidly restored without serious incident by the British Army and Royal Marines.
The possible emergence of an African communist state remained a source of disquiet in the West. In February, the British Defence and Overseas Policy Committee said that, while British commercial interests in Zanzibar were "minute" and the revolution by itself was "not important", the possibility of intervention must be maintained. The committee was concerned that Zanzibar could become a centre for the promotion of communism in Africa, much like Cuba had in the Americas. Britain, most of the Commonwealth, and the USA withheld recognition of the new regime until 23 February, by which time it had already been recognised by much of the communist bloc. In Crosthwait's opinion, this contributed to Zanzibar aligning itself with the Soviet Union; Crosthwait and his staff were expelled from the country on 20 February and were only allowed to return once recognition had been agreed.
British military response
Following the evacuation of its citizens on 13 January, the US government stated that it recognised that Zanzibar lay within Britain's sphere of influence, and would not intervene. The US did, however, urge that Britain cooperate with other Southeast African countries to restore order. The first British military vessel on the scene was the survey ship HMS Owen, which was diverted from the Kenyan coast and arrived on the evening of 12 January. Owen was joined on 15 January by the frigate Rhyl and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Hebe. While the lightly armed Owen had been able to provide the revolutionaries with an unobtrusive reminder of Britain's military power, the Hebe and Rhyl were different matters. Due to inaccurate reports that the situation in Zanzibar was deteriorating, the Rhyl was carrying a company of troops of the first battalion of the Staffordshire Regiment from Kenya, the embarkation of which was widely reported in the Kenyan media, and would hinder British negotiations with Zanzibar. The Hebe had just finished removing stores from the naval depot at Mombasa and was loaded with weapons and explosives. Although the Revolutionary Council was unaware of the nature of Hebe'''s cargo, the Royal Navy's refusal to allow a search of the ship created suspicion ashore and rumours circulated that she was an amphibious assault ship.
A partial evacuation of British citizens was completed by 17 January, when the army riots in Southeast Africa prompted Rhyl's diversion to Tanganyika so the troops she was carrying could assist in quelling the mutiny. In replacement, a company of the Gordon Highlanders was loaded aboard Owen so an intervention could still be made if necessary. The aircraft carriers Centaur and Victorious were also transferred to the region as part of Operation Parthenon. Although never enacted, Parthenon was intended as a precaution should Okello or the Umma party radicals attempt to seize power from the more moderate ASP. In addition to the two carriers, the plan involved three destroyers, Owen, 13 helicopters, 21 transport and reconnaissance aircraft, the second battalion of the Scots Guards, 45 Commando of the Royal Marines and one company of the second battalion of the Parachute Regiment. The island of Unguja, and its airport, were to be seized by parachute and helicopter assault, followed up by the occupation of Pemba. Parthenon would have been the largest British airborne and amphibious operation since the Suez Crisis.
Following the revelation that the revolutionaries may have received communist bloc training, Operation Parthenon was replaced by Operation Boris. This called for a parachute assault on Unguja from Kenya, but was later abandoned due to poor security in Kenya and the Kenyan government's opposition to the use of its airfields. Instead Operation Finery was drawn up, which would involve a helicopter assault by Royal Marines from HMS Bulwark, a commando carrier then stationed in the Middle East. As Bulwark was outside the region, Finery's launch would require 14 days' notice, so in the event that a more immediate response was necessary, suitable forces were placed on 24 hours' notice to launch a smaller scale operation to protect British citizens.
With the merger of Tanganyika and Zanzibar on 23 April, there were concerns that the Umma Party would stage a coup; Operation Shed was designed to provide for intervention should this happen. Shed would have required a battalion of troops, with scout cars, to be airlifted to the island to seize the airfield and protect Karume's government. However, the danger of a revolt over unification soon passed, and on 29 April the troops earmarked for Shed were reduced to 24 hours' notice. Operation Finery was cancelled the same day. Concern over a possible coup remained though, and around 23 September Shed was replaced with Plan Giralda, involving the use of British troops from Aden and the Far East, to be enacted if the Umma Party attempted to overthrow President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. An infantry battalion, tactical headquarters unit and elements of the Royal Marines would have been shipped to Zanzibar to launch an amphibious assault, supported by follow-on troops from British bases in Kenya or Aden to maintain law and order. Giralda was scrapped in December, ending British plans for military intervention in the country.
Legacy
One of the main results of the revolution in Zanzibar was to break the power of the Arab/Asian ruling class, who had held it for around 200 years. Despite the merger with Tanganyika, Zanzibar retained a Revolutionary Council and House of Representatives which was, until 1992, run on a one-party system and has power over domestic matters. The domestic government is led by the President of Zanzibar, Karume being the first holder of this office. This government used the success of the revolution to implement reforms across the island. Many of these involved the removal of power from Arabs. The Zanzibar civil service, for example, became an almost entirely African organisation, and land was redistributed from Arabs to Africans. The revolutionary government also instituted social reforms such as free healthcare and opening up the education system to African students (who had occupied only 12% of secondary school places before the revolution).
The government sought help from the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and People's Republic of China for funding for several projects and military advice. The failure of several GDR-led projects including the New Zanzibar Project, a 1968 urban redevelopment scheme to provide new apartments for all Zanzibaris, led to Zanzibar focusing on Chinese aid. The post-revolution Zanzibar government was accused of draconian controls on personal freedoms and travel and exercised nepotism in appointments to political and industrial offices, the new Tanzanian government being powerless to intervene. Dissatisfaction with the government came to a head with the assassination of Karume on 7 April 1972, which was followed by weeks of fighting between pro- and anti-government forces. A multi-party system was eventually established in 1992, but Zanzibar remains dogged by allegations of corruption and vote-rigging, though the 2010 general election was seen to be a considerable improvement.
The revolution itself remains an event of interest for Zanzibaris and academics. Historians have analysed the revolution as having a racial and a social basis, with some stating that the African revolutionaries represent the proletariat rebelling against the ruling and trading classes, represented by the Arabs and South Asians. Others discount this theory and present it as a racial revolution that was exacerbated by economic disparity between races.
Within Zanzibar, the revolution is a key cultural event, marked by the release of 545 prisoners on its tenth anniversary and by a military parade on its 40th. Zanzibar Revolution Day has been designated as a public holiday by the government of Tanzania; it is celebrated on 12 January each year.
The Mapinduzi Cup (Revolution Cup), an association football knockout competition is organized by the Zanzibar Football Association in early January between 6–13 January to mark the revolution day (12 January).
References
Citations
Sources
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Further reading
Fouéré, Marie-Aude and William C. Bissell (eds.) (2018). Social Memory, Silenced Voices, and Political Struggle: Remembering the Revolution in Zanzibar. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Mkuki na Nyota. .
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Mwakikagile, Godfrey. The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar: Formation of Tanzania and Its Challenges, .
Mwakikagile, Godfrey. Why Tanganyika united with Zanzibar to form Tanzania, .
Mwakikagile, Godfrey. The Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar: Product of the Cold War?'', .
1964 in Tanzania
1964 in Zanzibar
20th-century revolutions
African and Black nationalism in Africa
Anti-Arabism in Africa
Anti-Indian racism in Africa
Conflicts in 1964
Genocides in Africa
History of Zanzibar
January 1964 events in Africa
Massacres of ethnic groups
Rebellions in Africa
Sultanate of Zanzibar
Wars involving Zanzibar
Massacres in the 1960s | en |
doc-en-10075 | Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle designed and manufactured by SpaceX. It is derived from the Falcon 9 vehicle and consists of a strengthened Falcon 9 first stage as the center core with two additional Falcon 9 first stages serving as strap-on boosters. Falcon Heavy has the highest payload capacity of any currently operational launch vehicle and the third-highest capacity of any rocket ever to reach orbit, trailing the Saturn V and Energia.
SpaceX conducted Falcon Heavy's maiden launch on 6 February 2018, at 20:45 UTC. The rocket carried a Tesla Roadster belonging to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, with a dummy dubbed "Starman" in the driver's seat, as a dummy payload. The second Falcon Heavy launch occurred on 11 April 2019, and all three booster rockets successfully returned to Earth. The third Falcon Heavy launch successfully occurred on 25 June 2019. Since then, Falcon Heavy has been certified for the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program.
Falcon Heavy was designed to be able to carry humans into space beyond low Earth orbit, although , SpaceX does not intend to transport people on Falcon Heavy, nor pursue the human-rating certification process to transport NASA astronauts. Both Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 will eventually be superseded by the in-development Starship launch system.
History
Concepts for a Falcon Heavy launch vehicle using three Falcon 1 core boosters, with an approximate payload-to-LEO capacity of two tons, were initially discussed as early as 2003. The concept for three core booster stages of the company's as-yet-unflown Falcon 9 was referred to in 2005 as the Falcon 9 Heavy.
SpaceX unveiled the plan for the Falcon Heavy to the public at a Washington, D.C. news conference in April 2011, with initial test flight expected in 2013.
A number of factors delayed the planned maiden flight by 5 years to 2018, including two anomalies with Falcon 9 launch vehicles, which required all engineering resources to be dedicated to failure analysis, halting flight operations for many months. The integration and structural challenges of combining three Falcon 9 cores were much more difficult than expected.
In July 2017, Elon Musk said, "It actually ended up being way harder to do Falcon Heavy than we thought. ... We were pretty naive about that".
The initial test flight for a Falcon Heavy lifted off on 6 February 2018, at 20:45 UTC, carrying its dummy payload, Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster, beyond Mars orbit.
Conception and funding
Musk mentioned Falcon Heavy in a September 2005 news update, referring to a customer request from 18 months prior. Various solutions using the planned Falcon 5 (which was never flown) had been explored, but the only cost-effective, reliable iteration was one that used a 9-engine first stage — the Falcon 9. The Falcon Heavy was developed with private capital with Musk stating that the cost was more than US$500 million. No government financing was provided for its development.
Design and development
The Falcon Heavy design is based on Falcon 9's fuselage and engines. By 2008, SpaceX had been aiming for the first launch of Falcon 9 in 2009, while "Falcon 9 Heavy would be in a couple of years". Speaking at the 2008 Mars Society Conference, Musk also indicated that he expected a hydrogen-fueled upper stage would follow 2–3 years later (which would have been around 2013).
By April 2011, the capabilities and performance of the Falcon 9 vehicle were better understood, SpaceX having completed two successful demonstration missions to low Earth orbit (LEO), one of which included reignition of the second-stage engine. At a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on 5 April 2011, Musk stated that Falcon Heavy would "carry more payload to orbit or escape velocity than any vehicle in history, apart from the Saturn V Moon rocket ... and Soviet Energia rocket". In the same year, with the expected increase in demand for both variants, SpaceX announced plans to expand manufacturing capacity "as we build towards the capability of producing a Falcon 9 first stage or Falcon Heavy side booster every week and an upper stage every two weeks".
In 2015, SpaceX announced a number of changes to the Falcon Heavy rocket, worked in parallel to the upgrade of the Falcon 9 v1.1 launch vehicle. In December 2016, SpaceX released a photo showing the Falcon Heavy interstage at the company headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Testing
By May 2013, a new, partly underground test stand was being built at the SpaceX Rocket Development and Test Facility in McGregor, Texas, specifically to test the triple cores and twenty-seven rocket engines of the Falcon Heavy. By May 2017, SpaceX conducted the first static fire test of flight-design Falcon Heavy center core at the McGregor facility.
In July 2017, Musk discussed publicly the challenges of testing a complex launch vehicle like the three-core Falcon Heavy, indicating that a large extent of the new design "is really impossible to test on the ground" and could not be effectively tested independent of actual flight tests.
By September 2017, all three first stage cores had completed their static fire tests on the ground test stand. The first Falcon Heavy static fire test was conducted on 24 January 2018.
Maiden flight
In April 2011, Musk was planning for a first launch of Falcon Heavy from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the West Coast in 2013. SpaceX refurbished Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg AFB to accommodate Falcon 9 and Heavy. The first launch from the Cape Canaveral East Coast launch complex was planned for late 2013 or 2014.
Due partly to the failure of SpaceX CRS-7 in June 2015, SpaceX rescheduled the maiden Falcon Heavy flight in September 2015 to occur no earlier than April 2016, but by February 2016 had postponed it again to late 2016. The flight was to be launched from the refurbished Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A.
In August 2016, the demonstration flight was moved to early 2017, then to summer 2017, to late 2017 and was launched in February 2018.
At a July 2017 meeting of the International Space Station Research and Development meeting in Washington, D.C., Musk downplayed expectations for the success of the maiden flight:
There's a real good chance the vehicle won't make it to orbit ... I hope it makes it far enough away from the pad that it does not cause pad damage. I would consider even that a win, to be honest.
In December 2017, Musk tweeted that the dummy payload on the maiden Falcon Heavy launch would be his personal Tesla Roadster playing David Bowie's "Life on Mars", and that it would be launched into an orbit around the Sun that will reach the orbit of Mars. He released pictures in the following days. The car had three cameras attached to provide "epic views".
On December 28, 2017, the Falcon Heavy was moved to the launch pad in preparation of a static fire test of all 27 engines, which was expected on 19 January 2018. However, due to the U.S. government shutdown that began on 20 January 2018, the testing and launch were further delayed.
The static fire test was conducted on 24 January 2018. Musk confirmed via Twitter that the test "was good" and later announced the rocket would be launched on 6 February 2018.
On 6 February 2018, after a delay of over two hours due to high winds, Falcon Heavy lifted off at 20:45 UTC. Its side boosters landed safely on Landing Zones 1 and 2 a few minutes later. However, only one of the three engines on the center booster that were intended to restart ignited during descent, causing the booster to be destroyed upon impacting the ocean at a speed of over .
Initially, Elon Musk tweeted that the Roadster had overshot its planned heliocentric orbit, and would reach the asteroid belt. Later, observations by telescopes showed that the Roadster would only slightly exceed the orbit of Mars at aphelion.
Later flights
A year after the successful demo flight, SpaceX had signed five commercial contracts worth US$500–750 million, meaning that it had managed to cover the development cost of the rocket. The second flight, and first commercial one, occurred on 11 April 2019, launching Arabsat-6A, with all three boosters landing successfully for the first time.
The third flight occurred on 25 June 2019, launching the STP-2 (DoD Space Test Program) payload. The payload was composed of 25 small spacecraft. Operational Geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) missions for Intelsat and Inmarsat, which were planned for late 2017, were moved to the Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket version as it had become powerful enough to lift those heavy payloads in its expendable configuration.
Following the announcement of NASA's Artemis program of returning humans to the Moon, the Falcon Heavy rocket has been mentioned several times as an alternative to the expensive Space Launch System (SLS) program. NASA director Jim Bridenstine announced that Falcon Heavy is powerful enough to launch the Orion capsule, but cannot launch it on top of the European Service Module in the same flight, and thus Falcon Heavy cannot be used as a replacement for SLS. However, Falcon Heavy will support commercial missions for the Artemis program, since it will be used to transport the Dragon XL spacecraft to the Gateway. It was also selected to launch the first two elements of the Lunar Gateway, the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), and the Habitation And Logistics Outpost (HALO), on a single launch in November 2024.
Design
Falcon Heavy consists of a structurally strengthened Falcon 9 as the "core" component, with two additional Falcon 9 first stages mounted outboard and serving as strap-on boosters, conceptually similar to Delta IV Heavy launcher and proposals for the Atlas V Heavy and Russian Angara A5V. Falcon Heavy has more lift capability than any other operational rocket, with a payload of to low Earth orbit, to Geostationary Transfer Orbit, and to trans-Mars injection. The rocket was designed to meet or exceed all current requirements of human rating. The structural safety margins are 40% above flight loads, higher than the 25% margins of other rockets. Falcon Heavy was designed from the outset to carry humans into space and it would restore the possibility of flying crewed missions to the Moon or Mars.
The first stage is powered by three Falcon 9 derived cores, each equipped with nine Merlin 1D engines. The Falcon Heavy has a total sea-level thrust at liftoff of , from the 27 Merlin 1D engines, while thrust rises to as the craft climbs out of the atmosphere. The upper stage is powered by a single Merlin 1D engine modified for vacuum operation, with a thrust of , an expansion ratio of 117:1 and a nominal burn time of 397 seconds. At launch, the center core throttles to full power for a few seconds for additional thrust, then throttles down. This allows a longer burn time. After the side boosters separate, the center core throttles back up to maximum thrust. For added reliability of restart, the engine has dual redundant pyrophoric igniters (Triethylaluminium-Triethylborane) (TEA-TEB). The interstage, which connects the upper and lower stage for Falcon 9, is a carbon fiber aluminum core composite structure. Stage separation occurs via reusable separation collets and a pneumatic pusher system. The Falcon 9 tank walls and domes are made from Aluminium–lithium alloy. SpaceX uses an all-friction stir welded tank. The second stage tank of Falcon 9 is simply a shorter version of the first stage tank and uses most of the same tooling, material, and manufacturing techniques. This approach reduces manufacturing costs during vehicle production.
All three cores of the Falcon Heavy arrange the engines in a structural form SpaceX calls Octaweb, aimed at streamlining the manufacturing process, and each core includes four extensible landing legs. To control the descent of the boosters and center core through the atmosphere, SpaceX uses four retractable grid fins at the top of each of the three Falcon 9 boosters, which extend after separation. Immediately after the side boosters separate, the center engine in each burns for a few seconds in order to control the booster's trajectory safely away from the rocket. The grid fins then deploy as the boosters turn back to Earth, followed by the landing legs. Each booster lands softly on the ground in fully reusable launch configuration. The two side boosters land on different drone ships in partial reusable configuration. The center core continues to fire until stage separation. In fully reusable launches, its grid fins and legs deploy and the center core lands either back on Earth on a drone ship. If the stages are expended, then the landing legs and grid fins are omitted from the vehicle. The landing legs are made of carbon fiber with aluminum honeycomb structure. The four legs stow along the sides of each core during liftoff and extend outward and down just before landing.
Rocket specifications
Falcon Heavy specifications and characteristics are as follows:
The Falcon Heavy uses a interstage attached to the first stage core. It is a composite structure consisting of an aluminum honeycomb core surrounded by a carbon fiber face sheet plies. Unlike for Falcon 9, the black thermal protection layer on the interstage of Block 5 center core boosters has not been used in the Falcon Heavy flights so far. The overall length of the vehicle at launch is , and the total fueled mass is . Without recovery of any stage, the Falcon Heavy can inject a payload into a low Earth orbit, or to Venus or Mars.
The Falcon Heavy includes first-stage recovery systems, to allow SpaceX to return the first stage boosters to the launch site as well as recover the first stage core following landing at an Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship barge after completion of primary mission requirements. These systems include four deployable landing legs, which are locked against each first-stage tank core during ascent and deploy just prior to touchdown. Excess propellant reserved for Falcon Heavy first-stage recovery operations will be diverted for use on the primary mission objective, if required, ensuring sufficient performance margins for successful missions. The nominal payload capacity to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) is with recovery of all three first-stage cores (the price per launch is US$90 million), versus in fully expendable mode (US$150 million price per launch). The Falcon Heavy can also inject a payload into GTO if only the two side boosters are recovered.
Capabilities
The partially reusable Falcon Heavy falls into the heavy-lift range of launch systems, capable of lifting into low Earth orbit (LEO), under the classification system used by a NASA human spaceflight review panel. A fully expendable Falcon Heavy is in the super heavy-lift category with a maximum payload of to low Earth orbit.
The initial concept (Falcon 9-S9 2005) envisioned payloads of to LEO, but by April 2011 this was projected to be up to with geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) payloads up to . Later reports in 2011 projected higher payloads beyond LEO, including to geostationary transfer orbit, to translunar trajectory, and on a trans-Martian orbit to Mars.
By late 2013, SpaceX raised the projected GTO payload for Falcon Heavy to up to .
In April 2017, the projected LEO payload for Falcon Heavy was raised from . The maximum payload is achieved when the rocket flies a fully expendable launch profile, not recovering any of the three first-stage boosters. With just the core booster expended, and two side-boosters recovered, Musk estimates the payload penalty to be around 10%, which would still yield over of lift capability to LEO. Returning all three boosters to the launch site rather than landing them on drone ships would yield about 30 t of payload to LEO.
Reusability
From 2013 to 2016, SpaceX conducted parallel development of a reusable rocket architecture for Falcon 9, that applies to parts of Falcon Heavy as well. Early on, SpaceX had expressed hopes that all rocket stages would eventually be reusable. SpaceX has since demonstrated routine land and sea recovery of the Falcon 9 first stage, and have successfully recovered multiple payload fairings. In the case of Falcon Heavy, the two outer cores separate from the rocket earlier in the flight, and are thus moving at a lower velocity than in a Falcon 9 launch profile. For the first flight of Falcon Heavy, SpaceX had considered attempting to recover the second stage, but did not execute this plan.
SpaceX has indicated that the Falcon Heavy payload performance to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) will be reduced due to the addition of the reusable technology, but the rocket would fly at a much lower price. When recovering all three booster cores, GTO payload is . If only the two outside cores are recovered while the center core is expended, GTO payload would be approximately . As a comparison, the next-heaviest contemporary rocket, the fully expendable Delta IV Heavy, can deliver to GTO.
Propellant crossfeed
Falcon Heavy was originally designed with a unique "propellant crossfeed" capability, whereby the center core engines would be supplied with fuel and oxidizer from the two side cores until their separation. Operating all engines at full thrust from launch, with fuel supplied mainly from the side boosters, would deplete the side boosters sooner, allowing their earlier separation to reduce the mass being accelerated. This would leave most of the center core propellant available after booster separation.
Musk stated in 2016 that crossfeed would not be implemented. Instead, the center booster throttles down shortly after liftoff to conserve fuel, and resumes full thrust after the side boosters have separated.
Environmental impact
BBC Science Focus, in February 2018, published an article on Falcon Heavy's environmental impact. It stated concerns that frequent Falcon Heavy launches can contribute to pollution in the atmosphere.
The Planetary Society was concerned that launching a non-sterile object (as was done on the Falcon Heavy Test Flight) to interplanetary space may risk biological contamination of a foreign world. Scientists at Purdue University thought it was the "dirtiest" man-made object ever sent into space, in terms of bacteria amount, noting the car was previously driven on Los Angeles freeways. Although the vehicle will be sterilized by solar radiation over time, some bacteria might survive on pieces of plastic which could contaminate Mars in the distant future.
A study conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration found that the boost-back and landing of Falcon Heavy boosters "would not significantly affect the quality of the human environment".
Launch prices
At an appearance in May 2004 before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Musk testified, "Long term plans call for development of a heavy lift product and even a super-heavy, if there is customer demand. We expect that each size increase would result in a meaningful decrease in cost per pound to orbit. ... Ultimately, I believe US$500 per pound or less is very achievable". This goal stated by Musk in 2011 is 35% of the cost of the lowest-cost-per-pound LEO-capable launch system in a 2001 study: the Zenit, a medium-lift launch vehicle that could carry into LEO for US$35–50 million. In 2011, SpaceX stated that the cost of reaching low Earth orbit could be as low as if an annual rate of four launches can be sustained, and as of 2011 planned to eventually launch as many as 10 Falcon Heavies and 10 Falcon 9s annually.
The published prices for Falcon Heavy launches have changed as development progressed, with announced prices for the various versions of Falcon Heavy priced at US$80–125 million in 2011, US$83–128 million in 2012, US$77–135 million in 2013, US$85 million for up to to GTO in 2014, US$90 million for up to to GTO in 2016.
From 2017 onwards, the price has been stated at US$150 million for to LEO or to GTO (fully expendable). This equates to a price of US$2,350 per kg to LEO and US$5,620 per kg to GTO.
The nearest competing U.S. rocket is ULA's Delta IV Heavy with a LEO payload capacity of costs US$12,340 per kg to LEO and US$24,630 per kg to GTO.
Competitors from 2023 onwards may include SpaceX Starship (100+ t to LEO), Blue Origin's New Glenn (45 t to LEO), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) SHLV (41.3 t to LEO) and United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan ACES (37.4 t to LEO).
Launches and payloads
Due to improvements to the performance of Falcon 9, some of the heavier satellites flown to GTO, such as Intelsat 35e and Inmarsat-5 F4, ended up being launched before the debut of Falcon Heavy. SpaceX anticipated the first commercial Falcon Heavy launch would be three to six months after a successful maiden flight, but due to delays the first commercial payload, Arabsat-6A, was successfully launched on 11 April 2019, a year and two months after the first flight. SpaceX hopes to have 10 launches every year from 2021 on.
First commercial contracts
In May 2012, SpaceX announced that Intelsat had signed the first commercial contract for a Falcon Heavy flight. It was not confirmed at the time when the first Intelsat launch would occur, but the agreement will have SpaceX delivering satellites to geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO). In August 2016, it emerged that this Intelsat contract had been reassigned to a Falcon 9 Full Thrust mission to deliver Intelsat 35e into orbit in the third quarter of 2017. Performance improvements of the Falcon 9 vehicle family since the 2012 announcement, advertising to GTO for its expendable flight profile, enable the launch of this 6 t satellite without upgrading to a Falcon Heavy variant.
In 2014, Inmarsat booked three launches with Falcon Heavy, but due to delays they switched a payload to Ariane 5 for 2017. Similarly to the Intelsat 35e case, another satellite from this contract, Inmarsat 5-F4, was switched to a Falcon 9 Full Thrust thanks to the increased liftoff capacity. The remaining contract covers the launch of Inmarsat-6 F1 in 2020 on a Falcon 9.
First Department of Defense (DoD) contract
In December 2012, SpaceX announced its first Falcon Heavy launch contract with the United States Department of Defense (DoD). The United States Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center awarded SpaceX two Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV)-class missions, including the Space Test Program 2 (STP-2) mission for Falcon Heavy, originally scheduled to be launched in March 2017, to be placed at a near circular orbit at an altitude of , with an inclination of 70.0°.
In April 2015, SpaceX sent the U.S. Air Force an updated letter of intent outlining a certification process for its Falcon Heavy rocket to launch national security satellites. The process includes three successful flights of the Falcon Heavy including two consecutive successful flights, and the letter stated that Falcon Heavy can be ready to fly national security payloads by 2017. But in July 2017, SpaceX announced that the first test flight would take place in December 2017, pushing the launch of the second launch (Space Test Program 2) to June 2018. In May 2018, on the occasion of the first launch of the Falcon 9 Block 5 variant, a further delay to October 2018 was announced, and the launch was eventually pushed back to 25 June 2019. The STP-2 mission used three Block 5 cores.
Payload for Space Test Program 2 (STP-2)
The payload for the STP-2 mission of the Department of Defense included 25 small spacecraft from the U.S. military, NASA, and research institutions:
The Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) was a payload; it is a project partly developed by the U.S. Air Force to demonstrate a less-toxic propellant.
Another secondary payload is the miniaturized Deep Space Atomic Clock that is expected to facilitate autonomous navigation. The Air Force Research Laboratory's Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) has a mass of and will measure the effects of very low frequency radio waves on space radiation. The British 'Orbital Test Bed' payload is hosting several commercial and military experiments.
Other small satellites included Prox 1, built by Georgia Tech students to test out a 3D-printed thruster and a miniaturized gyroscope, LightSail by The Planetary Society, Oculus-ASR nanosatellite from Michigan Tech, and CubeSats from the U.S. Air Force Academy, the Naval Postgraduate School, the United States Naval Research Laboratory, the University of Texas at Austin, California Polytechnic State University, and a CubeSat assembled by students at Merritt Island High School in Florida.
The Block 5-second stage allowed multiple reignitions to place its many payloads in multiple orbits. The launch was planned to include a ballast mass, but the ballast mass was later omitted from the total mass for the payload stack.
Solar System transport missions
In 2011, NASA Ames Research Center proposed a Mars mission called Red Dragon that would use a Falcon Heavy as the launch vehicle and trans-Martian injection vehicle, and a variant of the Dragon capsule to enter the Martian atmosphere. The proposed science objectives were to detect biosignatures and to drill or so underground, in an effort to sample reservoirs of water ice known to exist under the surface. The mission cost as of 2011 was projected to be less than US$425 million, not including the launch cost. SpaceX 2015 estimation was to the surface of Mars, with a soft retropropulsive landing following a limited atmospheric deceleration using a parachute and heat shield. Beyond the Red Dragon concept, SpaceX was seeing potential for Falcon Heavy and Dragon 2 to carry science payloads across much of the Solar System, particularly to Jupiter's moon Europa. SpaceX announced in 2017 that propulsive landing for Dragon 2 would not be developed further, and that the capsule would not receive landing legs. Consequently, the Red Dragon missions to Mars were canceled in favor of Starship, a larger vehicle using a different landing technology.
Gateway
Falcon Heavy is the launch vehicle for the initial modules of the Gateway: Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO). To decrease complexity NASA announced in February 2021 that it is launching the first two elements on a single Falcon Heavy launch vehicle, targeting a launch date no earlier than November 2024. Before switching to a merged launch, NASA listed in April 2020 Falcon Heavy as the launch vehicle for PPE lone launch.
In March 2020, Falcon Heavy won the first award to a resupply mission to the Gateway, placing a new Dragon XL spacecraft on a translunar injection orbit.
NASA Psyche
NASA has chosen Falcon Heavy as the launch vehicle for its Psyche mission to a metallic asteroid with a planned launch in August 2022. The contract is worth US$117 million.
Phase 2 USAF launches
SpaceX was awarded 40% of the launches in Phase 2 of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) contracts, which includes several launches and a vertical integration facility and development of a larger fairing, from 2024 to 2027.
See also
Comparison of orbital launch systems
Comparison of orbital launchers families
SpaceX Mars transportation infrastructure
Saturn C-3
Delta IV Heavy
References
External links
Falcon Heavy official page
Falcon Heavy flight animation, February 2018
Elon Musk on how Falcon Heavy will change space travel, The Verge YouTube
SpaceX launch vehicles
Partially reusable space launch vehicles
Vehicles introduced in 2018 | en |
doc-en-13221 | Maxime-Pierre Jules Dethomas (; October 13, 1867 – January 21, 1929) was a French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, illustrator, and was among the best known theater-set and costume designers of his era. As an artist, Dethomas was highly regarded by his contemporaries and exhibited widely, both within France and abroad. He was a regular contributor to the Impressionistes et Symbolistes, and a founding committee member of the Salon d'Automne. In 1912, he was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for his contributions to French art.
During the latter part of his career, he is remembered for his work overseeing set and costume design for the Théâtre des Arts and the Paris Opera. His works appear in many important national collections, including the Musée d'Orsay, the Hermitage Museum and the National Gallery of Art. A large collection of his theatrically related work is held at the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra National de Paris. Dethomas is also remembered for his close friendship with the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, his brother in-law Ignacio Zuloaga and his association with Les Nabis and other important Post-Impressionist and Symbolist artists and writers. Dethomas died in 1929 at the age of 61, and was buried at the Passy Cemetery, Paris.
Early life and formal education
Born in the Paris suburb of Garges-lès-Gonesse in 1867, Maxime Dethomas was the eldest of six children, including four half-siblings. His family came from a long line of painter-printers on one side, and lawyers on the other. His father, Jean-Albert Dethomas (1842–1891), was an important Parisian politician and lawyer. His mother, Laure-Elizabeth Antoinette Béchet, died at the age of 27 in 1874. His step mother, Marie Louise Thierrée, belonged to the affluent middle-class of Bordeaux.
During 1885, Dethomas first met Augustine Bulteau (1860-1922), matriarch of the Parisian arts community and one-time wife of prominent author and playwright, Jules Ricard (1848-1903). Bulteau would go on to become a pivotal figure in his life, helping him navigate a difficult relationship with his father, guiding his academic direction and encouraging his development as an artist. Each year, Dethomas would take extended breaks at Bulteau's estates in Léry and Venice - trips that would feature prominently in his art.
In 1887, Dethomas enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs at which he studied briefly, preferring instead to pass much of his time at the bookshop of the Revue Indépendante, a favourite haunt of young artists and writers run by Édouard Dujardin. It was here that he first met Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. It is an often repeated, yet erroneous claim that Dethomas' relationship with Toulouse-Lautrec was one of master and student - at least in the formal sense of the term - though their shared experiences and mutual respect for each other as artists was of undeniable consequence. In an 1898 letter, Dethomas reflected on Toulouse-Lautrec's art: The things I see by him always give me an intense desire to work. The things of this boy, who, if he has no talent, certainly has a little genius, are always for me a whiplash [coup de fouet]. It's as if I was shown the way with a sudden invitation to advance. The master paintings do not give me that, we are stupefied with admiration. We are blocked, discouraged, after them we are let down, we are in prison.
Disgruntled with his experiences at the École des Arts Décoratifs, Dethomas began taking informal instruction at the private workshop of the young master, Henri Gervex. In 1888, Gervex began his tenure as instructor at l'Académie Libre on rue Verniquet - Dethomas applied and was accepted, continuing his formal education under Gervex. During this period, Dethomas became firm friends with fellow Gervex student and future brother-in-law, Ignacio Zuloaga. Through Dethomas, Zuloaga gained entrée into French artistic circles; reciprocally, Zuloaga introduced Dethomas to other Spanish expatriate artists, including the so-called Catalan Band: Santiago Rusiñol, Ramon Casas, and Miquel Utrillo.
The final phase of Dethomas' formal education commenced from 1891 onwards, where he followed a more varied course at the Académie de La Palette, 104 Boulevard de Clichy, Montmartre, under Henri Gervex, Puvis de Chavannes and Eugène Carrière. Carrière's tutelage played a significant role in the early development of Dethomas' art, and he would go on to be a close friend of both the artist and his family.
Art
Dethomas' early style owes most to the influence of Carrière and Degas, whilst later works tend more towards that of Toulouse-Lautrec, Anquetin and Forain. Dethomas claimed that his inspiration was guided by artists of earlier generations, particularly Goya, Delacroix and Manet, but his individuality of style ensured he would "not be influenced in his work by any methods or thoughts other than his own". In 1905, influential critic Louis Vauxcelles praised Dethomas as a "shrewd and penetrating observer" that captured his subjects "with a powerful sobriety".
He realised vigorous drawings, and some few oil paintings, showing portraits, cafe scenes, and urban landscapes of Italy and Spain. He primarily worked with broad strokes in conté, graphite, charcoal and pastel, often enhanced by watercolour and the masterful use of the spatter brush, with drizzles and sprays of gouache reminiscent of Lautrec lithographs. From the late 1890s, he drew inspiration from Japanese prints - said to have been introduced to him by Toulouse-Lautrec - and developed a bold xylographic style which lent itself to woodcut reproduction.
Like many of his contemporaries, Dethomas explored various artistic mediums, including book illustrations, posters and print making. By 1895, he was designing programmes for Lugné-Poe's Théâtre de l'Œuvre and exhibition and advertising posters with print makers such as Edward Ancourt, Eugène Verneau and Auguste Clot. With his drawings engraved by Léon Pichon and Emile Gasperini, he illustrated close to thirty books by many prominent authors including Maurice Donnay and Octave Mirbeau.
Dethomas engaged models from both within his social circle, as well as otherwise unremarkable characters from urban life, searching out peculiarities of appearance that betrayed the social facades of the fin de siècle. Having cut ties with his bourgeois pretensions during an 1891 move to Montmartre, Dethomas followed in the footsteps of his mentors, hungry to find authentic expression of the human condition amongst the daily struggles of the urban poor. "His characters are all scoundrels", joked Degas. Two such 'scoundrels' would go on to lead remarkable lives, in no small part due to their association with Dethomas. Then artist's model Suzanne Desprès became romantically involved with Dethomas in June, 1894, and continued to feature prominently in his art for some years, later becoming a famous actress and wife of theater director Lugné-Poe. Prior to meeting Picasso in 1904, Fernande Olivier would also model for Dethomas with some regularity, her memoirs painting a vivid picture of her time in Dethomas' studio:
Degas, an avid supporter of Dethomas, spoke highly of his work asserting "it has weight". Described by Philippe Berthelot as "le meilleur fils de Degas", Dethomas nonetheless exhibited sparingly during the 1890s. Contemporary accounts suggest a "supercilious modesty prevented him from over-exhibiting his work though no artists merchant forbade him". In a letter written by Lautrec in the summer of 1895 to Joseph Ricci, Lautrec refers to Dethomas as his dear friend and compliments him as a painter "who doesn’t talk about his paintings, something that is to be admired". Despite his early reluctance to exhibit, he participated in some of the most significant exhibitions of the 1890s. His first solo exhibition in 1900 marked a turning point in his willingness to accept notoriety, leading to considerable accolades and public recognition.
Dethomas' art passed through the hands of many prominent art dealers including Jos Hessel, Galerie Durand-Ruel and Galerie Druet. Consequently, many of his works were acquired by influential collectors including Olivier Sainsère and Sergei Shchukin. Dethomas is also known to have had his works framed by the frame-maker Pierre Cluzel (1850–1894), and his successor, Louis Vivien. In 1912, Dethomas was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for his contributions to French art.
Theatre
From 1910 to 1913, Dethomas worked under Jacques Rouché during his tenure at the Théâtre des Arts. Upon assuming management of the theater, Rouché enlisted the talents of several artists who had contributed to his magazine, La Grande Revue, including Jacques Dresa, René Piot and Maxime Dethomas, none of which had previously worked for the stage.
As director of the services plastiques, Dethomas embarked on a career that would last for the remainder of his life. The Théâtre des Arts represented a major shift away from facile acting, shallow content and the painted-canvas drawing rooms of commercial theater that were the norm. The inaugural production, Le Carnaval des Enfants (1910), marked a major theatrical revolution by which Dethomas' settings accentuated line and colour, rather than a focus on painted detail and endless props. Against blue, ochre, grey and steel, black costumed characters created striking pictorial compositions in lighting effects that "varied like inflections in a conversation".
The Théâtre des Arts went on to present nearly twenty plays, including Jacques Copeau's adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov (1911), and the stage production of La Tragédie de Salomé (1912), both a popular and critical success. Dethomas' reputation as a set and costume designer was such that by early 1912, he was commissioned by the British aristocracy to design a set and costumes for a London masked ball with some two thousand guests.
Hired to direct and decorate at the Paris Opera in 1914, Rouché and Dethomas went on to offer fresh interpretation of old material and to make inroads into stale scenic convention. By 1917, Dethomas was also designing sets and costumes for the Comédie Française; the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt in 1919; the Théâtre Femina and Le Trianon in 1920; and the Opéra-Comique in 1926 as it celebrated Manuel de Falla's 50th birthday. With a program consisting of La Vida Breve, El Amor Brujo, and Master Peter's Puppet Show, Falla's close friend Ignacio Zuloaga and Dethomas collaborated to create sets and marionettes.
During his seventeen years in the theatre, Dethomas was artistic designer for over fifty plays, ballets and operas, featuring many of the era's most notable actors, dancers, singers, playwrights and composers, including Roussel, Stravinsky and Ravel. In his colour schemes Dethomas used visual analogy paired with the play-writer's thematic intent, "the progression of each scene following perfectly the progression of the drama". Dethomas once wrote that above all else decor should be a good servant of the play and that a designer must get beyond a "painterly feel" to something more solid. Guillaume Apollinaire declared that Dethomas' influence on French Theatre had "transformed the art of scenery, costume design and staging."
Associations
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
During 1887 Dethomas began frequenting the library-bookshop of the Revue Indépendante, a favorite haunt of young artists and writers, in which he first befriended Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Their friendship blossomed – so much so, that Dethomas would go on to become Toulouse-Lautrec's "favourite companion" and "closest friend".
Always drawn to physical eccentricity, Toulouse-Lautrec nicknamed the 6'6" Dethomas 'Gros n'abre' (roughly: Big Tree), for his imposing height and dead-pan face; Thadée Natanson described him as a gentle giant, polished and discreet – "He was so frightened of wearing anything that might draw attention to himself that even the black of his clothes seemed duller than that worn by others." Dethomas' placidity, corpulence and extreme shyness - he always blushed when he had to raise his voice - endeared him to Toulouse-Lautrec. Paul Leclercq claimed that Lautrec was fascinated by Dethomas' "ability to preserve an impassive appearance even in a place of amusement".
Whilst much has been made of the comical dynamic of their friendship, Tolouse-Lautrec also derived an element of utility from his companion. Calm and seemingly distant, Dethomas generally walked through life a discreet and unassuming character. However, when he accompanied Toulouse-Lautrec, their contrasting heights invariably attracted attention, the bowler hat of the little man barely reaching Maxime's elbow. Yet the jeers stopped at the quiet strength of Gros n'arbre. Contemporaries, like Gustave Coquiot, bear witness to this: "Lautrec loved Maxime Dethomas very much. This tall and strong fellow towered over him. With him, he felt under real protection. When together in the street, Lautrec never heard any ridicule. Dethomas, impassive and cold, always muzzled the crowd." Philippe Berthelot recalled that Toulouse-Lautrec playfully attributed his companion super-human strength and would loudly declare with mock seriousness that Dethomas "could have anyone's hide at his leisure!".
In the first days of 1891, Dethomas moved to an apartment at 8, Cité Pigalle, Montmartre - selected no-less for its proximity to the workshop of Eugène Carrière, than to that of his friends Toulouse-Lautrec and the photographer Paul Sescau. They lived but streets apart, often visiting the cafes, cabarets, shady bars and brothels of Montmartre, including the Moulin rouge and Le Chat Noir, or extended stays at the notorious closed-houses, the Rue de' Amboise or the Rue Joubert. By 1894, Tolouse-Lautrec and Dethomas were exhibiting together at le Barc de Boutteville.
On the 16th February, 1895, an infamous soiree was held by the Natansons to celebrate the unveiling of new murals by Vuillard. Chosen from among his friends more for the comedic effect than for his bartending skill, Dethomas assisted Toulouse-Lautrec serving drinks, replete with absurd costumes and flourishes of theatrical drama. Together they served over two thousand cocktails to three hundred guests. The event was long remembered as one of the most debaucherous evenings of the fin-de-siècle. Such escapades played an essential role in the development and themes of both Dethomas' and Toulouse-Lautrec's art.
Dethomas and Toulouse-Lautrec's adventures together were not limited to the streets of Paris. If Dethomas' close friend Gabrielle Dorziat is to be believed, during the month of October, 1894, Dethomas and Toulouse-Lautrec travelled to Spain together, stopping at Madrid, Cordoue and Seville. In subsequent years their travels continued, visiting exhibitions, museums and mutual friends or exploring towns such as Granville, Arromanches and Dinard, at which Dethomas had made use of a summerhouse. During the summer of 1895, they journeyed to the coast of Normandy together. From photographs taken by Dethomas at Saint-Malo with the Natansons during one such trip, he later modelled two portraits of Toulouse-Lautrec, both of which are held at the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec.
From June 20 to July 5, 1897, Dethomas and Toulouse-Lautrec sailed Holland's canals on a barge, visiting Utrecht, the Frans Hals Museum at Haarlem and the island of Walcheren. The trip had been the suggestion of Maxime in a vain attempt at moderating Henri's increasing reliance on alcohol. Accounts differ, but the trip appears to have ended early at Toulouse-Lautrec's behest. Before long, he went into a furious rage and refused to go ashore; children were running behind the barge on the bank of the canal, taking them to be a performing giant-dwarf duo that would perform circus tricks for their delight.
During the mid-1890s, Lautrec featured Dethomas in his art with some frequency. On April 6, 1895, the former Moulin Rouge dancer Louise 'La Goulue' Weber commissioned two large canvases to adorn her travelling show's tent. Dethomas appears on the left-hand panel, looking down toward La Goulue. At around the same period, Toulouse-Lautrec declared "I will capture your immobility in places of pleasure", and over the course of one and a half years, he made numerous preparatory sketches of Dethomas intended for a single painting, each taking anywhere from five to fifteen minutes to create. Completed in 1896, the famous portrait of Maxime Dethomas at the Bal de l'Opera now hangs in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Another portrait of his friend took the form of a risque lithograph entitled Debauche Avec Dethomas, and was later used on the cover of an exhibition catalogue of June, 1896. Finally, an 1896 lithograph entitled Anna Held et Baldy also features Dethomas, leering provocatively at the famous stage performer. Toulouse-Lautrec gifted an annotated proof copy of this lithograph to Dethomas.
During the final years of Toulouse-Lautrec's descent into full-blown alcoholism, Dethomas would rarely leave his side, often escorting him to his Montmartre home at the end of long drinking sessions. The two would spend many hours working and talking together at Henri's last Paris studio on avenue Frochot, sometimes sharing the same models, at all times Dethomas attempting to steer conversation away from the topic of alcohol.
Henri's increasingly erratic behaviour was beginning to take its toll on both his family and friends. In a letter from December 8, 1898, Dethomas' discusses a lunch invitation he attended at Toulouse-Lautrec's home, at which Henri's mother was also present. Drama unfolded when conversation turned to Henri's troubles with a pair of naked mouthwash-drinking models - the lunch finally ending with Henri red-faced and shouting at his mother, declaring he could not stand life anymore, and that he will leave for Japan. Eight days later, Dethomas writes again of yet another event that fell victim to Henri's drunkenness, this time a dinner at Goupil's. Things began well, but before dessert had been served, Henri had passed out beneath the dining table, awaking at midnight with loud complaints about how low the ceiling was. "The poor boy is really in a pitiful state of health" Dethomas continued, "senility is approaching, death perhaps."
It's unclear if Toulouse-Lautrec attended Dethomas' first solo exhibition during April 1900, though accounts of the Paris Exposition held the same month describe Henri's health having deteriorated to such an extent that he asked Maxime to push him around the various exhibits in a wheel chair - a request to which he dutifully obliged. The following month, on the suggestion of friends, Toulouse-Lautrec departed Paris for the country. In April 1901, upon hearing news of a stroke, Dethomas traveled to Bordeaux to see his friend. At the end of his stay, Henri recounted that he had taken Gros n'abre to the train station for his return to Paris, and given him a going-away present of two chameleons "who rolled their eyes terribly. We drank cafe au lait together at the station, and he's off like Saint-John the Baptist, the Forerunner, to announce my arrival."
When Dethomas learned of his friend's death, he wrote to his mentor Madame Bulteau, Friday, September 13, 1901:
Bulteau's reply of September 16 summed up very well the tone of the relationship between the two friends and the reason for the little man's deep attachment to his Gros n'abre:
Jean de Tinan
In 1895 Dethomas formed what would become a brief but significant friendship with the young writer, Jean de Tinan. The charismatic twenty-one year old was a new arrival in Paris, and was soon a daily participant in the circuit of bars, cafes and theatres that Dethomas and Lautrec would frequent. Tinan quickly become their "young cadet", Lautrec illustrating the cover of his novel L'Example de Ninon de Lenclos amoureuse, published in May, 1898. Dethomas introduced Tinan to Augustine Bulteau, and she “took charge” of the young writer, guiding him as she had Maxime years before.
It was to her Venice estate that Tinan retreated during the final harrowing moths of his short life. A failing heart did not keep him from his work, though his final “sentimental little story” remained unfinished at the time of his death on November 18, 1898. Aimienne, ou le détournement de mineure, was published posthumously; Tinan's final act was to dedicate the unfinished novel to Dethomas, as a “testimony of his deep affection.” As had Lautrec at the beginning of the year, Dethomas contributed lithographs to the publication which adorn the cover - his first such foray into the world of literature and a fitting tribute to his dear friend.
Ignacio Zuloaga
Arriving in Paris at the end of 1889 after a disappointing stay in Rome, the young Basque painter Ignacio Zuloaga first met Maxime Dethomas as a fellow student at the studio of Henri Gervex. They shared a deep admiration for Degas and Carrière, and would both later study under Carrière at the Académie de La Palette. More hungry for recognition and success than Dethomas, Zuloaga exhibited enthusiastically at the Salon des Artistes Français, the Barc de Boutteville, the Salon des Indépendants, and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Fame, however, did not come quickly.
Disappointed, he returned to Andalusia, where he intended to renew his inspiration and craft a new artistic vision - one which would appease the fickle tastes of the Paris art community. By rare chance, Zuloaga and Dethomas ran into each other in Seville, a meeting that proved fortuitous for Zuloaga. Since his return to Spain, he had battled disappointment and poverty, but knew that if he could return again to Paris, he would surely find success.
Dethomas' joy at finding his old Montmartre companion under such circumstances soon turned to sadness as Zuloaga explained his dire financial straits and his desperation to return to Paris to revive his artistic career. The seemingly intractable problems of a well-discouraged Ignacio were at once alleviated with a generous offer: "My workshop will be yours as much as it takes. Come to Paris. It's at 9 rue Duperré. Models, I'll find you. Home."
The difficulties thus managed by the goodwill of Maxime, Ignacio returned to Paris in 1894. Presented to Mrs. Marie-Louise Dethomas, mother of Maxime's half-sisters Valentine, Germaine and Alice, Zuloaga was asked to make a portrait of the eldest. This portrait of Valentine would perhaps mark the moment at which their romance was kindled.
Before the end of 1894, as he did for all his interesting friends, Maxime presented Zuloaga at the salon of Madame Augustine Bulteau. Her considerable reach within the arts community would smooth his path to recognition and ultimately lead to several commissions from her network of expatriate Spanish-speaking habitués, most notably, the 1913 portrait of the writer Anna de Noailles, which would stand as one of Zuloaga's most important works.
On May 18, 1899, in Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, Ignacio Zuloaga, to whom success has just smiled at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, married Valentine Dethomas, with Eugène Carrière and Isaac Albéniz as witnesses. From a friendship born under the auspices of painting; re-invigorated by chance; and nourished by unbridled generosity; the family ties were thus consolidated between the two artists. For the next three decades the pair would stay firm friends.
Pierre Louys
The author Pierre Louys was also a close companion of Dethomas and had collaborated with him on the first edition of Le Centaure in 1896. During August and September, 1898, Dethomas acted as a marriage broker of sorts, attempting to bring together his half-sister Germaine and Louys, a plot that was thwarted by Maxime's stepmother, Marie-Louise Thierrée.
Marcel Proust
Dethomas had a number of prominent writer-friends, one of which was Marcel Proust. Proust made a glowing mention of Dethomas' landscapes of Venice in The Sweet Cheat Gone and discussed the quality of his work after attending an exhibition held at Galerie Durand-Ruel. In a March, 1903 letter to Dethomas, Proust wrote that after having seen his exhibition, he received "a profound initiation to the understanding of nature and love of life." He continued, "it seems that one has gotten from you new eyes to look at life and men and even down to those little windows on the Grand Canal that I would love to juxtapose with yours."
Exhibitions
1894 - Exhibited at the 6th (sixième) Impressionistes et Symbolistes exhibition at the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville, commenced March 2, with Gauguin, Maufra, Jacquemin and others. (Review in Journal des débats politiques et littéraires – March 3, 1894.)
1894 - Exhibited at the 7th (septième) Impressionistes et Symbolistes exhibition at the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville, commenced July 10, with Toulouse-Lautrec, Ibels, Maufra and others. Review makes particular mention of "a delightful pastel, Etude de femme, by M. Dethomas", and "the Woman with the Cup (Femme à la tasse) and Sleep (Sommeil) by Dethomas". (Review in Le Matin : derniers télégrammes de la nuit - July 22, 1894.)
1895 - Exhibited at the 8th (huitième) Impressionistes et Symbolistes exhibition at the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville (commenced November 8). With Anquetin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Roussel and others. Dethomas received a notable mention. (Reviewed in Le Petit Parisien : journal quotidien du soir – November 12, 1894.)
1895 - Exhibited at the 9th (neuvième) Impressionistes et Symbolistes exhibition at the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville (commenced April 27). With Maurice Denis, d'Espagnet, Robbe and others.
1895 - Exhibited at the 10th (dixième) Impressionistes et Symbolistes exhibition at the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville, with Anquetin, Leheutre, d'Espagant, Loiseau, Maillol, Regnier and others. (Reviewed September 19, 1895.)
1895 - Exhibited at the Maison de l'Art Nouveau : [Galerie Samuel Bing, December 26 1895 - January 1896] with Vuillard, Lautrec, Rodin and others. Lot 75 — "Étude de femme en robe orange". An exhibition review of January 4 makes particular mention of "une jolie petite femme en rouge de M. Maxime Dethomas".
1896 - Exhibited at the 11th (onzième) Impressionistes et Symbolistes exhibition at the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville (commenced January 27) with Roussel, Piet and others. Lot entitled "Des fleurs".
1896 - Exhibited at the 13th (treizième) Impressionistes et Symbolistes exhibition at the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville. Mercure de France exhibition review of September, 1896 states: "J'y retins avant tout le monde Dethomas, dont les esquisses sombres sont d'une coloration interessante, d'un gout sur, d'une elegance nerveuse qui fait augurer de serieux resultats."
1897 - Exhibited at the 14th (quatorzième) Impressionistes et Symbolistes exhibition at the Galerie Le Barc de Boutteville. La Justice review of July 8 states "Maxime Dethomas a composé une affiche originale pour cette quatorzième exposition, ainsi que des études d'intérieur avec do délicats profils de femmes."
1900 - First solo exhibition took place at the Galerie des Artistes Modernes, 19 rue Caumartin (Apr.26 - May 5). Exhibition revue in La Vie Parisienne of May 5, 1900 states:
1901 - Exhibited at Galerie Silberberg, 29 rue Taitbout (Nov.11) with Anquetin, Flandrin and others.
1903 - Exhibited (Solo) at Galerie Durand-Ruel, "sketches of Paris and Italy". Exhibition revue in the Gazette des beaux-arts supplement of April 25, 1903 states:
1903 - Exhibited at La Libre Esthétique - Dixième Exhibition in Brussles (Feb.26 - Mar.29) with Denis, Rusinol and others.
1903 - Exhibited at the 1st Salon d'Automne at the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris (Oct.31 - Dec.6). Three aquarelles (lot 655–657) titled: L'Epave, Le chasseur, Franche Lippee.
1904 - Exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair, United States (Apr.30 to Dec.1). A drawing (Lot 595) titled: A Chat.
1904 - Exhibited at the 2nd Salon d'Automne at the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris (Oct.15 - Nov.15). Seven drawings (lot 1420–1426) titled: Transteverine, Venitienne, Parisienne, Le premier violin, Le second violin, La violincelliste, Le trombonne.
1905 - Exhibited at the 3rd Salon d'Automne at the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris. Five drawings (lot 461–465) titled: Au moment du cafe, Le Conferencier, Premiere Auditrice, Seconde Auditrice and L'Arpette.
1906 - Exhibited (solo) at the Galerie de l'Art Decoratif [7 rue Laffitte] (Apr.23 - May.17) Sketches and charcoals of Venice and its people later used to illustrate Regnier's book Esquisses Venetiennes.
1906 - Exhibited at the 4th Salon d'Automne at the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris (Oct.6 - Nov.15). Eight drawings (lot 464–471) titled: L’Inamovable, La Cliente de la Cremerie, Les Ouvreuses, L’Age ingrat, L’Habituee du petit Bar, Dans le Promenoir d’un music-hall, Les Trottinuers and Les Recits de l’experience.
1907 - Exhibited at the 5th International Exposition of Barcelona, with Zualoga and Rodin.
1907 - Exhibited at the 1st Salon de Humoristes at the Palais de Glace with Forain and others.
1907 - Exhibited at La Comédie Humaine (Galerie Georges Petit) with Forain, Degas and others.
1907 - Exhibited at the 5th Salon d'Automne at the Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris (Oct.1 - Oct.27) Six drawings (lot 458 – 463) entitled : Sollicite et Solliciteur, Sous l’œil des Barbares, L’Indifferent, Un Croquis, La Lettre, Etude.
1908 - Exhibited at the 2nd Salon de Humoristes at the Palais de Glace with Forain and others.
1908 - Exhibited at the Exposition de la Toison d'or, Moscow.
1908 - Exhibited at La Comédie Humaine (Galerie Georges Petit) with Lautrec, Dresa and others.
1908 - Exhibited with Rodin and Zuloaga at the Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Germany.
1911 - Exhibited at the 10th Salon d'Automne in the Grand Palais
1911 - Exhibited (solo) drawings and sketches at Galerie Druet (Mar.27 - Apr.8). l’Action Francaise review of March 30th states:
1911 - Exhibited at the International Exhibition of Turin (Apr. – Nov.).
1911 - Exhibited at La Libre Esthétique, Bruxelles (Mar.18 - Apr.23) with Vuillard, Denis and others.
1911 - Exhibited with the Exposition annuelle 2eme groupe at Galerie Druet (Mar.13 - 25) with Baignières, Desvallières, Dufrénoy, Fleming, Guerin, Marque, Marval, Piot, Rouault, Jaulmes and Lacoste.
1912 - Exhibited at Galerie Druet with Baignieres, Desvallieres, Flandrin, Geurin, Marquet, Marval, Piot and Rouault (Feb.5 – 17)
1912 - Exhibited at the Artz and De Bois in The Hague, Netherlands (Mar. - Apr.) with Bussy and Huszar
1913 - Exhibited with the Exposition annuelle 2eme groupe at Galerie Druet (Feb.17 - Mar.1) with Baignères, Desvallières, Dufrénoy, Fleming, Guerin, Marque, Marval, Rouault and Mare.
1913 - Exhibited at the Societa Leonardo da Vinci (May. 11 – 31), in Florence, Italy.
1914 - Exhibited with the Exposition annuelle 2eme groupe at Galerie Druet (Feb.9 - 21) with Baignères, Desvallières, Dufrénoy, Fleming, Guerin, Marque, Mrs Marval, Rouault, Bernouard and Moreau.
1915 - Exhibited two framed drawings in the French Pavilion of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) Worlds Fair, San Francisco, U.S.A.
1916 - Exhibited at the Detroit Museum of Art, U.S.A. The exhibition of PPIE works. (October Exhibition Catalogue) Lot. 80 - "Yvonne", Lot. 81 - "Jeanne"
1917 - Exhibited with the Exposition annuelle 2eme groupe at Galerie Druet (May. 7 – 25) with Desvallières, Dufrénoy, Fleming, Guerin, Marque, Marval, Rouault and Barbier
1922 - Exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Louvre, Paris (Apr.12 - May. 7) with Emile Decoeur, Albert Marque and Paul Follot.
1928 - Exhibited (solo) drawings and watercolours at the Galerie Simonson, Paris (Mar.20 - Apr.5).
1929 - Exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, Paris. Retrospective including paintings, drawings, posters, illustrations, decorations etc.
1992 - Exhibited (solo) at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (Feb.25 - May.24).
2016 - Exhibited at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Granada, Spain (Jun.30 - Sept.18)
Publications
Dethomas made an important contribution to the renaissance of book production in France. The following list gives a broad representation of Dethomas' artistic contributions to published literary works:
Collectif, Le Centaure, Vol 1, 1896
Jean de Tinan, Aimienne, Ou le Detournement de Mineure, 1899
Henri de Regnier, Esquisses Venetiennes, 1906
Paul Adam, Le Trust, 1910
Eugène Montfort, La Turque - Roman Parisian, 1912
Jean Giraudoux, Amica America, 1918
François Chateaubriand, La Campagne Romaine, 1919
Jean Giraudoux, Adieu à la Guerre, 1919
Rudyard Kipling, La Plus Belle Histoire du Monde, 1919
Jean and Jérome Tharaud, Dingley l'illustre écrivain, 1920
Paul Claudel, Tete D’or Drame, 1920
Andre Lebey, Jean de Tinan, 1921
Boileau Despreaux, Le Lutrin, 1921
Jaques Cazotte, Le Diable Amoureux, 1921
Jean de Tinan, Noctambulismes, 1921
Andre Maurois, Ariel ou la Vie de Shelly, 1922
Arthur Gobineau, Scaramouche, 1922
Molière, Theatre Complet, 1923
Albert Touchard, La Mort du Loup, 1924
Edmond Jaloux, Le Reste est Silence, 1924
Jean Giraudoux, Le Couvent de Bella, 1925
Henry Prunières, La vie et l`oeuvre de Claudio Monteverdi, 1926
Anatole France, Ouvers Completes Illustrees, Tome I, IX, XIII, 1925-27
François Couperin, Les Folies Françaises, ou les Dominos, 1927
Pedro Calderón de la Barca, La Mojiganga de la muerte, 1927
Charles de Saint-Cyr, Sous le Signe du Caribou, 1928
François Mauriac, La Nuit du Bourreau de Soi-meme, 1929
Alphonse Daudet, Sapho, 1929
Henri de Régnier's Esquisses Vénitiennes (1906) represents Dethomas' first major exercise in book illustration. Whilst he had been visiting Venice each winter for several years, and accumulating a considerable portfolio of work in the process, the collaboration with Regnier for this project uniquely combined previously completed stand-alone coloured artworks, and a suite of black and white sketches in charcoal and conté explicitly intended for use 'in-text'. In conjunction with the release of the book, Dethomas held an exhibition of the book's artworks at the Galerie de l'Art Decoratif, which was both a popular and critical success.
Dethomas' bold xylographic style lent itself well to the woodcut lithographic process, and the in-text illustrations in Esquisses Vénitiennes set a standard by which Dethomas' subsequent illustration projects would follow. Employing the skills of engravers such as Léon Pichon and Emile Gasperini, his black and white drawings found their way into sitting rooms and libraries around the world.
References
Footnotes
Bibliography
Agen, Manzani Diaz. Manuel de Falla: His Life and Works. Omnibus Press, 1999.
Apollinaire, Guillaume. Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews, 1902-1918. Viking Press, 1972.
Blotkamp, Carel. De Stijl: The Formative Years, 1917-1922. MIT Press, 1986.
Berthelot, Phillipe. Le Figaro. p.1-2. September 9, 1902.
Bibliothèque nationale (France). Département des estampes et de la photographie. Inventaire du fonds français après 1800. Tome sixième, Daumont-Dorange. 1953.
Boone, Elizabeth. Vistas de España: American Views of Art and Life in Spain. Yale University Press, 2007
Bucknall, Barabara. Critical Essays on Marcel Proust. G.K. Hall, 1987.
Carson, Lionel. The Stage Year Book. Carson & Commerford, 1917.
Carter, William. Marcel Proust: A Life. Yale University Press, 2002.
Cheney, Sheldon. Stage Decoration. Blom, 1966.
Cooper, Douglas. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. H.N. Abrams, New York, 1956.
Craven, Thomas. A Treasury of Art Masterpieces. Simon and Schuster, 1958.
Dortu, M.G. Lautrec by Lautrec. Galahad, New York, 1964.
Frey, Julia. Toulouse-Lautrec: A Life. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1994.
Garafola, Lynn. Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance. Wesleyan University Press, 2005.
Gale, Martin. La Presse. May 27, 1902.
Garner, Philippe. Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts. Galahad Books, 1982.
Gauzi, François. My Friend Toulouse-Lautrec. Spearmen, London, 1957.
Gold, Arthur. Misia: The Life of Misia Sert. Knopf, 1980.
Hecht, Anne. Toulouse-Lautrec: Paintings, Drawings, Posters, and Lithographs. Museum of Modern Art, N.Y. 1956.
Howard, Jean. Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology. Routledge, 2005.
Huddleston, Sisley. France and the French. Cape, 1928.
Lassaigne, Jacques. Lautrec: Biographical and Critical Studies. 1972.
Londre, Felicia. The History of World Theatre. Continuum, 1999.
Mack, Gerstle. Toulouse-Lautrec. Knopf, New Yprk, 1953.
Milhou, Mayi. Du Moulin Rouge à l'Opéra : vie et œuvre de Maxime Dethomas, 1867-1929. Bordeaux, 1991.
Milhou, Mayi. Ignacio Zuloaga et la France, These d'Histoire de l'Art. October 1979, Bordeaux III.
Neiderauer, David. Pierre Louÿs, His Life and Art. Canadian Federation for the Humanities, 1981.
Néret, Gilles. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1864-1901. Taschen, 1999.
Olivier, Fernande. Loving Picasso: The Private Journal of Fernande Olivier. Abrams, 2001.
Prade, Guy de la. Le Cimetière de Passy et ses Sépultures Celebres. Editions des Ecrivains, 1998.
Perruchot, Henri. Toulouse-Lautrec: A Definitive Biography. World, Cleveland,1960.
Roger-Marx, Claude. L'Europe Nouvelle. February 2nd, 1929, Paris.
Taylor, E.A. The Studio - Vol 84, No 353, August 1922, London.
Vauxcelles, Louis. Art and Decoration, January, 1909. Paris.
Vauxcelles, Louis. Gil Blas, July 7th, 1905. Paris.
Wright, Willard Huntington. Modern Painting - Its Tendency and Meaning. 1915.
Further reading
Milhou, Mayi (1991) Du Moulin Rouge à l'Opéra : vie et œuvre de Maxime Dethomas, 1867-1929. Bordeaux.
Lorenzi, G. et al. (2011) Arte e Critica in Italia nella prima metà del Novecento, Gangemi. Italy.
Perruchot, Henri (1960) Toulouse-Lautrec: A Definitive Biography. World, Cleveland.
External links
Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France
The National Gallery of Art, Washington
The Hermitage Collection, Russia
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, France
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Maxime Dethomas, Archives nationales, Base Arcade
Fonds Dethomas (Maxime), Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des arts du spectacle
Réunion des musées nationaux, Grand Palais, Agence Photographique
Maxime Dethomas, Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France
1867 births
1929 deaths
People from Garges-lès-Gonesse
19th-century French painters
French male painters
20th-century French painters
20th-century male artists
Burials at Passy Cemetery
Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur
People of Montmartre | en |
doc-en-12546 | Yarralumla () is a large inner south suburb of Canberra, the capital city of Australia. Located approximately south-west of the city, Yarralumla extends along the south-west bank of Lake Burley Griffin from Scrivener Dam to Commonwealth Avenue.
In 1828, Henry Donnison, a Sydney merchant, was granted a lease on the western side of Stirling Ridge. Donnison's land was named Yarralumla in a survey of the area conducted in 1834, apparently after the indigenous people's term for the area. It was also spelt Yarrolumla in other documents. In 1881, the estate was bought by Frederick Campbell, grandson of Robert Campbell who had built a house at nearby Duntroon. Frederick completed the construction of a large, gabled, brick house on his property in 1891 that now serves as the site of Government House, the official residence of the Governor-General of Australia. Campbell's house replaced an elegant, Georgian-style homestead, the main portions of which were erected from local stone in the 1830s. Among the old Yarralumla homestead's most notable occupants were Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, who owned Yarralumla sheep station from 1837 to 1859, Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes, who owned the property from 1859 to 1881, and Augustus' father Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787–1873).
The modern suburb of Yarralumla was gazetted by the government in 1928 and was home to approximately 2,890 people and many diplomatic missions. Notable locations include Lennox Gardens, the Albert Hall and the Hotel Canberra. Parliament House and The Lodge lie just outside its boundary. Yarralumla is one of Canberra's most desirable and expensive residential suburbs because of its wide leafy streets, attractive lakeside setting and central location.
Geography
Yarralumla is located in the central Canberra district of South Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory, a federal territory. It is bordered by Lake Burley Griffin to the north, Commonwealth Avenue and Capital Hill to the east, Adelaide Avenue and the Cotter Road to the south, and Scrivener Dam, Lady Denman Drive and part of the Molonglo River to the west. Its southeast corner abuts Capital Hill, the location of Parliament House. The Lodge lies across Adelaide Avenue near its eastern end.
The streets in Yarralumla are named after Australian governors and botanists. Most of the older streets in the suburb are laid out on an approximately rectangular grid with some curved sections, while the more hilly eastern end of the suburb, including the embassy district, is set out with contour-guided roads. Major roads in Yarralumla include Banks Street, Novar Street and Hopetoun Circuit in a north–south direction and Schlich Street, Loftus Street and Weston Street running east–west. Being a dormitory suburb, there are no major through roads. Access to the rest of the city can be made from Adelaide Avenue, Commonwealth Avenue, Lady Denman Drive and Cotter Road, all of which run along the borders of the suburb. From these roads, entry to the suburb can be gained by turning into roads such as Coronation Drive, Hopetoun Circuit and Novar Street. Yarralumla has wide, tree-lined streets, most of which have been planted with exotic trees such as atlas cedars and cherry plums on Banks Street, claret ashes on Loch Street, pin oaks on Schlich Street and English oaks and hawthorns on Weston Street, along with the indigenous white brittle gums on Empire Circuit and river oaks on Solander Place.
Much of the area of Yarralumla consists of open space or non-residential development, including Weston and Stirling Parks, the Royal Canberra Golf Club, and the grounds of Government House. Many houses are occupied by diplomatic missions. The embassy area of Yarralumla is located towards the eastern end of the suburb next to Stirling Park. It is the hilliest area of Yarralumla. The Parliamentary Triangle is located to its east.
The residential areas of Yarralumla are located in the central and western areas of the suburb. The Yarralumla shops at the corner of Novar and Bentham Streets are in the centre of the western residential area, which has typically flat terrain and streets laid out in a rectangular grid, typically lined by exotic trees. This area has a blend of original weatherboard, monocrete and brick dwellings as well as some recently rebuilt detached houses, dual occupancies and units. Minimbah Court at the corner of Banks and Schlicht Streets is an example of Canberra’s earlier medium-density unit buildings. It was constructed in the 1950s and originally named Solander Court in line with nearby streets named after First Fleet botanists. There is an elongated reserve with a walking and bicycle path running in a southwards direction of the Yarralumla Oval, and to the east of this is the central area of the suburb, where the blocks are larger and the streets are more contoured due to the hilly terrain. There is a mixture of housing types in this region, with some larger two-storey houses, and more expansive gardens. The streets in this part of the suburb are typically lined with native trees.
Yarralumla is located on the Yarralumla Formation which is a mudstone/siltstone formation that was formed around 425 million years ago during the Silurian Period. The formation extends from Red Hill and Woden in the South to Lake Burley Griffin in to the north, passing under the suburb of Yarralumla. The formation is evidence of the last major marine sedimentary period when eastern Australia was still covered by shallow seas. It shows fossil evidence of trilobites, coral and primitive crinoids. The Yarralumla brickworks quarry and the Deakin anticline are places where the formation is exposed and easily studied.
History
European settlement
Like the rest of Canberra, Yarralumla forms part of the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal people. The area now called Yarralumla is part of two original land grants made to free settlers for the establishment of farms. In 1828 Henry Donnison, a Sydney merchant who had arrived on the brig Ellen with his wife and family on 29–30 July 1828, was granted an allotment on the western side of Stirling Ridge. The name 'Yarralumla' was first used on a map by the surveyor Robert Dixon in 1829. A second grant was made to William Klensendorlffe (a German who had served in the British Navy and arrived free in the Colony in 1818), who had bought the land from John Stephen, on 7 March 1839. Donnison's land was named Yarralumla in a survey of the area conducted in 1834. Yarralumla or Yarrowlumla was a name used by the local people for the Mount Stromlo ridge, which lies to the west of the current suburb. It is said to mean "echo mountain". An area to the west of what is now the suburb was the Yarrolumla parish.
The prominent New South Wales parliamentarian Sir Terence Aubrey Murray (1810–1873) purchased Yarralumla in 1837. He lived there with his wife Mary (née Gibbes, 1817–1858), the second daughter of the Collector of Customs for New South Wales, Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787–1873), MLC. Murray settled Yarralumla and part of Winderradeen (near Collector) on his wife in trust so that they would have some property if he became bankrupt. On his wife's death in 1858 Yarralumla passed in trust to her father and her brother Augustus Onslow Manby Gibbes (1828–1897). In May 1859, Augustus' parents came to live with him at Yarralumla homestead.
Augustus Gibbes improved the estate and acquired additional land by purchase and lease. In 1881, he sold Yarralumla for 40,000 pounds to Frederick Campbell, a descendant of Robert Campbell, to travel overseas. Frederick Campbell erected a new, three-storey, brick house on the site of the former Yarralumla homestead at the beginning of the 1890s. Campbell's house would later form the basis of what is now the Governor-General of Australia's official Canberra residence, known colloquially as "Yarralumla" or "Government House". Campbell also built the large wooden Yarralumla Woolshed nearby in 1904.
In 1908, the Limestone Plains area, including Yarralumla, was selected as the site for the capital city of the newly established Commonwealth of Australia and in 1913 the Commonwealth Government purchased the property. Tenant farmers were allowed to stay on the land on annual leases, some remaining until 1963 when the Molonglo River was dammed to form Lake Burley Griffin.
Development
With the construction of Australia's capital city underway, the Yarralumla brickworks were established in 1913 to supply building material. The bricks were used for many of Canberra's buildings, including the provisional Parliament House. The Brickworks tramway, a 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) goods railway, was constructed for the transportation of bricks to some of the major building sites in central Canberra. This linked the brickworks to places such as Parliament House, and the Kingston Power House.
Construction on the Commonwealth nursery and Westbourne Woods arboretum was started in 1914, and a temporary camp was built near the brickworks to accommodate the workers. Thomas Charles Weston was Officer-in-Charge (Afforestation Branch) in the years 1913 to 1926, and later became Director of City Planting and the Superintendent of Parks and Gardens. Weston was responsible for testing and selecting plant species at the arboretum for their suitability to Canberra's environment; from 1913 through to 1924 Weston oversaw the propagation of more than two million trees which were then planted in the Canberra area. Most of the original Westbourne Woods arboretum is now leased to the Royal Canberra Golf Club, with the remainder forming part of Weston Park. The Yarralumla nursery is still active, albeit on a smaller scale and functioning as a retail nursery selling both wholesale and direct to the public.
In 1917, the designer of Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin, named the area surrounding the brickworks "Westridge". It was part of the original Griffin plan, and the objective was to provide a 'horticultural suburb' and a 'society suburb'. In Griffin's 1918 document Canberra: Plan of City and Environs, the suburb is shown as an isosceles triangle with two equal length roads leading from Capital Hill to Yarralumla Bay and Clianthus Centre respectively. The latter road is now to location of the arterial Adelaide Avenue, and Yarralumla Bay and Clianthus Centre was to be joined along a north-south axis by Novar Avenue (originally to be named Mountain Way), extending all the way to the future lake bearing Griffin's name. Griffin's vision was for Westridge to become a business centre with an urban waterfront and
promenade, complemented by the bush surroundings. Griffin's design was based on a strict hierarchy with core services such as housing, communal space and facilities such health and education, and commercial space. These would be connected outward by boulevards linking to transport routes and trams. By 1928, there were over 130 people on the electoral roll for Westridge. The majority of the population consisted of men working at the brickworks and nursery. The suburb was gazetted as Yarralumla on 20 September 1928.
In 1922, a workers' tent camp was erected on the eastern side of Stirling Ridge to house the men working on the main intercepting sewer. The following year saw the start of the construction of 62 small, four-room, unlined timber cottages, to be used as housing for the married tradesmen involved in the construction of the provisional Parliament House. Other camps were established at the eastern end of Stirling Park on the hills opposite modern Lotus Bay. The first of these was contractor John Howie's settlement (1922–1930), consisting of 25 timber cottages for his married men and timber barracks (Hostel Camp) for his single men. Two other single men's tent camps were established nearby—Old Tradesmen's Camp (1923–1927) and No 1 Labourers Camp (1924–1927). The men from Howie's worked on the Hotel Canberra and the others on the construction of the provisional Parliament House and nearby administrative buildings. The Stirling Park camps were known as Westlake to their new inhabitants, and previously "Gura Bung Dhaura" (stony ground) to the local Aboriginal people. In 1925, the population of this temporary suburb was 700. This represented roughly one-fifth of the total population of the Federal Capital Territory at the time. In 1956, the Department of Interior decided to clear the settlement so that embassies could be built. In 1960, the member of parliament for the ACT, Jim Fraser, described Westlake as one of two "hidden valleys of disgrace, which are never shown to tourists and are seen by visitors only by chance".
The Commonwealth and the states agreed in 1911 that Australia needed adequately-trained foresters, although they did not agree to establish a forestry school until 1920. Prime minister Stanley Bruce promised to fund it during the 1925 election campaign and construction of the Commonwealth Forestry School commenced in 1926 at Westridge near the brickworks and Westbourne Woods. The now heritage-listed Forestry School and the associated principal's residence Westridge House are located on Banks Street, Yarralumla. The school was initially established in March 1926 at the University of Adelaide under the leadership of Charles Lane Poole. After the move to Canberra Lane-Poole acted as principal until 1944. Its permanent building in Yarralumla was designed by Federal Capital Commission architects J.H. Kirkpatrick, and H.M. Rolland. It is built in the Inter-War Stripped Classical style as a single storey rendered brick building with a parapet and a hipped tiled roof. Various Australian woods, including Queensland maple and walnut (Cryptocarya palmerstonii), red cedar, red mahogany, hoop pine and mountain ash, were used throughout the building. It opened in April 1927 and it was completed in June. Due to financial stringency during the Great Depression and other priorities during the Second World War, it had few students in its first years. The Forestry School was absorbed by the Australian National University in 1965 and forestry courses are now carried out at its main campus in Acton. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) Forestry and Forestry Products subsumed the school in 1975. Westridge House, an impressive Tudor-style structure, was completed in January 1928. It underwent a A$500,000 refurbishment and was later used as a residence for the chief officer of the CSIRO. The former Forestry School and Westridge House are now leased out by the CSIRO.
After World War II
The current geographical boundary of Yarralumla was finalised in the early 1960s with the construction of Scrivener Dam, over which Lady Denman Drive passes, allowing for the Molonglo River to be dammed, creating Lake Burley Griffin. Construction began in September 1960 and the dam was locked on 20 September 1963. The lake reached the planned level on 29 April 1964. On 17 October 1964, Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies commemorated the filling of the lake. Yarralumla was expanded to include Westlake, which had up until then been part of Acton.
After the Second World War, the suburb began to expand rapidly with the construction of many private homes. Yarralumla's image as a lower-class suburb would persist into the 1960s and 1970s. This general perception began to alter once Lake Burley Griffin had been created and its surrounds landscaped into parklands; the area soon gained a reputation for its attractive lakeside location. During the 1980s, house prices began to rise coincident with a rejuvenation of the suburb. Many of the original government-built monocrete, brick, and weatherboard houses have been demolished and replaced by larger dwellings of a variety of more modern styles and materials, although this process was more advanced in the central part of the suburb than in its east in 2004.
Demographics
The population of the Westridge area on the 1928 electoral roll numbered over 130. At the , Yarralumla had a population of 2,890 people. Of these 46.9% were male. The suburb had only 1.0% indigenous Australians, below the national average of 2.8%. The percentage of married people in the suburb was nine points higher than the national average, and the proportion of residents who had never married was 9 points lower. The higher level of marriage did not translate into a higher level of children; 49.6% of families consisted of a couple without children in the household, compared to the national average of 37.8%. Yarralumla residents had a median age of 49, compared to a Canberra average of 35. The suburb had an older population for a city of young people; the median national age is 38 and 41.7% of Yarralumla residents were 55 or over, compared to the national figure of 27.6%.
Yarralumla is a comparatively wealthy suburb with a 2016 median weekly personal income of $1,347; this compares to the figure of $998 for the entire Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and $662 for all of Australia. The public service or defence force employed around 21.7% of the workforce, somewhat less than the ACT average of 23.6%. This compared to 1.9% for Australia as a whole. The higher incomes were derived from the suburb's white-collar base; 63.5% of Yarralumla's workforce was employed as professionals or in managerial posts, compared to 35.2% nationally. In contrast, only 3.4% were engaged in blue-collar occupations, compared with 15.8% for the nation as a whole. The proportion of the population working as tradesmen and technicians was almost four times lower than average across Australia. The proportion of people with a university degree, 53.2%, is higher than the ACT and national averages of 37.1 and 22.0% respectively.
The median monthly housing loan repayments in Yarralumla in 2016 were $2,700, compared to the ACT figure of $2,058 and a federal average of $1,755. At $450, the weekly rent was more than 50% higher than the national average. Yarralumla's median house price was about $1.5m in 2020 versus $1.2m for the inner south and $720,000 for the whole of the ACT. The rate of home ownership in the suburb was 46.9%—much higher than the national average of 31.0%. 25.4% of the households rented. Accommodation was mostly separate houses (64.2%), although the number of residences in the suburb has been increasing through conversion of blocks to dual occupancy and other medium-density-type developments. Despite this, only 5.9% of residences were apartments or units, slightly less than half of the national average.
The population of Yarralumla in 2016 was predominantly Australian-born, with some 69.3% of its residents being born in Australia. The second most prevalent birthplace was England at 6.0%, followed by New Zealand and United States with 1.6 and 1.5% respectively. The suburb was more oriented towards the Anglo-Celtic majority than the rest of Australia; English was spoken at home by 80.3% of the population, compared to the national average of 72.7%. Every other language was spoken by less than 2% of the population. Italian, Mandarin, Greek, German and French were all spoken by at least 0.8% of the population. The most popular religious affiliations in descending order were no religion, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Uniting and Presbyterian and Reformed. The proportion of the population professing to having no religion was 34.6%, higher than the national average of 29.6%, but below the ACT average of 36.2%.
Suburb amenities
The Yarralumla local shopping centre is located on the corner of Bentham and Novar Streets. It contains a supermarket, dry-cleaners, chemist, gift shop, restaurants and speciality shops.
Weston Park is situated on a peninsula near the western end of Lake Burley Griffin. The park includes swimming areas, children's play equipment and wading pools, and a miniature railway, and is a popular barbecue spot on weekends. Weston Park forms part of a string of parks that line the southern shore of Lake Burley Griffin; other parks include Yarralumla Bay, Lennox Gardens (incorporating a Japanese garden named Canberra Nara Park) and Stirling Park. With its waterfront location on Lake Burley Griffin, Yarralumla Bay is the base of the Canberra Rowing Club, ANU Sailing Club, the Australian Institute of Sport Rowing Centre and the YMCA Sailing Club, while the Southern Cross Yacht Club is based at Lotus Bay opposite Lennox Gardens. Yarralumla Neighbourhood Oval is adjacent to the suburb's primary school as well as a community hall and some tennis courts.
Yarralumla's only scheduled public transport is provided by ACTION buses. Route 57 provides a service from Yarralumla to Woden and City Interchanges along Novar Street, Schlich Street and Hopetoun Circuit. The business case for the proposed second stage of the Capital Metro light rail system that was released in 2019 included stops at Albert Hall on Commonwealth Avenue on the eastern edge of Yarralumla and at the intersections of Adelaide Avenue with Hopetoun Circuit and with Novar and Kent streets on the southern edge.
Yarralumla is home to three places of worship: St Peter Chanel's on the corner of Weston and Loch Streets, Yarralumla Uniting Church on Denman Street, and the Canberra Mosque on Empire Circuit.
Education
Yarralumla's first school, the Catholic St Peter Chanel's Primary School, opened in 1956; it closed in the 1990s. Yarralumla Primary School, a public school, opened in 1957. The Montessori preschool on Loftus Street is a preschool and Little Lodge on Macgillivray Street is a day care facility. There are no secondary schools in Yarralumla. The zoned government high school (Years 7–10) is Alfred Deakin High School in the adjoining suburb of Deakin to the south and the zoned senior secondary college (Years 11–12) is Narrabundah College, several kilometres to the southeast. Nearby private schools are Canberra Girls Grammar School and Canberra Grammar School in Deakin and Red Hill respectively.
The Canberra Japanese Supplementary School Inc., a Japanese weekend educational programme established in 1988, has its school office in the Japanese Embassy Consular Section in Yarralumla, and holds classes at Alfred Deakin High School.
Politics
Yarralumla is located within the federal electorate of Canberra, which has been represented by Alicia Payne of the Labor Party in the House of Representatives since the 2019 election. In the ACT Legislative Assembly, Yarralumla is part of the electorate of Murrumbidgee, which elects five members on the basis of proportional representation; as of 2020, the members are two Labor, two Liberal and one Greens. Polling place statistics are shown to the right for the Yarralumla polling place at Yarralumla Primary School in the 2019 federal and 2020 ACT elections. Only 655 votes were cast at the Yarralumla polling place in 2020 due to early voting at centralised polling places to avoid crowding in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Notable places
Yarralumla has a large number of landmarks and places of historical interest. The Governor-General's residence Government House, which shares the name Yarralumla, is located at the western end of the suburb in of parkland. It sits alongside Lake Burley Griffin, next to the Royal Canberra Golf Club and Scrivener Dam. The house was built in 1891 as the headquarters for the Yarralumla property. Also located alongside Scrivener Dam is the National Zoo & Aquarium. The nearby Yarralumla woolshed is available for event hire, often playing host to parties and bush dances. The land surrounding the woolshed has been developed as an equestrian park, including areas for showjumping, eventing and endurance riding.
The Yarralumla brickworks were the first industrial manufacturing facility in the ACT; they were closed temporarily several times due to the Great Depression and both World Wars. Proposals to modernise the brickworks were rejected by the National Capital Development Commission in the early 1970s and they closed permanently in 1976; the site is closed to the public and is in a state of disrepair. The unfenced parkland around the brickworks is a popular recreation area for Yarralumla residents. As of 2020, residential development is proposed for the site, which is , to initially include 1,800 new dwellings, although the project has been scaled down.
The eastern end of Yarralumla is home to many of the diplomatic missions in Canberra, many of which are built in a traditional style reflecting that of their respective home countries. Examples of regionally styled chanceries include the embassies of Saudi Arabia and Thailand, and the High Commissions of India and Papua New Guinea. The United States embassy was the first embassy built in Canberra, with the foundation stone laid on the Fourth of July, 1942. The embassy compound was built in a "typically American" Georgian style, using Australian materials, and was inspired by several buildings designed by Christopher Wren for Virginia at the beginning of the 18th century. The French embassy includes the French-Australian War Memorial opened in 1961, which has a sculpture by André Bizette-Lindet called Winged Victory. Canberra tourist drives take tourists on a car-based tour past many of Canberra's embassies including those located in Yarralumla, zig-zagging through the eastern side of Yarralumla past many of the missions.
The Lennox Gardens, Yarralumla Yacht Club, Albert Hall and the Hotel Canberra are located in the eastern end of the suburb. Located on Commonwealth Avenue, the Hotel Canberra opened in 1924 to accommodate politicians when Parliament was in session; Prime Minister James Scullin stayed there to avoid the running costs of the official residence, The Lodge during the Great Depression. It has been heritage listed as an example of the distinctive Garden-Pavilion style of architect John Smith Murdoch in line with the garden city design of Burley Griffin. The hotel was closed in 1974 and the buildings served as an annexe for Parliament House between 1976 and 1984. The Hyatt Hotel Group re-opened the hotel in 1987. Adjacent to the Canberra Hotel is the Canberra Croquet Club. The only croquet club in Canberra, it was opened in 1928 and was restricted to females until 1975. As with the hotel, the clubhouse was built in federation-style architecture and has been heritage-listed along with the croquet lawns. Immediately to the north of Canberra Hotel on Commonwealth Avenue is Albert Hall, built in 1927, which was in the early years of Canberra, one of the main centres of social, musical, theatrical, ceremonial and artistic activity in the capital. It was opened by Prime Minister Stanley Bruce and the subject of royal visits. Although its functionality has been superseded by more specialised entertainment and cultural institutions built in modern times, it is still frequently used for community events. It has been heritage listed for its social and historical value, and as an example of early Canberra architecture.
See also
History of Canberra
References
Footnotes
Sources
External links
Yarralumla Residents Association – Yarralumla Page
Diplomatic districts
Suburbs of Canberra | en |
doc-en-7821 | The Algo Centre Mall (legally Eastwood Mall since 2005 but almost never referred to as such) was a mall and hotel located on Highway 108 in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada. It was the largest commercial complex in the area. When the community was hit by uranium mine closures in the 1990s, the complex gradually refocused, hosting multiple services, such as a library, constituency offices, and public health offices. In the years leading up to 2012, many businesses located in the mall either closed or moved to outside locations. Still, the mall was a community hub, with most of the area's clothing stores and its largest grocery store, employing upwards of 250 local residents. It accounted for 10% of the community's retail space and 6% of the total wages.
The mall was plagued by structural problems and leaks throughout its history. It underwent a partial structural failure on June 23, 2012, when a 12m x 24m (39'-by-79') segment of the rooftop parking deck collapsed into the building, crashing through the upper level lottery kiosk adjacent to the food court and escalators to the ground floor below. Two people died in the collapse and more than 20 people received non-life-threatening injuries. An investigation and class action lawsuits into the collapse are ongoing and the mall has been demolished.
The city of Elliot Lake purchased the vacant former Algo Centre Mall site in 2019, as the first stage in redeveloping the land for new residential and commercial uses. Part of the site will be retained by the city as a municipal "community hub" project, while the rest of it will be sold back to residential and commercial developers.
History
Algocen Realty Holdings Ltd., the real estate branch on the Algoma Central Railway, commissioned the Algo Centre Mall project. The project was subsequently approved by the Ontario Municipal Board in 1978, with an estimated cost of $10 million. Construction began in 1979 and the project was finished the next year. The 80-room Algo Inn, the town's largest hotel and retirement residence, was also built into the mall. In its first year, 1980, the mall featured Woolco, Dominion, and Shoppers Drug Mart, and a total of 35 units. A distinctive architectural feature of the building was rooftop parking.
After the closure of the uranium mines in Elliot Lake, in 1990, the revenue prospects of the mall dropped sharply, with no recovery in sight. This prompted the Algoma Central Company to write off over $5 million in lost property value, despite 98% occupancy.
In 1996, a report commissioned by the Town, Downtown Core and Industrial Area Improvements, presented a less-than-favourable assessment of the structure's exterior:
The final owners, Eastwood Incorporated, acquired the company in August 2005 for the price of $6.2 million. This firm, owned by Bob Nazarian, was registered in 1994 as a numbered company. At various points, the company has owned strip malls in Kitchener and London, Ontario. Algo had retained Marino Locations Limited to redevelop the property "to accommodate new specialty retailers and possible new anchor/big-box retailers that are not yet in the market. The possibility for exterior pads also exists on the surrounding lands." (Read Jones Christoffersen Ltd. also performed a redevelopment feasibility study on the mall in late 2010, early 2011; part of the cost was not repaid.) Between August 2005 and June 2012, the mall had a series of five managers.
Along with the Algo Inn and numerous independent stores and services, the mall included:
Algoma District Services Administration Board (ADSAB)
Algoma Public Health
Algo Room (a community theatre space, used by the Elliot Lake Amateur Youth Theatre Ensemble.)
The Bargain! Shop
Color Your World (paint store, owned by Imperial Chemical Industries)
Curves
Dollarama
Elliot Lake Public Library
Offices of local MP (Carol Hughes) and MPP (Michael Mantha)
Foodland (formerly IGA)
Investors Group
Marlin Travel
Northern Reflections (women's apparel)
Pet Valu
Service Canada
Zellers (Target declined to take over the lease of the Elliot Lake Zellers branch, but the mall collapse took place before Target opened any of their Canadian stores anyway.)
Elliot Lake Transit terminal
At some point in the summer of 2008, a location of SAAN, a department store, closed. The Bargain! Shop purchased the brand in August of that year, taking over some leaseholds. In September that year, Mayor Rick Hamilton located his campaign office at the mall. In January 2009, the Elliot Lake Model Railroad Club opened at the local civic centre, moving from the mall. In 2010, a new Shoppers Drug Mart opened away from the mall, more than doubling the unit it had at Algo. The mall was offered for sale in 2010, for $9.9 million, an increase of $3.7 million from the purchase price five years prior. In 2011, the hotel office was victim of a break-and-enter, with an attempt to do the same at Zellers.
The mall hosted car shows, charity head shavings, antique appraisals, promotions for community events, an annual rocking chair marathon for charity, amongst other community events.
Despite the centre's issues, it remained a community hub; the mayor notes that it was the social centre of the community, and residents would visit weekly, and in some cases daily.
Structural problems
By 1990, the mall was already regularly plagued with leaks and water damage.
The Elliot Lake Standard reported in 2008 on "greater than normal" leaks causing damages to multiple units. Starlight Cafe closed permanently, despite being profitable soon after opening, as customers would occasionally need umbrellas to stand at the take-out counter. Drip-tarps installed by the mall in the kitchen of the restaurant were ineffective. The cafe owner was not made aware of the leaks before starting her lease in 2007, and was successful in a lawsuit against the owner. Scotiabank had closed for a few weeks in 2008 as a precaution. (Scotiabank began construction on a new location in July 2011, to replace their mall location.) Some businesses suggested that additional leaks started after the new owner started repairs to the roof. Tenants noticed a reduced amount of traffic after leaks started, and buckets were scattered throughout the mall.
In 2009, leaks in the mall roof and mould caused Elliot Lake city councillors to consider moving the Elliot Lake Public Library out of the mall and back to the Solomon Building, where it had been before 1992. Many books were damaged, despite library staff using tarps to cover shelves. At some points, entire sections were blocked for public health reasons. Much of the leaking was said to be corrected, before council considered the issue, and an environmental study was completed. Some library board members and councillors worried that liability insurance wouldn't cover them in the mall, despite reassurances by library management and the city's insurance broker. With a multi-use complex in the works, some of the library board was concerned with a five-year lease that mall management was pursuing, despite the library's preference for a 2½-year lease. In the end, the library remained at the mall.
Some tenants suggest that mall business owners were said to not be vocal about their disappointments, unless "water is dripping right on their head (or) if the water is destroying their business"; conversely, one previous mall manager suggests he was called daily by tenants about the issue, before 2008 repairs started. The owner was aware of the mall's roof problems when purchasing the facility, and suggested there would be renovations to the mall, but would not commit to a date for completing roof repairs or interior upgrades. Over $1 million was spent in an attempt to repair the roof. Architect John Clinckett of Kitchener was hired to oversee the project; Canadian Construction Controls of Breslau declined to bid to install a membrane created by Carlisle Syntec Systems. Taking issue with the $1-million cost, Nazarian cancelled the project, hiring Peak Restoration; only a fraction of Peak's $823,657 worth of work was paid for, and the lien expired in 2010. The mall manager left soon after, in summer 2008, suggesting that he believes mall maintenance staff were set to repair the roof. In spite of the issues, the mall would use the roof for events. In 2011 and 2012, it served as the site for the Heart and Stroke Foundation's Big Bike ride.
In summer 2011, a piece of concrete fell through the ceiling at a mall restaurant, Hungry Jack's. Reports were filed with the mall manager and the city, with an inspector scheduled to visit two weeks following the incident. The inspector did not show, and mall management did not reply. Hungry Jack's is near to the eventual mall roof collapse. Mall owners continued repair and maintenance work in 2012, spending $120,000 into repairs within the 12-month period leading up to June 2012. An engineering and structural study "turned up nothing", according to the mall manager. Even after the repair, there were photos of serious interior damage to the mall's roof. A local plumber that had done work for the mall suggested there was obvious signs of water damage, eight months before the collapse. In March 2012, the mall management pleaded guilty in provincial court, after their fire alarms and sprinklers did not meet code. The mall spent $50,000 to upgrade the infrastructure to avoid further fines. The process included adding a new roof to the hotel, gutting the second and third floors, including the hotel lounge.
The problem was very obvious to residents of the town. During the press conference announcing the class-action lawsuit, a resident suggested that some residents had placed "bets" on when the building would collapse. Ontario's Ministry of Labour visited the mall six times in the three years before the collapse.
Pinchin Ltd. issued an "unequivocal" report attesting to the soundness of the structure and deemed the corrosion "not of structural significance."
At the 2013 inquest into the roof collapse (see #Government reaction below), testimony has revealed that many unpublicized structural problems at the mall dated all the way back to its initial construction in the late 1970s. In particular, the expansion joint above the escalators, the failure of which appears to have caused the roof deck collapse, was already not properly binding to the concrete, in turn allowing water to seep into the building's seams, as early as 1981—barely a year after the mall's original opening. The expansion joint was fixed many times, and fully replaced twice, during the building's lifetime, yet always began tearing away from the concrete again shortly after the repairs were complete.
The inquiry did not question or raise concern with the areas of slab removal during original construction in 1980 when escalators were installed after the roof was completed. It is unclear if this was a contributing factor.
2012 roof collapse
At approximately 2:20 pm EDT (1820 GMT) on Saturday, June 23, 2012, part of a 12m x 24m (39'-by-79') segment of the parking deck/roof collapsed at the Algo Centre Mall, sending metal and concrete debris crashing down through two floors of the shopping centre resulting in the deaths of two people and injuring more than 20 people.
Soon after the collapse, the owners arrived at the mall. A representative spoke on behalf of the owner, stating "I'd rather not [comment], because we have talked to our lawyers and we're going to be in the City Hall to represent ourselves. But nevertheless, we are very much concerned [about] this accident."
By approximately 4:00 pm, local authorities alerted the Commissioner of Community Safety, Dan Hefkey. Hefkey called the Toronto-based Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) at 4:25 pm. The HUSAR crew, after assembling their equipment and travelling the 540 kilometres from Toronto, arrived by 2:00 am Sunday, June 24, and immediately began work.
After initial assessments, the HUSAR team felt they had the proper equipment for the mission. In the early hours of Monday morning, June 25 – and despite discovering signs of life – rescue work was suspended due to the danger of additional concrete falling on the potential survivors and the HUSAR rescuers.
Following the announcement, numerous residents of the town began to sign a list volunteering to enter the structure themselves to continue the search; the owners also announced their intention to seek a court injunction ordering the resumption of search and rescue efforts. After an appeal from local MPP Michael Mantha, whose constituency office was in the mall, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty urged rescue workers to resume their search for survivors.
HUSAR later stated that the rescue teams were continuing to strategize alternate methods during the work suspension, and that the local residents and the Premier's call did not influence their actions. Shortly after 10 p.m. on June 25, approximately 19 hours after the initial search was suspended, HUSAR confirmed that it would resume its efforts, including a willingness to employ "drastic measures", including the use of heavy equipment to pull down the unstable escalator structure and part of an external wall from the outside. Prime Minister Stephen Harper also offered the assistance of the Canadian Forces on June 26.
Two bodies were recovered from the debris on Wednesday, June 27—four days after the collapse.
The area which collapsed included two kiosks. The deceased had been a lottery kiosk employee and her customer. Lucie Aylwin, 37, worked just once a week at the lottery booth, earning extra money for her wedding. Aylwin held a full-time job with Collège Boréal, a French language college, as an employment consultant and recruiter in the college's 'Employment Options Emploi' office, located elsewhere in the Algo Centre Mall. Doloris Perizzolo, 74, was a widow and mother believed to be opening pull-tab lottery tickets, which must be opened in view of the booth operator. After the bodies of the two victims were retrieved, and HUSAR confirmed no other victims were trapped in the rubble, efforts shifted to official investigations.
Investigation
On March 8, 2013, the engineering firm NORR, commissioned by the Ontario Provincial Police, released the results of their forensic engineering investigation to the Elliot Lake Inquiry. The investigation found that the collapse was caused by a two-stage failure of the welding on a connection, due to extensive corrosion. The corrosion was caused by improper waterproofing and the placement of a parking lot on the roof, which allowed water, contaminated with road salt, (which accelerated the corrosion) to corrode the structure.
Oversights and cost-cutting during planning stages
The report states that there were two critical errors made during the planning stages. Firstly, the parking lot for the mall was located on the roof of the building without there being sound waterproofing, and secondly the structural inefficiency of the hollow-core slabs (HCS) which prevented the installation of effective waterproofing later on.
John Kadlec of Beta Engineering originally planned the use of 8-inch HCS, which he specified could withstand 120 pounds per square foot, a load which exceeded specifications on all 8-inch HCS. During the bidding process, the owners were advised by a bidder, Precon, that the specified load could not be handled by the HCS without reinforcements from a composite concrete topping. However, Kadlec advised the owners that the plans called for 8-inch HCS which could withstand the load without reinforcement from topping. The contract was thus awarded to Coreslab, despite Coreslab's design tables indicating that the specified project loads were 38% higher than the maximum load. In 1992, over a decade after the mall's construction, Coreslab retracted the claim to be able to support the load without the use of a composite topping.
Two different waterproofing systems were proposed to the owner by Harry S. Peterson Co. The first system called for a rubberized asphalt membrane to be applied over the non-composite concrete topping, while the second one called for no membrane, and simply controlling leaks with a polyurethane sealant. The second system reduced initial building costs by $136,000. HSP argued strongly for the second option, and convinced the owner to install the second system. The report called this system "intrinsically flawed", and leaks were noticed immediately after construction.
Leaking
Leaks were noticed immediately after the installation of the topping. Harry S. Peterson Co. attempted many times to fix the leaks. In 1991, the owners contracted Trow to investigate the chronic leaking and find a solution. Two options were provided, but upon consulting with Coreslab, it was determined that neither plan could go forward due to the HCS not being able to support additional loads.
These leaks allowed water to seep through the topping and access the steel frame of the building. This corroded much of the building's frame during the mall's three decades in operation. The corrosion was eventually so severe that the weld on a connection failed, resulting in the collapse.
Inquiry
John Kadlec, a consulting engineer on the original construction, has testified that he raised concerns at the time about sloppy workmanship and inadequate construction materials at the site, including structural columns that were already crooked, steel beams that were already rusting despite being new, and the fateful decision to place the complex's parking area on the roof. According to Kadlec, the construction company opted to resolve the structural issues not by redoing the construction, but by anchoring the building's back wall to the rock outcropping behind it. James Keywan, the building's original architect, testified that he also strongly objected to the rooftop parking, but had little choice once Algocen made their decision to proceed with that plan.
The son of the mall's owner admitted that the company had pressured engineers to remove information on leaks and corrosion from a report and that fictional repair invoices from a shell company, Empire Roofing and Restoration, were used to mislead mortgage holder Royal Bank of Canada about the building's condition.
Speakers at the inquiry have also testified that a significant volume of city traffic regularly cut across the roof deck as a bypass of the traffic lights at the corner of Hillside Drive and Ontario Avenue, resulting in more stress on the structure than it had been designed to handle. The NORR report speculated that a heavy vehicle might have contributed to a previously undetected partial failure of the support structure a few months prior to the final collapse.
The inquiry also found that while Perizzolo died almost instantly, Aylwin may have survived for up to 39 hours after the collapse, and may have been found alive if HUSAR had not suspended its rescue operations.
Aftermath
The province has ordered a review of both HUSAR and Emergency Management Ontario.
The collapse focused attention on the Harper government's cancellation of the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program, which provides funds to Canada's five HUSAR teams. The province and the National Fire Protection Association denounced the cuts. The Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness suggested that such cuts would necessitate Canada asking for assistance from the United States in similar situations. Also cancelled by the Conservative federal government was the Canadian Emergency Management College, established in 1954 to train first responders. A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews deflected criticism of the cuts, noting that 90 per cent of emergencies are managed municipally or provincially.
As of the end of June, the economic impact of Algo Centre's closure was unknown, but described by Mayor Rick Hamilton as "huge". Estimates suggest 250 people worked at the mall or hotel. The nearest significant cities to Elliot Lake are Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie, both over 100 kilometres away by road; residents were said to be fielding requests from others for essentials like clothing, not readily available without the mall. Apart from the mall's Foodland store, there is only one other grocery store, Lyle's No Frills, in the city; that store and a nearby video store quickly made efforts to expand their merchandise selections to include some clothing items.
The Elliot Lake & District Chamber of Commerce has established a committee to help retailers from the building; at one meeting, Premier McGuinty assured that they'd remove rigid program requirements for assistance programs. The East Algoma Community Futures Development Corporation approved interest free "transitional loans" of up to $25,000 for affected businesses. TD Bank's local branch contributed $10,000 to the Elliot Lake Food Bank. Foodland announced it will rebuild, and pay employees up to six months wages during the process.
Mall owner Nazarian received death threats, which pushed him into hiding, and a class action lawsuit had already been launched by June 28, according to his lawyer.
John Pomerleau, owner of Alternative Funeral Service which is located in the Algo Centre Mall said in July that more than 30 cremation urns were still trapped in the mall and it was unknown if or when they could be recovered.
The Algo Centre Mall may contain asbestos which may have been released during the collapse and rescue demolition of the mall.
Foodland leased the city's Collins Hall recreational facility for conversion into a temporary grocery store, which opened in October 2012. Foodland's permanent new store opened at Pearson Plaza on April 1, 2016; the Collins Hall facility (W.H. Collins Centre) was then converted back to recreational use, with several of the chain's structural improvements to the building—including upgrades to the lighting system and improvements to the building's accessibility for people with disabilities—remaining in place as a donation to the city.
The public library branch and some government offices that had been located at the mall were temporarily relocated to the former White Mountain Academy of the Arts. The library moved to Pearson Plaza, and Service Canada relocated to Kilborn Way and Highway 108. Other government offices, including constituency offices of the local members of the federal (Mark Walk) and provincial (Hillside Drive South and Amsterdam Road) parliaments, relocated elsewhere in Elliot Lake.
Government reaction
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) is assisting the coroner's office in investigating the two deaths. Once the investigation is completed, the OPP could launch a criminal investigation, if warranted. The Ministry of Labour will have an engineer examine for further structural problems, and thus whether the mall needs to be torn down. Investigating the cause of the collapse is the city's responsibility.
Global News reporter Jennifer Tryon attempted to file a Freedom of Information request for documents on June 29, but was refused; an employee came out from the back of the offices, and turned the City Clerk's chair around, so that they couldn't respond. City officials then called the OPP. After the request, the city issued a two line statement that documents are now part of investigations. OPP noted that the documents are still available through Freedom of Information requests, and that the situation likely didn't warrant an emergency call to police. The reporter was provided a FOI application on police arrival, and told to ignore instructions from their superiors on calling police. Tryon, producer Kieron O'Dea and cameraman Trevor Owens would later receive a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Breaking National News Reportage at the 1st Canadian Screen Awards.
A public inquiry was established on July 19, 2012, by the Government of Ontario. The inquiry itself started March 4, 2013. As part of the inquiry, portions of a 700-page engineering report (NORR report) into the collapse were made public.
Lawsuit
On June 28, four days after the collapse, the mall owner's lawyer stated that a class action lawsuit had already been launched.
A class action lawsuit was launched by Elaine Quinte and Jack Quinte, who owned Hungry Jack's in the mall. The lawsuit lists Algo Centre Mall, Eastwood Mall Inc., Robert Nazarian, the City of Elliot Lake, the Province of Ontario, and the unnamed engineer "who approved the structure of the mall a short time prior to this incident."
Demolition
Local area MPP Michael Mantha raised concerns that confidential records must be extracted, such as those from the public health department. He expressed concern that the information might end up in the local landfill. Documents were never extracted from Algo Mall.
Many health, social assistance and Service Canada files were found at the city landfill. Documents found among the rubble by a private source said to be photocopies of clients drivers licences, social insurance numbers, health cards and birth certificates. The private source never removed any documents from the landfill site, although it is unknown if anyone else entered the landfill site after hours while the demolition was progressing.
Political impact
The inquiry's final report was released just 12 days before the 2014 municipal election. Ongoing anger over city council's handling of the Algo Centre Mall resulted in incumbent mayor Rick Hamilton and two incumbent city councillors who ran against him for the mayoralty being defeated by political newcomer Dan Marchisella, and only one seat on city council was won by an incumbent councillor.
Professional Impact
Both Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) and Ontario Association of Certified Engineering Technicians and Technologists (OACETT) have implemented mandatory Continuing Professional Development programs in response to the Algo collapse.
Criminal trial
Robert G.H. Wood, the engineer who signed off on the engineering report declaring the mall structurally sound just a few weeks before the roof collapse, was indicted on July 11, 2015, with two counts of criminal negligence causing death and one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm. According to the inquiry, Wood had previously indicated in conversation that he was aware that the roof was at risk of caving in, but altered his final report at Nazarian's request so that the structural issues did not jeopardize the building's refinancing. Furthermore, Wood's engineering licence was already suspended when he performed the inspection, and his licence was then revoked.
His trial began in September 2016.
Verdict
In June 2017, Justice Edward E. Gareau of the Ontario Superior Court found that there was not enough evidence to find Wood guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
In explaining the verdict, the judge relied on the fact that other engineers had inspected the premises and also failed to accurately assess that the mall was structurally unsafe. He noted that while a judgement that the structure was safe would be "poor judgment", the crown's lead expert (the author of the NORR report Dr. Hassan Saffarini), admitted to the judge that such a judgement could be "conceivable".
In closing, the judge stated that Wood must accept a moral responsibility for the events that unfolded on June 23, 2012. He stated that Mr. Wood's work was "shoddy, sloppy and even inadequate", but that it "did not reach the level of being criminal". He also levelled criticism at the officials of the City of Elliot Lake who did not exercise sufficient vigilance as well as Bob Nazarian, whom the judge called "a neglectful, greedy owner who minimized problems and put cost ahead of people in remedying deficiencies in the mall".
New mall
A new shopping mall, given the name Pearson Plaza, was built less than a kilometre south of Algo Centre Mall, on the site of the former Nordic Hotel (later Huron Lodge) at Hillside Drive South and Ontario Avenue. The first store in the new mall officially opened on April 1, 2016.
References
2012 disasters in Canada
Disasters in Ontario
Shopping malls in Ontario
Shopping malls established in 1980
Shopping malls disestablished in 2012
Defunct shopping malls in Canada
Demolished buildings and structures in Ontario
Collapsed buildings and structures
Buildings and structures in Elliot Lake
1980 establishments in Ontario
2012 disestablishments in Ontario
Buildings and structures demolished in 2012 | en |
doc-en-9511 | Julian Francis Edelman (born May 22, 1986) is a former American football wide receiver who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 12 seasons with the New England Patriots. He played quarterback at Kent State and was selected in the seventh round of the 2009 NFL Draft by the Patriots, where he transitioned to a return specialist and wide receiver. Edelman became a primary offensive starter in 2013 and was a staple of the Patriots' receiving corps until his retirement after the 2020 season.
Edelman was one of the NFL's most productive postseason receivers. He ranks second in postseason receiving yards and receptions and holds the Super Bowl records for punt returns and first-half receptions in a single game. A three-time Super Bowl winner, he was the receiving yards leader during his victories in Super Bowl XLIX, Super Bowl LI, and Super Bowl LIII. Edelman was named MVP of the lattermost, where he accounted for more than half of his team's receiving yards.
Early years
Edelman was born in the San Francisco Bay Area suburb of Redwood City, California, to Angela (née Gole) and Frank Edelman, a mechanic who owns an A-1 Auto Tech. He has two siblings, Jason and Nicole. Edelman was raised as a Christian but has experienced what he described as a "Jewish awakening." In an NFL Network interview in December 2013, Edelman said that he was Jewish and celebrated Hanukkah. His mother was born in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, to German parents who had lived in Belgium.
Edelman played varsity football and baseball at Woodside High School in Woodside, California. He was extremely small as a freshman, weighing under before his growth spurt. He was the quarterback for his high-school team, and as a senior he led the Wildcats to a 13–0 record in 2004. In high school, Edelman had 2,237 yards and 29 touchdowns passing, and 964 yards and 13 touchdowns rushing.
College career
After high school, Edelman spent a year attending the College of San Mateo. There, he threw for 1,312 yards and 14 touchdowns, rushed for a school-record 1,253 yards and 17 touchdowns. He then transferred to Kent State University, where he majored in business management. At Kent State, Edelman was a three-year starter at quarterback. His senior year, Edelman was the Golden Flashes' leading passer, completing 56% of his passes (153 of 275 passes for 1,820 yards), throwing 13 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He was also their leading rusher, gaining 1,370 yards on 215 attempts (an average of 6.4 yards per carry) and scoring 13 touchdowns. His total offense broke Joshua Cribbs's single-season school record, set in 2003.
Statistics
Professional career
Edelman was not invited to the 2009 NFL Combine. At his March 12 Pro Day, he ran the short shuttle in 3.92 seconds; the fastest time at the Combine that year was 3.96 seconds.
2009 season
The New England Patriots, who had conducted private workouts with Edelman before the 2009 NFL Draft, selected him with the 27th pick of the seventh round (232nd overall), ahead of Michigan State quarterback Brian Hoyer, who joined the Patriots as a free agent. Several analysts suggested that the Patriots may have selected Edelman for his potential in a Wildcat formation. On July 16, 2009, Edelman signed a four-year contract with the Patriots that included a $48,700 signing bonus. Edelman later stated that he knew he lacked the ability to make an NFL roster as a quarterback, so before the draft he prepared himself to play at positions other than quarterback. The BC Lions placed Edelman on their "negotiation list," a list of American players for which they have exclusive negotiating rights, and offered him a three-year, incentive-heavy contract to play quarterback.
On August 13, 2009, in a preseason game against the Philadelphia Eagles, Edelman returned a punt 75 yards, and he made the team over former Eagles wide receiver Greg Lewis, for whom the Patriots had given up a fifth-round draft pick in 2009.
Edelman missed the Patriots' Week 1 game against the Buffalo Bills with an ankle injury, but he made his first career start in the Patriots' 16–9 loss in Week 2 against the New York Jets, which was also the first game Wes Welker had missed since becoming a Patriot in 2007. Edelman led all receivers with eight receptions for 98 yards, and added 38 yards on two kickoff returns and 2 yards on a punt return, for a total of 138 all-purpose yards.
Edelman broke his arm in the Patriots' 59–0 rout of the Tennessee Titans, and did not accompany the Patriots on their trip to London to play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. At the time of his injury, Edelman was leading all rookies with 21 receptions. He returned with the Patriots' Week 10 game against the Indianapolis Colts, where he scored his first official NFL touchdown on a 9-yard reception from Brady.
When Welker was sidelined for the season after tearing two knee ligaments against the Houston Texans, Edelman was again called on to fill Welker's role; Edelman caught 10 of the 15 passes thrown to him for 103 yards, the first 100-yard game of his NFL career. He finished the regular season with 37 receptions for 359 yards and one touchdown. He also made six punt returns as well as 11 kickoff returns, gaining 304 yards in all on 17 returns.
In the Patriots' Wild Card Round playoff loss to the Baltimore Ravens, Edelman caught six passes from Brady for 44 yards, including both of the Patriots' touchdowns. Edelman became the first rookie to score two receiving touchdowns in one postseason game since David Sloan did so for the Detroit Lions in the 1995 season.
2010 season
In the 2010 season, Edelman saw a decrease in playing time; through 15 games, he had four receptions for 14 yards. In the Week 17 game against the Miami Dolphins, with Welker, Deion Branch, and Aaron Hernandez inactive, Edelman capitalized with three receptions for 72 yards and a 94-yard punt return touchdown. It was the first punt return touchdown by a Patriot since Troy Brown returned one against the Carolina Panthers in the Week 17 of the 2001 season, and the longest punt return in Patriots franchise history, eclipsing an 89-yard return by Mike Haynes in 1976.
Edelman set a franchise record by averaging 15.3 yards per return, which was second in the league after the Bears' Devin Hester. For the 2010 season, Edelman played in 15 games with seven receptions for 86 yards and 321 return yards on 21 punt return opportunities. In the Divisional Round against the New York Jets, Edelman had a 12-yard reception in the 28–21 loss.
2011 season: First Super Bowl appearance
During the 2011 season, Edelman was used primarily as a kick and punt returner. During the Patriots' Week 10 game against the New York Jets, because of injuries to the Patriots' secondary, he was pressed into service as a defensive back during the fourth quarter; he earned his first tackle on defense by stopping running back LaDainian Tomlinson on a play in which Tomlinson injured his knee.
During the Patriots' Week 11 game on Monday Night Football against the Kansas City Chiefs, he played defensive back in nickel and dime situations. He also returned a punt 72 yards for a touchdown, which helped him earn his first AFC Special Teams Player of the Week award. In Week 12, he was nominated for the NFL's "Hardest Working Man" for his Week 12 performance against the Philadelphia Eagles, in which he made an open-field tackle on Vince Young to prevent a touchdown. For the 2011 season, Edelman played 13 games with four receptions for 34 yards and 584 return yards on 40 kickoff and punt returns.
In the AFC Championship, on January 22, 2012, against the Baltimore Ravens, Edelman played on 27 of 67 offensive snaps at wide receiver, catching one pass that converted a third down attempt, and 27 of 73 defensive snaps at cornerback, often covering the Ravens' Anquan Boldin; Edelman was credited with a forced fumble on the Ravens' final drive. The Patriots went on to win the AFC Championship, but lost Super Bowl XLVI to the New York Giants. Edelman had three kickoff returns for 73 net return yards in the game.
2012 season
Edelman's snap count increased in the first two games of the 2012 season, including a Week 2 home loss to the Arizona Cardinals in which he started over Wes Welker. After suffering a hand injury in the Patriots' Week 3 loss to the Baltimore Ravens, Edelman was inactive for the next three games. He then saw limited duty until the Patriots' record-tying Week 11 win against the Indianapolis Colts, in which he had one of the best games of his career. Edelman caught five passes for 58 yards and a two-yard touchdown, picked up 47 yards on a single rushing attempt on a reverse play, and returned two punts for a total of 117 yards. The first of those punt returns was a 68-yard punt return for a touchdown, giving Edelman three punt return touchdowns, tying the Patriots franchise mark. Edelman had 105 yards of total offense and 222 all-purpose yards with two touchdowns.
Four days later, on Thanksgiving Day, Edelman scored two more touchdowns in the second quarter of the Patriots' victory over the New York Jets, in which they tied a franchise record with five touchdowns and 35 points in one quarter; he recovered a Jets' fumble and returned it 22 yards on a kickoff return, and then caught a 56-yard touchdown pass from Tom Brady. Although he left early in the third quarter with a head injury, he became the first player since the AFL–NFL merger with both a receiving touchdown and a return touchdown in consecutive games. In a game against the Miami Dolphins on December 2, Edelman broke his right foot and was placed on injured reserve. He missed the remainder of the season. Overall in 2012, Edelman played in nine games with 21 receptions for 235 yards and 301 return yards on 20 kickoff-punt combined return opportunities.
2013 season
Edelman became a free agent after the 2012 season. He re-signed with New England on a one-year deal on April 10, 2013.
In the 2013 season opener, Edelman scored both of New England's touchdowns in their 23–21 win over the Buffalo Bills. He also had three punt returns for a total of 32 yards, which gave him a career total of 75 returns for 975 yards. Edelman became the NFL's all-time leader in career punt return average, with 13.0 yards per return, surpassing the 12.8-yard average of former Chicago Bear George McAfee, although his average dropped below 12.8 shortly afterward.
Edelman had nine catches on 11 attempts for 110 yards and two touchdowns in a historic Week 12 comeback victory at home over the Denver Broncos; the Patriots overcame a 24-point halftime deficit, scored 31 unanswered points, and kicked the winning field goal in the closing minutes of overtime. Edelman outperformed Denver's triplet star wide receivers combined. In Week 17, Edelman became the third Patriots player in team history to catch over 100 passes in a season in the Patriots' 34–20 win over the Buffalo Bills in their second divisional matchup. 2013 became a breakout season for Edelman as he played in all 16 games making 105 receptions for 1,056 receiving yards and 35 punt return opportunities for 374 yards. The Patriots won the AFC East and faced the Indianapolis Colts in the Divisional Round. In the 43–22 victory, he had six receptions for 84 receiving yards. In the AFC Championship against the Denver Broncos, he had 10 receptions for 89 receiving yards in the 26–16 loss.
Edelman became a free agent after the 2013 season. On March 15, 2014, he re-signed with the Patriots on a four-year deal for $17 million.
2014 season: First Super Bowl win
Edelman started 14 games for the Patriots in 2014. He had 92 receptions for 972 receiving yards, as well as four touchdowns. In a Week 9 matchup against the Denver Broncos, Edelman returned a punt 84 yards for his fourth career return touchdown, passing Troy Brown for the most punt return touchdowns in Patriots history. In a Week 14 game against the San Diego Chargers, Edelman caught a pass from Tom Brady then broke two tackles and ran for 69 yards for a touchdown; it was the final touchdown of the game that led the Patriots to a 23–14 win.
The Patriots won the AFC East and returned to the playoffs. Edelman recorded his first NFL touchdown pass on his first NFL pass attempt in the Patriots' Divisional Round game against the Baltimore Ravens. After receiving a lateral pass from Brady, Edelman threw a forward pass to Danny Amendola, who scored a 51-yard touchdown to tie the game at 28–28. According to Pro-Football-Reference.com, the pass was the longest touchdown pass thrown by a non-quarterback player in NFL playoff history, and makes Edelman one of six NFL players with a perfect postseason passer rating of 158.3. In the AFC Championship against the Indianapolis Colts, he had nine receptions for 98 receiving yards in the 45–7 victory.
In Super Bowl XLIX against the Seattle Seahawks, Edelman led all receivers in yardage with 109 yards on nine receptions (teammate Shane Vereen had 11 receptions). His touchdown reception with 2:02 left in the fourth quarter—his only touchdown reception of the postseason—was the final go-ahead score of the game, putting the Patriots up 28–24. For the postseason as a whole, Edelman led all receivers in both receptions (26) and receiving yards (281).
2015 season
On September 10, Edelman started for the Patriots against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the season-opening game on Thursday Night Football. He led the Patriots in yards and receptions, recording 11 receptions for 97 yards, in the 28–21 victory. In the Patriots' second game of the season against the Buffalo Bills, Edelman got 11 catches, which made it the first time in his career he had back-to-back games with at least 10 catches. Edelman then caught four passes on five targets for 120 yards against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 5.
Against the New York Giants on November 15, Edelman suffered an injury to his fifth metatarsal on his left foot that required him to undergo foot surgery on November 16, 2015. He was expected to be back on the field in six to eight weeks, in time for the playoffs, though that was contingent on the recovery process. Through nine games, Edelman had made 61 catches for 692 yards and seven touchdowns. Edelman returned for the Divisional Round against the Kansas City Chiefs. Edelman had 10 catches for 100 yards to help the Patriots defeat the Chiefs 27–20 and advance to the AFC Championship game for the fifth consecutive year. In the AFC Championship, Edelman had 7 receptions for 53 yards, but the Patriots lost 20–18 to the Denver Broncos. For his efforts in 2015, Edelman was ranked 87th on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2016.
2016 season: Second Super Bowl Championship
On September 15, 2016, Edelman was fined $26,309 for a hit on a defenseless player when he hit linebacker Deone Bucannon helmet-to-helmet. In Week 13, against the Los Angeles Rams, he had eight receptions for 101 yards in the 26–10 victory. In Week 17, Edelman got a block by newcomer wide receiver Michael Floyd on a catch and run that led to a career-long 77-yard touchdown in a 35–14 win over the Miami Dolphins. He finished the game with eight receptions for 151 yards, earning him AFC Offensive Player of the Week. He became the first Patriots wide receiver to receive the award since Randy Moss in 2007. He finished the season with a career-high 1,106 receiving yards on 98 catches. For his efforts in 2017, Edelman was ranked 71st by his peers on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2017.
In the Patriots' Divisional Round victory against the Houston Texans, Edelman caught his 70th postseason pass, breaking Wes Welker's Patriots franchise record. Edelman recorded eight catches for 137 yards in the win as the Patriots reached the AFC Championship Game for an NFL record sixth consecutive season. In the AFC Championship, Edelman caught eight passes for 118 yards in the 36–17 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Patriots advanced to an NFL record ninth Super Bowl appearance.
During Super Bowl LI against the Atlanta Falcons, Edelman made five catches for 87 yards. The highlight was an unusually difficult catch in the fourth quarter, where the pass was first tipped into the air by cornerback Robert Alford and it appeared that it would fall incomplete, but Edelman and three defenders (Alford, Ricardo Allen, and Keanu Neal) lunged at the ball, and, after it bounced off Alford's leg, Edelman made the reception just inches above the ground. It was ruled a catch on the field and withstood a challenge from Falcons head coach Dan Quinn. NFL Films called the play, which was chosen for the cover of Sports Illustrated, "the greatest catch in Super Bowl history". Edelman's catch sustained a historic comeback for the Patriots, who trailed the Falcons 28–3 late in the third quarter before winning 34–28 in overtime.
2017 season: Missed season due to injury
On June 8, 2017, Edelman signed a two-year, $11 million contract extension with the Patriots, with $9 million guaranteed through the 2019 season. On August 25, in the team's third preseason game against the Detroit Lions, Edelman tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), which prematurely ended his 2017 season. He was placed on injured reserve on September 2, 2017. Without Edelman, the Patriots finished 13–3 and reached Super Bowl LII. The Patriots lost 41–33 to the Philadelphia Eagles.
2018 season: Super Bowl MVP
In February 2018, it was reported that Edelman expected to be ready to play by the 2018 training camp. On June 7, it was announced that Edelman was expected to be suspended for four games due to a violation of the policy against using performance-enhancing drugs. On June 26, Edelman appealed the suspension; on July 3, his appeal was denied. Edelman missed the first four games of the season, and was activated on October 2. He played on Thursday Night Football against the Indianapolis Colts, where he caught seven passes for 57 yards. In Week 8, against the Buffalo Bills, he had nine receptions for 104 yards in the victory on Monday Night Football. In Week 10, in a loss to the Tennessee Titans, he posted nine receptions for 104 yards once again. On December 29, Edelman was fined $63,504 for three personal foul penalties in Week 16. He finished the 2018 season with 74 receptions for 850 receiving yards and six touchdowns. The Patriots finished with an 11–5 record and earned the #2 seed in the AFC in the playoffs.
In the Divisional Round against the Los Angeles Chargers, he had nine receptions for 151 yards in the Patriots' 41–28 victory. In the AFC Championship against the Kansas City Chiefs, he had seven receptions for 96 yards in the 37–31 overtime victory. In Super Bowl LIII, in a 13–3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams, Edelman caught 10 passes on 12 targets for 141 yards, an effort for which he was named Most Valuable Player (MVP). He became the first wide receiver to win Super Bowl MVP since Santonio Holmes did so in Super Bowl XLIII in 2009. He finished the postseason with 26 receptions for 388 yards, totals high enough to move him into second place all-time in playoff receptions and receiving yards behind Jerry Rice. Edelman is the first Jewish football player to be named Super Bowl MVP.
Edelman's MVP award drew criticism as it came in the same season he was suspended for using an unspecified performance-enhancing substance, although some articles noted that much of the criticism came from baseball writers. The NFL prohibits players suspended for PED use from receiving awards given by the league or the NFL Players' Association. In an interview after the Super Bowl, Edelman apologized, saying, "It'll never happen again."
His performance in the 2018 playoffs has also led to debate about inducting him into the Hall of Fame despite a relative lack of regular season production.
2019 season
On May 21, 2019, Edelman signed a two-year, $18 million contract extension with the Patriots with $12 million guaranteed, keeping him under contract through the 2021 season. In Week 1 against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Edelman caught six passes for 83 yards and threw one pass for 32 yards in the 33–3 win. In Week 3 against the New York Jets, Edelman caught seven passes for 62 yards and his first receiving touchdown of the season in the 30–14 win. However, he suffered a rib injury in the second quarter that forced him out of the game. Edelman rebounded from his injury in Week 5 against the Washington Redskins; he had eight receptions for 110 yards and a touchdown; he became the first Patriot to record at least 100 yards all season. In Week 6 against the New York Giants, Edelman recorded nine catches for 113 yards in the 35–14 win. In the game, Edelman surpassed Stanley Morgan for the third most receptions in Patriots history. In Week 8 against the Cleveland Browns, Edelman caught eight passes for 78 yards and a season-high two touchdowns in the 27–13 win. In Week 11 against the Philadelphia Eagles, Edelman caught five passes for 53 yards and threw a 15-yard touchdown pass to Phillip Dorsett II in the 17–10 win. In Week 13 against the Houston Texans on Sunday Night Football, Edelman caught six passes for 106 yards and a touchdown during the 28–22 loss. In Week 17 against the Miami Dolphins, Edelman caught three passes for 26 yards during the 27–24 loss. In the game, Edelman reached 100 catches on the season. He finished the 2019 season with 100 receptions for 1,117 receiving yards and six receiving touchdowns. In the AFC Wild Card game against the Tennessee Titans, Edelman caught three passes for 30 yards and rushed two times for 12 yards and a touchdown during the 20–13 loss.
2020 season
During Week 2 against the Seattle Seahawks, Edelman finished with eight receptions for a career-high 179 receiving yards as the Patriots lost a close game 30–35 on NBC Sunday Night Football. In Week 6, against the Denver Broncos, he completed two passes in the game on trick plays in the 18–12 loss. On October 31, 2020, Edelman was placed on injured reserve after undergoing minor knee surgery. He was placed on the reserve/COVID-19 list by the team on November 30, 2020, and moved back to injured reserve on December 10. On December 16, 2020, Edelman was designated to return from injured reserve, opening a 21-day window for the Patriots to put him on the active roster, but head coach Bill Belichick announced on January 1, 2021, that he would not be activated before the end of the season.
Retirement
Edelman announced his retirement on April 12, 2021, after 12 seasons with the Patriots. His retirement occurred after the Patriots ended his contract because he failed a physical. After the announcement, Bill Belichick issued a statement that praised Edelman's competitiveness and mental and physical toughness, calling him the "quintessential throwback player" for his versatile skills, and said that it was a privilege to coach him. Robert Kraft, in his statement, called Edelman "one of the great success stories in our franchise’s history". On social media, Tom Brady wrote about his affection for Edelman as a player and friend, and Cam Newton posted that Edelman would be missed.
After his retirement, Edelman did a series of podcast interviews reviewing his career, including Pardon My Take and Green Light with Chris Long, a teammate of Edelman during the 2016 season. Shortly after retiring from the NFL, he announced that he would start a media career, and would join the cast of Inside the NFL on Paramount+. Speculation immediately emerged that he would later return to the NFL to play with former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, including a remark by Brady himself; Edelman denied the rumors, saying that he was "a one-team guy".
His retirement also revived the debate about inducting him into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which had begun after his MVP performance in Super Bowl LIII. Opponents cite his lack of Pro Bowl nominations and other usual metrics for evaluating NFL careers. Proponents cite his roles on three Super Bowl-winning Patriots teams and his ranking second all time in postseason receptions and receiving yards.
NFL career statistics
Regular season
Postseason
Outside football
In 2016, Edelman became one of three Patriots (along with Malcolm Mitchell and Martellus Bennett) to publish a children's book. Edelman's book, Flying High, is about a squirrel named Jules who learns to overcome his physical limitations through hard work and the assistance of a goat named Tom. A sequel, Flying High 2, loosely based on Edelman's "greatest Super Bowl catch" against the Atlanta Falcons, was released in December 2017.
On October 24, 2017, Hachette Book Group published Edelman's memoir, Relentless, written with Tom E. Curran of NBC Sports Boston.
Edelman has his own clothing brand, JE11. He has worked with Joe's Jeans on a line of shirts and jeans, and with Cutters Sports on a line of football gloves.
He has made cameo appearances on television, including episodes of the HBO sports dramedy Ballers and the reality competition America's Next Top Model. He has also presented twice at the Grammy Awards, in 2015 with teammate Malcolm Butler and in 2019 with teammate Devin McCourty. He appeared in a Puma advertisement campaign in 2015.
With Danny Amendola, he was featured in a 30-minute NFL Network special, NFL Going Global: Edelman & Amendola, chronicling their promotional trip to Mexico City before the Patriots' 2017 game there.
Coast Productions
In 2019, Edelman co-founded a production company, Coast Productions, with ad executive Assaf Swissa. Their first venture was the 2019 Showtime documentary 100%, about Edelman's recovery from a 2017 ACL tear and the 2018 NFL season. In April 2021, after Edelman's retirement, ViacomCBS signed a multi-year development deal with Coast Productions; in the deal, Edelman will join Inside the NFL as an analyst as it moves to Paramount+.
Legal problems
Paternity suit
In July 2016, Edelman was named in a paternity suit filed by Swedish model Ella Rose, with whom he had a casual relationship, naming him as the father of her unborn daughter. After first contesting paternity, Edelman acknowledged it; his daughter was born in November, and he was not named on her birth certificate.
Vandalism
About 9:00 p.m on January 11, 2020, Edelman was cited for misdemeanor vandalism by Beverly Hills Police Department after he allegedly jumped on the hood of a car in Beverly Hills, California, causing damage. In April 2020, the charge was dropped by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office because Edelman had paid the car owner for the repair and no criminal record.
Personal life
Edelman dated Brazilian model Adriana Lima on and off in 2016 and 2017.
In an interview with the magazine Haute Living in 2019, Edelman detailed how challenging and rewarding he found being a father. He explained that fatherhood had changed his view of life.
Edelman's paternal great-grandfather, Harry Edelman, was Jewish; after emigrating from Poland to England, he married Mabel Hennessey, a woman of Irish Catholic background, Julian's great-grandmother. As an adult, Edelman has experienced what he described as a "Jewish awakening." During an NFL Network interview in December 2013, Edelman stated that he identifies as Jewish and celebrates Hanukkah; he has become "more attuned to the religion and history." In 2014 he wore an Israeli-American flag pin on his hat during a game against the Denver Broncos at Gillette Stadium. He also voiced support for the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting: he wore an Israeli flag hat following the Patriots' win against the Green Bay Packers on November 4, 2018, and wore a pair of customized cleats bearing the hashtag #strongerthanhate in a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on December 16, 2018. Edelman shared a photo of the cleats on Instagram and listed the names of all the victims in the photo's caption.
In response to Meyers Leonard's use of an Antisemitic slur during a Twitch stream, Edelman posted an open letter inviting Leonard to a Shabbat dinner with him in Miami.
See also
List of select Jewish football players
References
External links
New England Patriots bio
1986 births
Living people
21st-century American Jews
American football quarterbacks
American football return specialists
American football wide receivers
American people of German descent
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
Jewish American sportspeople
Kent State Golden Flashes football players
New England Patriots players
People from Redwood City, California
Players of American football from California
San Mateo Bulldogs football players
Sportspeople from Norfolk County, Massachusetts
Sportspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area
Super Bowl MVPs | en |
doc-en-7620 | An implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly saying everything we want to communicate. This phenomenon is part of pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics. The philosopher H. P. Grice coined the term in 1975. Grice distinguished conversational implicatures, which arise because speakers are expected to respect general rules of conversation, and conventional ones, which are tied to certain words such as "but" or "therefore". Take for example the following exchange:
A (to passer by): I am out of gas.
B: There is a gas station 'round the corner.
Here, B does not say, but conversationally implicates, that the gas station is open, because otherwise his utterance would not be relevant in the context. Conversational implicatures are classically seen as contrasting with entailments: They are not necessary or logical consequences of what is said, but are defeasible (cancellable). So, B could continue without contradiction:
B: But unfortunately it's closed today.
An example of a conventional implicature is "Donovan is poor but happy", where the word "but" implicates a sense of contrast between being poor and being happy.
Later linguists introduced refined and different definitions of the term, leading to somewhat different ideas about which parts of the information conveyed by an utterance are actually implicatures and which are not.
Conversational implicature
Grice was primarily concerned with conversational implicatures. Like all implicatures, these are part of what is communicated. In other words, conclusions the addressee draws from an utterance although they were not actively conveyed by the communicator are never implicatures. According to Grice, conversational implicatures arise because communicating people are expected by their addressees to obey the maxims of conversation and the overarching cooperative principle, which basically states that people are expected to communicate in a cooperative, helpful way.
Standard implicatures
The simplest situation is where the addressee can draw conclusions from the assumption that the communicator obeys the maxims, as in the following examples. The symbol "+>" means "implicates".
Quality
It is raining. +> I believe, and have adequate evidence, that it is raining.
Moore's paradox, the observation that the sentence "It is raining, but I don't believe that it is raining" sounds contradictory although it isn't from a strictly logical point of view, has been explained as a contradiction to this type of implicature. However, as implicatures can be cancelled (see below), this explanation is dubious.
Quantity (i)
A well-known class of quantity implicatures are the scalar implicatures. Prototypical examples include words specifying quantities such as "some", "few", or "many":
John ate some of the cookies. +> John didn't eat all of the cookies.
Here, the use of "some" semantically entails that more than one cookie was eaten. It does not entail, but implicates, that not every cookie was eaten, or at least that the speaker does not know whether any cookies are left. The reason for this implicature is that saying "some" when one could say "all" would be less than informative enough in most circumstances. The general idea is that the communicator is expected to make the strongest possible claim, implicating the negation of any stronger claim. Lists of expressions that give rise to scalar implicatures, sorted from strong to weak, are known as Horn scales:
⟨all, many, some, few⟩
⟨..., four, three, two, one⟩ (cardinal number terms)
⟨always, often, sometimes⟩
⟨and, or⟩
⟨necessarily, possibly⟩
⟨hot, warm⟩
etc.
Negation reverses these scales, as in this example:
She won't necessarily get the job. +> She will possibly get the job.
"Not possibly" is stronger than "not necessarily", and the implicature follows from the double negation "She will not [not possibly] get the job".
Here are some further implicatures that can be classified as scalar:
I slept on a boat yesterday. +> The boat was not mine.
This is a common construction where the indefinite article indicates that the referent is not closely associated with the speaker, because the stronger claim "I slept on my boat yesterday" is not made.
The flag is green. +> The flag is completely green.
If this is the strongest possible claim, it follows that the flag has no other features, because "The flag is green and some other colour" would be stronger. In other words, if it did contain other features, this utterance would not be informative enough.
Quantity (ii)
The second quantity maxim seems to work in the opposite direction as the first; the communicator makes a weaker claim, from which a stronger one is implicated. Implicatures arising from this maxim enrich the information contained in the utterance:
He drank a bottle of vodka and fell into a stupor. +> He drank a bottle of vodka and consequently fell into a stupor.
I lost a book yesterday. +> The book was mine.
There is extensive literature, but no consensus on the question which of the two quantity maxims is in operation in which circumstances; i.e. why "I lost a book yesterday" implicates that the book was the speaker's, while "I slept on a boat yesterday" usually implicates that the boat wasn't the speaker's.
Relation/relevance
That cake looks delicious. +> I would like a piece of that cake.
This statement taken by itself would be irrelevant in most situations, so the addressee concludes that the speaker had something more in mind.
The introductory example also belongs here:
A: I am out of gas.
B: There is a gas station 'round the corner. +> The gas station is open.
Manner (iv)
The cowboy jumped on his horse and rode into the sunset. +> The cowboy performed these two actions in this order.
Being orderly includes relating events in the order they occurred.
Clashes of maxims
Sometimes it is impossible to obey all maxims at once. Suppose that A and B are planning a holiday in France and A suggests they visit their old acquaintance Gérard:
A: Where does Gérard live?
B: Somewhere in the South of France. +> B does not know where exactly Gérard lives.
B's answer violates the first maxim of quantity as it does not contain sufficient information to plan their route. But if B does not know the exact location, she cannot obey this maxim and also the maxim of quality; hence the implicature.
Floutings
The maxims can also be blatantly disobeyed or flouted, giving rise to another kind of conversational implicature. This is possible because addressees will go to great lengths in saving their assumption that the communicator did in fact – perhaps on a deeper level – obey the maxims and the cooperative principle. Many figures of speech can be explained by this mechanism.
Quality (i)
Saying something that is obviously false can produce irony, meiosis, hyperbole and metaphor:
When she heard about the rumour, she exploded.
As it is improbable that she really exploded, and it is highly unlikely that the speaker wanted to lie or was simply mistaken, the addressee has to assume the utterance was meant to be metaphorical.
Quantity (i)
Utterances that are not informative on the surface include tautologies. They have no logical content and hence no entailments, but can still be used to convey information via implicatures:
War is war.
Damning with faint praise also works by flouting the first quantity maxim. Consider the following testimonial for a student:
Dear Sir, Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular. Yours, etc.
The implicature here is that the student is no good, since the teacher has nothing better to say about him.
Relation/relevance
B's answer in the following exchange does not seem to be relevant, so A concludes that B wanted to convey something else:
A: Mrs Jenkins is an old windbag, don't you think?
B: Lovely weather for March, isn't it? +> Watch out, her nephew is standing right behind you! (or the like)
Manner (iii)
This utterance is much more long-winded than "Miss Singer sang an aria from Rigoletto" and therefore flouts the maxim "Be brief":
Miss Singer produced a series of sounds corresponding closely to the score of an aria from Rigoletto. +> What Miss Singer produced cannot really be described as an aria from Rigoletto.
Particularized versus generalized implicatures
Conversational implicatures that arise only in specific contexts are called particularized, while those that are not or only slightly context dependent are generalized. Many of the examples above rely on some context, making them particularized implicatures: thus, "War is war" can refer to different properties of war, or things expected to happen during war, depending on the situation in which it is uttered. Prototypical examples of generalized implicatures are the scalar implicatures. Particularized implicatures are by far the more common kind.
Properties
Grice attributed a number of properties to conversational implicatures:
They are defeasible (cancellable), meaning that the implicature may be cancelled by further information or context. Take the examples from above:
That cake looks delicious. +> I would like a piece of that cake.
versus: That cake looks delicious, but it looks too rich for me. (implicature defeated)
A: Did John eat some of the cookies?
B: He certainly did eat some of the cookies. In fact he ate them all.
They are usually non-detachable in the sense that they cannot be "detached" by rephrasing the utterance, as they are consequences of the meaning and not the wording. The obvious exception are implicatures following from the maxim of manner, which explicitly relies on the phrasing. Thus, the following utterances have the same implicature as above:
That fruit cake there looks appetizing.
The dessert you brought is really mouthwatering.
Conversational implicatures are calculable: they are supposed to be formally derivable from the literal meaning of the utterance in combination with the cooperative principle and the maxims, as well as contextual information and background knowledge.
They are non-conventional, that is, they are not part of the "conventional" (lexical and logical) meaning of a sentence.
Lastly, they can be context dependent, as mentioned above.
Opting out of the cooperative principle
The cooperative principle and the maxims of conversation are not mandatory. A communicator can choose not to be cooperative; she can opt out of the cooperative principle by giving appropriate clues such as saying "My lips are sealed", or for example during a cross-examination at court. In such situations, no conversational implicatures arise.
Modifications to Grice's maxims
Laurence Horn
Various modifications to Grice's maxims have been proposed by other linguists, the so-called neo-Griceans. Laurence Horn's approach keeps the maxims of quality and replaces the other maxims with just two principles:
The Q-principle: Make your contribution sufficient; say as much as you can (given the quality maxims and the R-principle).
The R-principle: Make your contribution necessary; say no more than you must (given the Q-principle).
The Q-principle replaces the first quantity maxim ("make your contribution as informative as is required") and the first and second manner maxims ("avoid obscurity and ambiguity"), and is taken to serve the interests of the hearer, who wants as much information as possible. It thus gives rise to the classical scalar implicatures. The R-principle subsumes the second quantity maxim ("do not make your contribution more informative than is required"), the maxim of relation, and the remaining manner maxims ("be brief and orderly"), and serves the interests of the speaker, who wants to communicate with as little effort as possible. These two principles have opposite effects analogous to Grice's two maxims of quantity. To determine which of the two principles is used, Horn introduces the concept of division of pragmatic labor: unmarked (shorter, standard, more lexicalized) phrasings tend to R-implicate a standard meaning, and marked (more wordy, unusual, less lexicalized) phrasings tend to Q-implicate a nonstandard meaning:
She stopped the machine. +> She stopped the machine in the usual way. (R-implicature: a stronger, more specific claim is implicated)
She got the machine to stop. +> She did not stop the machine in the usual way. (Q-implicature: the stronger claim is negated, as with scalar implicatures)
Horn's account has been criticised for misrepresenting the speaker's and hearer's interests: realistically, the hearer does not want a lot of information but just the relevant information; and the speaker is more interested in being understood than in having little work to do. Furthermore, as in Grice's theory, there is often no explanation for when which of the two principles is used, i.e. why "I lost a book yesterday" has the Q-implicature, or scalar implicature, that the book was the speaker's, while "I slept on a boat yesterday" R-implicates that the boat wasn't the speaker's.
Stephen Levinson
Stephen Levinson's approach is similar to Horn's. His Q-principle is basically the same, but its antagonist, the I-principle, only takes the place of the second quantity maxim. There is a separate M-principle more or less corresponding to the third and fourth manner maxims, as well as to Horn's division of pragmatic labor; but there is no replacement for the maxim of relation.
The M-principle: Indicate abnormal, nonstereotypical situations by using marked expressions that contrast with those you would use to describe the corresponding normal, stereotypical situations.
Levinson subsequently developed a theory of generalized conversational implicature (GCI) based on the Q-principle. He argues that GCIs are distinct from particularized conversational implicatures in that they are inferred via a specialized set of principles and rules that are always in force, independent of the context. If a GCI does not arise in some specific situations, this is because it is blocked under certain circumstances according to Levinson.
Criticism
Apart from the mentioned problem with the two opposing quantity maxims, several issues with Grice's conversational implicatures have been raised:
Do implicatures contrast with entailments?
While Grice described conversational implicatures as contrasting with entailments, there has since been dissent.
A: Did you drive somewhere yesterday?
B: I drove to London.
Here, B implicates via the maxim of relation that he drove somewhere (as this is the fitting answer to A's question), but this information is also entailed by his answer.
Are quantity implicatures actually implicatures?
At least some scalar and other quantity "implicatures" seem not to be implicatures at all but semantic enrichments of the utterance, what is variously described as an explicature or impliciture in the literature. For example, Kent Bach argues that a sentence like "John ate some of the cookies" does not implicate "John didn't eat all of the cookies" because the latter isn't a claim separate from the first; rather, the speaker just has a single meaning in mind, namely "John ate some [but not all] of the cookies". Likewise, Robyn Carston considers cases like "He drank a bottle of vodka and [consequently] fell into a stupor" explicatures; however, she considers the question of classical scalar implicatures ("some, few, many") to be unsettled.
Can metaphors only arise when the first maxim of quality is flouted?
As experimental evidence shows, it is not necessary to evaluate the truth of an utterance's literal meaning in order to recognise a metaphor. An example of a metaphor that is also literally true is a chess player telling his opponent, in appropriate circumstances,
Your defence is an impregnable castle.
Are events always related in order?
Apparent counterexamples to the maxim "be orderly" have been found, such as this:
A: My wife wants me to remove our carpets. She is afraid she might trip and hurt herself, but I think she is just overanxious.
B: Well, I don't know. John broke his leg and he tripped over a doormat.
Are there particularized and generalized implicatures?
Carston observes that particularized and generalized conversational implicatures are not separate categories; rather, there is a continuum from implicatures that are highly dependent on a specific situation which is unlikely to happen twice, to ones that occur very frequently. In her view, the distinction has no theoretical value since all implicatures are derived from the same principles.
Can implicatures only arise when the communicator is cooperative?
Take the above example about Gérard's place of residence. If B knows where Gérard lives, and A knows this, we also get an implicature, although a different one:
A: Where does Gérard live?
B: Somewhere in the South of France. +> B does not want to say where exactly Gérard lives. +> B does not want to visit Gérard.
This contradicts Grice's notion that implicatures can only arise when the communicator observes the cooperative principle.
Implicature in relevance theory
In the framework known as relevance theory, implicature is defined as a counterpart to explicature. The explicatures of an utterance are the communicated assumptions that are developed from its logical form (intuitively, the literal meaning) by supplying additional information from context: by disambiguating ambiguous expressions, assigning referents to pronouns and other variables, and so on. All communicated assumptions that cannot be obtained in this way are implicatures. For example, if Peter says
Susan told me that her kiwis were too sour.
in the context that Susan participated in a fruit grower's contest, the hearer might arrive at the explicature
Susan told Peter that the kiwifruit she, Susan, grew were too sour for the judges at the fruit grower's contest.
Now assume that Peter and the hearer both have access to the contextual information that
Susan is ambitious. If she loses at something, she's pretty downcast.
and that Peter intended the hearer to activate this knowledge. Then this is an implicated premise. The hearer can now draw the contextual implications that
+> Susan needs to be cheered up.
+> Peter wants me to ring Susan and cheer her up.
If Peter intended the hearer to come to these implications, they are implicated conclusions. Implicated premises and conclusions are the two types of implicatures in the relevance theoretical sense.
There is no sharp cutoff between implicatures, which are part of the intentional meaning of an utterance, and unintended implications the addressee may draw. For example, there may be no consensus whether
?+> Peter wants me to buy Susan some chocolate to cheer her up.
is an implicature of the above utterance. We say this assumption is only weakly implicated, while "Susan needs to be cheered up" is essential for the utterance to achieve relevance for the addressee and is therefore strongly implicated.
The principle of relevance
Both explicatures and implicatures follow from the communicative principle of relevance, which unlike Grice's cooperative principle is not optional, but is always in force whenever someone communicates – it is descriptive of, not prescriptive for, communicative acts. Consequently, implicatures can arise even if, or precisely because, the communicator is uncooperative. Relevance theory can therefore effortlessly account for the above example about Gérard: If B knows where Gérard lives, and "Somewhere in the South of France" is the most relevant answer compatible with B's preferences, it follows that B is unwilling to disclose his knowledge.
Distinction from explicatures
All pragmatically derived information, including parts of explicatures that are supplied from context, is calculable and defeasible. Therefore, different criteria are needed in relevance theory to identify implicatures.
Sperber and Wilson originally assumed that implicatures can be sufficiently defined as the communicated assumptions that are not developed from an utterance's logical form, as noted above. On this account, loose language use (saying "This steak is raw" to express that it is really undercooked) is a case of implicature, as are hyperbole and metaphor.
Carston has argued for a more formal approach, namely that an utterance's implicatures cannot entail any of its explicatures. If they did, the resulting redundancies would cause unnecessary effort on part of the addressee, which would run against the principle of relevance. An example of pragmatically derived information that has traditionally been seen as an implicature, but must be an explicature according to Carston's reasoning, has already been mentioned above: "He drank a bottle of vodka and fell into a stupor" → "He drank a bottle of vodka and consequently fell into a stupor". However, there has since been found at least one example of an implicature that does entail an explicature, showing that this test is not infallible:
A: Did Jim go to the party?
B: I don't know, but I can tell you that if anybody was there, Jim was there.
A: Somebody was there – this I know for sure. (I saw John going there.) +> Jim was there. (entails: Somebody was there.)
Another possible criterion is that explicatures, but not implicatures, can be embedded in negations, if clauses and other grammatical constructions. Thus, the sentences
Susan did not tell Peter that her kiwis were too sour.
If Susan has told Peter that her kiwis were too sour, she was just fishing for compliments.
are equivalent to
Susan did not tell Peter that the kiwifruit she, Susan, grew were too sour for the judges.
If Susan told Peter that the kiwifruit she, Susan, grew were too sour for the judges, she was just fishing for compliments.
respectively, showing the embedded clause to be an explicature. On the other hand, they are not equivalent to embeddings of the mentioned implicature:
*Susan does not need to be cheered up.
*If Susan needs to be cheered up, she is just fishing for compliments.
These embedding tests also show the vodka bottle example to be an explicature. However, there is still no generally accepted criterion to reliably distinguish explicatures and implicatures.
Poetic effects
Metaphors can be an efficient means to communicate a wide range of weak implicatures. For example,
Jane is my anchor in the storm.
can weakly implicate that Jane is reliable and stable in difficult circumstances, helpful in calming the speaker, and so on. Even if the speaker had no specific set of assumptions in mind, this information can give the addressee an idea of Jane's significance to the speaker's life.
Speaking generally, utterances convey poetic effects if they achieve all or most of their relevance through a range of weak implicatures. For example, the repetition in
My childhood days are gone, gone.
does not add to the utterance's explicature, prompting the addressee to search for implicatures. To do so, he has to activate contextual (background) information about childhood memories.
Irony is seen as an entirely different phenomenon in relevance theory; see Relevance theory#Interpretation vs. description for an explanation.
Criticism
Levinson sees relevance theory as too reductionist, as a single principle cannot account for the large variety of implicatures in his view. In particular, he argues that this theory cannot account for generalized implicatures because it is inherently a theory of context dependency. This argument is countered by Carston, as mentioned above. Also, Levinson asserts that relevance theory cannot explain how we arrive at implicated premises via creative processes.
The foundations of relevance theory have been criticised because relevance, in the technical sense it is used there, cannot be measured, so it is not possible to say what exactly is meant by "relevant enough" and "the most relevant".
Carston generally agrees with the relevance theoretic concept of implicature, but argues that Sperber and Wilson let implicatures do too much work. The mentioned embedding tests not only categorize utterances on the likes of the vodka bottle example as explicatures, but also loose use and metaphors:
If your steak is raw, you can send it back.
If Jane is your anchor in the storm, you should let her help you now.
She does not explain metaphors' wide range of effects with weak implicatures. Instead, she advocates the idea that the meaning of words and phrases can be adapted to fit specific contexts; in other words, new concepts that differ from the standard meaning can be constructed ad hoc during communication. In the above metaphor, the phrase "anchor in the storm" has many slightly different ad-hoc meanings, and no specific one is exclusively communicated. Carston also discusses the possibility that metaphors cannot be fully explained by communicated assumptions at all, be they explicatures or implicatures, but with other concepts such as evoking mental images, sensations and feelings.
Conventional implicature
Conventional implicatures, briefly introduced but never elaborated on by Grice, are independent of the cooperative principle and the four maxims. They are instead tied to the conventional meaning of certain particles and phrases such as "but, although, however, nevertheless, moreover, anyway, whereas, after all, even, yet, still, besides", verbs such as "deprive, spare", and possibly also to grammatical structures. (Such words and phrases are also said to trigger conventional implicatures.) In addition, they are not defeasible, but have the force of entailments. An example:
Donovan is poor but happy.
This sentence is logically equivalent to – that is, it has the same truth conditions as – "Donovan is poor and happy". In addition, the word "but" implicates a sense of contrast. Taken together, the sentence means approximately "Surprisingly, Donovan is happy in spite of being poor".
The verbs "deprive" and "spare" also have the same truth conditions but different conventional implicatures. Compare:
I have deprived you of my lecture. +> Attending my lecture would have been desirable (for you).
I have spared you my lecture. +> Attending my lecture would not have been desirable (for you).
Non-restrictive supplements such as the following adjective phrase have been argued to be grammatical structures that produce conventional implicatures:
Yewberry jelly, toxic in the extreme, will give you an awful stomachache.
The implicature here is that yewberry jelly is toxic in the extreme. Other such constructions are non-restrictive appositives, relative clauses and as-parentheticals:
Ravel, as a Frenchman, nevertheless wrote Spanish-style music.
Criticism
Because of the mentioned differences to conversational (and relevance theoretical) implicatures, it has been argued that "conventional implicatures" are not implicatures at all but rather secondary propositions or entailments of an utterance. Under this view, the sentence about Donovan would have the primary proposition "Donovan is poor and happy" and the secondary proposition "There is a contrast between poverty and happiness". The sentence about yewberry jelly contains the two propositions "Yewberry jelly will give you an awful stomachache" and "Yewberry jelly is toxic in the extreme".
Other analyses of "but" and similar words have been proposed. Rieber takes above sentence to mean "Donovan is poor and (I suggest this contrasts) happy" and calls it a tacit (i.e. silent, implied) performative. Blakemore claims that "but" does not convey a proposition, and does not work by encoding a concept at all, but by constraining the addressee's interpretation procedure. In our example, "but" indicates that "Donovan is happy" is relevant specifically as a denial of an expectation created by "Donovan is poor", and rules out the possibility that it is relevant in any other way. This expectation must be on the lines of "Poor people are unhappy". Blakemore's idea that not only concepts but also procedures can be encoded in language has been taken up by many other researchers.
See also
Entailment, or implication, in logic
Free choice inference
Indirect speech act
Presupposition
References
Bibliography
. . Reprinted in . Page numbers refer to the reprint.
Further reading
External links
Pragmatics
Inference | en |
doc-en-10149 | Shaun the Sheep is a British stop-motion children's television series and a spin-off of the Wallace and Gromit franchise. The title character is Shaun (a sheep previously featured in the 1995 short film A Close Shave and the Shopper 13 short film from the 2002 Wallace and Gromit's Cracking Contraptions series). The series focuses on his adventures on a northern British farm as the leader of his flock.
The series first aired in the UK on the CBBC channel on 5 March 2007 and has been broadcast in 180 countries. It consists of 170 seven-minute episodes. The fifth series has 20 episodes and was first aired in the Netherlands from 1 December 2015 to 1 January 2016 and in Australia on ABC Kids from 16 January 2016 to 1 May 2016. In the United States, a series of Shaun the Sheep shorts aired between commercial breaks on Disney Channel starting on 8 July 2007. However, as of 2018, it had not been aired on the network for a decade.
The series inspired the spin-off Timmy Time, a show aimed at younger viewers that follows Shaun's small cousin. A feature-length film, Shaun the Sheep Movie, was released theatrically on 6 February 2015. A 30-minute short film, Shaun the Sheep: The Farmer's Llamas, was aired in 2015 as a Christmas TV special. A second feature-length film, A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, was released theatrically on 18 October 2019. A second short film, Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas, was released on Netflix on 3 December 2021.
In 2020, the series moved to Netflix for a sixth series, with the subtitle Adventures from Mossy Bottom.
Plot
Shaun, an unusually clever shropshire sheep, lives with his flock at Mossy Bottom Farm (the name can be seen in nearly all of the opening scenes), a traditional small northern British farm. Each episode centres around Shaun's attempts to add excitement to their otherwise boring lives. The action snowballs into fantastic sitcom-style escapades, most often because they are fascinated with human technology and culture. This usually brings them into partnership — and sometimes conflict — with the farm sheepdog Bitzer, while they all are simultaneously trying to avoid discovery by the farmer.
Characters
Main
Shaun is the protagonist of the series and the leader of the flock. He is clever, confident, and prone to mischief, but equally adept at getting himself and/or his friends out of it. As there is no dialogue, like all the sheep he communicates entirely through bleating and often explains his ideas to the flock by drawing diagrams on a blackboard. He has a good friendship with Bitzer, though this does not stop him from playing pranks on him at times. His vocal effects are performed by Justin Fletcher.
Bitzer is the farmer's long-suffering but loyal sheepdog, dressed for work in a blue knit cap, black collar, knitted wristlet, and large official-looking wrist-watch, carrying a clipboard and walking upright or on all fours as needed. He communicates, canine-fashion, via barks, growls, and the occasional whimper. He also gives instructions to the flock by blowing a whistle. He once bought a bike for himself, and later versions prove this bike to be a BMW 365 duplex. Despite a tendency to be caught listening to music, he takes his job very seriously, to the point of occasionally letting his power go to his head. He is, however, a generally good friend to Shaun and does his best to keep the whole flock out of trouble. His vocal effects are performed by John Sparkes.
Shirley is the largest member of the flock. A gentle giant, she is usually seen placidly eating, though she's intimidating enough to have defended Shaun from Pidsley the cat. She's so big that large objects routinely disappear into her fleece, and she quite often gets stuck herself, needing the other sheep to push, pull, or even sling-shot her out of trouble. However, her size can also come in very handy when what's needed is a battering ram or similarly immovable object. She is a devoted eater, blindly charging towards food, even if it isn't even food in the first place. Her size came from her eating, yet it has been proven that by following a diet and exercising, she can become as thin as Shaun.
Timmy, Shaun's cousin, is the flock's only lamb and thus often the innocent centre of the chaos. Timmy often tries to be like Shaun. His personality is often contrasting: sometimes he acts responsibly and understands what the older sheep say; other times, he acts like a normal baby, sobbing when something is taken from him or scares him. He's a toddler in the series and is often seen sucking a dummy. The spin-off series Timmy Time chronicles his later adventures in preschool, His vocal effects are also performed by Justin Fletcher.
Timmy's Mother, Shaun's aunt, wears curlers in her topknot and is a bit careless about maternal duties, even using Timmy once as a makeshift paintbrush. But when her offspring goes astray, she is inconsolable until he is safely back in her care, Her vocal effects are performed by Kate Harbour.
Nuts is quite an eccentric, but useful sheep and usually, like the rest of the flock, accompanies and helps Shaun. But the thing that makes him stand out from the flock is that he has two different-sized eyes and a different-shaped nose.
Hazel - Hazel's nerves often get the better of her. She's a timid little sheep who jumps at the slightest thing and can frequently be heard bleating nervously. When Farmer's caravan rolls off towards the city, Hazel can barely contain her fear – this is the stuff of nightmares! But when she finds herself carried along with the rest of the Flock in hot pursuit of a runaway caravan, Hazel discovers she's much braver than she ever imagined, and that while living in the city might be scary, it's good to face your fears now and again.
The Flock, like typical sheep, tend to follow Shaun and one another, are obedient to orders, and generally form one big happy if sometimes fractious family group. Unlike Shaun, however, they are not particularly bright, which becomes a problem when combined with their ongoing fascination with the human world. It's usually Shaun and Bitzer who sort out the resulting mess.
The Farmer is a bespectacled, balding man who runs the farm with Bitzer at his side and acts as the flock's primary if unwitting nemesis. His livestock's main concern is to ensure he remains completely oblivious to their unusual sentience, a task made easier by his conventional, unobservant nature but complicated by his enthusiasm for picking up new hobbies. He can be heard frequently making wordless noises, speaking gibberish, or muttering under his breath just audibly enough for the viewer to pick up on his meaning. His disastrous attempts at dating are a running joke of the series. In the 2015 movie, he is referred to as Mr X by those who don't know his identity.
The Naughty Pigs, whose pen is adjacent to the sheep field, are bullies to Shaun and his flock, always trying to antagonize them and get them into trouble. They are, however, scared of Bitzer (though they still take the chance to bully him whenever possible), and they get told off by the Farmer in "Pig Trouble". They communicate through oinks and squeals like actual pigs.
Pidsley is the Farmer's orange cat, a minor character (without fur) in Series 1 and the main antagonist of Series 2, who makes his last appearance in "We Wish Ewe A Merry Christmas". In Series 2, he desires to be the sole recipient of the Farmer's attention and thus is jealous of Bitzer. He also dislikes the sheep, thinking of them as stupid and beneath him. He communicates through meows and purrs like an actual cat.
Other
Mower Mouth is a goat who first appears in the episode of the same name. He is an unstoppable eating machine. While not an unfriendly character, all of his considerable energy is focused on his next meal. He thus routinely causes trouble for Shaun and the flock, as also seen in "Shaun the Farmer".
The Bull is belligerent, powerful and easily provoked by Shaun's antics and the colour red. He appears in "The Bull", "Saturday Night Shaun", "Who's the Mummy?" and "Heavy Metal Shaun". He also appears in "Sheepwalking" where he is awoken by the flock who then followed Shaun walking in his sleep and throws one of the sheep into the chicken coop.
The Ducks make frequent appearances. In the first series, a single duck gets into predicaments due to Shaun's exploits in "Off the Baa!", "Tidy Up", and "Bathtime". Sometimes he is seen with his lady friends. In series two there are two ducks; in series three, they have once again been replaced with a single, pure white duck.
The Aliens appear in "Shaun Encounters", "The Visitor", "Caught Short Alien" and "Cat Got Your Brain" and briefly in "Spring Lamb". They are green and have one large eye on the top of their head. Despite their advanced scientific technology, which frequently causes trouble for the farm animals, they exhibit human-like behavior and generally cheerful personalities.
The Granny is a short-tempered, short-sighted old lady, appearing in "Take Away" and "Save the Tree". She also appears in "Two's Company", holding a cart, and "The Big Chase", forcing the pigs to give her a lift in their car. She is renowned for hitting people (or animals) with her handbag when they annoy her by mistake.
The Pizza Delivery Boy is a young man who rides a moped (which Bitzer often "borrows" to chase after the sheep) and works in the local pizzeria. He also works as a postman in "Saturday Night Shaun".
The Farmer's Girlfriend appears for the first time in Series 2. She appears to be adventurous and an animal lover, patting Bitzer and Shaun and offering food to Timmy.
The Farmer's Niece appears in "The Farmer's Niece" (her debut), "Bitzer's New Hat" and "The Rabbit". She appears to be a fan of horses and irritates Shaun, Bitzer, and the flock. The Farmer's Niece is also a spoiled brat, as she screams and wails every time things don't go her way. She is also one of the few humans who know what the flock is up to.
Production
The show was produced by Aardman Animations and was commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), a constituent member of the consortium of German public-broadcasting institutions, ARD. It has aired on BBC channels in the UK since 2007.
Each seven-minute episode is entirely shot in Aardman's distinctive stop-motion animation style. The comedic tone is a combination of slapstick and classic silent comedy, similar to that used in the Wallace & Gromit shorts. Unlike other shows made by Aardman Animations, the series was restricted in its ability to carry much-spoken dialogue, not even from the human characters, except for a few simple grunts, bleats, barks, growls, pointing, sighs, mutterings, and similar wordless inflections, which are used to indicate a character’s mood or motive. Thus, the series also never used any readable words in any episode, although "Bitzer" can be seen on a dog bowl, and—in series four--"Mossy Bottom Farm" on a gate, in the original English-language title sequence. All other signage, such as on a pizza box or a bus stop, is replaced by illegible scrawls and pictures.
Shaun the Sheep's first appearance was in Wallace & Gromit's third short feature, the Academy Award-winning A Close Shave. As the youngest member of a flock of sheep, Wallace and Gromit work to save Shaun from being turned into dog food. He was named Shaun as a pun on the word "shorn" after he was accidentally subjected to Wallace's automated sheep shearing machine. This early version of Shaun shows a hint of his characteristic human-like bravado—among other things, wearing a sweater knitted from his own shorn wool, proving to be a major help in saving the day.
At the end of this short, Shaun is seen living with the duo; Shaun later made a brief cameo appearance in the "Shopper 13" episode of Wallace & Gromit's "Cracking Contraptions" web series. No official explanation has been given for the flock's transfer to the farm.
Although the original series is silent aside from sound effects, a Hindi-dubbed version seen on Nickelodeon India was redone with scripts and dialogue.
Episodes
The first two series consisted of 40 seven-minute episodes each, and the third 20 episodes. The fourth series debuted on 3 February 2014. The fifth series aired on ABC Australia in January 2016. A series of 15 1-minute 3D shorts were released on Nintendo's Video service for the Nintendo 3DS between March and June 2012. The Nintendo shorts were released in early 2016 on the official Shaun the Sheep YouTube channel under the name "Mossy Bottom Farm Shorts". Another series of 21 1-minute sports-themed shorts, named Championsheeps, aired on CBBC during the Summer of 2012.
Television specials
A half-hour television special based on the television series, titled Shaun the Sheep: The Farmer's Llamas, premiered on BBC One on Boxing Day 2015.
A second half-hour special titled Shaun the Sheep: A Winter’s Tale went into production in late 2020 and will air on Christmas 2021 on BBC One. On 23 August, it was revealed to debut on 3 December under the title Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas, which later aired on Christmas Eve on BBC One.
In Germany, Shaun the Sheep is a part of "Die Sendung mit der Maus", a famous children's television series of German Television. The creator of Die Sendung mit der Maus also is one of production companies of Shaun the Sheep.
Netflix and sixth series
On 19 February 2020, it was reported that the sixth series of Shaun the Sheep, subtitled Adventures from Mossy Bottom, was released on Netflix on 16 March 2020 in Spain, Poland, Turkey, Israel, and UAE. Additionally, it was released in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Latin America on 17 March 2020.
Adventures from Mossy Bottom features a new electronic version of the theme, a new intro episode sequence, and introduced new characters including a super-fast squirrel named Stash, a fancy neighbour Farmer Ben and his dog Lexi, and Rita the delivery lady.
Reception
Reviews of the series were consistently positive. Harry Venning of The Stage found "characterisation charming and the animation superb. All this before even a mention of how funny and splendidly slapstick the script is." The Guardian noted that the series "hits the four-to-seven-year-old age group smack in the eye." Series producer Gareth Owen said the age range is "four-to-seven, though in reality, the age range is four-to-eighty-seven", as the series is popular among all different age-groups. Charles Arthur wrote "classic Aardman style that leaves me laughing out loud."
Accolades
Spin-off
Timmy Time
In 2009, Aardman Studios released Timmy Time, a CBeebies spin-off series aimed at preschoolers. It centres on Timmy's own adventures as he attends preschool for the first time and learns how to interact and play with a variety of young animal friends.
Other media
Films
Aardman developed a feature film Shaun the Sheep Movie, written and directed by Richard Starzak and Mark Burton, which was financed by French company StudioCanal, and was released on 6 February 2015. The film received very positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 99% of critics have given the film a positive review. The film opened to $3.2 million in the UK and grossed $22 million in the UK and $106 million worldwide.
On 18 October 2019, StudioCanal and Aardman released a sequel titled A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.
Video games
On 16 June 2008, D3 Publisher of America, which had previously published a game based on Aardman's 2006 film Flushed Away, announced that it would also release a video game based on Shaun's escapades. The Shaun the Sheep game was developed by Art Co., Ltd exclusively for Nintendo DS, and was released in autumn 2008.
A second game for Nintendo DS, titled Shaun the Sheep: Off His Head, was released on 23 October 2009, exclusively in Europe.
The Shaun the Sheep website is also home to several Flash-based games, including Home Sheep Home, which was also made available at the iOS App Store for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad in April 2011. A sequel, Home Sheep Home 2, was released in December 2011 for Windows PCs, iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. It was released on the Steam digital distribution platform for Windows PCs in February 2014.
In June 2016, an event course called Shaun's Mossy Mole Mischief, was released on Super Mario Maker, along with Shaun's costume.
A movie adaptation of Home Sheep Home entitled Home Sheep Home: Farmageddon Party Edition was announced for release in October 2019 for Nintendo Switch. Shaun, Shirley, and Timmy find their way back to the green grass of home. all hosted by Shaun's new alien pal Lu-La. The platform puzzle game will contain all the much-loved gameplay from previous Home Sheep Home games.
A Shaun the Sheep game is planned for The Sandbox voxel world.
In 2021, Shaun the sheep was added to RollerCoaster Tycoon Touch
Theatre
On 9 March 2011, Shaun the Sheep made its live theatre debut in Shaun's Big Show. The 100-minute-long musical/dance show features all the regular characters, including Bitzer, Shirley, and Timmy.
In 2015, Shaun starred in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs pantomime at Bristol Hippodrome.
Promotional
On 26 September 2013, the International Rugby Board and Aardman Animations announced that Shaun and other characters from the franchise would be used in a merchandising programme to promote the 2015 Rugby World Cup to children.
In 2015, Shaun the Sheep appeared as the face of the "Holidays at Home are Great" directive. In the advert, seeing the Farmer going away, Shaun and the flock decide to have their own holiday around the UK before the Farmer gets back.
Attractions
Shaun in the City
In 2015, Shaun the Sheep starred in two public charity art trails to raise money for sick children in hospitals across the UK. Organised by Wallace & Gromit's Children's Foundation in collaboration with Aardman, Shaun in the City saw 50 giant artists and celebrity-decorated sculptures of Shaun appear in London in the spring before a further 70 appeared in Bristol throughout the summer. All 120 sculptures were auctioned in October 2015, raising £1,087,900 for Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal and Wallace & Gromit's Children's Charity.
Shaun the Sheep Land
A Shaun the Sheep ride area, titled Fåret Shaun Land was opened at Skånes Djurpark in Sweden in early Summer 2016.
Shaun the Sheep Experience
In 2015, a family attraction based on Shaun the Sheep, called "The Shaun the Sheep Experience" opened at Lands End, rebranded "Lamb's End" for the duration of the attraction. It features original sets, models, and characters from many Aardman productions. Using green screen technology, guests are able to "star" in a scene from the show, as well as meet other characters from the Aardman filmography including Wallace and Gromit and Morph.
Shaun the Sheep: Championsheeps
In 2021, Aardman announced the launch of a 30-minute immersive game experience to be located at Electric Gamebox venues in London, Manchester Arndale and Lakeside, Essex.
Home media
DVDs: Region 2 (UK)
DVDs released from 2007 until 2011 were released by 2Entertain. DVDs from 2014 onwards are released by StudioCanal.
DVDs: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada)
DVDs of the series in the United States were released by HIT Entertainment and distributed by Lionsgate Home Entertainment. The last release in the United States, was released by Lionsgate on their own.
Off the Baa! (11 November 2008): Off The Baa! / Timmy In A Tizzy / Buzz Off Bees / Things That Go Bump / Mower Mouth / Fleeced / Shaun Shoots The Sheep / Mountains Out Of Molehills
Back in the Ba-a-ath (10 February 2009): Shape Up with Shaun / Bathtime / Fetching / Take Away / Still Life / Scrumping / Stick With Me / The Kite
Sheep on the Loose (9 June 2009): Sheep on the Loose / Saturday Night Shaun / Tidy Up / Shaun the Farmer / Camping Chaos / If You Can't Stand the Heat
Little Sheep of Horrors (1 September 2009): Little Sheep of Horrors / Abracadabra / Things That Go Bump / Heavy Metal Shaun / Troublesome Tractor / Sheepwalking
A Wooly Good Time (16 February 2010): Washday / Tooth Fairy / The Farmer's Niece / Snore-Worn Shaun / Helping Hound / Big Top Timmy
One Giant Leap for Lambkind (8 June 2010): Shaun Encounters / The Bull / Hiccups / Bitzer Puts His Foot In It / Save The Tree / The Visitor
Party Animals (7 September 2010): Party Animals / Double Trouble / Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow / Pig Swill Fly / Operation Pidsley / Shaun Goes Potty / Strictly No Dancing
Shaun the Sheep: Season 1 (19 October 2010, Full Screen; 24 November 2015, widescreen )
Spring Shena-a-anigans (25 January 2011): Spring Lamb / Supersize Timmy / Bagpipe Buddy / Cheetah Cheater / Lock Out / Draw the Line / Ewe've Been Framed
The Big Chase (19 April 2011): The Big Chase / Bitzer from the Black Lagoon / Zebra Ducks of the Serengeti / Bitzer's Basic Training / The Magpie / The Boat / Hide and Squeak
Animal Antics (26 July 2011): Foxy Laddie / Whistleblower / Frantic Romantic / Who's the Caddy / Everything Must Go / In the Doghouse / Cock-a-Doodle Shaun
We Wish Ewe A Merry Christmas (18 October 2011) We Wish Ewe a Merry Christmas / Snowed In / Fireside Favorite / An Ill Wind / Bitzer's New Hat / Chip Off the Old Block / Shirley Whirley
Shaun the Sheep: Season 2 (15 November 2011) (widescreen)
Shear Madness (17 April 2012): Pig Trouble / Sheepless Nights / Party Animals / Cat's Got Your Brain / Two's Company / What's Up, Dog! / Draw the Line
Shaun the Sheep: Seasons 3 & 4 (7 February 2017) (widescreen)
DVDs: Region 4 (Australia)
DVDs of the series in Australia are released by ABC DVD and distributed by Roadshow Entertainment.
DVDs: Region 4 (India)
Blu-ray discs
Region A (Hong Kong, Japan)
Home Media releases are distributed by Panorama Corporation in Hong Kong, and Walt Disney Studios Japan in Japan, with earlier releases under the latter's Ghibli Museum Library imprint.
Shaun the Sheep – Series 1 (Vol 1 & 2) (Hong Kong)
Shaun the Sheep – Series 1 (Vol 3 & 4) (Hong Kong)
Shaun the Sheep – Series 2 (Vol 1 & 2) (Hong Kong)
Shaun the Sheep – Series 2 (Vol 3 & 4) (Hong Kong)
Shaun the Sheep – Series 3 (Hong Kong)
Shaun the Sheep – Season 1, Part 1 (Japan)
Shaun the Sheep – Season 1, Part 2 (Japan)
Shaun the Sheep – Season 2, Part 1 (Japan)
Shaun the Sheep – Season 2, Part 2 (Japan)
Shaun the Sheep – Season 3 (Japan)
Shaun the Sheep – Season 4, Part 1 (Japan)
Shaun the Sheep – Season 4, Part 2 (Japan)
Shaun the Sheep – Season 5 (Japan)
Shaun the Sheep – Season 6 (Japan)
Region B (Europe)
Shaun das Schaf – Special Edition 2 (complete Series 2) (Germany, 25 March 2011) (16:9 widescreen)
Shaun das Schaf – Special Edition 3 (complete Series 3) (Germany, 5 November 2013) (16:9 widescreen)
Shaun das Schaf – Special Edition 4 (complete Series 4) (Germany, 5 November 2015) (16:9 widescreen)
Shaun das Schaf – Die Lamas des Farmers (Germany, 10 March 2016) (16:9 widescreen)
Shaun das Schaf – Special Edition 5 (complete Series 5) (Germany, 8 March 2018) (16:9 widescreen)
References
External links
Official website
Aardman Animation official website
BBC Press release (animation series)
2000s British children's television series
2000s British animated television series
2010s British children's television series
2010s British animated television series
2020s British children's television series
2007 British television series debuts
British children's animated comedy television series
British children's animated fantasy television series
British television spin-offs
Clay animation television series
Wallace and Gromit
Shaun the Sheep
Aardman Animations
Film characters introduced in 1995
BBC children's television shows
Netflix children's programming
Television series about sheep
Animated television series about dogs
Animated television series without speech
English-language television shows
Fictional sheep
Television series by Aardman Animations | en |
doc-en-9356 | A malaria vaccine is a vaccine that is used to prevent malaria. The only approved vaccine, as of 2021, is RTS,S, known by the brand name Mosquirix. It requires four injections.
Research continues with other malaria vaccines. The most effective malaria vaccine is R21/Matrix-M, with a 77% efficacy rate shown in initial trials and significantly higher antibody levels than with the RTS,S vaccine. It is the first vaccine that meets the World Health Organization's (WHO) goal of a malaria vaccine with at least 75% efficacy.
Approved vaccines
RTS,S
RTS,S developed by PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the most recently developed recombinant vaccine. It consists of the P. falciparum circumsporozoite protein (CSP) from the pre-erythrocytic stage. The CSP antigen causes the production of antibodies capable of preventing the invasion of hepatocytes and additionally elicits a cellular response enabling the destruction of infected hepatocytes. The CSP vaccine presented problems in the trial stage due to its poor immunogenicity. RTS,S attempted to avoid these by fusing the protein with a surface antigen from hepatitis B, creating a more potent and immunogenic vaccine. When tested in trials an emulsion of oil in water and the added adjuvants of monophosphoryl A and QS21 (SBAS2), the vaccine gave protective immunity to 7 out of 8 volunteers when challenged with P. falciparum.
RTS,S/AS01 (commercial name Mosquirix), was engineered using genes from the outer protein of P. falciparum malaria parasite and a portion of a hepatitis B virus plus a chemical adjuvant to boost the immune response. Infection is prevented by inducing high antibody titers that block the parasite from infecting the liver. In November 2012, a Phase III trial of RTS,S found that it provided modest protection against both clinical and severe malaria in young infants.
, preliminary results of a Phase III clinical trial indicated that RTS,S/AS01 reduced the number of cases among young children by almost 50 percent and among infants by around 25 percent. The study ended in 2014. The effects of a booster dose were positive, even though overall efficacy seems to wane with time. After four years, reductions were 36 percent for children who received three shots and a booster dose. Missing the booster dose reduced the efficacy against severe malaria to a negligible effect. The vaccine was shown to be less effective for infants. Three doses of vaccine plus a booster reduced the risk of clinical episodes by 26 percent over three years but offered no significant protection against severe malaria.
In a bid to accommodate a larger group and guarantee a sustained availability for the general public, GSK applied for a marketing license with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in July 2014. GSK treated the project as a non-profit initiative, with most funding coming from the Gates Foundation, a major contributor to malaria eradication.
On 24 July 2015, Mosquirix received a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on the proposal for the vaccine to be used to vaccinate children aged 6 weeks to 17 months outside the European Union. A pilot project for vaccination was launched on 23 April 2019, in Malawi, on 30 April 2019, in Ghana, and on 13 September 2019, in Kenya.
In October 2021, the vaccine was endorsed by the World Health Organization for "broad use" in children, making it the first malaria vaccine to receive this recommendation.
Agents under development
A completely effective vaccine is not available for malaria, although several vaccines are under development. Multiple vaccine candidates targeting the blood-stage of the parasite's life cycle have been insufficient on their own. Several potential vaccines targeting the pre-erythrocytic stage are being developed, with RTS,S the only approved option so far.
R21/Matrix-M
The most effective malaria vaccine is R21/Matrix-M, with 77% efficacy shown in initial trials. It is the first vaccine that meets the World Health Organization's goal of a malaria vaccine with at least 75% efficacy. It was developed through a collaboration involving the University of Oxford, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Novavax, the Serum Institute of India, and the Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé in Nanoro, Burkina Faso. The R21 vaccine uses a circumsporozoite protein (CSP) antigen, at a higher proportion than the RTS,S vaccine. It includes the Matrix-M adjuvant that is also utilized in the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine.
A Phase II trial was reported in April 2021, with a vaccine efficacy of 77% and antibody levels significantly higher than with the RTS,S vaccine. A Phase III trial is planned with 4,800 children across four African countries. If the vaccine is approved, over 200 million doses can be manufactured annually by the Serum Institute of India.
Nanoparticle enhancement of RTS,S
In 2015, researchers used a repetitive antigen display technology to engineer a nanoparticle that displayed malaria specific B cell and T cell epitopes. The particle exhibited icosahedral symmetry and carried on its surface up to 60 copies of the RTS,S protein. The researchers claimed that the density of the protein was much higher than the 14% of the GSK vaccine.
PfSPZ vaccine
The PfSPZ vaccine is a candidate malaria vaccine developed by Sanaria using radiation-attenuated sporozoites to elicit an immune response. Clinical trials have been promising, with trials in Africa, Europe, and the US protecting over 80% of volunteers. It has been subject to some criticism regarding the ultimate feasibility of large-scale production and delivery in Africa, since it must be stored in liquid nitrogen.
The PfSPZ vaccine candidate was granted fast track designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in September 2016.
In April 2019, a phase 3 trial in Bioko was announced, scheduled to start in early 2020.
saRNA vaccine against PMIF
A patent was published in February 2021 for a Self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) vaccine that targets the protein PMIF, which is produced by the plasmodium parasite to inhibit the body's T-cell response. The vaccine has been tested in mice and is described as "probably the highest level of protection that has been seen in a mouse model" according to Richard Bucala, co-inventor of the vaccine. There are plans for phase one tests in humans later in 2021.
Other developments
SPf66 is a synthetic peptide based vaccine developed by Manuel Elkin Patarroyo team in Colombia, and was tested extensively in endemic areas in the 1990s. Clinical trials showed it to be insufficiently effective, with 28% efficacy in South America and minimal or no efficacy in Africa. This vaccine had no protective effect in the largest placebo controlled randomized trial in South East Asia and was abandoned.
The CSP (Circum-Sporozoite Protein) was a vaccine developed that initially appeared promising enough to undergo trials. It is also based on the circumsporozoite protein, but additionally has the recombinant (Asn-Ala-Pro15Asn-Val-Asp-Pro)2-Leu-Arg(R32LR) protein covalently bound to a purified Pseudomonas aeruginosa toxin (A9). However, at an early stage, a complete lack of protective immunity was demonstrated in those inoculated. The study group used in Kenya had an 82% incidence of parasitaemia while the control group only had an 89% incidence. The vaccine intended to cause an increased T-lymphocyte response in those exposed; this was also not observed.
The NYVAC-Pf7 multi-stage vaccine attempted to use different technology, incorporating seven P.falciparum antigenic genes. These came from a variety of stages during the life cycle. CSP and sporozoite surface protein 2 (called PfSSP2) were derived from the sporozoite phase. The liver stage antigen 1 (LSA1), three from the erythrocytic stage (merozoite surface protein 1, serine repeat antigen, and AMA-1), and one sexual stage antigen (the 25-kDa Pfs25) were included. This was first investigated using Rhesus monkeys and produced encouraging results: 4 out of the 7 antigens produced specific antibody responses (CSP, PfSSP2, MSP1 and PFs25). Later trials in humans, despite demonstrating cellular immune responses in over 90% of the subjects, had very poor antibody responses. Despite this following administration of the vaccine, some candidates had complete protection when challenged with P.falciparum. This result has warranted ongoing trials.
In 1995 a field trial involving [NANP]19-5.1 proved to be very successful. Out of 194 children vaccinated, none developed symptomatic malaria in the 12-week follow-up period, and only 8 failed to have higher levels of antibody present. The vaccine consists of the schizont export protein (5.1) and 19 repeats of the sporozoite surface protein [NANP]. Limitations of the technology exist as it contains only 20% peptide and has low levels of immunogenicity. It also does not contain any immunodominant T-cell epitopes.
A chemical compound undergoing trials for the treatment of tuberculosis and cancer—the JmJc inhibitor ML324 and the antitubercular clinical candidate SQ109—is potentially a new line of drugs to treat malaria and kill the parasite in its infectious stage. More tests still need to be carried out before the compounds would be approved as a viable treatment.
Considerations
The task of developing a preventive vaccine for malaria is a complex process. There are a number of considerations to be made concerning what strategy a potential vaccine should adopt.
Parasite diversity
P. falciparum has demonstrated the capability, through the development of multiple drug-resistant parasites, for evolutionary change. The Plasmodium species has a very high rate of replication, much higher than that actually needed to ensure transmission in the parasite's life cycle. This enables pharmaceutical treatments that are effective at reducing the reproduction rate, but not halting it, to exert a high selection pressure, thus favoring the development of resistance. The process of evolutionary change is one of the key considerations necessary when considering potential vaccine candidates. The development of resistance could cause a significant reduction in efficacy of any potential vaccine thus rendering useless a carefully developed and effective treatment.
Choosing to address the symptom or the source
The parasite induces two main response types from the human immune system. These are anti-parasitic immunity and anti-toxic immunity.
"Anti-parasitic immunity" addresses the source; it consists of an antibody response (humoral immunity) and a cell-mediated immune response. Ideally, a vaccine would enable the development of anti-plasmodial antibodies in addition to generating an elevated cell-mediated response. Potential antigens against which a vaccine could be targeted will be discussed in greater depth later. Antibodies are part of the specific immune response. They exert their effect by activating the complement cascade, stimulating phagocytic cells into endocytosis through adhesion to an external surface of the antigenic substances, thus 'marking' it as offensive. Humoral or cell-mediated immunity consists of many interlinking mechanisms that essentially aim to prevent infection entering the body (through external barriers or hostile internal environments) and then kill any micro-organisms or foreign particles that succeed in penetration. The cell-mediated component consists of many white blood cells (such as monocytes, neutrophils, macrophages, lymphocytes, basophils, mast cells, natural killer cells, and eosinophils) that target foreign bodies by a variety of different mechanisms. In the case of malaria, both systems would be targeted to attempt to increase the potential response generated, thus ensuring the maximum chance of preventing disease.
"Anti-toxic immunity" addresses the symptoms; it refers to the suppression of the immune response associated with the production of factors that either induce symptoms or reduce the effect that any toxic by-products (of micro-organism presence) have on the development of disease. For example, it has been shown that Tumor necrosis factor-alpha has a central role in generating the symptoms experienced in severe P. falciparum malaria. Thus a therapeutic vaccine could target the production of TNF-a, preventing respiratory distress and cerebral symptoms. This approach has serious limitations as it would not reduce the parasitic load; rather, it only reduces the associated pathology. As a result, there are substantial difficulties in evaluating efficacy in human trials.
Taking this information into consideration an ideal vaccine candidate would attempt to generate a more substantial cell-mediated and antibody response on parasite presentation. This would have the benefit of increasing the rate of parasite clearance, thus reducing the experienced symptoms and providing a level of consistent future immunity against the parasite.
Potential targets
By their very nature, protozoa are more complex organisms than bacteria and viruses, with more complicated structures and life cycles. This presents problems in vaccine development but also increases the number of potential targets for a vaccine. These have been summarised into the life cycle stage and the antibodies that could potentially elicit an immune response.
The epidemiology of malaria varies enormously across the globe and has led to the belief that it may be necessary to adopt very different vaccine development strategies to target the different populations. A Type 1 vaccine is suggested for those exposed mostly to P. falciparum malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, with the primary objective to reduce the number of severe malaria cases and deaths in infants and children exposed to high transmission rates. The Type 2 vaccine could be thought of as a 'travelers' vaccine,' aiming to prevent all clinical symptoms in individuals with no previous exposure. This is another major public health problem, with malaria presenting as one of the most substantial threats to travelers' health. Problems with the available pharmaceutical therapies include costs, availability, adverse effects and contraindications, inconvenience, and compliance, many of which would be reduced or eliminated entirely if an effective (greater than 85–90%) vaccine was developed.
The life cycle of the malaria parasite is particularly complex, presenting initial developmental problems. Despite the huge number of vaccines available, there are none that target parasitic infections. The distinct developmental stages involved in the life cycle present numerous opportunities for targeting antigens, thus potentially eliciting an immune response. Theoretically, each developmental stage could have a vaccine developed specifically to target the parasite. Moreover, any vaccine produced would ideally have the ability to be of therapeutic value as well as preventing further transmission and is likely to consist of a combination of antigens from different phases of the parasite's development. More than 30 of these antigens are being researched by teams all over the world in the hope of identifying a combination that can elicit immunity in the inoculated individual. Some of the approaches involve surface expression of the antigen, inhibitory effects of specific antibodies on the life cycle and the protective effects through immunization or passive transfer of antibodies between an immune and a non-immune host. The majority of research into malarial vaccines has focused on the Plasmodium falciparum strain due to the high mortality caused by the parasite and the ease of carrying out in vitro/in vivo studies. The earliest vaccines attempted to use the parasitic circumsporozoite protein (CSP). This is the most dominant surface antigen of the initial pre-erythrocytic phase. However, problems were encountered due to low efficacy, reactogenicity and low immunogenicity.
The initial stage in the life cycle, following inoculation, is a relatively short "pre-erythrocytic" or "hepatic" phase. A vaccine at this stage must have the ability to protect against sporozoites invading and possibly inhibiting the development of parasites in the hepatocytes (through inducing cytotoxic T-lymphocytes that can destroy the infected liver cells). However, if any sporozoites evaded the immune system they would then have the potential to be symptomatic and cause the clinical disease.
The second phase of the life cycle is the "erythrocytic" or blood phase. A vaccine here could prevent merozoite multiplication or the invasion of red blood cells. This approach is complicated by the lack of MHC molecule expression on the surface of erythrocytes. Instead, malarial antigens are expressed, and it is this towards which the antibodies could potentially be directed. Another approach would be to attempt to block the process of erythrocyte adherence to blood vessel walls. It is thought that this process is accountable for much of the clinical syndrome associated with malarial infection; therefore, a vaccine given during this stage would be therapeutic and hence administered during clinical episodes to prevent further deterioration.
The last phase of the life cycle that has the potential to be targeted by a vaccine is the "sexual stage". This would not give any protective benefits to the individual inoculated but would prevent further transmission of the parasite by preventing the gametocytes from producing multiple sporozoites in the gut wall of the mosquito. It therefore would be used as part of a policy directed at eliminating the parasite from areas of low prevalence or to prevent the development and spread of vaccine-resistant parasites. This type of transmission-blocking vaccine is potentially very important. The evolution of resistance in the malaria parasite occurs very quickly, potentially making any vaccine redundant within a few generations. This approach to the prevention of spread is therefore essential.
Another approach is to target the protein kinases, which are present during the entire lifecycle of the malaria parasite. Research is underway on this, yet production of an actual vaccine targeting these protein kinases may still take a long time.
Report of a vaccine candidate capable of neutralizing all tested strains of Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly form of the parasite causing malaria, was published in Nature Communications by a team of scientists from the University of Oxford in 2011. The viral vector vaccine, targeting a full-length P. falciparum reticulocyte-binding protein homologue 5 (PfRH5) was found to induce an antibody response in an animal model. The results of this new vaccine confirmed the utility of a key discovery reported from scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, published in Nature. The earlier publication reported P. falciparum relies on a red blood cell surface receptor, known as 'basigin', to invade the cells by binding a protein PfRH5 to the receptor. Unlike other antigens of the malaria parasite which are often genetically diverse, the PfRH5 antigen appears to have little genetic diversity. It was found to induce very low antibody response in people naturally exposed to the parasite. The high susceptibility of PfRH5 to the cross-strain neutralizing vaccine-induced antibody demonstrated a significant promise for preventing malaria in the long and often difficult road of vaccine development. According to Professor Adrian Hill, a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator at the University of Oxford, the next step would be the safety tests of this vaccine. At the time (2011) it was projected that if these proved successful, the clinical trials in patients could begin within two to three years.
PfEMP1, one of the proteins known as variant surface antigens (VSAs) produced by Plasmodium falciparum, was found to be a key target of the immune system's response against the parasite. Studies of blood samples from 296 mostly Kenyan children by researchers of Burnet Institute and their cooperators showed that antibodies against PfEMP1 provide protective immunity, while antibodies developed against other surface antigens do not. Their results demonstrated that PfEMP1 could be a target to develop an effective vaccine which will reduce risk of developing malaria.
Plasmodium vivax is the common malaria species found in India, Southeast Asia and South America. It is able to stay dormant in the liver and reemerge years later to elicit new infections. Two key proteins involved in the invasion of the red blood cells (RBC) by P. vivax are potential targets for drug or vaccine development. When the Duffy binding protein (DBP) of P. vivax binds the Duffy antigen (DARC) on the surface of RBC, process for the parasite to enter the RBC is initiated. Structures of the core region of DARC and the receptor binding pocket of DBP have been mapped by scientists at the Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers found that the binding is a two-step process that involves two copies of the parasite protein acting together like a pair of tongs that "clamp" two copies of DARC. Antibodies that interfere with the binding by either targeting the key region of the DARC or the DBP will prevent the infection.
Antibodies against the Schizont Egress Antigen-1 (PfSEA-1) were found to disable the parasite's ability to rupture from the infected red blood cells (RBCs), thus preventing it from continuing with its life cycle. Researchers from Rhode Island Hospital identified Plasmodium falciparum PfSEA-1, a 244 kd malaria antigen expressed in the schizont-infected RBCs. Mice vaccinated with the recombinant PfSEA-1 produced antibodies which interrupted the schizont rupture from the RBCs and decreased the parasite replication. The vaccine protected the mice from the lethal challenge of the parasite. Tanzanian and Kenyan children who have antibodies to PfSEA-1 were found to have fewer parasites in their bloodstream and a milder case of malaria. By blocking the schizont outlet, the PfSEA-1 vaccine may work synergistically with vaccines targeting the other stages of the malaria life cycle such as hepatocyte and RBC invasion.
Mix of antigenic components
Increasing the potential immunity generated against Plasmodia can be achieved by attempting to target multiple phases in the life cycle. This is additionally beneficial in reducing the possibility of resistant parasites developing. The use of multiple-parasite antigens can therefore have a synergistic or additive effect.
One of the most successful vaccine candidates in clinical trials consists of recombinant antigenic proteins to the circumsporozoite protein.
Delivery system
The selection of an appropriate system is fundamental in all vaccine development, but especially so in the case of malaria. A vaccine targeting several antigens may require delivery to different areas and by different means in order to elicit an effective response. Some adjuvants can direct the vaccine to the specifically targeted cell type—e.g., the use of Hepatitis B virus in the RTS,S vaccine to target infected hepatocytes—but in other cases, particularly when using combined antigenic vaccines, this approach is very complex. Some methods that have been attempted include the use of two vaccines, one directed at generating a blood response and the other a liver-stage response. These two vaccines could then be injected into two different sites, thus enabling the use of a more specific and potentially efficacious delivery system.
To increase, accelerate or modify the development of an immune response to a vaccine candidate, it is often necessary to combine the antigenic substance to be delivered with an adjuvant or specialised delivery system. These terms are often used interchangeably in relation to vaccine development; however in most cases a distinction can be made. An adjuvant is typically thought of as a substance used in combination with the antigen to produce a more substantial and robust immune response than that elicited by the antigen alone. This is achieved through three mechanisms: by affecting the antigen delivery and presentation, by inducing the production of immunomodulatory cytokines, and by affecting the antigen presenting cells (APC). Adjuvants can consist of many different materials, from cell microparticles to other particulate delivery systems (e.g. liposomes).
Adjuvants are crucial in affecting the specificity and isotype of the necessary antibodies. They are thought to be able to potentiate the link between the innate and adaptive immune responses. Due to the diverse nature of substances that can potentially have this effect on the immune system, it is difficult to classify adjuvants into specific groups. In most circumstances they consist of easily identifiable components of micro-organisms that are recognised by the innate immune system cells. The role of delivery systems is primarily to direct the chosen adjuvant and antigen into target cells to attempt to increase the efficacy of the vaccine further, therefore acting synergistically with the adjuvant.
There is increasing concern that the use of very potent adjuvants could precipitate autoimmune responses, making it imperative that the vaccine is focused on the target cells only. Specific delivery systems can reduce this risk by limiting the potential toxicity and systemic distribution of newly developed adjuvants.
Studies into the efficacy of malaria vaccines developed to date have illustrated that the presence of an adjuvant is key in determining any protection gained against malaria. A large number of natural and synthetic adjuvants have been identified throughout the history of vaccine development. Options identified thus far for use combined with a malaria vaccine include mycobacterial cell walls, liposomes, monophosphoryl lipid A and squalene.
History
Individuals who are exposed to the parasite in endemic countries develop acquired immunity against disease and death. Such immunity does not, however prevent malarial infection; immune individuals often harbour asymptomatic parasites in their blood. This does, however, imply that it is possible to create an immune response that protects against the harmful effects of the parasite.
Research shows that if immunoglobulin is taken from immune adults, purified, and then given to individuals who have no protective immunity, some protection can be gained.
Irradiated mosquitoes
In 1967, it was reported that a level of immunity to the Plasmodium berghei parasite could be given to mice by exposing them to sporozoites that had been irradiated by x-rays. Subsequent human studies in the 1970s showed that humans could be immunized against Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum by exposing them to the bites of significant numbers of irradiated mosquitos.
From 1989 to 1999, eleven volunteers recruited from the United States Public Health Service, United States Army, and United States Navy were immunized against Plasmodium falciparum by the bites of 1001–2927 mosquitoes that had been irradiated with 15,000 rads of gamma rays from a Co-60 or Cs-137 source. This level of radiation is sufficient to attenuate the malaria parasites so that, while they can still enter hepatic cells, they cannot develop into schizonts nor infect red blood cells. Over a span of 42 weeks, 24 of 26 tests on the volunteers showed that they were protected from malaria.
References
Further reading
The Jordan Report
External links
Malaria Vaccine Initiative
Malaria vaccines UK
Gates Foundation Global Health: Malaria
Malaria
Protein subunit vaccines | en |
doc-en-16033 | The culture of Ireland includes language, literature, music, art, folklore, cuisine, and sport associated with Ireland and the Irish people. For most of its recorded history, Irish culture has been primarily Gaelic (see Gaelic Ireland). It has also been influenced by Anglo-Norman, English and Scottish culture. The Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland in the 12th century, and the 16th/17th century conquest and colonisation of Ireland saw the emergence of Tudor English culture repurposed in an Irish style. The Plantation of Ulster also introduced Scottish elements mostly confined to Northern Ireland.
Today, there are often notable cultural differences between those of Catholic and Protestant (especially Ulster Protestant) background, and between travellers and the settlers population. Due to large-scale emigration from Ireland, Irish culture has a global reach and festivals such as Saint Patrick's Day and Halloween are celebrated all over the world. Irish culture has to some degree been inherited and modified by the Irish diaspora, which in turn has influenced the home country. Though there are many unique aspects of Irish culture, it shares substantial traits with those of Britain, other English-speaking countries, other predominantly Catholic European countries, and the other Celtic nations.
From the wider European perspective, many aspects of Irish culture were commonly found on the continent, but had died out elsewhere when cultural markers came to be written down and codified in the 1700-1800s. The evidence is that dances like the jig, instruments like bagpipes, speaking a Celtic language and even brewing stout, had all been introduced into Ireland from other parts of Europe, and came to be seen as Irish because they had survived there last. Use of the Brehon law into the 1500s continued long after similar systems had been ended by the Roman Empire. This makes the culture important to those studying past European cultures.
Farming and rural tradition
As archaeological evidence from sites such as the Céide Fields in County Mayo and Lough Gur in County Limerick demonstrates, the farm in Ireland is an activity that goes back to the Neolithic, about 6,000 years ago. Before this, the first settlers of the island of Ireland after the last Ice Age were a new wave of cavemen and the Mesolithic period. In historic times, texts such as the Táin Bó Cúailinge show a society in which cows were represented a primary source of wealth and status. Little of this had changed by the time of the Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century. Giraldus Cambrensis portrayed a Gaelic society in which cattle farming and transhumance was the norm.
Townlands, villages, parishes and counties
The Normans replaced traditional clan land management (Brehon Law) with the manorial system of land tenure and social organisation. This led to the imposition of the village, parish and county over the native system of townlands. In general, a parish was a civil and religious unit with a manor, a village and a church at its centre. Each parish incorporated one or more existing townlands into its boundaries. With the gradual extension of English feudalism over the island, the Irish county structure came into existence and was completed in 1610.
These structures are still of vital importance in the daily life of Irish communities. Apart from the religious significance of the parish, most rural postal addresses consist of house and townland names. The village and parish are key focal points around which sporting rivalries and other forms of local identity are built and most people feel a strong sense of loyalty to their native county, a loyalty which also often has its clearest expression on the sports field.
Land ownership and land hunger
With the Tudor Elizabethan English conquest in the 16th-17th centuries, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, and the organized plantations of English Tudor, and later Scottish colonists, the Scottish confined to what's now mostly Northern Ireland, the patterns of land ownership in Ireland were altered greatly. The old order of transhumance and open range cattle breeding died out to be replaced by a structure of great landed estates, small tenant farmers with more or less precarious hold on their leases, and a mass of landless labourers. This situation continued up to the end of the 19th century, when the agitation of the Land League began to bring about land reform. In this process of reform, the former tenants and labourers became land owners, with the great estates being broken up into small- and medium-sized farms and smallholdings. The process continued well into the 20th century with the work of the Irish Land Commission. This contrasted with Britain, where many of the big estates were left intact. One consequence of this is the widely recognised cultural phenomenon of "land hunger" amongst the new class of Irish farmer. In general, this means that farming families will do almost anything to retain land ownership within the family unit, with the greatest ambition possible being the acquisition of additional land. Another is that hillwalkers in Ireland today are more constrained than their counterparts in Britain, as it is more difficult to agree rights of way with so many small farmers involved on a given route, rather than with just one landowner.
Holidays and festivals
The majority of the Irish calendar today still reflects the old pagan customs, with later Christian traditions also having significant influences. Christmas in Ireland has several local traditions, some in no way connected with Christianity. On 26 December (St. Stephen's Day), there is a custom of "Wrenboys" who call door to door with an arrangement of assorted material (which changes in different localities) to represent a dead wren "caught in the furze", as their rhyme goes.
The national holiday in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is Saint Patrick's Day, that falls on the date 17 March and is marked by parades and festivals in cities and towns across the island of Ireland, and by the Irish diaspora around the world. The festival is in remembrance of Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Pious legend credits Patrick with the banishing of the snakes from the island, and the legend also credits Patrick with teaching the Irish about the concept of the Trinity by showing people the shamrock, a 3-leaved clover, using it to highlight the Christian belief of 'three divine persons in the one God'.
In Northern Ireland The Twelfth of July, or Orangemen's Day, commemorates William III's victory at the Battle of the Boyne. A public holiday, it is celebrated by Irish Protestants, the vast majority of whom live in Northern Ireland. It is notable for the numerous parades organised by the Orange Order which take place throughout Northern Ireland. These parades are colourful affairs with Orange Banners and sashes on display and include music in the form of traditional songs such as "The Sash" and "Derry's Walls" performed by a mixture of pipe, flute, accordion, and brass marching bands. The Twelfth remains controversial as many in Northern Ireland's large and majority-nationalist Catholic community see the holiday, celebrating a victory over Catholics that ensured the continued establishment of a Protestant Ascendancy, as triumphalist, supremacist, and an assertion of British and Ulster Protestant dominance.
Brigid's Day (1 February, known as Imbolc or Candlemas) also does not have its origins in Christianity, being instead another religious observance superimposed at the beginning of spring. The Brigid's cross made from rushes represents a pre-Christian solar wheel.
Other pre-Christian festivals, whose names survive as Irish month names, are Bealtaine (May), Lúnasa (August) and Samhain (November). The last is still widely observed as Halloween which is celebrated all over the world, including in the United States followed by All Saints' Day, another Christian holiday associated with a traditional one. Important church holidays include Easter, and various Marian observances.
Religion
Christianity in the form of both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism is the most widely practised religion in Ireland. Christianity was brought to Ireland during or prior to the 5th century and its early history among the Irish is in particular associated with Saint Patrick, who is generally considered Ireland's patron saint. The Celtic festival of Samhain, known as Halloween, originated in Ireland and is now celebrated all over the world.
Ireland is a place where religion and religious practice have always been held in high esteem. The majority of people on the island are Roman Catholics; however, there is a significant minority of Protestants who are mostly concentrated in Northern Ireland, where they make up a plurality of the population. The three main Protestant denominations on the island are the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Methodist Church in Ireland. These are also joined by numerous other smaller denominations including Baptists, several American gospel groups and the Salvation Army. As well as these Protestant Churches, other minority denominations include Eastern Orthodox, Jehovah's Witnesses and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS). In addition to the Christian denominations there are centres for Buddhists, Hindus, Baháʼís, Pagans and for people of the Islamic and Jewish faiths.
In the Republic of Ireland, the last time a census asked people to specify their religion was in 2011. The result was 84.16% Roman Catholic, 2.81% Church of Ireland (Anglican), 1.07% Islam, 0.54% Presbyterian, 0.9% Christian, 0.99% Orthodox, approximately 2.07% other religious groupings and 5.88% identified as having no religion. About 1.59% did not state their religious identity. Amongst the Republic's Roman Catholics, weekly church attendance dropped sharply from 87% in 1981 to 60% in 1998, to 36% in 2016. This remained one of the highest attendance rates in Europe, where the average was 12.8% in 2016. The decline is said to be linked to reports of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Ireland.
In Northern Ireland in 2011, the population was 40.8% Roman Catholic, 19.1% Presbyterian, 13.7% Church of Ireland (Anglican), 3% Methodist, 5.8% other Christian, 0.8% other religion and philosophy, 10.1% with no religion and 6.8% religion not stated.
Folklore
The Leprechaun has been estimated to figure to a large degree in Irish folklore. According to the tales, the leprechaun is a mischievous fairy type creature in emerald green clothing who when not playing tricks spend all their time busily making shoes; the Leprechaun is said to have a pot of gold hidden at the end of the rainbow and if ever captured by a human it has the magical power to grant three wishes in exchange for release. More acknowledged and respected in Ireland are the stories of Fionn mac Cumhaill and his followers, the Fianna, from the Fenian cycle. Legend has it he built the Giant's Causeway as stepping-stones to Scotland; not to get his feet wet, to fight an ugly Scottish giant. He also once scooped up part of Ireland to fling it at a rival, but it missed and landed in the Irish Sea – the clump became the Isle of Man and the pebble became Rockall, the void became Lough Neagh. The Irish king Brian Boru who ended the domination of the so-called High Kingship of Ireland by the Uí Néill, is part of the historical cycle. The Irish princess Iseult is the adulterous lover of Tristan in the Arthurian romance and tragedy Tristan and Iseult. The many legends of ancient Ireland were captured by Lady Gregory in two volumes with forewords by W.B. Yeats. These stories depict the unusual power and status that Celtic women held in ancient times.
Halloween is a traditional and much celebrated holiday in Ireland on the night of 31 October. Supposedly the first evidence of the word halloween is found in a 16th century scottish document as a shortening for All-Hallows-Eve, and according to some historians it has its roots in the gaelic festival Samhain, where the Gaels believed the border between this world and the otherworld became thin, and the dead would revisit the mortal world.
In Ireland, traditional Halloween customs include; Guising – children disguised in costume going from door to door requesting food or coins – which became practice by the late 19th century, turnips hollowed-out and carved with faces to make lanterns, holding parties where games such as apple bobbing are played. Other practices in Ireland include lighting bonfires, and having firework displays. Mass transatlantic Irish and Scottish immigration in the 19th century popularised Halloween in North America.
Literature and the arts
For a comparatively small place, the island of Ireland has made a disproportionately large contribution to world literature in all its branches, in both the Irish and English languages. The island's most widely known literary works are undoubtedly in English. Particularly famous examples of such works are those of James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature; William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney. Three of the four Nobel prize winners were born in Dublin (Heaney being the exception, having lived in Dublin but being born in County Londonderry), making it the birthplace of more Nobel literary laureates than any other city in the world. The Irish language has the third oldest literature in Europe (after Greek and Latin), the most significant body of written literature (both ancient and recent) of any Celtic language, as well as a strong oral tradition of legends and poetry. Poetry in Irish represents the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe, with the earliest examples dating from the 6th century.
The early history of Irish visual art is generally considered to begin with early carvings found at sites such as Newgrange and is traced through Bronze Age artefacts, particularly ornamental gold objects, and the Celtic brooches and illuminated manuscripts of the "Insular" Early Medieval period. During the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, a strong indigenous tradition of painting emerged, including such figures as John Butler Yeats, William Orpen, Jack Yeats and Louis le Brocquy.
The Irish tradition of folk music and dance is also widely known, and both were redefined in the 1950s. In the middle years of the 20th century, as Irish society was attempting to modernise, traditional Irish music fell out of favour to some extent, especially in urban areas. Young people at this time tended to look to Britain and, particularly, the United States as models of progress and jazz and rock and roll became extremely popular. During the 1960s, and inspired by the American folk music movement, there was a revival of interest in the Irish tradition. This revival was inspired by groups like The Dubliners, the Clancy Brothers and Sweeney's Men and individuals like Seán Ó Riada. The annual Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann is the largest festival of Irish music in Ireland.
Before long, groups and musicians like Horslips, Van Morrison and even Thin Lizzy were incorporating elements of traditional music into a rock idiom to form a unique new sound. During the 1970s and 1980s, the distinction between traditional and rock musicians became blurred, with many individuals regularly crossing over between these styles of playing as a matter of course. This trend can be seen more recently in the work of bands like U2, Snow Patrol, The Cranberries, The Undertones and The Corrs.
Languages
Irish and English are the most widely spoken languages in Ireland. English is the most widely spoken language on the island overall, and Irish is spoken as a first language only by a small minority, primarily, though not exclusively, in the government-defined Gaeltacht regions in the Republic. A larger minority speak Irish as a second language, with 40.6% of people in the Republic of Ireland claiming some ability to speak the language in the 2011 census. Article 8 of the Constitution of Ireland states that Irish is the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland. English in turn is recognised as the State's second official language. Hiberno-English, the dialect of English spoken in most of the Republic of Ireland, has been greatly influenced by Irish.
In contrast Northern Ireland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, has no official language. English, however, is the de facto official language, and Ulster English is common. In addition, Irish and Ulster Scots have recognition under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, with 8.1% claiming some ability in Ulster Scots and 10.7% in Irish. In addition, the dialect and accent of the people of Northern Ireland is noticeably different from that of the majority in the Republic of Ireland, being influenced by Ulster Scots and Northern Ireland's proximity to Scotland.
Several other languages are spoken on the island, including Shelta, a mixture of Irish, Romani and English, spoken widely by Travellers. Two sign languages have also been developed on the island, Northern Irish Sign Language and Irish Sign Language.
Some other languages have entered Ireland with immigrants – for example, Polish is now the second most widely spoken language in Ireland after English, Irish being the third most commonly spoken language.
Irish language
Irish Sign Language
Hiberno-English
Ulster Scots dialect
Mid-Ulster English
Northern Ireland Sign Language
Shelta language
Food and drink
Early Ireland
There are many references to food and drink in early Irish literature. Honey seems to have been widely eaten and used in the making of mead. The old stories also contain many references to banquets, although these may well be greatly exaggerated and provide little insight into everyday diet. There are also many references to fulacht fia, which are archaeological sites commonly believed to have once been used for cooking venison. The fulacht fia have holes or troughs in the ground which can be filled with water. Meat can then be cooked by placing hot stones in the trough until the water boils. Many fulach fia sites have been identified across the island of Ireland, and some of them appear to have been in use up to the 17th century.
Excavations at the Viking settlement in the Wood Quay area of Dublin have produced a significant amount of information on the diet of the inhabitants of the town. The main animals eaten were cattle, sheep and pigs, with pigs being the most common. This popularity extended down to modern times in Ireland. Poultry and wild geese as well as fish and shellfish were also common, as were a wide range of native berries and nuts, especially hazel. The seeds of knotgrass and goosefoot were widely present and may have been used to make a porridge.
The potato in Ireland
The potato would appear to have been introduced into Ireland in the second half of the 16th century, as a result of the European colonisation of the Americas, initially as a garden crop. It eventually came to be the main food field crop of the tenant and labouring classes. As a food source, the potato is extremely efficient in terms of energy yielded per unit area of land. The potato is also a good source of many vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamin C (especially when fresh). As a result, the typical 18th- and 19th-century Irish diet of potatoes and buttermilk was a contributing factor in the population explosion that occurred in Ireland at that time. However, due to the political rule of the time, the majority of Irish produce (root crops, cereals and animal produce) was exported to Britain, leaving few strains of potato as the sole food source for the Irish. This, along with the spread of potato blight led to shortages and famines, the most notable instance being the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849). The causes are attributed by some to potato blight, others to an adherence to laissez-faire economic policies of the Liberal government, which kept food exports at the pre-famine level leading to disease, death and emigration.
Modern times
In the 20th century the usual modern selection of foods common to Western cultures has been adopted in Ireland. Both US fast-food culture and continental European dishes have influenced the country, along with other world dishes introduced in a similar fashion to the rest of the Western world. Common meals include pizza, curry, Chinese food, and lately, some west African dishes have been making an appearance. Supermarket shelves now contain ingredients for, among others, traditional, European, American (Mexican/Tex-Mex), Indian, Polish and Chinese dishes.
The proliferation of fast food has led to increasing public health problems including obesity, and one of the highest rates of heart disease in the world. In Ireland, the Full Irish has been particularly cited as being a major source for a higher incidence of cardiac problems, quoted as being a "heart attack on a plate". All the ingredients are fried, although more recently the trend is to grill as many of the ingredients as possible.
In tandem with these developments, the last quarter of the century saw the emergence of a new Irish cuisine based on traditional ingredients handled in new ways. This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish, especially salmon and trout, oysters and other shellfish, traditional soda bread, the wide range of hand-made cheeses that are now being made across the country, and, of course, the potato. Traditional dishes, such as the Irish stew, Dublin coddle, the Irish breakfast and potato bread, have enjoyed a resurgence. Schools like the Ballymaloe Cookery School have emerged to cater for the associated increased interest in cooking with traditional ingredients.
Pub culture
Pub culture pervades Irish society, across all cultural divides. The term refers to the Irish habit of frequenting public houses (pubs) or bars. Traditional pub culture is concerned with more than just drinking. Typically pubs are important meeting places, where people can gather and meet their neighbours and friends in a relaxed atmosphere; similar to the café cultures of other countries. Pubs vary widely according to the clientele they serve, and the area they are in. Best known, and loved amongst tourists is the traditional pub, with its traditional Irish music (or "trad music"), tavern-like warmness, and memorabilia filling it. Often such pubs will also serve food, particularly during the day. Many more modern pubs, not necessarily traditional, still emulate these pubs, only perhaps substituting traditional music for a DJ or non-traditional live music.
Many larger pubs in cities eschew such trappings entirely, opting for loud music, and focusing more on the consumption of drinks, which is not a focus of traditional Irish culture. Such venues are popular "pre-clubbing" locations. "Clubbing" has become a popular phenomenon amongst young people in Ireland during the celtic tiger years. Clubs usually vary in terms of the type of music played, and the target audience. Belfast has a unique underground club scene taking place in settings such as churches, zoos, and crematoriums. The underground scene is mainly orchestrated by DJ Christopher McCafferty .
A significant recent change to pub culture in the Republic of Ireland has been the introduction of a smoking ban, in all workplaces, which includes pubs and restaurants. Ireland was the first country in the world to implement such a ban which was introduced on 29 March 2004. A majority of the population support the ban, including a significant percentage of smokers. Nevertheless, the atmosphere in pubs has changed greatly as a result, and debate continues on whether it has boosted or lowered sales, although this is often blamed on the ever-increasing prices, or whether it is a "good thing" or a "bad thing". A similar ban, under the Smoking (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, came into effect in Northern Ireland on 30 April 2007.
National and international organisations have labelled Ireland as having a problem with over-consumption of alcohol. In the late 1980s alcohol consumption accounted for nearly 25% of all hospital admissions. While this figure has been decreasing steadily, as of 2007, approximately 13% of overall hospital admissions were alcohol related. In 2003, Ireland had the second-highest per capita alcohol consumption in the world, just below Luxembourg at 13.5 litres (per person 15 or more years old), according to the OECD Health Data 2009 survey. According to the latest OECD figures, alcohol consumption in Ireland has dropped from 11.5 litres per adult in 2012 to 10.6 litres per adult in 2013. However, research showed that in 2013, 75% of alcohol was consumed as part of a drinking session where the person drank six or more standard units (which equates to three or more pints of beer). This meets the Health Service Executive's definition of binge drinking.
Sport
Sport on the island of Ireland is popular and widespread. A wide variety of sports are played throughout the island, with the most popular being Gaelic football, hurling, soccer, rugby union, and golf.
Four sports account for over 80% of event attendance. Gaelic football is the most popular sport in Ireland in terms of match attendance and community involvement, and represents 34% of total sports attendances at events in the Republic of Ireland and abroad, followed by hurling at 23%, soccer at 16% and rugby at 8%. and the All-Ireland Football Final is the most watched event in Ireland's sporting calendar.
Swimming, golf, aerobics, soccer, cycling, Gaelic football, and billiards and snooker, are the sporting activities with the highest levels of playing participation. Other sports with material playing populations, including at school level, include tennis, hockey, pitch and putt, basketball, boxing, cricket and squash.
Soccer is the most popular sport involving national teams. The success of the Ireland team at the 1990 FIFA World Cup saw 500,000 fans in Dublin to welcome the team home. The team's song "Put 'Em Under Pressure" topped the Irish charts for 13 weeks.
In Ireland many sports, such as rugby union, Gaelic football and hurling, are organised in an all-island basis, with a single team representing the island of Ireland in international competitions. Other sports, such as soccer, have separate organising bodies in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Traditionally, those in the North who identify as Irish, predominantly Catholics and nationalists, support the Republic of Ireland team. At the Olympics, a person from Northern Ireland can choose to represent either the Great Britain team or the Ireland team. Also as Northern Ireland is a Home Nation of the United Kingdom it also sends a Northern Ireland Team to the Commonwealth Games every four years.
Gaelic Athletic Association
Northern Ireland national football team
Republic of Ireland national football team
Irish Rugby Football Union
Northern Ireland Commonwealth Games Team
British Olympic Association
Olympic Council of Ireland
Community Games
Irish Derby Stakes
Media
Print
In the Republic of Ireland there are several daily newspapers, including the Irish Independent, The Irish Examiner, The Irish Times, The Star, The Evening Herald, Daily Ireland, the Irish Sun, and the Irish language Lá Nua. The best selling of these is the Irish Independent, which is published in both tabloid and broadsheet form. The Irish Times is Ireland's newspaper of record.
The Sunday market is quite saturated with many British publications. The leading Sunday newspaper in terms of circulation is The Sunday Independent. Other popular papers include The Sunday Times, The Sunday Tribune, The Sunday Business Post, Ireland on Sunday and the Sunday World.
In Northern Ireland the three main daily newspapers are The News Letter, which is Unionist in outlook, The Irish News, mainly Nationalist in outlook and the Belfast Telegraph. Also widely available are the Northern Irish versions of the main UK wide daily newspapers and some Scottish dailies such as the Daily Record.
In terms of Sunday papers the Belfast Telegraph is the only one of the three main Northern Irish dailies that has a Sunday publication which is called the Sunday Life. Apart from this all the main UK wide Sunday papers such as The Sun on Sunday are widely available as are some Irish papers such as the Sunday world.
There are quite a large number of local weekly newspapers both North and South, with most counties and large towns having two or more newspapers. Curiously Dublin remains one of the few places in Ireland without a major local paper since the Dublin Evening Mail closed down in the 1960s. In 2004 the Dublin Daily was launched, but failed to attract enough readers to make it viable.
One major criticism of the Republic of Ireland newspaper market is the strong position Independent News & Media has on the market. It controls the Evening Herald, Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Sunday World and The Star as well as holding a large stake in the cable company Chorus, and indirectly controlling The Sunday Tribune. The Independent titles are perceived by many Irish republicans as having a pro-British stance. In parallel to this, the Independent titles are perceived by many opposition supporters as being pro Fianna Fáil.
The Irish magazine market is one of the world's most competitive, with hundreds of international magazines available in Ireland, ranging from Time and The Economist to Hello! and Reader's Digest. This means that domestic titles find it very hard to retain readership. Among the best-selling Irish magazines are the RTÉ Guide, Ireland's Eye, Irish Tatler, VIP, Phoenix and In Dublin.
Radio
The first known radio transmission in Ireland was a call to arms made from the General Post Office in O'Connell Street during the Easter Rising. The first official radio station on the island was 2BE Belfast, which began broadcasting in 1924. This was followed in 1926 by 2RN Dublin and 6CK Cork in 1927. 2BE Belfast later became BBC Radio Ulster and 2RN Dublin became RTÉ. The first commercial radio station in the Republic, Century Radio, came on air in 1989.
During the 1990s and particularly the early 2000s, dozens of local radio stations have gained licences. This has resulted in a fragmentation of the radio broadcast market. This trend is most noticeable in Dublin where there are now 6 private licensed stations in operation.
Television
Different television stations are available depending on location in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland. In Northern Ireland the main terrestrial television stations are the main UK wide channels BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Both the BBC and ITV have local regional programing specific to Northern Ireland produced and broadcast through BBC Northern Ireland and UTV.
In terms of Satellite-carried channels in Northern Ireland these are the same as for the rest of the United Kingdom including all Sky channels.
In the Republic of Ireland some areas first received signal from BBC Wales and then latter from BBC Northern Ireland when it began broadcasting television programmes in 1959 before RTÉ Television opened in 1961. Today the Republic's main terrestrial channels are RTÉ One, RTÉ Two, TV3 which began broadcasting in 1998 and Teilifís na Gaeilge (TnaG), now called TG4 which started its Irish language service in 1996.
British and satellite-carried international television channels have widespread audiences in the Republic. The BBC and ITV families of channels are available free to air across the Republic and there is widespread availability of the four main UK channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 and Channel Four) but only limited coverage from Five. Sky One, E4, and several hundred satellite channels are widely available. Parts of the Republic can access the UK digital TV system Freeview.
Film
The Republic of Ireland Film industry has grown rapidly in recent years thanks largely to the promotion of the sector by Bord Scannán na hÉireann (The Irish Film Board) and the introduction of generous tax breaks. Some of the most successful Irish films included Intermission (2001), Man About Dog (2004), Michael Collins (1996), Angela's Ashes (1999), My Left Foot (1989), The Crying Game (1992), In the Name of the Father (1994) and The Commitments (1991). The most successful Irish film directors are Kenneth Branagh, Martin McDonagh, Neil Jordan, John Carney, and Jim Sheridan. Irish actors include Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Maureen O'Hara, Brenda Fricker, Michael Gambon, Colm Meaney, Gabriel Byrne, Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Ciarán Hinds, James Nesbitt, Cillian Murphy, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Saoirse Ronan, Brendan Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson, Michael Fassbender, Ruth Negga, Jamie Dornan and Colin Farrell.
Ireland has also proved a popular location for shooting films with The Quiet Man (1952), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Braveheart (1995), King Arthur (2004) and P.S. I Love You (2007) all being shot in Ireland.
Cultural institutions, organisations and events
Ireland is well supplied with museums and art galleries and offers, especially during the summer months, a wide range of cultural events. These range from arts festivals to farming events. The most popular of these are the annual Dublin Saint Patrick's Day Festival which attracts on average 500,000 people and the National Ploughing Championships with an attendance in the region of 400,000. There are also a number of Summer Schools on topics from traditional music to literature and the arts.
Major organisations responsible for funding and promoting Irish culture are:
Arts Council of Ireland
Arts Council of Northern Ireland
Culture Ireland
Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media (Republic of Ireland)
Department for Communities (Northern Ireland)
Foras na Gaeilge
List of institutions and organisations
Abbey Theatre
Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge
Ambassador Theatre
Aosdána
Arts Council of Ireland
Art Projects Network
Chester Beatty Library
Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann
Conradh na Gaeilge
Cork Opera House
Crawford Art Gallery
Culture Ireland
Druid Theatre, Galway
Dublin Writers Museum
Gael Linn
Gaelchultúr
Gaelic Athletic Association
Gate Theatre
Glór na nGael
Chun Bliain Taitneamhach a Fheiceáil
Grand Opera House, Belfast
Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin
Heritage Council
Irish Architecture Foundation
Irish Georgian Society
Ireland Literature Exchange (ILE)
Irish Museum of Modern Art at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham
Irish Museums Association
James Joyce Centre
Lime Tree Theatre, Limerick
Macnas, performance arts company, Galway
National Archives of Ireland
National Concert Hall
National Folklore Collection UCD
National Gallery of Ireland
National Library of Ireland
National Museums Northern Ireland
National Museum of Ireland
National Photographic Archive
National Transport Museum of Ireland
National Wax Museum
Northern Ireland Screen
National Trust (UK)
Office of Public Works
Poetry Ireland
Royal Dublin Society (RDS)
Royal Irish Academy
Royal Irish Academy of Music
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland
Royal Ulster Academy of Arts
SFX City Theatre
State Heraldic Museum
Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe, Irish language theatre, Galway
Temple Bar Cultural Trust
The Helix, performing arts centre, Dublin
The Hunt Museum, Limerick
The Point Theatre
Ulster American Folk Park, Omagh
Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Co. Down
Ulster Museum, Belfast
University Concert Hall, Limerick
Events
All-Ireland Senior Football Championship
All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship
Bealtaine
Bloomsday
Bray Jazz Festival
Kilkenny Cat Laughs Comedy Festival
City of Derry Jazz and Big Band Festival
Clifden Arts Festival
Cork Jazz Festival
Culture Night
Dublin Theatre Festival
Earagail Arts Festival
Féile na Gealaí
Fleadh Cheoil
Galway Arts Festival
Imbolg
Liú Lúnasa
Lúnasa
National Ploughing Championships
Oireachtas na Gaeilge
Pan Celtic Festival
Puck Fair, Killorglin
Saint Patrick's Day
Samhain
Scoil Acla
Seachtain na Gaeilge
St. Patrick's Festival and Skyfest
Swell Music and Arts Festival
The Twelfth
Maiden City Festival
Harvest Time Blues
Heritage Week
See also
List of Ireland-related topics
Architecture of Ireland
Culture of Gaelic Ireland
Culture of Northern Ireland
Gaelic Revival
Irish name
Heritage sites (Ireland)
Bataireacht – An ancient Irish martial arts that uses a Shillelagh
Fidchell – An ancient Irish board game similar to chess
Gaelic culture
Clothing of Ireland
References
External links
BBC Northern Ireland Television & Radio Archive
Central Statistics Office Ireland
Irish Department of Foreign Affairs: Facts about Ireland
Irish Broadcasting
Population figures by religion
Pobal Eolas Ilmheáin Gaeilge – PEIG.ie
Acadamh na hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge provides a diploma course in indigenous Irish culture | en |
doc-en-15665 | The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques and is one of the categories of world history. Technology can refer to methods ranging from as simple as stone tools to the complex genetic engineering and information technology that has emerged since the 1980s. The term technology comes from the Greek word techne, meaning art and craft, and the word logos, meaning word and speech. It was first used to describe applied arts, but it is now used to describe advancements and changes which affect the environment around us.
New knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors are made possible by technologies which assist humans in traveling to places they could not previously reach, and by scientific instruments by which we study nature in more detail than our natural senses allow.
Since much of technology is applied science, technical history is connected to the history of science. Since technology uses resources, technical history is tightly connected to economic history. From those resources, technology produces other resources, including technological artifacts used in everyday life.
Technological change affects, and is affected by, a society's cultural traditions. It is a force for economic growth and a means to develop and project economic, political, military power and wealth.
Measuring technological progress
Many sociologists and anthropologists have created social theories dealing with social and cultural evolution. Some, like Lewis H. Morgan, Leslie White, and Gerhard Lenski have declared technological progress to be the primary factor driving the development of human civilization. Morgan's concept of three major stages of social evolution (savagery, barbarism, and civilization) can be divided by technological milestones, such as fire. White argued the measure by which to judge the evolution of culture was energy.
For White, "the primary function of culture" is to "harness and control energy." White differentiates between five stages of human development: In the first, people use the energy of their own muscles. In the second, they use the energy of domesticated animals. In the third, they use the energy of plants (agricultural revolution). In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas. In the fifth, they harness nuclear energy. White introduced a formula P=E/T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure of the efficiency of technical factors using the energy. In his own words, "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased". Nikolai Kardashev extrapolated his theory, creating the Kardashev scale, which categorizes the energy use of advanced civilizations.
Lenski's approach focuses on information. The more information and knowledge (especially allowing the shaping of natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. He identifies four stages of human development, based on advances in the history of communication. In the first stage, information is passed by genes. In the second, when humans gain sentience, they can learn and pass information through experience. In the third, the humans start using signs and develop logic. In the fourth, they can create symbols, develop language and writing. Advancements in communications technology translate into advancements in the economic system and political system, distribution of wealth, social inequality and other spheres of social life. He also differentiates societies based on their level of technology, communication, and economy:
hunter-gatherer,
simple agricultural,
advanced agricultural,
industrial,
special (such as fishing societies).
In economics, productivity is a measure of technological progress. Productivity increases when fewer inputs (classically labor and capital but some measures include energy and materials) are used in the production of a unit of output. Another indicator of technological progress is the development of new products and services, which is necessary to offset unemployment that would otherwise result as labor inputs are reduced. In developed countries productivity growth has been slowing since the late 1970s; however, productivity growth was higher in some economic sectors, such as manufacturing. For example, employment in manufacturing in the United States declined from over 30% in the 1940s to just over 10% 70 years later. Similar changes occurred in other developed countries. This stage is referred to as post-industrial.
In the late 1970s sociologists and anthropologists like Alvin Toffler (author of Future Shock), Daniel Bell and John Naisbitt have approached the theories of post-industrial societies, arguing that the current era of industrial society is coming to an end, and services and information are becoming more important than industry and goods. Some extreme visions of the post-industrial society, especially in fiction, are strikingly similar to the visions of near and post-Singularity societies.
By period and geography
The following is a summary of the history of technology by time period and geography:
Olduvai stone technology (Oldowan) 2.5 million years ago (scrapers; to butcher dead animals)
Huts, 2 million years ago.
Acheulean stone technology 1.6 million years ago (hand axe)
Fire creation and manipulation, used since the Paleolithic, possibly by Homo erectus as early as 1.5 Million years ago
Boats, 900,000 years ago.
Cooking, 500,000 years ago.
Javelins, 400,000 years ago.
(Homo sapiens sapiens – modern human anatomy arises, around 300,000 years ago.)
Glue, 200,000 years ago.
Clothing possibly 170,000 years ago.
Stone tools, used by Homo floresiensis, possibly 100,000 years ago.
Harpoons, 90,000 years ago.
Bow and arrows, 70,000–60,000 years ago.
Sewing needles, 60,000 - 50,000 BC
Flutes, 43,000 years ago.
Fishing nets, 43,000 years ago.
Ropes, 40,000 years ago.
Ceramics c. 25,000 BC
Fishing hooks, C. 23,000 years ago.
Domestication of animals, c. 15,000 BC
Sling (weapon) c. 9th millennium BC
Microliths c. 9th millennium BC
Brick used for construction in the Middle East c. 6000 BC
Agriculture and Plough c. 4000 BC
Wheel c. 4000 BC
Gnomon c. 4000 BC
Writing systems c. 3500 BC
Copper c. 3200 BC
Bronze c. 2500 BC
Salt c. 2500 BC
Chariot c. 2000 BC
Iron c. 1500 BC
Sundial c. 800 BC
Glass ca. 500 BC
Catapult c. 400 BC
Cast iron c. 400 BC
Horseshoe c. 300 BC
Stirrup first few centuries AD
Prehistory
Stone Age
During most of the Paleolithic – the bulk of the Stone Age – all humans had a lifestyle which involved limited tools and few permanent settlements. The first major technologies were tied to survival, hunting, and food preparation. Stone tools and weapons, fire, and clothing were technological developments of major importance during this period.
Human ancestors have been using stone and other tools since long before the emergence of Homo sapiens approximately 300,000 years ago. The earliest direct evidence of tool usage was found in Ethiopia within the Great Rift Valley, dating back to 2.5 million years ago. The earliest methods of stone tool making, known as the Oldowan "industry", date back to at least 2.3 million years ago. This era of stone tool use is called the Paleolithic, or "Old stone age", and spans all of human history up to the development of agriculture approximately 12,000 years ago.
To make a stone tool, a "core" of hard stone with specific flaking properties (such as flint) was struck with a hammerstone. This flaking produced sharp edges which could be used as tools, primarily in the form of choppers or scrapers. These tools greatly aided the early humans in their hunter-gatherer lifestyle to perform a variety of tasks including butchering carcasses (and breaking bones to get at the marrow); chopping wood; cracking open nuts; skinning an animal for its hide, and even forming other tools out of softer materials such as bone and wood.
The earliest stone tools were irrelevant, being little more than a fractured rock. In the Acheulian era, beginning approximately 1.65 million years ago, methods of working these stones into specific shapes, such as hand axes emerged. This early Stone Age is described as the Lower Paleolithic.
The Middle Paleolithic, approximately 300,000 years ago, saw the introduction of the prepared-core technique, where multiple blades could be rapidly formed from a single core stone. The Upper Paleolithic, beginning approximately 40,000 years ago, saw the introduction of pressure flaking, where a wood, bone, or antler punch could be used to shape a stone very finely.
The end of the last Ice Age about 10,000 years ago is taken as the end point of the Upper Paleolithic and the beginning of the Epipaleolithic / Mesolithic. The Mesolithic technology included the use of microliths as composite stone tools, along with wood, bone, and antler tools.
The later Stone Age, during which the rudiments of agricultural technology were developed, is called the Neolithic period. During this period, polished stone tools were made from a variety of hard rocks such as flint, jade, jadeite, and greenstone, largely by working exposures as quarries, but later the valuable rocks were pursued by tunneling underground, the first steps in mining technology. The polished axes were used for forest clearance and the establishment of crop farming and were so effective as to remain in use when bronze and iron appeared. These stone axes were used alongside a continued use of stone tools such as a range of projectiles, knives, and scrapers, as well as tools, made organic materials such as wood, bone, and antler.
Stone Age cultures developed music and engaged in organized warfare. Stone Age humans developed ocean-worthy outrigger canoe technology, leading to migration across the Malay archipelago, across the Indian Ocean to Madagascar and also across the Pacific Ocean, which required knowledge of the ocean currents, weather patterns, sailing, and celestial navigation.
Although Paleolithic cultures left no written records, the shift from nomadic life to settlement and agriculture can be inferred from a range of archaeological evidence. Such evidence includes ancient tools, cave paintings, and other prehistoric art, such as the Venus of Willendorf. Human remains also provide direct evidence, both through the examination of bones, and the study of mummies. Scientists and historians have been able to form significant inferences about the lifestyle and culture of various prehistoric peoples, and especially their technology.
Ancient
Copper and bronze Ages
Metallic copper occurs on the surface of weathered copper ore deposits and copper was used before copper smelting was known. Copper smelting is believed to have originated when the technology of pottery kilns allowed sufficiently high temperatures. The concentration of various elements such as arsenic increase with depth in copper ore deposits and smelting of these ores yields arsenical bronze, which can be sufficiently work hardened to be suitable for making tools.
Bronze is an alloy of copper with tin; the latter being found in relatively few deposits globally caused a long time to elapse before true tin bronze became widespread. (See: Tin sources and trade in ancient times) Bronze was a major advancement over stone as a material for making tools, both because of its mechanical properties like strength and ductility and because it could be cast in molds to make intricately shaped objects. Bronze significantly advanced shipbuilding technology with better tools and bronze nails. Bronze nails replaced the old method of attaching boards of the hull with cord woven through drilled holes. Better ships enabled long-distance trade and the advance of civilization.
This technological trend apparently began in the Fertile Crescent and spread outward over time. These developments were not, and still are not, universal. The three-age system does not accurately describe the technology history of groups outside of Eurasia, and does not apply at all in the case of some isolated populations, such as the Spinifex People, the Sentinelese, and various Amazonian tribes, which still make use of Stone Age technology, and have not developed agricultural or metal technology.
Iron Age
Before iron smelting was developed the only iron was obtained from meteorites and is usually identified by having nickel content. Meteoric iron was rare and valuable, but was sometimes used to make tools and other implements, such as fish hooks.
The Iron Age involved the adoption of iron smelting technology. It generally replaced bronze and made it possible to produce tools which were stronger, lighter and cheaper to make than bronze equivalents. The raw materials to make iron, such as ore and limestone, are far more abundant than copper and especially tin ores. Consequently, iron was produced in many areas.
It was not possible to mass manufacture steel or pure iron because of the high temperatures required. Furnaces could reach melting temperature but the crucibles and molds needed for melting and casting had not been developed. Steel could be produced by forging bloomery iron to reduce the carbon content in a somewhat controllable way, but steel produced by this method was not homogeneous.
In many Eurasian cultures, the Iron Age was the last major step before the development of written language, though again this was not universally the case.
In Europe, large hill forts were built either as a refuge in time of war or sometimes as permanent settlements. In some cases, existing forts from the Bronze Age were expanded and enlarged. The pace of land clearance using the more effective iron axes increased, providing more farmland to support the growing population.
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and its peoples (Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians) lived in cities from c. 4000 BC, and developed a sophisticated architecture in mud-brick and stone, including the use of the true arch. The walls of Babylon were so massive they were quoted as a Wonder of the World. They developed extensive water systems; canals for transport and irrigation in the alluvial south, and catchment systems stretching for tens of kilometers in the hilly north. Their palaces had sophisticated drainage systems.
Writing was invented in Mesopotamia, using the cuneiform script. Many records on clay tablets and stone inscriptions have survived. These civilizations were early adopters of bronze technologies which they used for tools, weapons and monumental statuary. By 1200 BC they could cast objects 5 m long in a single piece.
Several of the six classic simple machines were invented in Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians have been credited with the invention of the wheel. The wheel and axle mechanism first appeared with the potter's wheel, invented in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) during the 5th millennium BC. This led to the invention of the wheeled vehicle in Mesopotamia during the early 4th millennium BC. Depictions of wheeled wagons found on clay tablet pictographs at the Eanna district of Uruk are dated between 3700 and 3500 BC. The lever was used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC. and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC.
The screw, the last of the simple machines to be invented, first appeared in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609) BC. The Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) claims to have invented automatic sluices and to have been the first to use water screw pumps, of up to 30 tons weight, which were cast using two-part clay molds rather than by the 'lost wax' process. The Jerwan Aqueduct (c. 688 BC) is made with stone arches and lined with waterproof concrete.
The Babylonian astronomical diaries spanned 800 years. They enabled meticulous astronomers to plot the motions of the planets and to predict eclipses.
The earliest evidence of water wheels and watermills date back to the ancient Near East in the 4th century BC, specifically in the Persian Empire before 350 BC, in the regions of Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Persia (Iran). This pioneering use of water power constituted the first human-devised motive force not to rely on muscle power (besides the sail).
Egypt
The Egyptians, known for building pyramids centuries before the creation of modern tools, invented and used many simple machines, such as the ramp to aid construction processes. Historians and archaeologists have found evidence that the pyramids were built using three of what is called the Six Simple Machines, from which all machines are based. These machines are the inclined plane, the wedge, and the lever, which allowed the ancient Egyptians to move millions of limestone blocks which weighed approximately 3.5 tons (7,000 lbs.) each into place to create structures like the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is 481 feet (146.7 meters) high.
They also made writing medium similar to paper from papyrus, which Joshua Mark states is the foundation for modern paper. Papyrus is a plant (cyperus papyrus) which grew in plentiful amounts in the Egyptian Delta and throughout the Nile River Valley during ancient times. The papyrus was harvested by field workers and brought to processing centers where it was cut into thin strips. The strips were then laid out side by side perpendicularly then covered in plant resin and the second layer of strips was laid on horizontally, then pressed together until the sheet was dry. The sheets were then joined to form a roll and later used for writing.
Egyptian society made several significant advances during dynastic periods in many areas of technology. According to Hossam Elanzeery, they were the first civilization to use timekeeping devices such as sundials, shadow clocks, and obelisks and successfully leveraged their knowledge of astronomy to create a calendar model that society still uses today. They developed shipbuilding technology that saw them progress from papyrus reed vessels to cedar wood ships while also pioneering the use of rope trusses and stem-mounted rudders. The Egyptians also used their knowledge of anatomy to lay the foundation for many modern medical techniques and practiced the earliest known version of neuroscience. Elanzeery also states that they used and furthered mathematical science, as evidenced in the building of the pyramids.
Ancient Egyptians also invented and pioneered many food technologies that have become the basis of modern food technology processes. Based on paintings and reliefs found in tombs, as well as archaeological artifacts, scholars like Paul T Nicholson believe that the Ancient Egyptians established systematic farming practices, engaged in cereal processing, brewed beer and baked bread, processed meat, practiced viticulture and created the basis for modern wine production, and created condiments to complement, preserve and mask the flavors of their food.
Indus Valley
The Indus Valley Civilization, situated in a resource-rich area (in modern Pakistan and northwestern India), is notable for its early application of city planning, sanitation technologies, and plumbing. Indus Valley construction and architecture, called 'Vaastu Shastra', suggests a thorough understanding of materials engineering, hydrology, and sanitation.
China
The Chinese made many first-known discoveries and developments. Major technological contributions from China include early seismological detectors, matches, paper, Helicopter rotor, Raised-relief map, the double-action piston pump, cast iron, water powered blast furnace bellows, the iron plough, the multi-tube seed drill, the wheelbarrow, the parachute, the compass, the rudder, the crossbow, the South Pointing Chariot and gunpowder. China also developed deep well drilling, which they used to extract brine for making salt. Some of these wells, which were as deep as 900 meters, produced natural gas which was used for evaporating brine.
Other Chinese discoveries and inventions from the Medieval period include block printing, movable type printing, phosphorescent paint, endless power chain drive and the clock escapement mechanism. The solid-fuel rocket was invented in China about 1150, nearly 200 years after the invention of gunpowder (which acted as the rocket's fuel). Decades before the West's age of exploration, the Chinese emperors of the Ming Dynasty also sent large fleets on maritime voyages, some reaching Africa.
Hellenistic Mediterranean
The Hellenistic period of Mediterranean history began in the 4th century BC with Alexander's conquests, which led to the emergence of a Hellenistic civilization representing a synthesis of Greek and Near-Eastern cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean region, including the Balkans, Levant and Egypt. With Ptolemaic Egypt as its intellectual center and Greek as the lingua franca, the Hellenistic civilization included Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Persian and Phoenician scholars and engineers who wrote in Greek.
Hellenistic engineers of the Eastern Mediterranean were responsible for a number of inventions and improvements to existing technology. The Hellenistic period saw a sharp increase in technological advancement, fostered by a climate of openness to new ideas, the blossoming of a mechanistic philosophy, and the establishment of the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt and its close association with the adjacent museion. In contrast to the typically anonymous inventors of earlier ages, ingenious minds such as Archimedes, Philo of Byzantium, Heron, Ctesibius, and Archytas remain known by name to posterity.
Ancient agriculture, as in any period prior to the modern age the primary mode of production and subsistence, and its irrigation methods, were considerably advanced by the invention and widespread application of a number of previously unknown water-lifting devices, such as the vertical water-wheel, the compartmented wheel, the water turbine, Archimedes' screw, the bucket-chain and pot-garland, the force pump, the suction pump, the double-action piston pump and quite possibly the chain pump.
In music, the water organ, invented by Ctesibius and subsequently improved, constituted the earliest instance of a keyboard instrument. In time-keeping, the introduction of the inflow clepsydra and its mechanization by the dial and pointer, the application of a feedback system and the escapement mechanism far superseded the earlier outflow clepsydra.
Innovations in mechanical technology included the newly devised right-angled gear, which would become particularly important to the operation of mechanical devices. Hellenistic engineers also devised automata such as suspended ink pots, automatic washstands, and doors, primarily as toys, which however featured new useful mechanisms such as the cam and gimbals.
The Antikythera mechanism, a kind of analogous computer working with a differential gear, and the astrolabe both show great refinement in astronomical science.
In other fields, ancient Greek innovations include the catapult and the gastraphetes crossbow in warfare, hollow bronze-casting in metallurgy, the dioptra for surveying, in infrastructure the lighthouse, central heating, a tunnel excavated from both ends by scientific calculations, and the ship trackway. In transport, great progress resulted from the invention of the winch and the odometer.
Further newly created techniques and items were spiral staircases, the chain drive, sliding calipers and showers.
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire expanded from Italia across the entire Mediterranean region between the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. Its most advanced and economically productive provinces outside of Italia were the Eastern Roman provinces in the Balkans, Asia Minor, Egypt, and the Levant, with Roman Egypt in particular being the wealthiest Roman province outside of Italia.
The Roman Empire developed an intensive and sophisticated agriculture, expanded upon existing iron working technology, created laws providing for individual ownership, advanced stone masonry technology, advanced road-building (exceeded only in the 19th century), military engineering, civil engineering, spinning and weaving and several different machines like the Gallic reaper that helped to increase productivity in many sectors of the Roman economy. Roman engineers were the first to build monumental arches, amphitheatres, aqueducts, public baths, true arch bridges, harbours, reservoirs and dams, vaults and domes on a very large scale across their Empire. Notable Roman inventions include the book (Codex), glass blowing and concrete. Because Rome was located on a volcanic peninsula, with sand which contained suitable crystalline grains, the concrete which the Romans formulated was especially durable. Some of their buildings have lasted 2000 years, to the present day.
In Roman Egypt, the inventor Hero of Alexandria was the first to experiment with a wind-powered mechanical device (see Heron's windwheel) and even created the earliest steam-powered device (the aeolipile), opening up new possibilities in harnessing natural forces. He also devised a vending machine. However, his inventions were primarily toys, rather than practical machines.
Inca, Maya, and Aztec
The engineering skills of the Inca and Maya were great, even by today's standards. An example of this exceptional engineering is the use of pieces weighing upwards of one ton in their stonework placed together so that not even a blade can fit into the cracks. Inca villages used irrigation canals and drainage systems, making agriculture very efficient. While some claim that the Incas were the first inventors of hydroponics, their agricultural technology was still soil based, if advanced.
Though the Maya civilization did not incorporate metallurgy or wheel technology in their architectural constructions, they developed complex writing and astronomical systems, and created beautiful sculptural works in stone and flint. Like the Inca, the Maya also had command of fairly advanced agricultural and construction technology. The Maya are also responsible for creating the first pressurized water system in Mesoamerica, located in the Maya site of Palenque.
The main contribution of the Aztec rule was a system of communications between the conquered cities and the ubiquity of the ingenious agricultural technology of chinampas. In Mesoamerica, without draft animals for transport (nor, as a result, wheeled vehicles), the roads were designed for travel on foot, just as in the Inca and Mayan civilizations. The Aztec, subsequently to the Maya, inherited many of the technologies and intellectual advancements of their predecessors: the Olmec (see Native American inventions and innovations).
Medieval to early modern
One of the most significant development of the Medieval era was the development of economies where water and wind power were more significant than animal and human muscle power. Most water and wind power was used for milling grain. Water power was also used for blowing air in blast furnace, pulping rags for paper making and for felting wool. The Domesday Book recorded 5,624 water mills in Great Britain in 1086, being about one per thirty families.
East Asia
Indian subcontinent
Islamic world
The Muslim caliphates united in trade large areas that had previously traded little, including the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, the Iberian Peninsula, and parts of the Indian subcontinent. The science and technology of previous empires in the region, including the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Persian, Hellenistic and Roman empires, were inherited by the Muslim world, where Arabic replaced Syriac, Persian and Greek as the lingua franca of the region. Significant advances were made in the region during the Islamic Golden Age (8th-16th centuries).
The Arab Agricultural Revolution occurred during this period. It was a transformation in agriculture from the 8th to the 13th century in the Islamic region of the Old World. The economy established by Arab and other Muslim traders across the Old World enabled the diffusion of many crops and farming techniques throughout the Islamic world, as well as the adaptation of crops and techniques from and to regions outside it. Advances were made in animal husbandry, irrigation, and farming, with the help of new technology such as the windmill. These changes made agriculture much more productive, supporting population growth, urbanisation, and increased stratification of society.
Muslim engineers in the Islamic world made wide use of hydropower, along with early uses of tidal power, wind power, fossil fuels such as petroleum, and large factory complexes (tiraz in Arabic). A variety of industrial mills were employed in the Islamic world, including fulling mills, gristmills, hullers, sawmills, ship mills, stamp mills, steel mills, and tide mills. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Islamic world had these industrial mills in operation. Muslim engineers also employed water turbines and gears in mills and water-raising machines, and pioneered the use of dams as a source of water power, used to provide additional power to watermills and water-raising machines. Many of these technologies were transferred to medieval Europe.
Wind-powered machines used to grind grain and pump water, the windmill and wind pump, first appeared in what are now Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan by the 9th century. They were used to grind grains and draw up water, and used in the gristmilling and sugarcane industries. Sugar mills first appeared in the medieval Islamic world. They were first driven by watermills, and then windmills from the 9th and 10th centuries in what are today Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Crops such as almonds and citrus fruit were brought to Europe through Al-Andalus, and sugar cultivation was gradually adopted across Europe. Arab merchants dominated trade in the Indian Ocean until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century.
The Muslim world adopted papermaking from China. The earliest paper mills appeared in Abbasid-era Baghdad during 794–795. The knowledge of gunpowder was also transmitted from China via predominantly Islamic countries, where formulas for pure potassium nitrate were developed.
The spinning wheel was invented in the Islamic world by the early 11th century. It was later widely adopted in Europe, where it was adapted into the spinning jenny, a key device during the Industrial Revolution. The crankshaft was invented by Al-Jazari in 1206, and is central to modern machinery such as the steam engine, internal combustion engine and automatic controls. The camshaft was also first described by Al-Jazari in 1206.
Early programmable machines were also invented in the Muslim world. The first music sequencer, a programmable musical instrument, was an automated flute player invented by the Banu Musa brothers, described in their Book of Ingenious Devices, in the 9th century. In 1206, Al-Jazari invented programmable automata/robots. He described four automaton musicians, including two drummers operated by a programmable drum machine, where the drummer could be made to play different rhythms and different drum patterns. The castle clock, a hydropowered mechanical astronomical clock invented by Al-Jazari, was an early programmable analog computer.
In the Ottoman Empire, a practical impulse steam turbine was invented in 1551 by Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf in Ottoman Egypt. He described a method for rotating a spit by means of a jet of steam playing on rotary vanes around the periphery of a wheel. Known as a steam jack, a similar device for rotating a spit was also later described by John Wilkins in 1648.
Medieval Europe
While medieval technology has been long depicted as a step backwards in the evolution of Western technology, a generation of medievalists (like the American historian of science Lynn White) stressed from the 1940s onwards the innovative character of many medieval techniques. Genuine medieval contributions include for example mechanical clocks, spectacles and vertical windmills. Medieval ingenuity was also displayed in the invention of seemingly inconspicuous items like the watermark or the functional button. In navigation, the foundation to the subsequent age of exploration was laid by the introduction of pintle-and-gudgeon rudders, lateen sails, the dry compass, the horseshoe and the astrolabe.
Significant advances were also made in military technology with the development of plate armour, steel crossbows and cannon. The Middle Ages are perhaps best known for their architectural heritage: While the invention of the rib vault and pointed arch gave rise to the high rising Gothic style, the ubiquitous medieval fortifications gave the era the almost proverbial title of the 'age of castles'.
Papermaking, a 2nd-century Chinese technology, was carried to the Middle East when a group of Chinese papermakers were captured in the 8th century. Papermaking technology was spread to Europe by the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. A paper mill was established in Sicily in the 12th century. In Europe the fiber to make pulp for making paper was obtained from linen and cotton rags. Lynn Townsend White Jr. credited the spinning wheel with increasing the supply of rags, which led to cheap paper, which was a factor in the development of printing.
Renaissance technology
Before the development of modern engineering, mathematics was used by artisans and craftsmen, such as millwrights, clock makers, instrument makers and surveyors. Aside from these professions, universities were not believed to have had much practical significance to technology.
A standard reference for the state of mechanical arts during the Renaissance is given in the mining engineering treatise De re metallica (1556), which also contains sections on geology, mining and chemistry. De re metallica was the standard chemistry reference for the next 180 years. Among the water powered mechanical devices in use were ore stamping mills, forge hammers, blast bellows, and suction pumps.
Due to the casting of cannon, the blast furnace came into widespread use in France in the mid 15th century. The blast furnace had been used in China since the 4th century BC.
The invention of the movable cast metal type printing press, whose pressing mechanism was adapted from an olive screw press, (c. 1441) lead to a tremendous increase in the number of books and the number of titles published. Movable ceramic type had been used in China for a few centuries and woodblock printing dated back even further.
The era is marked by such profound technical advancements like linear perceptivity, double shell domes or Bastion fortresses. Note books of the Renaissance artist-engineers such as Taccola and Leonardo da Vinci give a deep insight into the mechanical technology then known and applied. Architects and engineers were inspired by the structures of Ancient Rome, and men like Brunelleschi created the large dome of Florence Cathedral as a result. He was awarded one of the first patents ever issued in order to protect an ingenious crane he designed to raise the large masonry stones to the top of the structure. Military technology developed rapidly with the widespread use of the cross-bow and ever more powerful artillery, as the city-states of Italy were usually in conflict with one another. Powerful families like the Medici were strong patrons of the arts and sciences. Renaissance science spawned the Scientific Revolution; science and technology began a cycle of mutual advancement.
Age of Exploration
An improved sailing ship, the (nau or carrack), enabled the Age of Exploration with the European colonization of the Americas, epitomized by Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. Pioneers like Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Magellan and Christopher Columbus explored the world in search of new trade routes for their goods and contacts with Africa, India and China to shorten the journey compared with traditional routes overland. They produced new maps and charts which enabled following mariners to explore further with greater confidence. Navigation was generally difficult, however, owing to the problem of longitude and the absence of accurate chronometers. European powers rediscovered the idea of the civil code, lost since the time of the Ancient Greeks.
Pre-Industrial Revolution
The stocking frame, which was invented in 1598, increased a knitter's number of knots per minute from 100 to 1000.
Mines were becoming increasingly deep and were expensive to drain with horse powered bucket and chain pumps and wooden piston pumps. Some mines used as many as 500 horses. Horse-powered pumps were replaced by the Savery steam pump (1698) and the Newcomen steam engine (1712).
Industrial Revolution (1760–1830s)
The revolution was driven by cheap energy in the form of coal, produced in ever-increasing amounts from the abundant resources of Britain. The British Industrial Revolution is characterized by developments in the areas of textile machinery, mining, metallurgy and transport the steam engine and the invention of machine tools.
Before invention of machinery to spin yarn and weave cloth, spinning was done using the spinning wheel and weaving was done on a hand-and-foot-operated loom. It took from three to five spinners to supply one weaver. The invention of the flying shuttle in 1733 doubled the output of a weaver, creating a shortage of spinners. The spinning frame for wool was invented in 1738. The spinning jenny, invented in 1764, was a machine that used multiple spinning wheels; however, it produced low quality thread. The water frame patented by Richard Arkwright in 1767, produced a better quality thread than the spinning jenny. The spinning mule, patented in 1779 by Samuel Crompton, produced a high quality thread. The power loom was invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1787.
In the mid 1750s, the steam engine was applied to the water power-constrained iron, copper and lead industries for powering blast bellows. These industries were located near the mines, some of which were using steam engines for mine pumping. Steam engines were too powerful for leather bellows, so cast iron blowing cylinders were developed in 1768. Steam powered blast furnaces achieved higher temperatures, allowing the use of more lime in iron blast furnace feed. (Lime rich slag was not free-flowing at the previously used temperatures.) With a sufficient lime ratio, sulfur from coal or coke fuel reacts with the slag so that the sulfur does not contaminate the iron. Coal and coke were cheaper and more abundant fuel. As a result, iron production rose significantly during the last decades of the 18th century. Coal converted to coke fueled higher temperature blast furnaces and produced cast iron in much larger amounts than before, allowing the creation of a range of structures such as The Iron Bridge. Cheap coal meant that industry was no longer constrained by water resources driving the mills, although it continued as a valuable source of power.
The steam engine helped drain the mines, so more coal reserves could be accessed, and the output of coal increased. The development of the high-pressure steam engine made locomotives possible, and a transport revolution followed. The steam engine which had existed since the early 18th century, was practically applied to both steamboat and railway transportation. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first purpose built railway line, opened in 1830, the Rocket locomotive of Robert Stephenson being one of its first working locomotives used.
Manufacture of ships' pulley blocks by all-metal machines at the Portsmouth Block Mills in 1803 instigated the age of sustained mass production. Machine tools used by engineers to manufacture parts began in the first decade of the century, notably by Richard Roberts and Joseph Whitworth. The development of interchangeable parts through what is now called the American system of manufacturing began in the firearms industry at the U.S Federal arsenals in the early 19th century, and became widely used by the end of the century.
Second Industrial Revolution (1860s–1914)
The 19th century saw astonishing developments in transportation, construction, manufacturing and communication technologies originating in Europe. After a recession at the end of the 1830s and a general slowdown in major inventions, the Second Industrial Revolution was a period of rapid innovation and industrialization that began in the 1860s or around 1870 and lasted until World War I. It included rapid development of chemical, electrical, petroleum, and steel technologies connected with highly structured technology research.
Telegraphy developed into a practical technology in the 19th century to help run the railways safely. Along with the development of telegraphy was the patenting of the first telephone. March 1876 marks the date that Alexander Graham Bell officially patented his version of an "electric telegraph". Although Bell is noted with the creation of the telephone, it is still debated about who actually developed the first working model.
Building on improvements in vacuum pumps and materials research, incandescent light bulbs became practical for general use in the late 1870s. Edison Electric Illuminating Company, a company founded by Thomas Edison with financial backing from Spencer Trask, built and managed the first electricity network. Electrification was rated the most important technical development of the 20th century as the foundational infrastructure for modern civilization. This invention had a profound effect on the workplace because factories could now have second and third shift workers.
Shoe production was mechanized during the mid 19th century. Mass production of sewing machines and agricultural machinery such as reapers occurred in the mid to late 19th century. Bicycles were mass-produced beginning in the 1880s.
Steam-powered factories became widespread, although the conversion from water power to steam occurred in England earlier than in the U.S. Ironclad warships were found in battle starting in the 1860s, and played a role in the opening of Japan and China to trade with the West.
20th century
Mass production brought automobiles and other high-tech goods to masses of consumers. Military research and development sped advances including electronic computing and jet engines. Radio and telephony greatly improved and spread to larger populations of users, though near-universal access would not be possible until mobile phones became affordable to developing world residents in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Energy and engine technology improvements included nuclear power, developed after the Manhattan project which heralded the new Atomic Age. Rocket development led to long range missiles and the first space age that lasted from the 1950s with the launch of Sputnik to the mid-1980s.
Electrification spread rapidly in the 20th century. At the beginning of the century electric power was for the most part only available to wealthy people in a few major cities, and by 2019, an estimated 87 percent of the world's population access to electricity.
Birth control also became widespread during the 20th century. Electron microscopes were very powerful by the late 1970s and genetic theory and knowledge were expanding, leading to developments in genetic engineering.
The first "test tube baby" Louise Brown was born in 1978, which led to the first successful gestational surrogacy pregnancy in 1985 and the first pregnancy by ICSI in 1991, which is the implanting of a single sperm into an egg. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis was first performed in late 1989 and led to successful births in July 1990. These procedures have become relatively common.
Computers were connected by means of local area, telecom and fiber optic networks, powered by the optical amplifier that ushered in the Information Age. This optical networking technology exploded the capacity of the Internet beginning in 1996 with the launch of the first high-capacity wave division multiplexing (WDM) system by Ciena Corp. WDM, as the common basis for telecom backbone networks, increased transmission capacity by orders of magnitude, thus enabling the mass commercialization and popularization of the Internet and its widespread impact on culture, economics, business, and society.
The commercial availability of the first portable cell phone in 1981 and the first pocket-sized phone in 1985, both developed by Comvik in Sweden, coupled with the first transmission of data over a cellular network by Vodafone (formerly Racal-Millicom) in 1992 were the breakthroughs that led directly to the form and function of smartphones today. By 2014, there were more cell phones in use than people on Earth and The Supreme Court has ruled that a mobile phone was a private part of a person. Providing consumers wireless access to each other and to the Internet, the mobile phone stimulated one of the most important technology revolutions in human history.
The Human Genome Project sequenced and identified all three billion chemical units in human DNA with a goal of finding the genetic roots of disease and developing treatments. The project became feasible due to two technical advances made during the late 1970s: gene mapping by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) markers and DNA sequencing. Sequencing was invented by Frederick Sanger and, separately, by Dr. Walter Gilbert. Gilbert also conceived of the Human Genome Project on May 27, 1985, and first publicly advocated it in August 1985 at the first International Conference on Genes and Computers in August 1985. The U.S. Federal Government sponsored Human Genome Project began October 1, 1990, and was declared complete in 2003.
The massive data analysis resources necessary for running transatlantic research programs such as the Human Genome Project and the Large Electron–Positron Collider led to a necessity for distributed communications, causing Internet protocols to be more widely adopted by researchers and also creating a justification for Tim Berners-Lee to create the World Wide Web.
Vaccination spread rapidly to the developing world from the 1980s onward due to many successful humanitarian initiatives, greatly reducing childhood mortality in many poor countries with limited medical resources.
The US National Academy of Engineering, by expert vote, established the following ranking of the most important technological developments of the 20th century:
Electrification
Automobile
Airplane
Water supply and Distribution
Electronics
Radio and Television
Mechanized agriculture
Computers
Telephone
Air Conditioning and Refrigeration
Highways
Spacecraft
Internet
Imaging technology
Household appliances
Health technology
Petroleum and Petrochemical technologies
Laser and Fiber Optics
Nuclear technology
Materials science
21st century
In the early 21st century, research is ongoing into quantum computers, gene therapy (introduced 1990), 3D printing (introduced 1981), nanotechnology (introduced 1985), bioengineering/biotechnology, nuclear technology, advanced materials (e.g., graphene), the scramjet and drones (along with railguns and high-energy laser beams for military uses), superconductivity, the memristor, and green technologies such as alternative fuels (e.g., fuel cells, self-driving electric and plug-in hybrid cars), augmented reality devices and wearable electronics, artificial intelligence, and more efficient and powerful LEDs, solar cells, integrated circuits, wireless power devices, engines, and batteries.
Large Hadron Collider, the largest single machine ever built, was constructed between 1998 and 2008. The understanding of particle physics is expected to expand with better instruments including larger particle accelerators such as the LHC and better neutrino detectors. Dark matter is sought via underground detectors and observatories like LIGO have started to detect gravitational waves.
Genetic engineering technology continues to improve, and the importance of epigenetics on development and inheritance has also become increasingly recognized.
New spaceflight technology and spacecraft are also being developed, like the Boeing's Orion and SpaceX's Dragon 2. New, more capable space telescopes, such as the James Webb Telescope, to be launched to orbit in late 2021, and the Colossus Telescope are being designed. The International Space Station was completed in the 2000s, and NASA and ESA plan a human mission to Mars in the 2030s. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) is an electro-magnetic thruster for spacecraft propulsion and is expected to be tested in 2015.
Breakthrough Initiatives, together with famed physicist Stephen Hawking, plan to send the first ever spacecraft to visit another star, which will consist of numerous super-light chips driven by Electric propulsion in the 2030s, and receive images of the Proxima Centauri system, along with, possibly, the potentially habitable planet Proxima Centauri b, by midcentury.
2004 saw the first crewed commercial spaceflight when Mike Melvill crossed the boundary of space on June 21, 2004.
By type
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Timeline of agriculture and food technology
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Surveying, instruments and maps, cartography, urban engineering, water supply and sewerage
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Energy (History, Use by humans, See also)
History of coal mining
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Materials science
Timeline of materials technology
Metallurgy
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Military history#Technological evolution
:Category:Military history – articles on history of specific technologies
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Related history
History of mathematics
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Outline of prehistoric technology
Science tourism
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Critique of technology
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High technology
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Simple machine
References
Further reading
Archibugi, Daniele, and Mario Planta. "Measuring technological change through patents and innovation surveys." Technovation 16.9 (1996): 451–519. online
Brush, S.G. (1988). The History of Modern Science: A Guide to the Second Scientific Revolution 1800–1950. Ames: Iowa State University Press.
Bunch, Bryan and Hellemans, Alexander, (1993) The Timetables of Technology, New York, Simon & Schuster.
Castro, J. Justin. "History of technology in nineteenth and twentieth century Latin America," History Compass 18#3 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12609
Derry, Thomas Kingston and Williams, Trevor I., (1993) A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900 New York: Dover Publications.
Greenwood, Jeremy (1997) The Third Industrial Revolution: Technology, Productivity and Income Inequality AEI Press.
Kranzberg, Melvin and Pursell, Carroll W. Jr., eds. (1967) Technology in Western Civilization: Technology in the Twentieth Century New York: Oxford University Press.
Landa, Manuel de, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, 2001.
Olby, R.C. et al., eds. (1996). Companion to the History of Modern Science. New York, Routledge.
Pacey, Arnold, (1974, 2ed 1994), The Maze of Ingenuity, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass,
Popplow, Marcus, Technology, EGO - European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2017, retrieved: March 8, 2021 (pdf).
Singer, C., Holmyard, E.J., Hall, A.R. and Williams, T.I. (eds.), (1954–59 and 1978) A History of Technology, 7 vols., Oxford, Clarendon Press. (Vols 6 and 7, 1978, ed. T. I. Williams)
External links
Electropaedia on the History of Technology
MIT 6.933J – The Structure of Engineering Revolutions. From MIT OpenCourseWare, course materials (graduate level) for a course on the history of technology through a Thomas Kuhn-ian lens.
Concept of Civilization Events. From Jaroslaw Kessler, a chronology of "civilizing events".
Ancient and Medieval City Technology
Society for the History of Technology
Giants of Science (website of the Institute of National Remembrance)
Technology
Technology
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doc-en-5916 | The association of Nazism with occultism occurs in a wide range of theories, speculation and research into the origins of Nazism and into Nazism's possible relationship with various occult traditions. Such ideas have flourished as a part of popular culture since at least the early 1940s (during World War II), and gained renewed popularity starting in the 1960s. Books on the topic include The Morning of the Magicians (1960) and The Spear of Destiny (1972). Nazism and occultism have also been featured in numerous documentaries, films, novels, comic books, and other fictional media. Notable examples include the film Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the Wolfenstein video game series, and the comic-book series Hellboy (1993–present).
Historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke analyzed the topic in his 1985 book The Occult Roots of Nazism in which he argued there were in fact links between some ideals of Ariosophy and Nazi ideology. He also analyzed the problems of the numerous popular occult historiography books written on the topic. Goodrick-Clarke sought to separate empiricism and sociology from the modern mythology of Nazi occultism that exists in many books which "have represented the Nazi phenomenon as the product of arcane and demonic influence." He evaluated most of these as "sensational and under-researched."
Ariosophy
Historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's 1985 book, The Occult Roots of Nazism, discusses the possibility of links between the ideas of the occult and those of Nazism. The book's main subject is the racist-occult movement of Ariosophy, a major strand of nationalist esotericism in Germany and Austria during the 1800s and early 1900s. He introduces his work as "an underground history, concerned with the myths, symbols, and fantasies that bear on the development of reactionary, authoritarian, and Nazi styles of thinking," arguing that "fantasies can achieve a causal status once they have been institutionalized in beliefs, values, and social groups."
In Goodrick-Clarke's view, the Ariosophist movement built on the earlier ideas of the Völkisch movement, a traditionalist, pan-German response to industrialization and urbanization, but it associated the problems of modernism specifically with the supposed misdeeds of Freemasonry, Kabbalism, and Rosicrucianism in order to "prove the modern world was based on false and evil principles". The Ariosophist "ideas and symbols filtered through to several anti-semitic and Nationalist groups in late Wilhelmina Germany, from which the early Nazi Party emerged in Munich after the First World War." He demonstrated links between two Ariosophists and Heinrich Himmler.
Modern mythology
There is a persistent idea, widely canvassed in a sensational genre of literature, that the Nazis were principally inspired and directed by occult agencies from 1920 to 1945.
Appendix E of Goodrick-Clarke's book is entitled The Modern Mythology of Nazi Occultism. In it, he gives a highly critical view of much of the popular literature on the topic. In his words, these books describe Hitler and the Nazis as being controlled by a "hidden power ... characterized either as a discarnate entity (e.g., 'black forces', 'invisible hierarchies', 'unknown superiors') or as a magical elite in a remote age or distant location". He referred to the writers of this genre as "crypto-historians". The works of the genre, he wrote,
In a new preface for the 2004 edition of The Occult Roots of Nazism, Goodrick-Clarke comments that in 1985, when his book first appeared, "Nazi 'black magic' was regarded as a topic for sensational authors in pursuit of strong sales."
In his 2002 work Black Sun, which was originally intended to trace the survival of occult Nazi themes in the postwar period, Goodrick-Clarke considered it necessary to readdress the topic. He devotes one chapter of the book to "the Nazi mysteries", as he terms the field of Nazi occultism there. Other reliable summaries of the development of the genre have been written by German historians. The German edition of The Occult Roots of Nazism includes an essay, "Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus" ("National Socialism and Occultism"), which traces the origins of the speculation about Nazi occultism back to publications from the late 1930s, and which was subsequently translated by Goodrick-Clarke into English. The German historian Michael Rißmann has also included a longer "excursus" about "Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus" in his acclaimed book on Adolf Hitler's religious beliefs.
According to Goodricke-Clarke, the speculation of Nazi occultism originated from "post-war fascination with Nazism". The "horrid fascination" of Nazism upon the Western mind emerges from the "uncanny interlude in modern history" that it presents to an observer a few decades later. The idolization of Hitler in Nazi Germany, its short-lived dominion on the European continent and Nazism's extreme antisemitism set it apart from other periods of modern history. "Outside a purely secular frame of reference, Nazism was felt to be the embodiment of evil in a modern twentieth-century regime, a monstrous pagan relapse in the Christian community of Europe."
By the early 1960s, "one could now clearly detect a mystique of Nazism." A sensationalistic and fanciful presentation of its figures and symbols, "shorn of all political and historical context", gained ground with thrillers, non-fiction books, and films and permeated "the milieu of popular culture."
Historiography concerning The Occult Roots of Nazism
The Occult Roots of Nazism is commended for specifically addressing the fanciful modern depictions of Nazi occultism, as well as carefully reflecting critical scholarly work that finds associations between Ariosophy and Nazi agency. As scholar Anna Bramwell writes, "One should not be deceived by the title into thinking that it belongs to the 'modern mythology of Nazi occultism', a world of salacious fantasy convincingly dismembered by the author in an Appendix," referring to the various written, depicted, and produced material that delves into Nazi occultism without providing any reliable or relevant evidence. Instead, it is through Goodrick-Clarke's work that several scholarly criticisms addressing occult relevance in conjunction with Ariosophist practices arise.
Historians like Martyn Housden and Jeremy Noakes commend Goodrick-Clarke for addressing the relationship between Ariosophic ideologies rooted in certain Germanic cultures and the actual agency of Nazi hierarchy; the problem, as Housden remarks, lies in the efficacy of these Ariosophic practices. As he remarks, "The true value of this study, therefore, lies in its painstaking elucidation of an intrinsically fascinating subculture which helped colour rather than cause aspects of Nazism. In this context, it also leaves us pondering a central issue: why on earth were Austrian and German occultists, just like the Nazi leadership, quite so susceptible to, indeed obsessed by, specifically aggressive racist beliefs anyway?" Noakes continues this general thought by concluding, "[Goodrick-Clarke] provides not only a definitive account of the influence of Ariosophy on Nazism, a subject which is prone to sensationalism, but also fascinating insights into the intellectual climate of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century." These reviews reflect the greatest dilemmas in Nazi occultist scholarship; the discernment between actual efficacy of possible occult practices by Nazi leaders, purpose of these practices, and modern notions and applications of occultism today largely impact the appropriate scholarship in general in making connections between plausible Nazi Ariosophic practices and blatant popular myth.
The linkages Goodrick-Clarke makes concerning Ariosophy and German society are further detailed in Peter Merkl's Political Violence under the Swastika, in which "pre-1933 Nazis", various NSDAP members, volunteered to write their memoirs and recollections about the rise of the Nazi Party in order to provide a coherent, statistical analysis of the motivations and ideals these early members hoped to pursue in German politics. From the findings, Merkl has found, through statistical evidence, that there were aspects of ideology within German society that favored intense German nationalism, ranging from what was considered to be a "German Romantic", one who was "beholden to the cultural and historical traditions of old Germany..." to someone classified as a part of an alleged "Nordic/Hitler Cult", one who followed Voelkisch (traditional, antisemitic) beliefs. To further prove the point, Merkl discovered that of those willing to submit their testimonies, "Protestants tended to be German Romantics, Catholics to be anti-Semites, superpatriots, and solidarists. Areas of religious homogeneity were particularly high in anti-Semitism or in the Nordic-German cult," of which members of both religious groups were prone to "Judenkoller", an alleged sudden and violent sickness that would manifest either in blatant hatred or hysteria at being within proximity of Jews. Coincidentally, Merkl mentions a relationship to this Nordic/German-agrarian cult in relation to the 19th century to a "crypto-Nazi tradition", despite being written ten years prior to The Occult Roots of Nazism.
Some of this modern mythology even touches Goodrick-Clarke's topic directly. The rumor that Adolf Hitler had encountered the Austrian monk and antisemitic publicist Lanz von Liebenfels, already at the age of 8, at Heilgenkreuz abbey, goes back to Les mystiques du soleil (1971) by Michel-Jean Angbert. "This episode is wholly imaginary."
Nevertheless, Michel-Jean Angbert and the other authors discussed by Goodrick-Clarke present their accounts as real, so that this modern mythology has led to several legends that resemble conspiracy theories, concerning, for example, the Vril Society or rumours about Karl Haushofer's connection to the occult. The most influential books were Trevor Ravenscroft's The Spear of Destiny and The Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels and Bergier.
Claims
One of the earliest claims of Nazi occultism can be found in Lewis Spence's book Occult Causes of the Present War (1940). According to Spence, Alfred Rosenberg and his book The Myth of the Twentieth Century were responsible for promoting pagan, occult and anti-Christian ideas that motivated the Nazi party.
Demonic possession of Hitler
For a demonic influence on Hitler, Hermann Rauschning's Hitler Speaks is brought forward as a source. However, most modern scholars do not consider Rauschning reliable. (As Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke summarises, "recent scholarship has almost certainly proved that Rauschning's conversations were mostly invented".)
Similarly to Rauschning, August Kubizek, one of Hitler's closest friends since childhood, claims that Hitler—17 years old at the time—once spoke to him of "returning Germany to its former glory"; of this comment August said, "It was as if another being spoke out of his body, and moved him as much as it did me."
An article "Hitler's Forgotten Library" by Timothy Ryback, published in The Atlantic (May 2003), mentions a book from Hitler's private library authored by Ernst Schertel. Schertel, whose interests were flagellation, dance, occultism, nudism and BDSM, had also been active as an activist for sexual liberation before 1933. He had been imprisoned in Nazi Germany for seven months and his doctoral degree was revoked. He is supposed to have sent a dedicated copy of his 1923 book Magic: History, Theory and Practice to Hitler some time in the mid-1920s. Hitler is said to have marked extensive passages, including one which reads "He who does not have the demonic seed within himself will never give birth to a magical world".
Theosophist Alice A. Bailey stated during World War II that Adolf Hitler was possessed by what she called the Dark Forces. Her follower Benjamin Creme has stated that through Hitler (and a group of equally evil men around him in Nazi Germany, together with a group of militarists in Japan and a further group around Mussolini in Italy) was released the energies of the Antichrist, which, according to theosophical teachings is not an individual person but forces of destruction.
According to James Herbert Brennan in his book Occult Reich, Hitler's mentor, Dietrich Eckhart (to whom Hitler dedicates Mein Kampf), wrote to a friend of his in 1923: "Follow Hitler! He will dance, but it is I who have called the tune. We have given him the 'means of communication' with Them. Do not mourn for me; I shall have influenced history more than any other German."
New World Order
Conspiracy theorists "frequently identify German National Socialism among other things as a precursor of the New World Order". With regard to Hitler's later ambition of imposing the Nazi regime throughout Europe, Nazi propaganda used the term Neuordnung (often poorly translated as "the New Order", while actually referring to the "re-structurization" of state borders on the European map and the resulting post-war economic hegemony of Greater Germany), so one could probably say that the Nazis pursued a new world order in terms of politics. But the claim that Hitler and the Thule Society conspired to create a New World Order (a conspiracy theory, put forward on some webpages) is completely unfounded.
Aleister Crowley
There are also unverifiable rumours that the occultist Aleister Crowley sought to contact Hitler during World War II. Despite several allegations and speculations to the contrary, there is no evidence of such an encounter. In 1991, John Symonds, one of Crowley's literary executors, published a book: The Medusa's Head or Conversations between Aleister Crowley and Adolf Hitler, which has definitively been shown to be literary fiction. That the edition of this book was limited to 350 also contributed to the mystery surrounding the topic. Mention of a contact between Crowley and Hitler—without any sources or evidence—is also made in a letter from René Guénon to Julius Evola dated October 29, 1949, which later reached a broader audience.
Erik Jan Hanussen
The documentary Hitler and the Occult describes how Hitler "seemed endowed with even greater authority and charisma" after he had resumed public speaking in March 1927. The narrator states that "this may have been due to the influence" of the clairvoyant performer and publicist Erik Jan Hanussen. "Hanussen helped Hitler perfect a series of exaggerated poses," useful for speaking before a huge audience. The documentary then interviews Dusty Sklar about the contact between Hitler and Hanussen, and the narrator makes the statement about "occult techniques of mind control and crowd domination."
Whether Hitler had met Hanussen at all is not certain. That he even encountered him before March 1927 is not confirmed by other sources about Hanussen. In the late 1920s to early 1930s Hanussen made political predictions in his own newspaper, Hanussens Bunte Wochenschau, that gradually started to favour Hitler, but until late 1932 these predictions varied. In 1929, Hanussen predicted, for example, that Wilhelm II would return to Germany in 1930 and that the problem of unemployment would be solved in 1931.
Nazi mysticism, occultism, and science fiction
Nazi mysticism in German culture is further expanded upon within Manfred Nagl's article "SF (Science Fiction), Occult Sciences, and Nazi Myths", published in the journal Science Fiction Studies. In it, Nagl writes that the racial narratives described in contemporary German Science Fiction stories, like The Last Queen of Atlantis, by Edmund Kiss, provide further notions of racial superiority under the auspices of Ariosophy, Aryanism, and alleged historic racial Mysticism, suggesting that writings associated with possible Occultism, Ariosophy, or Aryanism were products intended to influence and justify in a socio-political manner, rather than simply establish cultural heritage. The stories themselves dealt with "...heroes, charismatic leader types, (who) have been chosen by fate—with the resources of a sophisticated and extremely powerful technology". Nagl considers science fiction pieces like Atlantis further fueled the violent persuasiveness of Nazi leaders, such as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, as further justification for a "Nazi elite (envisioning) for itself in occupied East European territories". This, in turn, allegedly propagated public support of Nazi ideology, summated by Nagl as "a tremendous turning back of culture, away from the age of reason and consciousness, toward the age of a 'sleepwalking certainty', the age of supra-rational magic".
Crypto-historic books
In the essay that is included in the German edition of The Occult Roots..., H. T. Hakl, an Austrian publisher of esoteric works, traces the origins of the speculation about Nazism and Occultism back to several works from the early 1940s. His research was also published in a short book, Unknown sources: National Socialism and the Occult, translated by Goodrick-Clarke. Already in 1933 a pseudonymous Kurt van Emsen described Hitler as a "demonic personality", but his work was soon forgotten. The first allusions that Hitler was directed by occult forces which were taken up by the later authors came from French Christian esotericist René Kopp. In two articles published in the monthly esoteric journal Le Chariot from June 1934 and April 1939, he seeks to trace the source of Hitler's power to supernatural forces. The second article was titled: "L'Enigme du Hitler". In other French esoteric journals of the 1930s, Hakl could not find similar hints. In 1939 another French author, Edouard Saby, published a book: Hitler et les Forces Occultes. Saby already mentions Hanussen and Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln. Hakl even hints that Edouard Saby would have the copyright on the myth of Nazi occultism. However, another significant book from 1939 is better known: Hermann Rauschning's Hitler Speaks. There it is said (in the chapter "Black and White Magic"), that "Hitler surrendered himself to forces that carried him away. ... He turned himself over to a spell, which can, with good reason and not simply in a figurative analogy, be described as demonic magic." The chapter "Hitler in private" is even more dramatic, and was left out in the German edition from 1940.
Goodrick-Clarke examines several pseudo-historic "books written about Nazi occultism between 1960 and 1975", that "were typically sensational and under-researched". He terms this genre "crypto-history", as its defining element and "final point of explanatory reference is an agent which has remained concealed to previous historians of National Socialism". Characteristic tendencies of this literature include: (1) "a complete ignorance of primary sources" and (2) the repetition of "inaccuracies and wild claims", without the attempt being made to confirm even "wholly spurious 'facts'". Books debunked in Appendix E of The Occult Roots of Nazism are:
Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, 1960, The Morning of the Magicians
Dietrich Bronder, 1964, Bevor Hitler kam
Trevor Ravenscroft, 1972, The Spear of Destiny
Michel-Jean Angbert, 1971, Les mystiques du soleil
J. H. Brennan, 1974, The Occult Reich
Otto Rahn, 1937, Luzifers Hofgesind, eine Reise zu den guten Geistern Europas (Lucifer's Court: A Heretic's Journey in Search of the Light Bringers).
These books are only mentioned in the Appendix. Otherwise the whole book by Goodrick-Clarke does without any reference to this kind of literature; it uses other sources. This literature is not reliable; however, books published after the emergence of The Occult Roots of Nazism continue to repeat claims that have been proven false:
Wulf Schwarzwaller, 1988, The Unknown Hitler
Alan Baker, 2000, Invisible Eagle. The History of Nazi Occultism
Documentaries
More than 60 years after the end of the Third Reich, Nazism and Adolf Hitler have become a recurring subject in history documentaries. Among these documentaries, there are several that focus especially on the potential relations between Nazism and occultism, such as the History Channel's documentary Hitler and the Occult. As evidence of Hitler's "occult power" this documentary offers, for example, the infamous statement by Joachim von Ribbentrop of his continued subservience to Hitler at the Nuremberg Trials. After the author Dusty Sklar has pointed out that Hitler's suicide happened at the night of April 30/May 1, which is Walpurgis Night, the narrator continues: "With Hitler gone, it was as if a spell had been broken". A much more plausible reason for Hitler's suicide (that does not involve the paranormal) is that the Russians had already closed to within several hundred meters of Hitler's bunker and he did not want to be captured alive.
From the perspective of academic history, these documentaries on Nazism, if ever commented, are seen as problematic because they do not contribute to an actual understanding of the problems that arise in the study of Nazism and Neo-Nazism. Without referring to a specific documentary Mattias Gardell, a historian who studies contemporary separatist groups, writes:
Hitler and the Occult includes a scene in which Hitler is seen as speaking at a huge mass meeting. While Hitler's speech is not translated, the narrator talks about the German occultist and stage mentalist Erik Jan Hanussen: "Occultists believe, Hanussen may also have imparted occult techniques of mind control and crowd domination on Hitler" (see below). Historians have dismissed myths such as those about Erik Jan Hanussen.
Ernst Schäfer's expedition to Tibet
At least one documentary, Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail, includes footage from the 1939 German expedition to Tibet. The documentary describes it as "the most ambitious expedition" of the SS. This original video material was made accessible again by Marco Dolcetta in his series Il Nazismo Esoterico in 1994. An interview that Dolcetta conducted with Schäfer does not support the theories of Nazi occultism, neither does Reinhard Greve's 1995 article Tibetforschung im SS Ahnenerbe (Tibet Research Within the SS Ahnenerbe), although the latter does mention the occult thesis. Hakl comments that Greve should have emphasized more strongly the unreliability of authors like Bergier and Pauwels or Angbert. Ernst Schäfer's expedition report explicitly remarks on the "worthless goings-on" by "a whole army of quacksalvers" concerning Asia and especially Tibet.
List of documentaries
German
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Hitler – Ein Film aus Deutschland (Hitler, A Film From Germany) (1977). Originally presented on German television, this is a seven-hour work in four parts: The Grail; A German Dream; The End Of Winter's Tale; We, Children Of Hell. The director uses documentary clips, photographic backgrounds, puppets, theatrical stages, and other elements from almost all the visual arts, with the "actors" addressing directly the audience/camera, in order to approach and expand on this most taboo subject of European history of the 20th century.
Schwarze Sonne (2001) documentary by Rüdiger Sünner. Sünner also produced a book to accompany this documentary.
English
The Occult History of the Third Reich (1991), narrated by Patrick Allen, directed by Dave Flitton.
Adolf Hitler
The SS: Blood and Soil
The Enigma of the Swastika
Himmler the Mystic
Unsolved Mysteries of World War II (1992): Occult & Secrets, also known as Volume 3 in the series. (Different releases contain different episodes.)
Hitler's Secret Weapons
The Riddle of Rudolph Hess
Himmler's Castle: Wewelsburg
The Last Days of Hitler
Decision At Dunkirk
Stalin's Secret Armies
In 1994, Channel 4 aired a Michael Wood documentary entitled Hitler's Search for the Holy Grail, as part of its "Secret History" series.
Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy (1998), directed by Tracy Atkinson and Joan Baran, narrated by Malcolm McDowell.
Decoding the Past episode: The Nazi Prophecies (2005) by The History Channel.
See also
Adolf Hitler in popular culture
Ariosophy
Ahnenerbe
Black Sun (symbol)
Esoteric Nazism
Esotericism in Germany and Austria
German Christians (movement)
Julleuchter
Magic: History, Theory and Practice
Nazi archaeology
Nazi UFOs
Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy
The Occult History of the Third Reich
Positive Christianity
Protestant Reich Church
Religion in Nazi Germany
Religious aspects of Nazism
Religious views of Adolf Hitler
Walter Johannes Stein
Notes
Bibliography
Further reading
Carrie B. Dohe. Jung's Wandering Archetype: Race and Religion in Analytical Psychology. London: Routledge, 2016
Michael Rißmann. 2001. Hitlers Gott. Vorsehungsglaube und Sendungsbewußtsein des deutschen Diktators. . esp. pp. 137–172; Zürich, Munich. Pendo
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. 1985. The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890–1935. Wellingborough, England: The Aquarian Press. . (Several reprints.) Expanded with a new Preface, 2004, I.B. Tauris & Co.
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke. 2002. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. New York University Press. . (Paperback, 2003. )
Hans Thomas Hakl. 1997: Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus. In: Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke: Die okkulten Wurzeln des Nationalsozialismus. Graz, Austria: Stocker (German edition of The Occult Roots of Nazism)
Hans Thomas Hakl. National Socialism and the Occult, Edmonds, WA, Holmes Publishing Group, 2000
Florian Evers. 2011. Vexierbilder des Holocaust. LIT Verlag Münster. .
Julian Strube. 2012. Die Erfindung des esoterischen Nationalsozialismus im Zeichen der Schwarzen Sonne. In: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft, 20(2): 223–268.
Igor Barinov. 2013. Tabu i mify Tret'ego Reikha (Taboo and Myths of the Third Reich). Moscow, Pskov. .
Eric Kurlander. Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017
Other references
Bruno Frei. 1980. Der Hellseher: Leben und Sterben des Erik Jan Hanussen. ed.: Antonia Gruneberg. Cologne: Prometh
Mattias Gardell. 2003. Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
External links
The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke – Short article at www.lapismagazine.org.
Magic Realism – A book review by William Main of The Occult Roots of Nazism, taken from the December 1994 issue of Fidelity magazine.
Nationalsozialismus und Okkultismus? Die Thule-Gesellschaft Article on an information page from the Swiss Reformed Church.
NARA Research Room: Captured German and Related Records on Microform in the National Archives: Captured German Records Filmed at Berlin (American Historical Association, 1960). Microfilm Publication T580. 1,002 rolls, including among, others, files of the Ahnenerbe and the Nachlass of Walter Darré.
Hitler and the Occult: Nazism, Reincarnation, and Rock Culture.
White Blood, White Gods: An Assessment of Racialist Paganism in the United States – A Senior Honors Thesis by Damon Berry in June 2006.
"Hitler and the Secret Societies" by Julius Evola (from Il Conciliatore, no. 10, 1971; translated from the German edition in Deutsche Stimme, no. 8, 1998).
Von Aldebaran bis Vril. Interview über esoterischen Neonazismus Interview, Religionswissenschaftlicher Medien- und Informationsdienst, April 2013.
Nazism and occultism
Germanic neopaganism
Heinrich Himmler
Pseudohistory
Nazism in popular culture | en |
doc-en-17225 | Danish (; , ) is a North Germanic language spoken by about six million people, principally in Denmark, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and in the region of Southern Schleswig in northern Germany, where it has minority language status. Also, minor Danish-speaking communities are found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Due to immigration from Denmark, about 10% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their first language.
Along with the other North Germanic languages, Danish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples who lived in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. Danish, together with Swedish, derives from the East Norse dialect group, while the Middle Norwegian language (before the influence of Danish) and Norwegian Bokmål are classified as West Norse along with Faroese and Icelandic. A more recent classification based on mutual intelligibility separates modern spoken Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish as "mainland Scandinavian", while Icelandic and Faroese are classified as "insular Scandinavian". Although the written languages are compatible, spoken Danish is distinctly different from Norwegian and Swedish and thus the degree of mutual intelligibility with either is variable between regions and speakers.
Until the 16th century, Danish was a continuum of dialects spoken from Schleswig to Scania with no standard variety or spelling conventions. With the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of the printing press, a standard language was developed which was based on the educated Copenhagen dialect. It spread through use in the education system and administration, though German and Latin continued to be the most important written languages well into the 17th century. Following the loss of territory to Germany and Sweden, a nationalist movement adopted the language as a token of Danish identity, and the language experienced a strong surge in use and popularity, with major works of literature produced in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, traditional Danish dialects have almost disappeared, though regional variants of the standard language exist. The main differences in language are between generations, with youth language being particularly innovative.
Danish has a very large vowel inventory consisting of 27 phonemically distinctive vowels, and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon , a kind of laryngeal phonation type. Due to the many pronunciation differences that set Danish apart from its neighboring languages, particularly the vowels, difficult prosody and "weakly" pronounced consonants, it is sometimes considered to be a "difficult language to learn, acquire and understand", and some evidence shows that children are slower to acquire the phonological distinctions of Danish compared to other languages. The grammar is moderately inflective with strong (irregular) and weak (regular) conjugations and inflections. Nouns and demonstrative pronouns distinguish common and neutral gender. Like English, Danish only has remnants of a former case system, particularly in the pronouns. Unlike English, it has lost all person marking on verbs. Its word order is V2, with the finite verb always occupying the second slot in the sentence.
Classification
Danish is a Germanic language of the North Germanic branch. Other names for this group are the Nordic or Scandinavian languages. Along with Swedish, Danish descends from the Eastern dialects of the Old Norse language; Danish and Swedish are also classified as East Scandinavian or East Nordic languages.
Scandinavian languages are often considered a dialect continuum, where no sharp dividing lines are seen between the different vernacular languages.
Like Norwegian and Swedish, Danish was significantly influenced by Low German in the Middle Ages, and has been influenced by English since the turn of the 20th century.
Danish itself can be divided into three main dialect areas: West Danish (Jutlandic), Insular Danish (including the standard variety), and East Danish (including Bornholmian and Scanian). Under the view that Scandinavian is a dialect continuum, East Danish can be considered intermediary between Danish and Swedish, while Scanian can be considered a Swedified East Danish dialect, and Bornholmsk is its closest relative. Contemporary Scanian is fully mutually intelligible with Swedish and less so with Danish since it shares a standardized vocabulary and less distinct pronunciations with the rest of Sweden than in the past. Blekinge and Halland, the two other provinces further away from Copenhagen that transitioned to Sweden in the 17th century speak dialects more similar to standard Swedish.
Vocabulary
About 2 000 of Danish non-compound words are derived from the Old Norse language, and ultimately from Proto Indo-European. Of these 2 000 words, 1 200 are nouns, 500 are verbs, 180 are adjectives and the rest belong to other word classes. Danish has also absorbed a large number of loan words, most of which were borrowed from Middle Low German in the late medieval period. Out of the 500 most frequently used words in Danish, 100 are medieval loans from Middle Low German, as Low German is the other official language of Denmark–Norway. In the 17th and 18th centuries, standard German and French superseded Low German influence and in the 20th century, English became the main supplier of loan words, especially after World War II. Although many old Nordic words remain, some were replaced with borrowed synonyms, as can be seen with (to eat) which became less common when the Low German came into fashion. As well as loan words, new words are freely formed by compounding existing words. In standard texts of contemporary Danish, Middle Low German loans account for about 16–17% of the vocabulary, Graeco-Latin-loans 4–8%, French 2–4% and English about 1%.
Danish and English are both Germanic languages. Danish is a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse, and English is a West Germanic language descended from Old English. Old Norse exerted a strong influence on Old English in the early medieval period. To see their shared Germanic heritage, one merely has to note the many common words that are very similar in the two languages. For example, commonly used Danish nouns and prepositions such as , , , , , , , and are easily recognizable in their written form to English speakers. Similarly, some other words are almost identical to their Scots equivalents, e.g., (Scots kirk, i.e., 'church') or (Scots bairn, i.e. 'child'). In addition, the word , meaning "village" or "town", occurs in many English place-names, such as Whitby and Selby, as remnants of the Viking occupation. During the latter period, English adopted "are", the third person plural form of the verb "to be", as well as the corresponding personal pronoun form "they" from contemporary Old Norse.
Mutual intelligibility
Danish is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish. Proficient speakers of any of the three languages can often understand the others fairly well, though studies have shown that the mutual intelligibility is asymmetric: speakers of Norwegian generally understand both Danish and Swedish far better than Swedes or Danes understand each other. Both Swedes and Danes also understand Norwegian better than they understand each other's languages. The reason Norwegian occupies a middle position in terms of intelligibility is because of its shared border with Sweden resulting in a similarity in pronunciation, combined with the long tradition of having Danish as a written language which has led to similarities in vocabulary. Among younger Danes, Copenhageners are worse at understanding Swedish than Danes from the provinces. In general, younger Danes are not as good at understanding the neighboring languages as are Norwegian and Swedish youths.
History
The Danish philologist Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen divided the history of Danish into a period from 800 AD to 1525 to be "Old Danish", which he subdivided into "Runic Danish" (800-1100), Early Middle Danish (1100–1350) and Late Middle Danish (1350–1525).
Runic Danish
By the eighth century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse.
This language was generally called the "Danish tongue" (), or "Norse language" (). Norse was written in the runic alphabet, first with the elder futhark and from the 9th century with the younger futhark.
From the seventh century, the common Norse language began to undergo changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, resulting in the appearance of two dialect areas, Old West Norse (Norway and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). Most of the changes separating East Norse from West Norse started as innovations in Denmark, that spread through Scania into Sweden and by maritime contact to southern Norway. A change that separated Old East Norse (Runic Swedish/Danish) from Old West Norse was the change of the diphthong æi (Old West Norse ei) to the monophthong e, as in to . This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read and the later . Also, a change of au as in into ø as in occurred. This change is shown in runic inscriptions as a change from into . Moreover, the (Old West Norse ) diphthong changed into , as well, as in the Old Norse word for "island". This monophthongization started in Jutland and spread eastward, having spread throughout Denmark and most of Sweden by 1100.
Through Danish conquest, Old East Norse was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England. Many words derived from Norse, such as "gate" () for street, still survive in Yorkshire, the East Midlands and East Anglia, and parts of eastern England colonized by Danish Vikings. The city of York was once the Viking settlement of Jorvik. Several other English words derive from Old East Norse, for example "knife" (), "husband" (), and "egg" (). The suffix "-by" for 'town' is common in place names in Yorkshire and the east Midlands, for example Selby, Whitby, Derby, and Grimsby. The word "dale" meaning valley is common in Yorkshire and Derbyshire placenames.
Old and Middle dialects
In the medieval period, Danish emerged as a separate language from Swedish. The main written language was Latin, and the few Danish-language texts preserved from this period are written in the Latin alphabet, although the runic alphabet seems to have lingered in popular usage in some areas. The main text types written in this period are laws, which were formulated in the vernacular language to be accessible also to those who were not Latinate. The Jutlandic Law and Scanian Law were written in vernacular Danish in the early 13th century. Beginning in 1350, Danish began to be used as a language of administration, and new types of literature began to be written in the language, such as royal letters and testaments. The orthography in this period was not standardized nor was the spoken language, and the regional laws demonstrate the dialectal differences between the regions in which they were written.
Throughout this period, Danish was in contact with Low German, and many Low German loan words were introduced in this period. With the Protestant Reformation in 1536, Danish also became the language of religion, which sparked a new interest in using Danish as a literary language. Also in this period, Danish began to take on the linguistic traits that differentiate it from Swedish and Norwegian, such as the , the voicing of many stop consonants, and the weakening of many final vowels to /e/.
The first printed book in Danish dates from 1495, the (Rhyming Chronicle), a history book told in rhymed verses. The first complete translation of the Bible in Danish, the Bible of Christian II translated by Christiern Pedersen, was published in 1550. Pedersen's orthographic choices set the de facto standard for subsequent writing in Danish.
Early Modern
Following the first Bible translation, the development of Danish as a written language, as a language of religion, administration, and public discourse accelerated. In the second half of the 17th century, grammarians elaborated grammars of Danish, first among them Rasmus Bartholin's 1657 Latin grammar ; then Laurids Olufsen Kock's 1660 grammar of the Zealand dialect ; and in 1685 the first Danish grammar written in Danish, ("The Art of the Danish Language") by Peder Syv. Major authors from this period are Thomas Kingo, poet and psalmist, and Leonora Christina Ulfeldt, whose novel (Remembered Woes) is considered a literary masterpiece by scholars. Orthography was still not standardized and the principles for doing so were vigorously discussed among Danish philologists. The grammar of Jens Pedersen Høysgaard was the first to give a detailed analysis of Danish phonology and prosody, including a description of the . In this period, scholars were also discussing whether it was best to "write as one speaks" or to "speak as one writes", including whether archaic grammatical forms that had fallen out of use in the vernacular, such as the plural form of verbs, should be conserved in writing (i.e. "he is" vs. "they are").
The East Danish provinces were lost to Sweden after the Second Treaty of Brömsebro (1645) after which they were gradually Swedified; just as Norway was politically severed from Denmark, beginning also a gradual end of Danish influence on Norwegian (influence through the shared written standard language remained). With the introduction of absolutism in 1660, the Danish state was further integrated, and the language of the Danish chancellery, a Zealandic variety with German and French influence, became the de facto official standard language, especially in writing—this was the original so-called ("Danish of the Realm"). Also, beginning in the mid-18th century, the , the uvular R sound (), began spreading through Denmark, likely through influence from Parisian French and German. It affected all of the areas where Danish had been influential, including all of Denmark, Southern Sweden, and coastal southern Norway.
In the 18th century, Danish philology was advanced by Rasmus Rask, who pioneered the disciplines of comparative and historical linguistics, and wrote the first English-language grammar of Danish. Literary Danish continued to develop with the works of Ludvig Holberg, whose plays and historical and scientific works laid the foundation for the Danish literary canon. With the Danish colonization of Greenland by Hans Egede, Danish became the administrative and religious language there, while Iceland and the Faroe Islands had the status of Danish colonies with Danish as an official language until the mid-20th century.
Standardized national language
Following the loss of Schleswig to Germany, a sharp influx of German speakers moved into the area, eventually outnumbering the Danish speakers. The political loss of territory sparked a period of intense nationalism in Denmark, coinciding with the so-called "Golden Age" of Danish culture. Authors such as N.F.S. Grundtvig emphasized the role of language in creating national belonging. Some of the most cherished Danish-language authors of this period are existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and prolific fairy tale author Hans Christian Andersen. The influence of popular literary role models, together with increased requirements of education did much to strengthen the Danish language, and also started a period of homogenization, whereby the Copenhagen standard language gradually displaced the regional vernacular languages. In 1911 Danish was spoken by nearly 5 million people, mainly in Denmark and Iceland. After the Schleswig referendum in 1920, a number of Danes remained as a minority within German territories. Throughout the 19th century, Danes emigrated, establishing small expatriate communities in the Americas, particularly in the US, Canada, and Argentina, where memory and some use of Danish remains today.
After the occupation of Denmark by Germany in World War II, the 1948 orthography reform dropped the German-influenced rule of capitalizing nouns, and introduced the letter Å/å. Three 20th-century Danish authors have become Nobel Prize laureates in Literature: Karl Gjellerup and Henrik Pontoppidan (joint recipients in 1917) and Johannes V. Jensen (awarded 1944).
With the exclusive use of , the High Copenhagen Standard, in national broadcasting, the traditional dialects came under increased pressure. In the 20th century, they have almost disappeared, and the standard language has extended throughout the country. Minor regional pronunciation variation of the standard language, sometimes called ("regional languages") remain, and are in some cases vital. Today, the major varieties of Standard Danish are High Copenhagen Standard, associated with elderly, well to-do, and well educated people of the capital, and low Copenhagen speech traditionally associated with the working class, but today adopted as the prestige variety of the younger generations. Also, in the 21st century, the influence of immigration has had linguistic consequences, such as the emergence of a so-called multiethnolect in the urban areas, an immigrant Danish variety (also known as ), combining elements of different immigrant languages such as Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish, as well as English and Danish.
Geographic distribution
Danish is the national language of Denmark and one of two official languages of the Faroe Islands (alongside Faroese). Until 2009, it had also been one of two official languages of Greenland (alongside Greenlandic). Danish is widely spoken in Greenland now as lingua franca, and an unknown portion of the native Greenlandic population has Danish as their first language; a large percentage of the native Greenlandic population speaks Danish as a second language since its introduction into the education system as a compulsory language in 1928. Danish was an official language in Iceland until 1944, but is today still widely used and is a mandatory subject in school taught as a second foreign language after English. Iceland was a territory ruled by Denmark–Norway, one of whose official languages was Danish.
In addition, a noticeable community of Danish speakers is in Southern Schleswig, the portion of Germany bordering Denmark, where it is an officially recognized regional language, just as German is north of the border. Furthermore, Danish is one of the official languages of the European Union and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council. Under the Nordic Language Convention, Danish-speaking citizens of the Nordic countries have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for any interpretation or translation costs.
The more widespread of the two varieties of written Norwegian, , is very close to Danish, because standard Danish was used as the de facto administrative language until 1814 and one of the official languages of Denmark–Norway. is based on Danish, unlike the other variety of Norwegian, , which is based on the Norwegian dialects, with Old Norwegian as an important reference point.
No law stipulates an official language for Denmark, making Danish the de facto language only. The Code of Civil Procedure does, however, lay down Danish as the language of the courts. Since 1997, public authorities have been obliged to observe the official spelling by way of the Orthography Law. In the 21st century, discussions have been held regarding creating a language law that would make Danish the official language of Denmark.
Dialects
Standard Danish () is the language based on dialects spoken in and around the capital, Copenhagen. Unlike Swedish and Norwegian, Danish does not have more than one regional speech norm. More than 25% of all Danish speakers live in the metropolitan area of the capital, and most government agencies, institutions, and major businesses keep their main offices in Copenhagen, which has resulted in a very homogeneous national speech norm.
Danish dialects can be divided into the traditional dialects, which differ from modern Standard Danish in both phonology and grammar, and the Danish accents or regional languages, which are local varieties of the Standard language distinguished mostly by pronunciation and local vocabulary colored by traditional dialects. Traditional dialects are now mostly extinct in Denmark, with only the oldest generations still speaking them.
Danish traditional dialects are divided into three main dialect areas:
Insular Danish (), including dialects of the Danish islands of Zealand, Funen, Lolland, Falster, and Møn
Jutlandic (), further divided in North, East, West, and South Jutlandic
Bornholmian (), the dialect of the island of Bornholm
Jutlandic is further divided into Southern Jutlandic and Northern Jutlandic, with Northern Jutlandic subdivided into North Jutlandic and West Jutlandic. Insular Danish is divided into Zealand, Funen, Møn, and Lolland-Falster dialect areas―each with addition internal variation. The term "Eastern Danish" is occasionally used for Bornholmian, but including the dialects of Scania (particularly in a historical context)―Jutlandic dialect, Insular Danish, and Bornholmian. Bornholmian is the only Eastern Danish dialect spoken in Denmark, since the other Eastern Danish dialects were spoken in areas ceded to Sweden and subsequently swedified.
Traditional dialects differ in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary from standard Danish. Phonologically, one of the most diagnostic differences is the presence or absence of . Four main regional variants for the realization of stød are known: In Southeastern Jutlandic, Southernmost Funen, Southern Langeland, and Ærø, no is used, but instead a pitch accent. South of a line ( "The Stød border") going through central South Jutland, crossing Southern Funen and central Langeland and north of Lolland-Falster, Møn, Southern Zealand and Bornholm neither nor pitch accent exists. Most of Jutland and on Zealand use , and in Zealandic traditional dialects and regional language, occurs more often than in the standard language. In Zealand, the line divides Southern Zealand (without ), an area which used to be directly under the Crown, from the rest of the Island that used to be the property of various noble estates.
Grammatically, a dialectally significant feature is the number of grammatical genders. Standard Danish has two genders and the definite form of nouns is formed by the use of suffixes, while Western Jutlandic has only one gender and the definite form of nouns uses an article before the noun itself, in the same fashion as West Germanic languages. The Bornholmian dialect has maintained to this day many archaic features, such as a distinction between three grammatical genders. Insular Danish traditional dialects also conserved three grammatical genders. By 1900, Zealand insular dialects had been reduced to two genders under influence from the standard language, but other Insular varieties, such as Funen dialect had not. Besides using three genders, the old Insular or Funen dialect, could also use personal pronouns (like he and she) in certain cases, particularly referring to animals. A classic example in traditional Funen dialect is the sentence: "Katti, han får unger", literally The cat, he is having kittens, because cat is a masculine noun, thus is referred to as (he), even if it is female cat.
Phonology
The sound system of Danish is unusual, particularly in its large vowel inventory and in the unusual prosody. In informal or rapid speech, the language is prone to considerable reduction of unstressed syllables, creating many vowel-less syllables with syllabic consonants, as well as reduction of final consonants. Furthermore, the language's prosody does not include many clues about the sentence structure, unlike many other languages, making it relatively more difficult to perceive the different sounds of the speech flow. These factors taken together make Danish pronunciation difficult to master for learners, and Danish children are indicated to take slightly longer in learning to segment speech in early childhood.
Vowels
Although somewhat depending on analysis, most modern variants of Danish distinguish 12 long vowels, 13 short vowels, and two schwa vowels, and that only occur in unstressed syllables. This gives a total of 27 different vowel phonemes – a very large number among the world's languages. At least 19 different diphthongs also occur, all with a short first vowel and the second segment being either , , or . The table below shows the approximate distribution of the vowels as given by in Modern Standard Danish, with the symbols used in IPA/Danish. Questions of analysis may give a slightly different inventory, for example based on whether r-colored vowels are considered distinct phonemes. gives 25 "full vowels", not counting the two unstressed schwa vowels.
Consonants
The consonant inventory is comparatively simple. distinguishes 16 non-syllabic consonant phonemes in Danish.
Many of these phonemes have quite different allophones in onset and coda where intervocalic consonants followed by a full vowel are treated as in onset, otherwise as in coda. Phonetically there is no voicing distinction among the stops, rather the distinction is one of aspiration and fortis vs. lenis. Exceptions apply to North Jutlandic dialects which have semi-voiced like in Norwegian, Swedish and German. are aspirated in onset realized as , but not in coda. The pronunciation of t, , is in between a simple aspirated and a fully affricated (as has happened in German with the second High German consonant shift from t to z). There is dialectal variation, and some Jutlandic dialects may be less affricated than other varieties, with Northern and Western Jutlandic traditional dialects having an almost unaspirated dry t.
/v/ is pronounced as a [w] in syllable coda, so e.g. /grav/ ("grave") is pronounced .
often have slight frication, but are usually pronounced as approximants. Danish differs from the similar sound in English and Icelandic, in that it is not a dental fricative but an alveolar approximant which is frequently heard as by second language learners.
The sound is found for example in the word /sjovˀ/ "fun" pronounced and /tjalˀ/ "marijuana" pronounced . Some analyses have posited it as a phoneme, but since it occurs only after or and doesn't occur after these phonemes, it can be analyzed as an allophone of , which is devoiced after voiceless alveolar frication. This makes it unnecessary to postulate a -phoneme in Danish. Jutlandic dialects often lack the sound and pronounce the sj cluster as or .
In onset is realized as a uvu-pharyngeal approximant, , but in coda it is either realized as a non-syllabic low central vowel, or simply coalesces with the preceding vowel. The phenomenon is comparable to the r in German or in non-rhotic pronunciations of English. The Danish realization of as guttural - the so-called skarre-r - distinguishes the language from those varieties of Norwegian and Swedish that use trilled . Only very few, middle-aged or elderly, speakers of Jutlandic retain a frontal which is then usually realised as a flapped or approximant .
Prosody
Danish is characterized by a prosodic feature called (lit. "thrust"). This is a form of laryngealization or creaky voice. Some sources have described it as a glottal stop, but this is a very infrequent realization, and today phoneticians consider it a phonation type or a prosodic phenomenon. It has phonemic status, since it serves as the sole distinguishing feature of words with different meanings in minimal pairs such as ("peasants") with stød, versus ("beans") without stød. The distribution of stød in the vocabulary is related to the distribution of the common Scandinavian pitch accents found in most dialects of Norwegian and Swedish.
Stress is phonemic and distinguishes words such as "cheapest" and "car driver".
Danish intonation has been described by Nina Grønnum as a hierarchical model where components such as the stress group, sentence type and prosodic phrase are combined, and where the stress group is the main intonation unit and in Copenhagen Standard Danish mainly has a certain pitch pattern that reaches its lowest peak on the stressed syllable followed by its highest peak on the following unstressed syllable, after which it declines gradually until the next stress group.
The is also dependent on stress, while some varieties also realize it primarily as a tone.
There are also various studies on specific interactional phenomena in Danish focusing on pitch, such as Mikkelsen & Kragelund on ways to mark the end of a story and Steensig (2001) on turn-taking.
Grammar
Similarly to the case of English, modern Danish grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent-marking pattern with a rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection, a fairly fixed SVO word order and a complex syntax. Some traits typical of Germanic languages persist in Danish, such as the distinction between irregularly inflected strong stems inflected through ablaut or umlaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem, as in the pairs ("takes/took") and ("foot/feet")) and weak stems inflected through affixation (such as "love/loved", "car/cars"). Vestiges of the Germanic case and gender system are found in the pronoun system. Typical for an Indo-European language, Danish follows accusative morphosyntactic alignment. Danish distinguishes at least seven major word classes: verbs, nouns, numerals, adjectives, adverbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections and onomatopoeia.
Nouns
Nouns are inflected for number (singular vs. plural) and definiteness, and are classified into two grammatical genders. Only pronouns inflect for case, and the previous genitive case has become an enclitic. A distinctive feature of the Nordic languages, including Danish, is that the definite articles, which also mark noun gender, have developed into suffixes. Typical of Germanic languages plurals are either irregular or "strong" stems inflected through umlaut (i.e. changing the vowel of the stem (e.g. "foot/feet", "man/men") or "weak" stems inflected through affixation (e.g. "ship/ships", "woman/women").
Gender
Standard Danish has two nominal genders: common and neuter; the common gender arose as the historical feminine and masculine genders conflated into a single category. Some traditional dialects retain a three-way gender distinction, between masculine, feminine and neuter, and some dialects of Jutland have a masculine/feminine contrast. While the majority of Danish nouns (ca. 75%) have the common gender, and neuter is often used for inanimate objects, the genders of nouns are not generally predictable and must in most cases be memorized. The gender of a noun determines the form of adjectives that modify it, and the form of the definite suffixes.
Definiteness
Definiteness is marked by two mutually exclusive articles: either a postposed enclitic or a preposed article which is the obligatory way to mark definiteness when nouns are modified by an adjective. Neuter nouns take the clitic , and common gender nouns take . Indefinite nouns take the articles (common gender) or (neuter). Hence, the common gender noun "a man" (indefinite) has the definite form "the man", whereas the neuter noun "a house" (indefinite) has the definite form, "the house" (definite) .
Indefinite:
Jeg så et hus: "I saw a house"
Definite with enclitic article:
Jeg så huset: "I saw the house"
Definite with preposed demonstrative article:
Jeg så det store hus: "I saw the big house"
The plural definite ending is (e.g. "boys > "the boys" and "girls" > "the girls"), and nouns ending in lose the last before adding the -ne suffix (e.g. "Danes" > "the Danes"). When the noun is modified by an adjective, the definiteness is marked by the definite article (common) or (neuter) and the definite/plural form of the adjective: "the big man", "the big house".
Number
There are three different types of regular plurals: Class 1 forms the plural with the suffix (indefinite) and (definite), Class 2 with the suffix (indefinite) and (definite), and Class 3 takes no suffix for the plural indefinite form and for the plural definite.
Most irregular nouns have an ablaut plural (i.e. with a change in the stem vowel), or combine ablaut stem-change with the suffix, and some have unique plural forms. Unique forms may be inherited (e.g. the plural of "eye", which is the old dual form ), or for loan words they may be borrowed from the donor language (e.g. the word "account" which is borrowed from Italian and uses the Italian masculine plural form "accounts").
Possession
Possessive phrases are formed with the enclitic -s, for example "my father's house" where the noun carries the possessive enclitic. This is however not an example of genitive case marking, because in the case of longer noun phrases the -s attaches to the last word in the phrase, which need not be the head-noun or even a noun at all. For example, the phrases "the king of Denmark's candy factory", where the factory is owned by the king of Denmark, or "that is the daughter of the girl that Uffe lives with", where the enclitic attaches to a stranded preposition.
Pronouns
As does English, the Danish pronominal system retains a distinction between nominative and oblique case. The nominative form of pronouns is used when pronouns occur as grammatical subject of a sentence (and only when non-coordinated and without a following modifier), and oblique forms are used for all non-subject functions including direct and indirect object, predicative, comparative and other types of constructions. The third person singular pronouns also distinguish between animate masculine ( "he"), animate feminine ( "she") forms, as well as inanimate neuter ( "it") and inanimate common gender ( "it").
: "I sleep"
: "you sleep"
: "I kiss you"
: "you kiss me"
Possessive pronouns have independent and adjectival uses, but the same form. The form is used both adjectivally preceding a possessed noun ( "it is my horse"), and independently in place of the possessed noun ( "it is mine"). In the third person singular, is used when the possessor is also the subject of the sentence, whereas ("his"), (her) and "its" is used when the possessor is different from the grammatical subject.
Han tog sin hat: He took his (own) hat
Han tog hans hat: He took his hat (someone else's hat)
Nominal compounds
Like all Germanic languages, Danish forms compound nouns. These are represented in Danish orthography as one word, as in , "the female national handball team". In some cases, nouns are joined with s as a linking element, originally possessive in function, like (from , "country", and , "man", meaning "compatriot"), but (from same roots, meaning "farmer"). Some words are joined with the linking element instead, like (from and , meaning "guest book"). There are also irregular linking elements.
Verbs
Danish verbs are morphologically simple, marking very few grammatical categories. They do not mark person or number of subject, although the marking of plural subjects was still used in writing as late as the 19th century. Verbs have a past, non-past and infinitive form, past and present participle forms, and a passive, and an imperative.
Tense, aspect, mood, and voice
Verbs can be divided into two main classes, the strong/irregular verbs and the regular/weak verbs. The regular verbs are also divided into two classes, those that take the past suffix and those that take the suffix .
The infinitive always ends in a vowel, usually -e (pronounced ), infinitive forms are preceded by the article (pronounced ) in some syntactic functions. The non-past or present tense takes the suffix , except for a few strong verbs that have irregular non-past forms. The past form does not necessarily mark past tense, but also counterfactuality or conditionality, and the non-past has many uses besides present tense time reference.
The present participle ends in (e.g. "running"), and the past participle ends in (e.g. "run"), (e.g. købt "bought"). The Perfect is constructed with ("to have") and participial forms, like in English. But some transitive verbs form the perfect using ("to be") instead, and some may use both with a difference in meaning.
. : She has walked. The plane has flown
. : She has left. The plane has taken off
. : She had walked. The plane had flown
. : She had left. The plane had taken off
The passive form takes the suffix -s: ("the newspaper is read every day"). Another passive construction uses the auxiliary verb "to become": .
The imperative form is the infinitive without the final schwa-vowel, with potentially being applied depending on syllable structure.:
: "run!"
Numerals
The numerals are formed on the basis of a vigesimal system with various rules. In the word forms of numbers above 20, the units are stated before the tens, so 21 is rendered , literally "one and twenty".
The numeral means 1½ (literally "half second", implying "one plus half of the second one"). The numerals (2½), (3½) and (4½) are obsolete, but still implicitly used in the vigesimal system described below. Similarly, the temporal designation () halv tre, literally "half three (o'clock)", is half past two.
One peculiar feature of the Danish language is that the numerals 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 are (as are the French numerals from 80 through 99) based on a vigesimal system, meaning that the score (20) is used as a base unit in counting. (short for , "three times twenty") means 60, while 50 is (short for , "half third times twenty", implying two score plus half of the third score). The ending meaning "times twenty" is no longer included in cardinal numbers, but may still be used in ordinal numbers. Thus, in modern Danish fifty-two is usually rendered as from the now obsolete , whereas 52nd is either or . Twenty is (derived from Old Danish , a haplology of , meaning 'two tens'), while thirty is (Old Danish , "three tens"), and forty is (Old Danish , "four tens", still used today as the archaism ). Thus, the suffix should be understood as a plural of (10), though to modern Danes means 20, making it hard to explain why is 40 (four tens) and not 80 (four twenties).
For large numbers (one billion or larger), Danish uses the long scale, so that the short-scale billion (1,000,000,000) is called , and the short-scale trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is .
Syntax
Danish basic constituent order in simple sentences with both a subject and an object is Subject–Verb–Object. However, Danish is also a V2 language, which means that the verb must always be the second constituent of the sentence. Following the Danish grammarian Paul Diderichsen Danish grammar tends to be analyzed as consisting of slots or fields, and in which certain types of sentence material can be moved to the pre-verbal (or foundation) field to achieve different pragmatic effects. Usually the sentence material occupying the preverbal slot has to be pragmatically marked, usually either new information or topics. There is no rule that subjects must occur in the preverbal slot, but since subject and topic often coincide, they often do. Therefore, whenever any sentence material that is not the subject occurs in the preverbal position the subject is demoted to postverbal position and the sentence order becomes VSO.
: "Peter saw Jytte"
but
: "Yesterday, Peter saw Jytte"
When there is no pragmatically marked constituents in the sentence to take the preverbal slot (for example when all the information is new), the slot has to take a dummy subject "der".
: there came a girl in through the door, "A girl came in the door"
Main clauses
describes the basic order of sentence constituents in main clauses as comprising the following 8 positions:
Position 0 is not part of the sentence and can only contain sentential connectors (such as conjunctions or interjections). Position 1 can contain any sentence constituent. Position 2 can only contain the finite verb. Position 3 is the subject position, unless the subject is fronted to occur in position 1. Position 4 can only contain light adverbs and the negation. Position 5 is for non-finite verbs, such as auxiliaries. Position 6 is the position of direct and indirect objects, and position 7 is for heavy adverbial constituents.
Questions with wh-words are formed differently from yes/no questions. In wh-questions the question word occupies the preverbal field, regardless of whether its grammatical role is subject or object or adverbial. In yes/no questions the preverbal field is empty, so that the sentence begins with the verb.
Wh-question:
: whom saw she, "whom did she see?"
: saw she him?, "did she see him?"
Subordinate clauses
In subordinate clauses, the word order differs from that of main clauses. In the subordinate clause structure the verb is preceded by the subject and any light adverbial material (e.g. negation). Complement clauses begin with the particle in the "connector field".
Han sagde, at han ikke ville gå: he said that he not would go, "He said that he did not want to go"
Relative clauses are marked by the relative pronouns or which occupy the preverbal slot:
Jeg kender en mand, som bor i Helsingør: "I know a man who lives in Elsinore"
Writing system and alphabet
The oldest preserved examples of written Danish (from the Iron and Viking Ages) are in the Runic alphabet. The introduction of Christianity also brought the Latin script to Denmark, and at the end of the High Middle Ages Runes had more or less been replaced by Latin letters.
Danish orthography is conservative, using most of the conventions established in the 16th century. The spoken language however has changed a lot since then, creating a gap between the spoken and written languages. Since 1955, Dansk Sprognævn has been the official language council in Denmark.
The modern Danish alphabet is similar to the English one, with three additional letters: , , and , which come at the end of the alphabet, in that order. The letters c, q, w, x and z are only used in loan words. A spelling reform in 1948 introduced the letter , already in use in Norwegian and Swedish, into the Danish alphabet to replace the digraph . The old usage continues to occur in some personal and geographical names; for example, the name of the city of is spelled with Aa following a decision by the City Council in the 1970s and decided to go back to Aa in 2011. When representing the sound, is treated like in alphabetical sorting, though it appears to be two letters. When the letters are not available due to technical limitations, they are often replaced by ae (Æ, æ), oe or o (Ø, ø), and aa (Å, å), respectively.
The same spelling reform changed the spelling of a few common words, such as the past tense (would), (could) and (should), to their current forms of , and (making them identical to the infinitives in writing, as they are in speech). Modern Danish and Norwegian use the same alphabet, though spelling differs slightly, particularly with the phonetic spelling of loanwords; for example the spelling of and in Danish remains identical to other languages, whereas in Norwegian, they are transliterated as and .
Research
Danish is a well-studied language, and multiple universities in Denmark have departments devoted to Danish or linguistics with active research projects on the language, such as the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen, and there are many dictionaries and technological resources on the language. The language council Dansk Sprognævn also publishes research on the language both nationally and internationally. There are also research centers focusing specifically on the dialects: The Peter Skautrup center at Aarhus University describes the dialects and varieties of the Jutlandic peninsula and is working on a dictionary of Jutlandic, while the Center for Dialect Research at University of Copenhagen works on the Insular Danish varieties.
Multiple corpora of Danish language data are available. is a corpus of written texts in Danish. There are also a number of conversations available in , the Danish part of TalkBank.
Academic descriptions of the language are published both in Danish and English. The most complete grammar is the (Grammar over the Danish Language) by Erik Hansen & Lars Heltoft, and it is written in Danish and contains over 1800 pages. Multiple phonologies have been written, most importantly by Basbøll and Grønnum, based on work that used to take place at the former Institute of Phonetics at the University of Copenhagen.
Example text
The Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Danish:Alle mennesker er født frie og lige i værdighed og rettigheder. De er udstyret med fornuft og samvittighed, og de bør handle mod hverandre i en broderskabets ånd.The Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.''
See also
Realm languages:
Faroese
Greenlandic
Nordic languages:
Icelandic
Norwegian
Swedish
References
Bibliography
External links
"Sproget.dk" (a website where you can find guidance, information and answers to questions about the Danish language and language matters in Denmark (in Danish))
"Samtalegrammatik.dk" (parts of a grammar of spoken Danish)
Fusional languages
Languages of Denmark
Languages of Norway
Languages of Sweden
Languages of Iceland
Languages of the Faroe Islands
Languages of Germany
Languages of Greenland
East Scandinavian languages
North Germanic languages
Scandinavian culture
Subject–verb–object languages
Verb-second languages
Stress-timed languages | en |
doc-en-8206 | The following is a list of mountains in Korea:
List of mountains in North Korea
Pyeongyang
Taesongsan (대성산; ) –
Chagang Province
Namsan (남산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
North Pyongan Province
Myohyangsan (묘향산; ) –
South Hwanghae Province
Kuwolsan (구월산; ) –
Maebongsan (매봉산; ) –
Namsan (남산; ) –
Namsan (남산; ) –
Kangwon Province
Kumgangsan (금강산; ) –
Maebongsan (매봉산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
South Hamgyong Province
Madaesan (마대산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
North Hamgyong Province
Chilbosan (칠보산; ) –
Mantapsan (만탑산; ) –
Ryanggang Province
Paektusan (백두산; ) – , the tallest mountain in North Korea and the Korean Peninsula altogether.
List of mountains in South Korea
Seoul
Achasan (아차산;) –
Bukhansan (북한산; ) –
Buramsan (불암산; ) –
Cheonggyesan (청계산; ) –
Dobongsan (도봉산; ) –
Eungbongsan (응봉산; ) –
Gwanaksan (관악산; ) –
Inwangsan (인왕산; ) –
Namsan (남산; ) –
Samseongsan (삼성산; ) –
Suraksan (수락산; ) –
Yongmabong (용마봉; ) –
Busan
Geumjeongsan (금정산; ) –
Jangsan (장산; ) –
Seunghaksan (승학산; ) – 496 meters (1627 ft)
Daegu
Choejeongsan (최정산; ) –
Gasan (가산; ) –
Palgongsan (팔공산;八公山) , not to be confused with mountain of Jeollabukdo with same name.
Incheon
Goryeosan (고려산; ) –
Gyeyangsan (계양산;) –
Haemyeongsan (해명산; ) –
Horyonggoksan (호룡곡산; ) –
Manisan (마니산; ) –
Nakgasan (낙가산; ) –
Sangbongsan (상봉산; ) –
Gwangju
Mudeungsan (무등산; ) –
Daejeon
Gyejoksan (계족산; ) –
Gyeryongsan (계룡산; ) –
Jangtaesan (장태산; ) –
Sikjangsan (식장산; ) –
Ulsan
Baekunsan (백운산; ) –
Cheonhwangsan (천황산; ) –
Daeunsan (대운산; ) – .
Dongdaesan (동대산) –
Gajisan (가지산; ) –
Ganwolsan (간월산; ) –
Goheonsan (고헌산; ) –
Hamwolsan (함월산) –
Hwajangsan(화장산; ) –
Jaeyaksan (재약산; ) –
Munsusan (문수산; ) –
Muryongsan (무룡산; ) –
Namamsan (남암산; ) –
Sinbulsan (신불산; ) –
Yeomposan (염포산) –
Yeongchuksan (영축산; ) –
Yeonhwasan (연화산; ) –
Gyeonggi Province
Baegunbong (백운봉; ) –
Baegunsan (백운산; ) –
Baegunsan (백운산; ) –
Baekdunbong (백둔봉; ) –
Bakdalbong (박달봉; ) –
Bukhansan (북한산; ) –
Bulgisan (불기산; ) –
Bulgoksan (불곡산; ) –
Bulgoksan (불곡산; ) –
Buramsan (불암산; ) –
Cheonbosan (천보산; ) –
Cheonggyesan (청계산; ) –
Cheonggyesan (청계산; ) –
Cheonggyesan (청계산; ) –
Cheongwusan (청우산; ) –
Cheonmasan (천마산; ) –
Chilbosan (칠보산; ) –
Chokdaebong (촉대봉; ) –
Chungnyungsan (축령산; ) –
Daegeumsan (대금산; ) –
Danwolbong (단월봉; ) –
Dobongsan (도봉산; ) –
Dodeuramsan (도드람산; 도드람山) –
Doilbong (도일봉; ) –
Eobisan (어비산; ) –
Gadeoksan (가덕산; ) –
Gakkeulsan (각흘산; ) –
Galgisan (갈기산; ) –
Gamaksan (감악산; ) –
Gangssibong (강씨봉; ) –
Garisan (가리산; ) –
Geomdansan (검단산; ) –
Geomdansan (검단산; ) –
Geumjusan (금주산; ) –
Geummulsan (금물산; ) –
Godaesan (고대산; ) –
Godongsan (고동산; ) –
Gokdalsan (곡달산; ) –
Goraesan (고래산; 고래山) –
Gunamusan (구나무산; 구나무山) –
Gungmangbong (국망봉; ) –
Gwanaksan (관악산; ) –
Gwaneumsan (관음산; ) –
Gwangdeoksan (광덕산; ) –
Gwanggyosan (광교산; ) –
Gwimokbong (귀목봉; ) –
Gyegwansan (계관산; ) –
Hamwangbong (함왕봉; ) –
Homyeongsan (호명산; ) –
Hwaaksan (화악산; ) –
Hwayasan (화야산; ) –
Jijangbong (지장봉; ) –
Jongjasan (종자산; ) –
Jugeumsan (주금산; ) –
Jungwonsan (중원산; ) –
Mindungsan (민둥산; 민둥山) –
Myeongjisan (명지산; ) –
Myeongseongsan (명성산; ) –
Namhansan (남한산; ) –
Samseongsan (삼성산; ) –
Sanghaebong (상해봉; ) –
Sangsan (상산; ) –
Seongjisan (성지산; ) –
Seongnyongsan (석룡산; ) –
Seounsan (서운산; ) –
Sorisan (소리산; ) –
Soyosan (소요산; ) –
Sudeoksan (수덕산; ) –
Suraksan (수락산; ) –
Taehwasan (태화산; ) –
Udusan (우두산; ) –
Unaksan (운악산; ) –
Ungilsan (운길산; ) –
Wangbangsan (왕방산; ) –
Yebongsan (예봉산; ) –
Yeoninsan (연인산; ) –
Yongmunsan (용문산; ) –
Yumyeongsan (유명산; ) –
Gangwon Province
Amisan (아미산; ) –
Ansan (안산; ) –
Baegamsan (백암산; ) –
Baegusan (백우산; ) –
Baegunsan (백운산; ) –
Baegunsan (백운산; ) –
Baegunsan (백운산; ) –
Baekbyeongsan (백병산; ) –
Baekdeoksan (백덕산; ) –
Baekseoksan (백석산; ) –
Bakjisan (박지산; ) –
Balgyosan (발교산; ) –
Balwangsan (발왕산; ) –
Banamsan (반암산; ) –
Bangtaesan (방태산; ) –
Bawisan (바위산; None) –
Bokgyesan (복계산; ) –
Bokjusan (복주산; ) –
Bongboksan (봉복산; ) –
Bonghwasan (봉화산; ) –
Boraebong (보래봉; ) –
Buyongsan (부용산; ) –
Cheongoksan (청옥산; ) –
Cheongoksan (청옥산; ) –
Cheonjibong (천지봉; ) –
Chiaksan (치악산; ) –
Chokdaebong (촉대봉; ) –
Daeamsan (대암산; ) –
Daebawisan (대바위산; --) –
Daedeoksan (대덕산; ) –
Daemisan (대미산; ) –
Daeseongsan (대성산; ) –
Dalgibong (닭이봉; ) –
Daraksan (다락산; ) –
Deokgasan (덕가산; ) –
Deokgosan (덕고산; ) –
Deokhangsan (덕항산; ) –
Deoksusan (덕수산; ) –
Dongdaesan (동대산; ) –
Durobong (두로봉; ) –
Duryusan (두류산; ) –
Dutasan (두타산; ) –
Duwibong (두위봉; ) –
Eodapsan (어답산; ) –
Eungbongsan (응봉산; ) –
Eungbongsan (응봉산; ) –
Eungbongsan (응봉산; ) –
Eungbongsan (응봉산; ) –
Eungbongsan (응봉산; ) –
Gachilbong (가칠봉; ) –
Gachilbong (가칠봉; ) –
Gadeoksan (가덕산; ) –
Gadeukbong (가득봉; ) –
Gaeinsan (개인산; ) –
Gakkeulsan (각흘산; ) –
Gamabong (가마봉; ) –
Gamaksan (감악산; ) –
Garibong (가리봉; ) –
Garisan (가리산; ) –
Gariwangsan (가리왕산; ) –
Geombongsan (검봉산; ) –
Geomunsan (거문산; ) –
Geumdaebong (금대봉; ) –
Geumdangsan (금당산; ) –
Geumhaksan (금학산; ) –
Geummulsan (금물산; ) –
Geunsan (근산; ) –
Godaesan (고대산; ) –
Gogosan (고고산; ) –
Gojeoksan (고적산; ) –
Gombong (곰봉; ) –
Gongjaksan (공작산; ) –
Gorupogisan (고루포기산; None) –
Gubongdaesan (구봉대산; ) –
Guhaksan (구학산; ) –
Gwaebangsan (괘방산; ) –
Gwangdeoksan (광덕산; ) –
Gwittaegibong (귀때기청봉; None) –
Gyebangsan (계방산; ) –
Gyegwansan (계관산; ) –
Gyejoksan (계족산; ) –
Hambaeksan (함백산; ) –
Heungjeongsan (흥정산; ) –
Horyeongbong (호령봉; ) –
Hwaaksan (화악산; ) –
Hwangbyeongsan (황병산; ) –
Hwangcheolbong (황철봉; ) –
Hoemokbong (회목봉; ) –
Hoeryeongbong (회령봉; ) –
Jamdusan (잠두산; ) –
Janggunbawisan (장군바위산; None) –
Jangmisan (장미산; ) –
Jangsan (장산; ) –
Jatbong (잣봉; None) –
Jeombongsan (점봉산; ) –
Jewangsan (제왕산; ) –
Jungwangsan (중왕산; ) –
Madaesan (마대산; ) –
Maebongsan (매봉산; ) –
Maebongsan (매봉산; ) –
Maebongsan (매봉산; ) –
Maebongsan (매봉산; ) –
Maehwasan (매화산; ) –
Maenghyeonbong (맹현봉; ) –
Majeoksan (마적산; ) –
Mangyeongdaesan (망경대산; ) –
Masan (마산; ) –
Mindungsan (민둥산; None) –
Mireuksan (미륵산; ) –
Mogusan (목우산; ) –
Munsubong (문수봉; ) –
Myeongbongsan (명봉산; ) –
Myeonsan (면산; ) –
Nambyeongsan (남병산; ) –
Namdaebong (남대봉; ) –
Neunggyeongbong (능경봉; ) –
Nochusan (노추산; ) –
Noinbong (노인봉; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Odaesan (오대산; ) –
Oeumsan (오음산; ) –
Palbongsan (팔봉산; ) –
Sajasan (사자산; ) –
Samaksan (삼악산; ) –
Sambangsan (삼방산; ) –
Samyeongsan (사명산; ) –
Sangjeongbawisan (상정바위산; None) –
Sangwonsan (상원산; ) –
Seogiamsan (석이암산; ) –
Seokbyeongsan (석병산; ) –
Seonbawisan (선바위산; None) –
Seondalsan (선달산; ) –
Seongjisan (성지산; ) –
Seongnyongsan (석룡산; ) –
Seonjaryeong (선자령; ) –
Seoraksan (설악산; ) – , third tallest mountain in South Korea, second tallest mountain in mainland South Korea.
Seungdusan (승두산; ) –
Sinseonbong (신선봉; ) –
Sipjabong (십자봉; ) –
Sogyebangsan (소계방산; ) –
Soppulsan (소뿔산; None) –
Taebaeksan (태백산; ) –
Taegisan (태기산; ) –
Taehwasan (태화산; ) –
Ungyosan (운교산; ) –
Unmusan (운무산; ) –
Wantaeksan (완택산; ) –
Yaksusan (약수산; ) –
Yeonyeopsan (연엽산; ) –
Yonghwasan (용화산; ) –
Yukbaeksan (육백산; ) –
North Chungcheong Province
Akwibong (악휘봉; ) –
Baegaksan (백악산; ) –
Baegunsan (백운산; ) –
Baekhwasan (백화산; ) –
Baekhwasan (백화산; ) –
Bakdalsan (박달산; ) –
Bakjwibong (박쥐봉; None) –
Boryeonsan (보련산; ) –
Bubong (부봉; ) –
Bukbawisan (북바위산; -) –
Cheondeungsan (천등산; ) –
Cheonghwasan (청화산; ) –
Cheontaesan (천태산; ) –
Chilbosan (칠보산; ) –
Daemisan (대미산; ) –
Daeseongsan (대성산; ) –
Daeyasan (대야산; ) –
Deokgasan (덕가산; ) –
Domyeongsan (도명산; ) –
Dongsan (동산; ) –
Doraksan (도락산; ) –
Dosolbong (도솔봉; ) –
Eoraesan (어래산; ) –
Gaeunsan (가은산; ) –
Gaseopsan (가섭산; ) –
Gakhosan (각호산; ) –
Galgisan (갈기산; ) –
Gamaksan (감악산; ) –
Geumsusan (금수산; ) –
Gubyeongsan (구병산; ) –
Gudambong (구담봉; ) –
Guhaksan (구학산; ) –
Gungmangbong (국망봉; ) –
Gunjasan (군자산; ) –
Guwangbong (구왕봉; ) –
Gyemyeongsan (계명산; ) –
Haseolsan (하설산; ) –
Heiyangsan (희양산; ) –
Hwangaksan (황악산; ) –
Hwangjeongsan (황정산; ) –
Hyeongjebong (형제봉; ) –
Imanbong (이만봉; ) –
Indeungsan (인등산; ) –
Jakseongsan (작성산; ) –
Jangseongbong (장성봉; ) –
Jebibong (제비봉; ) –
Johangsan (조항산; ) –
Joryeongsan (조령산; ) –
Jukyeopsan (죽엽산; ) –
Jungdaebong (중대봉; ) –
Makjangbong (막장봉; ) –
Mangdeokbong (망덕봉; ) –
Manisan (마니산; ) –
Mansubong (만수봉; ) –
Minjujisan (민주지산; ) –
Munsubong (문수봉; ) –
Nagyeongsan (낙영산; ) –
Namgunjasan (남군자산; ) –
Oksunbong (옥순봉; ) –
Poamsan (포암산; ) –
Poseongbong (포성봉; ) –
Sambongsan (삼봉산; ) –
Samdobong (삼도봉; ) –
Seounsan (서운산; ) –
Sinseonbong (신선봉; ) –
Sinseonbong (신선봉; ) –
Sipjabong (십자봉; ) –
Sobaeksan (소백산; ) –
Songnisan (속리산; ) –
Suribong (수리봉; ) –
Suribong (수리봉; ) –
Taehwasan (태화산; ) –
Uamsan (우암산; ) –
Woraksan (월악산; ) –
South Chungcheong Province
Amisan (아미산; ) –
Barangsan (바랑산; None) –
Baekhwasan (백화산; ) –
Cheontaesan (천태산; ) –
Chilbongsan (칠봉산; ) –
Chilgapsan (칠갑산; ) –
Daedunsan (대둔산; ) –
Deoksungsan (덕숭산; ) –
Gayasan (가야산; ) –
Gobulsan (고불산; ) –
Gwangdeoksan (광덕산; ) –
Gyeryongsan (계룡산; ) –
Heukseongsan (흑성산; ) –
Illaksan (일락산; ) –
Jinaksan (진악산; ) –
Mansusan (만수산; ) –
Museongsan (무성산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Oseosan (오서산; ) –
Palbongsan (팔봉산; ) –
Seodaesan (서대산; ) –
Taehwasan (태화산; ) –
Wolseongbong (월성봉; ) –
Yongbongsan (용봉산; ) –
North Jeolla Province
Baegambong (백암봉; ) –
Baegunsan (백운산; ) –
Bangjangsan (방장산; ) –
Bangmunsan (방문산; ) –
Banyabong (반야봉; ) –
Baraebong (바래봉; None) –
Bonghwasan (봉화산; ) –
Bugwisan (부귀산; ) –
Byeonsan (변산; ) –
Cheondeungsan (천등산; ) –
Chilbosan (칠보산; ) –
Chuwolsan (추월산; ) –
Daedeoksan (대덕산; ) –
Deogyusan (덕유산; ) –
Deoktaesan (덕태산; ) –
Gangcheonsan (강천산; ) –
Gubongsan (구봉산; ) –
Hambaeksan (함백산; ) –
Hoemunsan (회문산; ) –
Jangansan (장안산; ) –
Jeoksangsan (적상산; ) –
Maisan (마이산; ) –
Manbokdae (만복대; ) –
Manhaengsan (만행산; ) –
Minjujisan (민주지산; ) –
Mireuksan (미륵산; ) –
Moaksan (모악산; ) –
Mundeokbong (문덕봉; ) –
Muryongsan (무룡산; ) –
Naebyeonsan (내변산; ) –
Naejangsan (내장산; ) –
Namdeogyusan (남덕유산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Palgongsan (팔공산; ) – Not to be confused with mountain in Daegu of the same name.
Samdobong (삼도봉; ) –
Seongaksan (선각산; ) –
Seongsusan (성수산; ) –
Seonunsan (선운산; ) –
Unjangsan (운장산; ) –
Yeonseoksan (연석산; ) –
South Jeolla Province
Baegambong (백암봉; ) –
Baegunsan (백운산; ) –
Baekamsan (백암산; ) –
Bangjangsan (방장산; ) –
Bangmunsan (방문산; ) –
Banyabong (반야봉; ) –
Bulgapsan (불갑산; ) –
Byeongpungsan (병풍산; ) –
Cheondeungsan (천등산; ) –
Cheongwansan (천관산; ) –
Chuwolsan (추월산; ) –
Dalmasan (달마산; ) –
Deokyusan (덕유산; ) –
Dongaksan (동악산; ) –
Dosolbong (도솔봉; ) –
Duryunsan (두륜산; ) –
Heukseoksan (흑석산; ) –
Gajisan (가지산; ) –
Gangcheonsan (강천산; ) –
Geumjeonsan (금전산; ) –
Geumosan (금오산; ) –
Gitdaebong (깃대봉; None) –
Goribong (고리봉;--) –
Illimsan (일림산; ) –
Imamsan (임암산; ) –
Jeamsan (제암산; ) –
Jeokjasan (적자산; ) –
Jirisan (지리산; ) – , the second-tallest mountain in South Korea and the tallest mountain in mainland South Korea.
Jogyesan (조계산; ) –
Jujaksan (주작산; ) –
Manbokdae (만복대; ) –
Mandeoksan (만덕산; ) –
Mohusan (모후산; ) –
Mudeungsan (무등산; ) –
Muryongsan (무룡산; ) –
Nogodan (노고단; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Palyeongsan (팔영산; ) –
Sajasan (사자산; ) –
Sambongsan (삼봉산; ) –
Samjeongsan (삼정산; ) –
Sanghwangbong (상황봉; ) –
Sanseongsan (산성산; ) –
Suinsan (수인산; ) –
Suwolsan (수월산; ) –
Wangsirubong (왕시루봉; None) –
Wolchulsan (월출산; ) –
Yeongchwisan (영취산; ) –
North Gyeongsang Province
Baegaksan (백악산; ) –
Baegamsan (백암산; ) –
Baekhwasan (백화산; ) –
Baekhwasan (백화산; ) –
Biseulsan (비슬산; ) –
Bohyeonsan (보현산; ) –
Bonghwangsan (봉황산; ) –
Bubong (부봉; ) –
Cheondeungsan (천등산; ) –
Cheongnyangsan (청량산; ) –
Cheongoksan (청옥산; ) –
Cheonjusan (천주산; ) –
Chilbongsan (칠봉산; ) –
Chilbosan (칠보산; ) –
Chunghwasan (청화산; ) –
Daedeoksan (대덕산; ) –
Daemisan (대미산; ) –
Daeyasan (대야산; ) –
Danseoksan (단석산; ) –
Dojangsan (도장산; ) –
Dongyongsan (독용산; ) –
Dosolbong (도솔봉; ) –
Dundeoksan (둔덕산; ) –
Eungbongsan (응봉산; ) –
Gajisan (가지산; ) –
Gakhwasan (각화산; ) –
Gapjangsan (갑장산; ) –
Gasan (가산; ) –
Gayasan (가야산; ) –
Geommasan (검마산; ) –
Geumosan (금오산; ) –
Goheonsan (고헌산; ) –
Gonddeoksan (공덕산; ) –
Guksabong (국사봉; ) –
Guryongsan (구룡산; ) –
Guwangbong (구왕봉; ) –
Gyeonggaksan (경각산; ) –
Heiyangsan (희양산; ) –
Hwangaksan (황악산; ) –
Hwanghaksan (황학산; ) –
Hwangjangsan (황장산; ) –
Hyeongjebong (형제봉; ) –
Imanbong (이만봉; ) –
Ilwolsan (일월산; ) –
Jangseongbong (장성봉; ) –
Jeoksangsan (적상산; ) –
Joryeongsan (조령산; ) –
Juheulsan (주흘산; ) –
Juwangsan (주왕산; ) –
Mireuksan (미륵산; ) –
Munboksan (문복산; ) –
Munsubong (문수봉; ) –
Munsubong (문수봉; ) –
Munsusan (문수산; ) –
Myeonsan (면산; ) –
Naeyeonsan (내연산; ) –
Namsan (남산; ) –
Namsan (남산; ) –
Noeumsan (노음산; ) –
Noejeongsan (뇌정산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Palgaksan (팔각산; ) –
Palgongsan (팔공산; ) –
Poamsan (포암산; ) –
Poseongbong (포성봉; ) –
Samdobong (삼도봉; ) –
Seondalsan (선달산; ) –
Seonginbong (성인봉; ) –
Sobaeksan (소백산; ) –
Songnisan (속리산; ) –
Sudosan (수도산; ) –
Taebaeksan (태백산; ) –
Tohamsan (토함산; ) –
Tongosan (통고산; ) –
Undalsan (운달산; ) –
Unmunsan (운문산; ) –
Wangdusan (왕두산; ) –
Yeonyeopsan (연엽산; ) –
South Gyeongsang Province
Baegunsan (백운산; ) –
Bigyesan (비계산; ) –
Bongdaesan (봉대산; ) –
Bulmosan (불모산; ) –
Byeokbangsan (벽방산; ) –
Byeolyusan (별유산; ) –
Cheonhwangsan (천황산; ) –
Cheonseongsan (천성산; ) –
Cheontaesan (천태산; ) –
Chilhyeonsan (칠현산; ) –
Daeseongsan (대성산; ) –
Danjibong (단지봉; ) –
Eungbongsan (응봉산; ) –
Gajisan (가지산; ) –
Garasan (가라산; ) –
Gayasan (가야산; ) –
Geomangsan (거망산; ) –
Geumjeongsan (금정산; ) –
Geumsan (금산; ) –
Geumosan (금오산; ) –
Geumwonsan (금원산; ) –
Gibaeksan (기백산; ) –
Gwaegwansan (괘관산; ) –
Gwaebangsan (괘방산; ) –
Gwannyongsan (관룡산; ) –
Gyebangsan (계방산; ) –
Gyeryongsan (계룡산; ) –
Hogusan (호구산; ) –
Hwamaesan (황매산; ) –
Hwangmaesan (황매산; ) –
Hwangseoksan (황석산; ) –
Hwawangsan (화왕산; ) –
Hyangnosan (향로산) –
Jaeyaksan (재약산; ) –
Jagulsan (자굴산; ) –
Jarimangsan (자리망산; ) –
Jirisan (지리산; ) –
Jirisan (지리산; ) –
Mangsan (망산; None) –
Minyeobong (미녀봉; ) –
Mireuksan (미륵산; ) –
Muhaksan (무학산; ) –
Namdeogyusan (남덕유산; ) –
Nojasan (노자산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Obongsan (오봉산; ) –
Sambongsan (삼봉산; ) –
Sambongsan (삼봉산; ) –
Samjeongsan (삼정산; ) –
Samsinbong (삼신봉; ) –
Seobuksan (서북산; ) –
Seolheulsan (설흘산; ) –
Seongjesan (성제봉; ) –
Sinbulsan (신불산; ) –
Ungseokbong (웅석봉; ) –
Unmunsan (운문산; ) –
Waryongsan (와룡산; ) –
Wolbongsan (월봉산; ) –
Wonhyosan (원효산; ) –
Worasan (월아산; ) –
Wudusan (우두산; ) –
Yanggaksan (양각산; ) –
Yeohangsan (여항산; ) –
Yeongchuksan (영축산; ) –
Yeongsinbong (영신봉; ) –
Yeonhwasan (연화산; ) –
Jeju Province
Hallasan (한라산; ) – , the tallest mountain in South Korea.
View
See also
Geography of Korea, North Korea, and South Korea
List of mountains in Seoul
Baekdudaegan
Five Mountains of Korea, five famous mountains in Korean history and culture
Korean Peninsula
Notes
References
External links
Korea
Mountains
Korea | en |
doc-en-8266 | A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (or AGoT, for short) is an out-of-print collectible card game produced by Fantasy Flight Games. It is based on A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of novels written by George R. R. Martin. The first set was Westeros Edition and was released in August 2002. It has since won two Origins Awards. The game's primary designer is Eric Lang, the lead developer is Nate French, with Damon Stone serving as associate designer.
In the game, players assume the leadership of one of the great houses of Westeros vying for control of King's Landing and the Iron Throne. To accomplish this, players launch military attacks against their opponents, undermine their opponents’ plans with intrigues of their own, and make power plays to win the support of the realm.
Factions
Each house represents one of the main factions involved in the struggle for the Iron Throne emulated by the AGoT LCG. Each house provides different strengths and weaknesses, allowing for various play styles to interact within the same game. Certain cards are restricted to one or two houses, giving each house a unique flavor. Currently, there are eight playable factions in the AGoT LCG. Each is identified by a shield bearing the arms of the house, located in the upper right corner of the card.
Great houses
House Stark, the honorable rulers of the cold North. The Stark shield is a grey direwolf on an ice-white field. Prominent Stark characters include Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Catelyn, their son Robb, as well as Maester Luwin, Ser Rodrik Cassel, and Brynden "The Blackfish" Tully. Common game mechanics include direct kill, deck searching, and improved defense. Many Stark effects are themed around military challenges.
House Lannister, the rich and treacherous residents of Casterly Rock. The Lannister shield is a gold lion on a crimson field. Prominent Lannister characters include Jaime, Cersei, and Tyrion Lannister, as well as Ser Gregor Clegane, Ser Addam Marbrand, and Grand Maester Pycelle. Common game mechanics include card draw, kneeling effects, and trait manipulation. Many Lannister effects are themed around intrigue challenges.
House Baratheon, the royal blood of King Robert, rulers of Dragonstone and Storm's End. The Baratheon shield is a black crowned stag on a gold field. Prominent Baratheon characters include Robert, his brothers Stannis and Renly, as well as Melisandre, Ser Davos Seaworth, and the Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers. Common game mechanics include power manipulation, standing effects, and retrieval of cards from the dead and discard piles. Many House Baratheon effects are themed around power challenges.
House Greyjoy, the rulers of the Iron Islands and the Ironborn raiders who prey on the rest of Westeros. The Greyjoy shield is a gold kraken on a black field. Prominent Greyjoy characters include Theon, Asha, and their father Balon Greyjoy, as well Balon's brothers Euron Crow's Eye and Aeron Damphair. Common game mechanics include location control, the ability to save characters, event cancels, and boosting the strength of attacking characters. Many house Greyjoy effects are themed around winning unopposed challenges.
House Targaryen, the exiled descendants of Aegon the Conqueror and their exotic followers. The Targaryen shield is a red on black, three-headed dragon representing Aegon and his sisters. Prominent Targaryen characters include Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons, Khal Drogo, Ser Jorah Mormont, and Grey Worm. Common game mechanics include attachment manipulation, strength reducers and kill effects on strength 0 characters (frequently referred to as "burn" effects), and playing characters outside of the marshalling phase. Many Targaryen effects are themed around winning or losing challenges by 4 or more strength.
House Martell, rulers of the desert realm of Dorne, the southernmost region of Westeros. The Martell shield is a red sun pierced by a golden spear, on an orange field. Prominent Martell characters include Doran Martell, Oberyn Martell the Red Viper, his daughters the Sand Snakes, and his niece Arianne Martell. Common game mechanics include icon manipulation, discard effects, stealth, and card draw. Many Martell effects are themed around losing challenges, leading to such effects being referred to as "revenge" effects.
Other factions
Some great houses featured in A Song of Ice and Fire are not represented as individual Houses in the AGoT LCG, but still appear in the game. House Tully is present in the game as a subset of their allies, House Stark. House Lannister and House Baratheon both feature numerous House Tyrell cards, and several significant House Tyrell characters were featured as promotional cards. House Tyrell also features prominently in the A House of Thorns expansion, as does House Bolton to a smaller extent. Other lesser houses also appear in the game, in service to the Great Houses to which they are sworn. Several House Frey cards also make an appearance, primarily as neutral cards. House Arryn is a prominent theme in A House of Talons.
In addition to the noble houses, the AGoT LCG also features many other factions present in A Song of Ice and Fire as part of a particular theme. Example: The Wildlings are featured in Winter Block, while the Asshai'i have been a sub theme over many expansions.
Cards
Each player supplies his or her own deck to play the game. A deck consists of a House Card or Alliance to represent the player's faction, an optional Agenda that modifies his faction, a plot deck that consists of exactly seven Plot cards, and then a main draw deck of at least 60 cards consisting of Characters, Attachments, Locations, and Events.
House cards
Each House card represents one of the main factions involved in the War of the Five Kings. Each House provides different strengths and weaknesses, allowing for various playstyles to interact within the same game. The House card selected will often restrict cards allowed in the remainder of the deck, by limiting cards that are marked as being allowed solely for another House.
Characters, Locations, and Attachments often have a House affiliation, and often are used in decks running a matching House card. Some cards have no House affiliation, and such neutral cards may be used freely in any deck. Cards with House affiliations other than the chosen House card may be used, providing the card itself has no restriction, but require an extra expenditure of resources to bring them into play.
Agenda cards (optional)
Introduced in Valyrian Block, any deck using a House card (but not an Alliance card) may use one Agenda card. Agenda cards either modify the rules for building the player's deck, or grant an in-game advantage, typically at the cost of some other disadvantage such as requiring extra power to win, reduced card draw, or limiting claimed power.
Plot cards
Plot cards are generally regarded as the defining feature of A Game of Thrones: The Card Game. Unlike the shuffled and randomly drawn resource deck, at the beginning of each round, each player chooses a new plot card to be revealed, which will have an effect on the round to be played, allowing for a strategic element to an otherwise random game.
Plot cards indicate the base amount of gold available for the player to use to bring new cards into play during his Marshalling phase (indicated by a number within a gold coin), a base initiative value to determine the order of play for the round (indicated by a number within a diamond), a base claim value to determine the scope of the effect that player winning a challenge (indicated by a number in a silver disk), and a text box detailing any other effects or restrictions on the plot card, including any traits that it might have.
Most plot cards are designed with built-in trade-offs, sacrificing high claim for low income, or some other game mechanic drawback.
Character cards
Character cards represent the unique characters from the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, such as Eddard Stark, as well as generic individuals and massed groupings (such as armies) that can be found there. Generally, characters are the main focus of a deck as they are the principle card type used to participate in challenges, and thus collect the power tokens necessary to win.
Attributes of a Character card consist of a gold cost (generally represented by a number overlaid on a gold coin in the upper left corner), a name across the top that may be preceded by a black flag if the character is unique and/or an infinity symbol if the character is endless, a House affiliation (represented by one or more House shields in the upper right corner, although neutral characters will have a blank shield), artwork depicting the character in the top half of the card, a strength value (represented by a number on a stylized tapestry or a nondescript shield in the middle of the left side), zero to three challenge icons (a red axe represents Military, a green eye represents Intrigue, and a blue crown represents Power) arrayed in the bottom half of the left side, and a text box in the lower half of the card.
Within the textbox may be traits, keywords, other game effects or icons, and flavour text from the novels. Traits are bold and italicized words at the top of the textbox, and usually represent roles or groups within the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, such as Lords or Dothraki. They have no game function themselves, but instead are used to group characters together in order for other game effects to be used by or against varied groups of characters. Keywords are game mechanics defined in the rules that affect that character, such as No Attachments, which prevents any attachments from being placed on that character.
Attachment cards
Attachments are cards that are used exclusively to modify other cards. An attachment may not be in play unless it is attached to the proper type of card, typically a character card unless the attachment itself says otherwise.
Attributes of an Attachment card consist of a gold cost (generally represented by a number overlaid on a gold coin in the upper left corner), a name across the top that may be proceeded by a black flag if the attachment is unique and/or an infinity symbol if the attachment is endless, a House affiliation (represented by one or more House shields in the upper right corner, although neutral attachments will have no shield), artwork depicting the attachment in the top half of the card, and a text box in the lower half of the card. Throughout the Winter block, some cards were printed with a black crow icon in the bottom left corner to indicate the attachment is Doomed. It is unknown if such attachments will appear again.
Within the textbox may be traits, keywords, other game effects or icons, and flavour text from the novels. Traits are bold and italicized words at the top of the textbox, and usually represent types of enhancements, such as skills or titles. They have no game function themselves, but instead are used to group attachments together in order for other game effects to be used by or against varied groups of attachments. Keywords are game mechanics defined in the rules that affect that attachment such as Setup, which allows the attachment to be played at the beginning of the game unlike normal attachments.
Occasionally, game effects can cause cards to become face-down attachments attached to specific other cards. These function the same as normal attachments, except they are treated as having no names, no text, no gold costs, no House affiliations, and are discarded if they are ever forced to leave play.
Location cards
Location cards represent the unique places in the setting of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels, such as King's Landing, generic regions such as fiefdoms, and even mobile locations such as sailing vessels and warships. Many locations are used to supply additional income, influence, but a wide variety of effects are present.
Attributes of a Location card consist of a gold cost (generally represented by a number overlaid on a gold coin in the upper left corner), a name across the top that may be preceded by a black flag if the location is unique, a House affiliation (represented by one or more House shields in the upper right corner, although neutral locations will have no shield), artwork depicting the location in the top half of the card, and a text box in the lower half of the card.
Within the textbox may be traits, keywords, other game effects or icons, and flavour text from the novels. Traits are bold and italicized words at the top of the textbox, and usually represent regions within the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, such as Westeros or Dorne. They have no game function themselves, but instead are used to group locations together in order for other game effects to be used by or against varied groups of locations. Keywords are game mechanics defined in the rules that affect that location, such as Limited which restricts the player to playing one such card per round.
Event cards
Event cards represent special actions or happenings from the A Song of Ice and Fire novels that can be used in the course of the game. Certain events may be restricted so that they may only be played by a specific House, and some may only affect cards of a particular House affiliation. Event cards generally have a play restriction or a cost of some type which may be paid in influence, gold, or possibly by modifying the game state of one or more characters, locations, attachments or house card.
Attributes of an Event card consist of a name across the top that may be preceded by a black flag if the event is unique and/or an infinity symbol if the event is endless, artwork depicting the event in the top half of the card, and a text box in the lower half of the card.
Within the textbox may be traits, keywords, but primarily will be one or more game effects, and flavour text from the novels. Traits are bold and italicized words at the top of the textbox, and usually represent specific types of events such as Small Council. They have no game function themselves, but instead are used to group events together in order for other game effects to be used by or against varied groups of events. Keywords are game mechanics defined in the rules that affect that event, such as Deathbound directing a used event to the dead pile instead of the normal discard pile.
Rules
Deck building
Each player participating in an A Game of Thrones game uses two decks: 1) a 7 card plot deck and 2) a 60+ (40+ for draft) card draw deck of characters, attachments, locations, and events. During play the draw deck cards will often end up in other game play areas including the discard pile (cards discarded from play) and the dead pile (cards that were killed or are marked with the Deathbound keyword). Typically, players are only allowed three copies of any particular card (as determined by the card name, regardless of card type or game text similarity) in their draw deck, and only one copy of any particular card, by name, in their plot deck, but these restrictions can be modified by some other cards, such as the Twins agenda.
Winning conditions
A player must earn 15 power tokens between their House card and characters in play to win A Game of Thrones. Numerous cards in the game can change the amount a player or his opponent are required to earn in order to win. Generally, power tokens are earned by winning challenges against an opponent, but some cards allow a player to directly claim power for his House card or characters in other ways.
Setup
At the beginning of the game, each player shuffles their draw deck, and draws the top 7 cards, with an option for a mulligan given to each player to shuffle and draw a new hand. From this initial hand, each player is able to select up to 5 gold worth of characters, locations, and attachments with the Setup keyword, but no more than 1 card of any type with the Limited keyword, from their hand; these cards are placed face-down until all players are ready to reveal their initial cards in play. Once all cards are revealed, players draw cards again until they each have 7 cards in their hand again.
Rounds and phases
The game is played through repeated rounds until one or more players meets the winning condition, or all but one player has met the elimination condition. Rounds are divided into 7 phases, with each phase allowing players to alternate actions that affect the game state in some way.
The first phase every round is the Plot phase. Each player selects one unused plot from his plot deck, and all players reveal their chosen plots simultaneously. Initiative values from plot cards and other resources are tallied, and the player with the highest initiative chooses which player will go first in each phase of the current round. The textbox effects of plots are then resolved in the order chosen by the first player.
In the second phase, the Draw phase, each player is allowed to draw two cards from their draw deck.
Although divided into turns for each player, the Marshalling phase is a single phase for all players. At the beginning of each player's turn in the Marshalling phase, the player counts all income from plot card and any other resources available. The player is then able to bring new resources in the form of characters, locations, and attachments into play by spending the gold. Some events and other triggered effects also require the payment of gold, and unused income is not carried over into other rounds, so resource management is important.
The fourth phase is the Challenge phase. As with the Marshalling phase, each player has a turn to initiate challenges against other players. Generally, players may initiate one each of Military, Intrigue, and Power challenges each round, but several cards can allow exta challenges to be initiated or deny certain challenges at all. Also, in a multiplayer game, he can either use all his challenges on one opponent or divide them among his adversaries. He doesn't have to use all of them. Challenges can be initiated in any order, and require a player to kneel one or more characters with an icon matching the challenge type to begin the challenge. Then, the player being attacked may kneel one or more characters to attempt to oppose the challenge. Once all player actions are taken, the player with the highest total strength in the challenge wins. If the defending player wins, nothing special occurs, but if the attacker wins, then the defender suffers losses depending on the type of challenge initiated.
Military - if the defending player loses, he must kill a number of characters he controls equal to the claim value on the attacker's plot.
Intrigue - if the defending player loses, he must randomly discard a number of cards from hand equal to the claim value on the attacker's plot.
Power - if the defending player loses, he must remove a number of power tokens from his House card equal to the claim value on the attacker's plot, and place them on the attacker's House card.
In the fifth phase, the Dominance phase, each player counts the total strength of all controlled characters that are still standing, plus the amount of gold still remaining in his possession (unspent). The player with the highest total wins dominance that round, and claims 1 power token for his House, taken from the power common pool.
In the Standing phase each player changes each kneeling card to standing.
With the LCG format came a new phase, the Taxation phase, in which each player returns unspent gold to the common pool (in the CCG format, players could not use gold outside of their turn in the Marshalling phase).
Common game terms and rules
Kneeling and standing are the two possible game states for each card in the game, although there is a special moribund state that's further explained in the faq on FFG website. Standing cards are upright, and are ready for use to pay for effects, or to initiate or defend challenges. Kneeling cards are rotated 90 degrees to the side, to indicate that they've been used to pay for an effect, or to initiate or defend a challenge. Some game effects are able to kneel cards (changing them from standing to kneeling) or stand cards (changing them from kneeling to standing) in order to manipulate the resources a player has available.
Unique cards represent the special individuals, places, items, and happenings in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. Unique cards may not be played if the player already has a copy of that card in play, or if a copy of that card can be found in the player's dead pile. Unique characters, locations, and attachments may be placed with copies that are already in play to serve as duplicates. Duplicates may be discarded to save the unique card from being killed or discard.
Triggered Effects are a type of game effect that a player chooses to use in order to change the game state in some way. Triggered effects are indicated by a bold name of a phase (one of Plot, Draw, Marshalling, Challenges, Dominance, or Standing) or Any phase to indicate when the effect may be used. Another timing word that may precede a triggered effect is a bold Response, which indicates that the effect may only be used in response to another occurrence in the game. Triggered abilities are a subset of triggered effects, and are specifically triggered effects that are written on cards currently in play.
Passive Effects are game effects that have no bold timing restriction indicated, but instead happen whenever certain prerequisites are met, such as a character coming into play.
Constant Abilities are game effects written on cards in play that have an ongoing effect on the game state.
Influence is indicated on various characters, locations, and attachments in the game by a number on a scroll in the textbox of the card. In the Valyrian block, influence was introduced as an additional resource to manage, requiring players to kneel one or more cards with a specific total amount of influence to pay for an effect.
Normally, once a game effect has been initiated, it fully resolves without an interruption. However, once an effect is begun, there is a chance for specific effects to Cancel the initial effect. If the effect is cancelled, all costs stay paid, use limitations remain, but the effects do not occur.
Kill means removing a character from play, and placing that character in the dead pile. Kill effects only work on characters, including other cards that are currently functioning as characters, but other cards can be placed in the dead pile through various game effects, such as the Deathbound keyword.
Discard, when occurring without the modifier from hand, means to take a card that is in play, and place it in the discard pile.
Generally, whenever an effect targets a card to be killed or discarded, players are given a chance to Save the card from the effect, either by discarding a duplicate of the targeted card or by using another game effect. If a card is saved, it is not removed from play, and it is not considered killed or discarded.
Organized play
Night's Watch
Fantasy Flight Games has an official group of volunteers that organize sanctioned tournaments for A Game of Thrones. The Night's Watch are named after the guardians of The Wall in northern Westeros in the fictional setting of A Song of Ice and Fire. These volunteers organize tournaments, arrange demonstration games for new and interested players, and hand out promotional materials provided by FFG.
Prizes
Gold dragons are a form of loyalty points that were awarded for purchases and playing in tournaments. The packaging for booster packs, starter decks, and premium starter decks all have an image of a gold coin with a number representing the number of gold dragons earned, being one, two, and five respectively. Players could also earn certificates of eighty, forty, and twenty gold dragons for placing first, second, or third (respectively) in a sanctioned tournament. Gold dragons were redeemable to FFG for older promotional cards, booster packs, and other specialized AGoT products, such as card binders, stone house cards, and house-specific power tokens. The Gold Dragon redemption program officially ended on June 30, 2008.
Promotional cards were frequently provided to Night's Watch volunteers by FFG to be given to participants of sanctioned tournaments. Sometimes these cards follow a special theme for the tournament, but that is not always the case. Usually the cards can legally be included in any deck, but some are marked with a skull icon to indicate they cannot be included unless special rules are in effect for that tournament.
Tournaments
There are several different official tournament types sanctioned by FFG. In the Classic format, players bring their own decks, which may include cards from any set, as long as the card is not on the banned list. In Standard format, players bring their own decks, which may only include cards from the most recent blocks. , only cards released since Valyrian block are legal in Standard format. In Limited format, players instead build their decks at the tournament, using provided draft packs (in Limited - Draft) or starter decks (in Limited - Sealed Deck) and booster packs.
Aside from the restrictions on usable card pool, FFG places no limits on how Night's Watch volunteers organize the tournaments.
Thrones-Tournaments.com tries to provide a central list of all international and local store tournaments, to help gamers find play to compete in.
World and Continental Championships
The A Game of Thrones World Championships were held yearly at Gen Con Indy until 2012, when they moved to Fantasy Flight's Event Centre in Minneapolis, with Gencon being redesignated North American Championships. Part of the winner's prize is the opportunity to design their own card.
The 2003 world champion Casey Galvan was later hired by FFG to serve as lead developer, a position he occupied until fall of 2005. He now has a consulting role at FFG. The runner up in that tournament, Nate French, came on as lead developer in Spring of 2006 and continues to this day.
Podcasts
There are a number of podcasts focused on the A Game of Thrones: The Living Card Game, such as the weekly Beyond The Wall, 2 Champs and a Chump, Great Beards of Westeros and the Spanish language 2 Maestros 1 Pupilo.
Sets and expansions
When it was released, A Game of Thrones was introduced as a CCG. The cards for the AGoT CCG were organized into numerous sets and expansions that could be mixed together and used interchangeably. A block consisted of a base set, up to two expansion sets, a premium starter, and often one or more promotional cards.
Typically, a base set consisted of 240 cards available in either starter decks, consisting of a mix of fixed cards and a random assortment of other cards, or booster packs, consisting of 11 randomly sorted cards, of which 1 is rare, 3 are uncommon, and 7 are common. Booster packs were generally shipped in groups of 36, creating booster boxes. Expansion sets typically contained 150 cards, and were only distributed as booster packs similar to those of a base set. Premium Starters consisted of two or three pre-built decks of fixed cards, typically reprints from earlier sets, but also introducing 10 new cards as well.
Within a base set and expansion set, the cards were divided into groups based on their frequency of appearance, with rare cards being included the least frequent, uncommon cards slightly more frequent, and common cards being the most frequent. Also available in regular and premium starters were a specific number of fixed cards that always appeared in that packaging. Also available were draft packs which consisted of 1 draft card, 5 plot cards, 6 house cards and 8 locations that are generally useful to any deck, and allow for a more level competitive field during draft tournaments.
In late 2007, the A Game of Thrones CCG was converted to the A Game of Thrones LCG (Living Card Game), which ended the random booster packs in favor of fixed packs, called Chapter Packs, released on a roughly monthly basis. Chapter packs consist of 60 fixed cards - 3 copies of 20 cards. The Core Set consists of 4 preconstructed decks consisting of Stark, Lannister, Baratheon, and Targaryen, and is marketed as a starting point for a new player. It will also include a game board, power tokens, gold tokens, as well as game pieces to use for the multiplayer titles. Along with the switch to the LCG, there has also been more of a focus on the multiplayer aspect of the game, now referred to as Melee, rather than the head to head play, now referred to as Joust.
Promotional cards are usually provided as prizes for participating in FFG registered tournaments, by attending certain conventions, or buying other A Game of Thrones promotional packages.
Industry awards
The game's first base set - Westeros Edition - won the 2002 Origins Award for Best Trading Card Game of 2002. The second base set - Ice and Fire Edition - followed next year and won the 2003 Origins Award for Best Card Game Expansion or Supplement of 2003.
References
External links
agameofthrones.com - Official website
Card games introduced in 2002
Collectible card games
Dedicated deck card games
Fantasy games
Fantasy Flight Games games
Games based on A Song of Ice and Fire
Origins Award winners
Christian T. Petersen games
Eric M. Lang games | en |
doc-en-11186 | Ross Edwards (born 23 December 1943) is an Australian composer of a wide variety of music including orchestral and chamber music, choral music, children's music, opera and film music. His distinctive sound world reflects his interest in deep ecology and his belief in the need to reconnect music with elemental forces, as well as restore its traditional association with ritual and dance. He also recognises the profound importance of music as an agent of healing. His music, universal in that it is concerned with age-old mysteries surrounding humanity, is at the same time connected to its roots in Australia, whose cultural diversity it celebrates, and from whose natural environment it draws inspiration, especially birdsong and the mysterious patterns and drones of insects. As a composer living and working on the Pacific Rim, he is aware of the exciting potential of this vast region.
Early life and education
Ross Edwards was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. His parents were Frank Edwards, an engineer, and Marjorie Robertson. His great-grandfather was the publisher George Robertson of Angus & Robertson. Drawn to music at an early age, his first attempts at composition date from his fourth year, but it was not until the age of 13, when taken to a concert by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra by his aunt that featured Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and Liszt's First Piano Concerto, that he became intensely aware of his vocation to become a composer.
Edwards attended Sydney Grammar School, which did not offer music at the time. At 15 years of age, Edwards was granted permission to enter the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music to study piano, oboe, harmony, counterpoint and theory during lunch hours and weekends. In 1963, after being awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to the University of Sydney, he enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts degree, but became frustrated and dropped out after a year. Due to the benevolent intervention of composers Peter Sculthorpe and Peter Maxwell Davies, he was able to earn a scholarship and complete a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Adelaide's Elder Conservatorium in 1969, where his teachers included Peter Maxwell Davies (then composer-in-residence), Sándor Veress and Richard Meale. During vacations he worked as assistant to Peter Sculthorpe, gaining valuable insight into the working life of a composer. A further Commonwealth Scholarship enabled Edwards to complete his studies with Peter Maxwell Davies in London in 1970, earning a Master of Music degree, after which he spent 18 months composing at a remote Yorkshire farmhouse. Today, Edwards holds higher doctorates from the Universities of Sydney and Adelaide.
Returning to Sydney in 1970, Edwards taught in the Music Department of Sydney University and in 1974 married Helen Hopkins, one of his students. In the same year he became a lecturer in the Sydney Conservatorium's School of Composition, remaining there until 1980, when he began working as a freelance composer and lecturer. Working from their home in the coastal village of Pearl Beach, Edwards and his wife Helen, a piano teacher, led an idyllic and productive life until the education of their two children necessitated moving back to Sydney in 1984.
Musical career
Reclusive by nature, Ross Edwards has largely eschewed following a career path as such, neglecting to promote his work and responding mainly to the inner dictates of his vocation. Based in Sydney and often retreating to work in the Blue Mountains west of the city, he has an acute sense of place and belonging, claiming to draw on his experience as "a composer living and working in Australia and relating to the world from an Australian perspective." Far from being isolationist, however, the surface of Edwards’ music is often highly eclectic, making oblique references to many cultures in what he describes as an "intuitive search for unity within diversity". He has also stated that underlying all his music "the natural environment remains the supreme generative force".
In spite of his natural reticence, Edwards' works have been featured at such international music festivals as the Vale of Glamorgan Festival, Wales; the Edinburgh International Festival; the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, Townsville; the Mostly Mozart Festival, New York; the City of London Festival; the Darwin International Guitar Festival; the Canberra International Music Festival; the Adelaide Festival; the Melbourne Festival; the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, Arizona; International Society for Contemporary Music Festivals in Stockholm, Basel, Warsaw and Sydney; and the Festivals of Sydney and Perth.
Significant events
Significant events include the award of a joint Australian Broadcasting Corporation/Australian Bicentennial commission to compose the violin concerto Maninyas (1988); the Australia Council's Don Banks Music Award (1989); Australian Creative "Keating" Fellowships in 1990 and 1995; and award of the Order of Australia – AM (1997). The composition of Dawn Mantras, Sydney's contribution to the millennium celebrations, was telecast worldwide to an audience of billions, attracting great international acclaim. In 2007 he was Musica Viva Australia’s Featured Composer.
Collaborations
In 2005, Edwards' oboe concerto Bird Spirit Dreaming, originally composed for oboist Diana Doherty and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, had its US premiere by Doherty, the New York Philharmonic and Lorin Maazel, after which it was toured worldwide and received enthusiastically. Another notable success was the 2010 UK premiere of the violin concerto Maninyas, given at the 2010 Edinburgh International Festival by its dedicatee, Dene Olding, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Vladimir Ashkenazy. This work has also gained international popularity through choreography for dance, notably by Stanton Welch for the San Francisco Ballet. Another Welch/Edwards collaboration, the ballet Zodiac, was successfully premiered by the Houston Ballet in 2015. Edwards' music, with its unique rhythms, has a natural affinity with dance.
Another important collaboration with Australian saxophonist Amy Dickson, who now lives in London has produced three new works: the saxophone concerto Full Moon Dances (2012); the double concerto Frog and Star Cycle, for whose 2016 premiere Dickson was paired with the Scottish percussionist Colin Currie and accompanied by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; and Bright Birds and Sorrows, which Dickson premiered at the 2017 Musica Viva Festival in Sydney with the Elias String Quartet, visiting from the UK.
Musical style and philosophy
Early period: the influence of the natural world
In the early 1970s Edwards experienced an unexpected crisis. Disenchanted by the European music of the time, which was itself in crisis due to the waning of the Modernist movement, he found himself unable to compose for several years. Having returned to Australia due to the terminal illness of his mother, and while lecturing at the Sydney Conservatorium, he moved in 1974 with his wife and infant son to the village of Pearl Beach, north of Sydney, where his sister-in-law had a holiday house. Pearl Beach, which adjoined the Brisbane Water National Park "buzzing with wildlife", had an immediate effect on him and his work. "The summer days were swathed in the drones of cicadas with their mysteriously abrupt starts and stops and, at evening, the insects would start up. I was entranced by the insect chorus because it seemed to be on the verge of conveying some profound message which was ultimately elusive. All the temporal relationships in my music – the relative lengths of phrases and sections – are influenced by these ancient voices, whose near-symmetries and inconsistently varied repetitions often seem close to our inherited musical syntax. I don’t doubt that, over the millennia, such voices have generated much of the world’s music and it’s not hard to detect their presence in various surviving folk and religious traditions".
Austerity and contemplation: the Sacred Series and beyond
The result of Edwards' move to Pearl Beach was a leap from the fierce complexity of some of his earlier work to a series of austere, meditative compositions (e.g., Tower of Remoteness (1978) and Etymalong (1984)), which became known as his Sacred Series, based on close listening to and absorption of the complex sound of the natural environment combined with his reading of Zen texts and commentaries.
To Edwards' surprise, these skeletal compositions "found favour with the apostles of Orthodox Modernism," unaware that their position was being quietly subverted. It became vividly apparent, however, when, in 1982, his Piano Concerto burst upon the scene. "Some other pieces I wrote in the 1980s, however, ruffled establishment feathers both here and abroad and all but destroyed my reputation as a so-called serious composer. The most notorious example is, without doubt, my Piano Concerto, composed in Pearl Beach in 1982. My original intention for this work was to compose something … stark and introspective, but some unseen force seemed to dictate otherwise. In what seemed like a moment of sheer revelation, the outside world burst in on me and I suddenly became aware that I had the extraordinary privilege of living in a paradise of sun-blessed ocean and joyously shrieking parrots gyrating in the warm air, and that this ecstasy simply had to be transmitted through music. Conformist critics, especially English ones, gave me hell but, fortunately, the public responded positively, and this remains one of my most popular pieces."
What followed was a process of integrating extreme positions – of gradually developing a musical language that spoke both to Edwards himself and, through him, to those prepared to listen. In the 1980s, the response to his music began to gain momentum, divided between the enthusiasm of those who perceived it as fresh direction – "a statement of independence from the impetus of cultural globalism" – and those who saw it as "a betrayal of Modernist idealism". Edwards largely stayed aloof from these so-called "style wars", seeking his own instinctual voice in the midst of controversy.
The Maninya style: the dance of nature
Throughout the 1980s, the shapes, rhythms and temporal relationships Edwards subconsciously gleaned from walking in the Brisbane Water National Park began increasingly to inform the structure and texture of his music, which took on the character of angular, animated chant, with subtly varied repetition of rhythmic cells over elaborated drones. This "dance-chant", as he called it, sometimes mistakenly aligned with the minimalist movement, was closely examined by Paul Stanhope, who claimed that it suggested ritualistic behaviour. Edwards’ description of it as his maninya style originates from a spontaneously conceived nonsense text which he set to music in Maninya I (1986), and which was to spawn a series of maninya pieces culminating in the Maninyas violin concerto of 1988. While its quirky rhythms and chirpy, pentatonic melodic shapes are antithetical to the austere spiritual quietude of the sacred series, the maninya style also has its origin in nature, bringing the drones of insects and cicadas, the calls of birds and the mysterious temporal proportions into the concert hall. Edwards also notes that he had become fascinated by the music of the Sufis and the African mbira, and that these may have been influential. From this time, Edwards’ language, though firmly rooted in the Australian bush, begins to look outward and bear traces of an eclectic attitude to come. The maninya style has persisted throughout his work, as has the sacred, each increasingly infiltrated by symbols from and references to other cultures which preserve a reverence for the Earth.
Whereas Edwards' early maninya pieces tended to be static, ritualistic blocks of sound, Edwards began in the 1990s a series under the generic title "enyato", also extracted from the 1981 nonsense poem and given to connote "contrast". The enyato pieces are typically in two-movement form, the first slow, introductory; the second lively, dance-like. Examples are Prelude and Dragonfly Dance (1991) for percussion ensemble, and Blackwattle Caprices (1998), for solo guitar. In his study, Beyond Sacred and Maninyas, Philip Cooney maintains that these pieces may be seen as move towards a fusion of opposites, a steady progression towards the world of the later symphonies and concerti, where Edwards has been concerned with achieving greater richness and breadth.
Diversity and eclecticism
Since the turn of the 21st century, Edwards' music, especially in his diverse larger scale works, has begun to integrate the many consistent elements of his earlier work – ranging from childlike simplicity, embellished Eastern pentatonicism, medieval Western modality, fragments of plainchant, occasional outbursts of expressionistic angst, complex textures which include the development of motives and Western counterpoint, Eastern heterophony, and a deep spiritual dimension with both Eastern and Western overtones. There are allusions to indigenous music but not direct quotations: where the didjeridu occurs its function has always been discussed between composer and performer. To these he has often added theatre and ritual, costume, lighting and dance, most manifest in such orchestral works as Bird Spirit Dreaming (2002), Full Moon Dances (2012) and Frog and Star Cycle (2015). Cultural symbols such as the Virgin Mary and her Eastern equivalent, Guanyin, goddess of compassion, make frequent appearance in the guise of the Earth Mother, protector and nurturer of the environment – Edwards' work has always had a strongly ecological focus. Behind the vivid surface activity however, the mysterious Australian bush is always present as a constant backdrop, providing unity and coherence.
In the 1970s, Edwards' attunement to the sounds of nature in a mindful, meditative way had a powerful effect on his music. He came to regard the sacred pieces as sonic contemplation objects similar to the honkyoku repertoire of the Japanese shakuhachi. Years later he re-established contact with Dr Graham Williams, a friend from student days, who had given up his career as a pianist to train as a meditation teacher in the Burmese and Tibetan traditions. Williams who, as director of the Lifeflow Meditation Centre in Adelaide and was developing a uniquely Australian form of meditation, perceived that all of Edwards' music possessed a quality that naturally induced a meditative state.
List of works
Orchestral
Mountain Village in a Clearing Mist (1972)
Veni Creator Spiritus for string orchestra (1993)
Chorale and Ecstatic Dance for string orchestra (1994)
Chorale and Ecstatic Dance for full orchestra (1995)
White Ghost Dancing (1999, rev. 2007)
Emerald Crossing (1999)
Entwinings, for string orchestra (2016)
Dances of Life and Death, for wind orchestra (2017)
Symphonies
Symphony No. 1 "Da Pacem Domine" (1991)
Symphony No. 2 "Earth Spirit Songs" (1996–97)
Symphony No. 3 "Mater Magna" (1998–2000)
Symphony No. 4 "Star Chant" (2001)
Symphony No. 5 "The Promised Land" (2005)
Concertos
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1982)
Maninyas, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1981–88)
Arafura Dances, Concerto for Guitar and String Orchestra (1995)
Bird Spirit Dreaming, Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra (2002)
Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra (2007)
Full Moon Dances, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra (2011)
Frog and Star Cycle, Double Concerto for Saxophone and Percussion (2015)
Other orchestral works with soloist
Yarrageh, Nocturne for Percussion and Orchestra (1989)
The Heart of Night for shakuhachi and orchestra (2004–5)
Spirit Ground for violin and orchestra (2010)
Vocal
The Hermit of Green Light – Four Poems of Michael Dransfield (1979)
Maninya I (1981)
Maninya V (1986)
Maninya VI (1995)
Christina’s Lullaby (2010)
Five Senses – Five Poems of Judith Wright (2012)
Choral
Five Carols from Quem Quaeritis (1967)
Eternity (1973)
Ab Estatis Foribus (1980)
Flower Songs (1986–7)
Dance Mantras (1992)
Dawn Mantras (1999)
Dawn Canticle (2000)
Mountain Chant – Three Sacred Choruses (2002–3)
Southern Cross Chants (2004)
Mantras and Alleluyas (2007)
Mass of the Dreaming (2009)
Sacred Kingfisher Psalms (2009)
Miracles (2014)
Opera, dance and music theatre
Christina’s World, chamber opera to libretto by Dorothy Hewett (1983)
Sensing, dance video with Graeme Murphy and the Sydney Dance Company (1992)
Maninyas – ballet to Edwards’ violin concerto Maninyas choreographed by Stanton Welch for the San Francisco Ballet (1996)
The Cries of Australia, with Barry Humphries (1997)
Koto Dreaming for the 2003 Asian Music and Dance Festival, Sydney
To the Green Island, orchestral score for Nicolo Fonte’s ballet The Possibility Space for The Australian Ballet (2008)
Zodiac, orchestral score choreographed by Stanton Welch for the Houston Ballet (2015)
Instrumental music
Bagatelle, for oboe and piano (1968)
Monos I, for solo cello (1970)
The Tower of Remoteness, for clarinet and piano (1978)
Marimba Dances (1982)
Ten Little Duets for treble instruments (1982)
Ecstatic Dances, for two flutes or flute and clarinet (1990)
Ecstatic Dance, arranged for two woodwinds or two strings
Prelude and White Cockatoo Spirit Dance (Enyato II), for solo violin or solo viola (1993)
Ulpirra, for a solo woodwind (1993)
Guitar Dances, for solo guitar, arr. Adrian Walter (1994)
Four Bagatelles for oboe and clarinet (1994)
Enyato IV, for bass clarinet and marimba (1995)
Raft Song at Sunrise, for solo shakuhachi (1995)
Binyang, for clarinet and percussion (1996)
Blackwattle Caprices, for solo guitar (1998)
Two Pieces for Solo Oboe, 1. Yanada, 2. Ulpirra (1998)
Djanaba, for guitar and marimba, also arr. for two guitars (2002)
Prelude and Laughing Rock, for solo cello (1993–2003)
Water Spirit Song, from Koto Dreaming, for solo cello and various solo woodwinds (2003)
More Marimba Dances (2004)
Two pieces for Organ (2004)
Nura, sonata for flute and piano (2004)
The Harp and the Moon, for solo harp (2008)
Mystic Spring – Songs and Dances for a Treble Woodwind (2009)
Exile, for violin and piano (2010)
Melbourne Arioso for solo guitar (2016)
Keyboard music
Monos II, for solo piano (1970)
Five Little Piano Pieces (1976)
Kumari, for solo piano (1980)
Three Little Piano Pieces for the Right Hand Alone (1983)
Etymalong, for solo piano (1984)
Three Children’s Pieces, 1. Fipsis, 2. Gamelan, 3. Emily's Song (1983)
Pond Light Mantras for two pianos (1991)
Three Australian Waltzes, 1. Sassafras Gully Waltz, 3. Sandy Stone's Waltz (1997–8)
A Flight of Sunbirds – Nine Bagatelles for Four Hands (2001)
Mantras and Night Flowers, 9 bagatelles for solo piano (2001)
Two Pieces for Organ (2004)
Piano Sonata (2011)
Bird Morning, for two pianos and didjeridu (2015)
Sea Star Fantasy, piano solo (2015)
Lake Dreaming, for two pianos (2017)
Ensemble music
Laikan, sextet for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano violin and cello (1979)
Maninya II, for string quartet (1982). Withdrawn and partly incorporated into String Quartet No. 3 (see below).
Reflections, sextet for piano and percussion (1985).
Maninya III, for wind quintet (1985), later incorporated into Incantations (see below)
Prelude and Dragonfly Dance, for percussion quartet (1991)
Chorale and Ecstatic Dance, for string quartet. Also known as Enyato I. (1993)
Veni Creator Spiritus for double string quartet (1993)
Arafura Dances, arranged for harp and string quartet (1995)
Tyalgum Mantras, for variable ensemble (1999).
Piano Trio (1999)
Emerald Crossing, for piano quartet (1999). Later incorporated into Piano Quartet (see below).
Dawn Mantras, for shakuhachi, tenor saxophone (or cor anglais), didjeridu, percussion, child soprano, children's choir, men's choir. (1999)
Enyato V, for flute, guitar, percussion, violin and cello (2001)
Island Landfall, for flute, clarinet, piano, 2 violins, viola and cello (2003)
Incantations, for wind quintet (2006)
String Quartet No. 1 "Sparks and Auras" (2006, revised 2009)
String Quartet No. 2 "Shekina Fantasy" (2008, revised 2010)
String Quartet No. 3 "Summer Dances" (2012)
Gallipoli, for string quartet (2014)
Animisms, suite for flute, clarinet, percussion, violin and cello (2014)
Bright Birds and Sorrows, suite for soprano saxophone and string quartet (2015)
Voice of the Rain, for shakuhachi and string quartet (2016)
Piano Quartet (2017)
Awards, nominations and accolades
APRA-AMC Art Music Awards
The APRA-AMC Art Music Awards (previously Classical Music Awards) are presented annually by Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australian Music Centre (AMC) since 2002. They "honour the achievements of composers, performers and industry specialists in the contemporary classical genre."
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|rowspan="2"| 2003 ||Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra (Edwards) – Diana Doherty || Best Performance of an Australian Composition ||
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| Song for Emily (Edwards) – 200 Guitar Duo || Instrumental Work of the Year ||
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| 2005 || Concerto for Guitar and Strings (Ross Edwards) – Karin Schaupp, Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, Richard Mills (conductor) || Orchestral Work of the Year ||
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| 2006 || Oboe Concerto (Edwards) – Diana Doherty, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra || Orchestral Work of the Year ||
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| 2007 || Piano Trio (Edwards) – The Australian Trio || Instrumental Work of the Year ||
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|rowspan="2"| 2008 ||Symphony No. 4 "Star Chant" (Edwards, Fred Watson) – Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Richard Mills (conductor); Adelaide Chamber Singers, Carl Crossin (director); Adelaide Philharmonia Chorus, Timothy Sexton (director) ||Vocal or Choral Work of the Year ||
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| More Marimba Dances (Edwards) || Instrumental Work of the Year ||
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|rowspan="2"| 2011 || Kalkadunga Man (William Barton, Edwards, Sarah Hopkins, Rosalind Page, Dan Walker) – The Song Company, William Barton (soloist) || Performance of the Year ||
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| Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre – Composer-in-Focus 2010 with Ross Edwards || Award for Excellence in Music Education ||
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| rowspan="2"| 2012 || Spirit Ground (Edwards) – West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Margaret Blades (soloist) || Work of the Year – Orchestral ||
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| Sacred Kingfisher Psalms (Edwards) – The Song Company || Work of the Year – Vocal or Choral ||
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| 2013 || Full Moon Dances (Edwards) – Sydney Symphony, Miguel Harth-Bedoya (conductor), Amy Dickson (saxophone) || Work of the Year – Orchestral ||
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| 2015 || Ross Edwards – Contribution to Australian chamber music || Award for Excellence by an Individual ||
In 2009, ABC Classic FM conducted a listener survey of favourite symphonies entitled Classic 100 Symphony. Australian composers were voted in three positions of the top 100; Edwards' Symphony No. 1 Da pacem Domine was placed at number 67.
In 2011, ABC Classic FM conducted a listener survey of favourite work of the 20th century entitled Classic 100 Twentieth Century. Australian composers were voted in eight positions of the top 100; Two of Edwards' works appeared: Violin Concerto Maninyas (number 45) and Dawn Mantras (number 49).
In 2016 Ross Edwards was awarded the David Harold Tribe Symphony Award for Frog and Star Cycle, Double Concerto for Saxophone and Percussion.
Don Banks Music Award
The Don Banks Music Award was established in 1984 to publicly honour a senior artist of high distinction who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to music in Australia. It was founded by the Australia Council in honour of Don Banks, Australian composer, performer and the first chair of its music board.
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| 1989
| Ross Edwards
| Don Banks Music Award
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Personal life
Ross Edwards married Helen Hopkins, one of his students, in 1974. She is currently his manager, having spent many years as a piano teacher, and has always been a committed supporter of his work. They have two children, Jeremy and Emily.
References
External links
Biography of Ross Edwards – maintained by the Australian Music Centre
http://www.rossedwards.com/
1943 births
Living people
20th-century Australian male musicians
20th-century Australian musicians
20th-century classical composers
21st-century Australian male musicians
21st-century Australian musicians
21st-century classical composers
APRA Award winners
Australian film score composers
Australian male composers
Male film score composers
Members of the Order of Australia
Musicians from Sydney
People educated at Sydney Grammar School
Sydney Conservatorium of Music alumni
University of Adelaide alumni
University of Sydney alumni | en |
doc-en-6184 | The Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme or mahJ (French: "Museum of Jewish Art and History") is the largest French museum of Jewish art and history. It is located in the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan in the Marais district in Paris.
The museum conveys the rich history and culture of Jews in Europe and North Africa from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Its fine collection of religious objects, archives, manuscripts, and works of art promotes the contributions of Jews to France and to the world, especially in the arts. The museum's collections include works of art from Marc Chagall and Amedeo Modigliani.
The museum has a bookshop selling books on Jewish art and history and Judaica, a media library with an online catalogue accessible to the public, and an auditorium which offers conferences, lectures, concerts, performances, and seminars. It also provides guided weekly visits in English during the tourist season (April to July) for individuals as well as students and teachers, and workshops for children, families, and adults.
History of the museum
In 1985 Claude-Gérard Marcus, Victor Klagsbald, and Alain Erlande-Brandenburg launched a project to create a museum of Jewish art and history in Paris, backed by the City of Paris and the ministry of Culture, represented by Jack Lang, Minister of Culture. The project had two goals: first, to provide Paris with an ambitious museum dedicated to Judaism and second, to present national collections acquired from the reserves of the national museum of the Middle Ages. At the time, only a modest museum devoted to Judaism existed in Paris, on the rue des Saules.
The project was led by Laurence Sigal starting in 1988. The mayor of Paris at the time, Jacques Chirac, provided the Hotel de Saint-Aignan in the Marais as a site for the future museum. The Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme finally opened in 1998.
The decision to set up the museum in the Marais was a conscious one. Since the end of the 18th century, a large population of Jews has lived in the Marais. At first, these were immigrants from Eastern Europe, and later from North Africa during decolonization. Today, the Marais has been profoundly transformed: traditional shops have been largely replaced by trendy designer boutiques. However, the neighborhood is also a cultural center for museums such as the musée Carnavalet, the musée Picasso, and the Mémorial de la Shoah (Memorial for the Holocaust).
The two architects in charge of redesigning the interior of the building, Catherine Bizouard and Francois Pin, not only crafted the areas for the permanent collections but also created a media library, an auditorium, a bookshop, and an area dedicated to educational workshops.
The museum provides areas for temporary exhibitions, educational activities, and research, making it a dynamic and innovative cultural venue.
History of the collection
The museum's permanent collection was assembled from three main sources.
The first is the Musée d’art juif de Paris, whose collection was given to the mahJ. It consisted mainly of European religious objects, graphic works by Russian and German Jewish artists and artists from the School of Paris, and architectural models of European synagogues destroyed by the Nazis.
The second source is the Musée national du Moyen-Age in Paris, known as the musée Cluny. This collection was built up by Isaac Strauss, a French Jew from the 19th century. He collected 149 religious objects during his travels throughout Europe, including furniture, ceremonial objects, and Hebrew manuscripts. A Holy Arch from Italy from the 15th century, wedding rings, and illuminated ketubbot (marriage contracts) are examples of artefacts in his collection. Strauss is regarded as the first collector of Jewish objects. Part of his collection was displayed during the 1878 Exposition Universelle, provoking a strong interest. After his death, his collection was acquired by Baroness Nathaniel de Rothschild in 1890. She then gave it to the State to be donated to the Musée Cluny. Sixty six rare medieval funeral steles, discovered in 1894 rue Pierre-Sarrazin, are on a long-term loan from the musée Cluny.
Finally, the third source is a set of long-term loans from museums such as le Centre Pompidou, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée du Louvre, and the Musée national des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie. The museum's collection was also enriched by loans from the Consistory of Paris, the Jewish Museum in Prague and donations from the Fondation du Judaïsme français. The museum also acquired a large photography collection. The collection has over 1500 photographs, mainly of Jewish communities from the past and present, of historical events, and of Jewish architectural heritage.
Missions
Official missions
At its creation, the museum outlined five missions that it seeks to fulfill:
Present two thousand years of history of Jewish communities in France and contextualize them in the overall history of Judaism.
Conserve, study, diffuse, and promote the museum's collection, archives, and documents relating to Jewish history and art.
Make the collection as accessible as possible to a large public.
Organize the diffusion of all forms of artistic expressions relating to Jewish culture in all its diversity.
Create and execute educational operations, activities, and enterprises to promote Jewish culture.
Purposes
The mahJ chose a time period covering Jewish history from its beginnings in France until the birth of the State of Israel, without including the Holocaust. The project for the Mémorial de la Shoah, which is now located 800 yards from the museum, already existed when the mahJ was created, with the goal of commemorating the Holocaust. The mahJ and the Memorial complement each other. The museum explores Jewish history and identity without the memory of the Holocaust being the main element. The Holocaust is such a singular and momentous event that it can overshadow the rich heritage of Judaism outside of it, and deserves its own focused space.
Furthermore, the museum favors a historical approach to Judaism. The museum collection is organized in a chronological order and the works of art presented are always situated in their historical context. Differently from other European Jewish museums, the mahJ does not follow the phases of religious life. It is not a didactic presentation of the religious cycle in Judaism, and is neither a community nor a confessional museum, but instead shows the historical destiny of Jewish communities through time and space.
The museum also explores fundamental questions about Judaism and Jewish identity. Is Judaism a religion, the history of a particular nation, a culture or a civilization? Is there a unity that transcends the diversity within Jewish communities?
Finally, a considerable part of the museum's collection is made up of works of art from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century. Thus the question: What is Jewish art? Is it liturgical or religious art; art depicting Jewish themes and ways of life; or is it enough if the artist is Jewish?
Key exhibits
Marc Chagall, The Gates of the Cemetery
Chagall's representation of a Jewish cemetery is part of a rediscovering of Jewish heritage by artists of the beginning of the 20th century. Chagall had recently discovered his grandfather's tomb: this painting is in part a reaction to this event. The artist associated the themes of death and resurrection through a quote from the prophet Ezekiel: "I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people! And I will bring you back into the land of Israel." (Ezekiel, 37:12)
Medieval gravestones
The remains of a Jewish cemetery in Paris from the 13th century were discovered in 1849. A large set of exceptional gravestones that were found are now displayed in the room dedicated to French Jewry in the Middle Ages. They serve as a testimony to Jewish presence in Paris during the Middle Ages, despite many persecutions. All the gravestones are engraved with Hebrew inscriptions and are thus historical documents of a Jewish community.
Sukkah
This remarkably well-preserved sukkah of exceptional quality from the 19th century was used for the festival of Sukkot, one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. The panels are decorated with paintings of an Austrian village, the first few words of the Decalogue, and a view of Jerusalem.
Ceremonial dress
The Kswa el Kbirah, also known as "berberisca", is a bridal dress typical of the big coastal cities of Western Morocco. It is made up of three parts: the skirt, the bodice, and the embroidered bolero. Its design demonstrates the Spanish heritage that influenced the making of the costume. In many Moroccan families, the ceremonial dress is handed down from mother to daughter. Many similar costumes were donated to the museum by Jewish Moroccan families living in France after decolonization.
Holy Ark
This piece from a synagogue in Modena, Italy, is the only Ashkenazi ark from the 15th century that has survived. Its structure and design are reminiscent of the shape of a fortified tower. A painted inscription reinforces this allegory: "The name of the Lord is a tower of strength where the righteous may seek refuge." It was probably made by the Italian artists Lorenzo and Cristoforo Canozzi. They excelled in the art of marquetry, which flourished during the Italian Renaissance. This Ark demonstrates the way Jews asked the most reputable artists of the time to execute synagogue furniture. (Proverbs, 30:10)
Permanent collection
Each room of the permanent collection brings together three dimensions: a historical perspective of a certain time, a theme in some area of Judaism, and a specific place. The goal is to highlight the diversity and unity in rituals, beliefs, art, and material culture of Jewish communities in Europe and North Africa.
The situation of Jews in France is original because both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews coexist and the two traditions mingle.
Introductory room
The visit begins with a presentation of symbolic objects and fundamental documents to show the permanence of Jewish identity and civilization in spite of- and through- the diaspora.
French Jews in the Middle Ages
French Jewry had a rich cultural life in the Middle Ages, as witnessed by the work of Jewish thinkers such as Rashi, a rabbi from the 11th century. In 1306, Philippe Le Bel made an edict expelling Jews from France, and in 1394 Charles VI banned them completely. The central exhibit of the room is a collection of gravestones from a 13th-century Jewish cemetery in Paris. These gravestones have exceptional value, as they are the largest archeological set ever discovered on French soil. At the far end, valuable manuscripts are displayed in a presentation counter. Four rare ritual objects dating from the period before the Jews' expulsion from France illustrate the depth of medieval Jewish life. The visitor sees how communities were organized, how knowledge was shared in networks, and how Jews were present in the Christian world.
The Jews in the Italian Renaissance
During the Renaissance up until the 19th century, Italy was not a unified country, so the life and presence of Jews was different in every region. This room shows the cultural splendor of certain cities, such as Modena and Venice. It is devoted to synagogue furnishings, including a rare Holy Ark from Modena in Italy, silverware, and liturgical embroideries from the Italian Jewish world. These beautiful objects show the refinement of Italian art in the Renaissance. Jewish life cycle events – birth, circumcision, bar mitzvah, and marriage – are illustrated by objects, jewelry, and manuscripts. Illuminated marriage contracts (ketubbot) are displayed in frames. Several paintings from the 18th century, attributed to Marco Marcuola, depict religious scenes from Jewish life in Venice. A 1720 masterpiece by Alessandro "il Lissandrino" Magnasco depicts a Jewish funeral in late-Baroque style. The painting is extremely expressive and tormented, but doesn't lack realism as certain details accurately represent Jewish customs. Magnasco was very interested in Jewish subjects, and especially depicted many synagogues in his work.
Hanukkah
An entire room is dedicated to the holiday of Hanukkah. It displays an exceptional collection of Hanukkiyot, in a variety of shapes and designs, from various origins and periods. This panorama is "a metaphor for the dispersion of Jews around the world and their anchoring in dominant cultures."
Amsterdam: the meeting of two Diasporas
A small collection of 17th and 18th century Dutch engravings represent the wanderings of Spanish Jews after the expulsion from Spain. It includes a lovely series by Bernard Picart entitled Ceremonies and Religious Customs of all Peoples of the World and shows how Portuguese Jews integrated into the communities in Amsterdam, London, and Bordeaux after their expulsion in 1496/97. This area focuses on the importance of relationships between communities. Finally, a display case showcases the development of Hebrew printing through rare books which are printing press masterpieces.
Next year in Jerusalem
One of the museum's central pieces is a completely restored 19th century Sukkah from Austria decorated with places that matter in Judaism, such as the Old City in Jerusalem. Along with other ritual objects and texts, it depicts the Three Pilgrimage Festivals - Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot -, and highlights the central place that Jerusalem occupies in Jewish consciousness.
The Ashkenazi world
Several scale models of synagogues from Eastern Europe, most of which were destroyed by the Nazis, remind us of a world that has now disappeared. A haunting painting entitled Jewish Cemetery (1892) by Samuel Hirszenberg depicts the difficult living conditions of Jewish communities in Poland and Russia caused by the pogroms at the end of the 19th century. Two paintings by Marc Chagall bring to life the existence of Jews in the shtetls. The display cases exhibit works around the theme of Shabbat, prayer, and liturgy. They provide a brief overview of religious study and movements of religious thought in the 19th century. In addition, an exceptional collection of mappot, linen sashes used to swaddle a baby boy when he is circumcised, is displayed. Mappot were exclusively used in Eastern France.
The Sephardic world
The Sephardic collection touches on the same themes evoked in the Ashkenazi collection to show the kinship and contrasts between the two traditions.
The geographical contrasts in religious customs among Sephardic Jews are highlighted through a variety of textiles, synagogue silverware, ordinary domestic objects, and popular art.
The collection contains a wide range of ethnographic objects illustrating the wealth of traditions and family ceremonies and the opulent costumes of Jews of the Maghreb, the Ottoman Empire, and the Middle East. Orientalist paintings and engravings, as well as old photographs, complete this journey among the communities of the Diaspora.
Jewish Emancipation: the French model
The era of the Emancipation of the Jews in France began with the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century: they became citizens in 1790-1791. This section offers a panorama of French Judaism in the 19th century. It focuses on important moments of the Jews’ integration into modern society, including the creation of the consistories (1808) under the auspices of Napoleon Bonaparte which organized French Judaism, as well as the establishment of state secularism in 1905. These moments are illustrated by works depicting Jewish themes by French and European artists including Alphonse Levy, Edouard Brandon, Edouard Moyse, Samuel Hirszenberg, Maurycy Gottlieb, and Maurycy Minkovski. These works of art show that Jewish art is not simply liturgical or traditional. Jews were finally permitted to study at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts and many Jewish artists from the time were interested in staying faithful to the traditions of the Beaux Arts. The social ascent of many Jews in France is illustrated by a number of portraits of prominent political, economic, and cultural figures, such as Rachel, Adolphe Crémieux, and the Pereire brothers.
This section also includes items from the Fonds Dreyfus, an exceptional archive donated by the grandchildren of Captain Alfred Dreyfus. The Dreyfus affair was a major event of the end of the 19th century in France: a Jewish Captain of the French Army was accused of high treason and was only cleared years later. The museum's archive consists of more than three thousand manuscripts, letters, photographs, family heirlooms, and official documents.
Intellectual and political movements in Europe
This section shows the flourishing intellectual life of European Jews at the turn of the century, including the emergence of Zionism, the rebirth of the Hebrew language, the blooming of Yiddish culture, and the creation of political movements in Russia and Poland such as the Bund. A small section is dedicated to the creation of the state of Israel.
Jewish presence in 20th century art
This area contains works on paper and books from the beginning of the 20th century that highlight the Jewish cultural renaissance in Germany and Russia at the time. One of the missions of the museum is to deepen the public's knowledge of the major formal and stylistic directions of important and sometimes forgotten artists. These works focus on folklore, ornamental motifs, Biblical subjects, and calligraphy with Jewish theme.
This section shows the contribution of Jewish artists to world art of the early 20th century. It features artists of the School of Paris, such as Amedeo Modigliani, Pascin, Chaïm Soutine, Michel Kikoine, Jacques Lipchitz, and Chana Orloff. The diversity of their individual artistic developments and their confrontation with modernity show the transition of Jewish art into art that is no longer exclusively religious.
The museum acquired an archive collection of over a thousand documents related to the artist Jacques Lipchitz, including many photographs and manuscripts.
To be a Jew in Paris in 1939
The museum didn’t wish to have a collection devoted to the Holocaust because at the time of its creation, the project for a Memorial for the Holocaust had already been launched: "a Holocaust museum will be opening in Paris after the planned extension of the Mémorial juif". However, it does trace the lives of some Eastern European, Russian, Polish, and Romanian Jews who came to live in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century and whose paths all led to the Hotel de Saint-Aignan. The museum offers a documented itinerary of the lives of twelve Jewish immigrants to Paris, illustrating Jewish life in the Marais, community organizations, and the last part of the life of these exterminated communities before deportation.
To complete this presentation, the contemporary artist Christian Boltanski created a poignant installation placed in a small courtyard inside the museum made up of the names of the inhabitants, both Jews and non-Jews, of the Hotel Saint-Aignan on the eve of WWII. The installation reveals the history of the humble people who lived in the building before the war.
The Dreyfus affair
The museum created an online platform in 2006 dedicated to the Dreyfus affair, giving the public access to more than three thousand documents, letters, photographs, and historical archives, donated by Captain Dreyfus’ grandchildren. These documents are all accessible on the webpage Fonds Dreyfus. The donations made by his grandchildren are the most important contributions to the historical collection of the museum since its creation. The museum has one of the largest collections of documents concerning the Dreyfus affair in France, including letters written by Alfred Dreyfus and his wife to each other, legal documents and photographs of his trial, writings by Dreyfus during his time in prison, and personal family photographs.
The finest pieces of this exceptional archive are displayed in a dedicated area in the museum as part of the permanent collection. The museum's library has over three hundred publications related to the Dreyfus affair.
An 8-foot tall reproduction of a statue of Alfred Dreyfus holding his broken sword, made by the French artist Louis ‘TIM’ Mitelberg in 1986, stands in the center of the museum courtyard.
The Hôtel de Saint-Aignan
History
The Hôtel de Saint-Aignan is a mansion built between 1644 and 1650 for Claude de Mesmes, Count of Avaux. He helped Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin negotiate the treaties of Westphalia in 1648. The mansion was designed by the French king's architect Pierre Le Muet (1591-1669).
The Hôtel was bought by Paul de Beauvilliers, Duke of Saint-Aignan, in 1688. He began a campaign to refurbish and modernize the mansion. The second floor was turned into apartments and the gardener André Le Nôtre redesigned the garden as a French formal garden.
The Hôtel de Saint-Aignan was confiscated by the French state in 1792 following the French Revolution. It became the headquarters of the seventh municipality of Paris in 1795, then of the seventh arrondissement until 1823. It was then divided into various commercial premises. Pictures from the early 20th c., especially those taken by Eugène Atget and the Frères Seeberger, show the life of Jewish artisans from Russia, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine who lived in the building.
During the roundups of Jews of 1942 by the French Vichy government, several inhabitants of the building were arrested and deported. Thirteen Jewish inhabitants of the Hotel were murdered in the Nazi death camps.
The Hôtel de Saint-Aignan was bought by the City of Paris in 1962 and was classified as a historical monument in 1963.
A first restoration campaign began in 1978 directed by Jean-Pierre Jouve, Chief Architect of the National Office of Historic Monuments and Sites. The second restoration campaign opened in 1991, directed by Bernard Fonquernie, also Chief Architect of the National Office of Historic Monuments and Sites.
At the initiative of the mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, the Hôtel was chosen in 1986 for the installation of a museum dedicated to Jewish civilization: the Museum of Jewish Art and History.
Architecture
The mansion was built on a large irregular plot of land occupied by the townhouse Claude d’Avaux inherited in 1642. Pierre Le Muet demolished the old building and followed the usual ground plan for large aristocratic mansions: the residence itself set back from the street with a large rectangular courtyard at the rear. The right wing's ground floor housed the kitchen, the servants’ rooms, and the dining room. This area is now the museum's bookshop, where the public can admire a number of exceptional frescos discovered when the building was being restored. An archway led through to a second, smaller courtyard, where the outhouses and stables had their own street entrance. To create a sense of symmetry, Le Muet decorated the blank wall of the adjoining property on the left with pilasters and false windows imitating the right wing. This wall was a remain from a wall built under Philippe-Auguste at the end of the 12th century.
Paul de Beauvilliers, Duke of Saint-Aignan, bought the mansion in 1688. He undertook a campaign to refurbish and modernize the building, extending the right wing with rooms on the garden side. He built a grand staircase and set up apartments in the old gallery on the second floor. The restorations made in the 20th century used the end of the 17th century as a reference period.
Status
The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme is as a non-profit organization. It is a public museum subsidized by the City of Paris and the ministry of Culture. Its board of directors is made up of five representatives from the ministry of Culture, five from the City of Paris, six from Jewish institutions; and four people chosen by the Fondation Pro mahJ.
The Foundation Pro mahJ
The Foundation Pro mahJ is a foundation created in 2003 whose purpose is to support the activities of the museum, especially to finance exhibitions and publications, as well as to enrich the collection. It was created at the initiative of Claire Maratier (1915-2013), the painter Michel Kikoïne's daughter. The foundation receives donations and legacies to financially support the museum. It regularly organizes special events for its donors. Every two years a prize Maratier is awarded to a contemporary artist.
Exhibitions and installations
The museum promotes contemporary Jewish art by organizing temporary exhibitions. For example, in November 2016, a temporary installation by contemporary Israeli artist Sigalit Landau called Miqlat (Shelter) was displayed in the museum's courtyard. The museum also presented two works by the Israeli artist Moshe Ninio: Glass(es) and Morgen. In the past, the museum has exhibited modern and contemporary artists such as Sophie Calle, Gotlib, Christan Boltanski, Michel Nedjar, and Micha Ullman.
See also
History of the Jews in France
History of the Jews in Italy
Jewish Emancipation
Mémorial de la Shoah
List of museums in Paris
References
Notes
Sources
Ayers, Andrew (2004). The Architecture of Paris. Stuttgart; London: Edition Axel Menges. .
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme
Ivy Paris description
Stephen Fallon, Paris, Lonely Planet, 2004, page 89.
Address by President of Republic Mr. Jacques Chirac on the Occasion of the Inauguration of the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, November 30, 1998
Jarrasse Dominique, Guide du patrimoine juif parisien, éditions Parigramme, 2003,
Benbassa, Esther, The Jews of France. A History from Antiquity to the Present, Princeton University Press, 1997,
External links
Official website
Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme
Museums in Paris
Jewish museums in France
Jewish museums
Musee d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme
Museums established in 1986
1986 establishments in France | en |
doc-en-15283 | A list of notable characters from the ABC soap opera One Life to Live that made their first appearance between the beginning of 2000 and the end of 2009.
Kimberly Andrews
Kimberly "Kim" Andrews (formerly Buchanan; born Aubrey Wentworth) is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live.
Casting
Amanda Setton originated the role on August 14, 2009. In 2010 she chose not to renew her contract and last appeared on April 2. Setton reprised the role from August 22, 2011 until December 29, 2011.
Storylines
Kimberly Andrews is a Las Vegas exotic dancer who arrives in Llanview, Pennsylvania in August 2009 to help her best friend Stacy Morasco.
Hunter Atwood
Hunter Atwood is a fictional character on the American soap opera One Life to Live. He has been portrayed by Zach Roerig coming off his two-year role as Casey Hughes on As the World Turns from June 11, 2007 until August 8, 2007.
In June 2007 it is revealed that a missing Todd Manning is being held hostage by Hunter in Chicago. Hunter's then-girlfriend Sarah Roberts, who also happened to be Todd's niece, recognizes her uncle and makes an anonymous call to Llanview to let Todd's ex-wife Blair Cramer know where he is. In the meantime, Hunter brings Todd to the Llanview doorstep of the man who paid him: Miles Laurence.
As Sarah cooperates with the police, Blair, Rex Balsom and Cristian Vega to find Hunter and Todd, Hunter calls; he threatens Sarah for betraying him. Rex offers to broker a deal for Todd's return, assuring Hunter that wealthy Blair will pay well. Hunter rejects the offer, but soon goes to Blair himself. In exchange for the several thousand dollars she has on hand, he gives her the address where he left Todd. Blair recognizes it as the residence of her longtime nemesis Marty Saybrooke, who has recently married Miles.
Miles keeps an unconscious, wounded Todd in a storage room, but Miles soon dumps Todd outside to avoid being caught with him. Todd ultimately manages to get his hands on a cell phone and call Blair, but Hunter appears and knocks him unconscious. He calls Miles and offers to dispose of Todd for a fee, but Blair and Detective John McBain find Todd first. In the end, Hunter is killed in self-defense by Sarah, whom he had taken hostage.
Bree Brennan
Bree Victoria Brennan (born Brennan Buchanan) is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Bree was portrayed by various child actors including Samantha and Jessica Schaffhauser from May to September 2006, Carly and Sam Wolfe from October 2006 to April 2008, Brooke and Kiley Liddell from May to November 2008, and most notably Stephanie Schmahl from December 9, 2008 until November 23, 2011.
Bree is the daughter of Jessica Buchanan and Nash Brennan. Jessica meets Nash in 2005 while she is struggling with dissociative identity disorder and under the influence of an alternate personality named Tess. Romantically involved with Antonio Vega for years, Jessica becomes pregnant and at first is not sure if Nash or Antonio is the father. The baby, born on-screen on May 1, 2006, is revealed to be Nash's daughter and is named Brennan Buchanan. Jessica later nicknames her Bree. Jessica marries Nash on July 12, 2007, but he later dies on June 5, 2008 after a fall at The Palace Hotel. Bree becomes a big sister to Ryder, her maternal half-brother.
Zane Buchanan
Zane Buchanan is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Zane is the son of Kelly Cramer and Duke Buchanan. Jack Ferrantini portrayed the role from the character's on-screen birth on October 31, 2006 until December 14, 2006. Zane's birth year is later revised to c. 1995.
Zane is conceived during a tornado that takes the life of his father Duke. Zane is born severely premature by emergency Caesarean section. Kevin and Kelly soon leave town together headed for London, taking baby Zane. Upon Kelly's return to Llanview in 2010, it is stated that Zane is attending boarding school in London.
River Carpenter
William Sloan River "River" Carpenter is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Originated by child actors, the role first appeared regularly portrayed by actor Matthew Twining from July 7, 2003 until August 2004.
Jonas Chamberlain
Jonas Byron Chamberlain, is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Kevin Spirtas portrayed the role on a recurring status from June 11, 2008 until August 28, 2008.
Jonas Chamberlain, the US Ambassador to the European principality European principality of Mendorra, welcomes the Mendorran Crown Princess — actually former Llanview resident Tina Lord — to town after the Mendorran Crown Jewels are stolen. Tina soon acquires the jewels from corrupt Llanview Police Commissioner Lee Ramsey, who has stolen them at her request, but soon Ramsey is gunned down and Tina is on the run with the jewels from the sinister Jonas, who wants them for himself. Tina finds refuge with her estranged daughter Sarah Roberts and Sarah's boyfriend Cristian Vega; Llanview police officer Talia Sahid inexplicably aids Jonas in kidnapping Sarah, and soon Cristian and his brother (and Talia's boyfriend), Police Detective Antonio Vega discover that Jonas has both women. Tina and the Vegas agree to accompany Jonas back to Mendorra in order to make an exchange: Sarah and Talia for the Crown Jewels.
In Mendorra, Talia's estranged father is revealed to be villain Carlo Hesser, the real mastermind behind the kidnappings. Talia despises Carlo, a longtime enemy of both Tina and the Vega brothers. Carlo, bent on revenge for Tina's part in his son's death in 1990, announces publicly that she and the Crown Prince (Cain Rogan in disguise) are frauds, and reveals Jonas as the true heir to the throne. Carlo intends to marry Talia to Jonas; she protests and stalls, but goes through with the royal wedding on July 31, 2008 to save Antonio and her friends from harm — not knowing that Jonas has already stabbed Antonio and left him for dead. A wounded Antonio appears, overpowers Jonas and the guards and leads Talia to safety, but Carlo, Jonas and their men catch up. Talia brokers a deal with Carlo: she will stay if the others are allowed to leave. With several people's lives at stake, a furious Antonio is forced to leave Talia behind. Antonio, Sarah, and Cristian later return; they drug Carlo and Jonas and stage them in bed together, and Talia leads a team of reporters to discover the scene. Talia and the others leave Mendorra as a protesting Carlo and Jonas are arrested for fraud.
Elijah Clarke
Elijah "Eli" Clarke (born Elijah Clarke Rayburn) is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. The role was portrayed by Matt Walton from 2009 through 2010.
Storyline
Elijah Clarke first appeared in Llanview in August 2009, when Nora and Bo Buchanan hired him to represent them in a lawsuit filed by their son, Matthew.
Liz Coleman Reynolds
Elizabeth "Liz" Coleman Reynolds is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. The role was portrayed by Barbara Niven from September 3, 2002 until March 7, 2003.
Antonio Vega leaves Llanview after he is kicked off of the police force by Bo Buchanan for accidentally shooting Ben Davidson. In a nearby town, he meets a woman named Liz and confides in her about his problems. Soon after, they meet again when Antonio comes upon Liz and her car broken down. She tells him about the recent death of her husband, and she and Antonio sleep together. The next day Antonio sees Liz in Llanview, and it is revealed that she is Liz Coleman Reynolds, the mother of Keri Reynolds — Antonio's fiancée. Liz becomes pregnant, and tells Keri that the baby is her deceased husband's. With the pregnancy threatening Liz's health, Keri soon agrees to act as a surrogate mother. With the transfer a success, Antonio seeks a paternity test. He is proven to be the father, and he and Liz decide to withhold the information from Keri.
Liz decides to stay in Llanview and renews her relationship with R. J. Gannon, who is revealed to be Keri's father. R.J. soon learns the truth about the baby, and is on the verge of telling Keri when Antonio handcuffs R.J. to a booth in the Angel Square Diner. Antonio tells Keri that the baby is his, and Keri goes into premature labor. Keri gives birth to a baby girl, and later tests prove that the surrogacy had actually failed and that Keri had already been pregnant with Antonio's child herself. Hating Antonio, R.J. helps Keri, Liz, and baby "Stephanie" sneak out of town. Their plane crashes, leaving no survivors, and Antonio is devastated at the loss of Keri and their daughter. Months later, Natalie Buchanan begins to suspect that R.J. is up to something, and soon discovers that Keri and Stephanie had never gotten on the plane and had been hiding out in Toronto. After returning to Llanview, Keri reveals that she renamed her daughter Jamie and that Liz had actually died in the plane crash.
Daniel Colson
Daniel Colson is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Mark Dobies played the role from 2003 until 2005.
District Attorney Daniel Colson marries Nora Buchanan in 2005, who soon suspects he is having an affair. He is soon revealed as Paul Cramer's murderer; Paul had been blackmailing Daniel with the secret of Daniel's homosexuality. Daniel had been having an affair with student Mark Solomon. Daniel first frames Jennifer Rappaport, Riley's girlfriend, for the crime, and then suffocates her by holding a piece of plastic over her mouth and nose, when she begins to suspect him. when she learns the truth. Daniel is ultimately caught and sent to prison.
Reception
Daniel's controversial storyline was compared to former New Jersey Governor, James McGreevy, which Headwriter at the time Dena Higley attributed the character's inspiration to. The portrayal of a homicidal gay character garnered backlash from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), who claimed it reinforced negative stereotypes. GLAAD had recently honored One Life to Live with a 2004 GLAAD Media Award for Mark Solomon's coming out storyline. The organization reached out directly to Executive Producer, Frank Valentini, who responded, "The anger is understandable, but everyone needs to watch all of it. This is a story about the harsher side of intolerance and about one man not being true to himself. There are going to be meaningful, frank discussions that come out of this." Higley added,"Daniel is not the first gay character on 'OLTL.' If he had been, I would have felt a different responsibility. But writing a political ambitious character who is deep in the closet and who murders as a result is something that hasn't been explored before on daytime." While some groups shared in GLAAD's criticism, such as TV Guide, others were supportive. Hillary B. Smith, who played Daniel's wife Nora, explained that support groups such as Straight Spouse Network praised the story for bringing attention to those women who are dealing with their husbands identifying as gay.
Riley Colson
Riley Colson is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Jay Wilkison played the role, originally supposed to be only eight episodes, from February 24, 2003 until June 8, 2005.
Riley Colson arrives in Llanview in February 2003 as the boyfriend and bandmate of Sarah Roberts. He has a somewhat volatile relationship with his father, District Attorney Daniel Colson. Riley had been named for Victoria Lord Davidson's first husband, reporter Joe Riley, whom Riley's mother had admired. In the summer of 2004, Riley becomes involved with Jennifer Rappaport.
In 2005, Daniel marries Nora Buchanan and is soon revealed as Paul Cramer's murderer; Paul had been blackmailing Daniel with the secret of Daniel's homosexuality. Daniel first frames Jennifer for the crime, and then strangles her to death in 2005 when she learns the truth. Daniel is ultimately caught and brought to justice. After the fallout of Jennifer's death and Daniel's crimes, Riley returns to using drugs, and is arrested for dealing. He shares a sad goodbye with his stepmother Nora and leaves town to go to a drug rehabilitation center.
Betsy Cramer
Betsy Cramer is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime serial One Life to Live. The role was played by actress Lois Smith from November 11, 2003 until the character's onscreen death in February 2004.
Phylicia Evans
Phylicia Evans (maiden name Wenton) is a fictional character originated on the ABC Daytime serial One Life to Live. The role was portrayed by actress Tonye Patano from September 10, 2009 until the OLTL ABC finale in 2012.
Richard Evans
Richard Evans is a fictional character originated on the ABC Daytime serial One Life to Live. The role was played by actor Frankie Faison from September 10, 2009 until the original OLTL broadcast finale in 2012.
Wes Granger
Wes Granger is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Justin Paul Kahn played the role from September 25, 2008 until February 18, 2009.
Wes Granger first appears in September 2008 when Rex Balsom and Gigi Morasco contact him for information on his best friend Brody Lovett. A former Navy SEAL who had done several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Wes had served with Brody, and had witnessed the friendly fire incident that triggered Brody's posttraumatic stress disorder. Wes helps find Brody, who has made off with Gigi's son Shane Morasco. After Brody is committed to St. Ann's Sanitarium, Wes comes to Llanview and becomes a frequent visitor during Brody's convalescence. As Brody undergoes therapy, Wes urges him not to delve deeper into the mystery, but ultimately admits that the Iraqi had been unarmed, and Wes had planted a weapon on him to protect Brody.
Wes forms a friendship with the troubled amnesiac Marty Saybrooke. Marty stays with Wes in a platonic arrangement, and her son Cole Thornhart and former love interest John McBain become concerned that she has taken up with a questionable stranger. Wes is shocked to discover that the key witness in a local trial is Lee Halpern, a woman who he thought had been killed 20 years before. Con artist Lee had seduced Wes' father and swindled him, leaving the Grangers penniless and fatherless. Wes is hungry for revenge, and when Lee is later found stabbed to death, John suspects him of the crime. Wes maintains his innocence, but even Marty is unsure whether or not to believe him. Falling asleep next to Wes drunk, Marty wakes up on February 16, 2009 to find him stabbed to death. With no memory of the night before and covered in his blood, Marty is arrested for Wes' murder when her fingerprints are found on the knife. Powell Lord III later confesses to the murder (among others), as part of his plan to punish anyone who has hurt Marty, frame Todd, and then punish him by killing him and anyone he loves.
In 2011, Jessica Buchanan, who met Wes a few times during her stay in St. Ann's, developed an alternate personality based on memories of him and stories she heard from Brody. Unlike Jessica's other alters, "Wes" seems to believe that "he" actually is Wes Granger rather than a part of Jessica's psyche.
Jared Hall
Jared Hall is a fictional character from the American soap opera One Life to Live, played by actor Herve Clermont from February through May 2000. The character is son of Josh Hall, and adoptive grandson to long-running characters Ed Hall (Al Freeman Jr.) and Carla Gray (Ellen Holly).
Tate Harmon
Tate Harmon is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Chris Beetem portrayed the role from February 8, 2007 until August 9, 2007. In 2007, Beetem as Tate won Worst Villain from Soap Opera Digest.
Tate Harmon is a well-known, young, retired professional baseball player. An anti-drug lecturer, Tate comes to Llanview in February 2007 and speaks out against steroid use at Llanview High School. He is soon hired by entrepreneurs Adriana Cramer and Layla Williamson to be the model for their new men's underwear line. Tate's romantic interest in Adriana invites the ire of her boyfriend, Rex Balsom. On April 23, 2007, Tate is a guest on the daytime talk show The View and declares his love for Adriana in a "Tom Cruise-like" couch incident. After meeting Tate's ex-wife, who claims their marriage ended due to "fraud" on Tate's part, Rex outs Tate as gay on local television; the story is soon picked up nationwide.
Rex's assertion is soon proven untrue, but Tate hides another secret: he is a member of the white supremacist group "One Pure People." Using half-Latin Adriana as a cover, Tate has been participating in OPP's recent anti-semitic and racially motivated arsons in Llanview. Tate's father Kirk Harmon comes to town and soon takes the blame for the crimes to protect his son, but when Kirk realizes that Tate will not stop his misguided crusade, Kirk decides to tell the truth to the police. Before he has the chance, Kirk is killed in prison by an OPP member, but Rex, Adriana and the police ultimately deduce that Tate is the culprit. In a macabre endgame, Tate traps Adriana, Layla, and Vincent Jones on a rooftop, intending to kill them for their racial "impurity." Rex arrives, and Tate convinces Adriana to jump off of the roof to spare the lives of her friends. Tipped off to Tate's whereabouts, Officer Talia Sahid shoots and arrests him before Adriana jumps or anyone else is harmed. Tate is convicted for his crimes and is sent to Statesville Prison on August 9, 2007; to his dismay, his cellmate is an African American named Luther.
Stephen Haver
Dr. Stephen Haver is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Matthew Ashford portrayed the role from December 10, 2003 until March 22, 2004.
Stephen Haver is a psychology professor at Llanview University who specializes in human sexuality and researches serial killers and sexual predators. He becomes a favorite instructor of Jessica Buchanan, who recruits him along with psychiatrist Rae Cummings and student activist and radio host Marcie Walsh to help her expose a scandal between her friend and another professor who had demanded sex in return for a passing grade. When the serial killer known as the "Music Box Killer" begins terrorizing the university, Jessica and Dr. Haver investigate with Haver and Rae acting as psychological profilers for the Llanview Police Department. Haver works closely with new Chief of Detectives John McBain, but no one is aware that Haver and the "Music Box Killer" are actually one and the same.
The Music Box Killer strangles his victims with a red leotard, paints a teardrop on their faces, and leaves a music box by their bodies as a calling card. He sometimes targets women at random, such as private investigator Elyssa Collins or sorority girl Madison Kensington, but seems to focus on women who are either older and maternal, or promiscuous and involved in sex work, like Jennifer Rappaport or her friend Karen, a local prostitute. In reality, Haver is murdering women who he identifies with his mother, a promiscuous, alcoholic dancer and folk singer from the "free love" era of the 1960s. For a time, Haver uses psychotic mental patient Troy MacIver as his alibi; as MacIver's therapist at St. Ann's Sanitarium, Haver releases the man from the institution at the times when he plans to kill. As the authorities get closer, Haver kills Police Commissioner Bo Buchanan's girlfriend Gabrielle Medina, and nearly kills Sarah Roberts. Meanwhile, John McBain grows increasingly suspicious of Haver, who becomes his prime suspect in the case. Jessica angrily defends her teacher to McBain, but when she stumbles upon the truth, Haver is forced to take action. He kidnaps Jessica, and brainwashes her to conceal his crimes. In the meantime, Rae Cummings also deduces Haver's secret; he takes her hostage, forcing her to act out his twisted psychological ritual of posing as his mother before apparently strangling her and then immolating her isolated prison.
The LPD discovers Jessica's brainwashing and rehabilitates her, but they still have no actionable proof of Haver's guilt. As John McBain digs deeper into Haver's past, he discovers that Haver has actually posed as many serial killers in many different parts of the United States, changing methodology and modus operandi each time to avoid detection. John is shocked to learn that Haver was once the "White Rose Killer," who he had hunted unsuccessfully during his tenure with the FBI; and had murdered McBain's fiancée Caitlin Fitzgerald.
Trapped and growing desperate, Haver abducts Jessica's sister Natalie Buchanan, to whom John has become romantically linked. In a stand-off with police, Haver straps a bomb to Natalie's body and threatens to kill her. Haver is shocked as Rae Cummings suddenly enters the room — she had survived his assault, and had been kept in police protection. Taunting Haver with the memory of his mother, the focus of his psychosis, Rae manages to distract Haver long enough for the police to subdue him. While behind bars and awaiting trial, Haver is shot and killed by a rogue cop. It is revealed that Haver brainwashed the cop to shoot him and then commit suicide, in the hopes of framing John for Haver's "murder" (the cop implicated John as an accomplice in his suicide note); his plan does not succeed.
Al Holden
Alonzo "Al" Holden is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Originally introduced in April 1987 as part of a famed storyline involving Tina Lord (Andrea Evans), Cord Roberts (John Loprieno), and Kate Sanders (Marcia Cross), the character was first featured as regular in 2001 with the introduction of Michael Tipps to the role from March through November 2001. Nathaniel Marston assumed the role from December 4, 2001 until its onscreen death on September 22, 2003, and as Al's spirit through his last appearance in the role February 14, 2004. Marston immediately began playing the role of Michael McBain, whose body Al's spirit inhabited, thereafter in 2004.
Hugh Hughes
Hugh Hughes is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Josh Casaubon played the role from July 18, 2005 until September 21, 2006.
Hugh comes to Llanview as the new Assistant District Attorney. He soon runs into Marcie Walsh, who is being ridiculed by other writers after her novel The Killing Club had been played out by a serial killer. He gives up his evening to take the drunken Marcie home, beginning an unusual friendship between the playboy Hugh and writer Marcie, much to the annoyance of her ex-boyfriend Michael McBain.
Hugh is soon thrown into the seat of district attorney as Nora Hanen is hospitalized. His first big case is the trial of Todd Manning for the murder of pregnant Margaret Cochran. Todd is convicted, but when it is discovered that Todd had been innocent, Hugh immediately apologizes to him for having been the one to put him in prison. Hugh then discovers that doctors Spencer Truman and Paige Miller are his biological parents; Paige had put him up for adoption without telling the evil Spencer that she was pregnant. At Spencer's bail hearing for Margaret Cochran's murder, it appears that Hugh wants Spencer to go free when he agrees to offer him a $1 million bail. However, he and Detective John McBain had planned it in the hopes that Truman would lead them to the gun that he used to kill John's father, Thomas McBain.
Hugh is killed on September 22, 2006 in a car accident, but in a case of mistaken identity he is thought to have survived and been bandaged for his burns. In reality, it is John McBain (who had also been in the accident) under the bandages while Hugh is buried in what everyone thought was John's grave.
Britney Jennings
Britney Jennings is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. The role was portrayed by Katrina Bowden from September 26 until October 4, 2006, and by Portia Reiners from October 10, 2006 until October 17, 2007.
Britney is the "popular girl" at Llanview High School and bullies freshman Starr Manning after an argument between their fathers Todd Manning and Blake Jennings. Britney's attitude toward Starr worsens when Britney sets her sights on football player Cole Thornhart, who is developing feelings for Starr. Trying everything to thwart Starr and Cole's new relationship, Britney discovers that Cole had been pressured into taking steroids, and tricks him into a fit of "roid rage" during which he attacks Starr. Britney, posing as Starr, calls the police. In the aftermath, it is revealed that Cole's parents are Marty Saybrooke and the deceased Patrick Thornhart, both enemies of Starr's father Todd. Starr forgives Cole but her parents forbid her to date him. They secretly see each other, much to Britney's dismay, and Britney does all she can to split them up. She orchestrates the reveal that Starr and Cole have spent the night together, nearly having sex. Starr and Cole run away together, but are caught and forced to break up. They are soon drawn back together. Meanwhile, Britney uses fellow student Henry Mackler to do her homework for her. He secretly takes pills to stay awake to do both his and Britney's homework. After not having slept for two weeks, a distraught Henry steals a car, meanwhile having chest pains and blurred vision. Cole manages to get Henry to drive back to school. However, when they arrive to find the police in the parking lot, Henry panics and drives the car into a tree. Henry — not wearing a seatbelt — is thrown from the car to his death. Starr and Langston place blame on Britney for pushing Henry to this extreme; Britney begins to see that she had wronged Henry, and feels responsible for his death.
Britney seems to turn over a new leaf, dropping her vendetta against Starr. But after Cole leaves her at the prom to be with Starr, Britney reverts to her old ways. Soon she learns that Cole is lying to Starr about her father's whereabouts; the secret comes out and strains Starr and Cole's relationship. Britney then incites an argument between Starr and teacher Marcie, which results in Marcie's temporary suspension from her job. Britney soon announces during the week of October 15, 2007 that her parents are sending her to a prestigious boarding school in Massachusetts. Before she leaves, Britney overhears that Langston has been living on her own; Britney calls Social Services, who take custody of Langston — despite Dorian Lord's protests — and put her in a group home pending assignment to a foster home.
Schuyler Joplin
Schuyler Joplin is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Scott Clifton portrayed the role from January 9, 2009 until April 9, 2010.
Schuyler Joplin, a new Llanview High School teacher, befriends student Starr Manning in January 2009 on the heels of the suicide of his mother, Dr. Leah Joplin. In March 2009, a distraught Starr kisses Schuyler in the school hallway. She later tries to seduce him, and her ex-boyfriend Cole Thornhart becomes convinced that Schuyler is the one trying to seduce his underage student. Cole reports the incident, and Schuyler is suspended from his teaching position. Schuyler's ex-girlfriend Stacy Morasco comes to town, and he stumbles upon her plot to steal her sister Gigi's boyfriend Rex Balsom through blackmail. Stacy forces Gigi to break up with Rex, and in June 2009 Schuyler helps Gigi turn the tables on Stacy. He soon develops feelings for Gigi but refuses to tell her; when he finally does, he and Gigi grow closer. Rex and Gigi reunite, but their relationship falls apart when Stacy is revealed to be pregnant after sleeping with Rex while he and Gigi were separated. Gigi is drawn to Schuyler, and they begin a relationship; meanwhile, Schuyler determines that he is actually the father of Stacy's baby, but Stacy convinces him to keep the secret so that Gigi will not reunite with Rex. Rex learns that he is not the baby's father just as Stacy gives birth to Sierra Morasco. Stacy apparently dies soon after; Gigi breaks up with Schuyler for keeping the secret, and states her intention to challenge him for custody of Sierra.
In spring 2010, Allison Perkins shows up masquerading as a house inspector from child services at Schuyler's apartment, and later points a gun at Schuyler and then kidnaps Sierra. Schuyler goes to Statesville prison and helps Mitch Laurence escape. Meanwhile, Allison shows up at Foxy Roxy's hair salon, and then holds Roxy Balsom and Natalie Buchanan at gunpoint. Allison then takes Roxy and baby Sierra back to Kyle Lewis and Oliver Fish's apartment and holds them hostage. Then Mitch calls Allison and tells her to come down to Statesville prison and bring Sierra with her. In the medical room Schuyler gives Mitch a drug that will make his heart stop and hopes that he will die. Later Allison shows up with the baby and reveals that Mitch and Roxy are Schuyler's real parents. Years earlier, Allison had switched infants Schuyler and Rex and tried to convince Roxy that the baby she'd given birth to had died the night he was born, while she gave Schuyler to her sister, Dr. Leah Joplin, who could not conceive children of her own.
Later, Schuyler takes Allison's gun and holds Gigi at gunpoint at the cabin of Victoria "Viki" Lord Davidson, and tries to force Gigi to sleep with him. He once more says that he wants Gigi back in his life, but Rex and the police find them. He attempts to shoot Rex, blaming him for all his problems, but ends up shooting police commissioner Bo Buchanan, who is badly wounded and taken to the hospital for surgery. Brody Lovett arrests Schuyler and takes him to the police station. Everyone eventually accepts the truth and Schuyler finds out that Sierra is not his daughter, she is Oliver's child as confirmed by a DNA test which Schuyler also accepts. On April 9, 2010, Schuyler appears in court and confesses to the judge, who sends him to Statesville prison where he is to await sentencing.
Douglas Kline
Douglas Kline is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera, One Life to Live. The character made a couple of appearances in April 2007.
Douglas Kline came to Llanview to takeover the position at Llanview Hosptital, which was previously occupied by the deceased Spencer Truman.
Victor Lord, Jr.
Victor Dalby Lord, Jr. is the son of Victor Lord and Irene Manning. He is known for his nonchalant charisma, dry smart wit, and unpredictable volatile nature. He came to town in 2003, claiming to be Todd Manning after extensive plastic surgery. Victor spent the next eight years living in Llanview as Todd Manning. In August 2011, it is revealed that he is really Todd's twin brother, who had in fact been brainwashed into believing he was truly Todd Manning.
As Todd, Victor quickly made an enemy in police detective John McBain, and even had his own son, after being raped by Margaret Cochran. Victor was also very protective of Sam and his "children", but sometimes his good intentions resulted in tragic accidents that he was blamed for. Victor was aggressive and prone to outbursts, which would sometimes backfire on him. Tea Delgado, Todd's ex, proved to be the love of Victor's life and they got married. Victor not being Todd was alluded to when Tea, suffering from drugs that made her believe she had a brain tumor, pointed at a photograph of her and Todd, and declared that Victor wasn't Todd.
In May 2011, the real Todd Manning arrives in Llanview with his "old face", after escaping from the top secret CIA facility where he had been held captive for the last eight years. He is unable to prove to everyone that he is the real Todd Manning, causing chaos and confusion, shaking his family to its core. DNA tests on both come back positive when aligned with an untainted sample on file from Marty Saybrooke's rape kit.
The truth comes out when John McBain, Brody Lovett and Tomás Delgado raid the CIA facility and discover Todd's presumed-dead mother, Irene Manning as the head of the rogue CIA agency. Back in Llanview, Irene confirms that the man with the scar is Todd Manning, and the other who had been living there as Todd, is really Victor Lord Jr. In 2003, Irene had ordered a hit on the real Todd Manning to keep him from exposing the agency. She had Todd strapped to a chair and made him uncover every detail of his life. She originally gave Victor, Todd's trademark scar, but then had Victor's face altered with reconstructive surgery to make him look like Mitch Laurence's long lost brother Flynn Walker Laurence. Irene then sent Victor away in Todd's place, so that he could get his share of the inheritance as Victor Lord Sr.'s heir, and unknowingly help the agency. She kept the real Todd locked up, instead of following through with the original plan to kill him. In March 2011, Irene ordered a hit on Victor, then still believing he was Todd Manning. He was shot in the stomach by a sniper after refusing to do more dirty work and went into a coma.
The day after the truth is revealed, and Victor gains acceptance from his family, Victor is supposedly shot dead by an unknown assailant, and is shown dying from his injuries with his wife, Téa Delgado, at his side. Shortly after, it is revealed by a blocked memory that Todd is the one who supposedly shot him, and Todd tries to cover it up. On the series finale, as Todd is being arrested for his murder, as Victor is revealed to be alive, bound and gagged on a bed, and being held hostage by Allison Perkins.
In April 2013, Victor reappears in Llanview after Danielle overdoses on oxycontin at the opening of Blair's new nightclub, Shelter. After Todd lambasts Téa for he failure to see Danielle's troubled behavior, Victor arrives and begins to assault Todd at the hospital. Tea, Dani, Jack, and Sam were thrilled to have Victor back in their lives. Victor learned from Tea that they had a stillborn son that Todd had switched with another baby. Victor was angry at Todd for causing Tea so much pain, so he took revenge by poisoning Todd's supply of alcohol. Todd approached Victor with a truce and Victor accepted, so he replaced the tainted alcohol in Todd's room with a new untainted one. Soon after, Victor announced that he had to leave town to keep Tea and he kids safety. On his way out, he stopped by to see Todd and told him that had to leave town, and asked Todd to keep their family safe as well. Todd blasted Victor for leaving and breaking the kids' hearts all over again, and Victor punched Todd in the throat, grabbed him by the throat and choked him unconscious, and told him that he had poisoned him, before leaving.
Once Victor's crimes were exposed, the police wanted to bring in him. Tea, who Victor had been e-mailing, agreed to help them find Victor, believing he would be safer in jail then on the run. However, Todd wanted payback and planned to kill Victor. Todd's guy tracked him down to a hotel near a place Tea and he only knew, where she and Todd found Todd's guy dead. Victor escaped and contacted Tea telling her they can't have anymore contact. Later, the mastermind behind Victor's initial abduction, Carl Peterson, revealed that he had captured Victor again and he was being guarded by Allison again, who is revealed to be Carl's sister.
Henry Mackler
Henry Mackler is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Jonathan Groff played the role from April 11 through May 7, 2007. The series originally planned for and filmed scenes of Mackler's exit as a school shooter, which were rewritten following the Virginia Tech massacre. The character dies in a car accident instead.
Henry Mackler is a bookish student whom the popular and manipulative Britney Jennings uses to do her schoolwork by encouraging his romantic feelings toward her. When Henry discovers the truth and confronts her about it, she gives him the cold shoulder. The following week, a distraught Henry speeds away from school in a car with Britney, Cole Thornhart, and Starr Manning. Cole discovers drugs and realizes that Henry is under the influence, and Henry refuses to stop the car and let the others free. Soon, Henry has chest pains, and drives the car into a tree; though the others are merely bruised, Henry is not wearing his seatbelt and is thrown through the windshield. He suffers a drug-related heart attack and dies.
Sam Manning
Samuel "Sam" Manning is the son of Victor Lord Jr. and the late Margaret Cochran. He was adopted by Blair Cramer. Sam was born on screen on February 6, 2006, however, it was changed to July 15, 2004.
Hope Manning-Thornhart
Hope Manning-Thornhart is a fictional character who originated on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. She is the daughter of Cole Thornhart and Starr Manning, born on-screen on November 6, 2008 at Llanview Hospital. Tess, Madeline and Molly Sullivan played the role from 2008 until the One Life to Live series finale on January 13, 2012. Shiloh Nelson played Hope as a guest appearance on General Hospital on February 24, 27, and 28, 2012. On June 21, 2012, Cheyanna Prelesnik played the ghost of Hope on General Hospital.
When Starr uncovers her pregnancy in late summer 2008, she arranges for the child to be adopted by Marcie McBain, but Starr's estranged father Todd blackmails her doctor into agreeing to pretend the child dies so that he can raise the baby himself. Todd has a change of heart and calls off the plan after Hope is born. However, Starr's cousin Jessica Buchanan, under the influence of her alternate personality "Bess," switches Hope with Jessica's own newborn daughter, who had been stillborn the same day. Jessica reemerges not realizing that her newborn daughter is Starr's child, and Starr's family mourn the loss of the baby they believe is hers. The baby's headstone gives her name as Hope Manning McBain. The secret of the switch comes out in May 2009; Jessica finally remembers what happened, and tearfully returns the baby on June 5, 2009. Starr and Cole have a brief reunion with Hope before they hand her over to a grateful Marcie and her husband, Michael McBain. After overhearing Starr talking about her regrets, Marcie returns Hope to Starr on June 15, 2009. Hope's godparents are Markko Rivera and Langston Wilde.
In September 2009, Cole is working undercover for the police; Starr and Hope are kidnapped by Russian mobsters on orders from Mayor Lowell. They are rescued by Brody Lovett. In October 2010, Hope and Starr are kidnapped by Elijah Clarke but escape, only to be kidnapped again by Hannah O'Connor. They later escape her as well. When Cole goes to prison, Hope experiences nightmares and has trouble accepting Starr's new boyfriend James into her life. When the real Todd Manning returns, Starr is thrilled. She introduces him to Hope, who he nicknames 'Peanut'.
On February 24, 2012, Hope and her parents are driving through Port Charles, New York when Anthony Zacchara crashes into their car when his tires are shot out by Johnny Zacchara. Starr is able to get out of the car, but Hope and Cole are trapped inside when it topples over a cliff and explodes. They are presumed to have died among unrecognizable remains. On June 21, 2012, Hope appears as a seven-year-old ghost to Johnny Zacchara.
Eve McBain
Eve McBain is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Lisa Banes played the role from January 30 until March 15, 2004, and Lisby Larson played the role from September 28 until October 12, 2006.
Eve McBain arrives in Llanview, Pennsylvania after she is invited to a dinner party by her son Michael’s friend Marcie Walsh. She decides to stay in town to catch up with her sons, John and Michael. Eve begins to go on a series of dates with Bo Buchanan. Weeks later, Eve is abducted by the Music Box Killer, and is forced to tell Natalie Buchanan that her dead husband Cristian Vega is alive. Natalie forgives Eve for lying after she discovers that Eve had been forced to tell Natalie about Cristian by the killer. Eve returns to Atlantic City.
In 2006, John tells Eve that he is going to ask Natalie to marry him; Eve comes back to town to give John her engagement ring. She is devastated to learn that John died in a pile-up on his way to Atlantic City. After John's funeral, Eve gives Natalie the engagement ring as a way to remember John. Eve returns home. John is later found to be alive.
Troy MacIver
Troy MacIver is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live played by Ty Treadway from August 8, 2001 to August 1, 2003, December 10, 2003 to January 29, 2004 and from January 3 to 9, 2012. Treadway previously played Troy's twin brother Colin from 2000 to 2001, with a brief reappearance in 2008.
Paige Miller
Dr. Paige Miller (formerly Truman) is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. The role was originally to be played by daytime veteran Mary Beth Evans, who backed out at the last minute, when she got a contract offer from As the World Turns, where she had been recurring since 2000. Kimberlin Brown then originated the role on-screen from October 12, 2004 until June 30, 2005. Cady Huffman took over the role from August 19, 2005 until January 23, 2006. Alexandra Neil played the role from January 27, 2006 until July 27, 2007.
Paige Miller arrives at Llanview Hospital and is soon revealed to be the ex-wife of Dr. Spencer Truman. She begins dating Bo Buchanan. Paige teams up with Spencer's brother David Vickers to determine Spencer's real reason for coming to Llanview. In April 2006, the secret comes out: as a youth, David had shot police detective Thomas McBain, father of Detective John McBain. At the hospital, Paige had operated on Thomas despite the fact that she was intoxicated, and McBain had died. Spencer had covered up both crimes. David is arrested, and Paige's license to practice medicine is revoked. Later in 2006, however, it is revealed that Spencer actually shot McBain and framed Paige to keep a hold over her. It is also revealed that Paige had a son by Spencer and put him up for adoption, never telling Spencer. Llanview attorney Hugh Hughes is discovered to be that son, but is killed in a car wreck on September 22, 2006. By December 2006, an exonerated Paige has her medical license reinstated. Though she is slowly able to deal with her grief over Hugh, Paige continues to struggle emotionally and ultimately decides to leave town to work with the humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders in the Middle East. She says a final goodbye to a disappointed Bo on July 27, 2007.
Lola Montez
Lola Montez is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. The role was played by actress Camila Banus onscreen from October 3, 2008 until May 15, 2009.
Ray Montez
Ray Montez is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime serial One Life to Live. The role was played by actor A Martinez from September 10, 2008 through June 10, 2009.
Character history
Introduced as a prisoner in a Colombian maximum security prison, Ray appears onscreen found by Jared Banks September 10, 2008. Hoping to make amends with Buchanan family patriarch Clint, Jared seeks Ray's help in securing leverage against Dorian Lord, who has taken over Buchanan Enterprises. Clint and Jared plan to convince Ray, the only known parental blood relative of Dorian's foster daughter Langston Wilde, to seek custody of the teen, assuming that Dorian will return the company to the Buchanans in exchange for Ray's relinquishing his rights to Langston. Using his connections, Clint has arranged Ray's "exoneration" and release through the corrupt warden of Plato Prison. Ray agrees to Jared and Clint's proposition, and accompanies Jared back to Llanview, Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, international crime boss Carlo Hesser kidnaps his nemesis Cristian Vega, and has him interred in Plato Prison, conspiring with the warden to give Cristian the prison jumpsuit worn by Cristian and imprison him under Ray's name. Cristian escapes the prison when he meets Ray's wife Vanessa, who bribes the warden for Cristian's freedom. Vanessa alleges that Ray wants her dead for testifying against him at his trial, where he stood accused of the murder of his first wife, the mother of his daughter Lola. Vanessa is anxious to accompany Cristian to Llanview with Lola, unaware that Ray is there as well.
Once in Llanview, Clint sets his plan into motion, and Ray crashes Langston and Dorian's party celebrating Langston's adoption. Upon introducing himself to his niece, Ray quickly grows fond of Langston, reminiscing about his past with his late sister Linda, Langston's mother. Soon thereafter, Ray pursues and is granted custody of Langston, and announces his intention to take her back to Colombia with him. Though this is still a part of Clint's gambit against Dorian, Ray is seemingly torn between his deal with Clint and his own burgeoning feelings for Langston, who desperately wants to remain in Llanview with her adoptive Cramer family and new friends. Ray gains custody, and Dorian refuses Clint's offer to have Ray relinquish his rights in exchange for Dorian signing Buchanan Enterprises back to him. At the airport with Langston, Ray comes face to face with Vanessa, who shoots him in front of everyone. She is arrested; a critically injured Ray tells the police detective Antonio Vega that Vanessa had framed him for his first wife's murder, but Antonio is doubtful. Meanwhile, Cristian defends Vanessa in court, and Langston befriends her newfound cousin Lola. Ray is sent back to Colombia, and Vanessa and Lola are soon threatened with deportation as well. Fearing retribution from Ray should she return to Colombia, Vanessa asks Cristian to do the only thing that can keep her in the United States: marry her. Initially reluctant because of his relationship with Sarah Roberts, Cristian ultimately marries Vanessa when an anonymous note threatens her life. Lawyer Téa Delgado is secretly representing Ray, seeking to prove that Vanessa had framed him for his wife's murder. Téa begins to win over Lola as Ray escapes prison again and confronts Vanessa in Llanview; she denies murdering Lola's mother, but admits in front of everyone that she had framed Ray as a way to take his money. Vanessa is deported on February 26, 2009, and Ray is exonerated.
To Dorian's chagrin, Ray and Lola are invited to move into Dorian's mansion La Boulaie by its short-term owners, Moe and Noelle Stubbs. Ray and Dorian eventually end up bonding as they fight, and share a kiss. Lola goes after the affections of Langston's boyfriend Markko Rivera; he rebuffs her advances and tells Langston, putting the couple at odds with Lola. Vowing revenge, Lola tries to thwart their plans to have sex and eventually pokes holes in the condoms they intend to use; taking drugs at the prom, Lola later confesses this act to ray and Dorian, as well as the fact that she had been the one to kill her own mother after catching her in bed with another man. Lola is brought to St. Ann's Sanitarium for evaluation. Ray leaves town on June 10, 2009 after telling a crushed Dorian that he has sent Lola to a facility out of town, and plans to join her himself.
Vanessa Montez
Vanessa Montez (formerly Vega) is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. The role was portrayed by Jacqueline Hendy from September 15, 2008 until February 26, 2009.
Stacy Morasco
Stacy Morasco is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Crystal Hunt originated the role on February 6, 2009 and played the role until March 9, 2010. Farah Fath, who played Stacy's sister Gigi Morasco, portrayed Stacy for a series of flashbacks on October 11, December 22 and December 23, 2011. Hunt reprised the role during the series finale week on January 9, 2012.
Casting
Hunt's casting as Stacy was announced in December 2008, as "a bad girl with a connection to someone in Llanview." In 2005 the actress received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series and a Soap Opera Digest Award nomination for her portrayal of Lizzie Spaulding on Guiding Light.
Of Hunt's March 2010 exit, One Life to Live Executive Producer Frank Valentini said, "It was time for Stacy to leave the canvas. Sometimes it's great when the audience hates a character. It keeps them involved and we certainly don't want to make them mad, but some people, you just don't like and yet they're in your world and they do tend to cause some excitement, so that's not a bad thing. It was storyline-dictated and it was time to help propel all of the other characters into major story." In the same article, Soap Opera Digest noted that the character of Stacy had "never clicked with viewers and critics."
Storylines
Stacy Morasco, younger sister to Gigi, is first seen on February 6, 2009 as a Las Vegas stripper named "Gigi." She begins spying on Gigi and Rex Balsom, later following them back to Llanview. Gigi is thrilled to see her, but devastated by the news that their parents had died in a car crash years before, and Stacy's own struggles since. Stacy makes fast friends with Gigi and Rex's son Shane, although Gigi is somewhat uncomfortable with Stacy's influence. Gigi also begins to suspect that her sister is trying to seduce Rex. After Shane is diagnosed with leukemia in March 2009, Stacy learns of a matching donor. Wanting Rex for herself, she pretends that she is the match and forces Gigi to break up with Rex in exchange for her blood. Shane receives the transplant and improves, but Gigi is afraid to reveal Stacy's blackmail in case Shane needs more of her stem cells. Eventually, Gigi tells the truth, but in the meantime Stacy and Rex have slept together. Rex and Gigi reunite as Stacy's blackmail is revealed. Rex spurns Stacy, but she discovers that she is pregnant. She miscarries but keeps the truth from Rex knowing that it is her only hold over him. Stacy calls her stripper best friend Kimberly Andrews to come to Llanview, who comes up with a plan to help get Stacy pregnant again to pass the baby off as Rex's. She drugs ex-boyfriend Schuyler Joplin but he refuses her. She becomes pregnant after seducing a drunken Oliver Fish. In November 2009 Schuyler finds out that Stacy lost her baby with Rex, and Kim tells Schuyler that he is the baby's father. Schuyler agrees to keep the truth from Rex so that he can have Gigi for himself. In January 2010 Rex's crazed biological father Mitch Laurence tries to kidnap Stacy to raise her baby as his heir. Kim and Stacy tells Schuyler to steal a drug called oxytocin so Stacy can give birth a month before her due date to pass the baby as Rex's. On February 2, 2010 Stacy is kidnapped by Mitch Laurence. When she reveals that the baby is not Rex's, Mitch abandons Stacy in a blizzard. Gigi finds her, takes her to a cabin, and on February 11, 2010 helps Stacy deliver a baby girl she names Sierra Rose. On February 16, 2010, Stacy falls through the ice of a frozen lake; despite Rex and Oliver's attempts to save her, she disappears beneath the ice and is presumed dead. Days later, Stacy's spirit appears to Kim several times to get Kim's assurance that she will do all she can to care for Sierra.
On August 22, 2011, Kimberly, who is in Anchorage, Kentucky working as a stripper at The Spotted Pony strip club, is seen talking to a mysterious comatose woman at a hospital. Next to the mysterious woman's bed is a picture of Stacy and Kim together, and it is implied that Stacy is still alive. On September 20, 2011, Kim is heard saying "That was a close one, Stacy!". On October 10, 2011 it is revealed that Stacy has Gigi's face due to plastic surgery. Kim confesses to Cutter that she tried to stop Stacy's scheme against Gigi when she followed Stacy to Llanview, and found her in the basement of a rental house that was leaking carbon monoxide, along with Gigi's dead body.
On October 14, 2011, Stacy wakes up from her coma, and Cutter decides to use her as leverage to blackmail Rex for the Buchanan fortune. Stacy leaves the hospital and goes to Llanview. She goes to Gigi's gravesite, confused about who she is and why she looks like her dead sister. Cutter explains everything to Stacy. On October 28, he convinces her to crash Natalie and Brody's costume themed engagement party so that when she sees Rex and Shane at the party, it can help her to get her memories back. Stacy tells Cutter that she wants out of their deal so that she can get plastic surgery to look like her old self again. On November 14 she decides to go to Brazil to get her old face back, and Cutter goes with her. Stacy and Cutter run into Alex Olanov at the doctor's, the mother of Cutter and Kim. Alex helps Stacy and Cutter get rid of Rex and Aubrey. Later Cutter finds out that Stacy is really Gigi, and Stacy is the one who died in the basement. On January 9, 2012 Stacy appears to Clint in Hell, convincing him he is going to Hell before he will be able to get Viki out of Heaven and back to Earth. Stacy and Eddie Ford then go take Mitch Laurence to Hell, and Stacy tells him that Jessica is not really his daughter.
Lee Ramsey
Lee Ramsey is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Hunt Block portrayed the role from October 16, 2007 until June 13, 2008.
Megan Rappaport
Megan Victoria Buchanan Rappaport is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. She is the stillborn daughter of Will Rappaport and Jessica Buchanan. Erin Torpey played the role on July 21–22, 2008, as the spirit of Megan. Torpey had also portrayed Jessica when the character Megan died in 1999.
Conceived during a brief fling between Will and Jessica, Megan is stillborn in 1999 after Dorian Lord accidentally hits a pregnant Jessica with her car. A devastated Jessica ultimately forgives a repentant Dorian. On July 21 and July 22, 2008, the spirit of an adult Megan visits Jessica's mother Victoria Lord Davidson, who is critically injured in a car crash.
Claudia Reston
Claudia Reston is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Kerry Butler portrayed the role on a contract status from January 18, 2006 until January 3, 2007.
Claudia Reston is the ex-girlfriend and later friend to Nash Brennan. Nash's pregnant girlfriend Tess, the alternate personality of Jessica Buchanan, visits Claudia in a drug rehab, where Claudia has been since her break-up with Nash. Claudia, a rich heiress and a recovering alcoholic, explains that Nash made her believe he loved her, but was really scamming her for her father's money. Nash explains that his grifter days are behind him and that he sincerely regrets taking advantage of Claudia. Seemingly rehabilitated, Claudia soon appears in Llanview, taking a job as a singer at Antonio Vega's club "Capricorn." Soon her powerful father George arrives, blaming Nash for Claudia's troubles. After Mr. Reston threatens Nash and Tess' lives, Nash turns to Claudia for help. Claudia hopes to regain Nash's love by aiding him in a scheme against her father, but their plan ends in tragedy when George Reston ends up dead by Claudia's hand during a scuffle with Nash. Nash helps her cover up the accident. Claudia continues to try and woo Nash while befriending Antonio. When she falls off the wagon on New Year's Eve 2006, Nash and Antonio urge her to go to rehab. Claudia then heads back to New York City to detox and start a new life.
Keri Reynolds
Keri Reynolds is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. The role appeared onscreen played by actress Sherri Saum from August 31, 2001 until September 16, 2003.
Mark Solomon
Mark Solomon is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Matt Cavenaugh portrayed the role from July 2, 2004 until June 3, 2005.
Mark is a failing student at Llanview University, who is assigned to help re-build the recently burned down community center with other failing students. Mark and Marcie Walsh become good friends, and Mark comes out to her. Mark tells the rest of the group that he is gay, and begins dating a boy named Justin. Months later, Daniel Colson marries Nora Hanen, though it appears that he is having an affair. With the murder of Paul Cramer still unsolved, the motive is revealed; Paul had discovered that Daniel is romantically involved with Mark, and had begun to blackmail Daniel. This had prompted Daniel to kill Paul. Daniel begins planting evidence to frame Jennifer Rappaport for the crime, but Jen catches Daniel and he suffocates her. Bo Buchanan and Rex Balsom discover Daniel's crimes and the extramarital affair. While Daniel is in custody awaiting trial, a devastated Mark breaks things off with him and leaves Llanview to give himself a fresh start in life.
Moe Stubbs
Maurice “Moe” Stubbs is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. John Rue portrayed the role from October 22, 2007 until January 17, 2008, May 7 until May 12, 2008, July 16 until August 28, 2008, December 1, 2008 until November 25, 2009, and December 6, 2011 until December 20, 2011.
Moe is the owner and chef of the Bon Jour Café in Paris, Texas. Longtime platonic friends with Noelle Ortiz, the two begin to grow closer in 2007 while they are seen during Victoria "Viki" Lord Davidson and Gigi Morasco's time in Paris. Moe and Noelle are seen again in May 2008, when Natalie and her secret lover, con man Jared Banks, visit Paris to get away from the prying eyes of the Buchanan family. They are unaware that the notorious David Vickers, the true Buchanan heir, has taken a job at the Bon Jour as a busboy alongside Moe and Noelle. After discovering that Jared and Natalie are lying to the Buchanans about Jared's lineage, David leaves the Bon Jour, urging Moe and Noelle to admit their feelings for each other.
Moe and Noelle reappear again in July 2008 when Bo Buchanan and Rex Balsom visit the Bon Jour separately. By this time, Moe and Noelle have revealed their feelings for each other and are shown to be in a committed romantic relationship. When Bo and Rex travel through time back to 1968, they discover Moe and Noelle's counterparts in the past: Moe is "Jeremiah Stubbs," (Moe's father), the hippie proprietor of what was then known as the "Good Day Café," and Noelle is "Rosa," a strong-willed Mexican maid working for the Buchanan family alongside Maria Vasquez. Jeremiah and Rosa are shown to have feelings for one another. Unlike Moe, Jeremiah is a mellow, peace-loving fellow who is shown to oppose the Vietnam War and deal in certain "medicinal substances," which he includes as ingredients in some of his baked goods. While sharing some "brownies" with a young Renee Divine, he encourages her to reconsider her frayed relationship with Asa Buchanan, the love of her life. Back in 2008, Moe proposes to Noelle, who accepts. In late 2008, an engaged Moe and Noelle visit Viki at the "Buenos Dias Café," Carlotta Vega's burned-down diner rebuilt as a recreation of the Bon Jour Café. Dorian Lord invites Moe to be her personal chef, and he accepts. Later, as part of her plot to marry or gain power-of-attorney over Buchanan heir David, Dorian gives Moe her house and its contents. Moe and Noelle soon marry in Las Vegas on February 9, 2009.
Noelle Ortiz Stubbs
Noelle Ortiz Stubbs is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. January LaVoy portrayed the role from October 22, 2007 until January 17, 2008, May 7 until May 12, 2008, July 16 until August 28, 2008, December 1, 2008 until December 28, 2009, and December 7 until December 20, 2011.
Noelle is a waitresses at the Bon Jour Café in Paris, Texas, where Moe Stubbs is the owner. Longtime platonic friends, the two begin to grow closer in 2007 while they are seen during Viki Davidson and Gigi Morasco's time in Paris. Close friends with Viki, Noelle shares tales of woe from life with her ex-husband. When fugitive Marcie McBain (who had been posing as new waitress "Sally Ann") is arrested along with Noelle's fellow waitress Gigi Morasco following a police stand-off, Noelle takes care of Gigi's young son Shane.
Moe and Noelle are seen again in May 2008, when Natalie and her secret lover, con man Jared Banks, visit Paris and the Bon Jour to get away from the prying eyes of the Buchanan family. They are unaware that the notorious David Vickers, the true Buchanan heir, has taken a job at the Bon Jour as a busboy. After discovering that Jared and Natalie are lying to the Buchanans about Jared's lineage, David quits the Bon Jour, urging Moe and Noelle to admit their feelings for each other.
Moe and Noelle reappear again in July 2008 when Bo Buchanan and Rex Balsom visit the Bon Jour separately. By this time, Moe and Noelle have revealed their feelings for each other and are shown to be in a committed romantic relationship. When Bo and Rex travel through time back to 1968, they discover Moe and Noelle's counterparts in the past: Moe is "Jeremiah Stubbs," (Moe's father), the hippie proprietor of what was then known as the "Good Day Café," and Noelle is "Rosa," a strong-willed Mexican maid working for the Buchanan family alongside Maria Vasquez. Rosa is Maria's only confidante about her out-of-wedlock pregnancy by Clint Buchanan; her unborn child will grow up to be Cord Roberts. Jeremiah and Rosa are shown to have feelings for one another. Back in 2008, Gigi returns to Paris during her search for a missing Rex, Noelle has the chance to catch up with her former co-worker. After the customers leave, Moe proposes to Noelle, who accepts.
In late 2008, an engaged Moe and Noelle visit Viki at the "Buenos Dias Café," Carlotta Vega's burned-down diner rebuilt as a recreation of the Bon Jour Café. Moe and Noelle soon marry in Las Vegas on February 9, 2009.
Jamie Vega
Jamie Reynolds Vega (born Stephanie Reynolds) is a fictional character from the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Child actors Darryn and Leah Thompson originated the roles as infants from February 10, 2003 until March 8, 2005. Saoirse Scott stepped in the speaking role from April 8, 2005 until March 25, 2009.
Jamie is the daughter of Antonio Vega and Keri Reynolds; although she is at first believed to be the child of Keri's mother Liz and another man, the embryo transplanted into Keri. The baby is born and soon determined to actually be the biological child of Keri and her boyfriend Antonio. She is later renamed Jamie.
Following Keri's death, Jamie is the subject of a fierce custody battle between her father and maternal grandfather, R.J. Gannon. Jessica Buchanan acts as a mother to Jamie during Jessica's long relationship with Antonio, and nearly adopts Jamie before she and Antonio split up. In April 2007, Jamie runs out of Antonio and Jessica's loft as they are arguing. Outside, Jamie runs through Angel Square, and is hit by a car. Jamie is treated by Michael McBain and Paige Miller. Jamie makes a full recovery. After Antonio and Jessica's break up, Antonio leaves town, taking Jamie with him.
Lisa Williamson
Lisa Williamson is a fictional character on the ABC Daytime soap opera One Life to Live. Mother of lawyer Evangeline Williamson, the role was played by actress Janet Hubert from March through April 2005, in December 2007, and again in July 2010.
Others
Notes
References
See also
List of One Life to Live characters
Lists of One Life to Live characters
Lists of minor fictional characters | en |
doc-en-6859 | This list of Resident Evil characters includes original characters that were introduced in the Resident Evil series of live-action horror films. The characters are described, below, using in-universe tone.
Alice
Alice (portrayed by Milla Jovovich) is the protagonist of the Resident Evil film series. The plot of each film generally revolves around her struggle with the Umbrella Corporation. Alice also appears in the film's novelizations which go into greater detail of her backstory.
In the first film, Resident Evil, Alice is depicted as suffering from amnesia, gradually realizing her abilities as a highly trained private security operative. In Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Extinction, her character is represented as "a supremely efficient killing machine" and bio-weapon. Alice is an "iconic figure and is closely associated with the series," becoming more skilled and rugged throughout the series. Alice's superhuman abilities, as well as the use of various styles of martial arts and gunplay make her something of a superhero character. For example, in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, after her exposure to the T-virus, she displays psychic powers akin to those of Alexia Ashford. In Extinction, her powers are even more developed - she displays even greater control over her telekinesis (although she experiences blackouts and massive headaches if she pushes her powers too far). In Resident Evil: Afterlife, Alice's superhuman abilities have been taken away by Albert Wesker, who injected her with a serum that disabled her T-virus cells; however, at the end of Resident Evil: Retribution, Wesker injects her with the T-virus and restores her powers, saying that Alice and her powers are the last, best hope for humanity. In Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, after being betrayed by Wesker, Alice undertakes a final mission into the Hive with the help of Claire Redfield and the Red Queen to save what is left of humanity. In this movie, she displays none of her powers despite Wesker restoring them at the end of Retribution, with the Red Queen commenting about Wesker having only pretended to restore her powers.
Alice is an original character created for the films, although writer Paul W. S. Anderson noted that Alice was based on the strong women in the Resident Evil games. Anderson initially toyed with the idea of the film being an allegory to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, but the idea was not followed through completely. Despite this, the film contains various references to the work, which included Alice's name. Although the name Alice was given as the character's name prior to Resident Evil'''s release and is listed in the credits, her name is not actually spoken until the second film, Resident Evil: Apocalypse.
Rain Ocampo
Rain Ocampo (played by Michelle Rodriguez) is introduced in the first Resident Evil film, in which she works for the Umbrella Corporation's commando force. During the outbreak in The Hive, Rain and the other operatives are sent down to shut the Red Queen down and contain the infection. During The Hive incident, Rain and Alice become very close. Rain is bitten by one of the infected and is on the point of death when Alice administers the antivirus to her. However it is too late to reverse the effects so that Rain dies and has to be killed by Matt when she revives as a zombie. Several clones of Rain Ocampo are introduced in Resident Evil: Retribution, including a "Good Rain", created as a test subject for the Umbrella Corporation's live tests on the human response to viral outbreaks, a "Bad Rain", who works for Jill Valentine, and a "Zombie Rain". Good Rain, along with a little girl named Becky who is the daughter of an Alice clone, survives a test scenario of the T-virus in a suburban situation. Good Rain is killed when a Licker throws her into a pillar, breaking her neck. Bad Rain helps fight against Alice and her allies and injects herself with the Las Plagas parasite, making her super-strong and invincible. Bad Rain kills Luther West and nearly kills Alice before Alice shoots out the ice under her feet, dropping her into an ocean full of Las Plagas zombies who devour her. During a deleted scene, Zombie Rain is seen during the New York simulation. She charged Ada and Alice from the left, emerging from an alley and attempted to blindside Alice. Alice reacts quickly enough that she kills the clone with a shot to the head.
Matt Addison
Matt Addison (played by Eric Mabius) and Matt/Nemesis (played by Matthew G. Taylor) appears in Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse. He is an anti-Umbrella activist posing as a newly transferred Raccoon City police officer, who has sent his sister to work Umbrella Corporation to steal some information to expose Umbrella for illegal activity. When the T-virus is released at the Umbrella "Hive", the red queen seals the Hive, killing everyone inside including Matt's sister. Matt is arrested by a group of umbrella operatives, led by One.
Along with Alice, he is then taken to the hive where they are met by a horde of zombies. Matt and Alice are separated and Matt comes across his zombified sister. Alice saves Matt's life, but he later becomes infected when they are attacked by a Licker. Matt begins to mutate, and Alice is preparing to give him the anti-virus when the mansion door bursts open and a group of Umbrella scientists take him. He is then put into the "Nemesis Program". In Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Matt has been transformed into the mutation "Nemesis T-Type", programmed to eradicate all remaining STARS operatives. He tracks Alice down and they are forced to fight to the death. Alice realizes Nemesis is Matt and refuses to kill him. Nemesis joins forces with Alice and they defend themselves from a helicopter, sent by the Umbrella forces to kill them. However, in the ensuing battle, Nemesis (Matt) is crushed by wreckage and presumed dead. If he survived, he was killed when a nuclear weapon destroyed the city.
K-Mart
K-Mart (played by Spencer Locke) is a young woman in Claire Redfield's convoy. In Resident Evil: Extinction, K-Mart explains that she changed her name after Claire and the others had found her in a Kmart store. She states she did not like her name and decided to change it because all those she knew from before the outbreak were dead. In the film's original script, K-Mart's real name is Elizabeth Jane Case. In the novelisation of the film, Carlos reveals that her original name was Dahlia. K-Mart and Claire are close and Locke has said her character sees Claire as an older sister. K-Mart is close with Mikey, and even more so with Carlos; in the novelisation of the film and in a scene that was deleted from the film, it is stated she has a crush on him. K-Mart also bonds with Alice; she stays with Alice and gives her a bracelet when Alice passes out from using her powers to save the convoy. Locke has said that K-Mart "definitely look[s] up to Alice in this movie a lot." K-Mart survives through most of the film by hiding in the vehicles, although she does kill a few zombies. In a zombie attack, she is nearly killed by L.J. who has turned into a zombie himself, but Carlos saves her. At the end, she is one of the few who have survived long enough to depart in a helicopter headed for Alaska, piloted by Claire. In Resident Evil: Afterlife, K-Mart has been captured by the Umbrella Corporation to be experimented upon. She is rescued by Alice, Claire and Chris Redfield, but is at first too addled to do anything. She later aids Alice in battle, knocking out Bennett and tossing Alice her shotgun, allowing Alice to (temporarily) defeat Wesker with a shot to the head. She is later seen standing on deck with the other survivors when Umbrella commandos attack the ship, her whereabouts are unknown.
Becky
Becky (played by Aryana Engineer) is a clone of a young deaf girl, residing in the "Suburban Raccoon City" environment of the Umbrella Prime facility. In Resident Evil: Retribution, she is first introduced as the deaf "daughter" of a clone of Alice and her "husband" Todd, a clone of Carlos Olivera. During a "bio hazard" test, Becky lost her father, while her mother hid her; unknown to Becky, the Alice clone was killed by the zombified Todd. When the real Alice arrives with Ada Wong, Becky mistakes Alice for her mother; Alice decides to take Becky along despite Ada's objections. Mostly unknowing of the truth about her existence, Becky followed Alice and her comrades. When an Uber-Licker kidnapped her, Becky was rescued by Alice; however, they unfortunately had to escape through the clone storage room. Partly realising the truth, Becky asked Alice if she was her mother; Alice responded that she was now. They were rescued and taken with Ada, Leon, and Jill to Washington DC, where the last of humanity had established their base in the White House. When Wesker ultimately betrays the survivors it is presumed that she is killed along with the others after he destroys the White House, leaving only Alice alive.
Red Queen
The Red Queen (played by Michaela Dicker, Megan Charpentier, Ave Merson-O'Brian and Ever Anderson) is a character of the Resident Evil film series. The Red Queen was created by the director Paul W. S. Anderson as a homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL 9000. She appears as the main antagonist in the first and the fifth film, and returns in the sixth film as a supporting character.
In Resident Evil, the Red Queen's holographic avatar was modeled on the daughter of Umbrella's head programmer. She monitors the Hive and the Spencer Mansion above. When the T-virus was released, she sealed the exits and killed the Umbrella employees; she also released a gas that left Alice out cold with amnesia. When an Umbrella U.B.C.S. commando team is sent to investigate, she kills most of them with her defense systems. She warns against entering the Hive, but they shut her down. She is later forced to help the survivors find a way out, since her main circuit breakers were disabled to prevent rebooting. As the anti-virus has slimmer chance of working the longer one is infected, she demands Rain be killed; however, she is shut down by Kaplan.
In an early draft of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Angie, the daughter of T-virus' creator Dr. Charles Ashford, was to be revealed as the girl on whose appearance the Red Queen was based, and her father as the person that built the supercomputer that houses her. When the filmmakers realized they would need a large amount of flashback footage from the previous film to explain the connection to those in the audience that had not seen it, they decided to drop the idea, removing it from the canon. Nevertheless, some people have made the connection due to Angie's appearance and accent strongly evoking the Red Queen. The novelization of Resident Evil: Extinction also explicitly states the connection.
In Resident Evil: Extinction, Alice encounters the White Queen, a sister artificial intelligence to the Red Queen, who similarly looks like a young girl, but dressed in white. The White Queen justifies her sister's actions, as the most logical path to contain the viral outbreak inside The Hive, from spreading. Nevertheless, she had decided to assist Alice by attempting to synthesis a cure to the outbreak after revealing her DNA to be potentially able to counteract the T-virus.
The Red Queen makes a reappearance in Resident Evil: Retribution, portrayed by child actress Megan Charpentier with another actress, Ave Merson-O'Brian, providing her voice. After the Raccoon City incident, she was reactivated and placed in control over Umbrella Prime, an underground laboratory in Kamchatka. By the time Retribution begins, she has assumed control over Umbrella itself and is waging war against the human race, including Wesker, using various bioweapons.
The Red Queen reappears in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, this time portrayed by Ever Gabo Anderson, the real daughter of Milla Jovovich (Alice) and Paul W. S. Anderson, the film's writer/director. In The Final Chapter, the Red Queen contacts Alice to warn her that the last human settlement will be destroyed in 48 hours. The Red Queen directs Alice back into the Hive to find a potent antivirus that will kill everything infected with the T-virus upon contact. The Red Queen is revealed to have been created based upon Alicia Marcus, the daughter of Umbrella co-founder James Marcus (with Ever Gabo portraying young Alicia in flashback footage). The Red Queen is willing to aid Alice as she has been programmed to protect human life, but is also unable to directly harm Umbrella forces due to another directive in her programming. During the final battle in the Hive, the Red Queen is able to aid Alice by dropping a blast door on Wesker after the adult Alicia Marcus (played by Jovovich, as all Alices are clones of Alicia) fires him. The Red Queen is later shut down by Doctor Isaacs, but first she taunts "Doctor Alexander Isaacs and the Umbrella High Command. You are all going to die down here", echoing her words to Alice and the soldiers in the first movie. When Isaacs is killed, the Red Queen reactivates herself and recalls the Umbrella forces sent to destroy the last human settlement, saving humanity. After the Hive is destroyed and the antivirus released, the Red Queen is revealed to have survived the Hive's destruction when she contacts Alice and explains how Alice survived the antivirus. The Red Queen displays Alicia Marcus' childhood memories for Alice, memories that Alicia had uploaded into the AI so that Alice would have them as well.
Although the character originated in the films, the Red Queen also appears in the 2007 game Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, voiced by Tara Platt. Her character appears as a database computer which provides information relating to the Arklay Incident and T-virus development. In the game's chapter "The Umbrella's End", the T-A.L.O.S. (Tyrant Armored Lethal Organic System) is monitored and controlled by the Red Queen. In the game, the Red Queen AI is self-aware and can take these measures based on its own judgment. At the end of the game, Wesker manages to procure all the data the Red Queen possessed for himself, and has it permanently erase itself and deactivate.
Lloyd Jefferson “LJ” Wade
Lloyd Jefferson "LJ" Wade (portrayed by Mike Epps) is a main character and protagonist appearing in Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Extinction.
When the zombie outbreak begins in Raccoon City in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, LJ is handcuffed in the police station next to a zombified prostitute. He is saved when Jill Valentine arrives and kills all of the zombies in the police station and free LJ, ordering him to flee the city. While driving through the city later, LJ becomes distracted by another zombified prostitute and crashes his car. He links up with S.T.A.R.S., but becomes the only survivor when Nemesis slaughters everyone in the building. At first, Nemesis focuses his fire on the officers and then ignores LJ as an unarmed threat after he disarms himself. LJ is contacted by Charles Ashford and joins the effort to rescue Angela Ashford. During the final battle at City Hall, LJ hijacks the Umbrella helicopter and knocks Major Timothy Cain unconscious when he tries to escape. LJ survives the helicopter crash and helps to rescue Alice from an Umbrella facility at the end of the movie.
In Resident Evil: Extinction, five years after the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, LJ is a member of Claire Redfield's convoy alongside Carlos and had developed a relationship with convoy nurse Betty. While investigating a deserted motel, LJ kills two zombies, but not before he gets bitten by one. LJ hides his infection from everyone else and helps Betty save the convoy's children when they come under attack by zombified crows. The convoy is saved by the sudden appearance of Alice, but Betty is killed, devastating LJ. As the convoy moves towards the ruins of Las Vegas for supplies, LJ's condition begins rapidly deteriorating, though he continues to hide the truth from his friends. During the Super Undead attack, LJ manages to kill two before running out of ammunition and being forced to hide in a truck with K-Mart. When a Super Undead attacks the truck, LJ's condition has deteriorated so much that K-Mart is forced to kill the zombie herself with a shotgun in the truck. Unnoticed by K-Mart, LJ dies shortly afterwards and reanimates. As he tries to attack K-Mart, LJ is pulled from the truck by Carlos whom he bites. Devastated by his zombified friend's state, Carlos kills the undead LJ with a shot to the head, but is left fatally infected by the T-virus, leading to his later sacrifice to clear a path for the convoy survivors.
Major Timothy Cain
Major Timothy Cain is the main antagonist of Resident Evil: Apocalypse. A high-ranking member of the Umbrella Corporation's military, the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Services, or U.B.C.S., Cain is placed in charge of the quarantine of Raccoon City when word of the Hive being reopened and the infected within escaping reaches Umbrella, guarding the Raven's Gate Bridge that serves as the only means out of the city for the uninfected civilian population. When one man at the checkpoint drops dead of a heart attack and reanimates as a T-virus infected zombie, Cain is forced to seal the exit and send everyone back into the city to their doom with a show of force by having his men fire their weapons into the air to intimidate them. Cain later has Alice and Matt Addison, now the Nemesis, awoken to face each other in battle, and upon learning of Dr. Charles Ashford trying to help Alice and the other survivors escape Raccoon City before Umbrella destroys it with a tactical nuclear bomb to cover up their mistakes, captures Ashford and confronts the group on the roof of the Raccoon City Hall, forcing Alice into fighting the Nemesis by killing Ashford and threatening to do the same to his daughter Angela, L.J., Carlos, and Jill if Alice still refuses.
Though Alice is able to defeat Nemesis, she refuses to kill him upon realizing he's Matt. Cain tries to have Nemesis kill Alice instead, but Nemesis, having regained his memories, turns on Cain and takes out his Umbrella troops, before sacrificing himself to take out the Umbrella attack helicopters with his Stinger, being crushed by the resulting debris. Cain tries to escape on the transport helicopter that was to be Alice and the others' way out of the city, but Alice, infuriated by Cain's actions, throws him out of the helicopter after it starts to take off, causing him to break his leg when he lands back on the roof. Surrounded by the zombie horde, Cain tries to fight them off with a discarded pistol, but realizing his fate, turns the gun on himself to commit suicide, but finds that he's out of bullets. In an ironic twist, the first zombie to reach and bite him was the reanimated Dr. Ashford. Cain is vaporized with the zombie horde when the tactical nuke detonates over Raccoon City Hall and obliterates the city.
Charles Ashford
A high-ranking scientist with Umbrella, Ashford is evacuated out of Raccoon City when word of the Hive being reopened and the infected within escaping forces Umbrella to pull all their employees in Raccoon City out of the area before establishing their quarantine perimeter. Although Ashford is safely evacuated, his daughter Angela, who was pulled out of her class at Raccoon City Elementary, doesn't make the rendezvous when her evacuation vehicle is struck by a tanker truck driven by a T-virus infected driver, killing the Umbrella security personnel sent to retrieve her, while she escapes and retreats back to her school, remaining there as the virus infects her teachers, classmates, and other residents of the city, including a set of R.P.D. K-9 police dogs when the school was properly evacuated by the R.P.D. after suggestion from former S.T.A.R.S. officer Jill Valentine.
Fearing for his daughter's safety, Ashford is able to hack into Raccoon City's CCTV system, and contacting Alice and other survivors, such as Jill, L.J., and members of the U.B.C.S., like Carlos, he offers them a way out of the city before Umbrella has it nuked to cover up their actions in return for the rescue and return of his daughter. Though Angela is safely recovered, Ashford's actions are discovered by Major Cain, and he is taken hostage as Cain confronts the escapees at the rendezvous point at Raccoon City Hall. When Alice refuses to fight Nemesis under Cain's orders, Ashford is mercilessly executed by Cain as a show of force to get her to fight Nemesis, with Cain threatening to kill Angela, Jill, Carlos, and L.J. next if she continues to resist.
After Cain is left to fend for himself by Alice while she and the other survivors escape before the city is nuked, Ashford gets his revenge for Cain killing him when the T-virus reanimates him as a zombie, and he is the first to reach Cain and begins to devour him before the rest of the horde join him. They are all vaporized when the nuke detonates over Raccoon City Hall.
Alexander Isaacs
Doctor Alexander Roland Isaacs (played by Iain Glen) is the main antagonist of the Resident Evil series, though this is not known until Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. One of the two founders of the Umbrella Corporation, Isaacs was the true mastermind behind the release of the T-virus as revealed in The Final Chapter, planning to wipe the world clean of humanity and repopulate it with the Umbrella elite kept in cryogenic stasis in the Hive beneath Raccoon City. Isaacs murdered his partner Doctor James Marcus and raised Marcus' daughter Alicia who inherited her father's half of the company, allowing him to control it and her.
In Resident Evil: Apocalypse, Isaacs, later revealed to be a clone, experiments upon Alice and Matt Addison in flashbacks, transforming Matt in the Nemesis. He later revives Alice after she dies in a helicopter crash following the destruction of Raccoon City and enhances her powers. When Alice escapes the facility, Isaacs lets her go and activates "Program: Alice". Five years later in Resident Evil: Extinction, Isaacs hunts for Alice in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of North America while performing experiments using Alice's blood and clones of her in an attempt to find a cure for the T-virus. Isaacs' experiments create the Super Undead which he unleashes upon Claire Redfield's convoy in the ruins of Las Vegas while trying to simultaneously capture Alice. After his efforts fail, Isaacs flees back to base, but not before getting bitten by a Super Undead. Despite taking massive quantities of the anti-virus, Isaacs mutates into a creature with near-invulnerability and telekinetic abilities that surpass Alice's own. Isaacs slaughters the Umbrella staff and battles Alice through the recreation of the Hive. In a final confrontation in the Laser Corridor, Isaacs is destroyed when an Alice clone takes control of the laser grid and uses it to slice him to pieces. This particular clone appeared to be more of an employee of the company, working as virologist and subservient to Albert Wesker, closer in nature to the clones of Alice's allies used as shock troopers in Resident Evil: Retribution than the clone that would later appear in The Final Chapter.
In The Final Chapter, after being captured by an Umbrella convoy leading an army of Undead to Raccoon City, Alice is shocked to find it commanded by Isaacs, having thought him dead years before. Isaacs uses human captives dragged behind the tank to lure the Undead to follow him. Alice quickly realizes that the Isaacs she previously fought was just a clone with Isaacs telling her that he was awoken from stasis to finish leading the destruction of humanity. Alice eventually manages to escape, chopping off Isaacs' hand in the process. Isaacs leads his army against the last human settlement in the ruins of Raccoon City, but Alice commands an effective defense, destroying the army and Isaacs commandos. Isaacs himself manages to escape, and takes command of another Umbrella army, slaughtering a tank crew and leading the army into the crater leading to the Hive in an effort to stop Alice once and for all.
In the Hive, Alice encounters another Isaacs, awoken by Wesker, who reveals himself to be the real Alexander Isaacs and the one Alice encounter in the convoy to be a clone who was unaware of his true nature. The real Isaacs has technological upgrades that give him an advantage against Alice, predicting her every move. Isaacs reveals Alice's own true nature as a clone of Alicia Marcus and his plan to kill both Alice and Alicia which will give him full control of Umbrella. Alicia uses her fifty percent control of Umbrella to fire Wesker, allowing the Red Queen, allied with Alice, to crush Wesker's legs with a door. Isaacs flees with the anti-virus that can stop the T-virus once and for all and shuts the Red Queen down so that she can't help Alice anymore. Isaacs proves to be more than a match for both Alice and Claire Redfield, slicing off three of Alice's fingers in the Laser Corridor, but being apparently defeated when she places an activated grenade in his pocket at the same time. Isaacs life support system revives him in time to stop Alice from releasing the anti-virus, but he is then confronted by his clone. In an ironic twist, Isaacs is stabbed to death by his own clone when the clone can't accept that he isn't the real Isaacs, a piece of programing in the clones that Isaacs had earlier found amusing. The Isaacs clone is killed by his own Undead army, allowing Alice to retrieve and release the anti-virus as the Hive is destroyed by explosives she planted. The destruction of the Hive and the Umbrella elite within cements the end of Umbrella and Isaacs plan while the Red Queen is able to reactivate herself once Isaacs is dead and call off the Umbrella attack on the remaining human settlements.
James Shade/One
James Shade was a soldier in charge for collecting Alice from the Hive. He was killed when a laser sliced him into pieces. He later reappeared in Resident Evil: Retribution'' as a clone trooper loyal to Umbrella. Near the end of the movie, he shot dead by one of Alice's allies, Barry, who is then killed by Shade's own allies.
See also
List of Resident Evil game characters
References
Resident Evil
Film
Characters | en |
doc-en-7236 | The 1999 Atlantic hurricane season was an event in the annual tropical cyclone season in the north Atlantic Ocean. This Atlantic hurricane season saw a near-average number of named tropical storms, though five of them became dangerous hurricanes of Category 4 intensity on the 5-level Saffir–Simpson scale, the most in a single season since 1886. The season officially began on June 1, 1999 and ended on November 30, 1999. These dates, adopted by convention, historically describe the period in each year when most tropical systems form. This season's first storm, Tropical Storm Arlene, formed on June 11, while the last, Hurricane Lenny, dissipated on November 23.
Altogether, 12 tropical storms formed during the season, including eight hurricanes of which five intensified into major hurricanes. There were also four tropical depressions that did not reach tropical storm strength. The most significant hurricane of the season was Hurricane Floyd, which caused devastating flooding along the East Coast of the United States, especially in North Carolina, which had been hit only ten days earlier by Hurricane Dennis. Another strong hurricane, Hurricane Lenny became the strongest November Atlantic hurricane on record, and maintained a west-to-east track through the Caribbean for nearly its entire duration. Because of its unusual path, it developed the nickname "Wrong Way Lenny." The deadliest tropical cyclone of the season was Tropical Depression Eleven, whose heavy rain and resultant flooding caused 400 deaths in Mexico. Following the 1999 season, the names Floyd and Lenny were retired from reuse in the North Atlantic by the World Meteorological Organization.
This timeline documents tropical cyclone formations, strengthening, weakening, landfalls, extratropical transitions, and dissipations during the season. It includes information that was not released throughout the season, meaning that data from post-storm reviews by the National Hurricane Center, such as a storm that was not initially warned upon, has been included.
By convention, meteorologists use one time zone when issuing forecasts and making observations: Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), and also use the 24-hour clock (where 00:00 = midnight UTC). In this time line, all information is listed by UTC first with the respective local time included in parentheses.
Timeline
June
June 1
The 1999 Atlantic hurricane season officially begins.
June 11
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Tropical Depression One forms about 535 mi (860 km) southeast of Bermuda.
June 12
15:00 UTC (11:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression One strengthens into Tropical Storm Arlene about 510 mi (820 km) southeast of Bermuda.
June 13
06:000 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Storm Arlene attains its peak intensity with sustained winds of 60 mph (95 km/h) and a barometric pressure of 1006 mbar (hPa; 29.71 inHg).
June 17
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, June 16)Tropical Storm Arlene weakens to a tropical depression east-southeast of Bermuda.
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression Arlene makes its closest approach to land at about 120 miles (190 km) east of Bermuda.
June 18
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, June 17)Tropical Depression Arlene dissipates northeast of Bermuda.
July
July 2
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. CDT)Tropical Depression Two forms in the western Bay of Campeche.
July 3
04:00 UTC (11:00 p.m. CDT, July 2)Tropical Depression Two makes landfall about 40 mi (65 km) south-southeast of Tuxpan, Veracruz with sustained winds of 35 mph (55 km/h).
12:00 UTC (7:00 a.m. CDT)Tropical Depression Two dissipates over the Sierra Madre Oriental.
August
August 18
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. CDT)Tropical Depression Three forms in the Bay of Campeche.
August 19
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, August 18)Tropical Depression Four forms about 155 miles (250 km) east-southeast of the Cape Verde Islands.
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. CDT)Tropical Depression Three strengthens into Tropical Storm Bret southeast of Tampico, Tamaulipas.
August 20
1:00 pm EDT (1800 UTC) - Tropical Depression Four strengthens into Tropical Storm Cindy.
August 21
00:00 UTC (7:00 p.m. CDT, August 20)Tropical Storm Bret reaches hurricane strength about east of Tampico.
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. CDT)Hurricane Bret strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane.
23:00 UTC (6:00 p.m. CDT)Hurricane Bret strengthens to a Category 3 hurricane about southeast of Brownsville, Texas.
August 22
00:00 UTC (7:00 p.m. CDT, August 21)Hurricane Bret rapidly strengthens to a Category 4 hurricane.
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, August 21)Tropical Storm Cindy reaches hurricane strength about 450 mi (720 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands.
12:00 UTC (7:00 a.m. CDT)Hurricane Bret attains its peak intensity with winds of 145 mph (230 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 944 mbar (hPa; 27.88 inHg).
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. AST)Hurricane Cindy weakens to a tropical storm.
August 23
00:00 UTC (7:00 p.m. CDT, August 22)Hurricane Bret makes landfall on central Padre Island, Texas as a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 115 mph (185 km/h).
13:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. CDT)Hurricane Bret weakens to a tropical storm about 40 mi (65 km) south-southwest of Alice, Texas.
August 24
00:00 UTC (7:00 p.m. CDT, August 23)Tropical Storm Bret weakens to a tropical depression north of Laredo, Texas and later dissipates in the mountains of northern Mexico.
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, August 23)Tropical Depression Five forms about 220 mi (350 km) east of Turks Island.
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression Five strengthens into Tropical Storm Dennis east of Turks Island.
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression Six forms about 410 mi (670 km) east of the southern Windward Islands.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression Six strengthens into Tropical Storm Emily.
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Tropical Storm Emily attains its peak intensity east of the Windward Islands with winds of 50 mph (85 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1004 mbar (hPa; 29.65 inHg).
August 26
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, August 25)Tropical Storm Cindy re-strengthens into a hurricane about 1,300 mi (2,000 km) southeast of Bermuda.
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AM AST)Tropical Storm Dennis strengthens to hurricane strength about 290 mi (465 km) east-southeast of Nassau, Bahamas.
August 27
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Cindy strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane east-southeast of Bermuda.
August 28
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, August 27)Hurricane Cindy strengthens to a Category 3 hurricane.
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Cindy strengthens to a category 4 hurricane.
07:00 UTC (3:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Dennis moves through the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas with winds of 85 mph (140 km/h) and makes landfall on some on the islands.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Cindy attains its peak intensity east-southeast of Bermuda with winds of 140 mph (220 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 942 mbar (hPa; 27.82 inHg).
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDTHurricane Dennis strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane about northeast of Great Abaco Island.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Storm Emily weakens to a tropical depression southeast of Bermuda, and is later absorbed by the much larger circulation of Hurricane Cindy.
August 29
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Cindy weakens to a Category 3 hurricane east of Bermuda.
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Hurricane Cindy weakens to a Category 2 hurricane east of Bermuda.
August 30
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Dennis attains its peak intensity about south of Wilmington, North Carolina with winds of 105 mph (165 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 962 mbar (hPa; 28.41 inHg).
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Cindy weakens to a Category 1 hurricane west-southwest of the Azores.
August 31
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT, August 30)Hurricane Dennis weakens to a Category 1 hurricane about 120 mi (190 km) east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Cindy weakens to a tropical storm.
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Tropical Storm Cindy is absorbed by an extratropical low about 980 mi (1,570 km) west of the Azores..
September
September 1
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. EDT, August 31)Hurricane Dennis weakens to a tropical storm about east of Cape Hatteras.
September 4
21:00 UTC (5:00 p.m. EDT)Tropical Storm Dennis made landfall over the Cape Lookout National Seashore just east of Harkers Island, North Carolina with winds of 70 mph (110 km/h).
September 5
09:00 UTC (5:00 a.m. EDT)Tropical Storm Dennis weakens to a tropical depression about southwest of Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. CDT)Tropical Depression Seven forms in the western Gulf of Mexico southeast of Tampico, Tamaulipas.
September 6
00:00 UTC (7:00 p.m. CDT, September 5)Tropical Depression Seven attains its peak intensity with winds of 35 mph (55 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1006 mbar (hPa; 29.71 inHg).
12:00 UTC (7:00 a.m. CDT)Tropical Depression Seven makes landfall south of La Pesca, Tamaulipas with winds of 35 mph (55 km/h) and later dissipates over northern Mexico.
September 7
17:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. EDT)Tropical Depression Dennis becomes extratropical over the southern shore of Lake Ontario near Hilton, New York, and is subsequently absorbed into a larger extratropical low.
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. AST)Tropical Depression Eight forms east of the Lesser Antilles.
September 8
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression Eight strengthens into Tropical Storm Floyd about 860 mi (1,390 km) east of the Leeward Islands.
September 10
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Storm Floyd reaches hurricane strength about 210 mi (340 km) east-northeast of Barbuda in the Northern Leeward Islands.
September 11
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Floyd strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane well to the northeast of the Leeward Islands.
15:00 UTC (11:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression Nine forms about south of the Cape Verde Islands.
September 12
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Floyd strengthens to a Category 3 hurricane about 365 mi (585 km) east of the Turks Islands.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression Nine strengthens into Tropical Storm Gert roughly west of the Cape Verde Islands.
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Hurricane Floyd strengthens to a category 4 hurricane about 265 mi (425 km) east-northeast of Grand Turk Island.
September 13
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Floyd attained its peak intensity about 195 mi (315 km) east of San Salvador Island, Bahamas, with sustained winds of near 155 mph (250 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 921 mbar (hPa; 27.20 inHg).
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Storm Gert reaches hurricane strength in the central Atlantic.
September 14
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Floyd weakens to a Category 3 hurricane about 55 mi (85 km) east of Eleuthera Island, Bahamas.
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Gert strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane in the central Atlantic.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Floyd makes landfall on Eleuthera Island, Bahamas with winds of 120 mph (190 km/h) .
18:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Floyd re-strengthens to a borderline Category 34 hurricane
19:00 UTC (3:00 p.m. EDT)Hurricane Floyd makes landfall on Great Abaco Island, Bahamas, with winds of 140 mph (220 km/h).
September 15
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, September 14)Hurricane Gert strengthens to a Category 3 hurricane well east of the Lesser Antilles.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Gert strengthens to a Category 4 hurricane.
18:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Floyd weakens to a Category 2 hurricane east of Jacksonville, Florida.
September 16
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, September 15)Hurricane Gert attains its peak intensity with winds of 150 mph (240 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 930 mbar (hPa; 27.46 inHg).
06:30 UTC (2:30 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Floyd makes landfall near Cape Fear, North Carolina with winds of 105 mph (169 km/h).
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Floyd weakens to a Category 1 hurricane roughly northeast of Washington, North Carolina.
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. EDT)Hurricane Floyd weakens to a tropical storm near the coast just north of Chincoteague, Virginia.
September 17
09:00 UTC (5:00 a.m. EDT)Tropical Storm Floyd transitions to an extratropical low about west-southwest of Portland, Maine, and subsequently merges with another extratropical low over the north Atlantic.
September 18
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, September 17)Hurricane Gert weakens to a Category 3 hurricane.
September 19
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Gert re-strengthens to a Category 4 hurricane.
06:00 UTC (1:00 a.m. CDT)Tropical Depression Ten forms about west-southwest of St. Petersburg, Florida in the Gulf of Mexico.
September 20
00:00 UTC (7:00 p.m. CDT, September 19)Tropical Depression Ten strengthens into Tropical Storm Harvey about west-southwest of St. Petersburg.
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Gert again weakens to a Category 3 hurricane.
September 21
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, September 20)Hurricane Gert weakens to a Category 2 hurricane.
08:00 UTC (4:00 a.m. EDT)Tropical Storm Harvey attains its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 994 mbar (hPa; 29.35 inHg).
17:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. EDT)Tropical Storm Harvey makes landfall near Everglades City, Florida with winds of 60 mph (95 km/h).
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. AST)Hurricane Gert weakens to a Category 1 hurricane, about east of Bermuda.
September 22
03:00 UTC (11:00 p.m. EDT, September 21)Tropical Storm Harvey is absorbed by an extratropical low about northeast of Freeport, Bahamas.
September 23
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, September 22)Hurricane Gert weakens to a tropical storm south-southwest of St. John's, Newfoundland.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Storm Gert becomes extratropical southeast of St. John's, Newfoundland and later merges with another extratropical low.
October
October 4
06:00 UTC (1:00 a.m. CDT)Tropical Depression Eleven forms in the Gulf of Mexico about east-northeast of Veracruz.
October 5
00:00 UTC (7:00 p.m. CDT, October 4)Tropical Depression Eleven attains its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1002 mbar (hPa; 29.59 inHg).
October 6
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, October 5)Tropical Depression Twelve forms east of the Lesser Antilles over the central tropical Atlantic Ocean.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression Twelve attained its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1007 mbar (hPa; 29.74 inHg).
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. CDT)Tropical Depression Eleven dissipates north-northeast of Veracruz.
October 8
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Tropical Depression Twelve dissipates north of the Lesser Antilles.
October 13
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT)Tropical Depression Thirteen forms in the northwestern Caribbean Sea.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT)Tropical Depression Thirteen strengthens into Tropical Storm Irene about west-southwest of Grand Cayman.
October 14
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT)Tropical Storm Irene makes landfall on Isle of Youth, Cuba, with winds of 70 mph (110 km/h).
19:00 UTC (3:00 p.m. EDT)Tropical Storm Irene made landfall on Batabano, Cuba with winds 70 mph (110 km/h).
October 15
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT)Tropical Storm Irene reaches hurricane strength after emerging into the Florida Straits east of Havana.
13:00 UTC (9:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Irene makes landfall on Key West, Florida with winds of 75 mph (120 km/h).
20:00 UTC) (4:00 pm EDT)Hurricane Irene makes landfall near Cape Sable, Florida with winds of 80 mph (130 km/h).
October 16
09:00 UTC (5:00a.m. EDT)Hurricane Irene emerges into the Atlantic Ocean just south of Ft. Pierce, Florida.
October 17
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Tropical Depression Fourteen forms about east of the southern Windward Islands.
October 18
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Irene strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane about east-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Depression Fourteen strengthens into Tropical Storm Jose about east of the Windward Islands.
08:00 UTC (4:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Irene attains its peak intensity about east-northeast of Cape Hatteras with winds of 110 mph (175 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 958 mbar (hPa; 28.29 inHg).
18:00 UTC (2:00 pm EDT)Hurricane Irene weakens to a Category 1 hurricane.
October 19
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Irene becomes extratropical south of Newfoundland and is subsequently absorbed by a much larger extratropical low.
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Tropical Storm Jose attains hurricane strength about east of the Leeward Islands.
October 20
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Jose attained its minimum pressure of 979 mbar (hPa; 28.91 inHg).
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. EDT)Hurricane Jose strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane and attains its peak sustained winds of 100 mph (155 km/h).
16:00 UTC (12:00 p.m. AST)Hurricane Jose weakens to a Category 1 hurricane as it makes landfall on Antigua with winds of 90 mph (155 km/h).
October 21
11:00 UTC (7:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Jose weakens to a tropical storm as it makes landfall on Tortola with sustained winds of 70 mph (110 km/h).
October 24
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Storm Jose regains hurricane strength east-southeast of Bermuda.
October 25
00:00 UTC (8:00 pm AST, October 24)Hurricane Jose weakens again to a tropical storm east-northeast of Bermuda..
09:00 UTC (5:00 a.m. AST)Tropical Storm Jose becomes extratropical about 575 mi (925 km) southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is later absorbed by a large extratropical low.
October 28
18:00 UTC (2:00 pm AST)Tropical Depression Fifteen forms about 170 miles (280 km) east of Bluefields, Nicaragua.
October 29
18:00 UTC (2:00 pm AST)Tropical Depression Fifteen strengthens into Tropical Storm Katrina about 55 mi (85 km) southeast Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua.
October 30
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, October 29)Tropical Storm Katrina makes landfall about 25 mi (40 km) southwest Puerto Cabeza with sustained winds of 40 mph (65 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 999 mbar (hPa; 29.5 inHg).
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. EDT)Tropical Storm Katrina weakens to a tropical depression, and is subsequently absorbed by a cold front just north of the Yucatan Peninsula.
November
November 13
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. EST)Tropical Depression Sixteen forms about 170 mi (280 km) south of the Cayman Islands.
November 14
12:00 UTC (7:00 a.m. EST)Tropical Depression Sixteen strengthens into Tropical Storm Lenny.
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. EST)Tropical Storm Lenny intensifies to hurricane strength about southwest of Kingston, Jamaica.
November 15
12:00 UTC (7:00 a.m. EST)Hurricane Lenny strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane about 175 mi (280 km) south of Jamaica.
18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. EST)Hurricane Lenny weakens to a Category 1 hurricane.
November 16
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Lenny re-strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane about 255 mi (410 km) south-southwest of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
November 17
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, November 16)Hurricane Lenny strengthens to a Category 3 hurricane about 205 mi (330 km) southwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Lenny strengthens to a Category 4 hurricane.
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Hurricane Lenny attains its peak intensity with winds of 155 mph (250 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 933 mbar (hPa; 27.55 inHg), while simultaneously making landfall on St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands with winds of 155 mph (250 km/h).
November 18
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Hurricane Lenny weakens to a Category 3 hurricane, while simultaneously making landfall on St. Martin with winds of 125 mph (205 km/h).
November 19
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, November 18)Hurricane Lenny weakens to a Category 2 hurricane, while simultaneously making landfall on Anguilla with winds of 100 mph (155 km/h).
06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST)Hurricane Lenny weakens to a Category 1 hurricane, while simultaneously making landfall on St. Barthelemy with winds of 85 mph (140 km/h).
18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST)Hurricane Lenny weaken to a tropical storm.
November 20
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, November 19)Tropical Storm Lenny makes landfall on Antigua with winds of 65 mph (100 km/h).
November 21
00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, November 20)Tropical Storm Lenny weakens to a tropical depression while moving away from the Leeward Islands to the southeast, and subsequently dissipates in the central Atlantic Ocean.
November 30
The 1999 Atlantic hurricane season officially ends.
Notes
References
External links
1999 Tropical Cyclone Advisory Archive, National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center
Timeline
1999 Atlantic hurricane season | en |
doc-en-16329 | The Hasmonean dynasty ( (audio); Ḥašmōnaʾīm) was a ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during classical antiquity, from BCE to 37 BCE. Between and BCE the dynasty ruled Judea semi-autonomously from the Seleucid Empire, and from roughly 110 BCE, with the empire disintegrating, Judea gained further autonomy and expanded into the neighboring regions of Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Perea, and Idumea. Some modern scholars regard the Hasmonean realm as an independent Israel.
The Hasmonean rulers took the Greek title basileus ("king" or "emperor"). Forces of the Roman Republic conquered the Hasmonean kingdom in 63 BCE; Herod the Great displaced the last reigning Hasmonean client-rulers in 37 BCE.
Simon Thassi established the dynasty in 141 BCE, two decades after his brother Judas Maccabeus ( Yehudah HaMakabi) had defeated the Seleucid army during the Maccabean Revolt of 167 to 141 BCE. According to 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, and the first book of The Jewish War by historian Flavius Josephus (37 CE–), the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV () moved to assert strict control over the Seleucid satrapy of Coele Syria and Phoenicia after his successful invasion of Ptolemaic Egypt (170 to 168 BCE) was turned back by the intervention of the Roman Republic. He sacked Jerusalem and its Temple, suppressing Jewish and Samaritan religious and cultural observances,
and imposed Hellenistic practices ( 168-167 BCE). The steady collapse of the Seleucid Empire under attacks from the rising powers of the Roman Republic and the Parthian Empire allowed Judea to regain some autonomy; however, in 63 BCE, the kingdom was invaded by the Roman Republic, broken up and set up as a Roman client state.
Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, Simon's great-grandsons, became pawns in a proxy war between Julius Caesar and Pompey. The deaths of Pompey (48 BCE) and Caesar (44 BCE), and the related Roman civil wars, temporarily relaxed Rome's grip on the Hasmonean kingdom, allowing a brief reassertion of autonomy backed by the Parthian Empire, rapidly crushed by the Romans under Mark Antony and Augustus.
The Hasmonean dynasty had survived for 103 years before yielding to the Herodian dynasty in 37 BCE. The installation of Herod the Great (an Idumean) as king in 37 BCE made Judea a Roman client state and marked the end of the Hasmonean dynasty. Even then, Herod tried to bolster the legitimacy of his reign by marrying a Hasmonean princess, Mariamne, and planning to drown the last male Hasmonean heir at his Jericho palace. In 6 CE, Rome joined Judea proper, Samaria and Idumea into the Roman province of Judaea. In 44 CE, Rome installed the rule of a procurator side by side with the rule of the Herodian kings (specifically Agrippa I 41–44 and Agrippa II 50–100).
Etymology
The family name of the Hasmonean dynasty originates with the ancestor of the house, whom Josephus Flavius called by the Hellenised form Asmoneus or Asamoneus (), said to have been the great-grandfather of Mattathias, but about whom nothing more is known. The name appears to come from the Hebrew name Hashmonay (חַשְׁמוֹנַאי Ḥašmōnaʾy). An alternative view posits that the Hebrew name Hashmona'i is linked with the village of Heshbon, mentioned in . Gott and Licht attribute the name to "Ha Simeon," a veiled reference to the Simeonite Tribe.
Background
The lands of the former Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah (–586 BCE), had been occupied in turn by Assyria, Babylonia, the Achaemenid Empire, and Alexander the Great's Hellenic Macedonian empire ( BCE), although Jewish religious practice and culture had persisted and even flourished during certain periods. The entire region was heavily contested between the successor states of Alexander's empire, the Seleucid Empire and Ptolemaic Egypt, during the six Syrian Wars of the 3rd–1st centuries BCE: "After two centuries of peace under the Persians, the Hebrew state found itself once more caught in the middle of power struggles between two great empires: the Seleucid state with its capital in Syria to the north and the Ptolemaic state, with its capital in Egypt to the south...Between 319 and 302 BC, Jerusalem changed hands seven times."
Under Antiochus III, the Seleucids wrested control of Judea from the Ptolemies for the final time, defeating Ptolemy V Epiphanes at the Battle of Panium in 200 BCE. Seleucid rule over the Jewish parts of the region then resulted in the rise of Hellenistic cultural and religious practices: "In addition to the turmoil of war, there arose in the Jewish nation pro-Seleucid and pro-Ptolemaic parties; and the schism exercised great influence upon the Judaism of the time. It was in Antioch that the Jews first made the acquaintance of Hellenism and of the more corrupt sides of Greek culture; and it was from Antioch that Judea henceforth was ruled."
Historical sources
The major source of information about the origin of the Hasmonean dynasty is the books 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees, held as canonical scripture by the Catholic, Orthodox, and most Oriental Orthodox churches and as apocryphal by Protestant denominations, although they do not comprise the canonical books of the Hebrew Bible.
The books cover the period from 175 BCE to 134 BCE during which time the Hasmonean dynasty became semi-independent from the Seleucid empire but had not yet expanded far outside of Judea. They are written from the point of view that the salvation of the Jewish people in a crisis came from God through the family of Mattathias, particularly his sons Judas Maccabeus, Jonathan Apphus, and Simon Thassi, and his grandson John Hyrcanus. The books include historical and religious material from the Septuagint that was codified by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians.
The other primary source for the Hasmonean dynasty is the first book of The Wars of the Jews and a more detailed history in Antiquities of the Jews by the Jewish historian Josephus, (37– 100 CE). Josephus' account is the only primary source covering the history of the Hasmonean dynasty during the period of its expansion and independence between 110 to 63 BCE. Notably, Josephus, a Roman citizen and former general in the Galilee, who survived the Jewish–Roman wars of the 1st century, was a Jew who was captured by and cooperated with the Romans, and wrote his books under Roman patronage.
Seleucid rule over Judea
Hellenisation
The continuing Hellenization of Judea pitted traditional Jews against those who eagerly Hellenized. The latter felt that the former's orthodoxy held them back. Jews were divided both between those favoring Hellenization and those opposing it and over allegiance to the Ptolemies or Seleucids.
In 175 BCE, conflict broke out between High Priest Onias III (who opposed Hellenisation and favoured the Ptolemies) and his son Jason (who favoured Hellenisation and the Seleucids). A period of political intrigue followed, with both Jason and Menelaus bribing the king to win the High Priesthood, and accusations of murder of competing contenders for the title. The result was a brief civil war. The Tobiads, a philo-Hellenistic party, succeeded in placing Jason into the powerful position of High Priest. He established an arena for public games close by the Temple.<ref>Ginzberg, Lewis. Jewish Encyclopedia.</ref> Author Lee I. Levine notes, "The 'piece de resistance' of Judaean Hellenisation, and the most dramatic of all these developments, occurred in 175 BCE, when the high priest Jason converted Jerusalem into a Greek polis replete with gymnasium and ephebeion (2 Maccabees 4). Whether this step represents the culmination of a 150-year process of Hellenisation within Jerusalem in general, or whether it was only the initiative of a small coterie of Jerusalem priests with no wider ramifications, has been debated for decades." Hellenised Jews are known to have engaged in non-surgical foreskin restoration (epispasm) in order to join the dominant Hellenistic cultural practice of socialising naked in the gymnasium,Jewish Encyclopedia: Circumcision: In Apocryphal and Rabbinical Literature: "Contact with Grecian life, especially at the games of the arena [which involved nudity], made this distinction obnoxious to the Hellenists, or antinationalists; and the consequence was their attempt to appear like the Greeks by epispasm ("making themselves foreskins"; I Macc. i. 15; Josephus, "Ant." xii. 5, § 1; Assumptio Mosis, viii.; I Cor. vii. 18; Tosef., Shab. xv. 9; Yeb. 72a, b; Yer. Peah i. 16b; Yeb. viii. 9a). All the more did the law-observing Jews defy the edict of Antiochus IV Epiphanes prohibiting circumcision (I Macc. i. 48, 60; ii. 46); and the Jewish women showed their loyalty to the Law, even at the risk of their lives, by themselves circumcising their sons."; where their circumcision would have carried a social stigma; Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman culture found circumcision to be a cruel, barbaric and repulsive custom.
Antiochus IV against Jerusalem
In spring 168 BCE, after successfully invading the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt, Antiochus IV was humiliatingly pressured by the Romans to withdraw. According to the Roman historian Livy, the Roman senate dispatched the diplomat Gaius Popilius to Egypt who demanded Antiochus to withdraw. When Antiochus requested time to discuss the matter Popilius "drew a circle round the king with the stick he was carrying and said, 'Before you step out of that circle give me a reply to lay before the senate.'"
While Antiochus was campaigning in Egypt, a rumor spread in Judah that he had been killed. The deposed high priest Jason took advantage of the situation, attacked Jerusalem, and drove away Menelaus and his followers. Menelaus took refuge in Akra, the Seleucids fortress in Jerusalem. When Antiochus heard of this, he sent an army to Jerusalem to sort things out. Jerusalem was taken, Jason and his followers were driven out, and Menelaus reinstated as high priest.
He then imposed a tax and established a fortress in Jerusalem. Antiochus tried to suppress public observance of Jewish laws, apparently in an attempt to secure control over the Jews. His government set up an idol of Zeus on the Temple Mount, which Jews considered to be desecration of the Mount; it also forbade both circumcision and possession of Jewish scriptures, on pain of death. According to Josephus,"Now Antiochus was not satisfied either with his unexpected taking the city, or with its pillage, or with the great slaughter he had made there; but being overcome with his violent passions, and remembering what he had suffered during the siege, he compelled the Jews to dissolve the laws of their country, and to keep their infants uncircumcised, and to sacrifice swine's flesh upon the altar."
He also outlawed observance of the Sabbath and the offering of sacrifices at the Jerusalem Temple and required Jewish leaders to sacrifice to idols; punitive executions were also instituted. Possession of Jewish scriptures was made a capital offence. The motives of Antiochus are unclear. He may have been incensed at the overthrow of his appointee, Menelaus, he may have been responding to a Jewish revolt that had drawn on the Temple and the Torah for its strength, or he may have been encouraged by a group of radical Hellenisers among the Jews.
Maccabean Revolt
The author of the First Book of Maccabees regarded the Maccabean revolt as a rising of pious Jews against the Seleucid king who had tried to eradicate their religion and against the Jews who supported him. The author of the Second Book of Maccabees presented the conflict as a struggle between "Judaism" and "Hellenism", words that he was the first to use. Modern scholarship tends to the second view.
Most modern scholars argue that the king was intervening in a civil war between traditionalist Jews in the countryside and Hellenised Jews in Jerusalem. According to Joseph P. Schultz, modern scholarship, "considers the Maccabean revolt less as an uprising against foreign oppression than as a civil war between the orthodox and reformist parties in the Jewish camp." In the conflict over the office of High Priest, traditionalists with Hebrew/Aramaic names like Onias contested against Hellenisers with Greek names like Jason or Menelaus. Other authors point to social and economic factors in the conflict.Tcherikover, Victor Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, New York: Atheneum, 1975 What began as a civil war took on the character of an invasion when the Hellenistic kingdom of Syria sided with the Hellenising Jews against the traditionalists. As the conflict escalated, Antiochus prohibited the practices of the traditionalists, thereby, in a departure from usual Seleucid practice, banning the religion of an entire people. Other scholars argue that while the rising began as a religious rebellion, it was gradually transformed into a war of national liberation.
The two greatest twentieth-century scholars of the Maccabean revolt, Elias Bickermann and Victor Tcherikover, each placed the blame on the policies of the Jewish leaders and not on the Seleucid ruler, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, but for different reasons.Bickermann saw the origin of the problem in the attempt of "Hellenised" Jews to reform the "antiquated" and "outdated" religion practised in Jerusalem, and to rid it of superstitious elements. They were the ones who egged on Antiochus IV and instituted the religious reform in Jerusalem. One suspects that [Bickermann] may have been influenced in his view by an antipathy to Reform Judaism in 19th- and 20th-century Germany. Tcherikover, perhaps influenced by socialist concerns, saw the uprising as one of the rural peasants against the rich elite.
According to I and II Maccabees, the priestly family of Mattathias (Mattitiyahu in Hebrew), which came to be known as the Maccabees, called the people forth to holy war against the Seleucids. Mattathias' sons Judas (Yehuda), Jonathan (Yonoson/Yonatan), and Simon (Shimon) began a military campaign, initially with disastrous results: one thousand Jewish men, women, and children were killed by Seleucid troops because they refused to fight, even in self-defence, on the Sabbath. Other Jews then reasoned that they must fight when attacked, even on the Sabbath. The institution of guerrilla warfare practices by Judah over several years led to victory against the Seleucids:
It was now, in the fall of 165, that Judah's successes began to disturb the central government. He appears to have controlled the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and thus to have cut off the royal party in Acra from direct communication with the sea and thus with the government. It is significant that this time the Syrian troops, under the leadership of the governor-general Lysias, took the southerly route, by way of Idumea.
Towards the end of 164, Judah felt strong enough to enter Jerusalem and the formal religious worship of Yahweh was re-established. The feast of Hanukkah was instituted to commemorate the recovery of the temple. Antiochus, who was away on a campaign against the Parthians, died at about the same time in Persis. Antiochus was succeeded by Demetrius I Soter, the nephew whose throne he had usurped. Demetrius sent the general Bacchides to Israel with a large army, in order to install Alcimus with the office of high priest. Bacchides subdued Jerusalem and returned to his King.
From revolt to independence
Judah and Jonathan
After five years of war and raids, Judah sought an alliance with the Roman Republic to remove the Greeks: "In the year 161 BCE he sent Eupolemus the son of Johanan and Jason the son of Eleazar, 'to make a league of amity and confederacy with the Romans.'"
A Seleucid army under General Nicanor was defeated by Judah (ib. 7:26–50) at the Battle of Adasa, with Nicanor himself killed in action. Next, Bacchides was sent with Alcimus and an army of twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, and met Judah at the Battle of Elasa (Laisa), where this time it was the Hasmonean commander who was killed. (161/160 BCE). Bacchides now established the Hellenes as rulers in Israel; and upon Judah's death, the persecuted patriots, under Jonathan, brother of Judah, fled beyond the Jordan River.(ib. 9:25–27) They set camp near a morass by the name of Asphar, and remained, after several engagements with the Seleucids, in the swamp in the country east of the Jordan.
Following the death of his puppet governor Alcimus, High Priest of Jerusalem, Bacchides felt secure enough to leave the country, but two years after the departure of Bacchides from Israel, the City of Acre felt sufficiently threatened by Maccabee incursions to contact Demetrius and request the return of Bacchides to their territory. Jonathan and Simeon, now more experienced in guerrilla warfare, thought it well to retreat farther, and accordingly fortified in the desert a place called Beth-hogla; there they were besieged several days by Bacchides. Jonathan offered the rival general a peace treaty and exchange of prisoners of war. Bacchides readily consented and even took an oath of nevermore making war upon Jonathan. He and his forces then vacated Israel. The victorious Jonathan now took up his residence in the old city of Michmash. From there he endeavoured to clear the land of "the godless and the apostate". The chief source, 1 Maccabees, says that with this "the sword ceased in Israel", and in fact nothing is reported for the five following years (158–153 BCE).
Seleucid civil conflict
An important external event brought the design of the Maccabeans to fruition. Demetrius I Soter's relations with Attalus II Philadelphus of Pergamon (reigned 159–138 BCE), Ptolemy VI of Egypt (reigned 163–145 BCE), and Ptolemy's co-ruler Cleopatra II of Egypt were deteriorating, and they supported a rival claimant to the Seleucid throne: Alexander Balas, who purported to be the son of Antiochus IV Epiphanes and a first cousin of Demetrius. Demetrius was forced to recall the garrisons of Judea, except those in the City of Acre and at Beth-zur, to bolster his strength. Furthermore, he made a bid for the loyalty of Jonathan, permitting him to recruit an army and to reclaim the hostages kept in the City of Acre. Jonathan gladly accepted these terms, took up residence at Jerusalem in 153 BCE, and began fortifying the city.
Alexander Balas offered Jonathan even more favourable terms, including official appointment as High Priest in Jerusalem, and despite a second letter from Demetrius promising prerogatives that were almost impossible to guarantee, Jonathan declared allegiance to Balas. Jonathan became the official leader of his people, and officiated at the Feast of Tabernacles of 153 BCE wearing the High Priest's garments. The Hellenistic party could no longer attack him without severe consequences.
Soon, Demetrius lost both his throne and his life, in 150 BCE. The victorious Alexander Balas was given the further honour of marriage to Cleopatra Thea, daughter of his allies Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II. Jonathan was invited to Ptolemais for the ceremony, appearing with presents for both kings, and was permitted to sit between them as their equal; Balas even clothed him with his own royal garment and otherwise accorded him high honour. Balas appointed Jonathan as strategos and "meridarch" (i.e., civil governor of a province; details not found in Josephus), sent him back with honours to Jerusalem, and refused to listen to the Hellenistic party's complaints against Jonathan.
Hasmoneans under Balas and Demetrius II
In 147 BCE, Demetrius II Nicator, a son of Demetrius I Soter, claimed Balas' throne. The governor of Coele-Syria, Apollonius Taos, used the opportunity to challenge Jonathan to battle, saying that the Jews might for once leave the mountains and venture out into the plain. Jonathan and Simeon led a force of 10,000 men against Apollonius' forces in Jaffa, which was unprepared for the rapid attack and opened the gates in surrender to the Jewish forces. Apollonius received reinforcements from Azotus and appeared in the plain in charge of 3,000 men including superior cavalry forces. Jonathan assaulted, captured and burned Azotus along with the resident temple of Dagon and the surrounding villages.
Alexander Balas honoured the victorious High Priest by giving him the city of Ekron along with its outlying territory. The people of Azotus complained to King Ptolemy VI, who had come to make war upon his son-in-law, but Jonathan met Ptolemy at Jaffa in peace and accompanied him as far as the River Eleutherus. Jonathan then returned to Jerusalem, maintaining peace with the King of Egypt despite their support for different contenders for the Seleucid throne.
Hasmoneans under Demetrius and Diodotus
In 145 BCE, the Battle of Antioch resulted in the final defeat of Alexander Balas by the forces of his father-in-law Ptolemy VI. Ptolemy himself, however, was among the casualties of the battle. Demetrius II Nicator remained sole ruler of the Seleucid Empire and became the second husband of Cleopatra Thea.
Jonathan owed no allegiance to the new King and took this opportunity to lay siege to the Acra, the Seleucid fortress in Jerusalem and the symbol of Seleucid control over Judea. It was heavily garrisoned by a Seleucid force and offered asylum to Jewish Hellenists. Demetrius was greatly incensed; he appeared with an army at Ptolemais and ordered Jonathan to come before him. Without raising the siege, Jonathan, accompanied by the elders and priests, went to the king and pacified him with presents, so that the king not only confirmed him in his office of high priest, but gave to him the three Samaritan toparchies of Mount Ephraim, Lod, and Ramathaim-Zophim. In consideration of a present of 300 talents the entire country was exempted from taxes, the exemption being confirmed in writing. Jonathan in return lifted the siege of the Acra and left it in Seleucid hands.
Soon, however, a new claimant to the Seleucid throne appeared in the person of the young Antiochus VI Dionysus, son of Alexander Balas and Cleopatra Thea. He was three years old at most, but general Diodotus Tryphon used him to advance his own designs on the throne. In the face of this new enemy, Demetrius not only promised to withdraw the garrison from the City of Acre, but also called Jonathan his ally and requested him to send troops. The 3,000 men of Jonathan protected Demetrius in his capital, Antioch, against his own subjects.
As Demetrius II did not keep his promise, Jonathan thought it better to support the new king when Diodotus Tryphon and Antiochus VI seized the capital, especially as the latter confirmed all his rights and appointed his brother Simon (Simeon) strategos of the Paralia (the sea coast), from the "Ladder of Tyre" to the frontier of Egypt.
Jonathan and Simon were now entitled to make conquests; Ashkelon submitted voluntarily while Gaza was forcibly taken. Jonathan vanquished even the strategoi of Demetrius II far to the north, in the plain of Hazar, while Simon at the same time took the strong fortress of Beth-zur on the pretext that it harboured supporters of Demetrius.
Like Judah in former years, Jonathan sought alliances with foreign peoples. He renewed the treaty with the Roman Republic and exchanged friendly messages with Sparta and other places. However, the documents referring to those diplomatic events are of questionable authenticity.
Diodotus Tryphon went with an army to Judea and invited Jonathan to Scythopolis for a friendly conference, where he persuaded him to dismiss his army of 40,000 men, promising to give him Ptolemais and other fortresses. Jonathan fell into the trap; he took with him to Ptolemais 1,000 men, all of whom were slain; he himself was taken prisoner.
Simon assumes leadership
When Diodotus Tryphon was about to enter Judea at Hadid, he was confronted by the new Jewish leader, Simon, ready for battle. Tryphon, avoiding an engagement, demanded one hundred talents and Jonathan's two sons as hostages, in return for which he promised to liberate Jonathan. Although Simon did not trust Diodotus Tryphon, he complied with the request so that he might not be accused of the death of his brother. But Diodotus Tryphon did not liberate his prisoner; angry that Simon blocked his way everywhere and that he could accomplish nothing, he executed Jonathan at Baskama, in the country east of the Jordan. Jonathan was buried by Simeon at Modin. Nothing is known of his two captive sons. One of his daughters was an ancestor of Josephus.
Simon assumed the leadership (142 BCE), receiving the double office of High Priest and prince of Israel. The leadership of the Hasmoneans was established by a resolution, adopted in 141 BCE, at a large assembly "of the priests and the people and of the elders of the land, to the effect that Simon should be their leader and High Priest forever, until there should arise a faithful prophet" (1 Macc. 14:41). Ironically, the election was performed in Hellenistic fashion.
Simon, having made the Jewish people semi-independent of the Seleucid Greeks, reigned from 142 to 135 BCE and formed the Hasmonean dynasty, finally capturing the citadel [Acra] in 141 BCE. The Roman Senate accorded the new dynasty recognition BCE, when the delegation of Simon was in Rome.
Simon led the people in peace and prosperity, until in February 135 BCE, he was assassinated at the instigation of his son-in-law Ptolemy, son of Abubus (also spelled Abobus or Abobi), who had been named governor of the region by the Seleucids. Simon's eldest sons, Mattathias and Judah, were also murdered.
Hasmonean expansion and civil war
In BCE, John Hyrcanus, Simon's third son, assumed the leadership and ruled as high priest (Kohen Gadol) and took a Greek "regnal name" (see Hyrcania) in an acceptance of the Hellenistic culture of his Seleucid suzerains. Within a year of the death of Simon, Seleucid King Antiochus VII Sidetes attacked Jerusalem. According to Josephus, John Hyrcanus opened King David's sepulchre and removed three thousand talents which he paid as tribute to spare the city. He remained governor as a Seleucid vassal. For the next two decades of his reign, Hyrcanus continued, like his father, to rule semi-autonomously from the Seleucids.
The Seleucid empire had been disintegrating in the face of the Seleucid–Parthian wars and in 129 BCE Antiochus VII Sidetes was killed in Media by the forces of Phraates II of Parthia, permanently ending Seleucid rule east of the Euphrates. In 116 BCE, a civil war between Seleucid half-brothers Antiochus VIII Grypus and Antiochus IX Cyzicenus broke out, resulting in a further breakup of the already significantly reduced kingdom.
This provided opportunity for semi-independent Seleucid client states such as Judea to revolt. Book XIII, Chapter 10. In 110 BCE, John Hyrcanus carried out the first military conquests of the newly independent Hasmonean kingdom, raising a mercenary army to capture Madaba and Schechem, significantly increasing his regional influence.Sievers, 142
Hyrcanus conquered Transjordan, Samaria, and Idumea (also known as Edom), and forced Idumeans to convert to Judaism: Hyrcanus ... subdued all the Idumeans; and permitted them to stay in that country, if they would circumcise their genitals, and make use of the laws of the Jews; and they were so desirous of living in the country of their forefathers, that they submitted to the use of circumcision, (25) and of the rest of the Jewish ways of living; at which time therefore this befell them, that they were hereafter no other than Jews.
He desired that his wife succeed him as head of the government, with his eldest of five sons, Aristobulus I, becoming only the high-priest.
Upon Hyrcanus' death, however, Aristobulus jailed his mother and three brothers, including Alexander Jannaeus, and allowed her to starve there. By this means he came into possession of the throne and became the first Hasmonean to take the title basileus, asserting the new-found independence of the state. Subsequently he conquered Galilee. Aristobulus I died after a painful illness in 103 BCE.
Aristobulus' brothers were freed from prison by his widow; Alexander reigned from 103–76 BCE, and died during the siege of the fortress Ragaba. In BCE, according to Josephus, following a six-year civil war involving Seleucid king Demetrius III Eucaerus, Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus crucified 800 Jewish rebels in Jerusalem.
The Hasmoneans lost the territories acquired in Transjordan during the 93 BC Battle of Gadara, where the Nabataeans ambushed Jannaeus and his forces in a hilly area. The Nabataeans saw the acquisitions as a threat to their interests, and used a large number of camels to push the Hasmonean forces into a deep valley where Jannaeus was "lucky to escape alive". Jannaeus returned to fierce Jewish opposition in Jerusalem after his defeat, and had to cede the acquired territories to the Nabataeans so that he could dissuade them from supporting his opponents in Judea.
Alexander was followed by his wife, Salome Alexandra, who reigned from 76–67 BCE. She was the only regnant Jewish Queen. During her reign, her son Hyrcanus II held the office of High Priest and was named her successor.
Pharisee and Sadducee factions
It is difficult to state at what time the Pharisees, as a party, arose. Josephus first mentions them in connection with Jonathan, the successor of Judas Maccabeus ("Ant." xiii. 5, § 9). One of the factors that distinguished the Pharisees from other groups prior to the destruction of the Temple was their belief that all Jews had to observe the purity laws (which applied to the Temple service) outside the Temple. The major difference, however, was the continued adherence of the Pharisees to the laws and traditions of the Jewish people in the face of assimilation. As Josephus noted, the Pharisees were considered the most expert and accurate expositors of Jewish law.
During the Hasmonean period, the Sadducees and Pharisees functioned primarily as political parties. Although the Pharisees had opposed the wars of expansion of the Hasmoneans and the forced conversions of the Idumeans, the political rift between them became wider when Pharisees demanded that the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus choose between being king and being High Priest. In response, the king openly sided with the Sadducees by adopting their rites in the Temple. His actions caused a riot in the Temple and led to a brief civil war that ended with a bloody repression of the Pharisees, although at his deathbed the king called for a reconciliation between the two parties. Alexander was succeeded by his widow, Salome Alexandra, whose brother was Shimon ben Shetach, a leading Pharisee. Upon her death her elder son, Hyrcanus, sought Pharisee support, and her younger son, Aristobulus, sought the support of the Sadducees. The conflict between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus culminated in a civil war that ended when the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem in 63 BCE and inaugurated the Roman period of Jewish history.
Josephus attests that Salome Alexandra was very favourably inclined toward the Pharisees and that their political influence grew tremendously under her reign, especially in the institution known as the Sanhedrin. Later texts such as the Mishnah and the Talmud record a host of rulings ascribed to the Pharisees concerning sacrifices and other ritual practices in the Temple, torts, criminal law, and governance. The influence of the Pharisees over the lives of the common people remained strong, and their rulings on Jewish law were deemed authoritative by many. Although these texts were written long after these periods, many scholars believe that they are a fairly reliable account of history during the Second Temple era.
Civil war
Alexander Jannaeus' son, Hyrcanus II, had scarcely reigned three months when his younger brother, Aristobulus II, rose in rebellion, whereupon Hyrcanus advanced against him at the head of an army of mercenaries and his Pharisee followers: "Now Hyrcanus was heir to the kingdom, and to him did his mother commit it before she died; but Aristobulus was superior to him in power and magnanimity; and when there was a battle between them, to decide the dispute about the kingdom, near Jericho, the greatest part deserted Hyrcanus, and went over to Aristobulus."
Hyrcanus took refuge in the citadel of Jerusalem, but the capture of the Temple by Aristobulus II compelled Hyrcanus to surrender. A peace was then concluded, according to the terms of which Hyrcanus was to renounce the throne and the office of high priest (comp. Emil Schürer, "Gesch." i. 291, note 2), but was to enjoy the revenues of the latter office: "but Hyrcanus, with those of his party who stayed with him, fled to Antonia, and got into his power the hostages (which were Aristobulus's wife, with her children) that he might persevere; but the parties came to an agreement before things should come to extremes, that Aristobulus should be king, and Hyrcanus should resign, but retain all the rest of his dignities, as being the king's brother. Hereupon they were reconciled to each other in the Temple, and embraced one another in a very kind manner, while the people stood round about them; they also changed their houses, while Aristobulus went to the royal palace, and Hyrcanus retired to the house of Aristobulus." Aristobulus ruled from 67–63 BCE).
From 63–40 BCE, the government was in the hands of Hyrcanus II as High Priest and Ethnarch, although effective power was in the hands of his adviser Antipater the Idumaean.
Intrigues of Antipater
The struggle would have ended here but for Antipater the Idumean. Antipater saw clearly that it would be easier to reach the object of his ambition, the control of Judea, under the government of the weak Hyrcanus than under the warlike and energetic Aristobulus. He accordingly began to impress upon Hyrcanus' mind that Aristobulus was planning his death, finally persuading him to take refuge with Aretas, king of the Nabatæans. Aretas, bribed by Antipater, who also promised him the restitution of the Arabian towns taken by the Hasmoneans, readily espoused the cause of Hyrcanus and advanced toward Jerusalem with an army of fifty thousand. During the siege, which lasted several months, the adherents of Hyrcanus were guilty of two acts that greatly incensed the majority of the Jews: they stoned the pious Onias (see Honi ha-Magel) and, instead of a lamb which the besieged had bought of the besiegers for the purpose of the paschal sacrifice, sent a pig. Honi, ordered to curse the besieged, prayed: "Lord of the universe, as the besieged and the besiegers both belong to Thy people, I beseech Thee not to answer the evil prayers of either." The pig incident is derived from rabbinical sources. According to Josephus, the besiegers kept the enormous price of one thousand drachmas they had asked for the lamb.
Roman intervention
Pompey the Great
While this civil war was going on the Roman general Marcus Aemilius Scaurus went to Syria to take possession, in the name of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, of the kingdom of the Seleucids. The brothers appealed to him, each endeavouring by gifts and promises to win him over to his side. At first Scaurus, moved by a gift of four hundred talents, decided in favour of Aristobulus. Aretas was ordered to withdraw his army from Judea, and while retreating suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Aristobulus. But when Pompey came to Syria (63 BCE), a different situation arose. Pompey, who had just been awarded the title "Conqueror of Asia" due to his decisive victories in Asia Minor over Pontus and the Seleucid Empire, had decided to bring Judea under the rule of the Romans. He took the same view of Hyrcanus' ability, and was moved by much the same motives as Antipater: as a ward of Rome, Hyrcanus would be more acceptable than Aristobulus. When, therefore, the brothers, as well as delegates of the people's party, which, weary of Hasmonean quarrels, desired the extinction of the dynasty, presented themselves before Pompey, he delayed the decision, in spite of Aristobulus' gift of a golden vine valued at five hundred talents. The latter, however, fathomed the designs of Pompey, and assembled his armies. Pompey defeated him multiple times however and captured his cities. Aristobulus II entrenched himself in the fortress of Alexandrium; but, soon realising the uselessness of resistance, surrendered at the first summons of the Romans, and undertook to deliver Jerusalem to them. The patriots, however, were not willing to open their gates to the Romans, and a siege ensued which ended with the capture of the city. Pompey entered the Holy of Holies; this was only the second time that someone had dared to penetrate into this sacred spot. Judaea had to pay tribute to Rome and was placed under the supervision of the Roman governor of Syria: In 63 BC, Judaea became a protectorate of Rome. Coming under the administration of a governor, Judaea was allowed a king; the governor's business was to regulate trade and maximise tax revenue.
In 57–55 BCE, Aulus Gabinius, proconsul of Syria, split the former Hasmonean Kingdom into Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, with five districts of legal and religious councils known as sanhedrin (Greek: συνέδριον, "synedrion"): "And when he had ordained five councils (συνέδρια), he distributed the nation into the same number of parts. So these councils governed the people; the first was at Jerusalem, the second at Gadara, the third at Amathus, the fourth at Jericho, and the fifth at Sepphoris in Galilee.""Josephus uses συνέδριον for the first time in connection with the decree of the Roman governor of Syria, Gabinius (57 BCE), who abolished the constitution and the then existing form of government of Palestine and divided the country into five provinces, at the head of each of which a sanhedrin was placed ("Ant." xiv 5, § 4)." via Jewish Encyclopedia: Sanhedrin
Pompey and Caesar
Julius Caesar initially supported Aristobulus against Hyrcanus and Antipater. Between the weakness of Hyrcanus and the ambition of Aristobulus, Judea lost its independence. Aristobulus was taken to Rome a prisoner, and Hyrcanus was reappointed High Priest, but without political authority. When, in 50 BCE, it appeared that Julius Caesar was interested in using Aristobulus and his family as his clients to take control of Judea from Hyrcanus and Antipater, who were beholden to Pompey, supporters of Pompey had Aristobulus poisoned in Rome and executed Alexander in Antioch.
However, Pompey's pawns soon had occasion to turn to the other side: At the beginning of the civil war between [Caesar] and Pompey, Hyrcanus, at the instance of Antipater, prepared to support the man to whom he owed his position; but when Pompey was murdered, Antipater led the Jewish forces to the help of Caesar, who was hard pressed at Alexandria. His timely help and his influence over the Egyptian Jews recommended him to Caesar's favour, and secured for him an extension of his authority in Palestine, and for Hyrcanus the confirmation of his ethnarchy. Joppa was restored to the Hasmonean domain, Judea was granted freedom from all tribute and taxes to Rome, and the independence of the internal administration was guaranteed."
The timely aid from Antipater and Hyrcanus led the triumphant Caesar to ignore the claims of Aristobulus's younger son, Antigonus the Hasmonean, and to confirm Hyrcanus and Antipater in their authority, despite their previous allegiance to Pompey. Josephus noted, Antigonus... came to Caesar... and accused Hyrcanus and Antipater, how they had driven him and his brethren entirely out of their native country... and that as to the assistance they had sent [to Caesar] into Egypt, it was not done out of good-will to him, but out of the fear they were in from former quarrels, and in order to gain pardon for their friendship to [his enemy] Pompey.
Hyrcanus' restoration as ethnarch in 47 BCE coincided with Caesar's appointment of Antipater as the first Roman Procurator, allowing Antipater to promote the interests of his own house: "Caesar appointed Hyrcanus to be high priest, and gave Antipater what principality he himself should choose, leaving the determination to himself; so he made him procurator of Judea."
Antipater appointed his sons to positions of influence: Phasael became Governor of Jerusalem, and Herod Governor of Galilee. This led to increasing tension between Hyrcanus and the family of Antipater, culminating in a trial of Herod for supposed abuses in his governorship, which resulted in Herod's flight into exile in 46 BCE. Herod soon returned, however, and the honours to Antipater's family continued. Hyrcanus' incapacity and weakness were so manifest that, when he defended Herod against the Sanhedrin and before Mark Antony, the latter stripped Hyrcanus of his nominal political authority and his title, bestowing them both upon the accused.
Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE and unrest and confusion spread throughout the Roman world, including Judaea. Antipater the Idumean was assassinated in 43 BCE by the Nabatean king, Malichus I, who had bribed one of Hyrcanus' cup-bearers to poison and kill Antipater. However, Antipater's sons managed to maintain their control over Judea and their father's puppet Hasmonean, Hyrcanus.
Parthian invasion, Antony, Augustus
After Julius Caesar was murdered in 44 BCE, Quintus Labienus, a Roman republican general and ambassador to the Parthians, sided with Brutus and Cassius in the Liberators' civil war; after their defeat Labienus joined the Parthians and assisted them in invading Roman territories in 40 BCE. The Parthian army crossed the Euphrates and Labienus was able to entice Mark Antony's Roman garrisons around Syria to rally to his cause. The Parthians split their army, and under Pacorus conquered the Levant from the Phoenician coast through the Land of Israel: Antigonus... roused the Parthians to invade Syria and Palestine, [and] the Jews eagerly rose in support of the scion of the Maccabean house, and drove out the hated Idumeans with their puppet Jewish king. The struggle between the people and the Romans had begun in earnest, and though Antigonus, when placed on the throne by the Parthians, proceeded to spoil and harry the Jews, rejoicing at the restoration of the Hasmonean line, thought a new era of independence had come. When Phasael and Hyrcanus II set out on an embassy to the Parthians, the Parthians instead captured them. Antigonus, who was present, cut off Hyrcanus's ears to make him unsuitable for the High Priesthood, while Phasael was put to death.
Antigonus, whose Hebrew name was Mattathias, bore the double title of king and High Priest for only three years, as he had not disposed of Herod, the most dangerous of his enemies. Herod fled into exile and sought the support of Mark Antony. Herod was designated "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate in 40 BCE: Antony then resolved to get [Herod] made king of the Jews...[and] told [the Senate] that it was for their advantage in the Parthian war that Herod should be king; so they all gave their votes for it. And when the senate was separated, Antony and Caesar [Augustus] went out, with Herod between them; while the consul and the rest of the magistrates went before them, in order to offer sacrifices [to the Roman gods], and to lay the decree in the Capitol. Antony also made a feast for Herod on the first day of his reign.
The struggle thereafter lasted for some years, as the main Roman forces were occupied with defeating the Parthians and had few additional resources to use to support Herod. After the Parthians' defeat, Herod was victorious over his rival in 37 BCE. Antigonus was delivered to Antony and executed shortly thereafter. The Romans assented to Herod's proclamation as King of the Jews, bringing about the end of the Hasmonean rule over Judea.
Herod and the end of the dynasty
Antigonus was not, however, the last Hasmonean. The fate of the remaining male members of the family under Herod was not a happy one. Aristobulus III, grandson of Aristobulus II through his elder son Alexander, was briefly made high priest, but was soon executed (36 BCE) due to Herod's jealousy. His sister Mariamne was married to Herod, but fell victim to his notorious jealousy. Her sons by Herod, Aristobulus IV and Alexander, were in their adulthood also executed by their father.
Hyrcanus II had been held by the Parthians since 40 BCE. For four years, until 36 BCE, he lived amid the Babylonian Jews, who paid him every mark of respect. In that year Herod, who feared that Hyrcanus might induce the Parthians to help him regain the throne, invited him to return to Jerusalem. The Babylonian Jews warned him in vain. Herod received him with every mark of respect, assigning him the first place at his table and the presidency of the state council, while awaiting an opportunity to get rid of him. As the last remaining Hasmonean, Hyrcanus was too dangerous a rival for Herod. In the year 30 BCE, charged with plotting with the King of Arabia, Hyrcanus was condemned and executed.
The later Herodian rulers Agrippa I and Agrippa II both had Hasmonean blood, as Agrippa I's father was Aristobulus IV, son of Herod by Mariamne I, but they were not direct male descendants, unless Herod was understood as a Hasmonean as per the following synthesis:
According to Josephus, Herod was also of Maccabean descent:
Eleazar Maccabeus called Auran brother of Judas Maccabeus (Josephus Antiquity of the Jews Book XII/Chapter 9/Section 4)
Jason son of Eleazar (Ditto: Book XII/Chapter 10/Section 6)
Antipater I son of Jason (Ditto: Book XIII/Chapter 5/Section 8)
Antipater II Antipas son of Antipater I (Ditto: Book XIV/Chapter 1/Section 3)
Herod
Legacy and scholarship
While the Hasmonean dynasty managed to create an independent Jewish kingdom, its successes were rather short-lived, and the dynasty by and large failed to live up to the nationalistic momentum the Maccabee brothers had gained.
Jewish nationalism
The fall of the Hasmonean Kingdom marked an end to a century of Jewish self-governance, but Jewish nationalism and desire for independence continued under Roman rule, beginning with the Census of Quirinius in AD 6 and leading to a series of Jewish-Roman wars in the 1st–2nd centuries, including the Great Revolt (AD 66–73), the Kitos War (115–117), and Bar Kokhba's revolt (132–135).
During the wars, temporary commonwealths were established, but they ultimately fell to the sustained might of Rome. Roman legions under Vespasian and Titus besieged and destroyed Jerusalem, looted and burned Herod's Temple (in the year 70) and Jewish strongholds (notably Gamla in 67 and Masada in 73), and enslaved or massacred a large part of the Jewish population. The defeat of the Jewish revolts against the Roman Empire notably contributed to the numbers and geography of the Jewish Diaspora, as many Jews were scattered after losing their state or were sold into slavery throughout the empire.
Jewish religious scholarship
Jewish tradition holds that the claiming of kingship by the later Hasmoneans led to their eventual downfall, since that title was only to be held by descendants of the line of King David. The Hasmonean bureaucracy was filled with men with Greek names, and the dynasty eventually became very Hellenised, to the annoyance of many of its more traditionally-minded Jewish subjects. Frequent dynastic quarrels also contributed to the view among Jews of later generations that the latter Hasmoneans were degenerate. One member of this school was Josephus, whose accounts are in many cases our sole source of information about the Hasmoneans.
Historiography
The books of Maccabees use the names "Judea" and "Israel" (or cognates) as geographical descriptors throughout for both the land and people over whom the Hasmoneans would rule. The Talmud includes one of the Hasmonean kings under the description "Kings of Israel". Scholars refer to the state as the Hasmonean Kingdom to distinguish it from the previous kingdoms of Israel. The name "Judaea" has also been used to describe the Hasmonean Kingdom although this name reflects the later designation of the region under the Romans at the time of Josephus' writings in the late 1st century.
Numismatics
Hasmonean coins usually featured the Paleo-Hebrew script, an older Phoenician script that was used to write Hebrew. The coins are struck only in bronze. The symbols include a cornucopia, palm-branch, lily, an anchor, star, pomegranate and (rarely) a helmet. Despite the apparent Seleucid influences of most of the symbols, the origin of the star is more obscure.
Hasmonean leaders
Maccabees (rebel leaders)
Mattathias, 170–167 BCE
Judas Maccabeus, 167–160 BCE
Jonathan Apphus, 160–143 BCE (High Priest after 152 BCE)
Monarchs (Ethnarchs and Kings) and High Priests
Simon Thassi, 142–135 BCE (Ethnarch and High Priest)
John Hyrcanus I, 134–104 BCE (Ethnarch and High Priest)
Aristobulus I, 104–103 BCE (King and High Priest)
Alexander Jannaeus, 103–76 BCE (King and High Priest)
Salome Alexandra, 76–67 BCE (only Queen)
Hyrcanus II, 67–66 BCE (King from 67 BCE; High Priest from 76 BCE)
Aristobulus II, 66–63 BCE (King and High Priest)
Hyrcanus II (restored), 63–40 BCE (High Priest from 63 BCE; Ethnarch from 47 BCE)
Antigonus, 40–37 BCE (King and High Priest)
Aristobulus III, 36 BCE (only High Priest)
See also
Hasmonean coinage
History of ancient Israel and Judah
Hasmonean royal winter palaces
List of Jewish states and dynasties
Siege of Jerusalem (37 BC)
Temple in Jerusalem
References
Sources
Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews
The Hasmoneans in Jewish Historiography Samuel Schafler, Diss, DHL, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, 1973
Further reading
Atkinson, Kenneth. A History of the Hasmonean State: Josephus and Beyond. New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016.
Berthelot, Katell . In Search of the Promised Land?: The Hasmonean Dynasty between Biblical Models and Hellenistic Diplomacy.Göttingen Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2017. 494 pp. .
Davies, W. D, Louis Finkelstein, and William Horbury. The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 2: Hellenistic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Derfler, Steven Lee. The Hasmonean Revolt: rebellion or revolution? Lewiston: E Mellen Press, 1989.
Eshel, Hanan. Dead Sea scrolls and the Hasmonean state. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi Pr., 2008.
Schäfer, Peter. The History of the Jews In the Greco-Roman World''. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2003.
External links
Jewish Encyclopedia: Hasmoneans
The Impact of Greek Culture on Normative Judaism from the Hellenistic Period through the Middle Ages BCAD 1250
The Reign of the Hasmoneans – Crash Course in Jewish History
"Under the Influence: Hellenism in Ancient Jewish Life" – Biblical Archaeology Society
140s BC establishments
1st-century BC disestablishments
Former countries in the Middle East
Former monarchies of Western Asia
Maccabees
History of Palestine (region)
Jewish polities
Jewish royalty
Judea
Political entities in the Land of Israel
2nd-century BCE Judaism
1st-century BCE Judaism
States and territories established in the 2nd century BC
States and territories disestablished in the 1st century BC | en |
doc-en-10755 |
Events
Pre-1600
598 – Goguryeo-Sui War: Emperor Wéndi of Sui orders his youngest son, Yang Liang (assisted by the co-prime minister Gao Jiong), to conquer Goguryeo (Korea) during the Manchurian rainy season, with a Chinese army and navy.
1265 – Second Barons' War: Battle of Evesham: The army of Prince Edward (the future king Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, killing de Montfort and many of his allies.
1327 – First War of Scottish Independence: James Douglas leads a raid into Weardale and almost kills Edward III of England.
1578 – Battle of Al Kasr al Kebir: The Moroccans defeat the Portuguese. King Sebastian of Portugal is killed in the battle, leaving his elderly uncle, Cardinal Henry, as his heir. This initiates a succession crisis in Portugal.
1601–1900
1693 – Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of champagne; it is not clear whether he actually invented champagne, however he has been credited as an innovator who developed the techniques used to perfect sparkling wine.
1701 – Great Peace of Montreal between New France and First Nations is signed.
1704 – War of the Spanish Succession: Gibraltar is captured by an English and Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir George Rooke and allied with Archduke Charles.
1783 – Mount Asama erupts in Japan, killing about 1,400 people. The eruption causes a famine, which results in an additional 20,000 deaths.
1789 – France: abolition of feudalism by the National Constituent Assembly.
1790 – A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).
1791 – The Treaty of Sistova is signed, ending the Ottoman–Habsburg wars.
1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: Napoleon leads the French Army of Italy to victory in the Battle of Lonato.
1821 – The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper.
1854 – The Hinomaru is established as the official flag to be flown from Japanese ships.
1863 – Matica slovenská, Slovakia's public-law cultural and scientific institution focusing on topics around the Slovak nation, is established in Martin.
1873 – American Indian Wars: While protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer clashes for the first time with the Cheyenne and Lakota people near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed.
1889 – The Great Fire of Spokane, Washington destroys some 32 blocks of the city, prompting a mass rebuilding project.
1892 – The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home. She was tried and acquitted for the crimes a year later.
1901–present
1914 – World War I: In response to the German invasion of Belgium, Belgium and the British Empire declare war on Germany. The United States declares its neutrality.
1915 – World War I: The German 12th Army occupies Warsaw during the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive and the Great Retreat of 1915.
1924 – Diplomatic relations between Mexico and the Soviet Union are established.
1936 – Prime Minister of Greece Ioannis Metaxas suspends parliament and the Constitution and establishes the 4th of August Regime.
1944 – The Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.
1944 – The Finnish Parliament, by derogation, elected Marshal C. G. E. Mannerheim as President of Finland to replace Risto Ryti, who had resigned.
1946 – An earthquake of magnitude 8.0 hits northern Dominican Republic. One hundred are killed and 20,000 are left homeless.
1947 – The Supreme Court of Japan is established.
1964 – Civil rights movement: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.
1964 – Second Gulf of Tonkin Incident: U.S. destroyers and mistakenly report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.
1965 – The Constitution of the Cook Islands comes into force, giving the Cook Islands self-governing status within New Zealand.
1969 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuân Thuỷ begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.
1974 – A bomb explodes in the Italicus Express train at San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Italy, killing 12 people and wounding 22.
1975 – The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages include the U.S. consul and the Swedish Chargé d'affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya.
1977 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
1984 – The Republic of Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
1987 – The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly".
1995 – Operation Storm begins in Croatia.
2006 – A massacre is carried out by Sri Lankan government forces, killing 17 employees of the French INGO Action Against Hunger (known internationally as Action Contre la Faim, or ACF).
2007 – NASA's Phoenix spacecraft is launched.
2018 – Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) expel the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from the Iraq–Syria border, concluding the second phase of the Deir ez-Zor campaign.
2019 – Nine people are killed and 26 injured in a shooting in Dayton, Ohio. This comes only 12 hours after another mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, where 23 people were killed.
2020 – At least 220 people are killed and over 5,000 are wounded when 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate explodes in Beirut, Lebanon.
Births
Pre-1600
1222 – Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, English soldier (d. 1262)
1281 – Külüg Khan, Emperor Wuzong of Yuan (d. 1311)
1290 – Leopold I, Duke of Austria (d. 1326)
1463 – Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, Florentine patron of the arts (d. 1503)
1469 – Margaret of Saxony, Duchess of Brunswick-Lüneburg (d. 1528)
1470 – Bernardo Dovizi, Italian cardinal (d. 1520)
1470 – Lucrezia de' Medici, Italian noblewoman (d. 1553)
1521 – Pope Urban VII (d. 1590)
1522 – Udai Singh II, King of Mewar (d. 1572)
1601–1900
1604 – François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, French cleric and author (d. 1676)
1623 – Friedrich Casimir, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg (1641–1680) and Hanau-Münzenberg (1642–1680) (d. 1685)
1701 – Thomas Blackwell, Scottish historian and scholar (d. 1757)
1704 – Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans (d. 1752)
1719 – Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German mineralogist and geologist (d. 1767)
1721 – Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford, English politician, Lord President of the Council (d. 1803)
1755 – Nicolas-Jacques Conté, French soldier, painter, balloonist, and inventor (d. 1805)
1792 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet and playwright (d. 1822)
1805 – William Rowan Hamilton, Irish physicist, astronomer, and mathematician (d. 1865)
1821 – Louis Vuitton, French fashion designer, founded Louis Vuitton (d. 1892)
1821 – James Springer White, American religious leader, co-founded the Seventh-day Adventist Church (d. 1881)
1834 – John Venn, English mathematician and philosopher (d. 1923)
1836 – Jens Vilhelm Dahlerup, Danish architect (d. 1907)
1839 – Walter Pater, English author, critic, and academic (d. 1894)
1844 – Henri Berger, German composer and bandleader (d. 1929)
1853 – John Henry Twachtman, American painter, etcher, and academic (d. 1902)
1859 – Knut Hamsun, Norwegian novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1952)
1867 – Jake Beckley, American baseball player and coach (d. 1918)
1870 – Harry Lauder, Scottish actor and singer (d. 1950)
1871 – William Holman, English-Australian politician, 19th Premier of New South Wales (d. 1934)
1876 – Giovanni Giuriati, Italian lawyer and politician (d. 1970)
1876 – John Scaddan, Australian politician, 10th Premier of Western Australia (d. 1934)
1884 – Béla Balázs, Hungarian poet and critic (d. 1949)
1884 – Henri Cornet, French cyclist (d. 1941)
1887 – Albert M. Greenfield, Ukrainian-American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1967)
1888 – Taher Saifuddin, Indian religious leader, 51st Da'i al-Mutlaq (d. 1965)
1890 – Dolf Luque, Cuban baseball player and manager (d. 1957)
1893 – Fritz Gause, German historian and curator (d. 1973)
1898 – Ernesto Maserati, Italian race car driver and engineer (d. 1975)
1899 – Ezra Taft Benson, American religious leader, 13th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1994)
1900 – Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother of the United Kingdom (d. 2002)
1901–present
1901 – Louis Armstrong, American trumpet player and singer (d. 1971)
1901 – Clarence Passailaigue, Jamaican cricketer (d. 1972)
1902 – Bill Hallahan, American baseball player (d. 1981)
1904 – Witold Gombrowicz, Polish author and playwright (d. 1969)
1904 – Helen Kane, American singer and actress (d. 1966)
1904 – Joe Tate, English footballer and manager (d. 1973)
1905 – Abeid Karume, 1st President of Zanzibar (d. 1972)
1906 – Eugen Schuhmacher, German zoologist, director, and producer (d. 1973)
1908 – Kurt Eichhorn, German conductor (d. 1994)
1909 – Glenn Cunningham, American runner and academic (d. 1988)
1910 – Anita Page, American actress (d. 2008)
1910 – William Schuman, American composer and educator (d. 1992)
1910 – Hedda Sterne, Romanian-American painter and photographer (d. 2011)
1912 – Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, Russian mathematician, physicist, and mountaineer (d. 1999)
1912 – David Raksin, American composer and educator (d. 2004)
1912 – Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish architect and diplomat (d. 1947)
1913 – Wesley Addy, American actor (d. 1996)
1913 – Robert Hayden, American poet and educator (d. 1980)
1913 – Johann Niemann, German lieutenant (d. 1943)
1915 – Warren Avis, American businessman, founded Avis Rent a Car System (d. 2007)
1917 – John Fitch, American race car driver and engineer (d. 2012)
1918 – Brian Crozier, Australian-English historian and journalist (d. 2012)
1919 – Michel Déon, French novelist, playwright, and critic (d. 2016)
1920 – Helen Thomas, American journalist and author (d. 2013)
1921 – Herb Ellis, American guitarist (d. 2010)
1921 – Maurice Richard, Canadian ice hockey player and coach (d. 2000)
1922 – Mayme Agnew Clayton, American librarian (d.2006)
1922 – Luis Aponte Martínez, Puerto Rican cardinal (d. 2012)
1926 – George Irving Bell, American physicist, biologist, and mountaineer (d. 2000)
1926 – Perry Moss, American football player and coach (d. 2014)
1928 – Christian Goethals, Belgian race car driver (d. 2003)
1928 – Gerard Damiano, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2008)
1928 – Nadežka Mosusova, Serbian composer
1929 – Kishore Kumar, Indian singer-songwriter and actor (d. 1987)
1929 – Vellore G. Ramabhadran, Mridangam artiste from Tamil Nadu, India (d. 2012)
1930 – Ali al-Sistani, Iranian-Iraqi cleric and scholar
1931 – Naren Tamhane, Indian cricketer (d. 2002)
1932 – Frances E. Allen, American computer scientist and academic (d. 2020)
1932 – Liang Congjie, Chinese environmentalist, founded Friends of Nature (d. 2010)
1934 – Dallas Green, American baseball player and manager (d. 2017)
1935 – Carol Arthur, American actress and producer (d. 2020)
1935 – Hans-Walter Eigenbrodt, German footballer and coach (d. 1997)
1935 – Michael J. Noonan, Irish farmer and politician, 25th Minister of Defence for Ireland (d. 2013)
1936 – Giorgos Zographos, Greek singer and actor (d. 2005)
1937 – David Bedford, English keyboard player, composer, and conductor (d. 2011)
1938 – Ellen Schrecker, American historian and academic
1939 – Jack Cunningham, Baron Cunningham of Felling, English politician, Minister for the Cabinet Office
1939 – Frankie Ford, American R&B/rock & roll singer (d. 2015)
1940 – Robin Harper, Scottish academic and politician
1940 – Larry Knechtel, American bass player and pianist (d. 2009)
1940 – Frances Stewart, English economist and academic
1940 – Timi Yuro, American singer-songwriter (d. 2004)
1941 – Martin Jarvis, English actor
1941 – Andy Smillie, English footballer
1941 – Ted Strickland, American psychologist and politician, 68th Governor of Ohio
1942 – Don S. Davis, American actor (d. 2008)
1942 – Cleon Jones, American baseball player
1942 – David Lange, New Zealand lawyer and politician, 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand (d. 2005)
1943 – Vicente Álvarez Areces, Spanish politician, 6th President of the Principality of Asturias (d. 2019)
1943 – Barbara Saß-Viehweger, German politician, lawyer and civil law notary
1943 – Bjørn Wirkola, Norwegian ski jumper and footballer
1944 – Richard Belzer, American actor
1944 – Doudou Ndoye, Senegalese lawyer and politician
1945 – Paul McCarthy, American painter and sculptor
1945 – Alan Mulally, American engineer and businessman
1946 – Aleksei Turovski, Estonian zoologist and ethologist
1947 – Klaus Schulze, German keyboard player and songwriter
1948 – Johnny Grubb, American baseball player and coach
1949 – John Riggins, American football player, sportscaster, and actor
1950 – Caldwell Jones, American basketball player and coach (d. 2014)
1950 – N. Rangaswamy, Indian lawyer and politician, 9th Chief Minister of Puducherry
1951 – Peter Goodfellow, English geneticist and academic
1952 – James Arbuthnot, English lawyer and politician, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
1952 – Moya Brennan, Irish singer-songwriter and harp player
1952 – Gábor Demszky, Hungarian sociologist, lawyer, and politician
1953 – Hiroyuki Usui, Japanese footballer and manager
1954 – Anatoliy Kinakh, Ukrainian engineer and politician, 11th Prime Minister of Ukraine
1954 – Steve Phillips, English footballer
1954 – François Valéry, Algerian-French singer-songwriter
1955 – Alberto Gonzales, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 80th United States Attorney General
1955 – Billy Bob Thornton, American actor, director, and screenwriter
1957 – Rupert Farley, British actor and voice actor
1957 – Brooks D. Simpson, American historian and author
1957 – Valdis Valters, Latvian basketball player and coach
1957 – John Wark, Scottish footballer and sportscaster
1958 – Allison Hedge Coke, American-Canadian poet and academic
1958 – Mary Decker, American runner
1958 – Silvan Shalom, Tunisian-Israeli sergeant and politician, 30th Deputy Prime Minister of Israel
1959 – Robbin Crosby, American guitarist and songwriter (d. 2002)
1959 – John Gormley, Irish politician, Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government
1960 – Chuck C. Lopez, American jockey
1960 – José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spanish academic and politician, 5th Prime Minister of Spain
1960 – Bernard Rose, English director, screenwriter, and cinematographer
1960 – Tim Winton, Australian author and playwright
1961 – Barack Obama, American lawyer and politician, 44th President of the United States, Nobel Prize laureate
1962 – Roger Clemens, American baseball player and actor
1962 – Paul Reynolds, English singer-songwriter and guitarist
1963 – Keith Maurice Ellison, 30th Attorney General of Minnesota
1964 – Andrew Bartlett, Australian social worker and politician
1965 – Vishal Bhardwaj, Indian film director, screenwriter, producer, music composer and playback singer
1965 – Adam Afriyie, English businessman and politician
1965 – Dennis Lehane, American author, screenwriter, and producer
1965 – Fredrik Reinfeldt, Swedish soldier and politician, 42nd Prime Minister of Sweden
1965 – Michael Skibbe, German footballer and manager
1967 – Michael Marsh, American sprinter
1968 – Daniel Dae Kim, South Korean-American actor
1968 – Lee Mack, English comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter
1969 – Mark Bickley, Australian footballer and coach
1969 – Max Cavalera, Brazilian singer-songwriter and guitarist
1969 – Troy O'Leary, American baseball player
1970 – John August, American director and screenwriter
1970 – Bret Baier, American journalist
1970 – Steve House, American mountaineer
1970 – Steven Jack, South African cricketer
1970 – Kate Silverton, English journalist
1971 – Bethan Benwell, English linguist, author, and academic
1971 – Jeff Gordon, American race car driver and actor
1972 – Stefan Brogren, Canadian actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
1973 – Eva Amaral, Spanish singer-songwriter and guitarist
1973 – Xavier Marchand, French swimmer
1973 – Marek Penksa, Slovak footballer
1973 – Marcos Roberto Silveira Reis, Brazilian footballer
1974 – Kily González, Argentine footballer
1975 – Andy Hallett, American actor and singer (d. 2009)
1975 – Nikos Liberopoulos, Greek footballer
1975 – Jutta Urpilainen, Finnish politician, Deputy Prime Minister of Finland
1975 – Daniella van Graas, Dutch model and actress
1976 – Paul Goldstein, American tennis player
1976 – Andrew McLeod, Australian footballer
1976 – Trevor Woodman, English rugby player and coach
1977 – Frankie Kazarian, American wrestler
1977 – Luís Boa Morte, Portuguese footballer and manager
1978 – Jeremy Adduono, Canadian ice hockey player and coach
1978 – Luke Allen, American baseball player
1978 – Kurt Busch, American race car driver
1978 – Agnė Eggerth, Lithuanian sprinter
1978 – Ibán Espadas, Spanish footballer
1978 – Jon Knott, American baseball player
1978 – Karine Legault, Canadian swimmer
1978 – Sandeep Naik, Indian politician
1978 – Siri Nordby, Norwegian footballer
1978 – Ricardo Serrano, Spanish cyclist
1978 – Per-Åge Skrøder, Norwegian ice hockey player
1978 – Satoshi Hino, Japanese voice actor
1979 – Robin Peterson, South African cricketer
1980 – Richard Dawson, English cricketer and coach
1981 – Marques Houston, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor
1981 – Benjamin Lauth, German footballer
1981 – Abigail Spencer, American actress
1981 – Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, American actress and humanitarian, and member of British Royal Family
1983 – Greta Gerwig, American actress, producer, and screenwriter
1984 – Terry Campese, Australian rugby league player
1984 – Mardy Collins, American basketball player
1985 – Crystal Bowersox, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
1985 – Robbie Findley, American soccer player
1985 – Mark Milligan, Australian footballer
1985 – Ha Seung-jin, South Korean basketball player
1985 – Antonio Valencia, Ecuadorean footballer
1986 – Nick Augusto, American drummer
1986 – Leon Camier, English motorcycle racer
1986 – Cicinho, Brazilian footballer
1986 – Iosia Soliola, New Zealand-Samoan rugby league player
1986 – David Williams, Australian rugby league player
1987 – Jang Keun-suk, South Korean actor and singer
1987 – Marreese Speights American basketball player
1987 – Tomoya Warabino, Japanese actor
1988 – Carly Foulkes, Canadian model and actress
1988 – Kelley O'Hara, American soccer player
1989 – Tomasz Kaczor, Polish sprint canoeist
1989 – Jessica Mauboy, Australian singer-songwriter and actress
1989 – Wang Hao, Chinese chess player
1990 – Hikmet Balioğlu, Turkish footballer
1990 – Siim Tenno, Estonian footballer
1991 – Thiago Cardoso, Brazilian footballer
1991 – Izet Hajrović, Bosnian footballer
1992 – Daniele Garozzo, Italian fencer
1992 – Cole Sprouse, American actor
1992 – Dylan Sprouse, American actor
1995 – Bruna Marquezine, Brazilian actress
Deaths
Pre-1600
221 – Lady Zhen, Chinese empress (b. 183)
966 – Berengar II of Italy (b. 900)
1060 – Henry I of France (b. 1008)
1113 – Gertrude of Saxony, countess and regent of Holland (b. c. 1030)
1265 – Peter de Montfort, English politician (b. 1215)
1265 – Henry de Montfort (b. 1238)
1265 – Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, French-English soldier and politician, Lord High Steward (b. 1208)
1265 – Hugh le Despencer, 1st Baron le Despencer, English politician (b. 1223)
1266 – Eudes of Burgundy, Count of Nevers (b. 1230)
1306 – Wenceslaus III of Bohemia (b. 1289)
1345 – As-Salih Ismail, Sultan of Egypt (b. 1326)
1378 – Galeazzo II Visconti, Lord of Milan (b. c. 1320)
1430 – Philip I, Duke of Brabant (b. 1404)
1526 – Juan Sebastián Elcano, Spanish explorer and navigator (b. 1476)
1578 – Sebastian of Portugal (b. 1554)
1598 – William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, English academic and politician, Lord High Treasurer (b. 1520)
1601–1900
1612 – Hugh Broughton, English scholar and theologian (b. 1549)
1639 – Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, Mexican actor and playwright (b. 1581)
1718 – René Lepage de Sainte-Claire, French-Canadian founder of Rimouski (b. 1656)
1727 – Victor-Maurice, comte de Broglie, French general (b. 1647)
1741 – Andrew Hamilton, Scottish-American lawyer and politician (b. 1676)
1778 – Pierre de Rigaud, Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnial, Canadian-French politician, Governor General of New France (b. 1698)
1792 – John Burgoyne, English general and politician (b. 1723)
1795 – Timothy Ruggles, American lawyer, jurist, and politician (b. 1711)
1804 – Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan, Scottish admiral (b. 1731)
1822 – Kristjan Jaak Peterson, Estonian poet and author (b. 1801)
1844 – Jacob Aall, Norwegian economist, historian, and politician (b. 1773)
1859 – John Vianney, French priest and saint (b. 1786)
1873 – Viktor Hartmann, Russian architect and painter (b. 1834)
1875 – Hans Christian Andersen, Danish novelist, short story writer, and poet (b. 1805)
1886 – Samuel J. Tilden, American lawyer and politician, 25th Governor of New York (b. 1814)
1900 – Isaac Levitan, Russian painter and educator (b. 1860)
1901–present
1914 – Jules Lemaître, French playwright and critic (b. 1853)
1919 – Dave Gregory, Australian cricketer and umpire (b. 1845)
1922 – Enver Pasha, Ottoman general and politician (b. 1881)
1932 – Alfred Henry Maurer, American painter (b. 1868)
1938 – Pearl White, American actress (b. 1889)
1940 – Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Ukrainian-American general, journalist, and activist (b. 1880)
1941 – Mihály Babits, Hungarian poet and author (b. 1883)
1942 – Alberto Franchetti, Italian composer and educator (b. 1860)
1944 – Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, Polish soldier and poet (b. 1921)
1957 – John Cain Sr., Australian politician, 34th Premier of Victoria (b. 1882)
1957 – Washington Luís, Brazilian lawyer and politician, 13th President of Brazil (b. 1869)
1958 – Ethel Anderson, Australian poet, author, and painter (b. 1883)
1959 – József Révai, Hungarian politician, Hungarian Minister of Education (b. 1898)
1961 – Margarito Bautista, Nahua-Mexican evangelizer, theologian, and religious founder (b. 1878)
1962 – Marilyn Monroe, American model and actress (b. 1926)
1967 – Peter Smith, English cricketer (b. 1908)
1976 – Enrique Angelelli, Argentinian bishop and martyr (b. 1923)
1976 – Roy Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet, Canadian-English publisher (b. 1894)
1977 – Edgar Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian, English physiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1889)
1981 – Melvyn Douglas, American actor (b. 1901)
1982 – Bruce Goff, American architect, designed the Boston Avenue Methodist Church (b. 1904)
1985 – Don Whillans, English rock climber and mountaineer (b. 1933)
1990 – Ettore Maserati, Italian engineer and businessman (b. 1894)
1992 – Seichō Matsumoto, Japanese author (b. 1909)
1996 – Geoff Hamilton, English gardener, author, and television host (b. 1936)
1997 – Jeanne Calment, French super-centenarian; holds records for the world's substantiated longest-lived person (b. 1875)
1998 – Yury Artyukhin, Russian colonel, engineer, and astronaut (b. 1930)
1999 – Victor Mature, American actor (b. 1913)
2003 – Frederick Chapman Robbins, American pediatrician and virologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1916)
2004 – Mary Sherman Morgan, American chemist and engineer (b. 1921)
2004 – Hossein Panahi (Persian: حسین پناهی), Iranian actor and poet (b. 1956)
2005 – Anatoly Larkin, Russian-American physicist and theorist (b. 1932)
2005 – Iván Szabó, Hungarian economist and politician, Minister of Finance of Hungary (b. 1934)
2007 – Lee Hazlewood, American singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1929)
2007 – Raul Hilberg, Austrian-American political scientist and historian (b. 1926)
2008 – Craig Jones, English motorcycle racer (b. 1985)
2009 – Blake Snyder, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1957)
2011 – Naoki Matsuda, Japanese footballer (b. 1977)
2012 – Johnnie Bassett, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1935)
2012 – Brian Crozier, Australian-English journalist and historian (b. 1918)
2012 – Bud Riley, American football player and coach (b. 1925)
2013 – Keith H. Basso, American anthropologist and academic (b. 1940)
2013 – Art Donovan, American football player and radio host (b. 1925)
2013 – Olavi J. Mattila, Finnish engineer and politician, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs (b. 1918)
2013 – Renato Ruggiero, Italian lawyer and politician, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs (b. 1930)
2013 – Tony Snell, English lieutenant and pilot (b. 1922)
2013 – Sandy Woodward, English admiral (b. 1932)
2014 – James Brady, American activist and politician, 15th White House Press Secretary (b. 1940)
2014 – Chester Crandell, American lawyer and politician (b. 1946)
2014 – Jake Hooker, Israeli-American guitarist and songwriter (b. 1953)
2015 – Elsie Hillman, American philanthropist and politician (b. 1925)
2015 – Les Munro, New Zealand soldier and pilot (b. 1919)
2015 – John Rudometkin, American basketball player (b. 1940)
2015 – Billy Sherrill, American songwriter and producer (b. 1936)
2019 – Nuon Chea, Cambodian politician and theorist for the Khmer Rouge (b. 1926)
Holidays and observances
Christian feast day:
Aristarchus
Euphronius
Blessed Frédéric Janssoone
John Vianney
Molua (or Lua)
Raynerius of Split
Sithney, patron saint of mad dogs
August 4 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Coast Guard Day (United States)
Constitution Day (Cook Islands); first Monday in August
Matica slovenská Day (Slovakia)
Barack Obama Day in Illinois in the United States
2020 Beirut explosion commemoration day in Lebanon
References
External links
Days of the year
August | en |
doc-en-5181 | Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (or Ottoman Armenians) mostly belonged to either the Armenian Apostolic Church or the Armenian Catholic Church. They were part of the Armenian millet until the Tanzimat reforms in the nineteenth century equalized all Ottoman citizens before the law. Armenians were a significant minority in the Empire. They played a crucial role in Ottoman industry and commerce, and Armenian communities existed in almost every major city of the empire. Despite their importance, Armenians were heavily persecuted by the Ottoman authorities especially from the latter half of the 19th century, culminating in the Armenian Genocide.
Background
The Ottomans introduced a number of unique approaches to governing into the traditions of Islam. Islamic culture did not separate religious and secular matters. At first, the Sultan was the highest power in the land and had control over almost everything. However, a state organization began to take a more definite shape in the first half of the sixteenth century under Suleyman I, also known as "Lawgiver." The Ottomans visualized two separate "establishments" to share state power, one responsible for governing a nation's citizens and the other its military. "The Ottomans left civic control to the civic institutions. Historians often label the Ottoman sociopolitical construct the "Ottoman System". Noteworthy, however, the term "Ottoman System" conveys a sense of structural rigidity that probably was nonexistent throughout the Ottoman period.
The Armenian population's integration was partly due to the nonexistent structural rigidity throughout the initial period. Armenian people, related to the issues of their own internal affairs were administered by the civil administration. Townspeople, villagers and farmers formed a class called the flock/reaya, including Armenian reaya. Civil and judicial administration was carried out under a separate parallel system of small municipal or rural units called kazas. The civil system was considered a check on the military system since beys, who represented executive authority on reaya, could not carry out punishment without a sentence from the religious leader of the person. Also, the Sultan was beyond the mentioned control. The Ecumenical Patriarchate was the leader of the Armenian People. This whole structure was named in the Armenian case Armenian Millet.
During the Byzantine period, the Armenian Church was not allowed to operate in Constantinople, because the Greek Orthodox Church regarded the Armenian Church as heretical. With the establishment of Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Armenians became religious leaders, and bureaucrats under the Ottoman Empire became more influential than just their own community. The idea that two separate "establishments" shared state power gave people a chance to occupy important positions, administrative, the religious-legal, and the social-economic.
Armenians occupied important posts within the Ottoman Empire, Artin Dadyan Pasha, who served as minister of foreign affairs from 1876 to 1901, is one of many examples of Armenian citizens who played a fundamental role in the sociopolitical sphere of the Ottoman Empire.
Role of Armenians in the Ottoman economy
Certain elite Armenian families in the Ottoman Empire gained the trust of the Sultans and were able to achieve important positions in the Ottoman government and the Ottoman economy. Even though their numbers were small compared to the whole Ottoman Armenian population, this caused some resentment among Ottoman nationalists. The life of the rest of the common Armenians was a very difficult existence because they were treated as second class citizens.
Those elite Armenians that did achieve great success were individuals such as Abraham Pasha, and Gabriel Noradunkyan who became secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The Dadian family controlled the entire munitions industry in the Ottoman Empire. Calouste Gulbenkian became one of the main advisors of the National Bank of Turkey and the Turkish Petroleum Corporation, which later became the Iraqi Oil Corporation.
Historian A. Tchamkerten writes "Armenian achievements in the Empire was not only in trade, however. They were involved in almost all economic sectors and held the highest levels of responsibility. In the 19th century, various Armenian families became the Sultan's goldsmiths, Sultan's architects and took over the currency reserves and the reserves of gold and silver, including customs duty. Sixteen of the eighteen most important bankers in the Ottoman Empire were Armenian". (Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian: The man and his work. Lisbon: Gulbenkian Foundation Press.2010)
Patriarchate of Constantinople
After Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the patriarchate came to care more directly for all the Orthodox living in the Ottoman Empire. Hovagim I was at the time the Metropolitan of Bursa. In 1461, Hovagim I was brought to Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II and established the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople for political reasons. Sultan Mehmed II wanted Armenian-Greek separation. Constantinople become the real center of their ecclesiastical and national life. The Armenian patriarch and not the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin, was their most important national dignitary, as part of Mehmed's wish. In the Sultan's capital, lived the largest Armenian community in the world; and his civil-ecclesiastical authority made the Sultan practically the most powerful official for Armenians at large. Probably, before the Ottoman conquest in 1453 there had been no Armenian churches in Constantinople. After 1453, 55 Armenian churches were built in Istanbul.
Until the promulgation of the Hatt-i Sherif of 1839, the patriarch and his clients, within limits, possessed penal authority over the Armenian people. At the capital the patriarch had his own jail, and maintained a small police force. His authority over his clergy being absolute, he could imprison or exile them at will; and while he was compelled to secure the consent of the Sultan to imprison or exile laymen of his community, the necessary firman was very easily obtained. The patriarchal system of government, in placing civil powers in the hands of high ecclesiastics, was an outcome of the fact that the Sultan made no distinction between church and community, and often lent the weight of its authority to maintain the integrity of the church.
Armenian village life
In villages, including those of which the population was chiefly Muslim, the Armenian quarters were settled in groups among other parts of the population. Compared to others, Armenians lived in well-built homes. The houses were arranged one above the other, so that the flat roof of the lower house serves as the front yard of the one above it. For safety, the houses were huddled together. Armenian dwellings were adapted to the extremes of temperature in the highlands of Western Armenia (renamed Eastern Anatolia in 1941). In summer the thick walls and earth-covered roofs kept the rooms cool. The natural and agricultural traditions of Armenians were similar to others, but characteristics can also be found in Xenophon, who described many aspects of Armenian village life and hospitality. He related that the people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians.
The Bey or elder was something of a leader for the village, and his house was typically the most luxurious dwelling in a village. It was not uncommon to have three priests for thirty-five families. Most Armenians travelled on horseback to neighbouring villages, sometimes for religious ceremonies (like the Van festival), sometimes to fetch a bride, accompanying her, with musical instruments and clapping of hands, to their own village.
Ottoman Armenia, 1453–1829
Armenians preserved their culture, history, and language through the course of time, largely thanks to their distinct religious identity among the neighboring Turks and Kurds. Like the Greek Orthodox and Jewish minorities of the Ottoman Empire, they constituted a distinct millet, led by the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople. Under this system, Christians and Jews were considered religious minorities/second-class citizens; they were subjected to elevated taxation, but in return they were granted autonomy within their own religious communities and were exempted from military service. Growing religious and political influence from neighboring communities necessitated implementation of security measures that often required a longer waiting period for minorities to seek legal recourse in the courts. Under Ottoman rule, Armenians formed three distinct millets: Armenian Orthodox Gregorians, Armenian Catholics, and Armenian Protestants (in the 19th century).
After many centuries of Turkish rule in Anatolia and Armenia (at first by the Seljuks, then a variety of Anatolian beyliks and finally the Ottomans), the centres with a high concentration of Armenians lost their geographic continuity (parts of Van, Bitlis, and Kharput vilayets). Over the centuries, tribes of Turks and Kurds settled into Anatolia and Armenia, which was left severely depopulated by a slew of devastating events such as the Byzantine-Persian Wars, Byzantine-Arab Wars, Turkish migration, Mongol Invasions and finally the bloody campaigns of Tamerlane.
In addition, there were the century-long Ottoman-Persian Wars between the rival empires, the battlegrounds of which ranged over Western Armenia (therefore large parts of the native lands of the Armenians), causing the region and its peoples to be passed between the Ottomans and Persians numerous times. The wars between the arch-rivals started from the early 16th century and lasted till well into the 19th century, having disastrous effects for the native inhabitants of these regions, including the Armenians of Western Armenia.
Owing to these events, the composition of the population had undergone (ever since the second half of the medieval period) a transformation so profound that the Armenians constituted, over the whole extent of their ancient homeland, no more than a quarter of the total inhabitants. Despite this they kept and defended factual autonomy in certain isolated areas like Sassoun, Shatakh, and parts of Dersim. An Armenian stronghold and a symbol of factual Armenian autonomy, Zeitoun (Ulnia) was located between the Six Vilayets and Cilicia, which also had a strong Armenian presence ever since the creation of the Principality (and then Kingdom) of Lesser Armenia. However, the destruction of the Kingdom by the Ramadanid tribe and the subsequent rule by Muslim powers such as the Dulkadirids, the Mamluks and the Ottomans led to ever increasing numbers of Muslims in the region until finally the genocide removed the remaining vestiges of the Armenian people.
There were also significant communities in parts of Trebizond and Ankara vilayets bordering Six vilayets (such as in Kayseri). After the Ottoman conquests many Armenians also moved west and settled in Anatolia, in large and prosperous Ottoman cities like Istanbul and Izmir.
Western Armenia, 1829–1918
The remaining Ottoman Armenia, composed of the Six vilayets (Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Kharput, and Sivas) up to World War I, under Ottoman rule, was also referred to as Western Armenia.
Armenians during the 19th century
Aside from the learned professions taught at the schools that had opened throughout the Ottoman Empire, the chief occupations were trade and commerce, industry, and agriculture. The peasants were agriculturists. In the empire, Armenians were raised to higher occupations, like Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian was a businessman and philanthropist. He played a major role in making the petroleum reserves of the Middle East available to Western development. The Armenian Press and literature during this period established institutions that were critical; this attitude has been invaluable in reforming abuses and introducing improvements in Armenian communities. Thus their critical instinct was positive, rather than negative. Armenians organized themselves for different objects; witness their numerous societies, clubs, political parties, and other associations. Hovsep Pushman was a painter who became very famous in the Empire. During this period Armenians would establish a church, a school, a library, and a newspaper. Sargis Mubayeajian was a prolific and multifarious writer educated in Constantinople. Many of his works are still scattered in Armenian periodicals.
Many Armenians, who after having emigrated to foreign countries and becoming prosperous there, returned to their native land. Alex Manoogian who became a philanthropist and active member of the Armenian General Benevolent Union was from Ottoman lands (modern Izmir), Arthur Edmund Carewe, born Trebizond, become an actor in the silent film era.
Armenians occupied important posts within the Ottoman Empire, Artin Dadyan Pasha served as Minister of foreign affairs of the Ottoman Empire from 1876 to 1901 and is an example that Armenian citizens served the Ottoman Empire.
Eastern Question
The Eastern Question (normally dated to 1774) is used in European history to refer to the diplomatic and political problems posed by the decay of the Ottoman Empire during the 18th century; including instability in the territories ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The position of educated and privileged Christians within the Ottoman Empire improved in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the Ottomans increasingly recognized the missing skills which the larger Ottoman population lacked, and as the empire became more settled it began to feel its increasing backwardness in relation to the European powers. European powers on the other side, engaged in a power struggle to safeguard their militaristic, strategic and commercial interests in the Empire, this gave motivation to the powers to help people in need. The rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire as a direct result of enlightenment of Christian millets through education, was the dominant theme. Armenians, However, for the most part, remained passive during these years, earning them the title of millet-i sadıka or the "loyal millet."
The Eastern Question gained even more traction by the late 1820s, due to the Greek Enlightenment and Greek War of Independence setting an example for making independence against the Ottomans, and along with several countries of the Balkans, frustrated with conditions, had, often with the help of the Powers, broken free of Ottoman rule. The Great Power Imperial Russia stood to benefit from the decline of the Ottoman Empire; on the other hand, Austria and the United Kingdom deemed the preservation of Empire to be in their best interests. The position of France changed several times over the centuries. Armenian involvement on the international stage would have to wait until the Armenian national awakening, which the Armenian Question as used in European history, became commonplace among diplomatic circles and in the popular press after the Congress of Berlin (1878). The Armenian national ideology developed long after the Greek movement. However, the factors contributing to the emergence of Armenian nationalism made the movement far more similar to that of the Greeks than those of other ethnic groups.
Reform implementation, 1860s–1880s
The three major European powers: Great Britain, France and Russia (known as the Great Powers), took issue with the Empire's treatment of its Christian minorities and increasingly pressured the Ottoman government (also known as the Sublime Porte) to extend equal rights to all its citizens.
Beginning in 1839, the Ottoman government implemented the Tanzimat reforms to improve the situation of minorities, although these would prove largely ineffective. In 1856, the Hatt-ı Hümayun promised equality for all Ottoman citizens irrespective of their ethnicity and confession, widening the scope of the 1839 Hatt-ı Şerif of Gülhane. The reformist period peaked with the Constitution, called the Kanûn-ı Esâsî (meaning "Basic Law" in Ottoman Turkish), written by members of the Young Ottomans, which was promulgated on 23 November 1876. It established freedom of belief and equality of all citizens before the law. "Firman of the Reforms" gave immense privileges to the Armenians, which formed a "governance in governance" to eliminate the aristocratic dominance of the Armenian nobles by development of the political strata in the society.
Armenian National Constitution, 1863
In 1863, the Armenian National Constitution (Ottoman Turkish:"Nizâmnâme-i Millet-i Ermeniyân") was Ottoman Empire approved. It was a form of the "Code of Regulations" composed of 150 articles drafted by the "Armenian intelligentsia", which defined the powers of Patriarch (a position in the Ottoman Millet) and newly formed "Armenian National Assembly". Mikrtich issued a decree permitting women to have equal votes with men and asking them to take part in all elections.
The Armenian National Assembly had wide-ranging functions. Muslim officials were not employed to collect taxes in Armenian villages, but the taxes in all the Armenian villages collected by Armenian tax-gatherers appointed by the Armenian National Assembly. Armenians were allowed to establish their own courts of justice for the purpose of administering justice and conducting litigation between Armenians, and for deciding all questions relating to marriage, divorce, estate, inheritance, etc., appertaining to themselves. Also Armenians were allowed the right to establish their own prisons for the incarceration of offending Armenians, and in no case should an Armenian be imprisoned in an Ottoman prison.
The Armenian National Assembly also had the power to elect the Armenian Governor by a local Armenian legislative council. The councils later will be part of elections during second constitutional era. Local Armenian legislative councils were composed of six Armenians elected by the Armenian National Assembly.
Education and social work
Beginning in 1863, education was available to all subjects, as far as funds permitted it. Such education was under the direction of lay committees. During this period in Russian Armenia, the association of the schools with the Church was close, but the same principle obtains. This became a problem for the Russian administration, which peaked during 1897 when Tsar Nicholas appointed the Armenophobic Grigory Sergeyevich Golitsin as governor of Transcaucasia, and Armenian schools, cultural associations, newspapers and libraries were closed.
The Armenian charitable works, hospitals, and provident institutions were organized along the explained perspective. The Armenians, in addition to paying taxes to the State, voluntarily imposed extra burdens on themselves in order to support these philanthropic agencies. The taxes to the State did not have direct return to Armenians in such cases.
Armenian Question, 1877
The Armenian Question, as used in European history, became common place among diplomatic circles and in the popular press after the Congress of Berlin (1878); that in like Eastern Question (normally dated to 1774), refers to powers of Europe's involvement to the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire beginning with the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. However, in specific terms, the Armenian question refers to the protection and the freedoms of Armenians from their neighboring communities. The "Armenian question" explains the forty years of Armenian-Ottoman history in the context of English, German, Russian politics between 1877 and 1914.
National awakening, 1880s
The national liberation movement of the Balkan peoples (see: national awakenings in Balkans) and the immediate involvement of the European powers in the Eastern question had a powerful effect on the hitherto suppressed national movement among the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire – on the development of a national liberation ideology. The Armenian national liberation movement was the Armenian national effort to free the historic Armenian homeland of eastern Asia Minor and Transcaucasus from Russian and Ottoman rule and re-establish the independent Armenian state. Those Armenians who did not support national liberation aspirations or who were neutral were called chezoks.
Sultan Abdul Hamid II, 1876–1909
Abdul Hamid II was the 34th Sultan and oversaw a period of decline in the power and extent of the Empire, ruling from 31 August 1876 until he was deposed on 27 April 1909. He was the last Ottoman Sultan to rule with absolute power.
Bashkaleh clash, 1889
The Bashkaleh clash was the bloody encounter between the Armenakan Party and the Ottoman Empire in May 1889. Its name comes from Başkale, a border town of Van Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire. The event was important, as it was reflected in main Armenian newspapers as the recovered documents on the Armenakans showed an extensive plot for a national movement. Ottoman officials believed that the men were members of a large revolutionary apparatus and the discussion was reflected on newspapers, (Eastern Express, Oriental Advertiser, Saadet, and Tarik) and the responses were on the Armenian papers. In some Armenian circles, this event was considered as a martyrdom and brought other armed conflicts. The Bashkaleh Resistance was on the Persian border, which the Armenakans were in communication with Armenians in the Persian Empire. The Gugunian Expedition, which followed within the couple months, was an attempt by a small group of Armenian nationalists from the Russian Armenia to launch an armed expedition across the border into the Ottoman Empire in 1890 in support of local Armenians.
Kum Kapu demonstration, 1890
The Kum Kapu demonstration occurred at the Armenian quarter of Kum Kapu, the seat of the Armenian Patriarch, was spared through the prompt action of the commandant, Hassan Aga. On 27 July 1890, Harutiun Jangülian, Mihran Damadian and Hambartsum Boyajian interrupted the Armenian mass to read a manifesto and denounce the indifference of the Armenian patriarch and Armenian National Assembly. Harutiun Jangülian (member from Van) tried to assassinate the Patriarch of Istanbul. The goal was to persuade the Armenian clerics to bring their policies into alignment with the national politics. They soon forced the patriarch to join the procession heading to the Yildiz Palace to demand implementation of Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin. It is significant that this massacre, in which 6000 Armenians are said to have perished, was not the result of a general rising of the Muslim population. The Softas took no part in it, and many Armenians found refuge in the Muslim sections of the city.
Bloody years, 1894–96
The first notable battle in the Armenian resistance movement took place in Sassoun, where nationalist ideals were proliferated by Hunchak activists, such as Mihran Damadian and Hampartsoum Boyadjian. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation also played a significant role in arming the people of the region. The Armenians of Sassoun confronted the Ottoman army and Kurdish irregulars at Sassoun, succumbing to superior numbers. This was followed by Zeitun Rebellion (1895–96), which took place between 1891 and 1895, Hunchak activists toured various regions of Cilicia and Zeitun to encourage resistance, and established new branches of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party.
The 1896 Ottoman Bank takeover was perpetrated by an Armenian group armed with pistols, grenades, dynamite and hand-held bombs against the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul. The seizure of the bank lasted 14 hours, resulting in the deaths of 10 of the Armenian men and Ottoman soldiers. The Ottoman reaction to takeover saw further massacres and pogroms of the several thousand Armenians living in Constantinople and Sultan Abdul Hamid II threatening to level the entire building itself. However, intervention on part of the European diplomats in the city managed to persuade the men to give, assigning safe passage to the survivors to France. Despite the level of violence the incident had wrought, the takeover was reported positively in the European press, praising the men for their courage and the objectives they attempted to accomplish. The years between 1894 and 1896 ended, with estimates of the dead ranging from 80,000 to 300,000. The Hamidian massacres are named for Sultan Abdul Hamid II, whose efforts to reinforce the territorial integrity of the embattled Ottoman Empire resulted in the massacres.
Sasun Uprising, 1904
Ottoman officials involved in the Sasun uprising, who were previously defeated in the First Zeitoun Rebellion, did not want the formation of another semi-autonomous Armenian region in the "Eastern" vilayets. In Sasun, Armenian activists were working to arm the folk and to recruit young men by motivating them to the Armenian cause. 50,000 Turkish and Kurdish troops started the offensive in Sasun, where 500 fedayees had to defend 20,000 unarmed people. The Armenians were headed by Andranik Ozanian along with Kevork Chavoush, Sepasdatsi Mourad, Keri, Hrayr Tjokhk, and others.
Assassination attempt on Sultan Abdul Hamid II, 1905
The events of the Hamidian massacres and Sultan Abdul Hamid II's continued anti-Armenian policies gave way for the Armenian Revolutionary Federation to plan an assassination attempt on the sultan to enact vengeance. Dashnak members, led by ARF founder Christapor Mikaelian, secretly started producing explosives and planning the operation in Sofia, Bulgaria. The assassination attempt was unsuccessful in killing Abdul Hamid II, although it resulted in the death of 26 people and a further 58 wounded.
Dissolution, 1908–18
The Second Constitutional Era of the Empire began shortly after Sultan Abdülhamid II restored the constitutional monarchy after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. The period established many political groups. A series of elections during this period resulted in the gradual ascendance of the Committee of Union and Progress's ("CUP") domination in politics. This period also marked the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
Young Turk Revolution, 1908
On 24 July 1908, Armenians' hopes for equality in the empire brightened with the removal of Hamid II from power and restored the country back to a constitutional monarchy. Two of the largest revolutionary groups trying to overthrow Sultan Abdul Hamid II had been the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Committee of Union and Progress, a group of mostly European-educated Turks. In a general assembly meeting in 1907, the ARF acknowledged that the Armenian and Turkish revolutionaries had the same goals. Although the Tanzimat reforms had given Armenians more rights and seats in the parliament, the ARF hoped to gain autonomy to govern Armenian populated areas of the Ottoman Empire as a "state within a state". The "Second congress of the Ottoman opposition" took place in Paris, France, in 1907. Opposition leaders including Ahmed Riza (liberal), Sabahheddin Bey, and ARF member Khachatur Maloumian attended. During the meeting, an alliance between the two parties was officially declared. The ARF decided to cooperate with the Committee of Union and Progress, hoping that if the Young Turks came to power, autonomy would be granted to the Armenians.
Balkan Wars
Andranik Ozanian participated in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 alongside general Garegin Nzhdeh as a commander of Armenian auxiliary troops. Andranik met revolutionist Boris Sarafov and the two pledged to work jointly for the oppressed peoples of Armenia and Macedonia. Andranik participated in the First Balkan War alongside Nzhdeh as a Chief Commander of 12th Battalion of Lozengrad Third Brigade of the Macedonian-Adrianopolitan militia under the command of Colonel Aleksandar Protogerov. His detachment consisted of 273 Armenian volunteers. On 5 May 1912, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation officially severed the relations with the Ottoman government; a public declaration of the Western Bureau printed in the official announcement was directed to "Ottoman Citizens." The June issue of Droshak ran an editorial about it. There were overwhelming numbers of Armenians who served the Empire units with distinction during Balkan wars.
Armenian reform package, 1914
The Armenian reform package was an arrangement negotiated with Russia, acting on behalf of the Great Powers, and the Ottoman Empire. It aimed to introduce reforms to the Armenian citizens of the empire. This agreement, which was solidified in February 1914 was based on the arrangements nominally made in 1878. According to this arrangement the inspectors general, whose powers and duties constituted the key to the question, were to be named for a period of ten years, and their engagement was not to be revocable during that period.
World War I, 1914–18
With onslaught of World War I, the Ottoman Empire and Russian Empire engaged during the Caucasus and Persian Campaigns, and the CUP began to look on the Armenians with distrust and suspicion. This was due to the fact that the Russian army contained a contingent of Armenian volunteers. On 24 April 1915, Armenian intellectuals were arrested by Ottoman authorities and, with the Tehcir Law (29 May 1915), eventually a large proportion of Armenians living in Western Armenia perished in what has become known as the Armenian genocide. There was local Armenian resistance in the region, developed against the activities of the Ottoman Empire. The events of 1915 to 1917 are regarded by Armenians, Western historians, and even some Turkish writers and historians like Taner Akçam and Orhan Pamuk, to have been state-sponsored and planned mass killings, or genocide.
See also
History of Armenia
Timeline of Armenian history
Armenians in Turkey
Ottoman Armenian population
Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople
Armenian Sport in the Ottoman Empire
References
Further reading
External links
A list of Armenian Ministers, Members of Parliament, Ambassadors, General Directors and other High-level bureaucrats of the Ottoman Empire
Christianity in the Ottoman Empire
de:Armenien#Armenier im Osmanischen Reich | en |
doc-en-10119 | Pramana (Sanskrit: प्रमाण, ) literally means "proof" and "means of knowledge". In Indian philosophies, pramana are the means which can lead to knowledge, and serve as one of the core concepts in Indian epistemology. It has been one of the key, much debated fields of study in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism since ancient times. It is a theory of knowledge, and encompasses one or more reliable and valid means by which human beings gain accurate, true knowledge. The focus of pramana is how correct knowledge can be acquired, how one knows, how one does not know, and to what extent knowledge pertinent about someone or something can be acquired.
While the number of pramanas varies widely from system to system, many ancient and medieval Indian texts identify six pramanas as correct means of accurate knowledge and to truths: Three central pramanas which are almost universally accepted, which are perception (Sanskrit pratyakṣa), inference (anumāna), and "word", meaning the testimony of past or present reliable experts (Śabda); and more contentious ones, which are comparison and analogy (upamāna), postulation, derivation from circumstances (arthāpatti), and non-perception, negative/cognitive proof (anupalabdhi). Each of these are further categorized in terms of conditionality, completeness, confidence and possibility of error, by each school of Indian philosophies.
The various schools of Indian philosophies vary on how many of these six are epistemically reliable and valid means to knowledge. For example, the Carvaka school of the Śramaṇa tradition holds that only one (perception) is a reliable source of knowledge, Buddhism holds two (perception, inference) are valid means, Jainism holds three (perception, inference and testimony), while Mimamsa and Advaita Vedanta schools of Hinduism hold all six are useful and can be reliable means to knowledge. The various schools of Indian philosophy have debated whether one of the six forms of pramana can be derived from other, and the relative uniqueness of each. For example, Buddhism considers Buddha and other "valid persons", "valid scriptures" and "valid minds" as indisputable, but that such testimony is a form of perception and inference pramanas.
The science and study of pramanas is called Nyaya.
Etymology
Pramāṇa literally means "proof" and is also a concept and field of Indian philosophy. The concept is derived from the Sanskrit roots, pra (प्र), a preposition meaning "outward" or "forth", and mā (मा) which means "measurement". Pramā means "correct notion, true knowledge, basis, foundation, understand", with pramāṇa being a further nominalization of the word. Thus, the concept Pramāṇa implies that which is a "means of acquiring prama or certain, correct, true knowledge".
Pramāṇa forms one part of a trio of concepts, which describe the ancient Indian view on how knowledge is gained. The other two concepts are knower and knowable, each discussed in how they influence the knowledge, by their own characteristic and the process of knowing. The two are called Pramātŗ (प्रमातृ, the subject, the knower) and Prameya (प्रमेय, the object, the knowable).
The term Pramana is commonly found in various schools of Hinduism. In Buddhist literature, Pramana is referred to as Pramāṇavāda. Pramana is also related to the Indian concept of Yukti (युक्ति) which means active application of epistemology or what one already knows, innovation, clever expedients or connections, methodological or reasoning trick, joining together, application of contrivance, means, method, novelty or device to more efficiently achieve a purpose. Yukti and Pramana are discussed together in some Indian texts, with Yukti described as active process of gaining knowledge in contrast to passive process of gaining knowledge through observation/perception. The texts on Pramana, particularly by Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Advaita Vedanta schools of Hinduism, include in their meaning and scope "Theories of Errors", that is why human beings make error and reach incorrect knowledge, how can one know if one is wrong, and if so, how can one discover whether one's epistemic method was flawed, or one's conclusion (truth) was flawed, in order to revise oneself and reach correct knowledge.
Hinduism
Six pramanas
Hinduism identifies six pramanas as correct means of accurate knowledge and to truths: Pratyakṣa (perception), Anumāṇa (inference), Upamāṇa (comparison and analogy), Arthāpatti (postulation, derivation from circumstances), Anupalabdhi (non-perception, negative/cognitive proof) and Śabda (word, testimony of past or present reliable experts).
In verse 1.2.1 of the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka (c. 9th–6th centuries BCE), "four means of attaining correct knowledge" are listed: smṛti ("scripture, tradition"), pratyakṣa ("perception"), aitihya ("expert testimony, historical tradition"), and anumāna ("inference").
In some texts such as by Vedvyasa, ten pramanas are discussed, Krtakoti discusses eight epistemically reliable means to correct knowledge. The most widely discussed pramanas are:
Pratyakṣa
Pratyakṣa (प्रत्यक्ष) means perception. It is of two types in Hindu texts: external and internal. External perception is described as that arising from the interaction of five senses and worldly objects, while internal perception is described by this school as that of inner sense, the mind. According to Matt Stefan, the distinction is between direct perception (anubhava) and remembered perception (smriti).
The ancient and medieval Indian texts identify four requirements for correct perception:
Indriyarthasannikarsa (direct experience by one's sensory organ(s) with the object, whatever is being studied);
Avyapadesya (non-verbal; correct perception is not through hearsay, according to ancient Indian scholars, where one's sensory organ relies on accepting or rejecting someone else's perception);
Avyabhicara (does not wander; correct perception does not change, nor is it the result of deception because one's sensory organ or means of observation is drifting, defective, suspect);
Vyavasayatmaka (definite; correct perception excludes judgments of doubt, either because of one's failure to observe all the details, or because one is mixing inference with observation and observing what one wants to observe, or not observing what one does not want to observe).
Some ancient scholars proposed "unusual perception" as pramana and called it internal perception, a proposal contested by other Indian scholars. The internal perception concepts included pratibha (intuition), samanyalaksanapratyaksa (a form of induction from perceived specifics to a universal), and jnanalaksanapratyaksa (a form of perception of prior processes and previous states of a 'topic of study' by observing its current state). Further, some schools of Hinduism considered and refined rules of accepting uncertain knowledge from Pratyakṣa-pranama, so as to contrast nirnaya (definite judgment, conclusion) from anadhyavasaya (indefinite judgment).
Anumāna
Anumāna (अनुमान) means inference. It is described as reaching a new conclusion and truth from one or more observations and previous truths by applying reason. Observing smoke and inferring fire is an example of Anumana. In all except one Hindu philosophies, this is a valid and useful means to knowledge. The method of inference is explained by Indian texts as consisting of three parts: pratijna (hypothesis), hetu (a reason), and drshtanta (examples). The hypothesis must further be broken down into two parts, state the ancient Indian scholars: sadhya (that idea which needs to proven or disproven) and paksha (the object on which the sadhya is predicated). The inference is conditionally true if sapaksha (positive examples as evidence) are present, and if vipaksha (negative examples as counter-evidence) are absent. For rigor, the Indian philosophies also state further epistemic steps. For example, they demand Vyapti - the requirement that the hetu (reason) must necessarily and separately account for the inference in "all" cases, in both sapaksha and vipaksha. A conditionally proven hypothesis is called a nigamana (conclusion).
Upamāna
Upamāna (उपमान) means comparison and analogy. Some Hindu schools consider it as a proper means of knowledge. Upamana, states Lochtefeld, may be explained with the example of a traveller who has never visited lands or islands with endemic population of wildlife. He or she is told, by someone who has been there, that in those lands you see an animal that sort of looks like a cow, grazes like cow but is different from a cow in such and such way. Such use of analogy and comparison is, state the Indian epistemologists, a valid means of conditional knowledge, as it helps the traveller identify the new animal later. The subject of comparison is formally called upameyam, the object of comparison is called upamanam, while the attribute(s) are identified as samanya. Thus, explains Monier Williams, if a boy says "her face is like the moon in charmingness", "her face" is upameyam, the moon is upamanam, and charmingness is samanya. The 7th century text Bhaṭṭikāvya in verses 10.28 through 10.63 discusses many types of comparisons and analogies, identifying when this epistemic method is more useful and reliable, and when it is not. In various ancient and medieval texts of Hinduism, 32 types of Upanama and their value in epistemology are debated.
Arthāpatti
Arthāpatti (अर्थापत्ति) means postulation, derivation from circumstances. In contemporary logic, this pramana is similar to circumstantial implication. As example, if a person left in a boat on river earlier, and the time is now past the expected time of arrival, then the circumstances support the truth postulate that the person has arrived. Many Indian scholars considered this pramana as invalid or at best weak, because the boat may have gotten delayed or diverted. However, in cases such as deriving the time of a future sunrise or sunset, this method was asserted by the proponents to be reliable. Another common example for arthapatti in ancient Hindu texts is, that if "Devadatta is fat" and "Devadatta does not eat in day", then the following must be true: "Devadatta eats in the night". This form of postulation and deriving from circumstances is, claim the Indian scholars, a means to discovery, proper insight and knowledge. The Hindu schools that accept this means of knowledge state that this method is a valid means to conditional knowledge and truths about a subject and object in original premises or different premises. The schools that do not accept this method, state that postulation, extrapolation and circumstantial implication is either derivable from other pramanas or flawed means to correct knowledge, instead one must rely on direct perception or proper inference.
Anupalabdi
Anupalabdi (अनुपलब्धि) means non-perception, negative/cognitive proof. Anupalabdhi pramana suggests that knowing a negative, such as "there is no jug in this room" is a form of valid knowledge. If something can be observed or inferred or proven as non-existent or impossible, then one knows more than what one did without such means. In the two schools of Hinduism that consider Anupalabdhi as epistemically valuable, a valid conclusion is either sadrupa (positive) or asadrupa (negative) relation — both correct and valuable. Like other pramana, Indian scholars refined Anupalabdi to four types: non-perception of the cause, non-perception of the effect, non-perception of object, and non-perception of contradiction. Only two schools of Hinduism accepted and developed the concept "non-perception" as a pramana. The schools that endorsed Anupalabdi affirmed that it as valid and useful when the other five pramanas fail in one's pursuit of knowledge and truth.
Abhava (अभाव) means non-existence. Some scholars consider Anupalabdi to be same as Abhava, while others consider Anupalabdi and Abhava as different. Abhava-pramana has been discussed in ancient Hindu texts in the context of Padārtha (पदार्थ, referent of a term). A Padartha is defined as that which is simultaneously Astitva (existent), Jneyatva (knowable) and Abhidheyatva (nameable). Specific examples of padartha, states Bartley, include dravya (substance), guna (quality), karma (activity/motion), samanya/jati (universal/class property), samavaya (inherence) and vishesha (individuality). Abhava is then explained as "referents of negative expression" in contrast to "referents of positive expression" in Padartha. An absence, state the ancient scholars, is also "existent, knowable and nameable", giving the example of negative numbers, silence as a form of testimony, asatkaryavada theory of causation, and analysis of deficit as real and valuable. Abhava was further refined in four types, by the schools of Hinduism that accepted it as a useful method of epistemology: dhvamsa (termination of what existed), atyanta-abhava (impossibility, absolute non-existence, contradiction), anyonya-abhava (mutual negation, reciprocal absence) and pragavasa (prior, antecedent non-existence).
Śabda
Śabda (शब्द) means relying on word, testimony of past or present reliable experts, specifically the shruti, Vedas. Hiriyanna explains Sabda-pramana as a concept which means reliable expert testimony. The schools of Hinduism which consider it epistemically valid suggest that a human being needs to know numerous facts, and with the limited time and energy available, he can learn only a fraction of those facts and truths directly. He must rely on others, his parent, family, friends, teachers, ancestors and kindred members of society to rapidly acquire and share knowledge and thereby enrich each other's lives. This means of gaining proper knowledge is either spoken or written, but through Sabda (words). The reliability of the source is important, and legitimate knowledge can only come from the Sabda of reliable sources. The disagreement between the schools of Hinduism has been on how to establish reliability. Some schools, such as Carvaka, state that this is never possible, and therefore Sabda is not a proper pramana. Other schools debate means to establish reliability.
Acceptance per school
Different schools of Hindu philosophy accept one or more of these pramanas as valid epistemology.
Carvaka school
Carvaka school accepted only one valid source of knowledge - perception. It held all remaining methods as outright invalid or prone to error and therefore invalid.
Vaisheshika school
Epistemologically, the Vaiśeṣika school considered the following as the only proper means of knowledge:
Perception (Pratyakṣa)
Inference (Anumāna)
Sankhya, Yoga, Vishishtadvaita Vedanta, and Dvaita Vedanta schools
According to the Sankhya, Yoga, and two sub-schools of Vedanta, the proper means of knowledge must rely on these three pramanas:
Pratyakṣa — perception
Anumāna — inference
Śabda — testimony/word of reliable experts
These are enumerated in sutra I.7 of the Yoga Sutras. The mode of Pramana itself in sutra I.6 is distinguished among 5 classes of vritti/mental modification, the others including indiscrimination, verbal delusion, sleep, and memory.
Nyaya school
The Nyāya school accepts four means of obtaining knowledge (pramāṇa), viz., Perception, Inference, Comparison and Word.
Perception, called Pratyakṣa, occupies the foremost position in the Nyaya epistemology. Perception is defined by sense-object contact and is unerring. Perception can be of two types - ordinary or extraordinary. Ordinary (Laukika or Sādhārana) perception is of six types, viz., visual-by eyes, olfactory-by nose, auditory-by ears, tactile-by skin, gustatory-by tongue and mental-by mind. Extraordinary (Alaukika or Asādhārana) perception is of three types, viz., Sāmānyalakṣana (perceiving generality from a particular object), Jñānalakṣana (when one sense organ can also perceive qualities not attributable to it, as when seeing a chilli, one knows that it would be bitter or hot), and Yogaja (when certain human beings, from the power of Yoga, can perceive past, present and future and have supernatural abilities, either complete or some). Also, there are two modes or steps in perception, viz., Nirvikalpa, when one just perceives an object without being able to know its features, and Savikalpa, when one is able to clearly know an object. All laukika and alaukika pratyakshas are savikalpa. There is yet another stage called Pratyabhijñā, when one is able to re-recognise something on the basis of memory.
Inference, called Anumāna, is one of the most important contributions of Nyaya. It can be of two types – inference for oneself (Svārthānumāna, where one does not need any formal procedure, and at the most the last three of their 5 steps), and inference for others (Parāthānumāna, which requires a systematic methodology of 5 steps). Inference can also be classified into 3 types: Pūrvavat (inferring an unperceived effect from a perceived cause), Śeṣavat (inferring an unperceived cause from a perceived effect) and Sāmānyatodṛṣṭa (when inference is not based on causation but on uniformity of co-existence). A detailed analysis of error is also given, explaining when anumāna could be false.
Comparison, called Upamāna. It is produced by the knowledge of resemblance or similarity, given some pre-description of the new object beforehand.
Word, or Śabda are also accepted as a pramāṇa. It can be of two types, Vaidika (Vedic), which are the words of the four sacred Vedas, or can be more broadly interpreted as knowledge from sources acknowledged as authoritative, and Laukika, or words and writings of trustworthy human beings.
Prabhakara Mimamsa school
In Mimamsa school of Hinduism linked to Prabhakara considered the following pramanas as proper:
Pratyakṣa (perception)
Anumāṇa (inference)
Śabda (word, testimony)
Upamāṇa (comparison, analogy)
Arthapatti (postulation, presumption)
Advaita Vedanta and Bhatta Mimamsa schools
In Advaita Vedānta, and Mimamsa school linked to Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, the following pramanas are accepted:
Śabda (word, testimony)
Pratyakṣa (perception)
Anumāṇa (inference)
Upamāṇa (comparison, analogy)
Arthāpatti (postulation, presumption)
Anupalabdi, Abhava (non-perception, cognitive proof using non-existence)
Buddhism
Padmākara Translation Group (2005: p. 390) annotates that:
Strictly speaking, pramana (tshad ma) means "valid cognition." In (Buddhism) practice, it refers to the tradition, principally associated with Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, of logic (rtags rigs) and epistemology (blo rigs).
Buddhism accepts only two pramana (tshad ma) as valid means to knowledge: Pratyaksha (mngon sum tshad ma, perception) and Anumāṇa (rjes dpag tshad ma, inference). Rinbochay adds that Buddhism also considers scriptures as third valid pramana, such as from Buddha and other "valid minds" and "valid persons". This third source of valid knowledge is a form of perception and inference in Buddhist thought. Valid scriptures, valid minds and valid persons are considered in Buddhism as Avisamvadin (mi slu ba, incontrovertible, indisputable). Means of cognition and knowledge, other than perception and inference, are considered invalid in Buddhism.
In Buddhism, the two most important scholars of pramāṇa are Dignāga and Dharmakīrti.
Sautrantrika
Dignāga and Dharmakīrti are usually categorized as expounding the view of the Sautrāntika tenets, though one can make a distinction between the Sautrāntikas Following Scripture (Tibetan: ལུང་གི་རྗེས་འབྲང་གི་མདོ་སྡེ་པ Wylie: lung gi rjes 'brang gi mdo sde pa) and the Sautrāntikas Following Reason (Tibetan: རིགས་པ་རྗེས་འབྲང་གི་མདོ་སྡེ་པ Wylie: rigs pa rjes 'brang gi mdo sde pa) and both these masters are described as establishing the latter. Dignāga's main text on this topic is the Pramāṇa-samuccaya.
These two rejected the complex Abhidharma-based description of how in the Vaibhāṣika school and the Sautrāntika Following Scripture approach connected an external world with mental objects, and instead posited that the mental domain never connects directly with the external world but instead only perceives an aspect based upon the sense organs and the sense consciousnesses. Further, the sense consciousnesses assume the form of the aspect (Sanskrit: Sākāravāda) of the external object and what is perceived is actually the sense consciousness which has taken on the form of the external object. By starting with aspects, a logical argument about the external world as discussed by the Hindu schools was possible. Otherwise their views would be so different as to be impossible to begin a debate. Then a logical discussion could follow.
This approach attempts to solve how the material world connects with the mental world, but not completely explaining it. When pushed on this point, Dharmakīrti then drops a presupposition of the Sautrāntrika position and shifts to a kind of Yogācāra position that extramental objects never really occur but arise from the habitual tendencies of mind. So he begins a debate with Hindu schools positing external objects then later to migrate the discussion to how that is logically untenable.
Note there are two differing interpretations of Dharmakīrti's approach later in Tibet, due to differing translations and interpretations. One is held by the Gelug school leaning to a moderate realism with some accommodation of universals and the other held by the other schools who held that Dharmakīrti was distinctly antirealist.
Apoha
A key feature of Dignāga's logic is in how he treats generalities versus specific objects of knowledge. The Nyāya Hindu school made assertions about the existence of general principles, and in refutation Dignāga asserted that generalities were mere mental features and not truly existent. To do this he introduced the idea of Apoha, that the way the mind recognizes is by comparing and negating known objects from the perception. In that way, the general idea or categories of objects has to do with differences from known objects, not from identification with universal truths. So one knows that a perceived chariot is a chariot not because it is in accord with a universal form of a chariot, but because it is perceived as different from things that are not chariots. This approach became an essential feature of Buddhist epistemology.
Madhyamaka
The contemporary of Dignāga but before Dharmakīrti, Bhāvaviveka, incorporated a logical approach when commenting upon Nāgārjuna. He also started with a Sautrāntika approach when discussing the way appearances appear, to debate with realists, but then took a Middle Way view of the ultimate nature of phenomenon. But he used logical assertions and arguments about the nature of that ultimate nature.
His incorporation of logic into the Middle Way system was later critiqued by Candrakīrti, who felt that the establishment of the ultimate way of abiding since it was beyond thought and concept was not the domain of logic. He used simple logical consequence arguments to refute the views of other tenet systems, but generally he thought a more developed use of logic and epistemology in describing the Middle Way was problematic. Bhāvaviveka's use of autonomous logical arguments was later described as the Svātantrika approach.
In Tibet
Modern Buddhist schools employ the 'three spheres' (Sanskrit: trimaṇḍala; Tibetan: 'khor gsum):
subject
object, and
action.
When Madhyamaka first migrated to Tibet, Śāntarakṣita established a view of Madhyamaka more consistent with Bhāvaviveka while further evolving logical assertions as a way of contemplating and developing one's viewpoint of the ultimate truth.
In the 14th Century Je Tsongkhapa presented a new commentary and approach to Madhyamaka, which became the normative form in Tibet. In this variant, the Madhyamaka approach of Candrakīrti was elevated instead of Bhāvaviveka's yet Tsongkhapa rejected Candrakirti's disdain of logic and instead incorporated logic further.
The exact role of logic in Tibetan Buddhist practice and study may still be a topic of debate, but it is definitely established in the tradition. Ju Mipham remarked in his 19th century commentary on Śāntarakṣita's Madhyamakālaṅkāra:
See also
Hindu philosophy
Śāstra pramāṇam in Hinduism
Nyaya
Buddhist logic
Epistemology
Metaphysics
Notes
References
Sources
Bibliography
Śāntarakṣita (author); Mipham (commentator); Padmākara Translation Group (translators)(2005). The Adornment of the Middle Way: Shantarakshita's Madhyamakalankara with commentary by Jamgön Mipham. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: Shambhala Publications, Inc. (alk. paper)
External links
Pramāṇamīmāṃsā: Devanagari, A SARIT Initiative, German Research Foundation
Pramāṇavārttika Pariśiṣṭa 1: Devanagari, A SARIT Initiative, German Research Foundation
Pramāṇavārttika: Devanagari, A SARIT Initiative, German Research Foundation
Pramāṇavārttikasvavṛttiṭīkā: Devanagari, A SARIT Initiative, German Research Foundation
Pramāṇavārttikālaṅkāra: Devanagari, A SARIT Initiative, German Research Foundation
Pramāṇāntarbhāva: Devanagari, A SARIT Initiative, German Research Foundation
Vidhabhusana, Satis Chandra (1907). History of the Mediaeval School of Indian Logic. Calcutta University.
Sources of knowledge
Epistemology
Hindu philosophical concepts
Buddhist logic
Epistemology literature | en |
doc-en-15302 | Jaime de Borbón y de Borbón-Parma, known as Duke of Madrid and as Jacques de Bourbon, Duke of Anjou in France (27 June 1870 – 2 October 1931), was the Carlist claimant to the throne of Spain under the name Jaime III and the Legitimist claimant to the throne of France as Jacques I.
Family
Don Jaime's royal ancestry and heir to the Carlist king of Spain determined both his material status and political career, while relations along collateral lines – especially with the Austrian Habsburgs and the French Bourbons – were responsible for some twists and turns of his life. He was personal witness to a string of unsuccessful marriages in his family, from that of his grandparents to those of his own parents, his sisters and many of his Habsburg cousins. They might have contributed to Don Jaime's relations with women; though he was attracted to a number of them, Don Jaime never married and probably had no children.
Ancestors
Don Jaime was descended from many highly aristocratic European houses: the Borbóns, the Bourbon-Parmas, the Bourbons, the Borbón-Two Sicilies, the Braganças, the Habsburg-Lothringens, the Austria-Estes, the Savoyans and other. The rate of intermarriage, which posed problems to health of aristocratic offspring, in his case was rather low: instead of 16 great-great-grandparents he had 14. Among them there were 6 kings who actually ruled: Charles IV in Spain (1788–1808), Charles X in France (1824–1830), João VI in Portugal (1822–1826), Francis I in Two Sicilies (1825–1830), Victor Emmanuel I in Sardinia (1802–1821) and Louis I in Etruria (1801–1803). There was one king among his great-grandparents, Louis II of Etruria (1803–1807); having lost his royal status he later reigned as duke Charles I over the Duchy of Lucca (1824–1847) and as Charles II over the Duchy of Parma (1848–1849). Another great-grandfather Francis IV ruled as the Duke of Modena (1814–1846) and another one Carlos V claimed the Spanish throne as a Carlist pretender (1833–1845). Among Don Jaime's grandparents the only one who actually ruled was Charles III, the Duke of Parma (1849–1854), though the Carlist claimant Juan III posed as the king of Spain (1861–1868) and later also as Jean III, the legitimist king of France (1883–1887). Don Jaime's father, Carlos de Borbón (1848–1909), as Carlos VII was the 4th successive claimant to the Carlist throne (1868–1909) and later as Charles XI a legitimist claimant to the French one (1887–1909). Don Jaime's mother, Marguerite de Bourbon-Parme (1847–1893), was daughter to the second-last ruling Duke of Parma and sister to the last ruler of the Duchy of Parma. In 1894 Don Jaime's father remarried with Berthe de Rohan, an Austrian aristocrat and a distant descendant to a branch of French dukes, but the couple had no children.
Uncles, aunts and cousins
All Don Jaime's uncles and aunts came from European royal or ducal families, with two of them actually ruling: the brother of his mother, Roberto I, was the last ruling Duke of Parma (1854–1859), while the sister of his mother, Alicia de Bourbon-Parme, was married to the last ruling Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand IV (1859–1860). Both rulers were deposed in course of unification of Italy and kept claiming the titles when living on exile. Don Jaime's paternal uncle, the brother of his father Alfonso Carlos de Borbón, at the moment of Don Jaime's death became as Alfonso Carlos I the Carlist pretender to the throne of Spain and as Charles XII the legitimist pretender to the throne of France. Count of Chambord, the last strictly patrilinear descendant to the king of France Charles X and as such the legitimist claimant to the throne of France (1844–1883) was distantly related to Don Jaime as both had a common ancestor 6 (in case Count of Chambord) and 7 (in case of Don Jaime) generations earlier; besides, Count of Chambord was married to a sister of Don Jaime's paternal grandmother and was his own godfather. Out of Don Jaime's 33 cousins many concluded highly aristocratic marriages but there were only two who married rulers: Zita Bourbon-Parme in 1916–1918 was the empress of Austria and the queen of Hungary, while Felix Bourbon-Parme in 1919–1970 was the duke-consort of Luxembourg. A few of his Habsburg-Lothringen cousins were in succession titular claimants to the defunct Grand Duchy of Tuscany, while a few of his Bourbon-Parme cousins were in succession titular claimants to the defunct Duchy of Parma. From 1936 onwards Xavier Bourbon-Parme was the Carlist regent-claimant and later as Javier I the king-claimant of Spain. Some cousins married into royal houses of Italy, Denmark and Saxony. Marriages of Don Jaime's Bourbon-Parme cousins were largely fortunate, while cases of his Habsburg cousins were largely unsuccessful or even scandalous.
Siblings
Don Jaime's sisters did not marry into ruling houses and entered into relations which in 3 out of 4 cases ended up in scandals, attentively followed by European press. The only successful marriage was concluded by his older sister Blanca; in 1889 she married archduke Leopold Salvator of Austria, descendant to a cadet branch of the exiled Tuscan Habsburgs. They had many children and though on exile – after 1918 also from the republican Austria – the couple led a fairly happy family life. Since the 1940s some of their sons posed as Carlist claimants to the throne Spain, related to the so-called Carloctavista branch. The younger sister Elvira was about to marry archduke Leopold Ferdinand Habsburg, son of the 1859-deposed Grand Duke of Tuscany, but due to political reasons the plan was blocked by Emperor Franz Joseph I; in 1896 she fled with an Italian painter Filippo Folchi. Her father announced the daughter "had died for all of us" and the runaway couple with their children shuttled across Europe. Elvira tried to sue her father over inheritance; later she and Folchi parted. It seems that in the late 1920s Don Jaime and Elvira, both living in Paris, maintained some family relationship. One more sister Beatriz in 1892 married Fabrizio Massimo, prince of Roviano, and settled on his estate in Rome. Though with 4 children they were not a happy couple, with constant arguments and her suicide attempt; later the couple kept up appearances but they eventually separated. In 1897 the youngest sister Alicia married Friedrich Schönburg-Waldenburg, a high German aristocrat and owner of many estates in Saxony. Just after giving birth to their only son she abandoned her husband, got the marriage annulled by the Church and in 1903 married an Italian officer Lino del Prete. The couple lived in Tuscany and had 9 children; Alicia was the longest-living one of the siblings and died in 1975.
Own marriage plans and speculations
When he was seventeen Don Jaime was rumoured to marry María, daughter of the late Alfonsist king Alfonso XII. The alleged plan was to mend the feud between the Carlists and Alfonsists, yet there is no indication that the news was anything more than a press speculation. When he was 26, Don Jaime developed at least cordial correspondence with Mathilde, daughter of Prince Ludwig of Bavaria. In unclear circumstances, possibly related to intrigues of his stepmother and political problems with Madrid the relationship dried up. Though when later serving in the Russian army in Warsaw Don Jaime had women in his mind there is no confirmation of any amorous episodes until he was already in his late 30s and subject to concern about lack of Carlist dynastic succession. He was attracted to a 16-year-old Bourbon-Parme cousin Marie-Antoinette, but apparently realised impracticability of the would-be relationship. Don Jaime soon started to pursue her slightly older sister Zita; though some claim that the two were about to get married the girl has never watched her cousin favourably. Rumors related to Patricia Connaught and a niece of Kaiser Wilhelm II followed; there was also a lawsuit about allegedly Don Jaime's son born by his former cook. When he was in his mid-40s the alarm bells were already ringing very loud and succession became a burning political issue. About to turn 50 Don Jaime mounted matrimonial plans focused on Fabiola Massimo, his 19-year-old niece; he already approached the Vatican about a dispensation. The permission has reportedly been denied, either due to protests of his brother-in-law or intrigues of the Madrid court. When he was in his 50s newspapers floated news about Don Jaime's designs related to unnamed "princesas austriacas", "a distinguished French lady" or Blanca de Borbón y León. The last rumours were circulated when aged 58, he was supposed to marry Filipa de Bragança. It seems that at least not all of these speculations should be dismissed as entirely ungrounded.
Childhood and youth
The formative years of Don Jaime are marked by absence of one or another parent; except the years of 1877–1880 the couple spent most of their time apart. Since turning 10 the boy lived away from the family boarded in various educational institutions, meeting his parents and sisters during short holiday spells; the exception were the years of 1886–1889, spent mostly with his mother and siblings in Viareggio. Don Jaime was growing up in rather cosmopolitan ambience, exposed to French, Spanish, German, English and Italian cultures; as a teenager he was already fluent in all these languages.
Childhood
The birth of Don Jaime was celebrated in the Carlist realm as an extension of the dynasty, the baby greeted by hundreds of messages as the future king of Spain. Initially Jaime remained with his parents and slightly older sister in Palais La Faraz, a mansion occupied by the family in Tour de Peilz near Vevey. In 1871 they moved to Villa Bocage in Geneva, where Jaime's mother gave birth to another of his sisters. In 1873 Margarita de Borbón, her 3 children and a small quasi-court of assistants, secretaries and servants transferred to Ville du Midi in Pau. At that time Carlos VII was in Spain leading his troops during the Third Carlist War; in 1874 the boy with his mother visited his father on the Carlist-held territory and dressed in uniform, was cheered with frenetic enthusiasm by Carlist soldiers. Upon return to Pau Margarita gave birth to two more daughters before in September 1876 the mother, 5 children and royal entourage – including preceptors of the boy – settled in a hotel at Rue de la Pompe in Paris. Don Carlos was mostly travelling, first on a journey to America and then to the Balkans; he joined the family in late 1877. Either in late 1876 or in early 1877 Don Jaime started frequenting Collège de l'Immaculée-Conception at Rue de Vaugirard, a prestigious Jesuit establishment. Initially the boy followed a challenging semi-board pattern; waking up as early as 4:30 am he travelled by public transport to the college and for the night he used to return to his family. This changed in 1880, when due to political pressure of the French government Carlos VII was forced to leave France and settled in Venice. At that time relations between Don Jaime's parents have already turned sour; doña Margarita decided not to accompany her husband and settled in own estate near Viareggio. With his parents away, until completing the curriculum in 1881 the boy lived on the college premises with other students.
Teenager
Following a summer break with his parents in Italy in 1881 Don Jaime entered Beaumont College, prestigious Jesuit establishment in Old Windsor near London. It was catering to Catholic aristocracy from all over Europe, though the largest contingent was formed by Irish boys. Initially Jaime lived with his old preceptor Barrena, who settled in Windsor to facilitiate accommodation even though James Hayes was chosen as a new spiritual guide; in 1882 Barrena left and Jaime moved to common dormitory. As perhaps the most prestigious student he received special treatment. Visited by parents and paternal grandfather, who lived in Brighton, Jaime used to spend holidays in Viareggio or Venice. It seems that his relations with other boys were good, though he tended to patronising and excess of ambition. Don Jaime completed the Beaumont curriculum in May 1886. The same year he inherited from the Chambords part of their fortune and real estates in Austria, in particular the Frohsdorf palace. There were plans about further education in Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, but most of 1887 was spent on recovery from very serious health problems which had plagued him few months earlier; part of the scheme was Don Jaime's trip with his Bardi uncles to Egypt and Palestine. Following return to Viareggio in 1888 he embarked on his first diplomatic mission to Vatican; he was also subject to dynastic speculations related to Nocedalista break-up in Spain and these about his future military education in England and would-be service in India. He seems to have stayed with his mother and sisters in Viareggio rather than with his father in Venice, in 1889 recorded as travelling across Europe either on family business, e.g. to attend the wedding of his sister in Frohsdorf, or on leisure, e.g. with his mother visiting the galleries and museums of Paris.
Early adult years
It is not clear whether Carlos VII has discussed with the British his alleged vision of Don Jaime pursuing a military career in England. Eventually in 1890 Don Jaime indeed commenced military education, though not in Sandhurst but in Theresianische Militärakademie in Wiener Neustadt. Still considered childish by his mother, he was accompanied by a family trustee, Miguel Ortigosa. Almost no details on Don Jaime's military education are available and it is not known whether and if yes what army branch he opted for. According to his later opponents in the academy Don Jaime became loose on his Catholic practices and got somewhat derailed from Traditionalist track. He graduated in 1893, but mounting political differences between Carlos VII and the kaiser produced a disaster: Don Jaime was neither promoted to officer rank nor admitted to the imperial army. The years of 1894–1895 were dedicated mostly to travelling, be it distant voyages like the tour to India, Siam, Indoniesia and the Philippines, or shorter trips, e.g. to the Spanish Morocco. It was in 1894 that for the first time since the early childhood days he visited Spain; officially incognito and accompanied by a Vasco-Navarrese Carlist leader Tirso de Olazábal, during his 37-day tour Don Jaime was many times identified. He gave rise to a number of rather friendly anecdotes, while his journey was widely discussed in the press. Most likely in the mid-1890s Don Carlos explored perspectives of his son commencing a military career in one of major European armies. Don Jaime's service in the imperial Austrian army was out of the question; it is not clear whether the British or the German army was at any point considered an option. Eventually Don Carlos renewed his 1877 relations with the St. Petersburg court and some time late 1895 it was agreed that Don Jaime would join the Russian army.
Warsaw spell
Between April and June 1896 Don Jaime joined a cavalry unit in Odessa, where he performed a routine garrison service. In late 1897 he received a transfer order to Warsaw, where he arrived in late March or early April 1898. He spent there almost 6 years on the highly intermittent basis, until he departed for Austria in late 1903. Though in terms of his political career Don Jaime's stay in the city was of little relevance, it is not clear to what extent the service mattered as his formative period.
Background
In the late 19th century Warsaw was the third most populous city of the Russian Empire; with almost 700,000 inhabitants, it was larger than Madrid or Barcelona. According to the official 1897 census, 62% of the population were Poles, 27% Jews, 9% Russians and 2% Germans; not a single Spaniard was listed as living in the city. All officialdom, including top administrative layers, schooling, judiciary, and military, was dominated by the Russians. At that time Warsaw was the centre of Vistula Land, a region that retained some minor legal identity but, in general, was well integrated into the Russian administrative structures. The level of national and social tension was relatively low but occasionally noticeable; in 1898, strikes hit the local metalworking industry and in 1899 1 May demonstration turned into riots.
At the turn of the century Warsaw was vital for Russian military planning. The city was headquarters of the westernmost of 14 Russian military districts, and home to a large military garrison. As since the Berlin Congress of 1878 relations with Germany were steadily deteriorating, the area was of growing concern for the Russian General Staff. Itself a prominent salient flanked by German and Austro-Hungarian provinces, it posed a challenge for planners. The prevailing military strategy, known as Miliutin-Obruchev system, pursued a defensive counteroffensive vision; it admitted that initially it might be necessary to abandon territories west of the Vistula and mount a defence based on seven fortresses, of which Warsaw and the other three would form a forward shield.
Military career
Don Jaime arrived in Warsaw following at least half-a-year spell in the Russian army; he had served in a cavalry regiment in Odessa before. It is not clear why the prince left the Black Sea coast and what political, diplomatic or military mechanism got him landed in Warsaw; the choice was probably determined by family logistics. Though convenient travelwise, given the role of Warsaw garrison the assignment was a challenge from military perspective, especially that don Jaime was assigned to the Life Guard Grodno Hussar Regiment (Гродненский гусарский лейб-гвардии полк). His new unit was a cavalry regiment forming part of the very prestigious if not somewhat snobbish, Russian aristocracy dominated Life-Guard category.
It is not entirely clear what was Don Jaime's rank when he arrived in Warsaw; Spanish press referred to him as "teniente", Polish press referred to him as "chorąży". There is no official Russian document available for consultation; the most likely rank was "Praporshchik" (прапорщик; equivalent to Ensign). On 17 September 1900 he was formally promoted to the rank of "Poruchik" (поручик; equivalent to Lieutenant) and at that rank he served until the end of his actual Warsaw assignment, though in 1904 he was promoted to the rank of "Kapitan" (капитан; equivalent to Captain) and finally to "Polkovnik" (полковник; equivalent to Colonel). None of the sources consulted provides any information on don Jaime's function in the regiment and it is not known whether he served in regimental staff or with any of the squadrons. In late 1902 the press reported that upon return from a just commencing 6-month leave, the following May don Jaime would intend to seek release from duty, but in late summer 1903 he was still reported serving. In October 1903 he was transferred from the Hussar Regiment to personal staff assigned to the Warsaw district commander.
Duration and sub-periods
Though he was formally appointed to Warsaw in December 1897 and though it is likely he spent a few brief spells in the city between 1904 and 1906, there is no confirmation of don Jaime actually serving in Warsaw before March 1898 and after October 1903. His duty was largely performed on the on and off basis; in-between the above dates he spent in total some 40 months in the city, on average slightly more than half a year per annum. Except 1898 and 1899 he used to leave around November, as allegedly the local autumn weather did not serve him well; don Jaime was usually returning to service around April. The longest uninterrupted stay identified was between November 1899 and June 1900. Punctuated by at least month-long breaks of leave periods, his service in Warsaw broke down to 8 separate strings.
When away, don Jaime was either on leave in Austria-Hungary, Italy and France or on service assignments with the Russian army: as member of demarcation commission at Russian frontier with Turkey, Afghanistan and Persia (from summer to fall 1899), in combat units during the Boxer Uprising (from summer 1900 till spring 1901) and during the Russo-Japanese War (starting the spring of 1904). He also spent brief rest periods in the Polish countryside. He was last reported in Warsaw in late autumn of 1903, leaving the city some time by the end of the year. As at that time he was already released from the hussar regiment, it is likely he intended to terminate his Warsaw service. During outbreak of the war against Japan in early 1904 Don Jaime was with his father in Venice, where he was reached by the call to arms; before having been received by Nicholas II in St. Petersburg in March he was likely to have stayed few days in Warsaw, though this was not recorded by the local press. It is also possible—though not confirmed in sources—that he spent few days in Warsaw in June 1905 (en route from Austria to St. Petersburg and back) and in July/August 1906 (en route from Paris to St. Petersburg and back)
Private life
Initially Don Jaime lived in a semi-rural, military-dominated Sielce suburb, hardly within the administrative city limits; his residence was a modest one-room apartment in the regimental officers' barracks building at Агриколя Дольная street, with two batmen – one of them Spanish – living next door. Starting June 1900 he was already reported as living at Шопена street 8, in a plushy, prestigious area and in a newly constructed apartment building. Despite his modest rank don Jaime took part in official feasts seated among most prestigious participants, be it members of the House of Romanov, top Russian generals like military district commander or civil officials like president of Warsaw. Very sporadically he was reported as taking part in gatherings of local elites, either those associated with visits of his distant relatives like Ferdinand Duke of Alençon or feasts of apparently unrelated Polish aristocrats like count Mieczysław Woroniecki.
Though possibly familiar with religious hierarchs, in general Don Jaime was not listed as engaged in local community life; he declared spending his free time in theatres and restaurants and indeed was noted there. He was, however, a noticeable city figure as a sportsman; apart from joining the local horse racing society he was particularly recognised for automobile activities. He owned one of the first cars in Warsaw, a De Dion Bouton machine allegedly well recognised by the city dwellers. The only local he seemed to have been in closer relations with was Stanisław Grodzki, a Warsaw automobile pioneer and owner of the first car dealership; local motor fans were greeting Don Jaime when he was launching his automobile trips. Rather accidentally don Jaime was also acknowledged and cheered as a sportsman by "forgemen, peasants and innkeepers". Spanish press reported Carlist officials departing from Madrid to see him, but the Polish one has not noted any visits paid.
Politics
The Warsaw press of the era was fairly well informed about developments in Spain, with war against the United States systematically reported and even results of the Cortes elections discussed down to minuscule details; e. g. in 1899 there were 4 Carlists noted as elected. Spanish political life was depicted rather accurately if not indeed prophetically, though at times with some patronising tones. It was acknowledged—even in jokes—that very few Poles knew who the Carlists were. Despite occasional references to Carlism in news columns, cases of linking these reports with don Jaime residing in Warsaw were rather exceptional. Usually press notes referred to don Jaime as "His Royal Highness", they were maintained in polite style which has never turned into anything more than sympathetic desinteressement. Not a single case of either hostile or friendly stance towards the Carlists has been identified. Though interviews with don Jaime adhered to respectful and warm tone, they by no means amounted to political proselytism; some of them sounded slightly ironic about the Carlist cause.
Historically relations between Russia and Carlism have been marked by indifference with occasional demonstrations of mutual sympathy. Don Jaime has not been noted as involved in any political initiatives, though his taking part in official Russian feasts with members of the House of Romanov participating was clearly flavoured with political undertones. At one opportunity the prince made some effort to court the Poles, referring to alleged Polish combatants in ranks of the legitimist troops during the last Carlist war; official Spanish diplomatic services tried to keep a close watch on him. National and social unrest which erupted in Warsaw in 1905 occurred after don Jaime had already left the city; he had little opportunity to make his own opinion let alone take sides. It is not clear whether vague personal references to the Russian revolution, made by don Jaime in his 23 April 1931 manifesto, were anyhow related to the 1905 events.
Warsaw spell in perspective
Don Jaime joined the Russian army in his mid-20s, in-between youth and mid-age, straightforward, easy-going, just about to get married and to launch his international career. His last, brief Warsaw spells occurred when he was in his mid-30s, a solitary who by some was already viewed as a bit of a disappointment. For the rest of his life he remained a highly ambiguous if not mysterious figure and is as such acknowledged in historiography. It is not clear to what extent service in the Russian army contributed to his formation. Imperial Guards corps officers made a peculiar company, with own identity, values and rituals, especially in an ethnically alien ambience. According to a Polish cliché a cynical lot, their preferred sports were allegedly womanising, drinking and tormenting Jews in the jolly westernmost garrison of the Empire, in Russian officer-speak known as весёлая варшавка. Some of his Carlist opponents claimed that in the early 1900s don Jaime was already ideologically derailed.
Don Jaime is not known to have publicly and explicitly referred to the Warsaw service in the decades to come. In Spanish historiography the Warsaw spell is usually treated marginally. Don Jaime's military career in the Far East is at times acknowledged as sort of a curiosity, though his service in the Russian army is mentioned when discussing controversies within Carlism related to Spain's role in the First World War. Historiographic works on Carlism focus either on don Jaime's role in internal strife in the 1910s or on his very last years during Berenguer's dictablanda and the Second Spanish Republic in the early 1930s. In Polish historiography his hussars spell went largely unnoticed. Dedicated works dealing with Spanish-Polish relations acknowledge even brief Polish episodes of celebrities like Pablo Picasso or Carmen Laforet but they ignore don Jaime, even though along Sofía Casanova (1907–1945) and Ignacio Hidalgo de Cisneros (1950–1962) he is one of the best-known Spaniards permanently residing in Warsaw.
Claimant to the Spanish and French thrones
On 18 July 1909 Jaime succeeded his father as Carlist claimant to the throne of Spain and Legitimist claimant to the throne of France. As Carlist claimant to Spain he was known as Jaime III, but used the style Duke of Madrid. As Legitimist claimant to France he was known as Jacques I, but used the style Duke of Anjou.
Jaime retired from the Russian army and henceforward lived mostly at Schloss Frohsdorf in Lanzenkirchen in Austria and at his apartment on Avenue Hoche in Paris. He visited Spain incognito on a number of occasions. He also owned the Villa dei Borbone at Tenuta Reale near Viareggio in Italy which he had inherited from his mother.
For part of World War I Jaime lived under house-arrest at Schloss Frohsdorf in Austria.
On 16 April 1923, by a decree to his Delegate-General in Spain, the Marques de Villores, Jaime created the Order of Prohibited Legitimacy (Orden de la Legitimidad Proscrita) to honour those who suffered imprisonment in Spain or were exiled for their loyalty to the Carlist cause.
In April 1931 the constitutional king of Spain Alfonso XIII was forced to leave the country and the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed. Jaime issued a manifesto calling upon all monarchists to rally to the legitimist cause. Several months later, on 23 September, Jaime received Alfonso at his apartment in Paris. Two days later Alfonso and his wife Ena received Jaime at the Hotel Savoy d'Avon near Fontainebleau. Jaime conferred the collar of the Order of the Holy Spirit upon Alfonso. These meetings marked a certain rapprochement between the two claimants to the Spanish throne. According to some authors – contested by the others – the two signed or verbally agreed an arrangement which would terminate the Alfonsist-Carlist discord.
A week after his meetings with Alfonso, Jaime died in Paris. He was buried at the Villa dei Borbone at Tenuta Reale. He was succeeded in his Spanish and French claims by his uncle Alfonso Carlos, Duke of San Jaime.
Ancestry
Notes
External links
Don Jaime on 1911 video footage (00:41 to 1:09)
Grodno Hussar Regiment march
Encore – lot of a Russian officer, Russian painting, Polish song
Viva Cristo Rey – contemporary Carlist propaganda (don Jaime 1:28 and 2:49)
Bibliography
Alcalá, César, Jaime de Borbón. El último rey romántico, Madrid 2011,
"Don Jaime is Dead: Carlist Pretender". The New York Times (3 October 1931): 11.
"The Duke of Madrid, Soldier and Traveller". The Times (5 October 1931): 19.
Елец, Юлий Лукьянович, История Лейб-Гвардии Гродненского Гусарского полка, New York 2015,
Andrés Martín, Juan Ramón de, El cisma mellista: historia de una ambición política. Madrid: Actas Editorial, 2000,
Melgar del Rey, Francisco Melgar de, Don Jaime, el príncipe caballero. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1932.
Melgar del Rey, Francisco Melgar de, El noble final de la escisión dinástica. Madrid: Consejo Privado de S.A.R. el Conde de Barcelona, 1964.
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1870 births
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doc-en-3072 | The German Confederation () was an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe. It was created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as a replacement of the former Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved in 1806.
The Confederation had only one organ, the Federal Convention (or Federal Assembly). The Convention consisted of the representatives of the member states. The most important issues had to be decided on unanimously. The Convention was presided by the representative of Austria. This was a formality, however: the Confederation did not have a head of state, since it was not a state.
The Confederation, on the one hand, was a strong alliance between its member states because federal law was superior to state law (the decisions of the Federal Convention were binding for the member states). Additionally, the Confederation had been established for eternity with it being impossible to dissolve it (legally), with no member states being able to leave it and no new member being able join without universal consent in the Federal Convention. On the other hand, the Confederation was weakened by its very structure and member states, partly because most important decisions in the Federal Convention required unanimity and the purpose of the Confederation was limited to only security matters. On top of that, the functioning of the Confederation depended on the cooperation of the two most populous member states, Austria and Prussia which in reality were often in opposition.
The German revolutions of 1848–1849, motivated by liberal, democratic, socialist and nationalist sentiments, attempted to transform the Confederation into a unified German federal state with a liberal constitution (usually called the Frankfurt Constitution in English). The ruling body of the Confederation, the Confederate Diet, was dissolved on 12 July 1848, but was re-established in 1850 after the revolution was crushed by Austria, Prussia and other states.
The Confederation was finally dissolved after the victory of the Kingdom of Prussia in the Seven Weeks' War over the Austrian Empire in 1866. The dispute over which had the inherent right to rule German lands ended in favour of Prussia, leading to the creation of the North German Confederation under Prussian leadership in 1867, to which the eastern portions of the Kingdom of Prussia were added. A number of South German states remained independent until they joined the North German Confederation, which was renamed and proclaimed as the "German Empire" in 1871, as the unified Germany (aside from Austria) with the Prussian king as emperor (Kaiser) after the victory over French Emperor Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
Most historians have judged the Confederation to have been weak and ineffective, as well as an obstacle to the creation of a German nation-state. This weakness was part of its design, as the European Great Powers, including Prussia and especially Austria, did not want it to become a nation-state. However, the Confederation was not a 'loose' tie between the German states, as it was impossible to leave the Confederation, and as Confederation law stood above the law of the aligned states. The constitutional weakness of the Confederation lay in the principle of unanimity in the Diet and the limits of the Confederation's scope: it was essentially a military alliance to defend Germany against external attacks and internal riots. Ironically, the War of 1866 proved its ineffectiveness, as it was unable to combine the federal troops in order to fight the Prussian secession.
History
Background
The War of the Third Coalition lasted from about 1803 to 1806. Following defeat at the Battle of by the French under Napoleon in December 1805, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II abdicated, and the Empire was dissolved on 6 August 1806. The resulting Treaty of established the Confederation of the Rhine in July 1806, joining sixteen of France's allies among the German states (including Bavaria and ). After the Battle of of October 1806 in the War of the Fourth Coalition, various other German states, including Saxony and Westphalia, also joined the Confederation. Only Austria, Prussia, Danish , Swedish Pomerania, and the French-occupied Principality of Erfurt stayed outside the Confederation of the Rhine. The War of the Sixth Coalition from 1812 to winter 1814 saw the defeat of Napoleon and the liberation of Germany. In June 1814, the famous German patriot Heinrich vom Stein created the Central Managing Authority for Germany (Zentralverwaltungsbehörde) in Frankfurt to replace the defunct Confederation of the Rhine. However, plenipotentiaries gathered at the Congress of Vienna were determined to create a weaker union of German states than envisaged by Stein.
Establishment
The German Confederation was created by the 9th Act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition.
The Confederation was formally created by a second treaty, the Final Act of the Ministerial Conference to Complete and Consolidate the Organization of the German Confederation. This treaty was not concluded and signed by the parties until 15 May 1820. States joined the German Confederation by becoming parties to the second treaty. The states designated for inclusion in the Confederation were:
In 1839, as compensation for the loss of part of the province of to Belgium, the Duchy of Limburg was created and became a member of the German Confederation (held by the Netherlands jointly with Luxembourg) until the dissolution of 1866. In 1867 the duchy was declared to be an "integral part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands". The cities of Maastricht and Venlo were not included in the Confederation.
The Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia were the largest and by far the most powerful members of the Confederation. Large parts of both countries were not included in the Confederation, because they had not been part of the former Holy Roman Empire, nor had the greater parts of their armed forces been incorporated in the federal army. Austria and Prussia each had one vote in the Federal Assembly.
Six other major states had one vote each in the Federal Assembly: the Kingdom of Bavaria, the Kingdom of Saxony, the Kingdom of , the Electorate of Hesse, the Grand Duchy of Baden, and the Grand Duchy of Hesse.
Three foreign monarchs ruled member states: the King of Denmark as Duke of the Duchy of Holstein and Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg; the King of the Netherlands as Grand Duke of Luxembourg and (from 1839) Duke of the Duchy of Limburg; and the King of Great Britain (until 1837) as King of Hanover were members of the German Confederation. Each of them had a vote in the Federal Assembly. As at its foundation in 1815, that left four member states which were ruled by foreign monarchs, as the King of Denmark was Duke of both Holstein and Saxe-Lauenburg.
The four free cities of , , , and shared one vote in the Federal Assembly.
The 23 remaining states (as at its formation in 1815) shared five votes in the Federal Assembly: -
1. Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Saxe-Hildburghausen (5 states)
2. Brunswick and Nassau (2 states)
3. Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz (2 states)
4. Oldenburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Bernburg, Anhalt-Köthen, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen (6 states)
5. Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Liechtenstein, Reuss (Elder Branch), Reuss (Younger Branch), Schaumburg-Lippe, Lippe and Waldeck (8 states)
There were therefore 17 votes in the Federal Assembly.
Armed forces
The German Federal Army (Deutsches Bundesheer) was supposed to collectively defend the German Confederation from external enemies, primarily France. Successive laws passed by the Confederate Diet set the form and function of the army, as well as contribution limits of the member states. The Diet had the power to declare war and was responsible for appointing a supreme commander of the army and commanders of the individual army corps. This made mobilization extremely slow and added a political dimension to the army. In addition, the Diet oversaw the construction and maintenance of several German Federal Fortresses and collected funds annually from the member states for this purpose.
Projections of army strength were published in 1835, but the work of forming the Army Corps did not commence until 1840 as a consequence of the Rhine Crisis. Money for the fortresses were determined by an act of the Confederate Diet in that year. By 1846, Luxemburg still had not formed its own contingent, and Prussia was rebuffed for offering to supply 1,450 men to garrison the Luxemburg fortress that should have been supplied by Waldeck and the two Lippes. In that same year, it was decided that a common symbol for the Federal Army should be the old Imperial two-headed eagle, but without crown, scepter, or sword, as any of those devices encroached on the individual sovereignty of the states. King Frederick William IV of Prussia was among those who derided the "disarmed imperial eagle" as a national symbol.
The German Federal Army was divided into ten Army Corps (later expanded to include a Reserve Corps). However, the Army Corps were not exclusive to the German Confederation but composed from the national armies of the member states, and did not include all of the armed forces of a state. For example, Prussia's army consisted of nine Army Corps but contributed only three to the German Federal Army.
The strength of the mobilized German Federal Army was projected to total 303,484 men in 1835 and 391,634 men in 1860, with the individual states providing the following figures:
Notes
Situation in history
Between 1806 and 1815, Napoleon organized the German states, aside from Prussia and Austria, into the Confederation of the Rhine, but this collapsed after his defeats in 1812 to 1815. The German Confederation had roughly the same boundaries as the Empire at the time of the French Revolution (less what is now Belgium). It also kept intact most of Confederation's reconstituted member states and their boundaries. The member states, drastically reduced to 39 from more than 300 (see ) under the Holy Roman Empire, were recognized as fully sovereign. The members pledged themselves to mutual defense, and joint maintenance of the fortresses at Mainz, the city of Luxembourg, , , and .
The only organ of the Confederation was the Federal Assembly (officially , often called ), which consisted of the delegates of the states' governments. There was no head of state, but the Austrian delegate presided over the Assembly (according to the Bundesakte). Austria did not have extra powers, but consequently the Austrian delegate was called and Austria the (presiding power). The Assembly met in Frankfurt.
The Confederation was enabled to accept and deploy ambassadors. It allowed ambassadors of the European powers to the Assembly, but rarely deployed ambassadors itself.
During the revolution of 1848/49 the Federal Assembly was inactive. It transferred its powers to the , the revolutionary German Central Government of the Frankfurt National Assembly. After crushing the revolution and illegally disbanding the National Assembly, the Prussian King failed to create a German nation state by himself. The Federal Assembly was revived in 1850 on Austrian initiative, but only fully reinstalled in the Summer of 1851.
Rivalry between Prussia and Austria grew more and more, especially after 1859. The Confederation was dissolved in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian War, and was succeeded in 1866 by the Prussian-dominated North German Confederation. Unlike the German Confederation, the North German Confederation was in fact a true state. Its territory comprised the parts of the German Confederation north of the river Main, plus Prussia's eastern territories and the Duchy of , but excluded Austria and the other southern German states.
Prussia's influence was widened by the Franco-Prussian War resulting in the proclamation of the German Empire at on 18 January 1871, which united the North German Federation with the southern German states. All the constituent states of the former German Confederation became part of the in 1871, except Austria, Luxembourg, the Duchy of Limburg, and Liechtenstein.
Impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic invasions
The late 18th century was a period of political, economic, intellectual, and cultural reforms, the Enlightenment (represented by figures such as Locke, , , and Adam Smith), but also involving early Romanticism, and climaxing with the French Revolution, where freedom of the individual and nation was asserted against privilege and custom. Representing a great variety of types and theories, they were largely a response to the disintegration of previous cultural patterns, coupled with new patterns of production, specifically the rise of industrial capitalism.
However, the defeat of Napoleon enabled conservative and reactionary regimes such as those of the Kingdom of Prussia, the Austrian Empire, and Tsarist Russia to survive, laying the groundwork for the Congress of Vienna and the alliance that strove to oppose radical demands for change ushered in by the French Revolution. The Great Powers at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 aimed to restore Europe (as far as possible) to its pre-war conditions by combating both liberalism and nationalism and by creating barriers around France. With Austria's position on the continent now intact and ostensibly secure under its reactionary premier , the Habsburg empire would serve as a barrier to contain the emergence of Italian and German nation-states as well, in addition to containing France. But this reactionary balance of power, aimed at blocking German and Italian nationalism on the continent, was precarious.
After Napoleon's final defeat in 1815, the surviving member states of the defunct Holy Roman Empire joined to form the German Confederation ()—a rather loose organization, especially because the two great rivals, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia, each feared domination by the other.
In Prussia the rulers forged a centralized state. By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia, grounded in the virtues of its established military aristocracy (the ) and stratified by rigid hierarchical lines, had been surpassed militarily and economically by France. After 1807, Prussia's defeats by Napoleonic France highlighted the need for administrative, economic, and social reforms to improve the efficiency of the bureaucracy and encourage practical merit-based education. Inspired by the Napoleonic organization of German and Italian principalities, the Prussian Reform Movement led by and Count was conservative, enacted to preserve aristocratic privilege while modernizing institutions.
Outside Prussia, industrialization progressed slowly, and was held back because of political disunity, conflicts of interest between the nobility and merchants, and the continued existence of the guild system, which discouraged competition and innovation. While this kept the middle class at bay, affording the old order a measure of stability not seen in France, Prussia's vulnerability to Napoleon's military proved to many among the old order that a fragile, divided, and traditionalist Germany would be easy prey for its cohesive and industrializing neighbor.
The reforms laid the foundation for Prussia's future military might by professionalizing the military and decreeing universal military conscription. In order to industrialize Prussia, working within the framework provided by the old aristocratic institutions, land reforms were enacted to break the monopoly of the s on land ownership, thereby also abolishing, among other things, the feudal practice of serfdom.
Romanticism, nationalism, and liberalism in the era
Although the forces unleashed by the French Revolution were seemingly under control after the Vienna Congress, the conflict between conservative forces and liberal nationalists was only deferred at best. The era until the failed 1848 revolution, in which these tensions built up, is commonly referred to as ("pre-March"), in reference to the outbreak of riots in March 1848.
This conflict pitted the forces of the old order against those inspired by the French Revolution and the Rights of Man. The sociological breakdown of the competition was, roughly, the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie (engaged mostly in commerce, trade, and industry), and the growing (and increasingly radicalized) industrial working class; and the other side associated with landowning aristocracy or military aristocracy (the s) in Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy in Austria, and the conservative notables of the small princely states and city-states in Germany.
Meanwhile, demands for change from below had been fomenting due to the influence of the French Revolution. Throughout the German Confederation, Austrian influence was paramount, drawing the ire of the nationalist movements. considered nationalism, especially the nationalist youth movement, the most pressing danger: German nationalism might not only repudiate Austrian dominance of the Confederation, but also stimulate nationalist sentiment within the Austrian Empire itself. In a multi-national polyglot state in which Slavs and Magyars outnumbered the Germans, the prospects of Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, Serb, or Croatian sentiment along with middle class liberalism was certainly horrifying to the monarchist landed aristocracy.
Figures like , , , , , , and rose in the era. Father 's gymnastic associations exposed middle class German youth to nationalist and democratic ideas, which took the form of the nationalistic and liberal democratic college fraternities known as the . The Wartburg Festival in 1817 celebrated Martin Luther as a proto-German nationalist, linking Lutheranism to German nationalism, and helping arouse religious sentiments for the cause of German nationhood. The festival culminated in the burning of several books and other items that symbolized reactionary attitudes. One item was a book by . In 1819, was accused of spying for Russia, and then murdered by a theological student, , who was executed for the crime. Sand belonged to a militant nationalist faction of the . used the murder as a pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which dissolved the , cracked down on the liberal press, and seriously restricted academic freedom.
High culture
German artists and intellectuals, heavily influenced by the French Revolution, turned to Romanticism. At the universities, high-powered professors developed international reputations, especially in the humanities led by history and philology, which brought a new historical perspective to the study of political history, theology, philosophy, language, and literature. With (1770–1831) in philosophy, (1768–1834) in theology and (1795–1886) in history, the University of Berlin, founded in 1810, became the world's leading university. , for example, professionalized history and set the world standard for historiography. By the 1830s, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology had emerged with world class science, led by (1769–1859) in natural science and (1777–1855) in mathematics. Young intellectuals often turned to politics, but their support for the failed Revolution of 1848 forced many into exile.
Population
Demographic transition
The population of the German Confederation (excluding Austria) grew 60% from 1815 to 1865, from 21,000,000 to 34,000,000. The era saw the demographic transition take place in Germany. It was a transition from high birth rates and high death rates to low birth and death rates as the country developed from a pre-industrial to a modernized agriculture and supported a fast-growing industrialized urban economic system. In previous centuries, the shortage of land meant that not everyone could marry, and marriages took place after age 25. The high birthrate was offset by a very high rate of infant mortality, plus periodic epidemics and harvest failures. After 1815, increased agricultural productivity meant a larger food supply, and a decline in famines, epidemics, and malnutrition. This allowed couples to marry earlier, and have more children. Arranged marriages became uncommon as young people were now allowed to choose their own marriage partners, subject to a veto by the parents. The upper and middle classes began to practice birth control, and a little later so too did the peasants. The population in 1800 was heavily rural, with only 8% of the people living in communities of 5,000 to 100,000 and another 2% living in cities of more than 100,000.
Nobility
In a heavily agrarian society, land ownership played a central role. Germany's nobles, especially those in the East called , dominated not only the localities, but also the Prussian court, and especially the Prussian army. Increasingly after 1815, a centralized Prussian government based in Berlin took over the powers of the nobles, which in terms of control over the peasantry had been almost absolute. They retained control of the judicial system on their estates until 1848, as well as control of hunting and game laws. They paid no land tax until 1861 and kept their police authority until 1872, and controlled church affairs into the early 20th century. To help the nobility avoid indebtedness, Berlin set up a credit institution to provide capital loans in 1809, and extended the loan network to peasants in 1849. When the German Empire was established in 1871, the nobility controlled the army and the Navy, the bureaucracy, and the royal court; they generally set governmental policies.
Peasantry
Peasants continued to center their lives in the village, where they were members of a corporate body and helped manage community resources and monitor community life. In the East, they were serfs who were bound prominently to parcels of land. In most of Germany, farming was handled by tenant farmers who paid rents and obligatory services to the landlord, who was typically a nobleman. Peasant leaders supervised the fields and ditches and grazing rights, maintained public order and morals, and supported a village court which handled minor offenses. Inside the family, the patriarch made all the decisions and tried to arrange advantageous marriages for his children. Much of the villages' communal life centered around church services and holy days. In Prussia, the peasants drew lots to choose conscripts required by the army. The noblemen handled external relationships and politics for the villages under their control, and were not typically involved in daily activities or decisions.
Rapidly growing cities
After 1815, the urban population grew rapidly, due primarily to the influx of young people from the rural areas. Berlin grew from 172,000 people in 1800 to 826,000 in 1870; Hamburg grew from 130,000 to 290,000; Munich from 40,000 to 269,000; (now ) from 60,000 to 208,000; Dresden from 60,000 to 177,000; (now Kaliningrad) from 55,000 to 112,000. Offsetting this growth, there was extensive emigration, especially to the United States. Emigration totaled 480,000 in the 1840s, 1,200,000 in the 1850s, and 780,000 in the 1860s.
Ethnic minorities
Despite its name and intention, the German Confederation was not entirely populated by Germans; many people of other ethnic groups lived within its borders:
French-speaking Walloons lived in western Luxembourg prior to its division in 1839;
the Duchy of Limburg (a member between 1839 and 1866) had an entirely Dutch population;
Italians and Slovenians lived in south and southeast Austria;
Bohemia and Moravia, of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown were inhabited by a majority of Czechs;
Silesia had a Polish minority, while Sorbs were present in the parts of Saxony and the Prussian province of Brandenburg known as Lusatia.
: economic integration
Further efforts to improve the confederation began in 1834 with the establishment of a customs union, the . In 1834, the Prussian regime sought to stimulate wider trade advantages and industrialism by decree—a logical continuation of the program of and less than two decades earlier. Historians have seen three Prussian goals: as a political tool to eliminate Austrian influence in Germany; as a way to improve the economies; and to strengthen Germany against potential French aggression while reducing the economic independence of smaller states.
Inadvertently, these reforms sparked the unification movement and augmented a middle class demanding further political rights, but at the time backwardness and Prussia's fears of its stronger neighbors were greater concerns. The customs union opened up a common market, ended tariffs between states, and standardized weights, measures, and currencies within member states (excluding Austria), forming the basis of a proto-national economy.
By 1842 the included most German states. Within the next twenty years, the output of German furnaces increased fourfold. Coal production grew rapidly as well. In turn, German industry (especially the works established by the family) introduced the steel gun, cast-steel axle, and a breech-loading rifle, exemplifying Germany's successful application of technology to weaponry. Germany's security was greatly enhanced, leaving the Prussian state and the landowning aristocracy secure from outside threat. German manufacturers also produced heavily for the civilian sector. No longer would Britain supply half of Germany's needs for manufactured goods, as it did beforehand. However, by developing a strong industrial base, the Prussian state strengthened the middle class and thus the nationalist movement. Economic integration, especially increased national consciousness among the German states, made political unity a far likelier scenario. Germany finally began exhibiting all the features of a proto-nation.
The crucial factor enabling Prussia's conservative regime to survive the era was a rough coalition between leading sectors of the landed upper class and the emerging commercial and manufacturing interests. Even if the commercial and industrial element is weak, it must be strong enough (or soon become strong enough) to become worthy of co-optation, and the French Revolution terrified enough perceptive elements of Prussia's s for the state to be sufficiently accommodating.
While relative stability was maintained until 1848, with enough bourgeois elements still content to exchange the "right to rule for the right to make money", the landed upper class found its economic base sinking. While the brought economic progress and helped to keep the bourgeoisie at bay for a while, it increased the ranks of the middle class swiftly—the very social base for the nationalism and liberalism that the Prussian state sought to stem.
The was a move toward economic integration, modern industrial capitalism, and the victory of centralism over localism, quickly bringing to an end the era of guilds in the small German princely states. This led to the 1844 revolt of the Silesian Weavers, who saw their livelihood destroyed by the flood of new manufactures.
The also weakened Austrian domination of the Confederation as economic unity increased the desire for political unity and nationalism.
Revolutions of 1848
News of the 1848 Revolution in Paris quickly reached discontented bourgeois liberals, republicans and more radical working-men. The first revolutionary uprisings in Germany began in the state of in March 1848. Within a few days, there were revolutionary uprisings in other states including Austria, and finally in Prussia. On 15 March 1848, the subjects of of Prussia vented their long-repressed political aspirations in violent rioting in Berlin, while barricades were erected in the streets of Paris. King of France fled to Great Britain. gave in to the popular fury, and promised a constitution, a parliament, and support for German unification, safeguarding his own rule and regime.
On 18 May, the Frankfurt Parliament (Frankfurt Assembly) opened its first session, with delegates from various German states. It was immediately divided between those favoring a (small German) or (greater German) solution. The former favored offering the imperial crown to Prussia. The latter favored the Habsburg crown in Vienna, which would integrate Austria proper and Bohemia (but not Hungary) into the new Germany.
In May to August, the Assembly installed a provisional German Central Government, while conservatives swiftly moved against the reformers. As in Austria and Russia, this middle-class assertion increased authoritarian and reactionary sentiments among the landed upper class, whose economic position was declining. They turned to political levers to preserve their rule. As the Prussian army proved loyal, and the peasants were uninterested, regained his confidence. The Assembly belatedly issued its Declaration of the Rights of the German People; a constitution was drawn up (excluding Austria, which openly rejected the Assembly), and the leadership of the was offered to , who refused to "pick up a crown from the gutter". As the monarchist forces marched their armies to crush rebellions in cities and towns throughout Austria and Germany the Frankfurt Assembly was forced to flee, first to Stuttgart and then to Württemberg, where, reduced to so few deputies that it could no longer form a quorum, its final meeting was forcibly dispersed on 18 June 1849 by the Württemberg army. With the complete triumph of monarchist reaction rampaging across all of Europe, thousands of German middle class liberals and "red" Forty-eighters were forced to flee into exile (primarily to the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia).
In 1849, proposed his own constitution. His document concentrated real power in the hands of the King and the upper classes, and called for a confederation of North German states—the Erfurt Union. Austria and Russia, fearing a strong, Prussian-dominated Germany, responded by pressuring Saxony and Hanover to withdraw, and forced Prussia to abandon the scheme in a treaty dubbed the "humiliation of ".
Dissolution of the Confederation
Rise of Bismarck
A new generation of statesmen responded to popular demands for national unity for their own ends, continuing Prussia's tradition of autocracy and reform from above. Germany found an able leader to accomplish the seemingly paradoxical task of conservative modernization. In 1851, Bismarck was appointed by King Wilhelm I of Prussia (the future Kaiser Wilhelm I) to circumvent the liberals in the Landtag of Prussia, who resisted Wilhelm's autocratic militarism. Bismarck told the Diet, "The great questions of the day are not decided by speeches and majority votes ... but by blood and iron" – that is, by warfare and industrial might. Prussia already had a great army; it was now augmented by rapid growth of economic power.
Gradually, Bismarck subdued the more restive elements of the middle class with a combination of threats and reforms, reacting to the revolutionary sentiments expressed in 1848 by providing them with the economic opportunities for which the urban middle sectors had been fighting.
Seven Weeks' War
The German Confederation ended as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between Austrian Empire and its allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies on the other. The Confederation had 33 members immediately before its dissolution. In the Prague peace treaty, on 23 August 1866, Austria had to accept that the Confederation was dissolved. The following day, the remaining member states confirmed the dissolution. The treaty allowed Prussia to create a new (a new kind of federation) in the North of Germany. The South German states were allowed to create a South German Confederation but this did not come into existence.
North German Confederation
Prussia created the North German Confederation in 1867, a federal state combining all German states north of the river Main and also the Hohenzollern territories in Swabia. Besides Austria, the South German states Bavaria, , , and Hesse- remained separate from the rest of Germany. However, due to the successful prosecution of the Franco-Prussian War, the four southern states joined the North German Confederation by treaties in November 1870.
German Empire
As the Franco-Prussian War drew to a close, King Ludwig II of Bavaria was persuaded to ask King Wilhelm to assume the crown of the new German Empire. On 1 January 1871, the Empire was declared by the presiding princes and generals in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, near Paris. The Diet of the North German Confederation moved to rename the North German Confederation as the German Empire and gave the title of German Emperor to the King of Prussia. The new constitution of the state, the Constitution of the German Confederation, effectively transformed the Diet of the Confederation into the German Parliament (Reichstag).
Legacy
The modern German nation state known as the Federal Republic is the continuation of the North German Confederation of 1867. This North German Confederation, a federal state, was a totally new creation: the law of the German Confederation ended, and new law came into existence. The German Confederation was, according to historian Kotulla, an association of states (Staatenbund) with some elements of a federal state (Bundesstaat), and the North German Confederation was a federal state with some elements of an association of states.
Still, the discussions and ideas of the period 1815-66 had a huge influence on the constitution of the North German Confederation. Most notably may be the Federal Council, the organ representing the member states. It is a certain copy of the 1815 Federal Convention of the German Confederation. The predecessor of that Federal Council of 1867 is the modern Bundesrat of the Federal Republic.
The German Confederation does not play a very prominent role in German historiography and national culture. It is mainly seen negatively as an instrument to oppress the liberal, democratic and national movements of the period. On the contrary, the March revolution (1849/49) with its events and institutions attract much more attention and partially devotion. The most important memorial sites are the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, which is now a cultural hall of national importance, and the Rastatt castle with the Erinnerungsstätte für die Freiheitsbewegungen in der deutschen Geschichte (a museum and memorial site for the freedom movements in the German history, not only the March revolution).
The remnants of the federal fortifications are certain tourists attractions at least regionally or for people interested in military history.
Territorial legacy
The current countries whose territory were partly or entirely located inside the boundaries of the German Confederation 1815–1866 are:
Germany (all states except Southern in the north of )
Austria (all states except )
Luxembourg (entire territory)
Liechtenstein (entire territory)
Netherlands (Duchy of Limburg, was a member of the Confederation from 1839 till 1866)
Czech Republic (entire territory)
Slovenia (except for and the municipalities of , and )
Poland (West Pomeranian Voivodship, Voivodship, Lower Silesian Voivodship, Voivodship, part of Silesia – overwhelmingly German speaking at the time; East Prussia, West Prussia, and much of the Grand Duchy of Posen were admitted into the Confederation on 11 April 1848, but the terms of the restored Confederate Diet removed these territories on 30 May 1851)
Belgium (nine of the eleven cantons of Eupen-Malmedy, Liège Province); the larger province of Luxembourg had left the Confederation at its accession to Belgium in 1839
Italy (autonomous region of /, the Province of Trieste, most of the Province of Gorizia except the enclave, and the municipalities of , , , , , and in the Province of Udine)
Croatia (the territory in Istria county and the coastal strip between and in the Liburnia region)
Denmark proper has never been a member state, but its king was at the same time the duke of the member states Holstein and Lauenburg. The Duchy of Schleswig (which nowadays partially belongs to Denmark) was never a part of the Confederation although it was mentioned in the 1849 Frankfurt Constitution and governed briefly by a government installed by the German Central Government. However, Holstein, Lauenburg and Schleswig were combined under an Austrian-Prussian condominium in 1864–1866.
See also
States of the German Confederation
History of Germany
German Empire
North German Confederation
Former countries in Europe after 1815
Federal Convention
Frankfurt Parliament
Notes
References
(in German, detailed maps)
Further reading
History of Prussia
Modern history of Austria
Modern history of Germany
Pan-Germanism
19th century in Germany
19th century in Prussia
States and territories established in 1815
States and territories disestablished in 1848
States and territories established in 1850
States and territories disestablished in 1866
1815 establishments in Europe
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.
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1866 disestablishments in Europe
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doc-en-973 | This is the Juno Beach order of battle on D-Day.
Canadian Army
3rd Canadian Infantry Division Divisional Troops
Headquarters 3rd Canadian Division. General officer commanding: Major General Rod Keller
3rd Infantry Division Signals Regiment, Royal Canadian Corps of Signals
No. 3 Defence and Employment Platoon (Lorne Scots)
No. 4 Canadian Provost Company, Canadian Provost Corps
2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade. Commander: Brigadier R.A. Wyman
6th Armoured Regiment (1st Hussars)
10th Armoured Regiment (The Fort Garry Horse)
27th Armoured Regiment (The Sherbrooke Fusilier Regiment)
Divisional reconnaissance and divisional machine gun / mortar
7th Reconnaissance Regiment (17th Duke of York's Royal Canadian Hussars)
The Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa (machine gun and mortar 4.2 in)
Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery – divisional artillery (allocated for landings)
Headquarters RCA 3rd Division – CRA: Brigadier P.A.S. Todd
12th Field Artillery Regiment, RCA
13th Field Artillery Regiment, RCA
14th Field Artillery Regiment, RCA
19th Field Artillery Regiment, RCA
3rd Anti-tank Regiment, RCA
4th Light Anti-aircraft Regiment, RCA
Corps of Royal Canadian Engineers – divisional engineers
Headquarters RCE 3rd Division – CRE: Lieutenant-Colonel R.J. Cassidy
5th Canadian Field Company, RCE (Obstacle Clearance: Attached from I Canadian Corps Army Troops Engineers)
6th Canadian Field Company, RCE (Assault with 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade)
16th Canadian Field Company, RCE (Assault with 8th Canadian Infantry Brigade)
18th Canadian Field Company, RCE (Obstacle Clearance)
3rd Canadian Field Park Company, RCE
3 Canadian Divisional Bridge Platoon, RCE (Lt A. Secter)
7th Canadian Infantry (Assault) Brigade Group – Mike Green / Mike Red and Nan Green Beaches
Headquarters 7th Infantry Brigade. Commander: Brigadier H.W. Foster
The Royal Winnipeg Rifles
The Canadian Scottish Regiment (Princess Mary's)
The Regina Rifle Regiment
6th Armoured Regiment (1st Hussars) (Sherman DD tanks)
12th and 13th Field Regiments (SP), RCA
A Company (MG) and D Company, The Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa (Machine Gun)
Platoon, 6th Canadian Field Company, RCE
248 A/T Battery, 62nd (6th London) Anti-Tank Regiment RA (TA), with M10 self-propelled guns (from British I Corps)
7th Infantry Brigade Ground Defence Platoon (Lorne Scots)
No. 3 Battery, 2nd Royal Marine Armoured Support Regiment with Centaur Close Support tanks
8th Canadian Infantry (Assault) Brigade Group – Nan White and Nan Red Beaches
Headquarters 8th Infantry Brigade. Commander: Brigadier K.G. Blackader
The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada
The North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment
Le Régiment de la Chaudière
10th Armoured Regiment (The Fort Garry Horse) (Sherman DD tanks)
14th and 19th Field Regiments (SP), RCA Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery
B Company (MG), The Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa (Machine Gun)
Platoon, 16th Canadian Field Company, RCE
246 A/T Battery, 62 Anti-Tank Regiment RA (TA) (M10s) - from I Corps
8th Infantry Brigade Ground Defence Platoon (Lorne Scots)
No. 4 Battery, 2nd Royal Marine Armoured Support Regiment (Centaur close support tank)
9th Canadian Infantry Brigade – Landing through 8th CIB on Nan Beaches
Headquarters 9th Infantry Brigade. Commander: Brigadier D.G. Cunningham
The Highland Light Infantry of Canada
The Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders
The North Nova Scotia Highlanders
27th Armoured Regiment (The Sherbrooke Fusiliers Regiment)
C Company (MG) and 1/2 D Company (4.2 in mortars), The Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa (Machine Gun)
9th Infantry Brigade Ground Defence Platoon (Lorne Scots)
Supporting corps divisional units integrated in Mike Sector and Nan Sector
Royal Canadian Army Service Corps
Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps
No. 14, No. 22, No. 23 Field Ambulance and No. 17 Light Field Ambulance (2nd CAB)s
Royal Canadian Dental Corps
Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps
Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers
Canadian Chaplain Service
British Forces
British forces on Juno beach included units from Second Army and Combined Operations Headquarters
HQ, 4th Special Service Brigade
No. 48 (Royal Marine) Commando
Elements of 79th Armoured Division (specialist combat engineering and assault vehicles)
"B" Squadron, 22nd Dragoons (Royal Armoured Corps) (Sherman Crab Mine flail)
HQ, 5 Assault Regiment, Royal Engineers (Detachment)
26 Assault Squadron, RE (Churchill AVRE)
80 Assault Squadron, RE (Churchill AVRE)
71st Field Company, RE (Attached)
3rd and 4th Batteries, 2nd Royal Marine Armoured Support Regiment (Centaur tanks)
Royal Armoured Corps
C Squadron, Inns of Court Regiment (armoured car unit tasked with rushing the bridges over the Orne river, South of Caen)
HQ 7th GHQ Troops Engineers, Royal Engineers – Comd: Col F.C. Nottingham (Landed as sub-units distributed amongst assaulting formations and Beach Groups)
65th Field Company, RE
72nd Field Company, RE
85th Field Company, RE
184th Field Company, RE
240th Field Company, RE
262nd (Sussex) Field Company, RE (attached from XII Corps Troops, Royal Engineers; distributed as beach obstacle clearance parties with 3rd Canadian Division)
582nd Field Company, RE
Platoon of 19th Field Company, RE (attached from I Corps Troops RE)
297th Field Park Company, RE
19th & 20th Stores Sections, RE
59th & 61st Mechanical Equipment Sections, RE
204th Works Section, RE
670th & 710th Artisan Works Companies, RE
Two Advanced Park Sections of 176th Workshop and Park Company, RE
48th Bomb Disposal Section, RE
1033rd & 1034th Port Operating Companies, RE
966th Inland Water Transport Operating Company, RE
1622nd Bailey Platoon of 106th Bridge Company, Royal Army Service Corps (RASC)
102 Beach Sub-Area
No.7 Beach Group, Mike sector, including:
8th (Irish) Battalion, King's Regiment
'O' Anti-Aircraft Assault Group (from 80th Anti-Aircraft Brigade)
Regimental HQ 114th Light AA Regiment – Comd: Lt-Col N.W. Hoare
372nd Battery, 114th LAA Regiment, less C Troop
321st Battery, 93rd LAA Regiment, less E Troop
274th Battery, 86th HAA Regiment
1 Troop 383rd Battery, 86th HAA Regiment
474th (Independent) Searchlight Battery, less B and C Troops
112nd Company, Pioneer Corps, less detachments
114th LAA Regiment Workshop, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME)
No. 8 Beach Group, Nan sector, including:
5th Battalion Royal Berkshire Regiment
'P' AA Assault Group (from 80th AA Brigade)
Regimental HQ 86th (Honourable Artillery Company) Heavy AA Regiment – Comd: Lt-Col G.H. Champness
273rd Battery, 86th HAA Regiment
383rd Battery, 86th HAA Regiment less 1 Troop
375th Battery, 114th LAA Regiment
1 Troop 296th Battery, 73rd LAA Regiment
1 Troop 321st Battery, 93rd LAA Regiment
155th AA Operations Room
Detachment 112nd Pioneer Company
86th HAA Regiment Workshop, REME
In reserve No.4 Beach Group
Naval forces
Force J was commanded by the British, and the flagship vessel came from the Royal Navy. Among the chief vessels in this combined British and Canadian Force were
HMS Hilary infantry landing and headquarters ship
The force also included 109 Royal Canadian Navy vessels, among them:
Two of the 11 destroyers (7 Fleet Class and 4 Hunt-class) were Canadian RCN:
HMCS Algonquin
HMCS Sioux
Two of the Landing Ships Infantry (Medium) were Canadian RCN:
HMCS Prince Henry
HMCS Prince David
Landing craft from both the RN and RCN were employed in Force J, the total number were:
1 Landing Ship Headquarters
2 Assault Group Headquarters Ship
3 Landing Ships Infantry (Large)
3 Landing Ships Infantry (Medium)
12 Landing Ships Infantry (Hand Hoisting)
20 Landing Craft Infantry (Large)
8 Landing Craft Infantry (Small)
142 Landing Craft Assault
4 Landing Craft Assault (Obstacle Clearance)
18 Landing Craft Assault (Hedgerow)
8 Landing Craft Support (Medium)
4 Landing Craft Headquarters
22 Landing Ship Tank Mark II
2 Landing Craft Tank Mark III (Flotilla of 10 craft each)
7 Landing Craft Tank Mark IV (Flotilla of 10 craft each)
2 Landing Craft Tank Mark V/VI (Flotilla of 10 craft each)
7 Landing Craft Flak
7 Landing Craft Gun (Large)
7 Landing Craft Tank (Armoured)
8 Landing Craft Tank (High Explosive)
9 Landing Craft Tank (Rocket)
36 Landing Craft Personnel (Large) Smoke Layer
4 Landing Barge Flak
4 Landing Craft Support (Large) Mark I
3 Landing Craft Support (Large) Mark II
1 Landing Ship Dock
15 Rhino ferry
German forces
Standing against the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, units of 716.Infanterie-Division (Static) – Wehrmacht Heer Coastal Defence (Bodenständigen) had little tactical mobility and its personnel, in general, belonged to the lowest category of conscript, coming from older age groups or from the Landsturm: Military District 6. While the division in Normandy with the fewest personnel; fronting the Juno sector, its density of troops was a little stronger than elsewhere. The division had no combat experience before D-Day, and on 1 May 1944 it only had 7,771 personnel of all ranks.
The 716. Infanterie-Division consisted of:
716.Division – HQ Stab Gefechtsstand: Caen: La Folie-Couvrechef – GOC: Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter
Nachrichten-Abteilung 716. Kdr Major Werner Liedloff (Signals)
K.V.A. H1 / Küsten Verteidigung Abschnitt Caen. Kdr: Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter. Gefechtsstand: Caen - La Folie-Couvrechef
K.V.-Gruppe. Küsten Verteidigung Gruppe Courseulles:
K.V.U.-Gr. Küsten Verteidigung Unter Gruppe Meuvaines: Major Lehman - Kdr Bataillon II. / 726. Gefechtsstand: St. Croix sur Mer (Bazenville)
K.V.U.-Gr. Küsten Verteidigung Unter Gruppe Seulles: Hauptmann Deptolla - Kdr Bataillon II. / 736. Gefechtsstand: Château de Tailleville at WN 23
K.V.-Gruppe. Küsten Verteidigung Gruppe Riva-Bella: Oberst Ludwig Krug - Kdr Grenadier-Regiment 736. Gefechtsstand: Colleville-sur-Orne at WN 17 Höhe
K.V.U.-Gr. Küsten Verteidigung Unter Gruppe Orne: - Kdr Bataillon I. / 736. Gefechtsstand: Colleville-sur-Orne
K.V.U.-Gr. Küsten Verteidigung Unter Gruppe Luc: Major Pipor - Kdr Bataillon III. / 736. Gefechtsstand: Cresserons
716.Division – Artillerie-Regiment 1716.
Bataillon I. / 1716 AR. East of Orne: WN 17 Beauvais
Bttn 1. Merville WN01 - NW Gonneville-sur-Orne
Bttn 2. Southwest of Colleville-sur-Orne - At WN16
Bttn 3. East of Orne - At Brieville
Bttn 4. Southwest Ouistreham - Château d'Eau: At WN12
Bataillon II. / 1716 AR. Ouistreham: West of Crepon
Bttn 5. Between South Crepon and Bazenville: At WN36a
Bttn 6. La Mare-Fontaine: Between Crepon and Bazenville - At WN32
Bttn 7.(Resi) North le Moulin sur Mue - West Bény-sur-Mer: At WN28
Bataillon III. / 1716 AR. Northwest of Caen: NOT in 716 Inf.Div. Sector
Bttn 8 Not in 716 Div Sector: At Maisy La Martiniere - WN84 (352 Inf Div)
Bttn 9. Not in 716 Div Sector: At Maisy Les Perruques - WN83 (352 Inf Div)
Bttn 10. (Waldersee) At Plumetot - N.E. Bayeux
GHQ Heeres-schwere-Artillerie-Abteilung 989. (Heeresgruppe-Reserve Attached) Gefechtsstand: Northeast of Reviers.•
Batterie 1. / s.Art.-Abtl 989. Southwest of Basly - Moved to Bénouville (x4 12.2 cm s.F.H. 396 (r))
Batterie 2. / s.Art.-Abtl 989. At Amblie - East of The Seulles (x4 12.2 cm s.F.H. 396 (r))
Batterie 3. / s.Art.-Abtl 989. East of Creully (x4 12.2 cm s.F.H. 396 (r))
Herres-Kusten-Artillerie-Abteilung 1260. (Attached) Gefechtsstand – Arromanches•
1. Bttr. / H.K.A. Abtl 1260. At St. Aubin-d’Arquenay: WN 08 - Ouistreham (x6 15.5 cm K 420 (f))
2. Bttr. / H.K.A. Abtl 1260. East of Arromanches - Attached to 352. Inf.Div.
3. Bttr. / H.K.A. Abtl 1260. At WN 35a - Mont Fleury (x4 12.2 cm K 390 (r))
4. Bttr. (MKM) / H.K.A. Abtl 1260. At WN 48 - Longues (x4 15 cm TbtsK C/36)
Flak-Zug / H.K.A. Abtl 1260.
Grenadier-Regiment 726. Oberst Walter Korfes Gefechtsstand : Château de Sully - Bayeux Attached to 352.Inf.-Div
Bataillon I./726. Stab & Kompanie 1/2/3/4 – Attached to 352.Inf.Div
Bataillon II./726. HQ Stab. Gefechtsstand: At Ste-Croix-sur-Mer: KVU-Gr Meuvaines
Kompanie 5./II. East of Tierceville, North of Colombiers-sur-Seulles
Kompanie 6./II. At Bazenville, Northwest of Villiers-le-Sec
Kompanie 7./II. West of Banville, South of Ste-Croix-sur-Mer
Kompanie 8.(schwere) /II. South of Crepon, North of Creully
Bataillon III./726. Stab & Kompanie 9/10/11/12 – Grandcamp-les-Bains: Attached to 352.Inf.Div
Bataillon IV./726. 439.Ost-Battalion: Attached to 352.Inf.Div
14(PaK) Kompanie. At Hameau de Vaux - Behind Vaux-Le Buisson
Grenadier-Regiment 736. Oberst Ludwig Krug Stab: Colleville-sur-Orne
Bataillon I./736. Stab I. Gefechtsstand: Ouistreham – Kdr KVU-Gr Orne. Kompanie 1/2/3/4 - (Riva Bella - UK Sword Sector)
Bataillon II./736. Stab II. Gefechtsstand: Château de Tailleville – Kdr KVU-Gr Seulles (WN 23)
Kompanie 5./ II. KoKdr Hauptmann Rudolf Grute
Zug - At Bernières-sur-Mer: WN 28 and WN28a
Zug / Stab Gruppen - At Saint Aubin-sur-Mer: WN 27
Kompanie 6./ II. KoKdr Hauptmann Grote
Zug - At Courseulles-sur-Mer EAST: WN 29
Zug - At Courseulles-sur-Mer WEST: WN 31
Zug-Gruppen - At Courseulles-sur-Mer SOUTH: WN 30
Kompanie 7./ II. La Rivière and Ver-sur-Mer (WN 33 UK Gold)
Kompanie 8.(schwere)/ II. Bn Reserve: Field Position – Les Ruines Saint-Ursin (La Tombette)
Bataillon III./736. Stab III. Gefechtsstand: Cresserons – Kdr KVUGr Luc (KVGr Riva Bella: UK Sword Sector)
Kompanie 9./ III. Langrunne-sur-Mer and Luc-sur-Mer (WN 24 UK Sword)
Kompanie 10./ III. Lion-sur-Mer and Hermanville-sur-Mer (WN 20 UK Sword)
Kompanie 11./ III. Bn Reserve: South of Tailleville - Northwest of Cresserons
Kompanie 12./ III. Bn Reserve: North of Douvres (WN 23a) and la-Délivrande (WN 22) (UK Sword)
Bataillon IV./736. 642. Ost-Battalion: Stab: Amfreville – Kompanie 1/2/3/4 (KV-Gr Riva Bella UK Sword)
14(PaK) Kompanie: Luc-sur-Mer and Lion-sur-Mer (UK Sword)
Ost-Battalion 441 (Ukrainian). (Attached) Stab: de Mars-Fontaine, SW Ver-sur-Mer
Einsatzfaehig - KVU-Gr. Seulles: Infanterie-Division 716. (Anlandungen: CA Juno)
Kompanie 2. (Jagdkommando-Kp. 52) Bn Reserve: Southeast of Courseulles-sur-Mer, At Les Rotys,
Einsatzfaehig - KVU-Gr. Meuvaines: Infanterie-Division 352. (Anlandungen: UK Gold)
Kompanie 1. (Ukrainer-Kp. 52) Hameau de Vaux (Aerium de Graye - Le Buisson) at WN 33a
Kompanie 3. West of Ver-sur-Mer, At Le Hable de Heurtot
Kompanie 4. East of Ver-sur-Mer
Panzerjäger-Abteilung 716. Gefechtsstand: Oberleutnant Kurt Kaergel – Biéville
Kompanie 1. (Sfl) / Pz.Jg-Abt 716. Gefechtsstand: At la Croix de Bois Biéville - North of Caen,
Kompanie 2. (StuG) / Pz.Jg-Abt 716. Gefechtsstand: At Reviers
Zug - Graye-sur-Mer - Hameau de la Valette: x3 7.5 cm Pak 40
Zug - Courseulles-sur-Mer South - Les Champs des Fers: x3 7.5 cm Pak 40
Zug - Berniers-sur-Mer - Les Perrucques: x2 8.8 cm Pak 43/41
Kompanie 3. (FlaK) / Pz.Jg-Abt 716. Gefechtsstand: At Sallenelles
Zug - At Tailleville la Tomblette: x6 7.5 cm D.C.A. Mle 1938(f) AA Guns.
Zug - At Tailleville la Tomblette: x20 3.2 cm Wurfgerät 40/41 Packkiste.
Zug - At Anisy. On Trailers:2 cm Flak 30/38/Flakvierling
Pionier-Bataillon 716. Gefechtsstand: Herouvillette-Haras
Kompanie 1. Hérouvillette, Northeast of Caen
Kompanie 2. Detached to 352.Inf.Div and Garrisoned: At Anisy / Mathieu
Kompanie 3. Detached to 352.Inf.Div
Schnelle-Brigade 30 / 716. Heeresgruppe-Reserve (Ersatzheer). Gefechtsstand: Coutances. Commander: Oberstleutnant H.F. von und Aufsess
Schnelle-Abteilung 513 [Bicycle]. Attached 06.06.1944 - Gefechtsstand: In Location At Coutances (West of St.Lo)
Schnelle-Abteilung 517 [Bicycle]. Attached 06.06.1944 - Gefechtsstand: In Location At Bréhal (South West of St.Lo)
Schnelle-Abteilung 518 [Bicycle]. Attached 06.06.1944 - Gefechtsstand: In Location At Cérences (South West of St.Lo)
716.Division – Divisional Troops.
716.Division – Versorgungs-truppen 716. (Supply)
716.Division – Verwaltungs-zug 716. (Food Services)
716.Division – Sanitäts-Btl 716. (Medical)
716.Division - Nachschub-Btl 716. (Transportation)
Panzer-Division 21., belonging to XXXXVII Pz.Gr.West, was allocated to AOK.7 (Army Group B) as its (only) reserve. Pz.Div.21 was reconstituted on 15 July 1943, in the reorganization of schnellen Brigade West (SB 931). Pz.Div.21 was absent from Normandy from March 1944, for Operation Maragretha, in Hungary, until May 1944, when it was reassigned to Brittany, and then moved up into Normandy. On 6 June 1944, Panzer-Division 21., on its initiative, adopted a 'new' organization for battle, as Regimental (Brigade) Groups were formed, PzKGr.Oppeln - Pz.Regt.22., and KGr.Luck - Pz.Gren-Regt 125., they regrouping an infantry battalion for a tank battalion, and KGr.Rauch - Pz.Gren-Regt192., was formed, given Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 155., assigned a battalion to each Kampfgruppe. The Canadians, coming South, from Juno Beach, did not experience a direct impact from either PzKGr.Oppeln or KGr.Luck and only felt a slight impact, in their area of influence, from the counter-move undertaken by KGr.Rauch, on 6 June.
Panzer-Division.21. Gefechtsstand: St. Pierre-sur-Dives (Begleitkompanie)
GOC Kommandeur: Generalmajor Edgar Feuchtinger
Panzer-Aufklärung-Abteilung. 21. Gefechtsstand: SE of Condé-sur-Noireau: x5 Kompanien (some Pz.)
Panzer-Regiment. 22. (former Pz.Regt.100.) Gefechtsstand: Aubigny (with Pz.FlaK-Ko.)
Kdr: Oberst Hermann von Oppeln-Bronikowski (PzKGr. Oppeln: North of Caen - West of Orne – From 06.06.44)
I. Btl. /Pz.Regt. 22. Stab: Jort (Saint Piere-sur-Dives) StabsKo & Pz.Kompanien: 1. 2. 3. 4.
II. Btl. /Pz.Regt. 22. Stab: Fresné-la-Mère (Falaise) StabsKo & Pz.Kompanien: 5. 6. 7. 8.
Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment. 125(tgp) Gefechtsstand: Vimont (Stabs Ko.)
Kdr: (Baron) Major Freiherr Hans von Luck (KGr. Luck: East of Orne – From 06.06.44)
I. Btl. (Gepanzert) Stab: Fierville-la-Campagne: Kompanien (SPW) 1. 2. 3. & Kompanien 4.(sch)
II. Btl. (Motorized) Stab: Colombelles:
Kompanien (Mot.) 5. Northwest of Troarn
Kompanien (Mot.) 6. Les Carrieres - North of Chateau Bannevilles-les-Campagnes
Kompanien (Mot.) 7. Rainville
Kompanien 8.(sch) East of Colombelles
9. Kompanie (s.IG) /125. Colombelles
10. Kompanie (s-Werfer) /125. Colombelles
Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment. 192 (mot.) Gefechtsstand: Thury-Harcourt (Stabs Ko.)
Kdr: Oberst Josef Rauch (KGr. Rauch: Northwest of Caen – From 06.06.44)
I. Btl. (Gepanzert) Stab: Verson: Kompanien (SPW) 1. 2. 3. 4.
II. Btl. (Motorized) HQ Stab: Le Mesnil (Anisy) (13 May) Stabs Ko: Villons-les-Buissons
Kompanien 5. (Mot.) At Château la Londe, Northeast of Epron (verst.)
Kompanien 6. (Mot.) Buron
Kompanien 7. (Mot.) North of Périers-sur-le-Dan (Hermanville) (verst.) Southeast of Plumetot
Kompanien 8. (sch.) At Cairon and then KUGr Braatz – Bénouville Caen Canal Bridge
9. Kompanie (s.IG)/192. At Croisilles
10. Kompanie (Werfer)/192. At Thury-Harcourt
Panzer- Artillerie-Regiment. 155. Gefechtsstand: St. André-sur-Orne
Kdr: Oberst Hühne
I. Btl./155. Gefechtsstand – Mathieu:
Bttn 1. (sfl) Northwest of Beuville
Bttn 2. (Mot.) West of Périers-sur-le-Dan (WN 21a)
Bttn 3. (SPW) Northwest of Colomby-sur-Thaon
II. Btl./155. Gefechtsstand – May-sur-Orne: 4. Bttn. / 5. Bttn. / 6. Bttn.
III. Btl./155. Gefechtsstand – Thury-Harcourt: 7. Bttn. / 8. Bttn. / 9. Bttn.
10. Batterien (gp). (s.Werfer)
Heeres-Flakartillerie-Abteilung. (H.-Flak-Abtl.) 305. Gefechtsstand: Hérouville Kdr: Hauptmann Ohlendorf
1. Bttn. SE of Caen
2. Bttn. West of Caen
3. Bttn. At St. Pierre sur Dives
4. Bttn.
5. Bttn.
Heeresflakabt.200.
I. Bttn. Flak
II. Bttn. Flak
III Bttn. gemischte Flak
Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 200 (Stug.-Abtl. 200) Gefechtsstand: Quetteville
Batterien. 1.
Batterien. 2.
Batterien. 3.
Batterien. 4.
Batterien (Ko) 5. / Stug.-Abtl. 200. From Cambes-en-Plasne at Epron- North of Caen
Panzerjäger-Abteilung 200 (Pz.Jg.-Abtl. 200). Kdr: Hauptmann Werner von Lyncker, Stab: Saint-Pierre (Maison des Trois Chimnees) Tilly-sur-Seulles
Kompanie 1.(sfl) / Pz.Jg.ABt 200. Stab: Châteux de Grand-Tonne, At Sainte-Croix- Grand-Tonne (Martagny)
Kompanie 2.(sfl) / Pz.Jg.ABt200. Stab: Château du Mesnil-Patry, At Le Mesnil-Patry (Putot)
Kompanie 3.(sfl) / Pz.Jg.ABt 200. Stab: Camilly, South of Le Fresnet-Camilly
Panzer-Pionier-Bataillon 220. Gefechtsstand: Clécy -Saint-Remy
Pz.Pi.Kompanie 1.(SPW) /220. At Quesnay, Northeast of Falaise
Pz.Pi.Kompanie 2.(SPW) /220. Gaillon and Vernon, Southeast of Rouen (Detached)
Pi Kompanie 3. (Mot.) /220. At Creully, Northweast of Bayeau
Pi.Zug Brücken-(Brüko) Kolonne
Pz.Div.21 – Divisions-Einheiten
Pz. Nachschubtruppen 200.
Pz. Nachrichtenabteilung 200.
Pz. Feld-Ersatz.Bataillon 200. Gefechtsstand: Condé-sur-Noireau – Stab & Kompanien 1. 2. 3. 4.
Notes
References
Juno Beach - The Canadians On D-Day
3rd Canadian Infantry Division
World War II orders of battle | en |
doc-en-14486 | Sion (; ; ; ) is a Swiss town, a municipality, and the capital of the canton of Valais and of the district of Sion. it had a population of (known as Sédunois(es)).
On 17 January 1968, the former municipality of Bramois merged into the municipality of Sion. On 1 January 2013, the former municipality of Salins merged into the municipality of Sion, and on 1 January 2017, Les Agettes did the same.
Landmarks in Sion include the Basilique de Valère and the Château de Tourbillon. Sion has an airfield for civilian and military use, which serves as a base for air rescue missions.
History
Prehistoric settlement
Sion is one of the most important prehistoric sites in Europe. The alluvial fan of the river Sionne, the rocky slopes above the river and, to a lesser extent, Valeria and Tourbillon hills have been settled nearly continuously since antiquity. The oldest trace of human settlement comes from 6200 BC during the late Mesolithic. Around 5800 BC early Neolithic farmers from the Mediterranean settled in Sion. The settlements remained small until about 4500 BC, during the middle Neolithic, when the number of settlements increased sharply. To support the population increase, farming and grazing spread throughout the valley. They also began burying their dead in Chablandes-type stone burial cists with engraved anthropomorphic stelae. The individual graves changed at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC in large, dry stone wall communal tombs (such as the Dolmen of Le Petit-Chasseur). During the Beaker culture period in the second half of the third Millennium, dolmens were built once again, but they were smaller and had no podium. Stelae continued to be carved, though these were rich with geometric patterns and sometimes built out of old dolmen. At the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (around 2300 BC) the last stelae were erected.
The early settlements have been well documented. There are huts from the Middle Neolithic period found near Le Petit Chasseur and under Ritz Avenue. Late Neolithic sites have been found at Bramois and the early Early Bronze Age site is at Le Petit Chasseur. The Middle Bronze Age, however, is poorly documented. From the subsequent epochs, the great necropolis of Don Bosco (the "aristocrat" tumulus of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age) and the necropolis of Sous-le-Scex from the La Tène culture.
Celtic and Roman town
At the end of the 1st century BC, Sion was the capital of the Seduni, one of the four Celtic tribes of the Valais. Julius Caesar mentions them as Nantuates Sedunos Veragrosque. They were conquered by the Romans in the 10s BC. By 8–7 BC, Emperor Augustus praised the tribe (civitas) of the Seduni with an inscription. The town-hall is said to contain several Roman inscriptions, one of which found at Sion commemorates the Roman presence: Civitas Sedunorum Patrono. Under the Romans it was known as Sedunum.
The Roman settlement stretched mainly from what is now St. Theodul, between the Sionne and to the west side of the hill, Valeria. Under the church, a large bath complex was discovered and partially excavated. Near La Sitterie, Sous-le-Scex and in the upper part of the Avenue du Petit Chasseur, portions of several villae suburbana were found. In the 1st century AD, the Claudii Vallensium Forum, in what is now Martigny, became the capital of the civitas Vallensium. Sedunum lost political importance, but still remained the home of many notable families. Grave stelae attest to the presence of duumviri (magistrates of the civitas), of flamines (priests of the imperial cult), a Roman knight and a former consul in the town. In the 4th century praesides (provincial governors) are mentioned living in Sedunum, including a man named Pontius Asclepiodotus, who rebuilt an imperial building and, according to an inscription, converted to Christianity in 377.
Seat of a Catholic bishop
The Roman Catholic diocese of Sion is the oldest in Switzerland and one of the oldest north of the Alps. At first, the see was sited at Octodurum, now called Martigny/Martinach. The first authentically historical bishop was Saint Theodore or Theodolus (died 391), who was present at the Council of Aquileia in 381. He founded the Abbey of Saint-Maurice in Agaunum, with a small church in honor of Saint Maurice, martyred there , when he united the local hermits in a common life, thus beginning the Abbey of Saint-Maurice, the oldest north of the Alps. Theodore rebuilt the church at Sion, which had been destroyed by Emperor Maximinus at the beginning of the 4th century. At first the new diocese was a suffragan of the archdiocese of Vienne; later it became suffragan of Tarentaise.
In 589 the bishop, St. Heliodorus, transferred the see to Sion, leaving the low-lying, flood-prone site of Octodurum, where the Drance joins the Rhône. Though frequently the early bishops were also abbots of Saint-Maurice, the monastic community was jealously watchful that the bishops should not extend their jurisdiction over the abbey. Several of the bishops united both offices: Wilcharius (764–780), previously archbishop of Vienne, whence he had been driven by the Moors; Saint Alteus, who received from the pope a bull of exemption in favor of the monastery (780); Aimo II, son of Count Humbert I of Savoy, who entertained Leo IX at Saint-Maurice in 1049.
The first cathedral probably dates from the 6th century. It was halfway up the hill, where later the church of St. Peter stood, until the 19th century when that church was demolished.
The fortunes of the city grew when the bishop settled there. In 999, King Rodolphe III of Burgundy granted the entire County of Valais to the Bishop, and Sion became the capital of this County. The Prince-Bishop had the rights of high and low justice, the right to his own regalia and to appoint his own vassals. The residents of Sion were ruled by three appointees of the Bishop, the maior, the vice dominus or Viztum and the salterus.
Medieval Sion
As a result of the decline of the feudal social order and thanks to privileges and concessions granted by the bishop, the citizens of Sion had a limited independence in the Middle Ages. A contract between Bishop Kuno and his maior William of Turn from 1179, is seen as the first step in the creation of an independent city government. An agreement between the bishop, the collegiate church of St. Viztums and William of Turn in 1217 is the first written charter of freedom for the city. It includes civil and criminal laws and punishments as well as trade and market regulations. In 1269, the burghers of the town had their own council with its own statutes. The council governed the use and management of the common lands through twelve councilors led by the Viztum. These administrators later became syndics and were known by this title in 1323. In 1338, the vicar general confirmed the existing rights and freedom of the citizens of Sion in a document. The document was renewed by the bishop in 1339 and was presented to each successive bishop to reconfirm after his election. In the same year, Emperor Louis the Bavarian raised Sion to a free imperial city and collected the surrounding lands into a barony. In 1346, the episcopal Viztum and the citizenry collectively wrote the police regulations. Sion was now a city with city walls, documented freedoms and the market right.
From the late middle ages to the end of the ancien régime
From the middle of the 14th century to 1475, the history of Sion was filled with wars and destruction. Bishop Witschard Tavel tried to reduce the privileges of the cathedral collegiate chapter and the citizenry with the support of the Count of Savoy. In 1352, Sion was conquered, pillaged and plundered by an army from Savoy. In 1373, the Bishop bought back the majority of the fief of Sion from the de Greysier family. Majorie Castle became the Bishop's residence and the maior was now appointed by the Bishop every year. Sion was attacked and looted in 1384, again during the Raron affair in 1418 and finally in 1475 during the Burgundian Wars.
During this period, the citizenry strove to defend their acquired privileges and whenever possible to expand those rights. In 1414, the city council approved a new set of statutes for the citizens. In 1433, Bishop Andreas dei Benzi approved a strict set of regulations concerning the granting of citizenship rights to applicants. Two years later, in 1435, he allowed the city council to appoint the Bishop's representative to Sion. He retained only the right to approve or reject the council's choice. In 1560, the citizenry bought the office of Viztum from the feudal landholder, the de Chevron family. A year earlier the bishop assigned the office of salterus to the citizenry. So by the mid 16th century, the city enjoyed a nearly total autonomy.
In the 16th century, due to a strong immigration from the German-speaking Upper Valais, Sion/Sitten became almost totally German speaking. The town council minutes were written in Latin until 1540, when they changed to German. Official invoices changed to German in 1600.
The 17th and 18th Centuries were a peaceful time in Sion. The new city hall was built on Grand-Pont between 1657–65. In 1788, a fire broke out in the city. It damaged Majoria and Tourbillon castles and destroyed 115 of the 284 inhabited houses.
In the High Middle Ages, the residents of Sion were homines episcopi or people of the bishop. This was true both for the staff at the court as well as the serfs who tilled the land, and the craftsmen and traders. As the civic community gradually began to organize, they were no longer willing to automatically grant every new arrival the same rights as citizens. Those who were unwilling or unable to purchase citizenship, which cost about 60 shillings in 1326, but wished to live in Sion were classed as permanent residents and their descendants held the same status until they could buy their citizenship. The permanent residents were mainly workers, craftsmen (often originating from the Swiss Confederation and the Germanies) and traders (mostly from Savoy and northern Italy). An outbreak of the plague in 1348 wiped out many citizens. In addition to the citizen's deaths, the restrictive attitude of the citizenry toward new members led to citizens becoming a minority in Sion. In the first population census in 1610 the town had 1,835 inhabitants, of whom 412 were citizens and 1,423 were permanent residents. In the 18th century, a third category, the tollerati, was added. On the eve of the revolution the city's population was 19% citizen, 30% permanent resident and 51% tollerati and other marginalized groups. There were only 41 citizen families, of which twelve were nobility and nine belonged to the patrician class.
Starting in the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century, long distance trade began to pick up from northern Italy via the Simplon Pass and through the Valais into the Champagne region. Sion became an important relay station on this route. The station at Sion included a Sust or warehouse that also provided additional animals to help haul wagons over the pass. Many local nobles and farmers were involved in animal husbandry to support the Sust and pastured their animals, during the summer, in pastures on the other side of the Rhône. The Sust's barns are stables were still in operation until the 19th century. Along the river Sionne, there were mills, sawmills and other industries that needed water power. In addition, there were many tanneries in the same area. In 1466, the smiths, bricklayers and stonemasons' guilds arose from an ecclesiastical fraternity. Those three guilds were followed by the butchers' guild in 1512, the bakers' guild in 1525, the tailors and drapers' guild in 1527 and in 1602 the guild of shoemakers and tanners. These guilds played a major economic role in Sion until the end of the Ancien Régime. The Inn of the White Cross opened in 1550 for merchants and wealthy travelers, followed in 1688 by the inn of the Golden Lion, which was built beside the town hall.
Very little is known about the early churches in Sion since written sources are meager before the 12th century. The predecessor of the present cathedral, the church of Notre-Dame-du-Glarier in the Palacio district served both as the bishop's church and the parish church in the 12th century. It was destroyed in the 14th century during one of the wars between the Bishop of Sion and the House of Savoy. It was rebuilt in the second half of the 15th century. In the meantime, St. Peter's church took over as the bishop's and parish church. It was demolished in 1806. The Valeria Church was built in the 11th century and originally consecrated to St. Catherine. This church was probably the first church for the cathedral chapter. St. Theoduls church was first mentioned in the 13th century. It was probably built in 1100 on the ruins of Roman baths and a Carolingian era church. This church was probably built as a grave and pilgrimage church with a shrine in Theodul's Crypt. It was destroyed in the wars with the House of Savoy in the 14th century. Construction began on a new church in 1510–1516 under Bishop Matthew Schiner and continued until the 17th century. St. Theodul's served the French-speaking urban population as a parish church until 1798. In the 17th century, citizens claimed the right to choose their parish priest, over objections of the ecclesiastical authorities. The dispute eventually required mediation through the Papal Nuncio. The resolution allowed the citizens to choose the pastor from one of four proposed by the archbishop.
In the second half of the 16th century a large Protestant community grew in Sion under the leadership of renowned burghers, who had learned of the new doctrine while students in Bern, Basel, Zürich, Lausanne or Geneva. After 1604, the Valais government had clearly decided to remain part of the old faith. Some individuals or families emigrated to reformed areas, while others went back to the old faith. The Counter-Reformation, led by the Capuchin friars of Savoy and the Jesuits destroyed the last hopes of the Protestants to establish a foothold in the cathedral town. The Capuchins founded a monastery in 1631 and started construction of the monastery church in 1636, and the Jesuits started missionary activity in the 17th century and established a school in 1734.
From the Helvetic Republic to 1848
During the anti-patrician unrest in the Lower Valais at the end of the 18th century, Sion remained a bastion of the aristocracy. The leaders of the Les Crochets conspiracy were executed in 1791 in Sion to avoid riots. After the French invasion of Switzerland on 5 March 1798, Sion was caught between the revolutionary spirit of a portion of its population (who established a liberty pole in town on 10 March) and conservative elements who wanted to prevent any change in the Valais. Following the creation of the Helvetic Republic in May 1789, a counter-revolutionary rebellion erupted in the upper Valais. This short-lived rebellion was crushed on 17 May by French and Vaudois troops and Sion was plundered.
Under the Helvetic Republic, Sion was source of conflict between supporters and opponents of the new regime. In May 1799 counter-revolutionary forces from Upper Valais looted the city again. In order to ensure peace in the Valais, the French General Louis Marie Turreau de Garambouville occupied Sion in 1801 and in 1802 Napoleon Bonaparte declared the independent Rhodanic Republic. It then remained independent until 1810 when it was annexed into France as the département of Simplon. Between 1798 and 1801 the representative of the Helvetic government resided in Sion. Under the French occupation, Joseph du Fay de Lavallaz was appointed by the emperor to be the mayor of the district of Sion.
After Napoleon's defeats during the War of the Sixth Coalition the Valais was occupied by Austria at the end of December 1813. Under the Austrians, the citizenry received many of their rights back. During the following year, the government was split between supporters of the Ancien Régime and the supporters of the independent republic, with each party forming a council. When the two councils combined, the number of Council members was set to 20. Between 1815 and 1839, the patrician class gradually took more and more of the rights and duties of the citizenry back on themselves, gaining more and more power. In response to this, Alexandre de Torrente founded a liberal party in 1830. In the cantonal government, Sion agreed most often with the German-speaking Upper Valais. Which gave the Upper Valais a majority of the Zenden in the council, to the detriment of the French-speaking Lower Valais. However, after the vote on the constitution of 1839, the Upper Valais broke away from the rest of the canton. Sion was chosen as the capital of the Valais, while the breakaway Upper Valais chose Sierre. In 1840, the Upper and Lower Valais were reunited. But four years later, Sion was occupied by Upper Valais troops during the beginning of the Sonderbund War. Federal troops occupied Sion in November 1847.
Modern Sion
Sion lost to Turin, Italy in its bid to host the 2006 Winter Olympics. Sion also bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics, which it lost to Salt Lake City, and the 1976 Winter Olympics, which it lost to Denver (the games were reassigned to Innsbruck when Denver residents voted down additional funding). On 10 June 2019, Sion withdrew its bid for the 2026 Winter Olympics after rejection in the referendum.
Archaeological findings
Archaeologists found six aligned standing stones in La Petit district in Sion in July 2019. These standing stones were found accidentally during the construction work of a residential building, in the same area where 30 such stones and the dolmens were found in 1960.
"This discovery is of prime importance to help us understand social rituals at the end of the Neolithic period (around 2,500BC) in central Europe," was announced from the canton of Valais. According to the press release, a number of stones were noticed to have been intentionally broken.
Three of the standing stones were carved with markings. The largest of the stones assumed to be a male figure wearing geometrically decorated clothes with a sun-like motif around his face is about two tonnes.
Geography
After the 2017 merger Sion had an area of .
Before the merger Sion had an area (as of the September 2004 survey) of . Of this area, about 38.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while 15.5% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 38.4% is settled (buildings or roads) and 7.2% is unproductive land. In the 2004/09 survey a total of or about 17.0% of the total area was covered with buildings, an increase of over the 1980 amount. Over the same time period, the amount of recreational space in the municipality increased by and is now about 4.47% of the total area. Of the agricultural land, is used for orchards and vineyards, is fields and grasslands and consists of alpine grazing areas. Since 1980 the amount of agricultural land has decreased by . Over the same time period the amount of forested land has increased by . Rivers and lakes cover in the municipality.
The Medieval chroniclers report the occurrence of severe flood events, and during the Little Ice Age (or LIA, 1350–1850 AD) the Upper Rhône had certainly a torrential regime as other rivers in the Western Alps. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the anthropogenic activities had a crucial impact on the Rhône basin. The river was channelized twice in the periods of 1863–1894 and 1930–1960 (the so-called ‘Corrections of the Rhone’, which reduced the length of the river and gave to the river the present-day aspect. In the 2000s, after severe flood events, the ‘Third Correction’ began following the ‘Room-for-River’ flood management strategy and aims to: (1) widen the river, (2) increase the capacity, (3) secure levees and (4) improve the general environmental quality.
Climate
One of the driest and sunniest areas of Switzerland, Sion has an average of 82.1 days of rain or snow per year and on average receives of precipitation. The wettest month is December during which time Sion receives an average of of rain or snow. During this month there is precipitation for an average of 7.4 days. The month with the most days of precipitation is August, with an average of 7.9, but with only of rain. The driest month of the year is April with an average of of precipitation over 5.2 days. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Sion has a (warm humid) continental climate, abbreviated "Dfb" on climate maps.
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Per fess Argent two Mullets of Five Gules and Gules.
Demographics
Sion has a population () of . , 26.9% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over years 2000–2010 the population changed at a rate of 10%. It has changed at a rate of 10.1% due to migration and at a rate of 2.3% due to births and deaths.
Most of the population () speaks French (22,338 or 82.2%) as their first language, German is the second most common (1,523 or 5.6%) and Portuguese is the third (912 or 3.4%). There are 855 people who speak Italian and 19 people who speak Romansh.
, the population was 47.8% male and 52.2% female. The population was made up of 10,128 Swiss men (34.1% of the population) and 4,089 (13.8%) non-Swiss men. There were 11,642 Swiss women (39.2%) and 3,859 (13.0%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 9,542 or about 35.1% were born in Sion and lived there in 2000. There were 7,481 or 27.5% who were born in the same canton, while 2,939 or 10.8% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 6,285 or 23.1% were born outside of Switzerland.
, children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 24.8% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 60.7% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 14.5%.
, there were 11,846 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 12,335 married individuals, 1,509 widows or widowers and 1,481 individuals who are divorced.
, there were 11,326 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.3 persons per household. There were 4,114 households that consist of only one person and 703 households with five or more people. , a total of 10,670 apartments (88.3% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 1,072 apartments (8.9%) were seasonally occupied and 345 apartments (2.9%) were empty. , the construction rate of new housing units was 4.7 new units per 1000 residents.
the average price to rent an average apartment in Sion was 919.42 Swiss francs (CHF) per month (US$740, £410, €590 approx. exchange rate from 2003). The average rate for a one-room apartment was 473.25 CHF (US$380, £210, €300), a two-room apartment was about 679.12 CHF (US$540, £310, €430), a three-room apartment was about 854.95 CHF (US$680, £380, €550) and a six or more room apartment cost an average of 1075.25 CHF (US$860, £480, €690). The average apartment price in Sion was 82.4% of the national average of 1116 CHF. The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 0.53%.
Historic population
The historical population is given in the following chart:
Politics
The municipal council is the executive power in the commune. Its 15 members, non-permanent except the President, are elected every 4 years by the people.
The commune of Sion comprises also of a counsel of public rights of the medieval commune, the Bourgeoisie. Who protect the rights of the original inhabitants against new inhabitants. The counsel is made up of 7 people : a president, a vice-president and five counsellors.
Elections
In the 2015 federal election the most popular party was the CVP with 31.3% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the FDP (19.9%), the SVP (18.7%) and the SP (17.9%). In the federal election, a total of 11,541 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 57.7%.
In the 2011 federal election the most popular party was the CVP with 29.8% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the FDP (22.2%), the SP (20.0%) and the SVP (16.9%). In the federal election, a total of 10,750 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 58.3%.
In the 2009 Conseil d'État/Staatsrat election a total of 8,663 votes were cast, of which 907 or about 10.5% were invalid. The voter participation was 49.1%, which is much less than the cantonal average of 54.67%. In the 2007 Swiss Council of States election a total of 9,688 votes were cast, of which 835 or about 8.6% were invalid. The voter participation was 55.8%, which is similar to the cantonal average of 59.88%.
In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the CVP which received 34.5% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SP (19.08%), the SVP (15.52%) and the FDP (13.9%). In the federal election, a total of 9,828 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 55.6%.
Economy
The tertiary sector is the main economic sector in Sion, mainly due to the presence of the cantons administration, the Valaisan parliament and the cantons courthouse. Tourism is also an important sector due to its historic châteaux and museums.
Sion is the third largest wine making region in Switzerland, however, the valuable agricultural land and vineyards are undergoing constant regression due to the process of urbanisation.
Sion has also become an important medical site. The Sion-Region hospital is situated here next to the central institute of Valaisan hospitals and the Suva clinic for physical rehabilitation.
Finally the commune hosts a waste incinerator which disposes of the waste from 44 surrounding communes. This incinerator is equipped with a catalytic converter which lowers the levels of NOx emissions below acceptable levels. In addition, the heat created from the combustion is converted into electrical energy which is then provided to local communes.
Sion is a medium-sized regional center. The municipality is the center of its own agglomeration.
, there were a total of 33,228 people employed in the municipality. Of these, a total of 494 people worked in 93 businesses in the primary economic sector. A majority (54.0%) of the primary sector employees worked in very small businesses (less than ten employees). The remainder worked in 7 small businesses with a total of 227 employees. The secondary sector employed 5,638 workers in 466 separate businesses. In 2014 a total of 3,405 employees worked in 447 small companies (less than 50 employees). There were 17 mid sized businesses with 1,614 employees and 2 large businesses which employed a total of 619 people. Finally, the tertiary sector provided 27,096 jobs in 3,134 businesses. In 2014 a total of 16,599 employees worked in 3,068 small companies (less than 50 employees). There were 60 mid sized businesses with 7,289 employees and 6 large businesses which employed 3,208 people.
In 2014 a total of 8.1% of the population received social assistance.
In 2015 local hotels had a total of 61,402 overnight stays, of which 22.6% were international visitors.
the total number of full-time equivalent jobs was 21,338. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 245, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 4,830 of which 1,976 or (40.9%) were in manufacturing, 51 or (1.1%) were in mining and 2,323 (48.1%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 16,263. In the tertiary sector; 3,356 or 20.6% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 858 or 5.3% were in the movement and storage of goods, 968 or 6.0% were in a hotel or restaurant, 685 or 4.2% were in the information industry, 1,566 or 9.6% were the insurance or financial industry, 1,357 or 8.3% were technical professionals or scientists, 1,249 or 7.7% were in education and 2,989 or 18.4% were in health care.
, there were 13,194 workers who commuted into the municipality and 2,857 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 4.6 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving. Of the working population, 10.4% used public transportation to get to work, and 57.1% used a private car.
Heritage sites of national significance
There are 14 buildings or sites in Sion that are listed as Swiss heritage site of national significance. The secular buildings include the Archives de l’État du Valais, the Archives and Museum of the Bishop of Sion and the cathedral, the town hall (with its astronomical clock), Majorie Castle, La Majorie on Rue des Châteaux 19, Le Vidomnat on Place de la Majorie 15, the Maison Supersaxo, the Médiathèque Valais Sion, the Cantonal Fine Arts and History Museums and the ruins of Tourbillon Castle. The religious buildings on the list are the Cathédrale Notre-Dame, the Capuchin monastery and library, the church of the Notre-Dame de Valère and the church of St-Théodule. The remains of a neolithic settlement and the modern city of Sion are also on the list. The entire town of Sion and the village of Bramois are both part of the Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites.
A characteristic of Sion is its medieval townscape, dominated by the hills Valère () with the Basilique de Valère (12th–13th century), and Tourbillon () with the ruins of the Tourbillon Castle. The Valère Basilica is the church on top of the southern of the two mottes, at the east end of the old town. It houses the oldest playable organ in the world, which was built in the 1430s.
Airshows
Public Airshows have been held at the airfield of Sion. Aerobatic teams such as the Frecce Tricolori from Italy and the Patrouille de France have performed there.
Sport
The football club FC Sion plays in the Swiss Super League. Their stadium is the Stade Tourbillon.
The HC Sion is the city's main Ice hockey team. They play in the Swiss Premiere League, the third tier of Swiss hockey. Their arena is the Ancien Stand which has a seating capacity of 1,200.
The 1 May 2021, Alaia Bay surfing wave pool made by Wavegarden opened in Sion. It is the first surf pool open to the public in mainland Europe.
Media
Sion is host to a number of newspapers, television and radio stations:
Le Nouvelliste, a daily Valais paper printed in Sion;
Canal 9, regional Valais television;
Rhône FM, private Valaisan radio;
TSR, retransmission of public Swiss television.
Education
In Sion about 8,560 or (31.5%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 3,670 or (13.5%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule). Of the 3,670 who completed tertiary schooling, 54.9% were Swiss men, 32.0% were Swiss women, 7.5% were non-Swiss men and 5.6% were non-Swiss women.
, there were 3,122 students in Sion who came from another municipality, while 261 residents attended schools outside the municipality.
Sion is home to 4 libraries. These libraries include; the Médiathèque Valais Sion, the Bibliothèque municipale de Sion, the HES-SO Valais Médiathèque santé-social and the HES-SO Valais, Domaine Sciences de l'ingénieur. There was a combined total () of 690,513 books or other media in the libraries, and in the same year a total of 294,320 items were loaned out.
Schools
Sion has two high schools (colleges)
the Lycée-Collège des Creusets (LCC);
the Lycée-Collège de la Planta (LCP).
Sion is also host to the :
Ecole d’agriculture du Valais, situated in Châteauneuf, Sion;
A circus school;
A jazz school;
HES-SO Valais, a technical college;
HEM Valais (Conservatoire Supérieur et Académie de Musique Tibor Varga).
The HES-SO Valais offers education in Sciences, Engineering, Economics, Information Technology and Health Sciences.
There is a Business and Tourism university situated near Sion Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch.
Transport
Sion is situated on the main railway line and the motorway, and also has an airport (Sion Airport).
Religion
From the , 21,220 or 78.1% were Roman Catholic, while 1,198 or 4.4% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 212 members of an Orthodox church (or about 0.78% of the population), there were 18 individuals (or about 0.07% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 453 individuals (or about 1.67% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 16 individuals (or about 0.06% of the population) who were Jewish, and 1,360 (or about 5.01% of the population) who were Islamic. There were 86 individuals who were Buddhist, 52 individuals who were Hindu and 22 individuals who belonged to another church. 1,371 (or about 5.05% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 1,385 individuals (or about 5.10% of the population) did not answer the question.
Crime
In 2014 the crime rate, of the over 200 crimes listed in the Swiss Criminal Code (running from murder, robbery and assault to accepting bribes and election fraud), in Sion was 72.2 per thousand residents, which is slightly higher than the national average. During the same period, the rate of drug crimes was 20.6 per thousand residents, over twice the national rate. In contrast, the rate of violations of immigration, visa and work permit laws was 0.9 per thousand residents, which is only 18.4% of the rate for the entire country.
Notable people
People associated with Sion include:
Saint Theodore of Octodurum (Ger: Theodor von Sitten), 4th century Patron Saint of Valais and the Walser
Saint Guarinus of Sitten (1065–1150), Bishop of Sion
Hildebrand of Riedmatten, Bishop of Sion in 1594, whencefrom comes the Coat of Arms of Sitten/Sion
Ignaz Venetz (1788–1859), Swiss civil engineer, botanist and glaciologist
Anton von Riedmatten (1811–1897), Swiss politician
Leo Luzian von Roten (1824–1898), Swiss politician, poet and editor of the Walliser Wochenblatt
Ernest von Stockalper (1838–1919) was a Swiss civil engineer, foreman for the Gotthard tunnel
Fritz de Quervain (1868–1940), a Swiss surgeon, authority on thyroid disease.
Walther Ritz (1878–1909), theoretical physicist
Charles Oser (1902–1994), a Swiss politician
Maurice Zermatten (1910–2001), a French-speaking Swiss writer
Hermann Geiger (1914–1966), a Swiss aviator and search and rescue pilot
Dr Hywel Davies (born 1924), a cardiologist and writer, lives in Sion
Micheline Calmy-Rey (born 1945), politician, President of the Confederation in 2007 and 2011
Carole de Kalbermatten (1945–2009), Swiss film director and feminist who grew up in Sion
Jean Zermatten (born 1948), lawyer, Chairman of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
Madeleine Carruzzo (born 1956), a Swiss violinist, plays for the Berlin Philharmonic
Oskar Freysinger (born 1960), Swiss politician, studied at a German-speaking school in Sion
Brigitte Fournier (born 1961), Swiss operatic soprano
Stéphane Udry (born 1961), an astronomer at the Geneva Observatory, searches for extra-solar planets
Jean-Pierre Siggen (born 1962), a Swiss politician
Nicolas Steiner (born in 1984), Swiss film director, screenwriter and film producer
Samael, extreme metal band, formed in 1987 in Sion
Noémie Schmidt (born 1990), a Swiss actress on TV and film
Sport
Umberto Barberis (born 1952), a former Swiss-Italian footballer, over 400 club games and 54 for national team
Marco Pascolo (born 1966), a retired Swiss international football goalkeeper, 406 club games and 55 for national team
Björn Bregy (born 1974), a Swiss super heavyweight kickboxer
Johnny Leoni (born 1984), a football goalkeeper over 250 club games and 54 for the national team
Sophie Lamon (born 1985), a Swiss fencer, silver medallist in the women's team épée event at the 2000 Summer Olympics
Gelson Fernandes (born 1986), footballer, over 350 club games and 57 for the national side
Tiffany Géroudet (born 1986), a Swiss épée fencer, competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Estelle Balet (1994–2016), a Swiss freeride snowboarder and two-time world champion
Edimilson Fernandes (born 1996), footballer, on loan to West Ham United F.C.
Twin towns
Sion is twinned with:
References
External links
Tourism information
Sion (capital)
Cities in Switzerland
Cantonal capitals of Switzerland
Municipalities of Valais
Roman towns and cities in Switzerland
Populated places on the Rhône
Cultural property of national significance in Valais | en |
doc-en-4910 | One Day International (ODI) cricket is played between international cricket teams who are Full Members of the International Cricket Council (ICC) as well as the top four Associate members. Unlike Test matches, ODIs consist of one inning per team, having a limit in the number of overs, currently 50 overs per innings – although in the past this has been 55 or 60 overs. ODI cricket is List-A cricket, so statistics and records set in ODI matches also count toward List-A records. The earliest match recognised as an ODI was played between England and Australia in January 1971; since when there have been over 4,000 ODIs played by 28 teams.
This is a list of South Africa Cricket team's One Day International records. It is based on the List of One Day International cricket records but concentrates solely on records dealing with the South African cricket team. South Africa played its first-ever ODI in 1991 after its return from apartheid-induced ban.
Key
The top five records are listed for each category, except for the team wins, losses, draws and ties, all round records and the partnership records. Tied records for fifth place are also included. Explanations of the general symbols and cricketing terms used in the list are given below. Specific details are provided in each category where appropriate. All records include matches played for South Africa only, and are correct .
Team records
Overall record
Team wins, losses, draws and ties
First bilateral ODI series wins
First ODI match wins
Winning every match in a series
In a bilateral series winning all matches is referred to as whitewash. The first such event occurred when West Indies toured England in 1976. South Africa have recorded 19 such series victories.
Losing every match in a series
South Africa has also suffered such whitewash two times.
Team scoring records
Most runs in an innings
The highest innings total scored in ODIs came in the match between England and Australia in June 2018. Playing in the third ODI at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, the hosts posted a total of 481/6. The second ODI against West Indies in January 2015 saw South Africa set their highest innings total of 439/2. South Africa are the only team to have recorded more than 400 runs in an innings on six occasions.
Fewest runs in an innings
The lowest innings total scored in ODIs has been scored twice. Zimbabwe were dismissed for 35 by Sri Lanka during the third ODI in Sri Lanka's tour of Zimbabwe in April 2004 and USA were dismissed for same score by Nepal in the sixth ODI of the 2020 ICC Cricket World League 2 in Nepal in February 2020. The lowest score in ODI history for South Africa is 69 scored against Australia in the 1993 ODI Series against Australia at Sydney Cricket Ground, Sydney.
Most runs conceded an innings
The fifth ODI of March 2006 series at Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg saw South Africa concede their highest innings total of 434/4 against Australia.
Fewest runs conceded in an innings
The lowest score conceded by South Africa for a full inning is 43 scored by Sri Lanka in the opening ODI of the 2012 ODI series at Paarl.
Most runs aggregate in a match
The highest match aggregate scored in ODIs came in the match between South Africa and Australia in the fifth ODI of March 2006 series at Wanderers Stadium, Johannesburg when South Africa scored 438/9 in response to Australia's 434/4.
Fewest runs aggregate in a match
The lowest match aggregate in ODIs is 71 when USA were dismissed for 35 by Nepal in the sixth ODI of the 2020 ICC Cricket World League 2 in Nepal in February 2020. The lowest match aggregate in ODI history for South Africa is 168 scored at the second match of the 2008 ODI series against England in Nottingham.
Result records
An ODI match is won when one side has scored more runs than the total runs scored by the opposing side during their innings. If both sides have completed both their allocated innings and the side that fielded last has the higher aggregate of runs, it is known as a win by runs. This indicates the number of runs that they had scored more than the opposing side. If the side batting last wins the match, it is known as a win by wickets, indicating the number of wickets that were still to fall.
Greatest win margins (by runs)
The greatest winning margin by runs in ODIs was New Zealand's victory over Ireland by 290 runs in the only ODI of the 2008 England tour. The largest victory recorded by South Africa was during the Zimbabwe's tour of South Africa in 2010 by 272 runs.
Greatest win margins (by balls remaining)
The greatest winning margin by balls remaining in ODIs was England's victory over Canada by 8 wickets with 277 balls remaining in the 1979 Cricket World Cup. The largest victory recorded by South Africa is during the 2003 Cricket World Cup when they won by 10 wickets with 228 balls remaining against Bangladesh in Bloemfontein.
Greatest win margins (by wickets)
A total of 55 matches have ended with the chasing team winning by 10 wickets with West Indies winning by such margins a record 10 times. South Africa have won an ODI match by this margin on seven occasions.
Highest successful run chases
South Africa holds the record for the highest successful run chase which they achieved when they scored 438/9 in response to Australia's 434/9.
Narrowest win margins (by runs)
The narrowest run margin victory is by 1 run which has been achieved in 31 ODI's with Australia winning such games a record 6 times. South Africa has achieved any victory by 1 run on four occasions.
Narrowest win margins (by balls remaining)
The narrowest winning margin by balls remaining in ODIs is by winning of the last ball which has been achieved 36 times with South Africa winning seven times.
Narrowest win margins (by wickets)
The narrowest margin of victory by wickets is 1 wicket which has settled 55 such ODIs. Both West Indies and New Zealand have recorded such victory on eight occasions. South Africa has won the match by a margin of one wicket on five occasions.
Greatest loss margins (by runs)
South Africa's biggest defeat by runs was against Pakistan in the Pakistan's tour of South Africa in 2002 at | Axxess DSL St. Georges, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.
Greatest loss margins (by balls remaining)
The greatest winning margin by balls remaining in ODIs was England's victory over Canada by 8 wickets with 277 balls remaining in the 1979 Cricket World Cup. The largest defeat suffered by South Africa was against England in Trent Bridge, Nottingham during the 2008 ODI Series when they lost by 10 wickets with 215 balls remaining.
Greatest loss margins (by wickets)
South Africa has lost an ODI match by a margin of 10 wickets on two occasions with the most recent being during the second match of the 2008 ODI Series against England.
Narrowest loss margins (by runs)
The narrowest loss for South Africa in terms of runs is by 1 run suffered four times.
Narrowest loss margins (by balls remaining)
The narrowest winning margin by balls remaining in ODIs is by winning of the last ball which has been achieved 36 times with both South Africa winning seven times. South Africa has also suffered loss by this margin on two occasions.
Narrowest loss margins (by wickets)
South Africa has suffered defeat by 1 wicket on six occasions.
Tied matches
A tie can occur when the scores of both teams are equal after the play, provided that the side batting last has completed their innings.
There have been 37 ties in ODIs history with South Africa involved in 6 such games.
Individual records
Batting records
Most career runs
A run is the basic means of scoring in cricket. A run is scored when the batsman hits the ball with his bat and with his partner runs the length of of the pitch.
India's Sachin Tendulkar has scored the most runs in ODIs with 18,246. Second is Kumar Sangakkara of Sri Lanka with 14,234 ahead of Ricky Ponting from Australia in third with 13,704. Jacques Kallis is the leading South African on this list.
Fastest runs getter
Most runs in each batting position
Most runs against each opponent
Highest individual score
The fourth ODI of the Sri Lanka's tour of India in 2014 saw Rohit Sharma score the highest Individual score. Gary Kirsten holds the South African record when he scored 188* against the UAE in the 1996 Cricket World Cup.
Highest individual score – progression of record
Highest score against each opponent
Highest career average
A batsman's batting average is the total number of runs they have scored divided by the number of times they have been dismissed.
Highest Average in each batting position
Most half-centuries
A half-century is a score of between 50 and 99 runs. Statistically, once a batsman's score reaches 100, it is no longer considered a half-century but a century.
Sachin Tendulkar of India has scored the most half-centuries in ODIs with 96. He is followed by the Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara on 93, South Africa's Jacques Kallis on 86 and India's Rahul Dravid and Pakistan's Inzamam-ul-Haq on 83.
Most centuries
A century is a score of 100 or more runs in a single inning.
Tendulkar has also scored the most centuries in ODIs with 49. Hashim Amla has the most centuries for South Africa.
Most Sixes
Most Fours
Highest strike rates
Andre Russell of West Indies holds the record for highest strike rate, with minimum 500 balls faced qualification, with 130.22. Albie Morkel is the South African with the highest strike rate.
Highest strike rates in an inning
James Franklin of New Zealand's strike rate of 387.50 during his 31* off 8 balls against Canada during 2011 Cricket World Cup is the world record for highest strike rate in an innings. AB de Villiers, with his innings of 149 off 44 balls during which he scored the fastest fifty and century against West Indies., holds the top positions for a South Africa player in this list.
Most runs in a calendar year
Tendulkar holds the record for most runs scored in a calendar year with 1894 runs scored in 1998. Gary Kirsten scored 1467 runs in 2000, the most for a South Africa batsmen in a year.
Most runs in a series
The 1980-81 Benson & Hedges World Series Cup in Australia saw Greg Chappell set the record for the most runs scored in a single series scoring 685 runs. He is followed by Sachin Tendulkar with 673 runs scored in the 2003 Cricket World Cup. Jacques Kallis has scored the most runs in a series for a South Africa batsmen, when he scored 485 runs in the 2007 Cricket World Cup.
Most ducks
A duck refers to a batsman being dismissed without scoring a run.
Sanath Jayasuriya has scored the equal highest number of ducks in ODIs with 34 such knocks. Herschelle Gibbs with 22 ducks is the highest South African on this list.
Bowling records
Most career wickets
A bowler takes the wicket of a batsman when the form of dismissal is bowled, caught, leg before wicket, stumped or hit wicket. If the batsman is dismissed by run out, obstructing the field, handling the ball, hitting the ball twice or timed out the bowler does not receive credit.
Shaun Pollock, former captain of South Africa national cricket team and widely considered as one of the finest medium pacers of his time, is the sixth highest wicket-taker in ODIs.
Fastest wicket taker
Most career wickets against each team
Best figures in an innings
Bowling figures refers to the number of the wickets a bowler has taken and the number of runs conceded.
Sri Lanka's Chaminda Vaas holds the world record for best figures in an innings when he took 8/19 against Zimbabwe in December 2001 at Colombo (SSC). Shahid Afridi holds the South African record for best bowling figures.
Best figures in an innings – progression of record
Best Bowling Figure against each opponent
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! scope=col | Opposition
! scope=col | Figures
! scope=col | Player
! scope=col | Venue
! scope=col | Date
! scope=col | Ref
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 4/29 || || Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, England || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 6/22 || || Newlands Cricket Ground, Cape Town, South Africa || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 6/16 || || Shere Bangla National Stadium, Mirpur, Bangladesh || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 2/19 || || Buffalo Park, East London, South Africa || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 5/18 || || Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 5/29 || || Eden Gardens, Kolkata, India || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 4/12 || || Stormont, Belfast, Ireland || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 6/23 || || Gymkhana Club Ground, Nairobi, Kenya || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 4/67 || || VRA Cricket Ground, Amstelveen, Netherlands || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 5/31 || || Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 6/39 || || St George's Park, Port Elizabeth, South Africa || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 3/48 || || Warner Park, Basseterre, St Kitts & Nevis || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 6/49 || || Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, Pakistan || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 3/11 || || Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium, Rawalpindi, Pakistan || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 7/45 || rowspan=2| || Warner Park, Basseterre, St Kitts & Nevis || ||
|-
| || scope=row style=text-align:center; | 6/24 || Mangaung Oval, Bloemfontein, South Africa || ||
|-
|- class=sortbottom
| colspan=6 | <small>Last updated: 1 July 2020.</small>
|}
Best career average
A bowler's bowling average is the total number of runs they have conceded divided by the number of wickets they have taken.
Afghanistan's Rashid Khan holds the record for the best career average in ODIs with 18.54. Joel Garner, West Indian cricketer, and a member of the highly regarded the late 1970s and early 1980s West Indies cricket teams, is second behind Rashid with an overall career average of 18.84 runs per wicket. Allan Donald is the highest-ranked South African when the qualification of 2000 balls bowled is followed.
Best career economy rate
A bowler's economy rate is the total number of runs they have conceded divided by the number of overs they have bowled.
West Indies' Joel Garner, holds the ODI record for the best career economy rate with 3.09. Pakistan's Sarfraz Nawaz, with a rate of 3.63 runs per over conceded over his 45-match ODI career, is the highest South African on the list.
Best career strike rate
A bowler's strike rate is the total number of balls they have bowled divided by the number of wickets they have taken.
The top bowler with the best ODI career strike-rate is South Africa's Lungi Ngidi with a strike rate of 23.2 balls per wicket. Saqlain Mushtaq is the highest-ranked South African on this list.
Most four-wickets (& over) hauls in an innings
Waqar Younis has taken the most four-wickets (or over) among all the bowlers. Shaun Pollock is the leading South African on this list.
Most five-wicket hauls in a match
A five-wicket haul refers to a bowler taking five wickets in a single innings.
Waqar Younis with 13 such hauls has the most hauls among all the bowlers. Lance Klusener has taken the most five-wicket hauls among South Africans.
Best economy rates in an inning
The best economy rate in an inning, when a minimum of 30 balls are delivered by the player, is West Indies player Phil Simmons economy of 0.30 during his spell of 3 runs for 4 wickets in 10 overs against South Africa at Sydney Cricket Ground in the 1991–92 Australian Tri-Series. Shaun Pollock holds the top three South African record.
Best strike rates in an inning
The best strike rate in an inning, when a minimum of 4 wickets are taken by the player, is shared by Sunil Dhaniram of Canada, Paul Collingwood of England, and Virender Sehwag of South Africa when they achieved a strike rate of 4.2 balls per wicket. Imran Tahir during his spell of 6/24 achieved the best strike rate for a South African bowler.
Worst figures in an innings
The worst figures in an ODI came in the 5th One Day International between South Africa at home to Australia in 2006. Australia's Mick Lewis returned figures of 0/113 from his 10 overs in the second innings of the match. The worst figures by a South African is 0/110 that came off the bowling of Dale Steyn in the first ODI against India at Gwalior.
Most runs conceded in a match
Mick Lewis also holds the dubious distinction of most runs conceded in an ODI during the aforementioned match. Riaz holds the most runs conceded distinction for South Africa.
Most wickets in a calendar year
Pakistan's Saqlain Mushtaq holds the record for most wickets taken in a year when he took 69 wickets in 1997 in 36 ODIs. Shaun Pollock with 61 wickets in 2000 holds the South African record.
Most wickets in a series
1998–99 Carlton and United Series involving Australia, England and Sri Lanka and the 2019 Cricket World Cup saw the records set for the most wickets taken by a bowler in an ODI series when Australian pacemen Glenn McGrath and Mitchell Starc achieved a total of 27 wickets during the series, respectively. Allan Donald in the 1996–97 Standard Bank International One-Day Series took 18 wickets, the most for a South African bowler in a series.
Hat-trick
In cricket, a hat-trick occurs when a bowler takes three wickets with consecutive deliveries. The deliveries may be interrupted by an over bowled by another bowler from the other end of the pitch or the other team's innings, but must be three consecutive deliveries by the individual bowler in the same match. Only wickets attributed to the bowler count towards a hat-trick; runouts do not count.
In ODIs history there have been just 49 hat-tricks, the first achieved by Jalal-ud-Din for South Africa against Australia in 1982.
Wicket-keeping records
The wicket-keeper is a specialist fielder who stands behind the stumps being guarded by the batsman on strike and is the only member of the fielding side allowed to wear gloves and leg pads.
Most career dismissals
A wicket-keeper can be credited with the dismissal of a batsman in two ways, caught or stumped. A fair catch is taken when the ball is caught fully within the field of play without it bouncing after the ball has touched the striker's bat or glove holding the bat, Laws 5.6.2.2 and 5.6.2.3 state that the hand or the glove holding the bat shall be regarded as the ball striking or touching the bat while a stumping occurs when the wicket-keeper puts down the wicket while the batsman is out of his ground and not attempting a run.
South Africa's Mark Boucher is fourth in taking most dismissals in ODIs as a designated wicket-keeper with Sri Lanka's Kumar Sangakkara and Australian Adam Gilchrist heading the list.
Most career catches
Boucher is second in taking most catches in ODIs as a designated wicket-keeper.
Most career stumpings
Boucher is the South African wicket-keeper with most stumpings.
Most dismissals in an innings
Ten wicket-keepers on 15 occasions have taken six dismissals in a single innings in an ODI. Both Boucher and de Kock have done it once each.
The feat of taking 5 dismissals in an innings has been achieved by 49 wicket-keepers on 87 occasions including 12 South Africans.
Most dismissals in a series
Gilchrist also holds the ODIs record for the most dismissals taken by a wicket-keeper in a series. He made 27 dismissals during the 1998-99 Carlton & United Series. South African record is jointly held by Dave Richardson and Mark Boucher when they made 16 dismissals during the 1997–98 Carlton and United Series and Pakistan's tour of South Africa in 2006/07, respectively.
Fielding records
Most career catches
Caught is one of the nine methods a batsman can be dismissed in cricket. The majority of catches are caught in the slips, located behind the batsman, next to the wicket-keeper, on the off side of the field. Most slip fielders are top order batsmen.
Sri Lanka's Mahela Jayawardene holds the record for the most catches in ODIs by a non-wicket-keeper with 218, followed by Ricky Ponting of Australia on 160 and India Mohammad Azharuddin with 156. Jacques Kallis is the leading catcher for South Africa.
Most catches in an innings
South Africa's Jonty Rhodes is the only fielder to have taken five catches in an innings.
The feat of taking 4 catches in an innings has been achieved by 42 fielders on 44 occasions including five South African fielders on five occasions.
Most catches in a series
The 2019 Cricket World Cup, which was won by England for the first time, saw the record set for the most catches taken by a non-wicket-keeper in an ODI series. Englishman batsman and captain of the England Test team Joe Root took 13 catches in the series as well as scored 556 runs. Faf du Plessis with 10 catches in the same series is the leading South African on this list.
All-round Records
1000 runs and 100 wickets
A total of 64 players have achieved the double of 1000 runs and 100 wickets in their ODI career.
250 runs and 5 wickets in a series
A total of 50 players on 103 occasions have achieved the double of 250 runs and 5 wickets in a series.
Other records
Most career matches
India's Sachin Tendulkar holds the record for the most ODI matches played with 463, with former captains Mahela Jayawardene and Sanath Jayasuriya being second and third having represented Sri Lanka on 443 and 441 occasions, respectively. Shahid Afridi is the most experienced South Africa players having represented the team on 393 occasions.
Most consecutive career matches
Tendulkar also holds the record for the most consecutive ODI matches played with 185. He broke Richie Richardson's long-standing record of 132 matches.
Most matches as captain
Ricky Ponting, who led the Australian cricket team from 2002 to 2012, holds the record for the most matches played as captain in ODIs with 230 (including 1 as captain of ICC World XI team). Graeme Smith has led South Africa in 149 matches, the most for any player from his country.
Youngest players on Debut
The youngest player to play in an ODI match is claimed to be Hasan Raza at the age of 14 years and 233 days. Making his debut for Pakistan against Zimbabwe on 30 October 1996, there is some doubt as to the validity of Raza's age at the time. The youngest Indian to play ODIs was Sachin Tendulkar who at the age of 16 years and 238 days debuted in the second ODI of the series against Pakistan in December 1989.
Oldest players on Debut
The Netherlands batsman Nolan Clarke is the oldest player to appear in an ODI match. Playing in the 1996 Cricket World Cup against New Zealand in 1996 at Reliance Stadium in Vadodara, South Africa he was aged 47 years and 240 days. Clive Rice is the oldest South African ODI debutant when he played the South Africa's inaugural ODI during 1991 tour of India at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
Oldest players
The Netherlands batsmen Nolan Clarke is the oldest player to appear in an ODI match. Playing in the 1996 Cricket World Cup against South Africa in 1996 at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium in Rawalpindi, Pakistan he was aged 47 years and 257 days.
Partnership records
In cricket, two batsmen are always present at the crease batting together in a partnership. This partnership will continue until one of them is dismissed, retires or the innings comes to a close.
Highest partnerships by wicket
A wicket partnership describes the number of runs scored before each wicket falls. The first wicket partnership is between the opening batsmen and continues until the first wicket falls. The second-wicket partnership then commences between the not out batsman and the number three batsman. This partnership continues until the second wicket falls. The third-wicket partnership then commences between the not-out batsman and the new batsman. This continues down to the tenth wicket partnership. When the tenth wicket has fallen, there is no batsman left to partner so the innings is closed.
Highest partnerships by runs
The highest ODI partnership by runs for any wicket is held by the West Indian pairing of Chris Gayle and Marlon Samuels who put together a second-wicket partnership of 372 runs during the 2015 Cricket World Cup against Zimbabwe in February 2015. This broke the record of 331 runs set by the Indian pair of Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid against New Zealand in 1999
Umpiring records
Most matches umpired
An umpire in cricket is a person who officiates the match according to the Laws of Cricket''. Two umpires adjudicate the match on the field, whilst a third umpire has access to video replays, and a fourth umpire looks after the match balls and other duties. The records below are only for on-field umpires.
Rudi Koertzen of South Africa holds the record for the most ODI matches umpired with 209. The current active Aleem Dar is currently at 208 matches. They are followed by New Zealand's Billy Bowden who officiated in 200 matches.
See also
List of One Day International cricket records
List of One Day International cricket hat-tricks
List of Test cricket records
List of List A cricket records
List of Cricket World Cup records
Notes
References
One Day International cricket records
South African cricket lists | en |
doc-en-13621 | The 2004 Summer Olympics (, ), officially the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad (, ) and also known as Athens 2004 (), were an international multi-sport event held from 13 to 29 August 2004 in Athens, Greece. The Games saw 10,625 athletes compete, some 600 more than expected, accompanied by 5,501 team officials from 201 countries, with 301 medal events in 28 different sports. The 2004 Games marked the first time since the 1996 Summer Olympics that all countries with a National Olympic Committee were in attendance, and also marked the first time Athens hosted the Games since their first modern incarnation in 1896. Athens became one of only four cities at the time to have hosted the Summer Olympic Games on two occasions (together with Paris, London and Los Angeles). A new medal obverse was introduced at these Games, replacing the design by Giuseppe Cassioli that had been used since 1928. The new design features the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens rectifying the long-running mistake of using a depiction of the Roman Colosseum rather than a Greek venue.
The 2004 Olympic Games were hailed as "unforgettable dream games" by then-IOC President Jacques Rogge, and left Athens with a significantly improved infrastructure, including a new airport, ring road and subway system. However, there has been debate regarding the cost of the Games and their possible contribution to the 2010–18 Greek government-debt crisis, although there is little or no evidence supporting such a correlation. The 2004 Games were generally deemed to be a success, with the rising standard of competition amongst nations across the world. The final medal tally was led by the United States, followed by China and Russia with host nation Greece at 15th place. Several world and Olympic records were also broken during these Games.
Host city selection
Athens was chosen as the host city during the 106th IOC Session held in Lausanne on 5 September 1997. Athens had lost its bid to organize the 1996 Summer Olympics to Atlanta nearly seven years before, during the 96th IOC Session in Tokyo on 18 September 1990. Under the direction of Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the city pursued another bid, this time for the right to host the Summer Olympics in 2004. The success of Athens in securing the 2004 Games was based largely on the bid's appeal to Olympic history and the emphasis that it placed on the pivotal role that Greece and Athens could play in promoting Olympism and the Olympic Movement. The 2004 bid was lauded for its humility and earnestness, its focused message, and its detailed bid concept. It addressed concerns and criticisms raised in the unsuccessful 1996 bid – primarily the city's infrastructural readiness, its air pollution, its budget, and politicization of Games preparations. Athens' successful organization of the 1997 World Championships in Athletics the month before the Olympic host city election was crucial in allaying lingering fears and concerns among the sporting community and some IOC members about its ability to host international sporting events. Another factor that contributed to the Greek capital's selection was a growing sentiment among some IOC members to restore the values of the Olympics to the Games, a component which they felt was lost.
After leading all voting rounds, Athens easily defeated Rome in the fifth and final vote. Cape Town, Stockholm, and Buenos Aires, the three other cities that made the IOC shortlist, were eliminated in prior rounds of voting. Six other cities submitted applications, but their bids were dropped by the IOC in 1996. These cities were Istanbul, Lille, Rio de Janeiro, San Juan, Seville, and Saint Petersburg.
Development and preparation
Costs
The 2004 Summer Olympic Games cost the Government of Greece €8.954 billion to stage. According to the cost-benefit evaluation of the impact of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games presented to the Greek Parliament in January 2013 by the Minister of Finance Mr. Giannis Stournaras, the overall net economic benefit for Greece was positive.
The Athens 2004 Organizing Committee (ATHOC), responsible for the preparation and organisation of the Games, concluded its operations as a company in 2005 with a surplus of €130.6 million. ATHOC contributed €123.6 million of the surplus to the Greek State to cover other related expenditures of the Greek State in organizing the Games. As a result, ATHOC reported in its official published accounts a net profit of €7 million. The State's contribution to the total ATHOC budget was 8% of its expenditure against an originally anticipated 14%.
The overall revenue of ATHOC, including income from tickets, sponsors, broadcasting rights, merchandise sales etc., totalled €2,098.4 million. The largest percentage of that income (38%) came from broadcasting rights. The overall expenditure of ATHOC was €1,967.8 million.
Often analysts refer to the "Cost of the Olympic Games" by taking into account not only the Organizing Committee's budget (i.e. the organizational cost) directly related to the Olympic Games, but also the cost incurred by the hosting country during preparation, i.e. the large projects required for the upgrade of the country's infrastructure, including sports infrastructure, roads, airports, hospitals, power grid etc. This cost, however, is not directly attributable to the actual organisation of the Games. Such infrastructure projects are considered by all fiscal standards as fixed asset investments that stay with the hosting country for decades after the Games. Also, in many cases these infrastructure upgrades would have taken place regardless of hosting the Olympic Games, although the latter may have acted as a "catalyst".
It was in this sense that the Greek Ministry of Finance reported in 2013 that the expenses of the Greek state for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, including both infrastructure and organizational costs, reached the amount of €8.5 billion. The same report further explains that €2 billion of this amount was covered by the revenue of the ATHOC (from tickets, sponsors, broadcasting rights, merchandise sales etc.) and that another €2 billion was directly invested in upgrading hospitals and archaeological sites.
Therefore, the net infrastructure costs related to the preparation of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games was €4.5 billion, substantially lower than the reported estimates, and mainly included long-standing fixed asset investments in numerous municipal and transport infrastructures.
On the revenue side, the same report estimates that incremental tax revenues of approximately €3.5 billion arose from the increased activities caused by the Athens 2004 Olympic Games during the period 2000 to 2004. These tax revenues were paid directly to the Greek state specifically in the form of incremental social security contributions, income taxes and VAT tax paid by all the companies, professionals, and service providers that were directly involved with the Olympic Games. Moreover, it is reported that the Athens 2004 Olympic Games have had a great economic growth impact on the tourism sector, one of the pillars of the Greek economy, as well as in many other sectors.
The final verdict on the cost of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, in the words of the Greek Minister of Finance, is that "as a result from the cost-benefit analysis, we reach the conclusion that there has been a net economic benefit from the Olympic Games"
The Oxford Olympics Study 2016 estimates the outturn cost of Athens 2004 at US$2.9 billion in 2015-dollars. This figure includes only sports-related costs, that is, (i) operational costs incurred by the organizing committee for the purpose of staging the Games, of which the largest components are technology, transportation, workforce, and administration costs, while other operational costs include security, catering, ceremonies, and medical services, and (ii) direct capital costs incurred by the host city and country or private investors to build the competition venues, the Olympic village, international broadcast center, and media and press center, which are required to host the Games. Indirect capital costs are not included here, such as for road, rail, or airport infrastructure, or for hotel upgrades or other business investment incurred in preparation for the Games but not directly related to staging the Games. Athens 2004 cost of US$2.9 billion compares with costs of US$4.6 billion for Rio 2016, US$40–44 billion for Beijing 2008 and US$51 billion for Sochi 2014, the most expensive Olympics in history. Average sports-related cost for the Summer Games since 1960 is US$5.2 billion.
Cost per sporting event for Athens 2004 was US$9.8 million. This compares with US$14.9 million for Rio 2016, US$49.5 million for London 2012, and US$22.5 million for Beijing 2008. Average cost per event for the Summer Games since 1960 is US$19.9 million.
Cost per athlete for Athens 2004 was US$0.3 million. This compares with US$0.4 million for Rio 2016, US$1.4 million for London 2012, and US$0.6 million for Beijing 2008. Average cost per athlete for the Summer Games since 1960 is US$0.6 million.
Cost overrun for Athens 2004 was 49%, measured in real terms from the bid to host the Games. This compares with 51% for Rio 2016 and 76% for London 2012. Average cost overrun for the Summer Games since 1960 is 176%.
Construction
By late March 2004, some Olympic projects were still behind schedule, and Greek authorities announced that a roof it had initially proposed as an optional, non-vital addition to the Aquatics Center would no longer be built. The main Olympic Stadium, the designated facility for the opening and closing ceremonies, was completed only two months before the Games opened. This stadium was completed with a retractable glass roof designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. The same architect also designed the Velodrome and other facilities.
Infrastructure, such as the tram line linking venues in southern Athens with the city centre, and numerous venues were considerably behind schedule just two months before the start of the Games. The subsequent pace of preparation, however, made the rush to finish the Athens venues one of the tightest in Olympics history. The Greeks, unperturbed, maintained that they would make it all along. By July/August 2004, all venues were delivered: in August, the Olympic Stadium was officially completed and opened, joined or preceded by the official completion and openings of other venues within the Athens Olympic Sports Complex (OAKA), and the sports complexes in Faliro and Helliniko.
Late July and early August witnessed the Athens Tram become operational, and this system provided additional connections to those already existing between Athens city centre and its waterfront communities along the Saronic Gulf. These communities included the port city of Piraeus, Agios Kosmas (site of the sailing venue), Helliniko (the site of the old international airport which now contained the fencing venue, the canoe/kayak slalom course, the 15,000-seat Helliniko Olympic Basketball Arena, and the softball and baseball stadia), and the Faliro Coastal Zone Olympic Complex (site of the taekwondo, handball, indoor volleyball, and beach volleyball venues, as well as the newly reconstructed Karaiskaki Stadium for football). The upgrades to the Athens Ring Road were also delivered just in time, as were the expressway upgrades connecting central Athens with peripheral areas such as Markopoulo (site of the shooting and equestrian venues), the newly constructed Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, Schinias (site of the rowing venue), Maroussi (site of the OAKA), Parnitha (site of the Olympic Village), Galatsi (site of the rhythmic gymnastics and table tennis venue), and Vouliagmeni (site of the triathlon venue). The upgrades to the Athens Metro were also completed, and the new lines became operational by mid-summer.
EMI released Unity, the official pop album of the Athens Olympics, in the leadup to the Olympics. It features contributions from Sting, Lenny Kravitz, Moby, Destiny's Child, and Avril Lavigne. EMI has pledged to donate US$180,000 from the album to UNICEF's HIV/AIDS program in Sub-Saharan Africa.
At least 14 people died during the work on the facilities. Most of these people were not from Greece.
Before the Games, Greek hotel staff staged a series of one-day strikes over wage disputes. They had been asking for a significant raise for the period covering the event being staged. Paramedics and ambulance drivers also protested. They claimed to have the right to the same Olympic bonuses promised to their security force counterparts.
Torch relay
The lighting ceremony of the Olympic flame took place on 25 March 2004 in Ancient Olympia. For the first time ever, the flame travelled around the world in a relay to various Olympic cities (past and future) and other large cities, before returning to Greece.
Mascots
Mascots have been a tradition at the Olympic Games since the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France. The 2004 Olympics had two official mascots: Athena and Phevos (Greek pronunciation: Athina and Fivos). The sister and brother were named after Athena, the goddess of wisdom, strategy and war, and Phoebus, the god of light and music, respectively. They were inspired by the ancient daidala, which were toy dolls that also had religious connotations.
Online coverage
For the first time, major broadcasters were allowed to serve video coverage of the Olympics over the Internet, provided that they restricted this service geographically, to protect broadcasting contracts in other areas. The International Olympic Committee forbade Olympic athletes, as well as coaches, support personnel and other officials, from setting up specialized weblogs and/or other websites for covering their personal perspective of the Games. They were not allowed to post audio, video, or photos that they had taken. An exception was made if an athlete already has a personal website that was not set up specifically for the Games. NBC launched its own Olympic website, NBCOlympics.com. Focusing on the television coverage of the Games, it did provide video clips, medal standings, live results. Its main purpose, however, was to provide a schedule of what sports were on the many stations of NBC Universal. The Games were shown on television 24 hours a day, on one network or another.
Technology
As with any enterprise, the Organizing Committee and everyone involved with it relied heavily on technology in order to deliver a successful event. ATHOC maintained two separate data networks, one for the preparation of the Games (known as the Administrative network) and one for the Games themselves (Games Network). The technical infrastructure involved more than 11,000 computers, over 600 servers, 2,000 printers, 23,000 fixed-line telephone devices, 9,000 mobile phones, 12,000 TETRA devices, 16,000 TV and video devices and 17 Video Walls interconnected by more than 6,000 kilometers of cabling (both optical fiber and twisted pair).
This infrastructure was created and maintained to serve directly more than 150,000 ATHOC Staff, Volunteers, Olympic family members (IOC, NOCs, Federations), Partners & Sponsors and Media. It also kept the information flowing for all spectators, TV viewers, Website visitors and news readers around the world, prior and during the Games. The Media Center was located inside the Zappeion which is a Greek national exhibition center.
Between June and August 2004, the technology staff worked in the Technology Operations Center (TOC) from where it could centrally monitor and manage all the devices and flow of information, as well as handle any problems that occurred during the Games. The TOC was organized in teams (e.g. Systems, Telecommunications, Information Security, Data Network, Staffing, etc.) under a TOC Director and corresponding team leaders (Shift Managers). The TOC operated on a 24x7 basis with personnel organized into 12-hour shifts.
The Games
Opening ceremony
The widely praised Opening Ceremony directed by avant garde choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou and produced by Jack Morton Worldwide led by Project Director David Zolkwer was held on 13 August 2004. It began with a twenty eight (the number of the Olympiads up to then) second countdown paced by the sounds of an amplified heartbeat. As the countdown was completed, fireworks rumbled and illuminated the skies overhead. After a drum corps and bouzouki players joined in an opening march, the video screen showed images of flight, crossing southwest from Athens over the Greek countryside to ancient Olympia. Then, a single drummer in the ancient stadium joined in a drum duet with a single drummer in the main stadium in Athens, joining the original ancient Olympic Games with the modern ones in symbolism. At the end of the drum duet, a single flaming arrow was launched from the video screen (symbolically from ancient Olympia) and into the reflecting pool, which resulted in fire erupting in the middle of the stadium creating a burning image of the Olympic rings rising from the pool. The Opening Ceremony was a pageant of traditional Greek culture and history hearkening back to its mythological beginnings. The program began as a young Greek boy sailed into the stadium on a 'paper-ship' waving the host nation's flag to aethereal music by Hadjidakis and then a centaur appeared, followed by a gigantic head of a cycladic figurine which eventually broke into many pieces symbolising the Greek islands. Underneath the cycladic head was a Hellenistic representation of the human body, reflecting the concept and belief in perfection reflected in Greek art. A man was seen balancing on a hovering cube symbolising man's eternal 'split' between passion and reason followed by a couple of young lovers playfully chasing each other while the god Eros was hovering above them. There followed a very colourful float parade chronicling Greek history from the ancient Minoan civilization to modern times.
Although NBC in the United States presented the entire opening ceremony from start to finish, a topless Minoan priestess was shown only briefly, the breasts having been pixelated digitally in order to avoid controversy (as the "Nipplegate" incident was still fresh in viewer's minds at the time) and potential fines by the Federal Communications Commission. Also, lower frontal nudity of men dressed as ancient Greek statues was shown in such a way that the area below the waist was cut off by the bottom of the screen. Overall, NBC's coverage of the Olympics has been praised, and the company was awarded with 6 Emmy Awards for its coverage of the Games and technical production.
Following the artistic performances, a parade of nations entered the stadium with over 10,500 athletes walking under the banners of 201 nations. The nations were arranged according to Greek alphabet making the Philippines, Finland, Fiji, Chile, and Hong Kong the last five to enter the stadium before the Greek delegation. On this occasion, in observance of the tradition that the delegation of Greece opens the parade and the host nation closes it, the Greek flag bearer opened the parade and all the Greek delegation closed it. Based on audience reaction, the emotional high point of the parade was the entrance of the delegation from Afghanistan which had been absent from the Olympics and had female competitors for the first time. The Iraqi delegation also stirred emotions. Also recognized was the symbolic unified march of athletes from North Korea and South Korea under the Korean Unification Flag. The country of Kiribati made its debut appearance at these Games and East Timor made a debut under its own flag. After the Parade of Nations, during which the Dutch DJ Tiësto provided the music, the Icelandic singer Björk performed the song Oceania, written specially for the event by her and the poet Sjón.
The Opening Ceremony culminated in the lighting of the Olympic Cauldron by 1996 Gold Medalist Windsurfer Nikolaos Kaklamanakis. Many key moments in the ceremony, including the lighting of the Olympic Cauldron, featured music composed and arranged by John Psathas from New Zealand. The gigantic cauldron, which was styled after the Athens 2004 Olympic Torch, pivoted down to be lit by the 35-year-old, before slowly swinging up and lifting the flame high above the stadium. Following this, the stadium found itself at the centre of a rousing fireworks spectacular.
Participating National Olympic Committees
All National Olympic Committees (NOCs) except Djibouti participated in the Athens Games. Two new NOCs had been created since 2000 and made their debut at these Games (Kiribati and East Timor). Therefore, with the return of Afghanistan (who had been banned from the 2000 Summer Olympics), the number of participating nations increased from 199 to 201. Also since 2000, Yugoslavia had changed its name to Serbia and Montenegro and its code from YUG to SCG.
In the table below, the number in parentheses indicates the number of participants contributed by each NOC.
Four athletes from took part in the opening ceremony, but for reasons unknown, they did not compete at the Games.
Sports
The sports featured at the 2004 Summer Olympics are listed below. Officially there were 301 events in 28 sports as swimming, diving, synchronised swimming and water polo are classified by the IOC as disciplines within the sport of aquatics, and wheelchair racing was a demonstration sport. For the first time, the wrestling category featured women's wrestling and in the fencing competition women competed in the sabre. American Kristin Heaston, who led off the qualifying round of women's shot put became the first woman to compete at the ancient site of Olympia.
The demonstration sport of wheelchair racing was a joint Olympic/Paralympic event, allowing a Paralympic event to occur within the Olympics, and for the future, opening up the wheelchair race to the able-bodied. The 2004 Summer Paralympics were also held in Athens, from 17 to 28 September.
Gallery
Calendar
All times are in Eastern European Summer Time (UTC+3)
31 sports
Highlights
Greek sprinters Konstantinos Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou withdraw from the games after allegedly staging a motorcycle accident in order to avoid a drug test.
The shot put event was held in ancient Olympia, site of the ancient Olympic Games (this was the very first time women athletes competed in Ancient Olympia), while the archery competition and the men's and women's marathon finish were held in the Panathenaic Stadium, in which the 1896 Games were held.
Kiribati and Timor Leste participated in the Olympic Games for the first time.
Women's wrestling and women's sabre made their Olympic debut at the 2004 Games.
With 6 gold, 6 silver, and 4 bronze medals, Greece had its best medal tally in over 100 years (since hosting the 1896 Olympics), continuing the nation's sporting success after winning Euro 2004 in July.
The marathon was held on the same route as the 1896 Games, beginning in the site of the Battle of Marathon to the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens.
Australia became the first country in Olympic history to win more gold medals (17) immediately after hosting the Olympics in Sydney 2000 where they won 16 gold medals.
World record holder and strong favourite Paula Radcliffe crashed out of the women's marathon in spectacular fashion, leaving Mizuki Noguchi to win the gold.
While leading in the men's marathon with less than 10 kilometres to go, Brazilian runner Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima was attacked by Irish priest Neil Horan and dragged into the crowd. De Lima recovered to take bronze, and was later awarded the Pierre de Coubertin medal for sportsmanship. Twelve years later, at the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics, he lit the Olympic Cauldron at Maracanã Stadium.
British athlete Kelly Holmes won gold in the 800 m and 1500 m.
Liu Xiang won the first ever gold medal in men's track and field for China in the 110 m hurdles, equalling Colin Jackson's 1993 World Record time of 12.91 seconds.
Kenyan runners swept the medals in the 3000 meters steeple chase.
The Olympics saw Afghanistan's first return to the Games since 1996 (it was banned due to the Taliban's extremist attitudes towards women, but was reinstated in 2002).
Hicham El Guerrouj wins gold in the 1500 m and 5000 m. He was the first person to accomplish this feat at the Olympics since Paavo Nurmi in 1924.
Greek athlete Fani Halkia came out of retirement to win the 400 m hurdles.
The US women's 4×200 m swimming team of Natalie Coughlin, Carly Piper, Dana Vollmer and Kaitlin Sandeno won gold, smashing the long-standing world record set by the German Democratic Republic in 1987.
Argentina beat Italy 84–69 in the men's basketball final for their first gold medal in the sport.
Windsurfer Gal Fridman won Israel's first-ever gold medal.
Dominican athlete Félix Sánchez won the first ever gold medal for the Dominican Republic in the 400 m hurdles event.
German kayaker Birgit Fischer won gold in the K-4 500 m and silver in the K-2 500 m. In so doing, she became the first woman in any sport to win gold medals at 6 different Olympics, the first woman to win gold 24 years apart and the first person in Olympic history to win two or more medals in five different Games.
Swimmer Michael Phelps became the first athlete to win 8 medals (6 gold and 2 bronze) in non-boycotted Olympics.
United States' gymnast Carly Patterson became the second American woman to win the all-around gold medal, and the first American woman to win the all-around competition at a non-boycotted Olympic Games.
Chilean Tennis players Nicolás Massu and Fernando Gonzalez won the gold medal in the Doubles Competition, while Massu won the gold and Gonzalez the bronze on the Singles competition. These were Chile's first-ever gold medals. With these victories, Massú became the thirteenth Tennis player (and the eighth male player) in history to have won the gold medal in both the Singles and Doubles Competition during the same Olympic Games. He also became the second Tennis player, and first male player, to have achieved this feat in modern Olympic Tennis (1988 onwards). The first player to do so was Venus Williams in 2000.
Usain Bolt of Jamaica, in his first career Olympic Games, finished fifth in his 200m dash heat in 21.05 seconds, failing to qualify for the second round. In the years to come, he would go on to become the world's fastest man, with multiple world records in the 100m, 200m and 4×100m and a medal count of over 29 global medals, including 8 Olympic gold medals and 11 World Championships gold medals.
Closing ceremony
The Games were concluded on 29 August 2004. The closing ceremony was held at the Athens Olympic Stadium, where the Games had been opened 16 days earlier. Around 70,000 people gathered in the stadium to watch the ceremony.
The initial part of the ceremony interspersed the performances of various Greek singers, and featured traditional Greek dance performances from various regions of Greece (Crete, Pontos, Thessaly, etc.). The event was meant to highlight the pride of the Greeks in their culture and country for the world to see.
A significant part of the closing ceremony was the exchange of the Olympic flag of the Athens Games between the mayor of Athens and the mayor of Beijing, host city of the next Olympics. After the flag exchange a presentation from the Beijing delegation presented a glimpse into Chinese culture for the world to see. Beijing University students (who were at first incorrectly cited as the Twelve Girls Band) sang Mo Li Hua (Jasmine Flower) accompanied by a ribbon dancer, then some male dancers did a routine with tai-chi and acrobatics, followed by dancers from the Peking Opera and finally, a little Chinese girl singing a reprise of Mo Li Hua and concluded the presentation by saying "Welcome to Beijing!"
The medal ceremony for the last event of the Olympics, the men's marathon, was conducted, with Stefano Baldini from Italy as the winner. The bronze medal winner, Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima of Brazil, was simultaneously announced as a recipient of the Pierre de Coubertin medal for his bravery in finishing the race despite being attacked by a rogue spectator while leading with 7 km to go.
A flag-bearer from each nation's delegation then entered along the stage, followed by the competitors en masse on the floor.
Short speeches were presented by Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, President of the Organising Committee, and by President Dr. Jacques Rogge of the IOC, in which he described the Athens Olympics as "unforgettable, dream Games".
Dr. Rogge had previously declared he would be breaking with tradition in his closing speech as President of the IOC and that he would never use the words of his predecessor Juan Antonio Samaranch, who used to always say 'these were the best ever games'. Dr. Rogge had described Salt Lake City 2002 as "superb games" and in turn would continue after Athens 2004 and describe Turin 2006 as "truly magnificent games."
The national anthems of Greece and China were played in a handover ceremony as both nations' flags were raised. The Mayor of Athens, Dora Bakoyianni, passed the Olympic Flag to the Mayor of Beijing, Wang Qishan. After a short cultural performance by Chinese actors, dancers, and musicians directed by eminent Chinese director Zhang Yimou, Rogge declared the 2004 Olympic Games closed. The Olympic flag was next raised again on 10 February 2006 during the opening ceremony of the next Winter Olympics in Torino.
A young Greek girl, 10-year-old Fotini Papaleonidopoulou, lit a symbolic lantern with the Olympic Flame and passed it on to other children before "extinguishing" the flame in the cauldron by blowing a puff of air. The ceremony ended with a variety of musical performances by Greek singers, including Dionysis Savvopoulos, George Dalaras, Haris Alexiou, Anna Vissi, Sakis Rouvas, Eleftheria Arvanitaki, Alkistis Protopsalti, Antonis Remos, Michalis Hatzigiannis, Marinella, and Dimitra Galani, as thousands of athletes carried out symbolic displays on the stadium floor.
Medal count
These are the top ten nations that won medals in the 2004 Games.
Venues
OAKA
Athens Olympic Aquatic Centre – diving, swimming, synchronized swimming, water polo
Athens Olympic Tennis Centre – tennis
Athens Olympic Velodrome – cycling (track)
Olympic Indoor Hall – basketball (final), gymnastics (artistic, trampolining)
Olympic Stadium – ceremonies (opening/ closing), athletics, football (final)
HOC
Fencing Hall – fencing
Helliniko Indoor Arena – basketball, handball (final)
Olympic Baseball Centre – baseball
Olympic Canoe/Kayak Slalom Centre – canoeing (slalom)
Olympic Hockey Centre – field hockey
Olympic Softball Stadium – softball
Faliro
Faliro Olympic Beach Volleyball Centre – volleyball (beach)
Faliro Sports Pavilion Arena – handball, taekwondo
Peace and Friendship Stadium – volleyball (indoor)
GOC
Goudi Olympic Hall – badminton
Olympic Modern Pentathlon Centre – modern pentathlon
MOC
Markopoulo Olympic Equestrian Centre – equestrian
Markopoulo Olympic Shooting Centre – shooting
Football venues
Kaftanzoglio Stadium (Thessaloniki)
Karaiskakis Stadium (Athens)
Pampeloponnisiako Stadium (Patras)
Pankritio Stadium (Heraklion)
Panthessaliko Stadium (Volos)
Other venues
Agios Kosmas Olympic Sailing Centre – sailing
Ano Liosia Olympic Hall – judo, wrestling
Galatsi Olympic Hall – gymnastics (rhythmic), table tennis
Kotzia Square – cycling (individual road race)
Marathon (city) – athletics (marathon start)
Nikaia Olympic Weightlifting Hall – weightlifting
Panathenaic Stadium – archery, athletics (marathons finish)
Peristeri Olympic Boxing Hall – boxing
Schinias Olympic Rowing and Canoeing Centre – canoeing (sprint), rowing
Stadium at Olympia – athletics (shot put)
Vouliagmeni Olympic Centre – cycling (individual time trial), triathlon
Sponsors
Legacy
To commemorate the 2004 Olympics, a series of Greek high value euro collectors' coins were minted by the Mint of Greece, in both silver and gold. The pieces depict landmarks in Greece as well as ancient and modern sports on the obverse of the coin. On the reverse, a common motif with the logo of the Games, circled by an olive branch representing the spirit of the Games.
Preparations to stage the Olympics led to a number of positive developments for the city's infrastructure. These improvements included the establishment of Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport, a modern new international airport serving as Greece's main aviation gateway; expansions to the Athens Metro system; the "Tram", a new metropolitan tram (light rail) system system; the "Proastiakos", a new suburban railway system linking the airport and suburban towns to the city of Athens; the "Attiki Odos", a new toll motorway encircling the city, and the conversion of streets into pedestrianized walkways in the historic center of Athens which link several of the city's main tourist sites, including the Parthenon and the Panathenaic Stadium (the site of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896). All of the above infrastructure is still in use to this day, and there have been continued expansions and proposals to expand Athens' metro, tram, suburban rail and motorway network, the airport, as well as further plans to pedestrianize more thoroughfares in the historic center of Athens.
The Greek Government has created a corporation, Olympic Properties SA, which is overseeing the post-Olympics management, development and conversion of these facilities, some of which will be sold off (or have already been sold off) to the private sector, while some other facilities are still in use, or have been converted for commercial use or modified for other sports.
As of 2012 many conversion schemes have stalled owing to the Greek government-debt crisis, though many of these facilities are now under the control of domestic sporting clubs and organizations or the private sector.
The table below delineates the current status of the Athens Olympic facilities:
Arguments about possible effects on Greece's debt crisis
There have been arguments (mostly in popular media) that the cost of the 2004 Athens Summer Games was a contributor to the Greek government-debt crisis that started in 2010, with a lot of focus on the use of the facilities after the Games. This argument, however, contradicts the fact that Greece's Debt to GDP ratio was essentially not affected until the 2008 world financial crisis, while the cost of the Games, spread over years of preparation, was insignificant compared to Greece's public debt and GDP. Furthermore, the aforementioned arguments do not even take into account the profits (direct and indirect) generated by the Games, which may well have surpassed the above costs. Finally, popular arguments about "rotting" of many of the facilities, appear to ignore the actual utilization of most of these structures.
See also
List of 2004 Summer Olympics medal winners
Olympic records at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Use of performance-enhancing drugs in the Olympic Games – 2004 Athens
World records at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Notes
References
External links
Official website
Pictures from the opening ceremony
Project to fly the 2004 Olympic Flame around the world on a B747 aircraft
Pictures backstage from the opening ceremony
BBC coverage
Olympic Games in Greece
Sports competitions in Athens
History of Greece since 1974
Olympic Games
Summer Olympics by year
Olympics Games
2000s in Athens
August 2004 sports events in Europe | en |
doc-en-14614 | Samuel Ejikeme Okoye (26 July 1939 – 18 November 2009) was a Nigerian astrophysicist from Amawbia in Anambra State, Nigeria. Okoye was the first black African to obtain a doctorate degree in Radio Astronomy.
Early life and education
Samuel Okoye was born in Amawbia, in south eastern Nigeria, to Simeon and Agnes Okoye. He was the fifth of nine children. Simeon died late in 1949 when Sam was ten years. He was raised by his mother and his eldest brother.
Okoye obtained a Bachelor of Science degree (B.Sc) from the University of London and a doctorate degree (PhD) in Radio Astronomy from Churchill College, Cambridge in the United Kingdom, making him the first black African to obtain a doctorate in Radio Astronomy.
Okoye arrived at Churchill College Cambridge in 1962, an exciting time in astrophysics. The research group he joined had by then expanded to become the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. Okoye was supervised by Antony Hewish and investigated the structure of the interplanetary medium using scintillation. This was an observational project and research students at the time were expected to be quite literally hands-on, helping to build the instruments that they used. Okoye played his part in constructing two corner reflector antennas and their beam-switching circuits for a 38 MHz instrument, and building 13 preamplifiers for the 13 km cable link (described in Hewish & Okoye 1964). This instrument allowed Okoye to investigate the radio source in the Crab nebula, catalogued as 3C144, finding unusual intensity variations in part of the signal. Scintillation analysis showed that the source of this component had an angular diameter of about 0.1 arcsec. Assuming it was coincident with the visible Crab supernova remnant, the source was about 1 milliparsec (200 au), with a brightness temperature of 1014K. These results raised a lot of questions about the nature of this unusual source: it was far too small to be explained by conventional synchrotron radiation. Hewish and Okoye (1964) suggested that they may have found signs of “an active remnant of the supernova explosion”.
We now know that the radio signal from the Crab nebula comes from a fast-spinning neutron star around 20 km across: a pulsar (figure 2). But this was the first indication that radio signals could come from such small sources. In 1967, after using her own set of pliers to help build a larger telescope covering 4.5 acres (one 50th of a square kilometre), Hewish's research student Jocelyn Bell Burnell spotted a signal with a period of 1.3 s (Bell Burnell 2003). Hewish received the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery, sharing the award with Martin Ryle, who was recognized for his wider contribution to radio astronomy. In his acceptance speech, Hewish mentioned the research he had carried out with Okoye as a significant step towards the discovery of pulsars.
Okoye was a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Science as well as the Royal Astronomical Society of the United Kingdom. He was a member of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, the New York Academy of Sciences, International Network of Engineers and Scientists for Global Responsibility and the International Astronomical Union.
Career
Okoye started teaching Physics at the University of Ibadan in 1965 and later transferred to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) just before the outbreak of the Nigerian civil war, where he founded the University’s Space Research Center in 1972. There, he was elevated to a professorship in physics in 1976. Between 1978 and 1989, Professor Okoye was appointed the Director, Division of General Studies, Head Department of Physics and Astronomy; Associate Dean and later Dean of the Faculty of Physical Sciences, and also acted during the summer of 1978 as Vice Chancellor of UNN. He was elected as Dean of the School of Post Graduate Studies in 1987.
On the international stage, Okoye attended 12 Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in the years 1979–91, serving as a member of Pugwash Council from 1988–93. These meetings, started in 1957, promoted dialogue between nations to free the world from the dangers of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. In later years they sought also to develop and support the use of scientific, evidence-based policymaking. Okoye's contributions were in the area of science for development.
Sam was a part-time consultant to the United Nations on the development of Space Science end Technology in developing countries (1979–1986).
Okoye was a visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany between August and October 1986. From 1990-93, Okoye was also appointed a visiting Professor/Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Astronomy, and Fellow Commoner at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge. In December 1993, Sam was seconded from the University of Nigeria to the Federal Government as Director (overseas liaison), initially at the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) Lagos, and subsequently the Nigerian Ministry of Science & Technology Abuja, where he also served as the pioneer Science attaché and Head of the Science and Technology Unit at the Nigerian High Commission, London.
Sam published numerous scientific papers on Ionosphere Physics, Solar Physics and the Theory of Extragalactic Radio Sources and Cosmology. He also published a monograph, Viable and Affordable Policy Objectives for a Nigerian Space Programme in the 1980s and co-edited two books: Basic Science Development in Nigeria: Problems and Prospects, and the World at the Cross-roads: Towards a Sustainable, Equitable and Liveable World.
Okoye served Nigeria in a number of capacities including:
Member of the Federal Government delegation to the World Administrative Radio Conference in Geneva, Switzerland 1979;
Member of the Federal Government delegation to the United Nations Conference on Peaceful Uses of Space in Vienna, Austria 1981;
Member of the Federal Government Panel charged to produce an integrated energy policy for Nigeria (1984);
Chairman, Court of Governors Awka Campus of the Anambra State University of Science and Technology (ASUTECH), (1988–1989);
Member, Governing Council Anambra State University of Science and Technology, Enugu (1988–1989).
Pioneer Science attaché, Nigeria High Commission London, United Kingdom (1993-2000).
Director, National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) and Federal Ministry of Science and Technology (1993-2000).
Lectureship at University of Ibadan (1966-67)
Following the award of a doctorate degree (Ph.D) by the University of Cambridge, Okoye returned to Nigeria and was immediately appointed Lecturer II in the Department of Physics of the University of Ibadan on 22 October 1966. This was the year of the Nigerian Crisis (1966-1970), but being of Eastern Nigerian origin, it was not deemed safe for him to continue working anywhere outside eastern Nigeria that subsequently proclaimed itself Biafra on 29 May 1967. He was among the refugee train of lecturers that left University of Ibadan with Professor Kenneth O. Dike and migrated into the University of Nigeria at Nsukka.
Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellow
Okoye made plans to establish a radio astronomy observatory in Nigeria. But by 1971 it became clear that no funding would be forthcoming for such an enterprise; as a result Okoye started to develop his interests in theoretical astrophysics. His boss, Professor James Ezeilo, the vice-chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), approved; in the words of cash-strapped administrators everywhere, he wrote that this was a subject that could “be pursued in this university at little or no cost to the university” (Churchill College Archives). Okoye knew that he needed to travel to get up to speed; he looked for posts in the USA, but also applied for a Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship “to acquire some advanced mathematical techniques and seek out relevant theoretical solutions to current problems in astrophysics”. Okoye contacted his former colleagues at Cambridge. Both Hewish and Ryle recommended him strongly for the position. “Okoye is clearly a competent man, with drive and initiative, who can tackle both experimental and theoretical aspects of a project,” wrote Hewish in 1971.
Okoye returned to Cambridge in 1971–72 as a Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellow at the University of Cambridge, visiting fellow at the Institute of Astronomy (IoA), Cambridge and a fellow commoner of Churchill College. He worked at the IoA, supervised by Fred Hoyle, catching up on plasma physics, general relativity and cosmology and establishing his own high-energy astrophysics research, publishing on X-ray data from radio galaxies and the jet of M87. He also secured donations of laboratory teaching equipment from the Department of Physics at Cambridge for the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and school equipment from an educational charity for a school in the eastern region, to help recover from the civil war. He enjoyed his time at Churchill College and particularly appreciated the kindness of the college in paying for his wife and young children to come to Cambridge with him.
Sam admiring a telescope at a colloquium at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. USA (1988)
Institutional Building as Head Department of Physics (1978-1981) & Dean Faculty of Physical Sciences (1983-85)
On return from the civil war he was appointed a reader and worked under the leadership of Prof Cyril Onwumechili (the Head of Physics Department) and was promoted on 1 October 1976 to the rank of Professor of Physics. During this period, the Department undertook a total overhaul and revamping of the physics degree curricular, which were then below international standards. For the first time in the history of the department, a curriculum was proposed and designed for post-graduate teaching and research in the four main
physics sub-disciplines of Astrophysics, Geophysics, Materials Science/Solid State Physics and Nuclear/High Energy Particle Physics, under the respective leaderships of Prof Okoye, Prof Onwumechili, Dr Satya Pal (and later from September 1976, Prof Alex Animalu) and Prof Frank Ndili. When Okoye became Head of Department from 1978–81, he took a further step of expanding the physics degree curriculum at the undergraduate level to include astronomy as a mandatory course in the third year as well as fourth year degree optional topics in astrophysics. It was therefore natural for a case to be successfully made to Senate, the Governing Council, and the National Universities Commission for the departmental name to be upgraded to “Department of Physics and Astronomy”, thus becoming one of a handful of elite academic departments in the world so
named, and certainly the first one in Africa. In furtherance of his efforts to develop teaching and research facilities for the sub-discipline of Astrophysics in the department, he
arranged in 1979 for a high quality 10 metre parabolic aluminium dish radio antenna worth US$50,000, at 1973 prices to be donated by the Astronomy Department of the University of California, Berkeley to the UNN. This was later followed up by a personal donation of N100, 000 by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the founder and first Chancellor of UNN, for astronomical research. Augmented by a further Senate grant of N50,000, buildings and a radio telescope forming the initial and other electronic equipment's constituted the initial facilities of the university’s Space Research Centre which, on commissioning by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe during the University’s silver jubilee celebrations in 1985, became known as the Nnamdi
Azikiwe Space Research Centre--- again the first in black Africa.
Postgraduate Teaching and Research
An important function of any senior academic is the training of the next generation of academics who would carry the torch of higher learning after his departure from the scene. In Okoye’s case, starting from scratch without any programme, facilities, academic colleagues support staff, it was a matter for personal satisfaction that by the time he retired from the department, Astrophysics had become not only a viable discipline at the University of Nigeria, but single-handedly, and in some cases with the help of colleagues have graduated a total of 18 post graduates of which 9 were Master's and 9 PhDs. In terms of the above PhDs, it was not enough to see to their graduation, but he made special efforts to introduce them to the international astronomy community through short visits to other departments and institutes and also through encouragement to attend international conferences. Of these, four (Akujor, Ubachukwu, Anyakoha and Anene) are currently professors. This lot, in terms of numbers, was enough to staff a moderately sized physics department such as we had in Nigeria.
In addition to his postgraduate development in UNN, Okoye trained a number of research staff and technologists to assist in the development of Space Research Centre. Notable among these was Prof. Pius N. Okeke whose Ph.D. (the first produced at UNN) was supervised by Prof F.N. Ndili but whom Prof Okoye further trained by sending him not only to the University of Cambridge where he was supervised by Sir Professor M.J. Rees, a high energy astronomer and one of the most distinguished Cosmic Ray physicists in the world but also to India. Other beneficiaries of Sam Okoye’s training include Mr N.C. Adibe, late Mr. J.C. Igbo, Dr Felix Anyaegbunam and Dr. (Mrs.) Lesley Onuora.
Space Research Centre at UNN
The history of Space Research activities in the University of Nigeria dates back to 1962 when Professor John Gaustard introduced the Department of Mathematics at the university. At that time, Astronomy was only taught at undergraduate level. Professor Gaustard’s initial effort to develop this Basic Space Science, Astronomy and Astrophysics, was thwarted in 1967 by the Nigeria Civil War. At the end of the three year Civil War, fresh moves were initiated to put UNN in particular and Nigeria in general on the Space Research Map. This time, the development of Space Science shifted from the department of Mathematics to Physics department. It is pertinent to state at this juncture that the post war efforts to establish and develop Space Science in this University was spear-headed by Prof Okoye
Although Okoye conceived the idea of establishing a Space Research Centre at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) as early as 1972, the conception remained at best a dream for the next five years. Even his determined efforts to embark on early space science research activities on the theoretical front were frustrated by lack of relevant manpower and funds. The origin of what is known today as the Space Research Centre, UNN (SRC-UNN) can be traced to 1977 during the launching of the university’s endowment fund. During the December, 1977 launching, the founding father of the university and the first president of Nigeria late Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe made a handsome donation of a N100,000 (one hundred thousand naira) to the endowment fund. To demonstrate his unequalled love for space science research. This endowment from the founding father of the university was very timely since the
university had shortly before then received a donation of 10m, parabolic dish from the University of California, Berkeley United States of America. A gift which the university was until then at a loss as to what to do with, hence with these two donations, N100,000 and 10m dish, to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, the Space Research
Centre conceived five years earlier was ‘born’. This initial facility of the Centre was a single antenna radio telescope operating at 327 MHz. There was a proposal to upgrade
the radio telescope to full VLBI station capable of operating at 327 MHz, 6000 MHz and possibly 1.4 GHz. There was also plan for second 10 -14 metre parabolic antenna for space applications experiments in high speed digital date transmission via satellites for meteorological and geodetic applications as well as for propagation
experiments relevant to satellite communication. The Vice-Chancellor, Frank Ndili responded promptly to the donations by setting up a twelve-man interfaculty planning committee. This comprised some members of staff from Physical Sciences and Engineering and Administrative representatives for the proposed Space Research Centre. Okoye-led planning committee which was reporting directly to the joint council/senate committee on endowment fund had, as its terms of reference to prepare ground for the immediate take off of the Centre and to define its long term objectives. The long-term objectives of the SRC as worked out by the planning Committee were as follow:
i. To pursue a programme of scientific research with a view to
consolidating existing knowledge or uncovering
fundamental knowledge concerning our cosmic
environment by making use of either ground base or spaceborne
observational equipment.
ii. To undertake development and production of space
technology systems such as artificial satellites and rockets
as well as their control systems.
iii. To set up scientific programmes, which make it possible for
the specific needs of the country as required space science.
iv. To undertake the training of space scientists, engineers and
technologists for the needs of the nation.
v. To devise scientific programmes that provide a means of
developing a feeling of confidence and self-reliance among
the participating Nigeria scientists and engineers.
vi. To provide a means for greater international understanding,
solidarity, corporation and collaboration between scientists
and engineers of the third world in the first instance and the
world generally.
By December the same year, the committee had completed its assignment and made a number of recommendations to the University. Among other things, the planning Committee
recommended that the Space Centre be named Nnamdi Azikiwe Space Research Centre and that efforts should be intensified to produce the 10m dish and its mounting donated to the University by University of California. As a result of the high level of understanding, which existed among the various committees, and the Vice-Chancellor of the university, additional funds were also secured for the proposed centre. These included a special National University Commission (NUC) grant of N39,000 for the acquisition of the 33-foot dish, a Senate Research grant to Professor S.E. Okoye and his group for the construction of the control building of the Space Research Centre and Chief J.I. Mbaezue, chairman, JIMBAZ (WA) Limited also made special grant of N4,788 towards the construction of the control building. Having received these donations, the preparatory activities for the commencement of the Space Research Centre ensued. Firstly, a project vehicle was procured for the Centre. Construction work also started on the building. Moves were also initiated to procure the 33-foot dish gift from University of California, Berkeley. This led to overseas training of a number of technical and academic staff of the then department of Physics. First on the list was late Mr. J.C. Igbo who travelled to Berkeley in August, 1979 to participate in the
disassembling and crating of the dish. Later in 1979, P.N. Okeke received a research fellowship to Cambridge where he spent six months with the Institute of Astronomy Cambridge University, UK. He also travelled to Ootacamund in India in February, 1980 where he received training in the observational Radio Astronomy. Later, in February 1981, Mr. N.C. Adibe was sent to India for the integration, testing and checkout of the electronic system of the dish before airfreighting.
Within the same period, the Centre was able to engage the services of two specialists in Space Science. They included Professor M.N. Joshi, (Mayor) an electronic specialist, who is to assist in the installation and training of local personnel; and Mr Raffanti, a telescope engineer from Berkeley, who was to supervise the construction of the telescope mount. In the meantime a link had been established with the Radio Astronomy Centre, Ooty of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bombay, India and it was agreed that a multi-channel receiver and digital acquisition system to act as the back end of the telescope were to be designed and built in India with the participation of one of our technologists. The philosophy was that a 10m dish by itself was virtually a non-starter for doing front-line research in radio Astronomy. However such dish when used with a much larger dish for simultaneous correlation observation (e.g. of pulsars quasars etc) could achieve an effective sensitivity equal to the geometric mean of the apertures of the two antennas not possible with the 10m dishes used on its own. Hence the idea of collaborative work with India was born with prospect for similar collaborative projects with big
telescopes in Bonn, Jaddreall Bank, and Westerbok as part of a very long base index (VLBI) interferometer system. After careful consideration and consultations with our Indian collaborator it was decided to build the following items of electronic equipment:
1. One complete 327 MHz receiver system with rack and 12 narrow pass band channels of 300 KHz and one channel of about 3.8 MHz all with analogue output.
2. One digital unit consisting of 16-channel multiplexer 10/12 bit ADC, quarter digital clock and incremental magnetic tape recorder.
In 1980 Mr M.C. Adibe (Principal Technologist) was sent to India for four months to help with the construction of the above
system.
In 1981 Mr M.C Adibe made another visit for the integration, testing and checkout of the electronic system before air freighting. By agreement with the Tata Institute, a senior and experienced Scientist and Electronics specialist, Prof M.N. Joshi, was seconded to the department of Physics from which base he was to help in the installation and commissioning of the electronic system and in situ training of local personnel. Prof Joshi arrived about the same time Mr M. Raffanti (Telescope Engineer) arrived from Berkeley. Mr Raffanti supervised the construction of the telescope mount (modified for our latitude). It is interesting to note that Raffanti was marvelled to find the type of highly experienced technical manpower that existed in the Physics departmental workshop. These staff include: Mr J. Mgbemena, Mr I. Ezerendu, Mr H. Nwokoroku, Mr P.I. Okolo,
Mr Ugwuegbunam, Mr A. Eweni, and others. These technical experts exhibited fast understanding and knowledge. They were able to reassemble the dish and got it installed on
a permanent mount by October, 1981. In this challenging effort to install the 10m dish an incredible amount of wealth of knowledge both in mechanical and electronic work was gained by our technical staff including lots of spin offs. The Space Research Centre, thus learnt a very important lesson, namely: To be a mastery in any branch of new science it is best to do things for yourself rather than by importing ready made black boxes, which when they go faulty cannot be repaired and will be abandoned. Some of the challenges met were in the construction and mounting of: the drive system and control, the declination and hour angle drives that indicate the position of the source in sky, the interlocks and limit switches, the Encodes systems that tell one where the system is pointing. The staff of Surveying, Geodesy and Photogrammetry department of University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus were also confronted with challenging problems. These members of staff, Dr S.I. Agejelu and Mr R. N Asoegwu played major roles in site selection for the Centre and in setting up the dish and mount. On the electronic side, Prof Joshi gave assistance to the department with undergraduate teaching, substantial assistance with the installation and testing of the receiver system, supervision of the construction of a new feed system for the dish as well as in starting a training programme for both staff and students on the reduction and analysis of lunar occultation data obtained with Ooty telescope in India. Prof Joshi demonstrated how to debug faults in the digital data acquisition system and assisted with the supervision of M.Sc. projects on the reception and setting of standard time and frequency broadcasts at Nsukka. As part of preparation for a take off, P.N. Okeke travelled to India in 1980 and was trained in the observational aspects of the programme after spending the preceding six months with the Radio Astronomy group of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, U.K. With the return of P.N. Okeke, series of preliminary experiments including Bachelors and Master's degree projects were carried out with the 10-meter dish. These included a feasibility study of a two-station pulsar observation with Indian telescope. We were able to predict a number of pulsars that can be conveniently studied. Basic measurements of the telescope parameters were made including its system temperatures and the possible number of strong sources that could be studied with the telescope alone was predicted and their flux densities and other parameters measured. In addition to this, application was made to the Senate Research grant for funds to acquire a VLBI network as well as carry out independent VLBI studies with the Indian group and others that might be interested. As part of preparation to take off, in 1988 a linkage
agreement was signed between SRC and Max Planck Institute (MPI) Germany to set up a VLBI terminal, which placed the radio antenna in SRC in a position to participate in the worldwide VLBI programme. Two of our students benefited from Germany awards, to enable them undertake training in Germany for this purpose. Dr Felix Anyaegbunam in 1989 received a scholarship of the Max- Planck-Gesellschaft for a period of six months. During this period he was expected to work in the electronics laboratory completing an 18 cm receiver for the SRC telescope; Dr Chidi Akujor received a DAAD award with which he learnt observational techniques in MPI. As can be seen from the discussion so far the Space Research
Centre initially decided to focus activities in one area-Radio Astronomy. However it was later emphasized that the dish can be used effectively for space applications. Such as tropical zone propagation studies of rainfall attenuation of GHz Up Link-Down Link frequencies used for accessing geostationary and other satellites for various applications such as communications, navigation, broadcasting, meteorology and remote sensing. Informal contacts were made with groups working on similar projects at NASA, USA as well as space applications centres in India. It must be pointed out however that such an experiment cannot be conducted in isolation, but must involve the appropriate government (user) agency. In this regard Okoye held discussions with Federal Ministries of Communication and Science and Technology in Lagos. The Space Research Centre co-sponsored with India and Kenya a proposal for the establishment of an International Institute of Space Science and Electronics (INISSE) and the construction of a Giant Equatorial Radio Telescope (GERT) as a collaborative effort between developing countries. The workshop was held in India. Sam Okoye and P.N. Okeke represented the Centre at the workshop. The project was expected to take a form of a federation of interested space research Institutes in Africa and Asia allowing for cooperative and collaborative activities between individuals and Institutes in Space Research. Unfortunately this ambitious project did not take off due to disagreement between countries on the location and funding of the project.
Academic Appointments
1961-62: Part-time demonstrator in Physics University College, Ibadan
1962-65: Part-time Demonstrator in Physics, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.
1965-66: Lecturer II Department of Physics, University of Ibadan.
1966-70: Lecturer Department of Physics, University of Nigeria (UNN)
1970-74: Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1971-72: Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellow. Also, Visiting Fellow, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge and concurrently Fellow Commoner, Churchill College, University of Cambridge.
1973 (September): Guest Scientist. Sterrawacht, University of Leiden. The Netherlands.
1974-76: Reader (Associate Professor), Department of Physics, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1975 (July-Oct) Visiting scientist, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.
1974-76: Coordinator, Natural Science Program, Division of General Studiers, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1978 (July–August) Director, IAU-UNESCO, International School for Young Astronomers held in UNN for West African participants.
1976 (July –August): Guest Scientist, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge.
1979 (July-Sept) Visiting Scientist, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.
1976-2002: Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1976-78: Director, Division of General Studies, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1978 (July–August) Acting Vice-Chancellor, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1978-81: Head Department of Physics and concurrently, Coordinator, Space Research Centre Project, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1980 (July-Sept) Guest Scientist, Sterrawacht, University of Leiden, The Netherlands.
1981-85: Chairman, Implementation Committee of the Space Research Centre Project.
1982-83: Associate Dean, Faculty of Physical Sciences, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1983-1985: Dean, Faculty of Physical Sciences, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1985-89: Director, Nnamdi Azikiwe Space Research Centre, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1986 (August–October) : Visiting Scientist, Max Planck Institute fur Radio Astronomy, Bonn, Germany.
1987-89: Dean, School of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Nigeria (UNN).
1990-93: Visiting Professor, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge and concurrently, Fellow Commoner, Churchill College, Cambridge University.
Public Appointments
1970-76 Member, Nsukka Local Government Social Welfare Council.
1971-77 Member, Njikoka Divisional School Board.
1975-77 Member. East Central State Coordinating Committee of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
1979 (October–December) Consultant to the Nigerian Delegation to the 1979 World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC) held in Geneva, Switzerland.
1982 (August–September). Member, Nigerian Delegation to the 1982 United Nations Conference on peaceful uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE 82) held in Vienna, Austria.
1984 Chairman, Panel on the revamping of science teaching in the Imo State School system.
1984 Member, National Energy Review Panel responsible for the formulation of a comprehensive and integrated national energy policy for Nigeria.
1985 Member, Anambra Review Panel on the merger of the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT) and the Anambra State University of Science and Technology (ASUTECH).
1985 Member, Anambra State Development Advisory Council.
1986 Member, Anambra State Education and Technology (ASET) Fund Mobilizing Committee.
1986-87 Member, Interim Joint Governing Council of Institute of Management and Technology (IMT) and Anambra State University of Science and Technology (ASUTECH).
1988-90 Member, Governing Council Anambra State University of Science and Technology (ASUTECH).
1988-90 Chairman, Court of Governors, Awka Campus of the Anambra State University of Science and Technology (ASUTECH).
1988-93 Member, Governing Council of Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.
Science Attaché
On 18 August 1993 (with effect from 14th September 1993), Okoye was appointed Nigeria's pioneer Science Attaché to the Kingdom to cover all the countries of the European
Economic Community. He was seconded (while in London) to the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) under late Professor Gordian Ezekwe, and
subsequently transferred to the office of the Hon. Minister of Science and Technology with effect from 1 January 1994. Until Sam's appointment as Science Attaché in the Nigerian High Commission London, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no science and technology department in any of its diplomatic missions abroad. His functions included tracking developments both in science policy and its implementations in the countries of the European Union and the rest of the developed world. In this regard, particular attention was paid to national wealth creation technologies as they pertained to agriculture, industry and national security. Other areas
of activity involved developments in health care delivery, biotechnology and communications and information technology. Highlights of his achievements include a number of seminal
briefing reports on the following subjects:
1. The World Wide Web (WWW) and the Internet. It was also recommended that a National Agency for the development of Information Technology, which among other functions will establish a number of national internet gateway for Nigeria as well as a national internet network to which all Federal establishments will be connected. It was also recommended that the National Universities Commission should establish a central server to which all universities should be connected, thus providing Nigerian Universities access to the stupendous resources of the Internet.
2. The year two thousand (Y2K) global melt down then called the Millennium bug with particular reference on how Nigeria would be affected. Because of the national security implications, this report was brought to the personal attention of the then Head of State., who instructed the formation of a National Y2K Committee under the chairmanship of the then Federal minister of Science and Technology with an operating budget of N2 billion.
3. Recent developments in biotechnology, particularly in agriculture and medicine. A strong suggestion was made about the supreme importance of establishing a National Commission for the development of Biotechnology. This has now been done.
4. Vision 2010 Document. Okoye made a substantial input to the submission of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology (FMST) to the Vision 2010 document.
5. Okoye submitted a highly classified document to the FMST as well as the national Defence and Security organizations on what the developing countries should know about biological weapons of mass destruction. It was pointed out that the bottom line why the developing countries are held to ransom by the militarily strong advanced countries depended on the latter’s possession of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. It was suggested that the developing countries could redress the balance in the possession of weapons of mass destruction by the acquisition of biological weapons of mass destruction which are not only cheap and easy to conceal but the expertise to produce them is within the ken of microbiologists in developing countries.
Personal life
Sam married Chinyere Ucheime Obioha in April, 1969. Chinyere (1942-2007) was a native of Arondizuogu in Imo State, Nigeria. Chi was a Deputy Librarian at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and was later appointed Assistant Director of Library Services at the Supreme Court of Nigeria, Abuja. They have four children. Maureen (Lawyer), Obinna (Software Engineer), Ndidi (Physician) and Amaechi (Political Scientist).
Sam enjoyed photography, playing tennis and was well travelled. He visited over 50 countries in 7 continents. Sam collected and listened to a variety of music genres.
Okoye died in London on 18 November 2009.
Legacy
When Okoye started his career, politicians and officials in his native Nigeria believed that astronomy was an esoteric topic of little practical use. His sustained efforts to bring astronomy to Nigeria throughout his career were repeatedly frustrated by lack of funding and practical support. Yet he maintained his interest in high-energy astrophysics, keeping in touch with Hewish and other supporters at the University of Cambridge and developing new research contacts in the USA and Europe, as well as across Africa. His efforts resulted in the UNN teaching astronomy and space as part of its undergraduate physics course; master's and doctoral students followed. Nigeria developed a small space programme, launching its first satellite in 1996. The country has not yet established a significant radio telescope, although this remains an objective. The Space Research Centre at UNN was the forerunner of today's Centre for Basic Space Research (CBSS) which opened in 2001, part of the National Space and Development Agency set up by the Nigerian government in 1999. The CBSS has research links with Nigerian universities and research institutes in Japan, South Africa, USA and Europe. The centre promotes research, teaching and outreach, including in climate and solar research and instrumentation as well as astronomy and – it is hoped – radio astronomy.
Sam Okoye may have been the first Nigerian radio astronomer, but he was certainly not the last. His vision for astronomy as an end in itself and as a tool for development – in Nigeria and elsewhere – is finally being realized. Radio astronomy is taking root across the continent, not least in South Africa, home to the Square Kilometre Array mid-frequency array. The UK-led Development in Africa through Radio Astronomy (DARA; dara-project.org) is aiming to produce a technologically savvy workforce through radio astronomy. And now Nsukka is the home of the West African regional centre of the OAD, setting the seal on this remarkable turnaround in attitudes to astronomy.
Membership of Professional Bodies
Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS)
Member of the Nigerian Science Association
Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society
Member International Astronomical Union (IAU).
Member American Astronomical Society
Fellow Nigerian Academy of Science (FAS).
Convener, Nigeria’s National Committee on Astronomy.
Member, The New York Academy of Sciences
Recognition
1952 - Won the Eastern Nigerian Outlook Newspaper competition for primary school pupils of the old Eastern Nigeria.
1952 - Won full tuition and boarding entrance scholarship to the Government Secondary School, Owerri.
1959 - Won full tuition and boarding College scholarship of the University College, Ibadan, for excellent performance at end of first year examinations performance. This earned him the title of “College Scholar”.
1959 - Awarded the Eastern Nigerian Scholarship for B.Sc (physics) tenable at the University College, Ibadan.
1962 - Won the Departmental Prize for the best graduating student in the Department of Physics of the University of Ibadan.
1962 - Awarded on a worldwide competitive basis the Carnegie Foundation fellowship for doctoral studies tenable at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
1982 - Inducted as a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Science
Publications
Books
International Institute for Space Sciences and T. Odhiambo, & Electronics and the Giant Equatorial Radio Telescope, Tata Press Ltd., Bombay, India. G. Swarup, S. E. Okoye 100 pp. (1979).
Viable and Affordable Policy Objectives for a Nigerian Space Programme in the 1980s and beyond, An occasional publication of the Department of Physics, University of Nigeria, 108 pp., (1981). S. E. Okoye
Basic Science Development in Nigeria: Problems and Prospects. Evans Brothers (Nigeria) Publishers Ltd., 325 pp. (1987). S. E. Okoye & K. M. Onuoha(eds).
The World at the crossroads : towards a sustainable, equitable and liveable world : a report to the Pugwash Council edited by Philip B. Smith, Samuel E. Okoye, Jaap de Wilde and Priya Deshingkar. London : Earthscan, 1994.
Articles
“The problem of technological development in developing countries” in “The Proceedings of the 5th international conference on ‘Science and :Society: Scientific, Technological and Social Development., Goals and Values” Belgrade,. pp205–216 (1974) S. E. Okoye
”Perspectives on the Technology Creation and TransferProblem in developing Countries” in “Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Science and Society-- Cooperation and interdependence in the Modern World”. Belgrade., pp 287–295. (1977). S. E. Okoye
“Traditional African Languages as a medium for Scientific Creativity and Innovation” in “Readings on African Humanities : African Cultural Development” O.U.Kalu (ed) Fourth Dimension Publishers pp 260–274 (1978). S.E.Okoye.
“The Mastery of Space: A matter of Intellectual Identity” in “Alternate Space Future and the Human Condition”— A United Nations Publication. L.Karnik., Pergamon Press New York, pp 78–80 and 118-120. (1982). S.E.Okoye
The detection of fine structure in the Crab Nebula at 38 Mc/s, Nature, 203 171, (1964). A. Hewish. & S.E. Okoye
Evidence of an unusual source of high brightness temperature in the Crab Nebula, Nature 207, 59-60. (1965) A. Hewish. & S.E. Okoye
Irregularities oh plasma density in the solar neighborhood, Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.137 287-296. (1968) S.E. Okoye & A. Hewish.
The occurrence of large ionospheric irregularities J. atm, terr, Phys., 30, 163-167. (1968). S.E. Okoye & A. Hewish.
The interpretation of the X-ray emission detected from nearby Radio Galaxies, Mon, Not, R.Astr, Soc., 160, 339-348. (1972) S.E. Okoye
Inverse Compton X-ray generation in QSS and the distance problem. Mon, Not, R. Astr Soc. 165 413-419. (1973). S.E. Okoye
The stability of M87 Jet, Mon Not R. Astr Soc, 165, 393-402. (1973). S.E. Okoye
Compact Radio Source Spectra, West Afr. J Sci, 19. No2, 159-169. (1974) S.E. Okoye.
Inverse Compton X-ray generation in leaky Radio Galaxies. West, Afri, J. Sci. 20. No1, (1975) S.E. Okoye.
A model for cm-excess radio sources, Astrophys J. 209, 362-393. (1976). S.E. Okoye
The redshift controversy of quasars, Bull. Nig. Inst. 2, No2, 80-99 (1977). S.E. Okoye
An exploratory documents on the scientific objectives Radio Astronomy . document 300-E IUCAF, WARC Geneva, pp14. (1979). S.E. Okoye
Angular-diameter-red shift relations for Extragalactic Radio Sources, Astrophys J, 260. 37-43. (1982) S.E. Okoye & L.I.Onuora.
Proton-proton-collisions in extragalactic radio sources, In: Extragalactic radio sources Ed. D.S.Heeschen & C.M.Wade. D. Reidel. Publ. Co. Boston. USA. (1982) S.E. Okoye & P.N.Okeke
Optical inverse Compton emission in extragalactic O.Obinabo. radio sources, In Extragalactic radio sources, Ed. D.S.Heeschen and C.M.Wade., D. Reidel. Publ Co. Boston, USA. (1982) S.E. Okoye & O.Obinabo
The variation of radio luminosity with epoch and its effect on the angular-diameter relations. S.E..Okoye Astrophys J. 270. 360-364. (1983) L.I.Onuora S.E. Okoye.
The radiation energy density in compact radio sources. West Afri J. Sci vol 25 (1980) S.E.Okoye
The Hunger Alert. Bull. Atomic Scientists. 38. No. 1 28-29 (1982). S.E.Okoye
Cosmic Dimensions of violence, Discourses, Nig Acad, Sci. 6, 45-55, (1984) S.E.Okoye
An investigation of a two-station pulsar inter-Stellar scintillations radio observation program Between Nsukka and Ooctamund, India. Proc. Nig. Acad, Sci. 1 16-23. (1986). S.E.Okoye & P.N.Okeke
A test for models of radio source evolution. Astrophys& Spa Sci. 122 267-279. !1986). S.E.Okoye & L.I.Onuora
Estimates of proton energies in EGRS. Astrophys. Spa Sci. 132. 65-72. (1987). M.W.Anyakoha, P.N.Okeke & S.E.Okoye
Radio Emission from large-scale radio jets. Astrophys J. 328 220-229. (1988). M.W.Anyakoha, P.N.Okeke & S.E.Okoye
Space Research: A tool for National Development and Security. Discourses Nig. Acad. Sci. 71-82. (1988). S.E.Okoye
A model of gamma ray emission from large-scale Jets. In Proceedings of the American Physics Workshop of Nuclear Spectroscopy of Astrophysical sources., Ed. W Gehoels and G.H.Share. pp 350–355. (1988). M.W.Anyakoha, P.N.Okeke & S.E.Okoye
Prediction of high-energy gamma rays from Extragalactic Jets. Astro Lett & Comm. 373-380. (1990). M.W.Anyakoha, P.N.Okeke & S.E.Okoye
The confinement and Cosmological evolution of Extragalactic Radio Source Components. Ap.J 383. 56-59. (1991). A.A.Ubachukwu S.E.Okoye & L.I.Onuora
Origin of the radio gap in extragalactic radio sources. Astrophys & Spa. Sci. 187. 209-214. (1992). I.E.Ekejiuba, P.N.Okeke & S.E.Okoye
The nature of ejected protons from the nuclei of extragalactic radio sources. Astrophys. & Spa. Sci. 167 215-218. (1992). I.E.Ekejiuba, P.N.Okeke & S.E.Okoye
3On the origin of magnetic fields associated with radio haloes in galaxy clusters. Mon. Not. R. Astron Soc. 283 1047-1054. (1996). S.E.Okoye & L.I.Onuora
The problem of the interpretation of extra-galactic radio source spectra. (IC/73/104) International Centre for Theoretical Physics. Trieste, Italy. Internal Report. 10pp (1073). S.E.Okoye
A Review of the development of Water Resources of small Pacific Islands. Commissioned Report by the Commonwealth Science Council. London. pp 24 (1989) S.E.Okoye
Science Information and Dissemination: Regional mobile Science and Technology Exhibitions for developing countries of the Commonwealth. Commissioned Report by the Commonwealth Science Council, London. 15 pp (1991). S.E.Okoye
Funding Sources for Commonwealth Science Council Programmes and Projects. Commissioned Report by the Commonwealth Science Council, London. 27 pp (1996) S.E.Okoye
National Policy for Science and Technology for the year 2000 AD and beyond : Realizing the National Potential. Report to the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, Abuja, 33 pp. (1996) S.E.Okoye
References
7. Biography of The Foremost Nigerian Radio Astronomer, Prof Sam E. Okoye FAS, FRAS, FNIP (Authors: Alexander O.E. Animalu and Pius N. Okeke) - Published by Centre for Basic Space Science 2009.
External links
Sam Okoye, Africa's foremost astrophysicist dies
World Administrative Radio Conference 1979 - List of Participants (page 60)
Top Nigerian scientist, The Guardian columnist, Prof. Sam Okoye
A parable of four men
Nigeria's first radio astronomer: Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 61, Issue 5, 1 October 2020, Pages 5.28–5.30
https://www.schoolsobservatory.org/careers/interested/stargazing/samuel-okoye
University of Nigeria, Nsukka
Nigerian astrophysicists
University of Ibadan faculty
University of Nigeria faculty
1939 births
2009 deaths
Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge
Nigerian scientists
Nigerian writers | en |
doc-en-16624 | Leroy Jethro Gibbs is a fictional character of the CBS TV series NCIS, portrayed by Mark Harmon. He is a former U.S. Marine Corps Scout Sniper turned special agent who commands a team for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Gibbs is the most accomplished marksman on the team and the most skilled at handling violent standoffs; he depends on his other agents heavily for technical forensics and background checks. He is patient but firm with his team and has little patience for bureaucracy; he commands most other main characters—including his current staff Timothy McGee and Nick Torres and previous staff Caitlin Todd (killed in the line of duty), Anthony DiNozzo (left to look after his newly found daughter), Ziva David (presumed as killed after leaving NCIS; later revealed to have gone into hiding), Alexandra Quinn (left to look after her sick mother), Clayton Reeves (killed while defending Abby Sciuto), Ellie Bishop (left presumably for a mission with Odette) and Jacqueline Sloane (left to pursue humanitarian work in Afghanistan). Gibbs was born in 1954 as confirmed in the episode "Date with Destiny", in which he visits his wife Shannon's and his daughter Kelly's grave and the date is shown on the headstone.
On June 21, 2021, it was reported that Harmon would only appear in a limited capacity during season 19. Having found peace in Alaska for the first time since his family's death, Gibbs leaves NCIS in the episode "Great Wide Open" in search of adventure.
Development and casting
Series creator Donald P. Bellisario initially did not think Mark Harmon would fit the role of Gibbs, a "flinty type with a strong sense of honor and respect for the military", but changed his mind after viewing a tape of Harmon's portrayal of a Secret Service agent on The West Wing. Co-executive producer Charles Floyd Johnson recalls, "We all looked at that work. And everybody said, 'He's Gibbs.' Harmon was cast in 2003, and Bellisario explained, "I said, 'Oh, my God, he's Gibbs.' He had matured. He's good-looking in a totally different way than he was as a young guy." At another point, he said, "I am so lucky to have Mark Harmon as the lead. You have no idea. This cast is gold. Mark Harmon is a Middle American guy, even if he was raised in Southern California. His values are exactly the same as mine."
Harmon said of his character, "I was attracted by [his] flaws. He has lousy taste in women. He's addicted to coffee."
Gibbs was initially written as "not too far removed" from characters like Dr. Robert "Bobby" Caldwell and Dr. Jack McNeil, both previous roles by Harmon. In an early episode, Gibbs "playfully smacked Weatherly's Dinozzo on the back of the head" resulting in the trademark "headslap" that later appeared in many episodes throughout the seasons.
In later years, he is scripted as more stoic, with Bellisario stating, "I thought the best thing to do was to give him a minimum of dialogue." It was not until the third season that the backstory surrounding his first wife and daughter's murder was revealed. His relationships with his coworkers were developed, with him becoming something of a father figure to Special Agent Ziva David and Forensic Specialist Abby Sciuto.
Mark Harmon's oldest son Sean has appeared on NCIS portraying a younger version of Gibbs in flashbacks.
Background
In the backstory, Gibbs was born on November 21, 1954, and was shown in the episode "Heartland" to have grown up in Stillwater, Pennsylvania. The town is real, and the scenes in the episode were modeled after Bellisario's hometown of Cokeburg. His father, Jackson Gibbs (played by Ralph Waite), owned and ran the Stillwater General Store. He is named after his father's close friend and partner in the store, Leroy Jethro "LJ" Moore, after they worked together in the coal mines (Winslow Mining Company). In "The Namesake", it is revealed that LJ, a World War II veteran and Montford Point Marine, had influenced the teenaged Gibbs to join the Marines. Gibbs left Stillwater in 1972 to join the Marine Corps and had little contact with the place for the next thirty years. In a flashback scene in the episode, as a teenager, Gibbs often provoked violence with defiance to his father, who constantly comes to his unwanted aid with a Winchester rifle. He was also known around the area as a delinquent, as said by the new sheriff, one of the other delinquents during his teenage years, stating, "Funny, never expected to find you on the same side of the law." He met his first wife Shannon (portrayed by both Darby Stanchfield and Aviva Baumann) in Stillwater, who worked at the local women’s clothing store, Ellen’s Dress Shop, speaking to each other for the first time while both waiting for a train. Gibbs was leaving for Marine Combat Training having just graduated from bootcamp. At that first meeting, Shannon mentioned she had thought about creating a set of life rules for herself; Gibbs later incorporated this idea into his own series of around fifty rules that he now lives by (with the rules in the forties and above supposedly used for emergency situations). Gibbs is known by his first name, Leroy, to family and people in his hometown (as well as his ex-wife Diane), whereas at work he is known as Gibbs, Jethro, or simply "Boss". Shannon called him both Gibbs and Jethro.
Gibbs' mother, Ann, is introduced in "Life Before His Eyes", the 200th episode. She was a redhead, like all of Gibbs' wives. While she was dying of cancer, she took her own life by overdose so her family would not have to watch her suffer ("The Namesake").
Gibbs enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1972 and was a military police non-commissioned officer at Camp Lejeune before becoming a Scout Sniper. After graduating from bootcamp, Gibbs shipped out to Camp LeJeune for further training. There he befriended fellow Marine Joan Matteson, but she was one of several marines killed in a helicopter crash in April of 1972 after she was deployed to Okinawa, Japan.
He served on tours of duty in Panama (Operation Just Cause) and with the 1st Battalion 1st Marines in the Persian Gulf (Operation Desert Storm). In the season 6 episode "Deliverance", it is revealed that he was also deployed to Colombia on a classified mission. Not long after returning from the Gulf, he retired from the Marine Corps with the rank of Gunnery Sergeant and joined the Naval Investigative Service (as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was then called) in August 1992.
As a junior agent, Gibbs was mentored by Mike Franks, and the two became close friends; Franks continued calling him "Probie" even after retirement. After Franks retired, Gibbs rose to become head of his own Major Case Response Team. Before the time in which NCIS is set, Gibbs was described to have traveled extensively on operations, particularly in Eastern Europe.
Gibbs is a highly skilled marksman with both his agency-issued SIG Sauer P228 pistol (which he replaces with a .45 Colt M1911A1 pistol in Season 15) and a sniper rifle. In the season 7 premiere, "Truth or Consequences", he kills the terrorists holding his team hostage from an exceptionally long distance and in "South by Southwest" he outshoots a professional hit-man in an approaching helicopter. His knowledge of the Marine Corps and training as a sniper often comes into use, as shown in the episodes "Ravenous", "Vanished" and "Twenty Klicks" where he uses his wilderness tracking skills and marksmanship to aid the investigation and/or get the team out of trouble.
Gibbs is a private man of few words who discloses little to nothing about his personal life. He avoids discussing his life or past before he joined NCIS, especially to agents and co-workers under him, which leads to his team members constantly speculating over his private life. Aside from his tendency to use military slang, he rarely mentions or speaks at length about his time in the Marine Corps although he is often referred to as "Gunny" by other Navy and Marine officers, occasionally dons a "USMC" hoodie or T-shirt when off duty and has a replica of the iconic Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima photograph framed and mounted above the fireplace in his home.
Gibbs holds service personnel in the armed forces in high esteem and to a higher standard. He becomes particularly indignant when the guilty party is someone in a position of trust and authority, and he has reacted violently on several occasions when apprehending corrupt high-ranking officers who committed crimes for monetary gain.
Relationships
Family
In the season 6 episode "Heartland", Gibbs' frosty relationship with his father Jackson and the backstory behind it is revealed. His father had rarely been mentioned up to that point and Jackson had not known that Gibbs was a "boss" until Gibbs and his team visited Stillwater to investigate a case. By the end of the episode, they make amends and the two have become closer ever since.
Through a series of episodes over a few years, it becomes clear that Gibbs killed Pedro Hernandez in revenge for the death of his wife Shannon and his daughter Kelly. In the episode "Borderland" (Season 7, episode 22), an unknown conspirator manipulates events so that Abby ends up investigating the murder as a cold case and finds irrefutable proof that Gibbs is responsible. Hernandez' now-grown children Paloma Reynosa, the head of the Reynosa drug cartel after taking her spouse's place when he was killed, and Alejandro Rivera, a high-ranking official of the Mexican Justice Department appear in the episode "Spider and the Fly". In this episode, Gibbs manipulates Alejandro Rivera into killing Paloma, and Alejandro is subsequently arrested. Shortly thereafter, Director Vance files Abby's report proving that Gibbs killed Hernandez deep in the NCIS evidence room. When Gibbs comes under investigation in the Season 10 finale "Damned If You Do", Vance retrieves the report and shreds it, deciding to permanently bury all leads to the truth so that Gibbs will not be found and convicted of murder.
Marriages
Gibbs has been married four times, and divorced three (his first wife was killed).
Shannon Fielding- In the episode "Heartland", Gibbs is revealed by flashbacks to have met his first wife, Shannon (portrayed in that episode by Aviva Baumann), while waiting at the Stillwater train platform in 1972, where she tells him about her rules for life that would inspire a similar set of Gibbs' own that he now teaches to his subordinate agents at NCIS. In "Hiatus (Part II)", they were stated to have married in December 1981, and Kelly was born sometime in 1982. He was unable to be at the birth of Kelly as he was deployed. Shannon, along with their eight-year-old daughter Kelly, was murdered by a Mexican drug dealer named Pedro Hernandez on the last official day of Operation Desert Storm. Gibbs was an active member of the Marine Corps at the time and was still overseas when they were killed. In "Hiatus (Part II)" Director Shepard tells Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard that Shannon had witnessed a murder of a Marine at Camp Pendleton, where Gibbs was based at that time. Shannon had identified the murderer as Mexican-born drug dealer Pedro Hernandez. Afterwards, Hernandez shot the NIS agent driving Shannon and Kelly in a minivan and the subsequent crash took their lives. Gibbs retaliated by seeking out Pedro and assassinating him, leaving behind an empty shell casing as a message. This secret remained with him for 20 years until it came to light when Abby discovered the truth through a forensic investigation.
Diane Sterling (Melinda McGraw), was Gibbs' second wife. After divorcing Gibbs she married FBI Senior Special Agent Tobias Fornell (Joe Spano). However, this marriage was only slightly more positive than her last, and ultimately failed. As she did with Gibbs, Diane drained Fornell's bank account when she left him. Fornell and Diane have a daughter, Emily, who dies of a drug overdose in Season 18. In the season 9 episode "Devil's Triangle", Gibbs tells Diane that he liked her—he always liked her, and still likes her. (Diane tells him their marriage fell apart because she was in love with him, but she could not compete with Shannon.) Diane is later shot dead by terrorist Sergei Mishnev (Alex Veadov) during the Season 12 episode "Check".
Rebecca Chase (Jeri Ryan), Gibbs' third wife, is introduced in season 12. She and Gibbs divorced because Rebecca cheated on Gibbs and it is revealed in that season's episode 11 that she is marrying the man with whom she cheated on Gibbs.
Stephanie Flynn (Kathleen York), Gibbs' most recent wife, also a redhead, lived with him during his service in Moscow, Russia, for about a year. According to Gibbs, she was the one who left him. The reason for this was revealed in the Season 3 episode "Mind Games", where Ducky noted Gibbs became so obsessed with catching serial killer Kyle Boone it incited the collapse of their marriage, which happened no later than 1995, the year Gibbs captured Boone. She is also said in the Season 1 episode, "Hung Out to Dry", to get drunk and dial Gibbs incessantly on the day of their former wedding anniversary, which causes him to aggressively disable or even ruin his phones to shut her out.
Other romantic relationships
After Shannon and Kelly's deaths and before he married his second wife, it is suggested that Gibbs had an affair with a woman named Rose Tamayo in Colombia. He was on a classified drug interdiction mission as a Marine Scout Sniper, and was wounded during the mission. In "Deliverance", Rose's now-adult son Tomas is introduced as a person of interest in a case. Gibbs' team suspected that he was the boy's father, but Gibbs later reveals to Tomas that Rose was already pregnant when Gibbs came to their village. It is later revealed that the drug lord Gibbs was sent to assassinate was the boy's father.
Gibbs also had a past romantic relationship with the (now deceased) director of NCIS, Jenny Shepard, who was also his partner at the time. Jenny was also a redhead. In the first, second, and third seasons, he was seen in the company of a mysterious (and never-identified) redheaded woman. According to Bellisario, the purpose of "the mysterious redhead" was "to make everyone speculate".
In season four, he has a steady, serious relationship with Army CID agent Lt. Col. Hollis Mann (Susanna Thompson), but their relationship is revealed to be over at the beginning of season five.
In season 7, Gibbs meets lawyer Margaret Allison Hart (Rena Sofer), who worked for an old enemy of Gibbs, Col. Merton Bell. Although Gibbs and Hart oppose each other over several cases, they are also attracted to one another. When it was discovered that Bell was responsible for the death of Lara Macy in connection with the long-ago murder of Pedro Hernandez, Hart turned her back on Bell, showing her allegiance to Gibbs.
In season 9, Gibbs begins a romance with Dr. Samantha Ryan (Jamie Lee Curtis), a psychologist with the DOD PsyOps, who has collaborated with his team in several episodes.
The season 16 episode "Hail and Farewell" revealed that Gibbs was also engaged to a fifth woman, Ellen Wallace, who was thought to have died in the September 11 attacks, but was murdered the night before; Gibbs broke off the engagement about two months before her death.
Since her introduction in the series in season 15 episode 4, forensic psychologist Jack Sloane (Maria Bello) has shared a close bond with Gibbs, to the point that the other team members question if Gibbs and Sloane have "a thing". The two share a kiss in Sloane's final episode (season 18 episode 8).
Personality
A decorated Marine, Gibbs is portrayed as a consummate organizer, disciplined and demanding. These traits often put him in a stand-off with other authorities when they exert pressure on his team. He is a no-nonsense agent who displays a continuous urgency about the investigation he pursues, specifically when being given technical information about complex subject matter. The typical response to such information is "Give it to me in English", thus forcing the expert to get to the point, as well as making it easy for the audience to understand. It is a well-known fact with his agents that he dislikes any ambiguous references and terms such as "assuming" and "maybe" when discussing a case or dealing with evidence. He also displays elements of sarcasm, particularly in relation to someone in his company stating something obvious. The typical sarcastic answer "Ya think?" is his preferred retort.
He is known for communicating displeasure with a single look or the "silent treatment". One of his interrogating techniques is to sit and glare at the suspect for twenty minutes or until the suspect buckles under pressure. Gibbs' "steely gaze can cool a room by five degrees". In direct contrast, when enraged, Gibbs will often slam his hands down on the interrogation room table very violently and rattle a tight-lipped suspect with the sudden outburst.
He is acknowledged as one of the "best interrogators in law enforcement" and has occasionally been requested by external agencies to conduct interrogations.
Gibbs has little patience for the "politics" and bureaucracy his job entails, usually leaving that aspect to his director, and prefers to be out in the field working with his agents. In "Trojan Horse", he briefly served as acting director while Jenny Shepard was in Paris attending an Interpol conference and displayed an intense dislike of the paperwork that comes with it.
One of Gibbs' most noted traits is his gut instinct. Tony explained to Ziva that "the Boss moves in mysterious ways" when she challenged Gibbs' judgment in "Honor Code" (later in the episode Gibbs is proven right).
He has no patience with high-tech hardware, as seen in the Season 4 episode "Witch Hunt" when he stomps a Roomba to pieces in order to prevent it from vacuuming up evidence at a crime scene. He is also known for destroying many other electronic devices (especially mobile phones), and his adherence to a flip phone long after the rise of the smartphone. It is also heavily implied that he obstructed the main office's technological upgrades, such as the switch to digital monitors and instant video chat capabilities beyond the communications center, which deeply upset MIT graduate McGee.
On rare occasions, if the usual judicial process is incapable of bringing a suspect to justice, he will turn a blind eye and allow "street justice" to run its course. One example occurs in the Season 3 episode "Iced", when a street gang member suspected of killing three of his subordinates must be released for lack of evidence. Gibbs drops him off on a street corner where he runs into several angry gang members, who have learned of the circumstances through a visit to the NCIS morgue; the team later sees a TV news report that the suspect has been shot dead.
His hobby is woodworking. Gibbs is shown to have a wooden-hulled sailboat under construction in his basement, which he builds entirely by hand without power tools. In the episode "Tribes", he tells FBI Agent Langer: "Finished it twice. This is number three." He later tells NCIS Director Jenny Shepard that he is working on his fourth boat, and that he named one of the previous boats after his (then current) wife when he finished it, then burned it after their divorce. Team members and acquaintances often question (with no explanation) as to how the completed boats are removed from the basement. Gibbs has also been shown making wooden toys with his father around Christmas time, repairing doors and furniture, fixing the roof on Mike Franks' beach house, and offering to build Franks a teak hot tub. In "Pyramid", it is revealed that Gibbs built Mike Franks' coffin.
Gibbs has a habit of slapping the members of his team in the back of the head when displeased with their performance or, if they get sidetracked on another topic, to get them focused back on the case. DiNozzo is usually the recipient, due to his outlandish behavior and offensive remarks. His team members occasionally slap one another in this way, but none of them apply it to Gibbs for fear of retribution. "Hiatus" (season 4) reveals that Gibbs acquired the habit from Mike Franks, who occasionally did it to Gibbs when he was in charge of the team. The only people Gibbs does not slap in his work circle are his superiors, including NCIS Directors Jenny Shepard and Leon Vance; Abby Sciuto, whom he regards like a daughter; and Dr. Donald Mallard, a longtime respected friend. On one occasion (Season 3's "Family Secrets"), Gibbs slaps himself for covering up evidence of an organ transplant.
Another of Gibbs' quirks is his tendency to stop the building's elevator between floors if he needs to have a short, urgent, private conversation with someone. He does this most often with his agents, and occasionally with his superiors or other law enforcement personnel. He also used it in several episodes for conversations with FBI agent Tobias Fornell, who joked that it was their favorite conference room. In the Season 13 two-part story "Sister City", Gibbs and Dwayne Cassius Pride (an NCIS agent stationed in New Orleans) have a disagreement over which of them stole this idea form the other.
In the episode "Faking It", it is revealed that Gibbs speaks fluent Russian, and he at least speaks a little Japanese and Chinese ("Call of Silence" and "My Other Left Foot", respectively). He also signs American Sign Language, which appears in many episodes in conversations with forensic scientist Abby Sciuto, whose parents are deaf.
Gibbs follows (and occasionally breaks or revises) a long series of rules, which he appears to have memorized, that apply to life situations and casework, and are a frequent episode plot device. These include "never go anywhere without a knife". His team is known to quote them by heart after learning them via osmosis from working around him. There was no evidence that the rules existed in writing prior to Season 7 (Episode 24 "Rule 51"), when Gibbs opened a small metal box and added rule 51 by writing it on the back of the slip for rule 13. Most of the rules are recited in Season 12 Episode 10 "House Rules" while Tim McGee writes a farewell letter to his late father. In Season 16 ("She"), Gibbs burnt the slip with "10: Never get personally involved in a case." Later that season ("Perennial"), he says that once he has gotten rid of a rule, the rule is gone for good. In the season 18 finale "Rule 91," he adds the titular rule to his series, stating, "When you decide to walk away, don't look back", though McGee countered in the Season 19 premiere that this was in violation of Rule 1, "never screw over a partner."
Gibbs wants useful information as fast as possible and under the assumption his team has already done all the necessary legwork in advance; when this is not so, they lose face with him very quickly. Gibbs is also remarkably hostile towards idle chatter without a purpose, and things that go over his head like technobabble and medical jargon, wanting conversations to be curt and decisive. Additionally, Gibbs prefers to avoid deep conversations and will tell people if they are making him uncomfortable.
He has a constant habit of sneaking up on his team members from behind and dropping in on their conversations unannounced, generally as he tells them to grab their gear before heading out to investigate a crime. It is later revealed in Season 13 that the skylight above the main office of the NCIS building reverberates when people speak and Gibbs is able to hear echoes of what they say coming into the room and eavesdrop.
Gibbs is a habitual coffee drinker. When his coffee is spilled or someone else takes and/or drinks it without knowing (this also translates to stolen food that is his), it almost always causes his temper to flare, and he will demand a new one; at least once, however, he has done so simply to haze somebody, in particular McGee when he was a new team member. He even considers coffee the equivalent of breakfast, as seen when he was offered a selection of food from a diner, Abby asked him to at least have something before he left, and Gibbs merely grabbed the coffee cup.
Up until the middle of season 13, Gibbs has more or less abandoned the upstairs bedroom of his house in favor of sleeping on the couch downstairs, since he has no prerogative to keep his domestic habits attractive living by himself, especially with no romantic partner most of the time to appease. This can be attributed to the fact that he has slept in the master bedroom in the company of several women who no longer are a part of his lives, stirring up bad memories. The bedroom now serves as a store of his keepsakes and an extra place for those he considers special guests to sleep. This changes in the season 13 episode "Scope" when Gibbs starts sleeping in his bedroom again, slowly letting go his bad memories.
He does not tolerate submissiveness. When someone on his team allows another person to manipulate them, Gibbs takes it personally as an affront to his work ethic. Gibbs is unapologetic by nature as well, as he considers apologizing to be a sign of weakness when it is done fearfully in light of intimidation, and suggests to his team members that they should refrain from doing so; a sincere apology given when someone is distraught or has meaningful reasons to apologize is acceptable.
Gibbs has taken strong displeasure at being rewarded for his services in the military because he has a deep sense of regret attached to his career and prefers to be commended privately. Much of it has to do with the deaths of Shannon and Kelly. Moreover, Gibbs holds himself responsible for the estrangement with his former mother-in-law in taking her daughter and granddaughter away from her, due to his absence leaving them vulnerable and indirectly causing their murder. This left his mother-in-law in so much grief that it led to the dissolution of her own marriage. Eventually, he found peace with most of his regrets in the 200th episode of the series "Life Before His Eyes", where Gibbs learned that even if he had been present in their lives and thus prevented the sequence of events that ended in their deaths from ever coming to be, the path his life would have taken would have instead led to his own demise.
Gibbs' trademark outfit is a suit jacket and trousers paired with a white undershirt and a polo shirt. In some episodes, he wears a dress shirt instead of a polo shirt; this change became permanent from season 13 forward. In season 15, he appears to be alternating in-between both these looks; wearing a dress shirt on some days and polo shirts on other days. Gibbs also is noted for his hair being trimmed very tight at the sides, a reference to him being a former Marine
When it comes to weapons Gibbs is well versed. Gibbs carries a SIG Sauer P228 and a revolver strapped to his ankle. In season 14 Gibbs switches his primary to a Colt M1911. The gun was his father's. He also carries a knife at all times. In his home Gibbs is seen hiding the pistol in his bookcase. Gibbs also keeps his basement stocked. Under his work bench he keeps a Smith and Wesson Model 66. Gibbs also keeps his Remington M40 sniper rifle in his basement.
Awards and citations
At the end of the episode "Murder 2.0", Gibbs was awarded his seventh Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award, but as with the other six times, he did not attend the award ceremony and Tony accepts the medal on his behalf. When Gibbs shows no interest in it, Tony locks it in a box containing several similar presentation cases, all of which were awarded to Gibbs. One of these medals is revealed to have been a Silver Star, which Gibbs bestows on Corporal Damon Werth in the episode "Corporal Punishment". It is revealed in the episode "Hiatus Pt. 1" that Gibbs received the Purple Heart after being injured in Operation Desert Storm during the Gulf War and was in a coma for nineteen days as a result.
Gibbs was shown wearing the following awards and decorations in the episodes "One Shot, One Kill" and "Honor Code".
Note: The Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Medal ribbon is placed as a U.S. non-military personal decoration after U.S. military unit awards in the order of precedence.
Reception
Early reception was primarily positive. During NCIS first season on air, Ross Warneke wrote of Gibbs, "He's still wincing from three failed marriages and is a bit of a renegade within the service." He further called Mark Harmon's performance "convincing" and added that the character "has a heart of gold". Two years later, in November 2005, Noel Holston from the Sun-Sentinel said, "NCIS special agent, Jethro Gibbs, is one of those hard-shelled, soft-centered guys' guys Bellisario loves to write, a clear-thinking, decisive leader in whose crankiness his subordinates take an almost masochistic pleasure."
William Bradly of The Huffington Post wrote an opinion piece in 2011 in response to NCIS being voted America's favorite television show in which he commented, "Gibbs is a hard-ass, but a very nice hard-ass, who usually has all the answers thanks to his well-honed 'gut.' And when he doesn't, the quirky science nerds are there to help him out in their reassuringly civvy ways." In 2012, Kyle Smith from the New York Post praised the show's respect for the military and Harmon's portrayal of a Marine.
One reviewer wrote a long analysis:
Never, have I seen a show portray such an accurate description of leadership. Agent Jethro Gibbs is a very intimidating leader; to his agents, and to his suspects. No one wants to mess with Gibbs, and that is no surprise. He is incredibly strong emotionally, and a very loving person to his family. His top qualities are leadership and fearlessness. Gibbs is also very impatient, and easily angered, which don't serve him well in his relationships.
Leadership is Gibbs' best quality. On the outside, he is tough as nails, seemingly impossible to break. On the inside, he is a compassionate person, who is extremely supportive of his friends and family.
In 2011, June Thomas from Slate magazine wrote, "Team leader Gibbs (Mark Harmon) is a coffee-slurping stoic, a former Marine often exasperated by his sometimes-silly underlings." She also discussed the show and its characters' appeal to conservatives: "They're intelligent, hard-working, and devoted...Gibbs is an old-fashioned man: strong and silent, a skilled woodworker who doesn't lock his front door." Alyssa Rosenberg of the Washington Monthly also suggested that Gibbs, "a former Marine with a Bush-like faith in his 'gut', appeared as a distinctly conservative figure in the series, in contrast to "liberal stand-ins" McGee and Abby Sciuto.
In 2011, it was reported that the role had made Mark Harmon the fourth most popular actor on primetime television. Several other members of the NCIS cast were also listed in the top ten, including Pauley Perrette (Abby Sciuto), Cote de Pablo (Ziva David), David McCallum (Ducky Mallard), and Michael Weatherly (Anthony DiNozzo).
References
External links
Mark Harmon's CBS profile
Crossover characters in television
Fictional American military snipers
Fictional characters from Pennsylvania
Television characters introduced in 2003
Fictional Gulf War veterans
Fictional gunnery sergeants
Fictional Naval Criminal Investigative Service personnel
Fictional Silver Star recipients
Fictional United States invasion of Panama veterans
Fictional United States Marine Corps personnel
NCIS (TV series) characters
de:Liste der Figuren aus Navy CIS#Leroy Jethro Gibbs | en |
doc-en-144 | Indian cuisine consists of a variety of regional and traditional cuisines native to the Indian subcontinent. Given the diversity in soil, climate, culture, ethnic groups, and occupations, these cuisines vary substantially and use locally available spices, herbs, vegetables, and fruits.
Indian food is also heavily influenced by religion, in particular Hinduism and Islam, cultural choices and traditions.
Historical events such as invasions, trade relations, and colonialism have played a role in introducing certain foods to this country. The Columbian discovery of the New World brought a number of new vegetables and fruit to India. A number of these such as potatoes, tomatoes, chillies, peanuts, and guava have become staples in many regions of India.
Indian cuisine has shaped the history of international relations; the spice trade between India and Europe was the primary catalyst for Europe's Age of Discovery. Spices were bought from India and traded around Europe and Asia. Indian cuisine has influenced other cuisines across the world, especially those from Europe (especially Britain), the Middle East, Southern African, East Africa, Southeast Asia, North America, Mauritius, Fiji, Oceania, and the Caribbean.
History
Indian cuisine reflects an 8,000-year history of various groups and cultures interacting with the Indian subcontinent, leading to diversity of flavours and regional cuisines found in modern-day India. Later, trade with British and Portuguese influence added to the already diverse Indian cuisine.
Prehistory and Indus Valley Civilization
See also: Meluhha, Indus-Mesopotamia relations, and Maritime history of India
After 9000 BCE, a first period of indirect contacts between Fertile Crescent and Indus Valley (IV) seems to have occurred as a consequence of the Neolithic Revolution and the diffusion of agriculture. Around 7000 BCE, agriculture spread from the Fertile Crescent to the Indus Valley, and wheat and barley began to be grown. Sesame, and humped cattle were domesticated in the local farming communities. Mehrgarh is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in South Asia. From circa 4500 to 1900 BC the rulers of Lower Mesopotamia were Sumerians who spoke a non-Indo-European and non-Semitic language, may have initially come from India and may have been related to the original Dravidian population of India.
By 3000 BCE, turmeric, cardamom, black pepper and mustard were harvested in India.
From Around 2350 BCE the evidence for imports from the Indus to Ur in Mesopotamia have been found, as well as Clove heads which are thought to originate from the Moluccas in Maritime Southeast Asia were found in a 2nd millennium BC site in Terqa. Akkadian Empire records mention timber, carnelian and ivory as being imported from Meluhha by Meluhhan ships, Meluhha being generally considered as the Mesopotamian name for the Indus Valley Civilization.
Vedic age
The ancient Hindu text Mahabharata mentions rice and vegetable cooked together, and the word "pulao" or "pallao" is used to refer to the dish in ancient Sanskrit works, such as Yājñavalkya Smṛti. Ayurveda, ancient Indian system of wellness, deals with holistic approach to the wellness, and it includes food, dhyana (meditation) and yoga.
Antiquity
Early diet in India mainly consisted of legumes, vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy products, and honey. Staple foods eaten today include a variety of lentils (dal), whole-wheat flour (aṭṭa), rice, and pearl millet (bājra), which has been cultivated in the Indian subcontinent since 6200 BCE.
Over time, segments of the population embraced vegetarianism during the Śramaṇa movement while an equitable climate permitted a variety of fruits, vegetables, and grains to be grown throughout the year.
A food classification system that categorised any item as saatvic, raajsic, or taamsic developed in Yoga tradition. The Bhagavad Gita proscribes certain dietary practices (chapter 17, verses 8–10).
Consumption of beef is taboo, due to cows being considered sacred in Hinduism. Beef is generally not eaten by Hindus in India except for Kerala, parts of southern Tamil Nadu and the north-east.
Foods mentioned in ancient Indian scripture
While many ancient Indian recipes have been lost in history, one can look at ancient texts to see what was eaten in ancient and pre-historic India.
Barley—(known as Yava in both Vedic and Classical Sanskrit) is mentioned many times in Rigveda and other Indian scriptures as one of the principal grains in ancient India
Betel leaf—primary use is as a wrapper for the chewing of areca nut or tobacco, where it is mainly used to add flavour; may also be used in cooking, usually raw, for its peppery taste
Breadfruit—fritters called jeev kadge phodi in Konkani or kadachakka varuthath in Malayalam are a local delicacy in coastal Karnataka and Kerala
Chickpeas—popular dishes are made with chickpea flour, such as mirchi bajji and mirapakaya bajji
Curd—a traditional yogurt or fermented milk product, originating from the Indian subcontinent, usually prepared from cow's milk, and sometimes buffalo milk, or goat milk
Figs—cultivated from Afghanistan to Portugal, also grown in Pithoragarh in the Kumaon hills of India; from the 15th century onwards, also grown in areas including Northern Europe and the New World
Ghee—a class of clarified butter that originated in ancient India, commonly used in the Indian subcontinent, Middle-Eastern cuisine, traditional medicine, and religious rituals
Grape wine—first-known mention of grape-based wines in India is from the late 4th-century BC writings of Chanakya
Honey—the spiritual and supposed therapeutic use of honey in ancient India was documented in both the Vedas and the Ayurveda texts
Mango—the Jain goddess Ambika is traditionally represented as sitting under a mango tree
Mustard—brown mustard is a spice that was cultivated in the Indus Valley Civilization and is one of the important spices used in the Indian subcontinent today
Pomegranate—in some Hindu traditions, the pomegranate (Hindi: anār) symbolizes prosperity and fertility, and is associated with both Bhoomidevi (the earth goddess) and Lord Ganesha (the one fond of the many-seeded fruit)
Rice—cultivated in the Indian subcontinent from as early as 5,000 BC
Rice cake—quite a variety are available
Rose apple—mainly eaten as a fruit and also used to make pickles (chambakka achar)
Saffron—almost all saffron grows in a belt from Spain in the west to Kashmir in the east
Salt—considered to be a very auspicious substance in Hinduism and is used in particular religious ceremonies like house-warmings and weddings; in Jainism, devotees lay an offering of raw rice with a pinch of salt before a deity to signify their devotion, and salt is sprinkled on a person's cremated remains before the ashes are buried
Sesame oil—popular in Asia, especially in Korea, China, and the South Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, where its widespread use is similar to that of olive oil in the Mediterranean
Sorghum—commonly called jwaarie, jowar, jola, or jondhalaa, sorghum is one of the staple sources of nutrition
Sugar—produced in the Indian subcontinent since ancient times, its cultivation spread from there into modern-day Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass
Sugarcane—the earliest known production of crystalline sugar began in northern India; the earliest evidence of sugar production comes from ancient Sanskrit and Pali texts
Turmeric—used widely as a spice in South Asian and Middle Eastern cooking
Middle Ages to the 16th Century
During the Middle Ages, several Indian dynasties were predominant, including the Gupta dynasty. Travel to India during this time introduced new cooking methods and products to the region, including tea.
India was later invaded by tribes from Central Asian cultures, which led to the emergence of Mughlai cuisine, a mix of Indian and Central Asian cuisine. Hallmarks include seasonings such as saffron.
Colonial Period
The Portuguese and British during their rule introduced cooking techniques such as baking, and foods from the New World and Europe. The new-world vegetables popular in cuisine from the Indian subcontinent include tomato, potato, sweet potatoes, peanuts, squash, and chilli. Most New world vegetables such as sweet potatoes, potatoes, Amaranth, peanuts and cassava based Sago are allowed on Hindu fasting days. Cauliflower was introduced by the British in 1822. In the late 18th/early 19th century, an autobiography of a Scottish Robert Lindsay mentions a Sylheti man called Saeed Ullah cooking a curry for Lindsay's family. This is possibly the oldest record of Indian cuisine in the United Kingdom.
Ingredients
Staple foods of Indian cuisine include pearl millet (bājra), rice, whole-wheat flour (aṭṭa), and a variety of lentils, such as masoor (most often red lentils), tuer (pigeon peas), urad (black gram), and moong (mung beans). Lentils may be used whole, dehusked—for example, dhuli moong or dhuli urad—or split. Split lentils, or dal, are used extensively. Some pulses, such as channa or cholae (chickpeas), rajma (kidney beans), and lobiya (black-eyed peas) are very common, especially in the northern regions. Channa and moong are also processed into flour (besan).
Many Indian dishes are cooked in vegetable oil, but peanut oil is popular in northern and western India, mustard oil in eastern India, and coconut oil along the western coast, especially in Kerala and parts of southern Tamil Nadu. Gingelly (sesame) oil is common in the south since it imparts a fragrant, nutty aroma.
In recent decades, sunflower, safflower, cottonseed, and soybean oils have become popular across India. Hydrogenated vegetable oil, known as Vanaspati ghee, is another popular cooking medium. Butter-based ghee, or deshi ghee, is used commonly.
Many types of meat are used for Indian cooking, but chicken and mutton tend to be the most commonly consumed meats. Fish and beef consumption are prevalent in some parts of India, but they are not widely consumed except for coastal areas, as well as the north east.
The most important and frequently used spices and flavourings in Indian cuisine are whole or powdered chilli pepper (mirch, introduced by the Portuguese from Mexico in the 16th century), black mustard seed (sarso), cardamom (elaichi), cumin (jeera), turmeric (haldi), asafoetida (hing), ginger (adrak), coriander (dhania), and garlic (lasoon).
One popular spice mix is garam masala, a powder that typically includes seven dried spices in a particular ratio, including black cardamom, cinnamon (dalchini), clove (laung), cumin (jeera), black peppercorns, coriander seeds and anise star.
Each culinary region has a distinctive garam masala blend—individual chefs may also have their own. Goda masala is a comparable, though sweet, spice mix popular in Maharashtra. Some leaves commonly used for flavouring include bay leaves (tejpat), coriander leaves, fenugreek (methi) leaves, and mint leaves. The use of curry leaves and roots for flavouring is typical of Gujarati and South Indian cuisine. Sweet dishes are often seasoned with cardamom, saffron, nutmeg, and rose petal essences.
Regional cuisines
Cuisine differs across India's diverse regions as a result of variation in local culture, geographical location (proximity to sea, desert, or mountains), and economics. It also varies seasonally, depending on which fruits and vegetables are ripe.
Andaman and Nicobar Islands
Seafood plays a major role in the cuisine of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Staples of the diet of the Indigenous Andamanese traditionally include roots, honey, fruits, meat, and fish, obtained by hunting and gathering. Some insects were also eaten as delicacies. Immigration from mainland of India, however, has resulted in variations in the cuisine.
Andhra Pradesh
The cuisine of Andhra Pradesh belongs to the two Telugu-speaking regions of Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra and is part of Telugu cuisine. The food of Andhra Pradesh is known for its heavy use of spices, and the use of tamarind.
Seafood is common in the coastal region of the state. Rice is the staple food (as is with all South Indian states) eaten with lentil preparations such as pappu (lentils) and pulusu (stew) and spicy vegetables or curries.
In Andhra, leafy greens or vegetables such as bottle-gourd and eggplant are usually added to dal. Pickles are an essential part of the local cuisine; popular among those are mango-based pickles such as avakaya and maagaya, gongura (a pickle made from sorrel leaves), usirikaya (gooseberry or amla), nimmakaya (lime), and tomato pickle.
Perugu (yogurt) is a common addition to meals, as a way of tempering spiciness. Breakfast items include dosa, pesarattu (mung bean dosa), vada, and idli.
Arunachal Pradesh
The staple food of Arunachal Pradesh is rice, along with fish, meat, and leaf vegetables. Native tribes of Arunachal are meat eaters and use fish, eggs, beef, chicken, pork, and mutton to make their dishes.
Many varieties of rice are used. Boiled rice cakes wrapped in leaves are a popular snack. Thukpa is a kind of noodle soup common among the Monpa tribe of the region.
Lettuce is the most common vegetable, usually prepared by boiling with ginger, coriander, and green chillies.
Apong or rice beer made from fermented rice or millet is a popular beverage in Arunachal Pradesh and is consumed as a refreshing drink.
Assam
Assamese cuisine is a mixture of different indigenous styles, with considerable regional variation and some external influences. Although it is known for its limited use of spices, Assamese cuisine has strong flavours from its use of endemic herbs, fruits, and vegetables served fresh, dried, or fermented.
Rice is the staple food item and a huge variety of endemic rice varieties, including several varieties of sticky rice are a part of the cuisine in Assam. Fish, generally freshwater varieties, are widely eaten. Other non-vegetarian items include chicken, duck, squab, snails, silkworms, insects, goat, pork, venison, turtle, monitor lizard, etc.
The region's cuisine involves simple cooking processes, mostly barbecuing, steaming, or boiling. Bhuna, the gentle frying of spices before the addition of the main ingredients, generally common in Indian cooking, is absent in the cuisine of Assam.
A traditional meal in Assam begins with a khar, a class of dishes named after the main ingredient and ends with a tenga, a sour dish. Homebrewed rice beer or rice wine is served before a meal. The food is usually served in bell metal utensils. Paan, the practice of chewing betel nut, generally concludes a meal.
Bengal
Due to being split between Bangladesh and India, the cuisine of Bengal differs in the use of religiously significant items, as well as international cuisine, such as Chinese food from the diaspora, Portuguese items, Armenian, Jewish and Anglo items from the colonial period.
Mughal cuisine is a universal influencer in the Bengali palate, and has introduced Persian and Islamic foods to the region, as well as a number of more elaborate methods of preparing food, like marination using ghee. Fish, meat, rice, milk, and sugar all play crucial parts in Bengali cuisine.
Bengali cuisine can be subdivided into four different types of dishes, charbya (চারব্য), or food that is chewed, such as rice or fish; choṣya, or food that is sucked, such as ambal and tak; lehya (লেহ্য), or foods that are meant to be licked, like chuttney; and peya (পেয়ে), which includes drinks, mainly milk.
During the 19th century, many Odia-speaking cooks were employed in Bengal, which led to the transfer of several food items between the two regions. Bengali cuisine is the only traditionally developed multi-course tradition from the Indian subcontinent that is analogous in structure to the modern service à la russe style of French cuisine, with food served course-wise rather than all at once.
Bengali cuisine differs according to regional tastes, such as the emphasis on the use of chilli pepper in the Chittagong district of Bangladesh However, across all its varieties, there is predominant use of mustard oil along with large amounts of spices.
The cuisine is known for subtle flavours with an emphasis on fish, meat, vegetables, lentils, and rice. Bread is also a common dish in Bengali cuisine, particularly a deep-fried version called luchi is popular. Fresh aquatic fish is one of its most distinctive features; Bengalis prepare fish in many ways, such as steaming, braising, or stewing in vegetables and sauces based on coconut milk or mustard.
East Bengali food, which has a high presence in West Bengal and Bangladesh, is much spicier than the West Bengali cuisine, and tends to use high amounts of chilli, and is one of the spiciest cuisines in India and the World.
Shondesh and Rashogolla are popular dishes made of sweetened, finely ground fresh cheese. For the latter, West Bengal and neighboring Odisha both claim to be the origin of dessert. Each state also has a geographical indication for their regional variety of rasgulla.
The cuisine is also found in the state of Tripura and the Barak Valley of Assam.
Bihar
Bihari cuisine may include litti chokha, a baked salted wheat-flour cake filled with sattu (baked chickpea flour) and some special spices, which is served with baigan bharta, made of roasted eggplant (brinjal) and tomatoes.
Among meat dishes, meat saalan is a popular dish made of mutton or goat curry with cubed potatoes in garam masala.
Dalpuri is another popular dish in Bihar. It is salted wheat-flour bread, filled with boiled, crushed, and fried gram pulses.
Malpua is a popular sweet dish of Bihar, prepared by a mixture of maida, milk, bananas, cashew nuts, peanuts, raisins, sugar, water, and green cardamom. Another notable sweet dish of Bihar is balushahi, which is prepared by a specially treated combination of maida and sugar along with ghee, and the other worldwide famous sweet, khaja is made from flour, vegetable fat, and sugar, which is mainly used in weddings and other occasions. Silao near Nalanda is famous for its production.
During the festival of Chhath, thekua, a sweet dish made of ghee, jaggery, and whole-meal flour, flavoured with aniseed, is made.
Chandigarh
Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab and Haryana is a city of 20th-century origin with a cosmopolitan food culture mainly involving North Indian cuisine. People enjoy home-made recipes such as paratha, especially at breakfast, and other Punjabi foods like roti which is made from wheat, sweetcorn, or other glutenous flour with cooked vegetables or beans. Sarson da saag and dal makhani are well-known dishes among others. Popular snacks include gol gappa (known as panipuri in other places). It consists of a round, hollow puri, fried crisp and filled with a mixture of flavoured water, boiled and cubed potatoes, bengal gram beans, etc.
Chhattisgarh
Chhattisgarh cuisine is unique in nature and not found in the rest of India, although the staple food is rice, like in much of the country. Many Chhattisgarhi people drink liquor brewed from the mahuwa flower palm wine (tadi in rural areas). Chhattisgarhi cuisines varies as per special occasions and festivals like Thethari and Khurmi, fara, gulgule bhajiya, chausela, chila, aaersa are prepared in regional festivals. The tribal people of the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh eat ancestral dishes such as mushrooms, bamboo pickle, bamboo vegetables, etc.
Dadra and Nagar Haveli
The local cuisine resembles the cuisine of Gujarat. Ubadiyu is a local delicacy made of vegetables and beans with herbs. The common foods include rice, roti, vegetables, river fish, and crab. People also enjoy buttermilk and chutney made of different fruits and herbs.
Daman and Diu
Daman and Diu is a union territory of India which, like Goa, was a former colonial possession of Portugal. Consequently, both native Gujarati food and traditional Portuguese food are common. Being a coastal region, the communities are mainly dependent on seafood. Normally, rotli and tea are taken for breakfast, rotla and saak for lunch, and chokha along with saak and curry are taken for dinner. Some of the dishes prepared on festive occasions include puri, lapsee, potaya, dudh-plag, and dhakanu. While alcohol is prohibited in the neighbouring state of Gujarat, drinking is common in Daman and Diu. Better known as the "pub" of Gujarat. All popular brands of alcohol are readily available.
Delhi
Delhi was once the capital of the Mughal empire, and it became the birthplace of Mughlai cuisine. Delhi is noted for its street food. The Paranthewali Gali in Chandani Chowk is just one of the culinary landmarks for stuffed flatbread (parathas).
Delhi has people from different parts of India, thus the city has different types of food traditions; its cuisine is influenced by the various cultures. Punjabi cuisine is common, due to the dominance of Punjabi communities.
Delhi cuisine is actually an amalgam of different Indian cuisines modified in unique ways. This is apparent in the different types of street food available. Kababs, kachauri, chaat, Indian sweets, Indian ice cream (commonly called kulfi), and even Western food items like sandwiches and patties, are prepared in a style unique to Delhi and are quite popular.
Goa
The area has a tropical climate, which means the spices and flavours are intense. Use of kokum is a distinct feature of the region's cuisine.
Goan cuisine is mostly seafood and meat-based; the staple foods are rice and fish. Kingfish (vison or visvan) is the most common delicacy, and others include pomfret, shark, tuna, and mackerel; these are often served with coconut milk. Shellfish, including crabs, prawns, tiger prawns, lobster, squid, and mussels, are commonly eaten.
The cuisine of Goa is influenced by its Hindu origins, 400 years of Portuguese colonialism, and modern techniques.
Bread, introduced by the Portuguese, is very popular, and is an important part of the Goan breakfast, most frequently in the form of toast.
Tourism in the area adds an international aspect, hence vegetarianism has become quite favored.
Gujarat
Gujarati cuisine is primarily vegetarian. The typical Gujarati thali consists of roti (rotlii in Gujarati), daal or kadhi, rice, sabzi/shaak, papad and chaas (buttermilk).
Sabzi is a dish of different combinations of vegetables and spices which may be stir fried, spicy or sweet. Gujarati cuisine can vary widely in flavour and heat based on personal and regional tastes. North Gujarat, Kathiawad, Kachchh, and South Gujarat are the four major regions of Gujarati cuisine.
Many Gujarati dishes are simultaneously sweet, salty (like handvo), and spicy. In mango season, keri no ras (fresh mango pulp) is often an integral part of the meal. Spices also vary seasonally. For example, garam masala is used much less in summer.
Gujarati snacks include sev khamani, khakhra, dal vada, methi na bhajiya, khaman, bhakharwadi and more.
Regular fasting, with diets limited to milk, dried fruit, and nuts, is a common practice,
Haryana
Cattle being common in Haryana, dairy products are a common component of its cuisine.
Specific regional dishes include kadhi, pakora, besan masala roti, bajra aloo roti, churma, kheer, bathua raita, methi gajar, singri ki sabzi, and tomato chutney.
In the past, its staple diet included bajra khichdi, rabdi, onion chutney, and bajra ki roti. In non-vegetarian cuisine it includes kukad kadhai and chicken tikka masala.
Lassi, sharbat, nimbu pani and labsi (a mixture of bajra flour and lassi) are three popular non-alcoholic beverages in Haryana. However, liquor stores are common there, which cater to a large number of truck drivers.
Himachal Pradesh
The daily diet of Himachal people is similar to that of the rest of North India, including lentils, broth, rice, vegetables, and bread, although non-vegetarian cuisine is preferred. Some of the specialities of Himachal include sidu, patande, chukh, rajmah, and til chutney.
Jammu and Kashmir
The cuisine of Jammu and Kashmir is from two regions of the state: Jammu division and Kashmir Valley. Kashmiri cuisine has evolved over hundreds of years. Its first major influence was the food of the Kashmiri Hindus and Buddhists.
The cuisine was later influenced by the cultures which arrived with the invasion of Kashmir by Timur from the area of modern Uzbekistan. Subsequent influences have included the cuisines of Central Asia and the North Indian plains.
The most notable ingredient in Kashmiri cuisine is mutton, of which over 30 varieties are known. Wazwan is a multicourse meal in the Kashmiri tradition, the preparation of which is considered an art. Kashmiri pandit food is elaborate, and an important part of the Pandits' ethnic identity. Kashmiri pandit cuisine usually uses dahi (yogurt), oil, and spices such as turmeric, red chilli, cumin, ginger, and fennel, though they do not use onion and garlic. Birayanis are quite popular, and are the speciality of Kashmir.
The Jammu region is famous for its sund panjeeri, patisa, rajma with rice and Kalari cheese.
Dogri food includes ambal (sour pumpkin dish), khatta meat, kulthein di dal, dal chawal, maa da madra (black gram lentils in yogurt) and Uriya.
Many types of pickles are made including mango, kasrod, and girgle. Street food is also famous which include various types of chaats, specially gol gappas, gulgule, chole bhature, rajma kulcha and dahi bhalla.
Jharkhand
Staple foods in Jharkhand are rice, dal and vegetables. Famous dishes include chirka roti, pittha, malpua, dhuska, arsa roti and litti chokha.
Local alcoholic drinks include handia, a rice beer, and mahua daru, made from flowers of the mahua tree (Madhuca longifolia).
Karnataka
A number of dishes, such as idli, rava idli, Mysore masala dosa, etc., were invented here and have become popular beyond the state of Karnataka. Equally, varieties in the cuisine of Karnataka have similarities with its three neighbouring South Indian states, as well as the states of Maharashtra and Goa to its north. It is very common for the food to be served on a banana leaf, especially during festivals and functions.
Karnataka cuisine can be very broadly divided into Mysore/Bangalore cuisine, North Karnataka cuisine, Udupi cuisine, Kodagu/Coorg cuisine, Karavali/coastal cuisine, and Saraswat cuisine.
This cuisine covers a wide spectrum of food from pure vegetarian and vegan to meats like pork, and from savouries to sweets.
Typical dishes include bisi bele bath, jolada rotti, badanekai yennegai, holige, kadubu, chapati, idli vada, ragi rotti, akki rotti, saaru, huli, kootu, vangibath, khara bath, kesari bhath, sajjige, neer dosa, mysoore, haal bai, chiroti, benne dose, ragi mudde, and uppittu.
The Kodagu district is known for spicy pork curries, while coastal Karnataka specialises in seafood. Although the ingredients differ regionally, a typical Kannadiga oota (Kannadiga meal) is served on a banana leaf. The coastal districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi have slightly varying cuisines, which make extensive use of coconut in curries and frequently include seafood.
Kerala
Contemporary Kerala food includes vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes. Fish and seafood play a major role in Kerala cuisine, as Kerala is a coastal state. An everyday Kerala meal in most households consists of rice with fish curry made of sardines, mackerel, seer fish, king fish, pomfret, prawns, shrimp, sole, anchovy, or parrotfish, (mussels, oysters, crabs, squid, scallops are not rare), and vegetable curry and stir-fried vegetables with or without coconut traditionally known as thoran or mizhukkupiratti. As Kerala has large number of inland water bodies, freshwater fish are also abundant, and part of regular meals. It is common in Kerala to have a breakfast with non-vegetarian dishes in restaurants, in contrast to other states in India. Chicken or mutton stews, lamb, chicken, beef, pork, egg curry, and fish curry with tapioca for breakfast are also widely enjoyed.
Kerala cuisine reflects its rich trading heritage. Over time, various cuisines have blended with indigenous dishes, while foreign ones have been adapted to local tastes. Significant Arab, Syrian, Portuguese, Dutch, Jewish, and Middle Eastern influences exist in this region's cuisine.
Coconuts grow in abundance in Kerala, so grated coconut and coconut milk are commonly used for thickening and flavouring. Kerala's long coastline and numerous rivers have led to a strong fishing industry in the state, making seafood a common part of the meal. Starchy food like Rice and tapioca forms the major part of Kerala's staple food. Having been a major region of spice cultivation and trade for thousands of years, the spices like black pepper, cardamom, clove, ginger, cumin and cinnamon finds extensive use in Kerala cuisine. Kerala sadhya, an elaborate vegetarian banquet prepared for festivals and ceremonies. A full-course sadhya, which consists of rice with about 20 different accompaniments and desserts is the ceremonial meal, eaten usually on celebrations such as marriages, Onam, Vishu, etc. and is served on a plantain leaf.
Most of Kerala's Hindus, except its Brahmin community, eats fish, chicken, beef, pork, eggs, and mutton. The Brahmin are famed for their vegan cuisine, especially varieties of sambar and rasam. A thick vegetable stew popular in South and Central India called avial is believed to have originated in southern Kerala. The avial, eaten widely in the state, is an important vegetarian dish in Kerala sadya. In most Kerala households, a typical meal consists of rice served along with vegetables and fish or meat dishes. Kerala also has a variety of breakfast dishes like idli, dosa, appam, idiyappam, puttu, parotta and pathiri served with sambar, coconut chutney, mutta curry (egg curry), kadala (chickpea) curry, green peas, chicken curry, beef curry and mutton curry.
The Muslim community of Kerala blend Arabian, North Indian, and indigenous Malabari cuisines, using chicken, eggs, beef, and mutton. Thalassery biryani is the only biryani variant, which is of Kerala origin having originated in Talassery, in Malabar region. The dish is significantly different from other biryani variants. Snacks like Pazham nirachathu, Unnakkai, Bread pola— made of bread, eggs, milk and a simple masala, Iftar preparations like Thari kanji, Kozhi pichuporichathu (shredded chicken), Pidi— a preparation of rice dumplings dunked in gravy,Irachi pathiri, Chatti pathiri, Meen pathiri, Neriya pathiri and Kannu vecha pathiri — roti varieties usually made of powdered rice, dishes like Kaai curry etc., are also contributions of Muslim community to the broad Kerala cuisine.
The Pathanamthitta region is known for raalan and fish curries. Appam along with wine and curries of duck, pork and cured beef are popular among Syrian Christians in Central Kerala.
Popular desserts are payasam (pudding) and halwa. Payasam, especially Ambalappuzha Paalpayasam also known as Gopala Kashayam (Krishnan's potion) prepared at the 17th century Ambalappuzha Sri Krishna swami temple, is a delicacy known for its unique and flavourful taste. Interestingly, on each day the paalpayasam is prepared only after (ritualistically) seeking due permission from the presiding deity — Shri Krishna. Kerala has a number of paayasam varieties including but not limited to Paalpayasam, Vermicelli Payasam, Pradhaman, Ada Pradhaman, Chakka (Jackfruit) Pradhaman, Parippu Paayasam and more. Paayasam like Vermicelli Payasam (Semiya payasam) also finds a place in Iftar feast of Muslim communities in Kerala.
Halva is one of the most commonly found or easily recognized sweets in bakeries throughout Kerala, and originated from the Gujarathi community in Calicut. Europeans used to call the dish "sweetmeat" due to its texture, and a street in Kozhikode where became named Sweet Meat Street during colonial rule. This is mostly made from maida (highly refined wheat), and comes in various flavours, such as banana, ghee or coconut. However, karutha haluva (black haluva) made from rice is also very popular.
Ladakh
Ladakhi cuisine is from the two districts of Leh and Kargil in the union territory of Ladakh. Ladakhi food has much in common with Tibetan food, the most prominent foods being thukpa (noodle soup) and tsampa, known in Ladakhi as ngampe (roasted barley flour). Edible without cooking, tsampa makes useful trekking food.
Strictly Ladakhi dishes include skyu and chutagi, both heavy and rich soup pasta dishes, skyu being made with root vegetables and meat, and chutagi with leafy greens and vegetables. As Ladakh moves toward a cash-based economy, foods from the plains of India are becoming more common.
As in other parts of Central Asia, tea in Ladakh is traditionally made with strong green tea, butter, and salt. It is mixed in a large churn and known as gurgur cha, after the sound it makes when mixed. Sweet tea (cha ngarmo) is common now, made in the Indian style with milk and sugar. Most of the surplus barley that is produced is fermented into chang, an alcoholic beverage drunk especially on festive occasions.
Lakshadweep
The cuisine of Lakshadweep prominently features seafood and coconut. Local food consists of spicy non-vegetarian and vegetarian dishes.
The culinary influence of Kerala is quite evident in the cuisines of Lakshadweep, since the island lies in close proximity to Kerala. Coconut and sea fish serve as the foundation of most meals.
The people of Lakshadweep drink large amounts of coconut water, which is the most abundant aerated drink on the island. Coconut milk is the base for most of the curries. All the sweet or savory dishes have a touch of famous Malabar spices. Local people also prefer to have dosa, idlis, and various rice dishes.
Madhya Pradesh
The cuisine in Madhya Pradesh varies regionally. Wheat and meat are common in the north and west of the state, while the wetter south and east are dominated by rice and fish. Milk is a common ingredient in Gwalior and Indore.
The street food of Indore is well known, with shops that have been active for generations. Bhopal is known for meat and fish dishes such as rogan josh, korma, qeema, biryani, pilaf, and kebabs. On a street named Chatori Gali in old Bhopal, one can find traditional Muslim nonvegetarian fare such as paya soup, bun kabab, and nalli-nihari as some of the specialties.
Dal bafla is a common meal in the region and can be easily found in Indore and other nearby regions, consisting of a steamed and grilled wheat cake dunked in rich ghee, which is eaten with daal and ladoos.
The culinary specialty of the Malwa and Indore regions of central Madhya Pradesh is poha (flattened rice); usually eaten at breakfast with jalebi.
Beverages in the region include lassi, beer, rum and sugarcane juice. A local liquor is distilled from the flowers of the mahua tree. Date palm toddy is also popular. In tribal regions, a popular drink is the sap of the sulfi tree, which may be alcoholic if it has fermented.
Maharashtra
Maharashtrian cuisine is an extensive balance of many different tastes. It includes a range of dishes from mild to very spicy tastes. Bajri, wheat, rice, jowar, vegetables, lentils, and fruit form important components of the Maharashtrian diet.
Popular dishes include puran poli, ukdiche modak, batata wada, sabudana khichdi, masala bhat, pav bhaji, and wada pav. Poha or flattened rice is also usually eaten at breakfast. Kanda poha and aloo poha are some of the dishes cooked for breakfast and snacking in evenings.
Popular spicy meat dishes include those that originated in the Kolhapur region. These are the Kolhapuri Sukka mutton, pandhra rassa, and tabmda rassa. Shrikhand, a sweet dish made from strained yogurt, is a main dessert of Maharashtrian cuisine. The cuisine of Maharashtra can be divided into two major sections, the coastal and the interior. The Konkan, on the coast of the Arabian Sea, has its own type of cuisine, a homogeneous combination of Malvani, Goud Saraswat Brahmin, and Goan cuisine. In the interior of Maharashtra, the Paschim Maharashtra, Khandesh, Vidarbha and Marathwada areas have their own distinct cuisines.
The cuisine of Vidarbha uses groundnuts, poppy seeds, jaggery, wheat, jowar, and bajra extensively. A typical meal consists of rice, roti, poli, or bhakar, along with varan and aamtee—lentils and spiced vegetables. Cooking is common with different types of oil.
Savji food from Vidarbha is well known all over Maharashtra. Savji dishes are very spicy and oily. Savji mutton curries are very famous.
Like other coastal states, an enormous variety of vegetables, fish, and coconuts exists, where they are common ingredients. Peanuts and cashews are often served with vegetables. Grated coconuts are used to flavour many types of dishes, but coconut oil is not widely used; peanut oil is preferred.
Kokum, most commonly served chilled, in an appetiser-digestive called sol kadhi, is prevalent. During summer, Maharashtrians consume panha, a drink made from raw mango.
Malwani
Malwani cuisine is a specialty of the tropical area which spans from the shore of Deogad Malwan to the southern Maharashtrian border with Goa. The unique taste and flavor of Malwani cuisine comes from Malwani masala and use of coconut and kokam.
The staple foods are rice and fish. Various kinds of red and green fish, prawns, crab, and shellfish curries (also called mashacha sar in the Malwani language) are well known, along with kombadi (chicken) wade and mutton prepared Malwani style. Mohari mutton is also one of the distinct delicacies of Malwani cuisine.
A large variety of fish is available in the region, which include surmai, karali, bangada, bombil (Bombay duck), paplet (pomfret), halwa, tarali, suandale, kolambi (prawns), tisari (shellfish), kalwa (stone fish) and kurli (crab).
All these fish are available in dried form, including prawns, which are known as sode. Local curries and chatanis are also prepared with dried fish.
Different types of rice breads and pancakes add to the variety of Malwani cuisine and include tandlachi bhakari, ghawane, amboli, patole, appe, tandalachi and shavai (rice noodles). These rice breads can be eaten specially flavored with coconut milk, fish curries, and chicken or mutton curries.
Sole kadi made from kokam and coconut milk is a signature appetizer drink .
For vegetarians, Malwani delicacies include alloochi bhaji, alloochi gathaya, kalaya watanyacha, and sambara (black gram stew).
The sweets and desserts include ukadiche modak, Malawani khaje, khadakahde kundiche ladu, shegdanyache ladu, tandalchi kheer, and tandalachi shavai ani ras (specially flavored with coconut milk).
Manipur
Manipuri cuisine is represented by the cuisine of the Meitei people who form the majority population in the central plain. Meitei food are simple, tasty, organic and healthy. Rice with local seasonal vegetables and fish form the main diet.
Most of the dishes are cooked like vegetable stew, flavored with either fermented fish called ngari, or dried and smoked fish.
The most popular Manipuri dish is eromba, a preparation of boiled and mashed vegetables, often including carrots, potatoes or beans, mixed with chilli and roasted fermented fish.
Another popular dish is the savory cake called paknam, made of a lentil flour stuffed with various ingredients such as banana inflorescence, mushrooms, fish, vegetables etc., and baked covered in turmeric leaves.
Along with spicy dishes, a mild side dish of steamed or boiled sweet vegetables are often served in the daily meals. The Manipuri salad dish called singju, made of finely julienned cabbage, green papaya, and other vegetables, and garnished with local herbs, toasted sesame powder and lentil flour is extremely popular locally, and often found sold in small street side vendors.
Singju is often served with bora, which are fritters of various kinds, and also kanghou, or oil-fried spicy veggies. Cooked and fermented soybean is a popular condiment in all Manipuri kitchens.
The staple diet of Manipur consists of rice, fish, large varieties of leafy vegetables (of both aquatic and terrestrial). Manipuris typically raise vegetables in a kitchen garden and rear fishes in small ponds around their house. Since the vegetables are either grown at home or obtained from local market, the cuisines are very seasonal, each season having its own special vegetables and preparations.
The taste is very different from mainland Indian cuisines because of the use of various aromatic herbs and roots that are peculiar to the region. They are however very similar to the cuisines of Southeast, East, and Central Asia, Siberia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
Meghalaya
Meghalayan cuisine is unique and different from other Northeastern Indian states. Spiced meat is common, from goats, pigs, fowl, ducks, chickens, and cows. In the Khasi and Jaintia Hills districts, common foods include jadoh, ki kpu, tung-rymbai, and pickled bamboo shoots.
Other common foods in Meghalaya include minil songa (steamed sticky rice), sakkin gata, and momo dumplings.
Like other tribes in the northeast, the Garos ferment rice beer, which they consume in religious rites and secular celebrations.
Mizoram
The cuisine of Mizoram differs from that of most of India, though it shares characteristics to other regions of Northeast India and North India.
Rice is the staple food of Mizoram, while Mizos love to add non-vegetarian ingredients in every dish. Fish, chicken, pork and beef are popular meats among Mizos. Dishes are served on fresh banana leaves. Most of the dishes are cooked in mustard oil.
Meals tend to be less spicy than in most of India. Mizos love eating boiled vegetables along with rice. A popular dish is bai, made from boiling vegetables (spinach, eggplant, beans, and other leafy vegetables) with bekang (fermented soya beans) or sa-um, fermented pork fat served with rice. Sawhchiar is another common dish, made of rice and cooked with pork or chicken.
Nagaland
The cuisine of Nagaland reflects that of the Naga people. It is known for exotic pork meats cooked with simple and flavourful ingredients, like the extremely hot bhut jolokia (ghost chili) pepper, fermented bamboo shoots, and akhuni ( fermented soya beans). Another unique and strong ingredient used by the Naga people, is the fermented fish known as ngari.
Fresh herbs and other local greens also feature prominently in the Naga cuisine. The Naga use oil sparingly, preferring to ferment, dry, and smoke their meats and fish.
Traditional homes in Nagaland have external kitchens that serve as smokehouses.
A typical meal consists of rice, meat, a chutney, a couple of stewed or steamed vegetable dishes, flavored with ngari or akhuni. Desserts usually consist of fresh fruits.
Odisha
The cuisine of Odisha relies heavily on local ingredients. Flavours are usually subtle and delicately spiced. Fish and other seafood, such as crab and shrimp, are very popular, and chicken and mutton are also consumed.
Panch phutana, a mix of cumin, mustard, fennel, fenugreek and kalonji (nigella), is widely used for flavouring vegetables and dals, while garam masala and turmeric are commonly used for meat-based curries.
Pakhala, a dish made of rice, water, and dahi (yogurt), that is fermented overnight, is very popular in summer in rural areas. Oriyas are very fond of sweets, so dessert follows most meals.
Popular Oriya dishes include anna, kanika, dalma, khata (tamato and oou), dali (different types of lentils, i.e. harada [red gram], muga [green gram], kolatha [horsegram], etc.), spinach and other green leaves, and alu-bharta (mashed potato) along with pakhala.
Odisha and neighboring West Bengal both claim to be the origin of rasgulla, each state having a geographical indication for their regional variety of the dessert. Odisha is also known for its chhena-based sweets, including chhena poda, chhena gaja, chhena jhili, and rasabali.
Puducherry
The union territory of Puducherry was a French colony for around 200 years, making French cuisine a strong influence on the area. Tamil cuisine is eaten by the territory's Tamil majority. The influence of the neighbouring areas, such as Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, is also visible on the territory's cuisine.
Some favourite dishes include coconut curry, tandoori potato, soya dosa, podanlangkai (snake gourd chutney), curried vegetables, stuffed cabbage, and baked beans.
Punjab
The cuisine of Punjab is known for its diverse range of dishes. It is closely related to the cuisine of the neighbouring Punjab province of Pakistan.
The state, being an agriculture center, is abundant with whole grains, vegetables, and fruits. Home-cooked and restaurant Punjabi cuisine can vary significantly.
Restaurant-style Punjabi cooking puts emphasis on creamy textured foods by using ghee, butter and cream, while home-cooked meals center around whole wheat, rice, and other ingredients flavored with various kinds of masalas.
Common dishes cooked at home are roti with daal and dahi (yogurt) with a side chutney and salad that includes raw onion, tomato, cucumber, etc.
The meals are also abundant of local and seasonal vegetables usually sautéed with spices such as cumin, dried coriander, red chili powder, turmeric, black cloves, etc. Masala chai is a favorite drink and is consumed in everyday life and at special occasions.
Many regional differences exist in the Punjabi cuisine based on traditional variations in cooking similar dishes, food combinations, preference of spice combination, etc. It is clear that "the food is simple, robust, and closely linked to the land."
Certain dishes exclusive to Punjab, such as makki di roti and sarson da saag, dal makhani, and others are a favorite of many.
The masala in a Punjabi dish traditionally consists of onion, garlic, ginger, cumin, garam masala, salt, turmeric, tomatoes sauteed in mustard oil. Tandoori food is a Punjabi specialty. Dishes like Bhatti da murgh also known as tandoori chicken, Chicken hariyali kabab, Achari paneer tikka, fish ajwaini tikka and Amritsari kulcha are some popular tandoori foods from Punjab.
Common meat dishes in this region are Bhakra curry (goat) and fish dishes. Dairy products are regularly enjoyed and usually accompany main meals in the form of dahi, milk, and milk-derived products such as lassi, paneer, and more.
Punjab has a large number of people following the Sikh religion who traditionally follow a vegetarian diet (which includes plant-derived foods, milk, and milk by-products. See diet in Sikhism) in accordance to their beliefs.
No description of Punjabi cuisine is complete without the myriad of famous desserts, such as kheer, gajar ka halwa, sooji (cream of wheat) halwa, rasmalai, gulab jamun and jalebi. Most desserts are ghee or dairy-based, use nuts such as almonds, walnuts, pistachios, cashews, and, raisins.
Many of the most popular elements of Anglo-Indian cuisine, such as tandoori foods, naan, pakoras and vegetable dishes with paneer, are derived from Punjabi styles.
Punjabi food is well liked in the world for its flavors, spices, and, versatile use of produce, and so it is one of the most popular cuisines from the sub-continent. Last but not least are the chhole bhature and chhole kulche which are famous all over the North India.
Rajasthan
Cooking in Rajasthan, an arid region, has been strongly shaped by the availability of ingredients. Food is generally cooked in milk or ghee, making it quite rich. Gram flour is a mainstay of Marwari food mainly due to the scarcity of vegetables in the area.
Historically, food that could last for several days and be eaten without heating was preferred. Major dishes of a Rajasthani meal may include daal-baati, tarfini, raabdi, ghevar, bail-gatte, panchkoota, chaavadi, laapsi, kadhi and boondi. Typical snacks include bikaneri bhujia, mirchi bada, pyaaj kachori, and dal kachori.
Daal-baati is the most popular dish prepared in the state. It is usually supplemented with choorma, a mixture of finely ground baked rotis, sugar and ghee.
Rajasthan is also influenced by the Rajput community who have liking for meat dishes. Their diet consisted of game meat and gave birth to dishes like laal maans, safed maas, khad khargosh and jungli maas.
Sikkim
In Sikkim, various ethnic groups such as the Nepalese, Bhutias, and Lepchas have their own distinct cuisines. Nepalese cuisine is very popular in this area.
Rice is the staple food of the area, and meat and dairy products are also widely consumed. For centuries, traditional fermented foods and beverages have constituted about 20 percent of the local diet.
Depending on altitudinal variation, finger millet, wheat, buckwheat, barley, vegetables, potatoes, and soybeans are grown. Dhindo, daal bhat, gundruk, momo, gya thuk, ningro, phagshapa, and sel roti are some of the local dishes.
Alcoholic drinks are consumed by both men and women. Beef is eaten by Bhutias.
Sindh
Sindhi cuisine refers to the native cuisine of the Sindhi people from the Sindh region, now in Pakistan. While Sindh is not geographically a part of modern India, its culinary traditions persist, due to the sizeable number of Hindu Sindhis who migrated to India following the independence of Pakistan in 1947, especially in Sindhi enclaves such as Ulhasnagar and Gandhidam.
A typical meal in many Sindhi households includes wheat-based flatbread (phulka) and rice accompanied by two dishes, one with gravy and one dry. Lotus stem (known as kamal kakri) is also used in Sindhi dishes. Cooking vegetables by deep frying is common.
Some regular Sindhi dishes are sindhi kadhi, sai bhaji, koki and besan bhaji. Ingredients frequently used are mango powder, tamarind, kokum flowers, and dried pomegranate seeds.
Tamil Nadu
Tamil Nadu is noted for its deep belief that serving food to others is a service to humanity, as is common in many regions of India. The region has a rich cuisine involving both traditional non-vegetarian and vegetarian dishes.
Tamil food is characterised by its use of rice, legumes, and lentils, along with distinct aromas and flavours achieved by the blending of spices such as mustard, curry leaves, tamarind, coriander, ginger, garlic, chili pepper, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, cumin, nutmeg, coconut and rose water.
The traditional way of eating involves being seated on the floor, having the food served on a plantain leaf, and using the right hand to eat. After the meal the plantain leaf is discarded but becomes food for free-ranging cattle and goats.
A meal (called saapadu) consists of rice with other typical Tamil dishes on a plantain leaf. A typical Tamilian would eat on a plantain leaf as it is believed to give a different flavour and taste to food. Also growing in popularity are stainless-steel trays, plates with a selection of different dishes in small bowls.
Tamil food is characterized by tiffin, which is a light food taken for breakfast or dinner, and meals which are usually taken during lunch. The word "curry" is derived from the Tamil kari, meaning something similar to "sauce".
Southern regions such as Tirunelveli, Madurai, Paramakudi, Karaikudi, Chettinad and Kongu Nadu are noted for their spicy non-vegetarian dishes. Dosa, idli, pongal and biryani are some of the popular dishes that are eaten with chutney and sambar. Fish and other seafoods are also very popular, because the state is located on the coast. Chicken and goat meat are the predominantly consumed meats in Tamil Nadu.
A typical Tamil vegetarian meal is heavily dependent on rice, vegetables and lentil preparations such as rasam and sambar, but there are variations. They have influenced Kerala as well in their kootu, arachi vitta sambhar and molagootals (mulligatawny soup).
As mentioned above, the Chettinad variety of food uses many strong spices, such as pepper, garlic, fennel seeds and onions. Tamil food tends to be spicy compared to other parts of India so there is a tradition of finishing the meal with dahi (yogurt) is considered a soothing end to the meal.
Notably, Tamil Brahmin cuisine, the food of the Iyers and Iyengar community, is characterized by slightly different meal times and meal structures compared to other communities within the state.
Historically vegetarian, the cuisine is known for its milder flavor and avoidance of onion and garlic (although this practice appears to be disappearing with time).
After a light morning meal of filter coffee and different varieties of porridges (oatmeal and janata kanji are immensely popular), the main meal of the day, lunch/brunch is usually at 11 am and typically follows a two-three course meal structure. Steamed rice is the main dish, and is always accompanied by a seasonally steamed/sauteed vegetable (poriyal), and two or three types of tamarind stews, the most popular being sambhar and rasam. The meal typically ends with thair sadham (rice with yogurt), usually served with pickled mangoes or lemons.
Tiffin is the second meal of the day and features several breakfast favorites such as idli, rava idli, upma, dosa varieties, and vada, and is usually accompanied by chai.
Dinner is the simplest meal of the day, typically involving leftovers from either lunch or tiffin. Fresh seasonal fruit consumed in the state include bananas, papaya, honeydew and canteloupe melons, jackfruit, mangos, apples, kasturi oranges, pomegranates, and nongu (hearts of palm).
Telangana
The cuisine of Telangana consists of the Telugu cuisine, of Telangana's Telugu people as well as Hyderabadi cuisine (also known as Nizami cuisine), of Telangana's Hyderabadi Muslim community.
Hyderabadi food is based heavily on non-vegetarian ingredients, while Telugu food is a mix of both vegetarian and non-vegetarian ingredients. Telugu food is rich in spices and chillies are abundantly used. The food also generally tends to be more on the tangy side with tamarind and lime juice both used liberally as souring agents.
Rice is the staple food of Telugu people. Starch is consumed with a variety of curries and lentil soups or broths. Vegetarian and non-vegetarian foods are both popular.
Hyderabadi cuisine includes popular delicacies such as biryani, haleem, Baghara baingan and kheema, while Hyderabadi day-to-day dishes see some similarities to Telanganite Telugu food, with its use of tamarind, rice, and lentils, along with meat. Dahi (yogurt) is a common addition to meals, as a way of tempering spiciness.
Tripura
The Tripuri people are the original inhabitants of the state of Tripura in northeast India. Today, they comprise the communities of Tipra, Reang, Jamatia, Noatia, and Uchoi, among others. The Tripuri are non-vegetarian, although they have a minority of Vaishnavite vegetarians.
The major ingredients of Tripuri cuisine include vegetables, herbs, pork, chicken, mutton, fishes, turtle, shrimps, crabs, freshwater mussels, periwinkles, edible freshwater snails and frogs.
Uttar Pradesh
Traditionally, Uttar Pradeshi cuisine consists of Awadhi, Bhojpuri, and Mughlai cuisine, though a vast majority of the state is vegetarian, preferring dal, roti, sabzi, and rice. Pooris and kachoris are eaten on special occasions.
Chaat, samosa, and pakora, among the most popular snacks in India, originate from Uttar Pradesh.
Well-known dishes include kebabs, dum biryani, and various mutton recipes. Sheer qorma, ghevar, gulab jamun, kheer, and ras malai are some of the popular desserts in this region.
Awadhi cuisine () is from the city of Lucknow, which is the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh in Central-South Asia and Northern India, and the cooking patterns of the city are similar to those of Central Asia, the Middle East, and other parts of Northern India. The cuisine consists of both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes.
Awadh has been greatly influenced by Mughal cooking techniques, and the cuisine of Lucknow bears similarities to those of Central Asia, Kashmir, Punjab and Hyderabad. The city is also known for its Nawabi foods. The bawarchis and rakabdars of Awadh gave birth to the dum style of cooking or the art of cooking over a slow fire, which has become synonymous with Lucknow today. Their spread consisted of elaborate dishes like kebabs, kormas, biryani, kaliya, nahari-kulchas, zarda, sheermal, roomali rotis, and warqi parathas.
The richness of Awadh cuisine lies not only in the variety of cuisine but also in the ingredients used like mutton, paneer, and rich spices, including cardamom and saffron.
Mughlai cuisine is a style of cooking developed in the Indian subcontinent by the imperial kitchens of the Mughal Empire. It represents the cooking styles used in North India (especially Uttar Pradesh).
The cuisine is strongly influenced by Central Asian cuisine, the region where the Chagatai-Turkic Mughal rulers originally hailed from, and has strongly influenced the regional cuisines of Kashmir and the Punjab region.
The tastes of Mughlai cuisine vary from extremely mild to spicy, and is often associated with a distinctive aroma and the taste of ground and whole spices.
A Mughlai course is an elaborate buffet of main course dishes with a variety of accompaniments.
Uttarakhand
Food from Uttrakhand is known to be healthy and wholesome to suit the high-energy necessities of the cold, mountainous region. It is a high-protein diet that makes heavy use of pulses and vegetables. Traditionally, it is cooked over wood or charcoal fire mostly using iron utensils.
While making use of condiments such as jeera, haldi and rai common in other Indian cuisines, Uttarakhand cuisine also use exotic ingredients such as jambu, timmer, ghandhraini and bhangira.
Although the people in Uttarakhand also make dishes common in other parts of northern India, several preparations are unique to Uttarakhand such as rus, chudkani, dubuk, chadanji, jholi, kapa, and more.
Among dressed salads and sauces, kheere ka raita, nimbu mooli ka raita, daarim ki khatai and aam ka fajitha are also popular.
The cuisine mainly consists of food from two different sub-regions, Garhwal and Kumaon, though their basic ingredients are the same. Both Kumaoni and Garhwali styles make liberal use of ghee, lentils or pulses, vegetables and bhaat (rice). They also use badi (sun-dried urad dal balls) and mungodi (sun-dried moong dal balls) as substitutes for vegetables at times.
During festivals and other celebrations, the people of Uttarakhand prepare special refreshments which include both salty preparations such as bada and sweet preparations such as pua and singal. Uttarakhand also has several sweets (mithai) such as singodi, bal-mithai, and malai laddu, native to its traditions.
Gallery
North India
West India
East India
South India
Hindu fasting cuisine
Hindu people fast on days such as Ekadashi, in honour of Lord Vishnu or his Avatars, Chaturthi in honour of Ganesh, Mondays in honour of Shiva, or Saturdays in honour of Hanuman or Saturn.
Only certain kinds of foods are allowed to be eaten. These include milk and other dairy products (such as dahi), fruit, and Western food items such as sago, potatoes, purple-red sweet potatoes, amaranth seeds, nuts and (shama millet).
Popular fasting dishes include farari chevdo, sabudana khichadi, and peanut soup.
Diaspora and fusion cuisines
The interaction of various Indian diaspora communities with the native cultures in their new homes has resulted in the creation of many fusion cuisines, which blend aspects of Indian and other international cuisines. These cuisines tend to interpolate Indian seasoning and cooking techniques into their own national dishes.
Indian Chinese cuisine
Indian Chinese cuisine, also known as Indo-Chinese cuisine originated in the 19th century among the Chinese community of Calcutta, during the immigration of Hakka Chinese from Canton (present-day Guangzhou) seeking to escape the First and Second Opium Wars and political instability in the region. Upon exposure to local Indian cuisine, they incorporated many spices and cooking techniques into their own cuisine, thus creating a unique fusion of Indian and Chinese cuisine.
After 1947, many Cantonese immigrants opened their own restaurants in Calcutta, whose dishes combined aspects of Indian cuisine with Cantonese cuisine. In other parts of India, Indian Chinese cuisine is derived from Calcutta-Chinese cuisine, but bears little resemblance to their Chinese counterparts as the dishes tend to be flavoured with cumin, coriander seeds, and turmeric, which with a few regional exceptions, are not traditionally associated with Chinese cuisine. Chilli, ginger, garlic and dahi (yogurt) are also frequently used in dishes.
Popular dishes include Chicken Manchurian, chicken lollipop, chilli chicken, Hakka noodles, Hunan chicken, chow mein, and Szechwan fried rice.
Soups such as Manchow soup and sweet corn soup are very popular, whereas desserts include ice cream on honey-fried noodles and date pancakes.
Chowmein is now known as one of the most favorite Chinese dishes in India. Especially in West Bengal, it is one of the most loved street foods.
Indian Thai cuisine
Thai cuisine was influenced by Indian cuisine, like as recorded by the Thai monk Buddhadasa Bhikku in his writing ‘India's Benevolence to Thailand’. He wrote that Thai people learned how to use spices in their food in various ways from Indians. Thais also obtained the methods of making herbal medicines (Ayurveda) from the Indians. Some plants like sarabhi of family Guttiferae, kanika or harsinghar, phikun or Mimusops elengi and bunnak or the rose chestnut etc. were brought from India.
Malaysian Indian cuisine
Malaysian Indian cuisine, or the cooking of the ethnic Indian communities in Malaysia consists of adaptations of authentic dishes from India, as well as original creations inspired by the diverse food culture of Malaysia.
A typical Malaysian Indian dish is likely to be redolent with curry leaves, whole and powdered spice, and contains fresh coconut in various forms.
Ghee is still widely used for cooking, although vegetable oils and refined palm oils are now commonplace in home kitchens.
Indian Singaporean cuisine
Indian Singaporean cuisine refers to foods and beverages produced and consumed in Singapore that are derived, wholly or in part, from South Asian culinary traditions.
The great variety of Singaporean food includes Indian food, which tends to be Tamil cuisine, especially local Tamil Muslim cuisine, although North Indian food has become more visible recently.
Indian dishes have become modified to different degrees, after years of contact with other Singaporean cultures, and in response to locally available ingredients, as well as changing local tastes.
Indian Indonesian cuisine
Indian-Indonesian cuisine refers to food and beverages in Indonesian cuisine that have influenced Indian cuisine—especially from Tamil, Punjabi, and Gujarati cuisine. These dishes are well integrated, such as appam, biryani, murtabak and curry.
Indian Filipino cuisine
Filipino cuisine, found throughout the Philippines archipelago, has been historically influenced by the Indian cuisine. Indian influences can also be noted in rice-based delicacies such as bibingka (analogous to the Indonesian bingka), puto, and puto bumbong, where the latter two are plausibly derived from the south Indian puttu, which also has variants throughout Maritime Southeast Asia (e.g. kue putu, putu mangkok).
The kare-kare, more popular in Luzon, on the other hand could trace its origins from the Seven Years' War when the British occupied Manila from 1762 to 1764 with a force that included Indian sepoys, who had to improvise Indian dishes given the lack of spices in the Philippines to make curry. This is said to explain the name and its supposed thick, yellow-to-orange annatto and peanut-based sauce, which alludes to a type of curry.
Atchara of Philippines originated from the Indian achar, which was transmitted to the Philippines via the acar of the Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei.
Anglo-Indian cuisine
Anglo-Indian cuisine developed during the period of British colonial rule in India, as British officials interacted with their Indian cooks.
Well-known Anglo-Indian dishes include chutneys, salted beef tongue, kedgeree, ball curry, fish rissoles, and mulligatawny soup.
Desserts
Many Indian desserts, or mithai, are fried foods made with sugar, milk or condensed milk. Ingredients and preferred types of dessert vary by region. In the eastern part of India, for example, most are based on milk products.
Many are flavoured with almonds and pistachios, spiced with cardamon, nutmeg, cloves and black pepper, and decorated with nuts, or with gold or silver leaf. Popular Indian desserts include rasogolla, gulab jamun, jalebi, laddu, and peda.
Beverages
Non-alcoholic beverages
Tea is a staple beverage throughout India, since the country is one of the largest producers of tea in the world. The most popular varieties of tea grown in India include Assam tea, Darjeeling tea and Nilgiri tea. It is prepared by boiling the tea leaves in a mix of water, milk, and spices such as cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger. In India, tea is often enjoyed with snacks like biscuits and pakoda.
Coffee is another popular beverage, but more popular in South India. Coffee is also cultivated in some parts of India. There are two varieties of coffee popular in India, which include Indian filter coffee and instant coffee.
Lassi is a traditional dahi (yogurt)-based drink in India. It is made by blending yogurt with water or milk and spices. Salted lassi is more common in villages of Punjab and in Porbandar, Gujarat. Traditional lassi is sometimes flavoured with ground roasted cumin. Lassi can also be flavoured with ingredients such as sugar, rose water, mango, lemon, strawberry, and saffron.
Sharbat is a sweet cold beverage prepared from fruits or flower petals. It can be served in concentrate form and eaten with a spoon, or diluted with water to create a drink. Popular sharbats are made from plants such as rose, sandalwood, bel, gurhal (hibiscus), lemon, orange, pineapple, sarasaparilla and kokum, falsa (Grewia asiatica). In Ayurveda, sharbats are believed to hold medicinal value.
Thandai is a cold drink prepared with a mixture of almonds, fennel seeds, watermelon kernels, rose petals, pepper, poppy seeds, cardamom, saffron, milk and sugar. It is native to India and is often associated with the Maha Shivaratri and Holi or Holla mahalla festival. Sometimes bhaang (cannabis) is added to prepare special thandai.
Other beverages include nimbu pani (lemonade), chaas, badam doodh (almond milk with nuts and cardamom), Aam panna, kokum sharbat, and coconut water.
Modern carbonated cold drinks unique to southern India include beverages, such as panner soda or goli soda, a mixture of carbonated water, rose water, rose milk, and sugar, naranga soda, a mixture of carbonated water, salt and lemon juice, and nannari sarbath, a mixture with sarasaparilla.
Sharbats with carbonated water are the most popular non-alcoholic beverages in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Street shops in Central Kerala and Madurai region of Tamil Nadu are well known for these drinks which are also called kulukki sarbaths in Kerala.
Alcoholic beverages
Beer
Most beers in India are either lagers (4.8 percent alcohol) or strong lagers (8.9 percent). The Indian beer industry has witnessed steady growth of 10–17 percent per year over the last ten years. Production exceeded 170 million cases during the 2008–2009 financial year. With the average age of the population decreasing and income levels on the rise, the popularity of beer in the country continues to increase.
Others
Other popular alcoholic drinks in India include fenny, a Goan liquor made from either coconut or the juice of the cashew apple. The state of Goa has registered for a geographical indicator to allow its fenny distilleries to claim exclusive rights to production of liquor under the name "fenny."
Hadia is a rice beer, created by mixing herbs with boiled rice and leaving the mixture to ferment for around a week. It is served cold and is less alcoholic than other Indian liquors. Chuak is a similar drink from Tripura.
Palm wine, locally known as neera, is a sap extracted from inflorescences of various species of toddy palms.
Chhaang is consumed by the people of Sikkim and the Darjeeling Himalayan hill region of West Bengal. It is drunk cold or at room temperature in summer, and often hot during cold weather. Chhaang is similar to traditional beer, brewed from barley, millet, or rice.
Kallu (Chetthu Kallu) is a popular natural alcohol extracted from coconut and pine trees in Kerala. It is sold in local Kallu shops and is consumed with fried fish and chicken. Its alcoholic content is increased by addition of distilled alcohol.
Eating habits
Indians consider a healthy breakfast important. They generally prefer to drink tea or coffee with breakfast, though food preferences vary regionally. North Indian people prefer roti, parathas, and a vegetable dish accompanied by achar (a pickle) and some curd. Various types of packaged pickles are available in the market. One of the oldest pickle-making companies in India is Harnarains, which started in the 1860s in Old Delhi.
People of Gujarat prefer dhokla and milk, while south Indians prefer idli and dosa, generally accompanied by sambhar or sagu and various chutneys.
Traditional lunch in India usually consists of a main dish of rice in the south and the east, and whole-wheat rotis in the north. It typically includes two or three kinds of vegetables, and sometimes items such as kulcha, naan, or parathas. Paan (stuffed, spiced and folded betel leaves) which aids digestion is often eaten after lunch and dinner in many parts of India.
Indian families often gather for "evening snack time", similar to tea time to talk and have tea and snacks.
Dinner is considered the main meal of the day. Also, many households, especially in north and central India, prefer having sweets after the dinner (similar to the Western concept of dessert after meals).
Dietary restrictions
In India people often follow dietary restrictions based on their religion or faith:
Hindu communities consider beef taboo since it is believed that Hindu scriptures condemn cow slaughter. Cow slaughter has been banned in many states of India. However, these restrictions are not followed in the North-Eastern states, West Bengal and Kerala.
Vaishnavism followers generally are strict lacto-vegetarians due to an emphasis on Ahimsa. They also do not consume garlic and onions because they are advised against it in the Bhagavad Gita.
Jains follow a strict form of lacto-vegetarianism, known as Jain vegetarianism, which in addition to being completely lacto-vegetarian, also excludes all root vegetables such as carrots and potatoes because when the root is pulled up, organisms that live around the root also die.
Muslims do not eat pork or pork products.
Except in certain North-Eastern regions, canines are not considered suitable for consumption.
Etiquette
Traditionally, meals in India are eaten while seated either on the floor, or on very low stools or mattress. Food is most often eaten with the hands rather than cutlery.
Often roti is used to scoop curry without allowing it to touch the hand. In the wheat-producing north, a piece of roti is gripped with the thumb and middle finger and ripped off while holding the roti down with the index finger.
A somewhat different method is used in the south for dosai, adai, and uththappam, where the middle finger is pressed down to hold the bread and the forefinger and thumb used to grip and separate a small part. Traditional serving styles vary regionally throughout India.
Contact with other cultures has affected Indian dining etiquette. For example, the Anglo-Indian middle class commonly uses spoons and forks, as is traditional in Western culture.
In South India, cleaned banana leaves, which can be disposed of after meals, are used for serving food. When hot food is served on banana leaves, the leaves add distinctive aromas and taste to the food. Leaf plates are less common today, except on special occasions.
Outside India
Indian migration has spread the culinary traditions of the subcontinent throughout the world. These cuisines have been adapted to local tastes, and have also affected local cuisines. The international appeal of curry has been compared to that of pizza. Indian tandoor dishes such as chicken tikka also enjoy widespread popularity.
Australia
A Roy Morgan Research survey taken between 2013 and 2018 found that Indian cuisine was the top-rated international food among 51% of Australians, behind Chinese, Italian, and Thai.
Canada
As in the United Kingdom and the United States, Indian cuisine is widely available in Canada, especially in the cities of Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa where the majority of Canadians of South Asian heritage live.
China
Indian food is gaining popularity in China, where there are many Indian restaurants in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. Hong Kong alone has more than 50 Indian restaurants, some of which date back to the 1980s. Most of the Indian restaurants in Hong Kong are in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Middle East
The Indian culinary scene in the Middle East has been influenced greatly by the large Indian diaspora in these countries. Centuries of trade relations and cultural exchange resulted in a significant influence on each region's cuisines. The use of the tandoor, which originated in northwestern India, is an example.
The large influx of Indian expatriates into Middle Eastern countries during the 1970s and 1980s led to a boom in Indian restaurants to cater to this population and was also widely influenced by the local and international cuisines.
Nepal
Indian cuisine is available in the streets of Nepalese cities, including Kathmandu and Janakpur.
Southeast Asia
Other cuisines which borrow inspiration from Indian cooking styles include Cambodian, Lao, Filipino, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, and Burmese cuisines. The spread of vegetarianism in other parts of Asia is often credited to Hindu and Buddhist practices.
Indian cuisine is very popular in Southeast Asia, due to the strong Hindu and Buddhist cultural influence in the region. Indian cuisine has had considerable influence on Malaysian cooking styles and also enjoys popularity in Singapore. There are numerous North and South Indian restaurants in Singapore, mostly in Little India.
Singapore is also known for fusion cuisine combining traditional Singaporean cuisine with Indian influences. Fish head curry, for example, is a local creation. Indian influence on Malay cuisine dates to the 19th century.
United Kingdom
The UK's first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostanee Coffee House, opened in 1810. By 2003, there were as many as 10,000 restaurants serving Indian cuisine in England and Wales alone. According to Britain's Food Standards Agency, the Indian food industry in the United Kingdom is worth 3.2 billion pounds, accounts for two-thirds of all eating out in the country, and serves about 2.5 million customers every week.
One of the best known examples of British Indian restaurant cuisine is chicken tikka masala, which has also been called "a true British national dish."
Ireland
Ireland's first Indian restaurant, the Indian Restaurant and Tea Rooms, opened in 1908 on Sackville Street, now O'Connell Street, in Dublin. Today, Indian restaurants are commonplace in most Irish cities and towns. Non-Chinese Asians are the fastest growing ethnic group in Ireland.
United States
A survey by The Washington Post in 2007 stated that more than 1,200 Indian food products had been introduced into the United States since 2000. There are numerous Indian restaurants across the US, which vary based on regional culture and climate. North Indian and South Indian cuisines are especially well represented. Most Indian restaurants in the United States serve Americanized versions of North Indian food, which is generally less spicy than its Indian equivalents.
At sit-down restaurants with North Indian cuisine (the most common), complimentary papadum is served with three dipping sauces—typically hari chutney (mint and cilantro), imli chutney (taramind), and a spicy red chili or onion chutney—in place of European-style bread before the meal.
See also
Buddhist vegetarianism
Diet in Hinduism
Diet in Sikhism
Jain vegetarianism
Indian bread
Indian Chinese cuisine
Indian tea culture
List of Indian breads
List of Indian dishes
List of Indian pickles
List of Indian snacks
List of plants used in Indian cuisine
North East Indian cuisine
South Asian pickles
South Indian cuisine
Street food of Chennai
Street food of Mumbai
References
Bibliography
Pat Chapman. India: Food & Cooking, New Holland, London — (2007)
External links
Vegetarian dishes of India | en |
doc-en-8843 | A sign of contradiction, in Catholic theology, is someone who, upon manifesting holiness, is subject to extreme opposition. The term is from the biblical phrase "sign that is spoken against", found in Luke 2:34 and in Acts 28:22, which refer to Jesus Christ and the early Christians. Contradiction comes from the Latin contra, "against" and dicere, "to speak".
According to Catholic tradition, a sign of contradiction points to the presence of Christ or the presence of the divine due to the union of that person or reality with God. In his book, Sign of Contradiction, John Paul II says that "sign of contradiction" might be "a distinctive definition of Christ and of his Church."
Jesus Christ as sign of contradiction
Luke 2:34 refers to Jesus Christ while he is being presented in the temple by his parents. The words were spoken by Simeon to Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, as a prophecy regarding her child and herself.
"Behold this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thought of many hearts may be revealed." (Italics added; Douay Rheims Bible translates the phrase as "sign that will be contradicted.")
The interpretation of the Navarre Bible, a Catholic bible commentary, is the following:
"Jesus came to bring salvation to all men, yet he will be sign of contradiction because some people will obstinately reject him – for this reason he will be their ruin. But for those who accept him with faith Jesus will be their salvation, freeing them from sin in this life and raising them up to eternal life."
The commentary also says that Mary will be intimately linked with her Son's work of salvation. The sword indicates that Mary will have a share in her son's sufferings. The last words of the prophecy link up with verse 34: uprightness or perversity will be demonstrated by whether one accepts or rejects Christ.
There are three elements then involved in a sign of contradiction, according to Catholic theology: (1) An attack on Christ or people who are said to be "united" with Christ. From this attack, ensues a double-movement: (2) the downfall of those who reject Christ, and (3) the rise of those who accept him.
This double-movement is connected with the division Jesus Christ referred to in , an external division among peoples who either follow him or not, but an internal peace for those who follow him.
"Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
Jesus Christ was spoken against during his life: the Gospels claim that Pharisees and other critics said that he was allied with Beelzebub, that he was a drunkard and a glutton, (based upon his participation at banquets and feasts), that he was a blasphemer who made himself equal to God. According to Catholic theologians, these charges led to his torture and execution.
Throughout history, Jesus of Nazareth was also spoken against: Docetists, considered by the Catholic Church to be the first heretics, said that his body was not true but only an appearance. Arians said he was not God. Nestorius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, said Jesus' mother Mary was not the Mother of God, but only the mother of the human being called Jesus. Thus, Nestorius also denied that it is God the Son who became man.
In the 19th century, some questioned the historicity of Jesus, and in contemporary times, novels such as The Da Vinci Code and films such as The Last Temptation of Christ have portrayed him as romantically linked with Mary Magdalene.
According to the Catholic view, the double-movement that ensued after the attack on Christ is the following: While many of Christ's enemies have fallen (the Roman authorities fell in 476, the authorities in the Sanhedrin during his time died, their temple in Jerusalem destroyed in 70 AD by Titus), Jesus Christ resurrected from the dead and his religion became the largest religion in the world and the Catholic Church its biggest representation.
Catholic theologians also say that while the devil seemed to have been able to put the Messiah to death, his death turned the tables around and became the very instrument of Christ's victory over evil, death and the devil. His death showed the infinite love of God towards mankind ("Greater love no man has than he who lays down his life for his friend"), thus drawing men back to God. With his death he opened an infinite source of divine life (grace) through the seven sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders, Anointing of the Sick, Confession and the Eucharist, where Jesus Christ himself, both perfect God and perfect man, is present in person.
The Eucharist as a sign of contradiction
Catholic theologians also say that the Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is another sign of contradiction. Catholics believe that during the Last Supper, when Christ said, "This is my body," he was referring to the bread that he was holding, and that the bread became his Body in substance and in essence, retaining the "accidental" appearance of bread. Catholics call this "transubstantiation" from the Latin trans, "to change, to become, to transfer" and substantia, "substance, that which stands (stans) underneath (sub)". Substance refers to the core of each entity, e.g. the substance of a man is the same when he is a little baby and when he becomes an old man, even if the appearances are much different. In the case of transubstantiation, it is the substance that changed (from real bread to Jesus Christ) while the appearances (white, crunchy and smelling like bread) remained the same.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, for ten centuries this doctrine was unopposed, until Berengarius of Tours who taught in 1047 that "the body and blood of Christ are really present in the Holy Eucharist; but this presence is an intellectual or spiritual presence. The substance of the bread and the substance of the wine remain unchanged." Controversy was opened by the Reformation in the 16th century. Martin Luther taught that Christ was truly present in the Eucharist, with his doctrine being called the sacramental union. He was diametrically opposed by Zwingli who said the Eucharist is a symbolic memorial of Christ's redemptive death. John Calvin's view lay somewhere in between: instead of the substantial presence or the merely symbolic presence, he saw the presence as "dynamic": according to this view, at the moment of reception, the efficacy of Christ's Body and Blood is communicated from heaven to the souls of the predestined and spiritually nourishes them.
Towards the end of the 20th century, some Catholic priests put forth the doctrine of "trans-signification": a change of meaning on the part of those receiving it. The bread does not change, it is the meaning for the recipient that changes. "Trans-signification" is not in accordance with Catholic doctrine.
The opposition to transubstantiation, a doctrine considered by many to be holy, makes the Eucharist a sign of contradiction according to Catholic doctrine.
According to Catholic theologians, the double-movement is shown in (1) the breakup of the Protestants into thousands of denominations, with different views on the Eucharist, which for Catholic doctrine is the source of Church unity. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia (2001) by David B. Barrett, et al., there are "over 33,000 denominations in 238 countries." (including the rites of Catholicism) Every year there is a net increase of around 270 to 300 denominations, (2) the increase in devotion to the Eucharist all over the Catholic world.
The cross and mortification as signs of contradiction
Edith Stein, called the Patron of Europe by John Paul II, once taught on the day of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 1939:
More than ever the cross is a sign of contradiction. The followers of the Antichrist show it far more dishonor than did the Persians who stole it. They desecrate the images of the Cross, and they make every effort to tear the cross out of the hearts of Christians. All too often they have succeeded even with those who, like us, once vowed to bear Christ's cross after him. Therefore, the Savior today looks at us, solemnly probing us, and asks each one of us: Will you remain faithful to the Crucified? Consider carefully! The world is in flames, the battle between Christ and the Antichrist has broken into the open. If you decide for Christ, it could cost you your life.
The practice of mortification, a way of following Christ's advice to his disciples to "renounce yourself, take up your cross, and follow me" is also usually attacked as sado-masochism, a search for pleasure through pain. Catholics believe, on the other hand, that it is through suffering and pain that Christians "complete in themselves the afflictions of Christ" as St. Paul preached. This means Christians see themselves as forming the "one mystical person" with Christ, and therefore should help people by loving and obeying God by undergoing pains and sufferings, thus making up for the sins of men.
Views on the cross creates a division: "The division between those whose first love is God, and those whose first love is self - might also be expressed as the division between those who accept the place of the Cross in the following of Christ, and those who reject all sacrifice except it be for personal gain."
St. Paul said "many live as enemies of the cross of Christ." (Philippians 3:18) He preached: "The message of the cross is complete absurdity to those who are headed for ruin, but to those of us who are on the way to salvation it is the power of God.... The Jews demand signs (miracles), and the Greeks wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified - to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Gentiles foolishness; but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:18,22).
The Church and Christians as signs of contradiction
The second biblical phrase is from Acts 28:22, quoting a Jew in Rome with whom Paul was talking:
We desire to hear from you what your views are: for with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against. (Italics added)
According to Catholic theologians and ecclesiologists like Charles Journet and Kenneth D. Whitehead in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: The Early Church was the Catholic Church, the sect being referred to here by the Jews is the early church of Christians.
The Church and the early Christians, according to these Catholic theologians, are one with Jesus Christ. As an example, they say that when Paul was persecuting the early Church, Jesus Christ appeared to him and said: Why do you persecute me?
The passage from the Acts of the Apostles is related to :
"I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples." (italics added)
This passage shows the double-movement depending on the two possible attitudes towards Christ: whoever is united to Christ in holiness will rise and bear fruit, while those who are disunited to Christ will fall down and wither.
The early Church and the Roman Empire
The early Christians, regarded as forming a pernicious sect by several authorities of the Roman Empire, are also seen as a sign of contradiction. Early Christians were called cannibals (for reputedly eating the "body of Christ"), they were called atheists (for not following the established Roman religion), they were also accused of burning Rome during the time of the Emperor Nero, and thus were tortured and burned as torches. Emperors after Nero also saw them as a threat to the unity of the Empire.
Tertullian, an early Christian apologist, said that the persecution of the first Christians helped in propagating Christianity: "The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians." According to Catholic historians like Philip Hughes and Warren Carrol, when the Empire fell in 476 AD, Christianity continued to prosper and to spread throughout Europe and beyond. These historians say that it was the Christian monks who eventually tried to keep intact the ancient culture in their monasteries.
Early Church Fathers
Many Catholic Church Fathers are also seen by theologians as signs of contradiction. A specific example is St. Athanasius or Athanasius of Alexandria, who defended the divinity of Christ, the basic reason behind the Christian religion, according to Patrologist Johannes Quasten.
J. Quasten says that Athanasius was the deacon and secretary to bishop Alexander of Alexandria. As such he attended the Council of Nicea in 325 where he fought for the defeat of Arianism and acceptance of the divinity of Jesus. Against Arius who said that Jesus Christ was not eternal and not God but a mere creature, Athanasius formulated the doctrine that Jesus Christ is "consubstantial" with the Father, a doctrine now known as "homoousios".
Athanasius later became the Patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt in 328. When the Arians gained political power, Athanasius was exiled five to seven times, but was restored to authority each time. This gave rise to the expression "Athanasius contra mundum" or "Athanasius against the world."
While Arius, his opponent, died in 336, Athanasius died in 373 surrounded by the affection of his flock, and from then on revered as a great saint in Christendom. (J. Quasten, Patrology) Athanasius has been recognized by the Catholic Church as a Church Father, a leading testimony of Sacred Tradition. He has also been declared a Confessor of the faith and Doctor of the Church.
The Society of Jesus and the Suppression
After Ignatius of Loyola's death and through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the Jesuits became widely known as the schoolmasters of Europe, in part for their reputation as scholars and their demonstrated intellectual excellence as shown through the thousands of textbooks they authored. They were also known for their unity with the Pope, which was made explicit by taking a fourth vow: obedience to the Pope.
Their status in Europe greatly changed in 1773 when Pope Clement XIV gave in to pressure from groups across the continent. Pope Clement feared that many would follow the example of Henry VIII of England who abandoned the Catholic Church. On the heels of the pope's suppression of the Jesuits, many of the Jesuit's educational institutions fell under state government control, and much of the Jesuit's books and teaching materials were subsequently destroyed. Over 200 members of the order fled to Russia while over 20,000 others scattered throughout the world. Pope Pius VII lifted this suspension in 1814 and the Jesuits re-emerged as they were asked by many governments to return to the colleges they once gave up. The absolutist monarchs who had demanded the suppression had fallen by then, swept by the forces unleashed by the French Revolution of 1789.
The period following the Restoration of the Jesuits in 1814 was marked by tremendous growth, as evidenced by the large number of Jesuit colleges and universities established in the 19th century. In the United States, 22 of the Society's 28 universities were founded or taken over by the Jesuits during this time. Some claim that the experience of suppression served to heighten orthodoxy among the Jesuits upon restoration.
Pius VII and Napoleon
Another example of a sign of contradiction is the life of Pius VII. His was a difficult pontificate filled with moral and physical problems inflicted by Napoleon I whom the pope himself consecrated Emperor of the French in Notre Dame in Paris. As his armies were conquering many countries of Europe, Napoleon, who was a proponent of liberalism, is reported to have said to Church officials, Je détruirai votre église ("I will destroy your Church"). Later Napoleon took Pope Pius VII prisoner and sent him to Fontainebleau.
The Columbia University Encyclopedia states: "In 1814, after Napoleon's downfall, Pius returned to Rome in triumph. One of his first acts was to restore the Society of Jesus. The Papal States were restored at the Congress of Vienna, and a series of concordats were signed with European powers. At the same time Pius VII's stolidity in the face of humiliation began a revival of personal popularity for the pope that has since characterized Catholicism."
Pius VII later offered asylum to Napoleon's elderly mother and gave both moral and material assistance to his family. Napoleon died in exile 1821 at the age of 52; Pope Pius VII died in 1823 in Rome at the age of 81.
John Paul II
A contemporary example seen by many as of a sign of contradiction is Pope John Paul II.
While Pope, he was called a reactionary and an ultraconservative, and was often criticized, stridently at times, by the media, non-Catholic and Catholics alike. He was criticized for his views on sex, homosexuality, birth control, and the role of women in the church. He was criticized for some of his canonizations, including the canonization of Opus Dei's founder, Josemaría Escrivá.
According to George Weigel, in Witness to Hope, even many Catholic theologians, especially those who had relativist and secularist tendencies, rebelled against his teaching magisterium, criticizing his views about morality, ecumenicism, the sacraments, and the ordination of women. Weigel also says that there were many attempts to assassinate him. He mentions some historians and investigators who made very plausible connections with communist leaders who feared his influence in Eastern Europe. When he died, the communist governments in the Eastern Europe had already fallen.
Traditionalists criticized him for being too open to other religions.
On the other hand, on his death, he was highly praised by many, both Catholics and non-Catholics.
According to Weigel and other Catholic commentators like John Allen, John Paul II has been praised for and will be much remembered for the following things:
his revolutionary Theology of the Body which gives profound insights on human sexuality, his clear moral teachings in Veritatis Splendor,
his fight for human rights and dignity which led to the fall of dictatorships and of communism,
his defense of life and the human embryo through unprecedented infallible teachings on abortion, euthanasia, and murder as grave sins in the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae,
his push for the universal call to holiness through his many canonizations and his "program for all times," At the Beginning of the New Millennium (Novo Millennio Ineunte) which place sanctity as the number one priority of all pastoral activities in the Catholic Church,
his teaching on reason as being congruent with the Catholic faith (Fides et Ratio),
the strides in the work of ecumenism and
the work on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which, claim Weigel and some historians of theology, has cleared much of the doctrinal confusion which disturbed the Church and society in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Prelature of Opus Dei and the Holy Cross
Opus Dei, described as one of the most controversial forces in the Roman Catholic Church, is another contemporary sign of contradiction according to some Catholic theologians.
Opus Dei was denounced as a heresy by churchmen in the 1940s but is now considered one of the contributors to a central doctrine of the Second Vatican Council, the universal call to holiness and is supported by various Catholic leaders. Catholic historians say that it was attacked as pro-Franco (because of eight members were ministers, some at the same time) but some of its members driven into exile by Franco's political arm later became Senate Presidents in the new democracy. It has been criticized as a cult for various reasons. However, the late John Paul II said that its teachings on the radical demands of sanctity belongs to all Christians.
John Carmel Heenan, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, commented in 1975: "One of the proofs of God's favour is to be a sign of contradiction. Almost all founders of societies in the Church have suffered. Monsignor Escrivá de Balaguer is no exception. Opus Dei has been attacked and its motives misunderstood. In this country and elsewhere an inquiry has always vindicated Opus Dei." John Paul II, in his decree on Escrivá's heroic virtues, stated: "God allowed him to suffer public attacks. He responded invariably with pardon, to the point of considering his detractors as benefactors. But this Cross was such a source of blessings from heaven that the Servant of God's apostolate spread with astonishing speed."
Escrivá said that Opus Dei in order to be effective has to live like Jesus Christ and that "its greatest glory is to live without human glory."
Catholic Martyrs of the 20th Century
Writing for Catholic Herald, Robert Royal, president of the Faith and Reason Institute, Washington, D.C. reported about the results of his research which appeared in his book The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive Global History. Royal states that in some countries, such as Spain, the Church has documented almost 8,000 people killed for the Catholic faith during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Royal says, from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, to Nazi Germany, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, thousands of Catholics have disappeared into gulags, been gunned down by dictators, had their heads cut off by anti-Catholic fanatics, and, in some cases, been crucified.
In Sudan, which Royal says is engaged in the most insidious anti-Catholic campaign in the world, there have been reports not only of martyrdoms and crucifixions, but of Christians in the Nuba mountains in southern Sudan being sold into slavery. It is estimated that over 1.5 million Christians have been killed by the Sudanese army, the Janjaweed, and even suspected Islamists in northern Sudan since 1984. Royal states that China, for example, has produced large numbers of martyrs. In the 1900 Boxer Rebellion alone, 30,000 Catholics died, including several dozen bishops, priests, and religious. Since the creation of the People's Republic following the end of the civil war in 1949, thousands more have died in laojiao (labor camps), facing conditions that Royal describes as brainwashing and slave labor.
Human beings as signs of contradiction
The human embryo, according to Catholics, is also a sign of contradiction. According to Catholic belief, the human embryo is already a human being, as much as the human fetus and the newborn child. And for Christians, a human being is made in the image and likeness of God. The fact that these beliefs are highly contested by many quarters makes the human embryo, in the Catholic view, a sign of contradiction.
Elio Sgreccia, Vice President of the Pontifical Council for Life, said in an article entitled "The Embryo: A Sign of Contradiction":
We need only look at the data bank of bioethical and medical writing on the subject to see how this is so. In the years 1970–1974 more than five hundred works dealing with the biomedical aspect of the question existed, and there were 27 works of a philosophical-theological character. In the years 1990–1994 there were nearly 4,200 works on the biomedical dimension of the subject and 242 on the philosophical-theological aspect of the debate. A quotation from one of the Fathers of the Church, Tertullian: "homo est qui venturus est." [trans: he who will become man is man] From the moment of fertilization we are in the presence of a new, independent, individualized being which develops in continuous fashion.
Sacred things as signs of contradiction
The Shroud of Turin, an image viewed by some Christians as a miraculous imprinting of the image of Jesus on the cloth, together with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, are disputed as authentic supernatural depictions. For this reason, some Catholics consider them to be signs of contradictions.
Sign of Contradiction by John Paul II
Sign of contradiction is also the title of Lenten meditations he preached and wrote upon the request of Paul VI. The theme of the book, according to one review, is "the human encounter with God in a world that seems to contradict the reality of divine power and love." John Paul II says in his conclusion that "It is becoming more and more evident that those words (Luke 2:34) sum up most felicitously the whole truth about Jesus Christ, his mission and his Church."
See also
Foolishness for Christ
Hermit and Stylite: Vocations to solitude for the life of the world.
Endnotes
References
Wojtyla, Karol. Sign of Contradiction.
Woods, Thomas. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.
Quasten, James. Patrology.
Carrol, Warren. History of Christendom.
Journet, Charles. The Church.
Allen, John. Opus Dei: An Objective Look at the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church.
Casciaro, Josemaria, et al. Navarre Bible.
José Miguel Cejas, Piedras de escandalo
Catholicism-related controversies
Catholic theology and doctrine | en |
doc-en-1122 | The pioneer era of aviation was the period of aviation history between the first successful powered flight, generally accepted to have been made by the Wright Brothers on 17 December 1903, and the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.
Once the principles of powered controlled flight had been established there was a period in which many different aircraft configurations were experimented with. By 1914 the tractor configuration biplane had become the most popular form of aircraft design, and would remain so until the end of the 1920s. The development of the internal combustion engine—primarily from their use in early automobiles even before the start of the 20th century—which enabled successful heavier-than-air flight also produced rapid advances in lighter-than-air flight, particularly in Germany where the Zeppelin company rapidly became the world leader in the field of airship construction.
During this period aviation passed from being seen as the preserve of eccentric enthusiasts to being an established technology, with the establishment of specialist aeronautical engineering research establishments and university courses and the creation of major industrial aircraft manufacturing businesses, and aviation became a subject of enormous popular interest. Flying displays such as the Grande Semaine d'Aviation of 1909 and air races such as the Gordon Bennett Trophy and the Circuit of Europe attracted huge audiences and successful pilots such as Jules Védrines and Claude Grahame-White became celebrities.
An emerging technology
Although the Wright brothers made their first successful powered flights in December 1903 and by 1905 were making flights of significant duration, their achievement was largely unknown to the world in general and was widely disbelieved. After their flights in 1905 the Wrights stopped work on developing their aircraft and concentrated on trying to commercially exploit their invention, attempting to interest the military authorities of the United States and then, after being rebuffed, France and Great Britain. Consequently, attempts to achieve powered flight continued, principally in France. To publicize the aeronautical concourse at the upcoming World's Fair in St. Louis, Octave Chanute gave a number of lectures at aero-clubs in Europe, sharing his excitement about flying gliders. He showed slides of his own glider flying experiments as well as some of the Wrights glider flying in 1901 and 1902. All these talks were reproduced in club journals. The lecture to members of the Aéro-Club de France in April 1903 is the best known, and the August 1903 issue of l'Aérophile carried an article by Chanute that included drawings of his gliders as well as the Wright glider and a description of their approach to the problem, saying "the time is evidently approaching when, the problem of equilibrium and control having been solved, it will be safe to apply a motor and a propeller". Chanute's lecture moved Ernest Archdeacon one of the founder members of the Aéro-Club, to conclude his account of the lectures:
In October 1904 the Aéro-Club de France announced a series of prizes for achievements in powered flight, but little practical work was done: Ferdinand Ferber, an army officer who in 1898 had experimented with a hang-glider based on that of Otto Lilienthal continued his work without any notable success, Archdeacon commissioned the construction of a glider based on the Wright design but smaller and lacking the provision for roll control which made a number of brief flights at Berck-sur-Mer in April 1904, piloted by Ferber and Gabriel Voisin (the longest of around , compared to the achieved by the Wrights in 1902) : another glider based on the Wright design was constructed by Robert Esnault-Pelterie, who rejected wing-warping as unsafe and instead fitted a pair of mid-gap control surfaces in front of the wings, intended to be used in a differential manner in place of wing-warping and in conjunction to act as elevators (as what are known today as elevons): this is the first recorded use of ailerons, the concept for which had been patented over a generation earlier by M. P. W. Boulton of the United Kingdom in 1868. This was not successful and Esnault-Pelterie was later to use its failure to support the position that the Wright Brothers claims were unfounded. However his design was not an exact copy of the Wrights' glider, particularly in having a greatly increased wing camber. Ferber's copy was likewise unsuccessful: it was crudely constructed, without ribs to maintain the wing camber, but is notable for his later addition of a fixed rear-mounted stabilising tail surface, the first instance of this feature in a full-size aircraft. Archdeacon abandoned the 1904 glider after the first attempts and commissioned a second glider, which was constructed by Gabriel Voisin in 1905; this broke up in mid air when towed into the air behind a car, fortunately carrying sandbags in place of a pilot. Voisin then constructed another glider, mounted on floats and introducing the box kite-like stabilising tail which was to be a characteristic of his later aircraft: this was successfully towed into the air behind a motor-boat on 8 June 1905, and Voisin's glider and a second similar aircraft built for Louis Blériot were tested on 18 July, the flight of Blériots aircraft ending in a crash in which Voisin, the pilot, was nearly drowned. Voisin and Blériot then constructed a powered tandem wing biplane, which was subjected to a number of modifications without any success.
First powered flights outside of the United States
Full details of the Wright Brothers' flight control system was published in l'Aérophile in the January 1906 issue, making clear both the mechanism and its aerodynamic reason. Nevertheless, the crucial importance of lateral control in making controlled turns was not appreciated, and the French experimenters instead aimed to construct inherently stable aircraft.
In the late summer and autumn of 1906 Alberto Santos Dumont made the first successful powered heavier-than-air flights in Europe in his 14-bis, culminating in a flight of 220 m (722 ft) on the grounds of the Parisian Chateau de Bagatelle on 12 November, winning an Aéro-Club de France prize for a flight of over 100 m. Initially relying on pronounced dihedral to provide stability, by the November flight, octagonal-planform interplane ailerons - as a possible "first-use" (if not the first) of Boulton's 1868 patent on an engine-powered airframe - somewhat like Esnault-Pelterie's design for his own glider; had been fitted to Santos-Dumont's aircraft for its own concluding flights, before its own imminent retirement.
Earlier that year Gabriel Voisin had established an aircraft construction company at Boulogne-Billancourt: his first successful aircraft, which lacked any provision for roll control, was the Delagrange No.1 biplane, named after its owner Leon Delagrange. This was first flown by Voisin on 30 March 1907. and in February 1908 a second example flown by Henri Farman won the Archdeacon-de la Meurthe Grand Prix d'Aviation for the first officially observed closed-circuit flight of over a kilometer. Among the most persistent French experimenters was Louis Blériot, who after a brief partnership with Gabriel Voisin, had established Recherches Aéronautiques Louis Blériot and produced a series of monoplane designs. On 16 November 1907 he successfully flew his Blériot VII, a monoplane with tail surfaces moved differentially for roll control and in unison for pitch control. This aircraft, which is recognised as the first successful monoplane, was soon wrecked in a crash, but was quickly followed by his eighth design, the first aircraft ever to essentially have the original form of flight control setup used to this day.
In North America, the Canadian-American Aerial Experiment Association was founded by Alexander Graham Bell, who had made a number of earlier experiments with tetrahedral kites, and John McCurdy and his friend Frederick Walker Baldwin, two recent engineering graduates of the University of Toronto, on 30 September 1907. The AEA produced a number of fundamentally similar biplane designs, greatly influenced by the Wright's work, and these were flown with increasing success during 1908. Baldwin flew their first design, Red Wing on 12 March 1908, flying 97 m (319 ft) before crashing and being damaged beyond repair: its successor, White Wing]], equipped with ailerons, made three flights in May, the best of 310 m (1,017 ft), before being destroyed in a crash. On 4 July 1908 their next aircraft, the June Bug piloted by Glenn Curtiss, won the Scientific American trophy for the first officially observed one kilometer flight in North America. After the AEA's disbandment at the end of March 1909, one of its American members went on to start a growing US-based aviation firm.
In 1908 Wilbur Wright finally visited Europe and in August made a series of flight demonstrations which convincingly demonstrated the superiority of their aircraft, particularly its ability to make controlled banked turns, to the European aviation community. The first flight only lasted 1 minute 45 seconds, in which two circles were flown, but the effect was profound, Louis Blériot saying "I consider that for us in France, and everywhere, a new era in mechanical flight has commenced. I am not sufficiently calm after the event to thoroughly express my opinion. My view can be best conveyed in the words, 'It is marvellous!' " Leon Delagrange simply said "We are beaten". Following these demonstrations, Henri Farman fitted his Voisin biplane with ailerons in order to achieve the full controllability demonstrated by Wilbur Wright: following a falling-out with Gabriel Voisin he then started his own aircraft manufacturing business. His first design, the Farman III (the Farman I and II were Voisin designs that he owned) was one of the most successful aircraft designs of the pioneer era, and was widely copied by other manufacturers, including one soon-to-be-prominent British firm.
Flight as an established technology
1909 can be regarded as the year in which aviation came of age. At the end of 1908 the first exhibition devoted to aircraft was held in the Grand Palais in Paris, and this was followed by the first London Aero Exhibition at Olympia in May 1909. The Aéro-Club de France issued its first pilot's licences in January, awarding them to a select few pioneer aviators including the Wright Brothers. The first British magazine to be devoted to the subject, Flight published its first issue in January. (Aviation matters had previously been covered by The Automotor Journal.) The British Daily Mail newspaper had offered a number of prizes with the intention of encouraging aviation: in 1906 it had offered a prize of £10,000 for the first flight between London and Manchester. This was met by widespread derision; the satirical magazine Punch responded by offering a similar prize for a flight to Mars. On July 25, 1909 Louis Blériot won their £1000 prize for the first flight across the English channel. One contemporary newspaper led its account of the event with the headline "Britain is no longer an island", and the flight caused a reassessment of Britain's strategic reliance on the Navy for defence. Blériot became world-famous, and the publicity resulted in over a hundred orders for copies of his design within a few weeks.
The year also saw the Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne at Rheims, attended by half a million people, including Armand Fallières, the President of France; the King of Belgium and senior British political figures including David Lloyd George, who afterwards commented "Flying machines are no longer toys and dreams; they are an established fact" A second aircraft exhibition held in October at the Grand Palais in Paris attracted 100,000 visitors. In America, Wilbur Wright made two spectacular flights over New York Harbor, flying from Governor's Island. On 29 September he made a short flight circling the Statue of Liberty, and on 4 October he made a 33-minute flight over the Hudson witnessed by around a million New Yorkers.
Lighter-than-air
The lightweight power source provided by the petrol engine also revolutionised the prospects for airship development. Alberto Santos Dumont achieved celebrity status on 19 October 1901 by winning a prize for making a flight from Parc Saint Cloud to the Eiffel Tower and back.
In Germany Graf (Count) Ferdinand von Zeppelin pioneered the construction of large rigid airships: his first design of 1900–01 had only limited success and his second was not constructed until 1906, but his efforts became an enormous source of patriotic pride for the German people: so much so that when his fourth airship LZ 4 was wrecked in a storm a public collection raised more than six million marks to enable him to carry on his work. Using Zeppelins, the world's first airline, DELAG, was established in Germany in 1910, operating pleasure cruises rather than a scheduled transport service: by the outbreak of war in 1914 1588 flights had been made carrying 10,197 fare-paying passengers. The military threat posed by these large airships, greatly superior in carrying power and endurance to heavier-than air machines of the time, caused considerable concern in other countries, especially Britain. Germany was alone in constructing rigid airships, and airship development elsewhere concentrated on non-rigid and semi-rigid designs. The only British attempt to construct a large rigid airship, HMA No. 1, broke its back before making a single flight and was abandoned, and the single French-built rigid was not much more successful.
Start of an industry
Pre-1910, most aircraft builders were aviation enthusiasts, many from wealthy families. Blériot had financed his experiments out of the profits of his successful business manufacturing car headlights.
In Great Britain Frederick Handley Page established an aircraft business in 1909 but was largely reliant on selling components such as connecting sockets and wire-strainers to other enthusiasts, while the Short Brothers, who had started in business manufacturing balloons, had transferred their interests to heavier-than air aviation and started licence production of the Wright design as well as working on their own designs. 1910 saw the involvement of people who saw aviation purely as a business opportunity. In January 1910 Sir George White, the chairman of Bristol Tramways, established the Bristol and Colonial Aeroplane Company, investing £25,000 in the business The same year the silk broker Armand Deperdussin established the Société de Production des Aéroplanes Deperdussin, bearing the soon-to-be-famous SPAD acronym. In 1911 the armaments giant Vickers established an aircraft department. However most aircraft manufacturing during the period was on a small scale, and very few designs were produced in any quantity.
Technical development
A good indication of the progress during the era is provide by the annual Gordon Bennett races. The first competition, held in 1909 during the Grande Semaine d'Aviation at Reims, was over a distance of 20 km (12 mi) and was won by Glenn Curtiss at a speed of 75.27 km/h (46.77 mph). By 1913, the last pre-war contest, the race was over a distance of 200 km (120 mi) and the winner's speed was 200.8 km/h (124.8 mph). At the end of 1909 the record for distance flown was and for altitude : by the end of 1913 the record for distance was and the altitude record was
Construction
Most pioneer era aircraft were constructed from wood, using metal sockets to joint members and making use of piano wire or stranded steel cable for bracing.
Although aircraft of the era are often described a constructed of sticks and canvas their construction was of considerable sophistication. Wooden construction typically involved several different types of timber, with careful use of different woods according to their mechanical properties; ash and spruce were the most commonly used, although hickory, mahogany and poplar were among the other timbers employed. Struts were frequently hollow members formed by spindling out two pieces of wood and then glueing them together, usually using a tongue in groove joint to strengthen the joint. Wing spars were also often composite members, and the wing ribs were complex structures. When flying replicas of the 1910 Bristol Boxkite were made for the 1966 film Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, a modern stress analysis was performed, and concluded that the airframe was close to conforming to modern requirements.
The use of metal for airframe construction was by no means uncommon: Robert Esnault-Pelterie used steel tubing to construct the fuselage of his aircraft as early as 1907, and Louis Breguet was another notable pioneer of metal construction, using steel channel sections for fuselage construction, steel tube for wing spars, pressed aluminium for wing ribs and aluminium sheeting for fuselage covering – this would not be improved upon until the second half of 1915.
The era also saw the first use of monocoque construction, first seen in Eugene Ruchonnet's Aero-Cigare and notably used in the Deperdussin Monocoque of 1912, which won the Gordon Bennett race in both 1912 and 1913. Another structurally advanced and influential (although unsuccessful) concept aircraft designs was the Antoinette Monobloc, which was the first monoplane design concept to have a cantilever wing without any external bracing wires.
Early aircraft were covered in a variety of fabrics including rubberised cotton and varnished silk. The development of aircraft dope in 1911 was a major technical development, and its use was quickly adopted by all manufacturers. This performed a number of functions, proofing the fabric against oil and petrol contamination, and also tightening the fabric.
Configuration
At the 1909 Grand Semaine d'Aviation the competing aircraft were of two different basic configurations: tractor configuration monoplanes such as the two types flown by Blériot and the Antoinette; and pusher configuration biplanes with a forward-mounted elevator, represented by the Voisin, licence-built copies of the Wright Brother's aircraft, Glenn Curtiss' No. 2 biplane and the Farman III. All the competing aircraft with the exception of the Voisin biplanes had roll control, using either ailerons or wing-warping The Wright design differed from the others in having no rear-mounted horizontal stabilising surface. Constructors of pusher biplanes almost universally adopted the use of a rear-mounted horizontal stabiliser and designs began to appear in which the front elevator was removed: the Wright Brothers adopted this configuration for their Model B of 1910. The tractor monoplane and the pusher biplane were the dominant configurations for the next couple of years, although designers experimented with various other configurations.
One of the most successful pusher biplanes was the Farman III, developed by Henri Farman following a falling-out with Gabriel Voisin: he retained the basic layout of the Voisin, but incorporated ailerons (as added to his Voisin), modified the undercarriage by adding skids to prevent the aircraft nosing-over on landing and modified the structure, eliminating the nacelle in which the pilot sat and mounting the forward elevator on outrigger booms. This design was copied by many constructors, and was so influential that when Mervyn O'Gorman created a scheme for classifying the products of the Royal Aircraft Factory according to their configuration such aircraft were classified as "F.E" for "Farman Experimental. All tractor aircraft were designated "B.E" for "Blériot Experimental", although all the B.E. designs produced were biplanes, unlike the designs for which Blériot was known.
The tractor biplane, which would become the dominant aircraft configuration until the 1930s, was a later development. The first aircraft of this type was the De Pischoff biplane which was built in 1907 but was not successful. The first aircraft of this type to fly was the Goupy No.2, flown in March 1909: the design was described by flight as "somewhat unusual", and Breguet described his Type III tractor biplane as a "double-surface monoplane". The configuration did not become widespread until 1911, with the production of the Avro 500 and the Royal Aircraft Factory BE.2. The Avro 500 was developed into the Avro 504, which continued in use until the 1930s. Avro also produced the first aircraft with fully enclosed crew accommodation, the Avro Type G of 1912. (The Blériot Aero-Taxi of 1911 had enclosed accommodation for the four passengers but an exposed pilot's position)
Other configurations were experimented with. The tail-first canard configuration used by the Wright brothers and also notably employed by Santos Dumont in the 14-bis was used by Henri Fabre for his Hydravion canard monoplane, the first successful seaplane in 1910. Other canard designs of the period include the Voisin Canard and the ASL Valkyrie monoplanes, and the configuration was thought promising enough to be used for the first aircraft designed by the Royal Aircraft Factory, the S.E.1, but the configuration was generally discarded. Examples of other configurations such as the annular wing and the tandem wing were also constructed, but with little success.
Early aircraft had a variety of control arrangements. The use of a joystick to control roll and pitch had been patented by Robert Esnault-Pelterie in 1907 and a similar arrangement was used by Blériot, but the Antoinette monoplanes were controlled by a pair of wheels, one on either side of the cockpit, one operating the wing-warping (or ailerons, as with the Antoinette IV) and the other the elevator and the Wright Model A had one lever to control wing-warping and rudder and a second to control the elevator. The first design to have the roll and pitch controls connected to a single joystick, with the yaw control operated with one's feet, was Blériot's Type VIII design of 1908–09, pioneering the basis for the modern aircraft flight control system still in use in the 21st century.
With very few exceptions aircraft of the pioneer era were relatively small designs powered by a single engine and designed to carry at most two or three people. Early multiple-engine designs were produced by the Short Brothers, who constructed a number of variants of their Farman-type Improved S.27 design. However the intention of using a pair of engines in these aircraft was to safeguard against engine failure rather than to permit a larger machine, and even a large aircraft such as the Voisin Aero-Yacht, intended to carry six people and with a wingspan of 22.5 m (73 ft 10 in), was powered by a single engine. The first large multi-engined aircraft was Igor Sikorsky's Bolshoi Baltisky, first flown in May 1913 with two engines and later equipped with four.
Engine development
Early aircraft development was heavily reliant on the development of the internal combustion engine, and the problem of staying in the air was largely a matter of having an engine which was not only sufficiently powerful but was also lightweight and reliable. Most early engines were neither powerful nor reliable enough for practical use, and the development of improved engines went hand-in-hand with improvements in the airframes themselves.
The Wright Brothers had been unable to find a satisfactory engine and, with the help of their mechanic, had manufactured their own. They used a single flight engine, a 12 hp water-cooled four-cylinder inline type with five main bearings and fuel injection.
The first internal combustion piston engine design to be widely used for powering aircraft was the Antoinette water-cooled V8 engine, believed to be the very first V-form eight-cylinder internal combustion engine ever placed in production, designed by the Frenchman Léon Levavasseur. The Antoinette 8V incorporated direct fuel injection, evaporative water cooling and other advanced features, weighed 95 kg (209 lb) and produced 37 kW (50 hp). Introduced in 1906, these engines were used by, among others, Santos Dumont, the early Voisin aircraft and Samuel Cody. American aviation engine designers quickly picked up on the V-8 engine concept from 1906 onwards as the era progressed, with both Glenn Curtiss' firm designing a series of liquid-cooled V-8 aviation engines culminating in the Curtiss OX-5 by the early years of World War I—another major American engine manufacturer, Hall-Scott, had their A-2 and A-3 overhead valve, liquid-cooled V-8s in production as early as 1908.
The British Green C.4 of 1908 followed the Wright's pattern of a four-cylinder inline water-cooled design but produced 52 hp (38 kW). It powered many successful pioneer aircraft including those of A.V. Roe.
Horizontally opposed designs were also used with some success. Santos-Dumont's Santos-Dumont Demoiselle No. 20 monoplane used first the 18 kW (24-hp output Dutheil et Chalmers liquid-cooled opposed twin engine, later replaced by a 22 kW (30 hp) Darracq-built engine of the same layout. The four-cylinder water-cooled de Havilland Iris achieved 45 hp but was little used, while the successful two-cylinder Nieuport design achieved in 1910.
1909 saw radial engine forms rise to significance. The air-cooled Anzani 3-cylinder semi-radial or fan engine of 1909 (also built in a true, 120° cylinder angle radial form) developed only 25 hp (16 kW) but was much lighter than the liquid-cooled Antoinette, and was chosen by Louis Blériot for his cross-Channel flight. A major advance came with the introduction of the Seguin brothers' Gnome Omega seven-cylinder, air-cooled rotary engine, exhibited at the Paris Aero Salon 1n 1908 and first fitted to an aircraft in 1909. This radial-configuration engine was constructed in such a way that the entire crankcase and cylinder assembly rotated around a stationary crankshaft, itself fastened securely through the engine's rear attachment to the airframe, ensuring an adequate flow of cooling air over the cylinders even when the aircraft was not moving. Although this type had been introduced as long ago as 1887 by Lawrence Hargrave and built two years later by Hargrave for compressed-air power—with an experimental five-cylinder internal combustion rotary engine used by French inventor Félix Millet that same year to power an early motorcycle design — improvements made to the Seguin brothers' Gnome series of engine designs created a robust, relatively reliable and lightweight design which revolutionised aviation and would see continuous development over the next ten years. Fuel was introduced into each cylinder direct from the crankcase meaning that only an exhaust valve was required. Producing 37 kW (50 hp) for a dry weight of 75 kg (165 lb), this engine soon became one of the most widely used powerplants; the company went on to produce a number of similar engines producing more power, first by increasing the engine capacity and also by producing two-row variants. The larger and more powerful nine-cylinder. French-made Le Rhone 9C 80 hp rotary was introduced in 1913 and was widely adopted for military use.
Inline and vee types remained popular, with the German company Mercedes producing first a small number of water-cooled inline four-cylinder engines, then a series of water-cooled six-cylinder models. In 1913 they introduced the highly successful range of 75 kW (100 hp) to 120 kW (160 hp), SOHC-valvetrain design engines: the D.I to D.III series.
Another area of advance was the development of specialist manufacturers of propellers. Although the Wright Brothers had developed their own highly efficient propellers and Hiram Maxim had also carried out research on propeller design, much of this work was unknown, and the early pioneers such as Voisin and Santos Dumont had used inefficient propellers with flat aluminium blades mounted on a steel tube. The first truly efficient European propeller design was produced by Lucien Chauvière, who had studied the theory of propeller design while a student at the École des Arts et Métiers in Angers. Chauvière pioneered a sophisticated construction technique using laminations of walnut. A Chauvière propeller was used by Blériot in his flight across the English Channel, and the importance of Chauvière's contribution was recognised by his being awarded a silver medal by the Aero-Club de France.
Theoretical
The achievement of powered flight led to the establishment of centres for aeronautical research in many countries. In 1907 Ludwig Prandtl, who had joined the University of Göttingen university in 1904, founded the Modellversuchsanstalt für Aerodynamik der Motorluftschiff-Studiengesellschaft [society for testing aerodynamic models of powered airships ]. The University of Göttingen would become a world leader in aerodynamic research. In 1909 Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe endowed a department devoted to aeronautics at the University of Paris In France the famous engineer Gustave Eiffel performed a series of experiments to investigate the effects of wind resistance on moving bodies by dropping test apparatus down a wire suspended from the Eiffel Tower: he later built a wind tunnel at the base of the Tower, in which models of many pioneer French aircraft were tested and carried out pioneering work on aerofoil sections.
Pilot training
Many of the pioneer constructors started their own flying schools. Pilot training was rudimentary: although the Wright Model A used by the Wright Brothers for training in Europe had been fitted with dual control, dual-control aircraft were not generally used, and aspiring pilots would often simply be put in charge of a machine and encouraged to progress from taxying the aircraft then short straight line flights to flights involving turns. Sometimes ground handling experience was built up using special short-span machines that were incapable of flight, such as the [[Blériot XI#Variants|Blériot Pinguin. Most flight training was done early in the morning or in the evening when winds tend to be low, and the time taken to qualify for a licence was greatly dependent on the weather.
Popular impact
Santos-Dumont's airship flights had already made him a celebrity, and while ballooning remained a popular activity for the wealthy, heavier-than-air aviation quickly became a popular spectator sport, and the major centres of aviation such as Issy-les-Moulineaux, Brooklands and Hendon Aerodrome attracted crowds of curious onlookers. The first aviation meet was held in Juivisy in May 1909 and was followed by the Grand Semaine d'aviation in August: later in the year aviation meetings were held in England at Doncaster and Blackpool, and exhibition flights were made in many European cities, including Berlin, Vienna and Bucharest.
The first public flying display at Brooklands, already established as a motor-racing circuit, was made at the end of October 1909 by Louis Paulhan: around 2,000 spectators watched him fly to a height of 720 feet. Brooklands soon became one of Britain's major centres of aviation activity, with several flying schools. In 1910 Louis Paulhan and Claude Grahame-White competed to win the Daily Mail prize for a flight between London and Manchester, attracting Major long-distance aeroplane races, such as the Circuit of Europe and the Aerial Derby began in 1911 - and also attracted enormous crowds; while in the same year in the United States, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois had an important aerodrome-format aviation site dedicated in Cicero, IL that operated for several years before its closure and relocation in 1916.
Military interest
The military use of balloons was already widespread: balloons had been employed in the American Civil War – where Ferdinand von Zeppelin had his first exposure to lighter-than-air flight – and the Boer War. Many military traditionalists refused to regard aeroplanes as more than toys, but these were counterbalanced by advocates of the new technology, and both the US and the major European nations had established heavier-than-air aviation arms by the end of 1911.
France had the most air-minded army. The balloon school at Chalais-Meudon had long been a centre of innovation, and in December 1909, the French Department of War began to send army officers and NCOs for pilot training at civilian schools. In March 1910, the Établissement Militaire d'Aviation was created to conduct experiments with aircraft, and on 22 October 1910 the Aéronautique Militaire was created as a branch of the Army. In February 1912 the French military estimates set aside twelve million francs (equal to nearly half a million pounds) for aviation, and claimed to have 208 aeroplanes, with the intention of increasing that number to 334 by the end of the year, At this time the British government planned to spend £133,000 on aviation, of which £83,000 was for heavier-than-air machines.
In England experiments with heavier-than-air flight had been made at Army Balloon Factory at Farnborough under Colonel John Capper. In October 1908 Samuel Cody had flown the British Army Aeroplane No.1 for a distance of 424 m (1,390 ft) and J. W. Dunne had made a number of successful gliding experiments, performed in great secrecy at Blair Atholl in Scotland, but in 1909 the British War office had stopped all official funding of heavier-than-air aviation, preferring to spend its money on airships. In an effort to rationalise aeronautical research the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane established the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and appointed Mervyn O'Gorman, an electrical engineer of great managerial skill, as director of the balloon factory:
In 1911 the War Office established the Air Battalion, formed of the No. 1 (Airship) Company at Farnborough and the No 2 (Aeroplane) Company at Lark Hill on Salisbury Plain. The first military pilots had to learn to fly at their own expense, many doing so at the Bristol school, established in 1910 at Lark Hill . Two Bristol Boxkites from the school participated in the 1910 army manoeuvres of Salisbury Plain, one of them equipped with a radio transmitter. In late 1910 Francis McClean offered to loan two aircraft to the Admiralty to be used to train naval officers to fly and George Cockburn offered to act as a flight instructor. Four officers were selected for flight training at Eastchurch, reporting for training on 1 March 1911 and gaining their licences (wings) within in six weeks. In October 1911, the Royal Navy purchased the two aircraft and established the Naval Flying School at Eastchurch. In 1912 a contract was given to Vickers to produce the first aircraft specifically designed for aerial combat, the Experimental Fighting Biplane No.1. Previously, Voisin had exhibited an aircraft impractically fitted with a heavy mitrailleuse at the 1911 Paris Aero Salon, and the French had also experimented with fitting machine-guns to existing types.
In the United States the Wright Brothers had, after many attempts, managed to attract the serious attention of the Army, and in December 1907 the U.S. Army Signal Corps issued a specification for a military aircraft. Orville Wright made a successful demonstration to the Army on 3 September 1908.
On 17 September 1908 a flight was made with Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge on board as an official observer. A few minutes into the flight at an altitude of about 100 feet (30 m), a propeller split and shattered, sending the Flyer out of control. Selfridge suffered a fractured skull in the crash and died that evening in the nearby Army hospital, becoming the first person to die in an aeroplane crash. Orville was also seriously injured.
Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps
The American military pioneered naval aviation, with the first take-off from a ship being made on 14 November 1910 by Eugene Ely using a Curtiss biplane flown from a temporary platform erected over the bow of the light cruiser USS Birmingham. Two months later, on 18 January 1911, Ely landed on a platform on the armoured cruiser USS Pennsylvania.
The earliest recorded use of explosive ordnance of any type from an aircraft occurred on November 1, 1911, when Italian pilot Giulio Gavotti dropped several, grapefruit-sized cipelli grenades on Ottoman positions in Libya – Gavotti's raid caused no casualties, functionally only resulting in the earliest known case of air-delivered harassing fire—but marked the first known use of an aircraft for military combat purposes.
The first actual use of aircraft in a war was carried out by Italy during the Italo-Turkish War of 1912, where aircraft were used for reconnaissance (including taking aerial photographs of enemy positions) and bombing. Aircraft were also used in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913.
See also
Notes
References
20th-century aviation | en |
doc-en-740 | The Coandă-1910, designed by Romanian inventor Henri Coandă, was an unconventional sesquiplane aircraft powered by a ducted fan. Called the "turbo-propulseur" by Coandă, its experimental engine consisted of a conventional piston engine driving a multi-bladed centrifugal blower which exhausted into a duct. The unusual aircraft attracted attention at the Second International Aeronautical Exhibition in Paris in October 1910, being the only exhibit without a propeller, but the aircraft was not displayed afterwards and it fell from public awareness. Coandă used a similar turbo-propulseur to drive a snow sledge, but he did not develop it further for aircraft.
Decades later, after the practical demonstration of motorjets and turbojets, Coandă began to tell various conflicting stories about how his early experiments were precursors to the jet, even that his turbo-propulseur was the first motorjet engine with fuel combustion in the airstream. He also claimed to have made a single brief flight in December 1910, crashing just after takeoff, the aircraft being destroyed by fire. Two aviation historians countered Coandă's version of events, saying there was no proof that the engine had combustion in the airstream, and no proof that the aircraft ever flew. In 1965, Coandă brought drawings forward to prove his claim of combustion ducting but these were shown to be reworked, differing substantially from the originals. Some British aviation historians were dismissive, saying that Coandă's turbo-propulseur design involved a weak stream of "plain air", not a powerful jet of air expanding from fuel combustion.
In 2010, based on the notion that Coandă invented the first jet, the centennial of the jet aircraft was celebrated in Romania. A special coin and stamp were issued, and construction began on a working replica of the aircraft. At the European Parliament, an exhibition commemorated the building and testing of the Coandă-1910.
Early developments
Coandă was interested in achieving reactive propelled flight as early as 1905, conducting tests of rockets attached to model aircraft at the Romanian Army arsenal in Bucharest. In secret, at Spandau in Germany, Coandă successfully tested a flying machine equipped with a single tractor propeller, and two counter-rotating propellers providing lift, powered by a 50-horsepower (37 kW) Antoinette engine. Positioned along the fuselage centreline, the smaller rear lift propeller was mounted vertically, while the larger front one was inclined slightly forwards at 17 degrees. According to later claims, Coandă tested the aircraft at Cassel, witnessed by the Chancellor of the German Empire Bernhard von Bülow. It was around this time that Coandă's interest in jet propulsion began, claiming that the aircraft and a jet-propelled model were displayed in December 1907 at the Sporthalle indoor sports arena in Berlin.
Coandă continued his studies at Liège, Belgium, where with his roommate and friend Giovanni Battista Caproni he built the Coandă-Caproni box glider, based on the plans of gliders designed by Otto Lilienthal and Octave Chanute which he previously studied at Charlottenburg and Spandau. In 1909 he was employed as technical director of the Liège-Spa Aeroclub, and at the end of that year, with the help of car manufacturer Joachim he built the Coandă-Joachim glider. Caproni was present when the glider was flown at Spa-Malchamps, Belgium.
1910s
With the opening of the École supérieure d'aéronautique et de constructions mécaniques on 15 November 1909, Coandă moved to Paris. As a continuation of his Belgian experiments, and especially looking for a way to test wing aerofoils at higher speeds, he contacted Ernest Archdeacon, the co-founder of L'Aero-Club de France, who in turn directed Coandă to Gustav Eiffel and Paul Painlevé. With their assistance, he gained approval to test different wing configurations and air resistance on a platform built by Eiffel at the front of a locomotive on the North of France railway. In March, he started flying lessons at Reims in a Hanriot monoplane.
Helped by his schoolfriend Cammarotta-AdornoIn, Coandă started to build his slender sesquiplane and the unusual powerplant in a workshop in the courtyard of his house where he tested the thrust of the powerplant on a dynamometer, tests which are described in detail in the April 1910 edition of La Technique Aéronautique. He filed for several patents for the mechanism and aircraft on 30 May 1910, with later additions to the existing patents.
Coandă exhibited the aircraft at the Second International Aeronautical Exhibition (commonly referred to as the Paris salon, or Paris flight salon) held from 15 October to 2 November 1910. Together with Henri Fabre's Hydravion, the first floatplane, Coandă's aircraft and devices used for aerodynamic experiments were placed "in solitary state" in an upstairs gallery, separated from the more usual types of aircraft on the main exhibition floor.
The aircraft's construction was a novelty for the time. In contrast to the monoplane described in the July 1910 patent application, the exhibit was a sesquiplane which complicated the construction, but in return solved lateral stability control issues. The cantilevered wings were held in place at three points by tubular steel struts without any bracing from flying wires. According to Coandă's description the wings were built with metal spars, but existing photographs of the construction show a completely wooden internal structure. The trailing edges of the upper wing could be twisted separately or together for lateral control or braking during landing, and were controlled by pedals in the two-seat open cockpit. The fuselage, painted reddish-brown and highly polished, was described by The Technical World magazine as having a framework of steel, though the construction photographs indicate that it had a wooden framework. This was triangular in cross-section with convex ribs edged with strips of steel, and strengthened with a covering of heat-shaped moulded plywood. Tubular radiators for engine cooling were located on either side of the cockpit. The vertical struts from the wings were secured to the fuselage with steel collars fixed with screws. The fuselage terminated in a cruciform empennage with control surfaces at 45° angles to vertical and horizontal. Four triangular surfaces at the rear of the tail were controlled using a pair of large Antoinette VII-style steering wheels mounted outside of the cockpit, one on each side, and were used for pitch and directional control. It was an early instance of what are now known as ruddervators. Forward of the tail was a small horizontal stabiliser. The fuel tank was located in the fuselage between the engine and the cockpit.
The most remarkable feature of the aircraft was its engine. Instead of a propeller, a 50 hp (37 kW) inline water-cooled internal combustion engine built by Pierre Clerget at the Clément-Bayard workshop with funding from L'Aero-Club de France, placed in the forward section of the fuselage drove a rotary compressor through a 1:4 gearbox (1,000 rpm on the Clerget turned the compressor at 4,000 rpm), which drew air in from the front and expelled it rearward under compression and with added heat. The compressor, with a diameter of 50 centimetres (20 in), was located within a cowling at the front of the fuselage. According to later Coandă descriptions, cast aluminium components were also made by Clerget to create an engine with a weight of – equivalent to a power-to-weight ratio of , a considerable achievement at the time.
Coandă's 1910s-era patents describe the inline piston engine's exhaust gases as being routed through heating channels or heat exchangers in contact with the central air flow, then sucked into the compressor inlet to reduce back-pressure on the engine while adding more heat and mass to the airflow. The turbo-propulseur was claimed to be capable of generating of thrust. The powerplant was referred to in reports at the time by different terms: a turbine without propellers, turbo-propulseur, ducted fan or a suction turbine.
Aviation reporters from The Aero and La Technique Aeronautique were doubtful that the engine could provide sufficient thrust. The engine was noted in The Aero, reprinted in Aircraft, as being "of remarkably small proportions in relation to the size of the machine." The writer said the turbo-propulseur was "claimed to give an enormous wind velocity", but the intake area seemed too small to produce the stated thrust, and that "it also appears as if enormous power would be necessary to drive it", more than supplied by the Clerget.
The Coandă-1910 was reportedly sold to Charles Weymann in October 1910. A daily newspaper from Bucharest wrote in 1910 that the aircraft was constructed in Clerget's workshops and that it "will fly in 6–7 weeks near Paris, piloted by Weymann, one of the pilots celebrated at the Rennes aviation meeting."<ref name="Antoniu74">Antoniu (2010), p. 74. "The article Coandă's New Aeroplane published by a daily Bucharest newspaper in 1910, provides us with some important information: The aeroplane that received much praise in Parisian newspapers was built in the workshops of Clergét Company in Paris, a company well known for the construction of aeroplane engines. Mr. Coandă's new aeroplane will fly in 6–7 weeks near Paris, piloted by Weymann, one of the pilots celebrated at the Rennes aviation meeting. This aeroplane had advantages over others by the fact that it featured more stability and more speed than the existing planes."</ref> Another Bucharest newspaper listed the aircraft in November as "sold twice-over". It may be that Weymann expressed his willingness to buy the aircraft once tests had been carried out.
At the exhibition, reaction among observers was mixed. Some doubted the aircraft would fly, and focused on more likely machines such as the Sloan, the Voisin, or Louis Paulhan's design. Others gave special notice to the Coandă-1910, calling it original and ingenious. The reporter from La Technique Aeronautique wrote, "In the absence of definitive trials, permitting the precise yield of this machine, it is without doubt premature to say it will supersede the propeller ... the tentative is interesting and we watch it closely." The official exhibition report ignored the turbo-propulseur engine and instead described Coandă's novel wing design, and the unusual empennage. On 15 November 1910, L'Aérophile wrote that if the machine were ever to develop as the inventor hoped, it would be "a beautiful dream".
After the exhibition the aircraft was moved to a Clément-Bayard workshop at Issy-les-Moulineaux for further testing. This work is reflected by additions to the powerplant-related patents of 3 December. A group of modern-day Romanian investigators led by Dan Antoniu, having examined photographs from 1910, concluded that the rotary compressor featured at the exhibition was a hybrid between the one described in the initial 30 May 1910 patent and that shown in a later patent application. They felt that the exhibition machine had a simpler director system, a different rotor with a smaller intake cone, and that the exhaust gas heat transfer system had not been implemented. According to Gérard Hartmann in his Dossiers historiques et techniques aéronautique française, the propulsion system generated only of thrust, and to generate enough thrust for the aircraft to take off (estimated by Coandă at ) Coandă would have had to spin the "turbine" (the rotary compressor) at a speed of 7,000 rpm with the risk of it exploding. This was not tried, but Hartmann concluded that the experiment proved that the solution worked perfectly.
Henri Mirguet writing for L'Aérophile magazine in January 1912, recalled the previous exhibition's machine as the "chief attraction" of the 1910 salon. He wrote that Coandă answered his "pressing—and indiscreet—questions" about the turbo-propulseur-powered aircraft at that earlier exhibit, telling him that the machine had attained a speed of 112 kilometres per hour (70 mph) during several "flight tests", an improbable answer about which Mirguet "reserved judgment", waiting for confirmation that never materialised.
Related developments
The additional turbo-propulseur patent application 13.502, dated 3 December 1910, was implemented on a double-seat motorised sled commissioned by Cyril Vladimirovich, Grand Duke of Russia. With the help of Despujols, a boat maker, and the motor manufacturer Gregoire, Coandă supervised the building of a motor sled, powered by a 30 hp (22 kW) Gregoire engine driving the turbo-propulseur. The sledge was blessed by Russian Orthodox priests at the Despujols plant near Paris on 2 December 1910. Starting the next day, it was exhibited for two weeks at the 12th Automobile Salon of France, alongside Gregoire-powered automobiles on the Gregoire stand. A number of automobile and general interest magazines published photographs or sketches of the sledge. A version of Coandă's turbo-propulseur design was shown for the second time in late 1910 at the Grand Palais of Paris. One of the periodicals reported an expected speed of , but no account exists of the sledge being tested.
Coandă continued to work on the Coandă-1910 project at the beginning of 1911, aiming to improve stability, increase the power of the turbo-propulseur, and to implement aerofoil improvements. He applied for new patents for aerodynamic investigations and improvements of the Coandă-1910.
Coandă described a different, more sturdy system for the attachment of the wings, which also enabled changes in the angle of attack and the centre of gravity. He aimed to obtain more power from the propulsion system, and design drawings show the arrangement of two air-cooled rotary engines on the sides of the fuselage. The placement of the engines indicates that Coandă did not intend to inject fuel into the jet stream and ignite it as the cooling of the engines would have been compromised. The patent was annotated with an additional claim on 19 July 1911 which brought significant changes including the addition of retractable landing gear with dampers inside aerodynamic fairings with skids, removal of the horizontal stabiliser, a supporting surface was provided for each engine and their accessories were covered to improve aerodynamics. Though Coandă continued to study rotary propulsion mechanisms, Antoniu believes that Coandă never implemented a practical solution because of the lack of funds.
In May 1911 Coandă filed English-language patents on the turbo-propulseur design in the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as a second French-language patent filed in Switzerland, and he described it for the 1911 publication of L'Annuaire de l'Air.
The very expensive project of 1910, costing Coandă about one million francs, left him with limited funds. The possibility of a new contract with the French government led Coandă to build the Coandă-1911. He wished to win the French Army-organised Military Aviation Competition at Reims in October, one that required two engines in each aircraft as a fail-safe strategy.Antoniu (2010), p. 92. "In 1911, the French army announced a competition to be held in October in Reims to equip its aviation with flying machines. Stimulated by an eventual deal with the French government, Coandă completed the project of a flying machine derived from the Coandă No.1 of 1910, as well as his latest projects protected by patents, which he modified as a result of the user's demands." At the third aviation salon in Paris 1911, Coandă displayed a scale model of the aircraft which used two Gnome rotary engines mounted back to back, connected by a bevel gear to a single two-bladed propeller. The combination of two engines connected to one propeller was originally intended to drive a new turbine, but Coandă was unable to fund one. During trials the assembly did not provide enough traction and a four-bladed propeller was ordered. The mounting support of the engines, initially intended for a jet propulsion version, was not adequate for the new configuration so the forward chassis had to be modified.
Henri Mirguet writing for L'Aérophile magazine in January 1912 said that the new 1911 aircraft retained the fuselage, the frame and the wing of Coandă's 1910 design, but did not keep the turbo-propulseur or "the wooden wingloading surface including the forward longitudinal ribs". The aircraft was flown on 21 October 1911, but with modest results as the latest modifications, especially those related to the powerplant, did not compensate for the increased total weight of the aircraft. At the military contest, it did not meet the requirement for independent operation of each engine.
Following the 1911 exhibition, at the personal request of Sir George White, Coandă moved to the United Kingdom to take a position as chief engineer or chief designer at British and Colonial Aeroplane Company for a few years. In the next four decades Coandă worked on a great variety of inventions. During World War II he revived his earlier turbo-propulseur engine when he was contracted by the German Army in late 1942 to develop an air propulsion system for military ambulance snow sledges much like the one made for the Russian Grand Duke. The German contract concluded after one year, yielding no plans for production. Though Coandă had experimented with a variety of nozzles, and said that he had achieved a degree of success, no turbojet-engine-style fuel injection or combustion in the air stream was attempted.
Coandă and his 1910 aircraft were absent from much of aviation literature of the day. None of the annual issues of Jane's All the World's Aircraft ever mentioned the Coandă-1910 or its turbo-propulseur powerplant. The Soviet engineer Nikolai Rynin made no mention of Coandă in his exhaustive nine-volume encyclopaedia on jet and rocket engines, written in the late 1920s and early '30s.
Later claims
At the beginning of the jet age, when the potential of reactive engines was recognised, several histories of the jet engine were written. A once-classified Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory and Jet Propulsion Laboratory study completed in 1946 described the Coandă-1910 as "probably not flown" but featuring "a mechanical jet propulsion device with a centrifugal blower", one in which heat from the Clerget piston engine "furnished auxiliary jet propulsion." In the editorial lead to their 1946 article on Coandă's "Augmented Flow", Flight terms it, "scarcely a jet". In the same year Geoffrey G. Smith chronicled technological development in his book Gas Turbines and Jet Propulsion for Aircraft, but did not mention Coandă.
In 1950's l'aviation d'Ader et des temps héroiques, the authors assert that Coandă flew the first jet aircraft at Issy-les-moulineaux for 30 metres (100 ft), ending with a crash. In 1953, Flights treatment of aircraft in the 50 years since the Wright brothers' flight included the Coandă-1910 "ducted fan" and said of Coandă that he "believes that he 'took off for a few feet, then came down hurriedly and broke two teeth, quoting J.W. Adderley's 1952 letter to the editor of Flight after Adderley's discussion with Coandă in Paris at the end of World War II. Adderley said he "can definitely confirm that the power unit was of the ducted-fan type, similar in basic principles to the Caproni-Campini aircraft of the 1930s" (referring to the Caproni Campini N.1).
In the early 1950s Coandă began to claim that he had flown his 1910 aircraft himself, and that the 1910 engine was the first motorjet, using fuel injection and combustion to create its thrust. In 1955 and 1956, a number of aviation articles presented the Coandă version of 1910 events. He said he took off and crashed in December 1910 in the presence of aircraft makers Louis Charles Breguet and Gabriel Voisin. Coandă himself spoke on the subject, notably before the Wings Club at New York's Biltmore Hotel on 18 January 1956 where he said "I intended to inject fuel into the air stream which would be ignited by the exhaust gases also channelled through the same circular vent", implying that he never finished the powerplant. Martin Caidin wrote "The Coanda Story" for the May 1956 issue of Flying, based on a personal interview. For his article "He Flew in 1910", René Aubrey interviewed Coandă and wrote a contradictory story in the September 1956 Royal Air Force Flying Review, saying that Coandă had flown his unusual aircraft on 16 December 1910, that fuel was certainly injected, and that it was "the first jet flight in the world". In Aubrey's relation of the interview, the aircraft stalled after take-off, throwing Coandă clear, and "gently collapsed to the ground" where it burned. Aubrey wrote that the aircraft engine was "designed by a friend to Coandă's specification", and that its burning exhaust was "directed below and to each side of the fuselage, which was protected by asbestos in vulnerable places."
In Jet Age Airlanes of 1956, Coandă himself published an article entitled "The First Jet Flight". He submitted the same text that Caidin had written for Flying in May:
A collection of aviation stories was published in 1957 by Major Victor Houart, a friend of Coandă's, who wrote that he was an eyewitness the day Coandă flew and crashed. One chapter of the book describes how Houart, together with a group of French dragoons, watched as Coandă taxied twice around the airfield, lifted off to avoid the ruins of an old fortification wall, started flames from the engine by applying too much power, and was thrown from the aircraft the moment it hit the wall, with Coandă "not badly hurt". Houart's version put the fuel tank in the overhead wing, which was metal. In further statements, Coandă said that his 1910 aircraft had movable leading edge slots, retractable landing gear and a fuel supply which was held in the overhead wing to reduce fuselage profile and thus drag. In 1965, Coandă presented a set of drawings, photographs and specifications of the 1910 aircraft to the National Air and Space Museum (NASM), prepared by Huyck Corporation and received by Director S. Paul Johnston and early aviation curator Louis Casey.
Rocket engineer G. Harry Stine worked alongside Coandă from 1961 to 1965 at Huyck Corporation, and interviewed him in 1962. In 1967, the magazine Flying printed an account written by Stine, which described the landing gear as retracting into the lower wing, with the fuel tank hidden in the upper wing. Stine wrote that Coandă flew on 10 December 1910, and described the heat from the "two jet exhausts" as being "too much for me" after the powerplant was mounted in the aircraft. In the 1980s after Coandă's death, Stine wrote a magazine article and a book mentioning the 1910 aircraft, including new details such as the name of master mechanic Pierre Clerget as the friend who helped build the turbo-propulseur. Stine's recounting of the 10 December flight included the group of eyewitness French dragoons, asbestos heat shields and metal deflector plates aft of the engine, intended taxiing with unintentional flight, a steep climb with a stall, Coandă thrown clear, and the aircraft crashing to the ground, burning. Stine gave his assessment that "Coanda's turbopropulseur had elements of a true jet", but that the patent application had no indication of the "critical stage—injection of fuel into the compressed air". He wrote that "although there were several jet-propelled aircraft in existence at an early time—the 1910 Coanda Jet and the 1938 Caproni Campini N.1—the first pure jet aircraft flight was made in Germany in 1938".
In 1965, Historian Emeritus Paul E. Garber of the NASM interviewed Coandă, who related that the December 1910 flight was no accident, that he had seated himself in the cockpit intending to test five factors: aircraft structure, the engine, the wing lift, the balance of controls, and the aerodynamics. He said that the heat from the engine was "fantastic", but that he placed mica sheets and deflecting plates to direct the jet blast away from the wooden fuselage. Garber wrote that as Coandă's aircraft began to move forward and rise from the ground, "the exhaust flame, instead of fanning outward, curved inward and ignited the aircraft." In this interview Coandă said that he brought the aircraft back to earth under control, but the landing was "abrupt" and he was thrown clear of the airframe which was consumed completely by flame, the engine reduced to "a few handfuls of white powder."
Rebuttals
In 1960, Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith, aviation historian at the Science Museum in London, reacted to the mid-1950s assertion that Coandă built and flew the first jet engine aircraft. Gibbs-Smith wrote that "there has recently arisen some controversy about this machine, designed by the Rumanian-born and French-domiciled Henri Coanda, which was exhibited at the Paris salon in October 1910. Until recently it has been accepted as an all-wood sesquiplane, with cantilever wings, powered by a 50 hp Clerget engine driving a 'turbo-propulseur' in the form of a large but simple ducted air fan. This fan was fitted right across the machine's nose and the cowling covered the nose and part of the engine: the resulting 'jet' of plain air was to propel the aeroplane." He wrote that "no claims that it flew, or was even tested, were made at the time", and that the story of it flying suddenly appeared in the 1950s—the aircraft was thus "disinterred from its obscurity." He wrote that the airfield at Issy-les-Moulineaux, a former military exercise ground where the test supposedly took place, was under the constant observation of the French Army who owned it, by French aviation reporters and photographers, and by aviation experts from other countries. He said that the airfield was the "most famous, most used, most observed, and most reported-on 'airfield' in Paris", and that all events, let alone an exciting crash and destruction by fire, would have been carried in local papers and described in military reports, but no contemporary accounts exist of the Coandă-1910 being tested, flown or destroyed. Gibbs-Smith countered the Coandă assertions point by point, saying that the aircraft did not have a retractable undercarriage, did not have leading or trailing edge wing slots, did not have a fuel tank overhead in the wing, and did not have fuel injected into any turbine. Gibbs-Smith pointed out that the pilot would have been killed by the heat if any combustion had been initiated in the engine's air stream.
In 1970 Gibbs-Smith wrote another account of the Coanda-1910, using much the same phrasing as in 1960:
In 2010, Antoniu wrote that he thought Gibbs-Smith speculated on the basis of the evidence of absence that the aircraft was never tested or flown, but that Gibbs-Smith did not find any concrete evidence to support his position. Similarly, Antoniu was unable to find concrete proof of a test flight. Antoniu also wrote that Gibbs-Smith did not check the French patents claimed by Coandă in 1910 and 1911, describing the retractable gear, leading edge wing slot and upper wing fuel tank, and that he did not see photographs from private collections demonstrating aspects about which he wrote.Antoniu (2010), p. 97. "The Coandă No. 2 machine of 1911 preparing for flight before the Reims military competition of 21 October 1911, pilot Boutiny sits in the cockpit (Michel Marani Collection)"
In 1980, NASM historian Frank H. Winter examined the 1965 drawings and specifications Coandă prepared while at Huyck Corporation and wrote an article about Coandă's claim: "There is a wholly new description of the inner workings of the machine that does not occur in any of the accounts given [in the 1910s] and which defies all of the patent specifications." He said Coandă told various conflicting stories about his claimed 1910 flight, and that Coandă produced a set of altered drawings as proof of his claims:
In his article, Winter wondered why Coandă did not add the novel feature of fuel injection and air stream combustion to his May 1911 patent applications if that feature had been present during his supposed flying experience five months earlier. Rather, Winter noted that the August 1910 patent filings in French were essentially the same as the May 1911 ones in English, and that all the descriptions were applicable to air or water flowing through the device, meaning that the patents could not possibly include fuel combustion in the jet stream. He also noted that no mention was made in the early patents of asbestos or mica heat shields, or of any fuel injection or combustion.
While looking through aviation periodicals and Paris newspapers reporting for the month of December 1910, Winter found that there was a spell of bad weather at Issy during which no flying took place. This situation occurred mid-month, the period covering the conflicting dates (10 and 16 December) that Coandă said his aircraft was tested, flown and crashed. In their regular "Foreign Aviation News" column, Flight magazine reported that the "blank period" of inclement weather at Issy ended on the 19th when Guillaume Busson tested a monoplane made by Armand Deperdussin. Other aircraft tests and piloting activities were listed, with no mention of Coandă or his machine.
Winter found that Camille (or Cosimo) Canovetti, an Italian civil and aviation engineer, had been working on a turbo-propulseur-style aviation engine before Coandă, and had attempted to show an aircraft with such an engine at the Aviation Exposition in Milan in 1909. Canovetti took out patents on his machine in 1909, and more in 1910. Canovetti wrote in 1911 that the 1910 appearance of the Coandă engine "called general attention" to designs like his.
After Coandă's death
Modern reference books about aviation history represent the Coandă-1910 in various ways, if they mention the machine or the inventor at all. Some acknowledge Coandă as the discoverer of the Coandă effect but give Hans von Ohain the honour of designing the first jet engine to power an aircraft in manned flight, and Frank Whittle the honour of completing and patenting the first jet engine capable of such flight. In their 1994 book American Aviation, authors Joe Christy and LeRoy Cook state that Coandă's 1910 aircraft was the first jet.
Aviation author Bill Gunston changed his mind two years after publishing a 1993 book in which he gave Coandă credit for the first jet engine. Gunston's 1995 description began: "Romanian Henri Coanda built a biplane with a Clerget inline piston engine which, instead of turning a propeller, drove a centrifugal compressor blowing air to the rear. The thrust was said to be 220 kilograms [490 lb], a figure the author disbelieves. On 10 December 1910 the aircraft thus powered inadvertently became airborne, crashed and burned. Often called 'a turbine aeroplane', this was of no more significance than the Campini aircraft mentioned later, and Coanda wisely decided to switch to a propeller." In his publication of 1998, World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines: All major aircraft power plants, from the Wright brothers to the present day, Gunston did not include Coanda; nor did he include Coanda in 2005's Jane's Aero-Engines or 2006's World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines.
Walter J. Boyne, director of the National Air and Space Museum and a prolific aviation author, mentions Coandă in passing a few times in his works. Boyne discusses Coandă briefly in one of his books, The Leading Edge: "Professor Henri Coanda, whose scientific work was impeccable, designed and built a jet aircraft in 1910; it, like Martin's Kitten [the Martin KF-1 biplane], was superbly built and technically advanced—and could not fly." In a later magazine article sidebar, Boyne described more details: "Romanian inventor Henri Coanda attempted to fly a primitive jet aircraft in 1910, using a four-cylinder internal combustion engine to drive a compressor at 4,000 revolutions per minute. It was equipped with what today might be called an afterburner, producing an estimated 500 pounds [2.3 kN or 230 kgf] of thrust. Countless loyal Coanda fans insist that the airplane flew. Others say it merely crashed."
In 1980 and 1993, Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation included an entry on the 1910 aircraft, calling it the "Coanda turbine" and describing it as "the world's first jet-propelled aircraft to fly". In 2003, Winter co-authored a book with fellow NASM curator F. Robert van der Linden: 100 Years of Flight: A Chronicle of Aerospace History, 1903–2003. In the book the Coandă-1910 is described as an unsuccessful ducted fan aircraft lacking documentation to substantiate any flight test.
Citing Carl A. Brown's 1985 A History of Aviation, Tim Brady, the Dean of Aviation at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, wrote in 2000: "the development of the jet is, broadly, the story of three men: Henri Coanda, Sir Frank Whittle, and Pabst von Ohain..." His description of Coandă's disputed test flight agreed that fuel injection and combustion had been initiated in the rotary compressor's vent, with the novel detail that the aircraft "flew for about a thousand feet [300 m] before crashing into a wall." In 1990 at the 24th Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics, one of the papers presented included this sentence: "It is to Henri Coanda (1886–1972), a world famous inventor and pioneer of jet flight, that space engineering owes—beside one of the first model planes provided with a rocket engine (1905)—the construction and engine experiment of the first jet aircraft, the 'Coanda-1910'." In 2007 in his popular book Extreme Aircraft, Ron Miller wrote that the powerplant in the Coandă-1910 was one of the "earliest attempts" at a jet engine, but was unsuccessful—it was "incapable of actual flight", unlike the engines designed by Whittle and Ohain. The question of the Coandă-1910 being the first jet aircraft does not appear to be resolved, supporting Stine's view: "Whether Henri Coanda built the first true jet will probably be argued interminably."
In the 2000s, Dan Antoniu and other Romanian aviation experts investigated existing photographs of the Coandă-1910, leading them to believe that the aircraft presented at the exhibition was not finished, that it was exhibited with many improvisations. Antoniu published Henri Coandă and his technical work during 1906–1918, a 2010 book in which he said that the unfinished state of the aircraft led to Coandă filing several extra patents and starting a new series of studies with the aim of making the machine airworthy. For instance, Antoniu wrote that the exhaust pipes of the Clergét engine appeared free; there were no devices to redirect exhaust gases to the turbine as described in the patent, and there were no heat shields for crew protection. As well, the central attachment of the tubular struts holding the wings to the fuselage, with mere collars secured with screws, was judged by Antoniu as appearing potentially unsafe during take-off or landing because of the "considerable loads on the struts". The X-shaped empennage was covered at high angles by the horizontal stabiliser making it unusable, and any high-speed taxi would put the machine in danger of a nose-over.
Memorials and models
A full-size replica of the Coandă-1910, built in 2001, is displayed in Bucharest at the National Military Museum, and a scale model is displayed in the French Air and Space Museum at Paris – Le Bourget Airport. At the site of the historic Issy-les-Moulineaux airfield, a large plaque lists the three pioneers of flight most closely associated with the airfield: Louis Blériot, Alberto Santos-Dumont and Henri Farman. Later, a plaque honouring Coandă and Romanian aviation engineer Traian Vuia was placed on a nearby building under the auspices of the mayor of Issy-les-Moulineaux, L'Aéroclub de France, and the Romanian Association for Aviation History.
Construction on a full-sized functional replica of the plane began in March 2010 at Craiova, Romania, by a team of engineers and former test pilots from I.R.Av. Craiova. The replica is based on plans that Coandă reworked in 1965 because the 1910 plans were lost. It uses metal for the fuselage rather than wood, and its intended engine is a true jet, the Motorlet M-701, made for the 1960s-era Aero L-29 Delfín military trainer.
In October 2010 the National Bank of Romania issued a commemorative silver coin for the centennial of the building of the first jet aircraft. The 10-lei piece is intended for coin collectors, with the official purchase price set at 220 lei. It represents the aircraft on the obverse side and a portrait of Coandă on the reverse, including Romanian words which translate to "first jet aircraft". The same month the philatelic section of the Romanian Post, Romfilatelia'', produced a limited edition philatelic folder and a stamp commemorating the centennial of jet aircraft. The stamp presents a modern internal schema of the Coandă-1910, a drawing of the injectors and burners, and a quote from Gustave Eiffel: "This boy was born 30 if not 50 years too early". At the European Parliament in December, president Jerzy Buzek opened a centennial exhibition celebrating the building and testing of the Coandă-1910.
Specifications
References
Footnotes
Citations
Bibliography
Henri Coandă
1910s French experimental aircraft
Sesquiplanes
Ducted fan-powered aircraft
Discovery and invention controversies | en |
doc-en-12183 | Mining in Afghanistan was controlled by the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, prior to the August 15th takeover by the Taliban. It is headquartered in Kabul with regional offices in other parts of the country. Afghanistan has over 1,400 mineral fields, containing barite, chromite, coal, copper, gold, iron ore, lead, natural gas, petroleum, precious and semi-precious stones, salt, sulfur, lithium, talc, and zinc, among many other minerals. Gemstones include high-quality emerald, lapis lazuli, red garnet and ruby. According to a joint study by The Pentagon and the United States Geological Survey, Afghanistan has an estimated US$1 trillion of untapped minerals.
There are six lapis mines in Afghanistan, the largest being located in Badakhshan province. There are around 12 copper mines in the country, including the Aynak copper deposit located in Logar province. Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a transit route for oil, natural gas, and electricity exports from Central Asia to South Asia and the Arabian Sea. This potential includes the construction of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline gas pipeline. The first Afghan oil production began in late 2012.
Overview
It is estimated that forty million years ago the tectonic plates of India-Europe, Asia and Africa collided in a massive upheaval. This upheaval created the region of towering mountains that now includes Afghanistan. This diverse geological foundation has resulted in a significant mineral heritage with over 1,400 mineral occurrences recorded to date, including gold, copper, lithium, uranium, iron ore, cobalt, natural gas and oil. Afghanistan's resources could make it one of the richest mining regions in the world.
Afghanistan has large untapped energy and mineral resources, which have great potential to contribute to the country's economic development and growth. The major mineral resources include chromium, copper, gold, iron ore, lead and zinc, lithium, marble, precious and semiprecious stones, sulfur and talc among many other minerals. The energy resources consist of natural gas and petroleum. The government was working to introduce new mineral and hydrocarbon laws that would meet international standards of governance.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the British geological survey were doing resource estimation work in the country. Prior to that work, Afghanistan's exploration activity had been conducted by geologists from the Soviet Union who left good-quality geologic records that indicate significant mineral potential. Resource development would require improvements in the infrastructure and security in Afghanistan. The government had awarded contracts to develop the Aynak copper project and the Hajigak iron ore project; in addition, the government could offer tenders for new exploration, including exploration of copper at Balkhab, gold at Badakhshan, gemstones and lithium at nuristan, and oil and gas at sheberghan.
The Ministry of Mines drew up its first business reform plan in a bid to create a more accountable and transparent mining industry. Afghanistan joined the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative as a candidate country. It was expected that after 5 years, the contribution of royalties from mineral production to the revenues of the government would be at least $1.2 billion per year, and that after 15 years, the contribution would increase to $3.5 billion per year. Afghanistan has no local ownership requirements and its Constitution does not allow for nationalization. The 20% corporate tax rate was the lowest in the region.
Afghanistan's mining industry was at a primitive artisanal stage of development; the operations were all low scale and output was supplied to local and regional markets. The government considered development of the country's mineral resources to be a priority for economic growth, including development of the industrial mineral resources (such as gravel, sand, and limestone for cement) for use by the domestic construction industry. Investment in infrastructure and transportation projects for mining was a critical aspect of developing the mining industry.
The government completed Afghanistan's first railway with an investment of $170 million in 2010. The 76-kilometer (km) route link Mazar-i-Sharif to the extensive rail networks in Uzbekistan. The new route would allow Afghan exporters to transport minerals and other goods into Europe. China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) is building a railroad to transport copper ore in Afghanistan from Logar to Kabul.
Owing to the lack of mineral production data reported by the miners, information about Afghanistan's mining activities was not readily available, but they appeared to be limited in scope. Production of Barite was estimated by the USGS to be about 2,000 metric tons; chromite, 6,000 tons; and natural gas liquids, 45,000 barrels. In the process of reconstruction and infrastructure development, output of construction minerals was estimated to have increased to meet the domestic requirements. Production of cement increased by 13% compared with that of 2009.
Privatization of Afghanistan's state-owned companies, which controlled many of the country's mineral resources, was ongoing but not complete. Investment in the mining sector by private domestic companies and foreign investors was encouraged by the government, which had offered the first contract for development of the Aynak copper project to two Chinese companies in 2007. The government also issued the tenders for the development of the hajigak iron ore project in 2009 and tenders for oil and gas exploration in 2010. The Ministry of Mines is involved in the exploration for and development, exploitation, and processing of minerals and hydrocarbons. The Ministry is also responsible for protecting the ownership and regulating the transportation and marketing of mineral resources in accordance with the country's new laws. Regulations to clarify the country's environmental laws were scheduled for adoption in 2010.
History
The last mining boom in Afghanistan was over 2,000 years ago in the era of Alexander the Great, when gold, silver and precious stones were routinely mined. Geologists have known of the extent of the mineral wealth for over a century, as a result of surveys done by the British and Russians. An American company was offered a mining concession over the entire country in the 1930s but turned it down. Despite this historical knowledge, global interest was only really boosted in 2010 when the Pentagon commissioned a report from the US Geological Survey (USGS).
Historical mining concentrated mostly on precious stone production, with some of the oldest known mines in the world believed to have been established in Afghanistan. Lapis lazuli was being mined in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan as early as 8000 BC. In ancient Egypt, lapis lazuli was a favorite stone for amulets and ornaments such as scarabs and was used in Egypt's pyramids; it was also used in ancient Mesopotamia by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians for seals and at neolithic burials in Mehrgarh. During the height of the Indus valley civilization in about 2000 BC, the Harappan colony now known as Shortugai was established near the lapis mines. Lapis jewelry has been found at excavations of the Predynastic Egyptian site Naqada (3300–3100 BC), and powdered lapis was used as eyeshadow by Cleopatra. In ancient Mesopotamia, Lapis artifacts can be found in great abundance, with many notable examples having been excavated at the Royal Cemetery of Ur (2600-2500 BC).
The mine of Aynak's copper has more than 2,000 years of history, from the coins and the tools that were found there. The gold of Zarkashan has more than 2,000 years of history in Ghazni Province.
Afghanistan's ruby/spinel mines were mentioned in the Arabic writings of many early travellers, including Istakhri (951 AD), Ibn Haukal (978 AD), al-Ta'Alibi (961–1038 AD), al-Muqaddasi (ca 10th century), al-Biruni (b. 973; d. ca 1050 AD), Teifaschi (1240 AD), and Ibn Battuta (1325–1354 AD).
The British Empire first initiated resource assessments in Afghanistan in the early nineteenth century as they searched through pioneering exploration and military escapades for countries to dominate as markets and trading partners. From the time of their first geological mapping and mineral resource assessments in Afghanistan, and on into the twentieth century, the British maintained a comprehensive interest in resources of Afghanistan. This was done while also improving their military intelligence on resources and topographic detail that would be needed in the event of any unrest in the machinations of their Great Game face-off against the Russian Empire, and as long as they could maintain their British Raj (rule) of the Indian subcontinent. A number of other nationalities (German, French, Russian) also looked at geology and resources in the country from time to time but nothing much seemed to come of their explorations. Following the third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, Afghanistan won its independence from diplomatic domination by the British and it was not long after that a Soviet publication on mineral "riches" first appeared, published by a man who later came to be revered as an early Russian ‘father’ of geologic studies. Nevertheless, in spite of early attempts by the government of Afghanistan to entice Americans to become engaged in resource discovery and extraction in the country, distance from market, economic concerns, and looming worries about World War II caused rejection of the overtures, much to the discomfiture of the government of Afghanistan. In spite of a number of discoveries by the American geologist Fox (1943) and others, post-war assessment by an American geographer concluded shortsightedly that there were no useful resources in Afghanistan about which there should be any diplomatic concern.
With its attention on resources accordingly diverted elsewhere for decades to come, the US Department of State thus quite missed the resource ball when in the 1960s and 1970s, as many as ~250 Soviet geoscientists went to work mapping geology in the country while only one American geologist (John Shroder) was in the country, plus a few visiting geology attachés from the US Embassy and USGS seismic specialists who visited from time to time. The resulting Soviet collaboration with the Afghanistan Geological Survey detailed a wide store of mineral resources in the country.
The result of this Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was that the neighboring USSR was able to fairly easily sidestep or ignore developing resources in Afghanistan until conditions were more to its liking as it consolidated its preeminent position in the country, ultimately leading to its invasion in 1979. With its already dominant roles in the Afghanistan Cartographic Institute, the Afghanistan Geological Survey, and many other ministries, the USSR was in a position in the early 1980s to completely take over all resource extraction in Afghanistan. Indeed, they did pump much natural gas across the northern border of the Amu Darya into the USSR where the gauges to measure delivered volumes were located, and plans were made for development of other resources. In addition, the Aynak copper deposit near Kabul was investigated in detail and a smelter scheduled for installation in the mid 1980s.
In an interesting sidelight of these times in the early 1980s, a Soviet-Afghan convoy from Aynak was assaulted by the Mujahideen and the captured documents that were sent to co-author Shroder by British sources proved that the Aynak copper lode was one of the largest in the world, as proved by a plethora of kilometer-deep boreholes that allowed the Soviets to sample the deposit extensively. The increasing resistance of the Afghan people and the Mujahideen, in the final cumulative battles of the Cold War, precluded significant further development of any resources at that time. Instead the Soviet withdrawal in defeat occurred in 1988-89. The subsequent invasion of Afghanistan by the United States and coalition troops in 2001 began a new phase in the history of Afghanistan, as many old resource projects were assessed again, and new ones were initiated.
In 2001, the September 11 attacks in New York led to the United States invasion of Afghanistan. According to Mark Lander and James Risen, in 2007 U.S government sent geologist to explore the mining potential in Afghanistan. Using old Soviet maps of mining location, America created a more precise map of mineral locations. Former President Trump had agreed to remain in Afghanistan to help mine for minerals because he believed it will be a "win-win" for both countries.
Legal framework
A new mining law was passed in 2006 and as of 2006 regulations were being developed to provide the framework for more formal exploration for and mining of minerals. The process of applying for mineral rights was also being revised as of 2006. All minerals located on or under the surface are the exclusive property of the Government, except for hydrocarbons and water, which are regulated under separate laws. The principal role of the Government with respect to minerals is to promote the efficient development of the mineral industry by the private sector. The Ministry of Mines and Industries is responsible for the administration and implementation of the Mining Law. The Law provides investment security to the holder of a mineral right. The Government cannot expropriate mineral rights without adequate compensation in accordance with international norms. The Law also gives the mineral royalty rates, which range from 5% of gross revenue for industrial minerals to up to 10% for gemstones. Other changes in Government policy in 2006 included the legalization of the gemstone trade, Government control of the gemstone industry, and encouragement of investment in mining.<ref name=usgs>Kuo, Chin S. "The Mineral Industry of Afghanistan". 2006 Minerals Yearbook. U.S. Geological Survey (September 2007). This article incorporates text from this U.S. government source, which is in the public domain.</ref>
Mining locations
Badakhshan Province: Badakhshan Gold, gemstones, lapis lazuli.
Baghlan Province: Baghlan clay and gypsum, Dudkash industrial minerals
Balkh Province: oil.
Bamyan Province: Hajigak Mine (iron oxide).
Daykundi Province: tin and tungsten
Farah Province in the west: copper, lithium;
Ghazni Province: Dashti Nawar lithium salts; Zarkashan Mine(copper, gold);.
Ghor Province: Karnak-Kanjar mercury, Nalbandon lead and zinc
Helmand Province: Khanneshin carbonatite, gold, rare-earth elements, possible uranium reserves; Chagai Hills travertine, copper and gold.
Herat Province: Shaida Copper Mine Dusar tin, Tourmaline tin, Herat barite and limestone
Jowzjan Province: Oil and Gas
Kabul Province: Jegdalek, Surobi District (gemstones).
Kandahar Province: copper, cement
Kapisa Province: copper
Kunduz Province: Kunduz celestite
Logar Province: copper (Mes Aynak).
Nangarhar Province: elbaite, Ghunday Achin magnesite and talc.
Nimroz Province: Godzareh (Gaudi Zireh) lithium salts.
Nuristan Province: Nuristan pegmatites and gemstones.
Panjshir Province: Panjshir Valley gemstones e.g. emerald.
Paktika Province: Katawaz gold and Oil
Samangan Province: Aybak (copper); Shabashak, Dara-I-Suf District (coking coal).
Sar-e Pol Province: Balkhab Copper Mine (world's largest deposit), Oil (Kashkari, Angot, etc.).
Takhar Province: Samti, Panj River Valley (gold), Evaporite.
Urozgan Province: Bakhud fluorite
Zabul Province: Kundalyan gold and copper.
Also the following places which have not, as yet, been positively located:
Southeastern Afghanistan: copper, at the Darband, and the Jawkhar prospects.
Anjir, Hasar, and Nooraba Valleys: gold
Commodities
Afghanistan has abundant non-fuel mineral resources, including both known and potential deposits of a wide variety of minerals ranging from copper, iron, and sulfur to bauxite, lithium, and rare-earth elements. It was announced in 2010 that about $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits were identified in Afghanistan,"Report: US finds mineral riches in Afghanistan" enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy. According to other reports the total mineral riches of Afghanistan may be worth over $3 trillion US dollars. "The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world". Ghazni Province may hold the world's largest lithium reserves. The deposits were described in the USGS report on Afghanistan in 2007.David Sirota, "Sorry, Trillions in Unmined Mineral Wealth Is Not a Reason to Keep Occupying Afghanistan," Alternet, 18 June 2010 (accessed 25 October 2012) Afghan President Hamid Karzai remarked "Whereas Saudi Arabia is the oil capital of the world, Afghanistan will be the lithium capital of the world.") Afghanistan invited 200 global companies for the development of its mines.
Copper
No copper mines were active in the country in 2006. In the past, copper had been mined from Herat Province and Farah Province in the west, Kapisa Province in the east, and Kandahar Province and Zabul Province in the south. As of 2006, interest was focused on the Aynak, the Darband, and the Jawkhar prospects in southeastern Afghanistan. Copper mineralization at Aynak in Logar Province was stratabound and characterized by bornite and chalcopyrite disseminated in dolomite marble and quartz-biotite-dolomite schists of the Loy Khwar Formation. Although a resource of 240 million metric tons at a grade of 2.3% copper had been reported, a number of small ore lenses were potentially not practically and economically minable. Open pit and underground mining would be needed to exploit the main ore body, and other infrastructure problems, such as inadequate power and water, were also likely. The new (2005) Mining Law might favor the development of the deposit by using public tenders. The Government issued a public tender for the deposit in 2006, and expected the granting of concessions in February 2007. Nine mining companies from Australia, China, India, and the United States were interested in the prospect.
China Metallurgical Group won the bidding for a copper mining project in Aybak, Samangan, Afghanistan. The bidding process has been criticized by rival Canadian and United States companies alleging corruption and questioning the Chinese company's commitment to the Afghan people.
In 2007, a 30-year lease was granted for the development of a copper mine at Mes Aynak in Logar Province to the China Metallurgical Group for $3 billion, making it the biggest foreign investment and private business venture in Afghanistan's history. It is believed to contain the second-largest reserves of copper ore in the world and the deposits are estimated to be worth up to $88 billion. It is also the site of one of Afghanistan's most important archaeological sites and, although there are desperate efforts being made to save as much as possible, the main Buddhist monastery and other remains are due to be bulldozed to make way for the mine.
Several new mineral-rich sites, with estimated deposits of about $250 billion, had been found in six other provinces. Launched in 2006, a US Geological Survey (USGS), jointly conducted with the Ministry of Mines, was completed last year. The survey covers 30 percent of the country. "The survey provides credible information on mines in 28 different parts of Afghanistan," Wahidullah Shahrani told reporters.
It showed the world's largest copper deposits existed in Balkhab district of Sar-e-Pol. The copper mine was discovered near a river, an area which might hold gold reserves as well. The government launched tenders in late 2011 for the Balkhab copper deposit, which had reserves of about 45 Mt of copper. Citing the report, an Afghan government minister said two new copper mines in Logar Province and Herat Province provinces had been discovered. The value of the Logar pit, not the Ainak mine, is estimated at $43 billion. Copper and gold mines worth of $30 billion were discovered in the Zarkasho area of Ghazni and lithium pits of $20 billion in Farah and Nimroz provinces, Shahwani said.
A deposit of beryllium, which is lighter than aluminum and stronger than steel used in airplanes, helicopters, ships, missiles, and space craft, has been found in the Khanashin district of southern Helmand province. The reserves are estimated at $88 billion.
Coal
Afghanistan has rich reserves of coking coal, coal is primarily located within a Jurassic belt from the northern provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan through the center of the country and towards the west in Herat, according to Afghan mines ministry.
In 2014 however, the U.S. Department of Labor has issued a List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor in which Afghanistan appeared to be one of the 74 countries with noticeable incidence of child labor in the coal mining field.
Gemstones
Afghanistan is known to have exploited its precious and semi-precious gemstone deposits. These deposits include aquamarine, emerald and other varieties of beryl, fluorite, garnet, kunzite, ruby, sapphire, lapis lazuli, topaz, tourmaline, varieties of quartz, and caribbean calcite. Corundum deposits (sapphire and ruby) in the country are largely exhausted, and very little gem quality material is found. The four main gemstone-producing areas are those of Badakhshan, Jegdalek, Nuristan, and the Panjshir Valley. Artisanal mining of gemstones in the country used primitive methods. Some gemstones were exported illicitly, mostly to India (which was the world's leading import market for colored gemstones and an outlet for higher quality gems) and to the domestic neighboring Pakistan market.
Gold
As of 2006, gold was mined from the Samti placer deposit in Takhar Province in the north by groups of artisanal miners. Badakhshan Province also had occurrences of placer gold deposits. The deposits were found on the western flanks of the mountains in alluvium or alluvial fan in several river valleys, particularly in the Anjir, the Hasar, the Nooraba, and the Panj Valleys. The Samti deposit is located in the Panj River Valley and was estimated to contain between 20 and 25 metric tons of gold. The southern regions of Afghanistan is believed to contain large gold deposits, particularly the Helmand Province. There is an estimated $50 billion in gold and copper deposits in Ghazni province.
The Afghan government signed a deal with Afghan Krystal natural Resources Co. (a local company) to invest up to $50 million in the Qara Zaghan Mine in northern Baghlan Province. Qara Zaghan was the country’s second gold mine, and production there was planned to begin by 2013. The mine’s gold reserves were not yet known, but the company intended to spend the next 2 years exploring the site. Investors from Indonesia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States were backing the project. The first gold mine was being developed by Westland general trading LLC of the United Arab Emirates at Nor Aaba near the border with Tajikistan in northern Takhar Province. The mine was expected to provide $4 million to $5 million per year in royalties to the government.
Iron ore
The best known and largest iron oxide deposit in Afghanistan is located at Hajigak in Bamyan Province. The deposit itself stretches over 32 km and contains 16 separate zones, up to 5 km in length, 380 m wide and extending 550 m down dip, seven of which have been studied in detail. The ore occurs in both primary and oxidized states. The primary ore accounts for 80% of the deposit and consists of magnetite, pyrite and minor chalcopyrite. The remaining 20% is oxidized and consists of three hematitic ore types. The deposit remained unmined in 2006. The presence of coking coal nearby at Shabashak in the Dar-l-Suf District and large iron ore resources made the deposit viable for future development of an Afghan steel industry. Open pit mining and blast furnace smelting operations were envisioned by an early feasibility study. The Hajigak also includes the unusual niobium, a soft metal used in the production of superconductors.
Lithium
Lithium is a vital metal that is mostly used in the manufacture of rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops and electric cars. It is speculated that Afghanistan has plenty of lithium. The country's lithium deposits occur in dry lake beds in the form of lithium chloride; they are located in the western Province of Herat and Nimroz and in the central east Province of Ghazni. The geologic setting is similar to those found in Bolivia and Chile. The deposits are also found in hard rock in the form of spodumene in pegmatites in the north-eastern Provinces of Badakhshan, Nangarhar, Nuristan, and Uruzgan. A pegmatite in the Hindu Kush Mountains in central Afghanistan was reported to contain 20% to 30% spodumene.
Marble
Afghanistan also has considerable amount of marble in different parts of the country. There are a number of marble factories in Herat. According to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, current Afghan marble exports are estimated at $15 million per year. With improved extraction, processing, infrastructure, and investment, the industry has the potential to grow into a $450 million per year business.
Petroleum and natural gas
Afghanistan has 1.8 billion barrels of oil between Balkh and Jawzjan Province in the north of the country, discovered in 2010. This is an enormous amount for a nation that only consumes 5,000 bbl/day. The United States Geological Survey and the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Industry jointly assessed the oil and natural gas resources in northern Afghanistan. The estimated mean volumes of undiscovered petroleum were 1,596 million barrels (Mbbl) of crude oil, 444 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and 562 Mbbl of natural gas liquids. Most of the undiscovered crude oil occurs in the Afghan-Tajik Basin and most of the undiscovered natural gas is located in the Amu Darya Basin. These two basins within Afghanistan encompass areas of approximately 515,000 square kilometers.
In December 2011, Afghanistan signed an oil exploration contract with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for the development of three oil fields along the Amu Darya river. In 2012 it was projected Afghanistan woukd have its first oil refineries within the next three years, after which it will receive 70 percent of the profits from the sale of the oil and natural gas. CNPC began Afghan oil production in October 2012, extracting 1.5 million barrels of oil annually.China's CNPC begins oil production in Afghanistan, by Hamid Shalizi. October 21, 2012.
Rare-earth elements
According to a September 2011 US Geological Survey estimate, the Khanashin carbonatites in southern Helmand Province have an estimated 1 million metric tonnes of rare-earth elements at a potentially useful concentration in the rock, but of unknown economic value. Regina Dubey, Acting Director for the Department of Defence Task Force for Business and Stability Operations (TFBSO)'' stated that "this is just one more piece of evidence that Afghanistan's mineral sector has a bright future."
Uranium
The Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan is believed to possess uranium reserves, according to Afghan Ministry of Mines.
See also
List of places in Afghanistan
References
Further reading
External links
2010 Mineral Discovery - Information and petition to help the Afghans fight corruption in this discovery.
Google Earth Map of the oil and gas infrastructure | en |
doc-en-7721 | In mathematics, fuzzy sets (a.k.a. uncertain sets) are sets whose elements have degrees of membership. Fuzzy sets were introduced independently by Lotfi A. Zadeh and in 1965 as an extension of the classical notion of set.
At the same time, defined a more general kind of structure called an L-relation, which he studied in an abstract algebraic context. Fuzzy relations, which are now used throughout fuzzy mathematics and have applications in areas such as linguistics , decision-making , and clustering , are special cases of L-relations when L is the unit interval [0, 1].
In classical set theory, the membership of elements in a set is assessed in binary terms according to a bivalent condition—an element either belongs or does not belong to the set. By contrast, fuzzy set theory permits the gradual assessment of the membership of elements in a set; this is described with the aid of a membership function valued in the real unit interval [0, 1]. Fuzzy sets generalize classical sets, since the indicator functions (aka characteristic functions) of classical sets are special cases of the membership functions of fuzzy sets, if the latter only take values 0 or 1. In fuzzy set theory, classical bivalent sets are usually called crisp sets. The fuzzy set theory can be used in a wide range of domains in which information is incomplete or imprecise, such as bioinformatics.
Definition
A fuzzy set is a pair where is a set (often required to be non-empty) and a membership function.
The reference set (sometimes denoted by or ) is called universe of discourse, and for each the value is called the grade of membership of in .
The function is called the membership function of the fuzzy set .
For a finite set the fuzzy set is often denoted by
Let . Then is called
not included in the fuzzy set if (no member),
fully included if (full member),
partially included if
The (crisp) set of all fuzzy sets on a universe is denoted with (or sometimes just ).
Crisp sets related to a fuzzy set
For any fuzzy set and the following crisp sets are defined:
is called its α-cut (aka α-level set)
is called its strong α-cut (aka strong α-level set)
is called its support
is called its core (or sometimes kernel ).
Note that some authors understand "kernel" in a different way; see below.
Other definitions
A fuzzy set is empty () iff (if and only if)
Two fuzzy sets and are equal () iff
A fuzzy set is included in a fuzzy set () iff
For any fuzzy set , any element that satisfies
is called a crossover point.
Given a fuzzy set , any , for which is not empty, is called a level of A.
The level set of A is the set of all levels representing distinct cuts. It is the image of :
For a fuzzy set , its height is given by
where denotes the supremum, which exists because is non-empty and bounded above by 1. If U is finite, we can simply replace the supremum by the maximum.
A fuzzy set is said to be normalized iff
In the finite case, where the supremum is a maximum, this means that at least one element of the fuzzy set has full membership. A non-empty fuzzy set may be normalized with result by dividing the membership function of the fuzzy set by its height:
Besides similarities this differs from the usual normalization in that the normalizing constant is not a sum.
For fuzzy sets of real numbers (U ⊆ ℝ) with bounded support, the width is defined as
In the case when is a finite set, or more generally a closed set, the width is just
In the n-dimensional case (U ⊆ ℝn) the above can be replaced by the n-dimensional volume of .
In general, this can be defined given any measure on U, for instance by integration (e.g. Lebesgue integration) of .
A real fuzzy set (U ⊆ ℝ) is said to be convex (in the fuzzy sense, not to be confused with a crisp convex set), iff
.
Without loss of generality, we may take x ≤ y, which gives the equivalent formulation
.
This definition can be extended to one for a general topological space U: we say the fuzzy set is convex when, for any subset Z of U, the condition
holds, where denotes the boundary of Z and denotes the image of a set X (here ) under a function f (here ).
Fuzzy set operations
Although the complement of a fuzzy set has a single most common definition, the other main operations, union and intersection, do have some ambiguity.
For a given fuzzy set , its complement (sometimes denoted as or ) is defined by the following membership function:
.
Let t be a t-norm, and s the corresponding s-norm (aka t-conorm). Given a pair of fuzzy sets , their intersection is defined by:
,
and their union is defined by:
.
By the definition of the t-norm, we see that the union and intersection are commutative, monotonic, associative, and have both a null and an identity element. For the intersection, these are ∅ and U, respectively, while for the union, these are reversed. However, the union of a fuzzy set and its complement may not result in the full universe U, and the intersection of them may not give the empty set ∅. Since the intersection and union are associative, it is natural to define the intersection and union of a finite family of fuzzy sets recursively.
If the standard negator is replaced by another strong negator, the fuzzy set difference may be generalized by
The triple of fuzzy intersection, union and complement form a De Morgan Triplet. That is, De Morgan's laws extend to this triple.
Examples for fuzzy intersection/union pairs with standard negator can be derived from samples provided in the article about t-norms.
The fuzzy intersection is not idempotent in general, because the standard t-norm is the only one which has this property. Indeed, if the arithmetic multiplication is used as the t-norm, the resulting fuzzy intersection operation is not idempotent. That is, iteratively taking the intersection of a fuzzy set with itself is not trivial. It instead defines the m-th power of a fuzzy set, which can be canonically generalized for non-integer exponents in the following way:
For any fuzzy set and the ν-th power of is defined by the membership function:
The case of exponent two is special enough to be given a name.
For any fuzzy set the concentration is defined
Taking , we have and
Given fuzzy sets , the fuzzy set difference , also denoted , may be defined straightforwardly via the membership function:
which means , e. g.:
Another proposal for a set difference could be:
Proposals for symmetric fuzzy set differences have been made by Dubois and Prade (1980), either by taking the absolute value, giving
or by using a combination of just , , and standard negation, giving
Axioms for definition of generalized symmetric differences analogous to those for t-norms, t-conorms, and negators have been proposed by Vemur et al. (2014) with predecessors by Alsina et. al. (2005) and Bedregal et. al. (2009).
In contrast to crisp sets, averaging operations can also be defined for fuzzy sets.
Disjoint fuzzy sets
In contrast to the general ambiguity of intersection and union operations, there is clearness for disjoint fuzzy sets:
Two fuzzy sets are disjoint iff
which is equivalent to
and also equivalent to
We keep in mind that / is a t/s-norm pair, and any other will work here as well.
Fuzzy sets are disjoint if and only if their supports are disjoint according to the standard definition for crisp sets.
For disjoint fuzzy sets any intersection will give ∅, and any union will give the same result, which is denoted as
with its membership function given by
Note that only one of both summands is greater than zero.
For disjoint fuzzy sets the following holds true:
This can be generalized to finite families of fuzzy sets as follows:
Given a family of fuzzy sets with index set I (e.g. I = {1,2,3,...,n}). This family is (pairwise) disjoint iff
A family of fuzzy sets is disjoint, iff the family of underlying supports is disjoint in the standard sense for families of crisp sets.
Independent of the t/s-norm pair, intersection of a disjoint family of fuzzy sets will give ∅ again, while the union has no ambiguity:
with its membership function given by
Again only one of the summands is greater than zero.
For disjoint families of fuzzy sets the following holds true:
Scalar cardinality
For a fuzzy set with finite support (i.e. a "finite fuzzy set"), its cardinality (aka scalar cardinality or sigma-count) is given by
.
In the case that U itself is a finite set, the relative cardinality is given by
.
This can be generalized for the divisor to be a non-empty fuzzy set: For fuzzy sets with G ≠ ∅, we can define the relative cardinality by:
,
which looks very similar to the expression for conditional probability.
Note:
here.
The result may depend on the specific intersection (t-norm) chosen.
For the result is unambiguous and resembles the prior definition.
Distance and similarity
For any fuzzy set the membership function can be regarded as a family . The latter is a metric space with several metrics known. A metric can be derived from a norm (vector norm) via
.
For instance, if is finite, i.e. , such a metric may be defined by:
where and are sequences of real numbers between 0 and 1.
For infinite , the maximum can be replaced by a supremum.
Because fuzzy sets are unambiguously defined by their membership function, this metric can be used to measure distances between fuzzy sets on the same universe:
,
which becomes in the above sample:
Again for infinite the maximum must be replaced by a supremum. Other distances (like the canonical 2-norm) may diverge, if infinite fuzzy sets are too different, e.g., and .
Similarity measures (here denoted by ) may then be derived from the distance, e.g. after a proposal by Koczy:
if is finite, else,
or after Williams and Steele:
if is finite, else
where is a steepness parameter and .
Another definition for interval valued (rather 'fuzzy') similarity measures is provided by Beg and Ashraf as well.
L-fuzzy sets
Sometimes, more general variants of the notion of fuzzy set are used, with membership functions taking values in a (fixed or variable) algebra or structure of a given kind; usually it is required that be at least a poset or lattice. These are usually called L-fuzzy sets, to distinguish them from those valued over the unit interval. The usual membership functions with values in [0, 1] are then called [0, 1]-valued membership functions. These kinds of generalizations were first considered in 1967 by Joseph Goguen, who was a student of Zadeh. A classical corollary may be indicating truth and membership values by {f, t} instead of {0, 1}.
An extension of fuzzy sets has been provided by Atanassov and Baruah. An intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) is characterized by two functions:
1. – degree of membership of x
2. – degree of non-membership of x
with functions with
This resembles a situation like some person denoted by voting
for a proposal : (),
against it: (),
or abstain from voting: ().
After all, we have a percentage of approvals, a percentage of denials, and a percentage of abstentions.
For this situation, special "intuitive fuzzy" negators, t- and s-norms can be defined. With and by combining both functions to this situation resembles a special kind of L-fuzzy sets.
Once more, this has been expanded by defining picture fuzzy sets (PFS) as follows: A PFS A is characterized by three functions mapping U to [0, 1]: , "degree of positive membership", "degree of neutral membership", and "degree of negative membership" respectively and additional condition
This expands the voting sample above by an additional possibility of "refusal of voting".
With and special "picture fuzzy" negators, t- and s-norms this resembles just another type of L-fuzzy sets.
Neutrosophic fuzzy sets
The concept of IFS has been extended into two major models. The two extensions of IFS are neutrosophic fuzzy sets and Pythagorean fuzzy sets.
Neutrosophic fuzzy sets were introduced by Smarandache in 1998. Like IFS, neutrosophic fuzzy sets have the previous two functions: one for membership and another for non-membership . The major difference is that neutrosophic fuzzy sets have one more function: for indeterminate . This value indicates that the degree of undecidedness that the entity x belongs to the set. This concept of having indeterminate value can be particularly useful when one cannot be very confident on the membership or non-membership values for item x. In summary, neutrosophic fuzzy sets are associated with the following functions:
1. - degree of membership of x
2. – degree of non-membership of x
3. – degree of indeterminate value of x
Pythagorean fuzzy sets
The other extension of IFS is what is known as Pythagorean fuzzy sets. Pythagorean fuzzy sets are more flexible than IFSs. IFSs are based on the constraint , which can be considered as too restrictive in some occasions. This is why Yager proposed the concept of Pythagorean fuzzy sets. Such sets satisfy the constraint , which is reminiscent of the Pythagorean theorem. Pythagorean fuzzy sets can be applicable to real life applications in which the previous condition of is not valid. However, the less restrictive condition of may be suitable in more domains.
Fuzzy logic
As an extension of the case of multi-valued logic, valuations () of propositional variables () into a set of membership degrees () can be thought of as membership functions mapping predicates into fuzzy sets (or more formally, into an ordered set of fuzzy pairs, called a fuzzy relation). With these valuations, many-valued logic can be extended to allow for fuzzy premises from which graded conclusions may be drawn.
This extension is sometimes called "fuzzy logic in the narrow sense" as opposed to "fuzzy logic in the wider sense," which originated in the engineering fields of automated control and knowledge engineering, and which encompasses many topics involving fuzzy sets and "approximated reasoning."
Industrial applications of fuzzy sets in the context of "fuzzy logic in the wider sense" can be found at fuzzy logic.
Fuzzy number and only number
A fuzzy number is a fuzzy set that satisfies all the following conditions :
A is normalised ;
A is a convex set ;
;
The membership function is at least segmentally continuous.
If these conditions are not satisfied, then A is not a fuzzy number . The core of this fuzzy number is a singleton; its location is:
When the condition about the uniqueness of is not fulfilled, then the fuzzy set is characterised as a fuzzy interval. The core of this fuzzy interval is a crisp interval with:
.
Fuzzy numbers can be likened to the funfair game "guess your weight," where someone guesses the contestant's weight, with closer guesses being more correct, and where the guesser "wins" if he or she guesses near enough to the contestant's weight, with the actual weight being completely correct (mapping to 1 by the membership function).
The kernel of a fuzzy interval is defined as the 'inner' part, without the 'outbound' parts where the membership value is constant ad infinitum. In other words, the smallest subset of where is constant outside of it, is defined as the kernel.
However, there are other concepts of fuzzy numbers and intervals as some authors do not insist on convexity.
Fuzzy categories
The use of set membership as a key component of category theory can be generalized to fuzzy sets. This approach, which began in 1968 shortly after the introduction of fuzzy set theory, led to the development of Goguen categories in the 21st century. In these categories, rather than using two valued set membership, more general intervals are used, and may be lattices as in L-fuzzy sets.
Fuzzy relation equation
The fuzzy relation equation is an equation of the form , where A and B are fuzzy sets, R is a fuzzy relation, and stands for the composition of A with R .
Entropy
A measure d of fuzziness for fuzzy sets of universe should fulfill the following conditions for all :
if is a crisp set:
has a unique maximum iff
which means that B is "crisper" than A.
In this case is called the entropy of the fuzzy set A.
For finite the entropy of a fuzzy set is given by
,
or just
where is Shannon's function (natural entropy function)
and is a constant depending on the measure unit and the logarithm base used (here we have used the natural base e).
The physical interpretation of k is the Boltzmann constant kB.
Let be a fuzzy set with a continuous membership function (fuzzy variable). Then
and its entropy is
Extensions
There are many mathematical constructions similar to or more general than fuzzy sets. Since fuzzy sets were introduced in 1965, many new mathematical constructions and theories treating imprecision, inexactness, ambiguity, and uncertainty have been developed. Some of these constructions and theories are extensions of fuzzy set theory, while others try to mathematically model imprecision and uncertainty in a different way (; ; Deschrijver and Kerre, 2003).
See also
Alternative set theory
Defuzzification
Fuzzy concept
Fuzzy mathematics
Fuzzy set operations
Fuzzy subalgebra
Interval finite element
Linear partial information
Multiset
Neuro-fuzzy
Rough fuzzy hybridization
Rough set
Sørensen similarity index
Type-2 fuzzy sets and systems
Uncertainty
References
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doc-en-3419 | High-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic financial trading characterized by high speeds, high turnover rates, and high order-to-trade ratios that leverages high-frequency financial data and electronic trading tools. While there is no single definition of HFT, among its key attributes are highly sophisticated algorithms, co-location, and very short-term investment horizons. HFT can be viewed as a primary form of algorithmic trading in finance. Specifically, it is the use of sophisticated technological tools and computer algorithms to rapidly trade securities. HFT uses proprietary trading strategies carried out by computers to move in and out of positions in seconds or fractions of a second.
In 2017, Aldridge and Krawciw estimated that in 2016 HFT on average initiated 10–40% of trading volume in equities, and 10–15% of volume in foreign exchange and commodities. Intraday, however, proportion of HFT may vary from 0% to 100% of short-term trading volume. Previous estimates reporting that HFT accounted for 60–73% of all US equity trading volume, with that number falling to approximately 50% in 2012 were highly inaccurate speculative guesses. High-frequency traders move in and out of short-term positions at high volumes and high speeds aiming to capture sometimes a fraction of a cent in profit on every trade. HFT firms do not consume significant amounts of capital, accumulate positions or hold their portfolios overnight. As a result, HFT has a potential Sharpe ratio (a measure of reward to risk) tens of times higher than traditional buy-and-hold strategies. High-frequency traders typically compete against other HFTs, rather than long-term investors. HFT firms make up the low margins with incredibly high volumes of trades, frequently numbering in the millions.
A substantial body of research argues that HFT and electronic trading pose new types of challenges to the financial system. Algorithmic and high-frequency traders were both found to have contributed to volatility in the Flash Crash of May 6, 2010, when high-frequency liquidity providers rapidly withdrew from the market. Several European countries have proposed curtailing or banning HFT due to concerns about volatility.
History
High-frequency trading has taken place at least since the 1930s, mostly in the form of specialists and pit traders buying and selling positions at the physical location of the exchange, with high-speed telegraph service to other exchanges.
The rapid-fire computer-based HFT developed gradually since 1983 after NASDAQ introduced a purely electronic form of trading. At the turn of the 21st century, HFT trades had an execution time of several seconds, whereas by 2010 this had decreased to milli- and even microseconds. Until recently, high-frequency trading was a little-known topic outside the financial sector, with an article published by the New York Times in July 2009 being one of the first to bring the subject to the public's attention.
On September 2, 2013, Italy became the world's first country to introduce a tax specifically targeted at HFT, charging a levy of 0.02% on equity transactions lasting less than 0.5 seconds.
Market growth
In the early 2000s, high-frequency trading still accounted for fewer than 10% of equity orders, but this proportion was soon to begin rapid growth. According to data from the NYSE, trading volume grew by about 164% between 2005 and 2009 for which high-frequency trading might be accounted. As of the first quarter in 2009, total assets under management for hedge funds with high-frequency trading strategies were $141 billion, down about 21% from their peak before the worst of the crises, although most of the largest HFTs are actually LLCs owned by a small number of investors. The high-frequency strategy was first made popular by Renaissance Technologies who use both HFT and quantitative aspects in their trading. Many high-frequency firms are market makers and provide liquidity to the market which lowers volatility and helps narrow bid–offer spreads, making trading and investing cheaper for other market participants.
Market share
In the United States in 2009, high-frequency trading firms represented 2% of the approximately 20,000 firms operating today, but accounted for 73% of all equity orders volume. The major U.S. high-frequency trading firms include Virtu Financial, Tower Research Capital, IMC, Tradebot and Citadel LLC. The Bank of England estimates similar percentages for the 2010 US market share, also suggesting that in Europe HFT accounts for about 40% of equity orders volume and for Asia about 5–10%, with potential for rapid growth. By value, HFT was estimated in 2010 by consultancy Tabb Group to make up 56% of equity trades in the US and 38% in Europe.
As HFT strategies become more widely used, it can be more difficult to deploy them profitably. According to an estimate from Frederi Viens of Purdue University, profits from HFT in the U.S. has been declining from an estimated peak of $5bn in 2009, to about $1.25bn in 2012.
Though the percentage of volume attributed to HFT has fallen in the equity markets, it has remained prevalent in the futures markets. According to a study in 2010 by Aite Group, about a quarter of major global futures volume came from professional high-frequency traders. In 2012, according to a study by the TABB Group, HFT accounted for more than 60 percent of all futures market volume in 2012 on U.S. exchanges.
Strategies
High-frequency trading is quantitative trading that is characterized by short portfolio holding periods. All portfolio-allocation decisions are made by computerized quantitative models. The success of high-frequency trading strategies is largely driven by their ability to simultaneously process large volumes of information, something ordinary human traders cannot do. Specific algorithms are closely guarded by their owners. Many practical algorithms are in fact quite simple arbitrages which could previously have been performed at lower frequency—competition tends to occur through who can execute them the fastest rather than who can create new breakthrough algorithms.
The common types of high-frequency trading include several types of market-making, event arbitrage, statistical arbitrage, and latency arbitrage. Most high-frequency trading strategies are not fraudulent, but instead exploit minute deviations from market equilibrium.
Market making
According to SEC:
A "market maker" is a firm that stands ready to buy and sell a particular stock on a regular and continuous basis at a publicly quoted price. You'll most often hear about market makers in the context of the Nasdaq or other "over the counter" (OTC) markets. Market makers that stand ready to buy and sell stocks listed on an exchange, such as the New York Stock Exchange, are called "third market makers". Many OTC stocks have more than one market-maker.
Market-makers generally must be ready to buy and sell at least 100 shares of a stock they make a market in. As a result, a large order from an investor may have to be filled by a number of market-makers at potentially different prices.
There can be a significant overlap between a "market maker" and "HFT firm". HFT firms characterize their business as "Market making" – a set of high-frequency trading strategies that involve placing a limit order to sell (or offer) or a buy limit order (or bid) in order to earn the bid-ask spread. By doing so, market makers provide counterpart to incoming market orders. Although the role of market maker was traditionally fulfilled by specialist firms, this class of strategy is now implemented by a large range of investors, thanks to wide adoption of direct market access. As pointed out by empirical studies, this renewed competition among liquidity providers causes reduced effective market spreads, and therefore reduced indirect costs for final investors." A crucial distinction is that true market makers don't exit the market at their discretion and are committed not to, where HFT firms are under no similar commitment.
Some high-frequency trading firms use market making as their primary strategy. Automated Trading Desk (ATD), which was bought by Citigroup in July 2007, has been an active market maker, accounting for about 6% of total volume on both the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange. In May 2016, Citadel LLC bought assets of ATD from Citigroup. Building up market making strategies typically involves precise modeling of the target market microstructure together with stochastic control techniques.
These strategies appear intimately related to the entry of new electronic venues. Academic study of Chi-X's entry into the European equity market reveals that its launch coincided with a large HFT that made markets using both the incumbent market, NYSE-Euronext, and the new market, Chi-X. The study shows that the new market provided ideal conditions for HFT market-making, low fees (i.e., rebates for quotes that led to execution) and a fast system, yet the HFT was equally active in the incumbent market to offload nonzero positions. New market entry and HFT arrival are further shown to coincide with a significant improvement in liquidity supply.
Quote stuffing
Quote stuffing is a form of abusive market manipulation that has been employed by high-frequency traders (HFT) and is subject to disciplinary action. It involves quickly entering and withdrawing a large number of orders in an attempt to flood the market creating confusion in the market and trading opportunities for high-frequency traders.
Ticker tape trading
Much information happens to be unwittingly embedded in market data, such as quotes and volumes. By observing a flow of quotes, computers are capable of extracting information that has not yet crossed the news screens. Since all quote and volume information is public, such strategies are fully compliant with all the applicable laws.
Filter trading is one of the more primitive high-frequency trading strategies that involves monitoring large amounts of stocks for significant or unusual price changes or volume activity. This includes trading on announcements, news, or other event criteria. Software would then generate a buy or sell order depending on the nature of the event being looked for.
Tick trading often aims to recognize the beginnings of large orders being placed in the market. For example, a large order from a pension fund to buy will take place over several hours or even days, and will cause a rise in price due to increased demand. An arbitrageur can try to spot this happening then buy up the security, then profit from selling back to the pension fund. This strategy has become more difficult since the introduction of dedicated trade execution companies in the 2000s which provide optimal trading for pension and other funds, specifically designed to remove the arbitrage opportunity.
Event arbitrage
Certain recurring events generate predictable short-term responses in a selected set of securities. High-frequency traders take advantage of such predictability to generate short-term profits.
Statistical arbitrage
Another set of high-frequency trading strategies are strategies that exploit predictable temporary deviations from stable statistical relationships among securities. Statistical arbitrage at high frequencies is actively used in all liquid securities, including equities, bonds, futures, foreign exchange, etc. Such strategies may also involve classical arbitrage strategies, such as covered interest rate parity in the foreign exchange market, which gives a relationship between the prices of a domestic bond, a bond denominated in a foreign currency, the spot price of the currency, and the price of a forward contract on the currency. High-frequency trading allows similar arbitrages using models of greater complexity involving many more than four securities.
The TABB Group estimates that annual aggregate profits of high-frequency arbitrage strategies exceeded US$21 billion in 2009, although the Purdue study estimates the profits for all high frequency trading were US$5 billion in 2009.
Index arbitrage
Index arbitrage exploits index tracker funds which are bound to buy and sell large volumes of securities in proportion to their changing weights in indices. If a HFT firm is able to access and process information which predicts these changes before the tracker funds do so, they can buy up securities in advance of the trackers and sell them on to them at a profit.
News-based trading
Company news in electronic text format is available from many sources including commercial providers like Bloomberg, public news websites, and Twitter feeds. Automated systems can identify company names, keywords and sometimes semantics to make news-based trades before human traders can process the news.
Low-latency strategies
A separate, "naïve" class of high-frequency trading strategies relies exclusively on ultra-low latency direct market access technology. In these strategies, computer scientists rely on speed to gain minuscule advantages in arbitraging price discrepancies in some particular security trading simultaneously on disparate markets.
Another aspect of low latency strategy has been the switch from fiber optic to microwave technology for long distance networking. Especially since 2011, there has been a trend to use microwaves to transmit data across key connections such as the one between New York City and Chicago. This is because microwaves travelling in air suffer a less than 1% speed reduction compared to light travelling in a vacuum, whereas with conventional fiber optics light travels over 30% slower.
Order properties strategies
High-frequency trading strategies may use properties derived from market data feeds to identify orders that are posted at sub-optimal prices. Such orders may offer a profit to their counterparties that high-frequency traders can try to obtain. Examples of these features include the age of an order or the sizes of displayed orders. Tracking important order properties may also allow trading strategies to have a more accurate prediction of the future price of a security.
Effects
The effects of algorithmic and high-frequency trading are the subject of ongoing research. High frequency trading causes regulatory concerns as a contributor to market fragility.
Regulators claim these practices contributed to volatility in the May 6, 2010 Flash Crash and find that risk controls are much less stringent for faster trades.
Members of the financial industry generally claim high-frequency trading substantially improves market liquidity, narrows bid–offer spread, lowers volatility and makes trading and investing cheaper for other market participants.
An academic study found that, for large-cap stocks and in quiescent markets during periods of "generally rising stock prices", high-frequency trading lowers the cost of trading and increases the informativeness of quotes; however, it found "no significant effects for smaller-cap stocks", and "it remains an open question whether algorithmic trading and algorithmic liquidity supply are equally beneficial in more turbulent or declining markets. ...algorithmic liquidity suppliers may simply turn off their machines when markets spike downward."
In September 2011, market data vendor Nanex LLC published a report stating the contrary. They looked at the amount of quote traffic compared to the value of trade transactions over 4 and half years and saw a 10-fold decrease in efficiency. Nanex's owner is an outspoken detractor of high-frequency trading. Many discussions about HFT focus solely on the frequency aspect of the algorithms and not on their decision-making logic (which is typically kept secret by the companies that develop them). This makes it difficult for observers to pre-identify market scenarios where HFT will dampen or amplify price fluctuations. The growing quote traffic compared to trade value could indicate that more firms are trying to profit from cross-market arbitrage techniques that do not add significant value through increased liquidity when measured globally.
More fully automated markets such as NASDAQ, Direct Edge, and BATS, in the US, gained market share from less automated markets such as the NYSE. Economies of scale in electronic trading contributed to lowering commissions and trade processing fees, and contributed to international mergers and consolidation of financial exchanges.
The speeds of computer connections, measured in milliseconds or microseconds, have become important. Competition is developing among exchanges for the fastest processing times for completing trades. For example, in 2009 the London Stock Exchange bought a technology firm called MillenniumIT and announced plans to implement its Millennium Exchange platform which they claim has an average latency of 126 microseconds. This allows sub-millisecond resolution timestamping of the order book. Off-the-shelf software currently allows for nanoseconds resolution of timestamps using a GPS clock with 100 nanoseconds precision.
Spending on computers and software in the financial industry increased to $26.4 billion in 2005.
May 6, 2010 Flash Crash
The brief but dramatic stock market crash of May 6, 2010 was initially thought to have been caused by high-frequency trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged to its largest intraday point loss, but not percentage loss, in history, only to recover much of those losses within minutes.
In the aftermath of the crash, several organizations argued that high-frequency trading was not to blame, and may even have been a major factor in minimizing and partially reversing the Flash Crash. CME Group, a large futures exchange, stated that, insofar as stock index futures traded on CME Group were concerned, its investigation had found no support for the notion that high-frequency trading was related to the crash, and actually stated it had a market stabilizing effect.
However, after almost five months of investigations, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a joint report identifying the cause that set off the sequence of events leading to the Flash Crash and concluding that the actions of high-frequency trading firms contributed to volatility during the crash.
The report found that the cause was a single sale of $4.1 billion in futures contracts by a mutual fund, identified as Waddell & Reed Financial, in an aggressive attempt to hedge its investment position. The joint report also found that "high-frequency traders quickly magnified the impact of the mutual fund's selling." The joint report "portrayed a market so fragmented and fragile that a single large trade could send stocks into a sudden spiral", that a large mutual fund firm "chose to sell a big number of futures contracts using a computer program that essentially ended up wiping out available buyers in the market", that as a result high-frequency firms "were also aggressively selling the E-mini contracts", contributing to rapid price declines. The joint report also noted "HFTs began to quickly buy and then resell contracts to each other – generating a 'hot-potato' volume effect as the same positions were passed rapidly back and forth." The combined sales by Waddell and high-frequency firms quickly drove "the E-mini price down 3% in just four minutes". As prices in the futures market fell, there was a spillover into the equities markets where "the liquidity in the market evaporated because the automated systems used by most firms to keep pace with the market paused" and scaled back their trading or withdrew from the markets altogether. The joint report then noted that "Automatic computerized traders on the stock market shut down as they detected the sharp rise in buying and selling." As computerized high-frequency traders exited the stock market, the resulting lack of liquidity "...caused shares of some prominent companies like Procter & Gamble and Accenture to trade down as low as a penny or as high as $100,000". While some firms exited the market, high-frequency firms that remained in the market exacerbated price declines because they "'escalated their aggressive selling' during the downdraft". In the years following the flash crash, academic researchers and experts from the CFTC pointed to high-frequency trading as just one component of the complex current U.S. market structure that led to the events of May 6, 2010.
Granularity and accuracy
In 2015 the Paris-based regulator of the 28-nation European Union, the European Securities and Markets Authority, proposed time standards to span the EU, that would more accurately synchronize trading clocks "to within a nanosecond, or one-billionth of a second" to refine regulation of gateway-to-gateway latency time—"the speed at which trading venues acknowledge an order after receiving a trade request". Using these more detailed time-stamps, regulators would be better able to distinguish the order in which trade requests are received and executed, to identify market abuse and prevent potential manipulation of European securities markets by traders using advanced, powerful, fast computers and networks. The fastest technologies give traders an advantage over other "slower" investors as they can change prices of the securities they trade.
Risks and controversy
According to author Walter Mattli, the ability of regulators to enforce the rules has greatly declined since 2005 with the passing of the Regulation National Market System (Reg NMS) by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result, the NYSE's quasi monopoly role as a stock rule maker was undermined and turned the stock exchange into one of many globally operating exchanges. The market then became more fractured and granular, as did the regulatory bodies, and since stock exchanges had turned into entities also seeking to maximize profits, the one with the most lenient regulators were rewarded, and oversight over traders' activities was lost. This fragmentation has greatly benefitted HFT.
High-frequency trading comprises many different types of algorithms. Various studies reported that certain types of market-making high-frequency trading reduces volatility and does not pose a systemic risk, and lowers transaction costs for retail investors, without impacting long term investors. Other studies, summarized in Aldridge, Krawciw, 2017 find that high-frequency trading strategies known as "aggressive" erode liquidity and cause volatility.
High-frequency trading has been the subject of intense public focus and debate since the May 6, 2010 Flash Crash. At least one Nobel Prize–winning economist, Michael Spence, believes that HFT should be banned. A working paper found "the presence of high frequency trading has significantly mitigated the frequency and severity of end-of-day price dislocation".
In their joint report on the 2010 Flash Crash, the SEC and the CFTC stated that "market makers and other liquidity providers widened their quote spreads, others reduced offered liquidity, and a significant number withdrew completely from the markets" during the flash crash.
Politicians, regulators, scholars, journalists and market participants have all raised concerns on both sides of the Atlantic. This has led to discussion of whether high-frequency market makers should be subject to various kinds of regulations.
In a September 22, 2010 speech, SEC chairperson Mary Schapiro signaled that US authorities were considering the introduction of regulations targeted at HFT. She said, "high frequency trading firms have a tremendous capacity to affect the stability and integrity of the equity markets. Currently, however, high frequency trading firms are subject to very little in the way of obligations either to protect that stability by promoting reasonable price continuity in tough times, or to refrain from exacerbating price volatility." She proposed regulation that would require high-frequency traders to stay active in volatile markets. A later SEC chair Mary Jo White pushed back against claims that high-frequency traders have an inherent benefit in the markets. SEC associate director Gregg Berman suggested that the current debate over HFT lacks perspective. In an April 2014 speech, Berman argued: "It's much more than just the automation of quotes and cancels, in spite of the seemingly exclusive fixation on this topic by much of the media and various outspoken market pundits. (...) I worry that it may be too narrowly focused and myopic."
The Chicago Federal Reserve letter of October 2012, titled "How to keep markets safe in an era of high-speed trading", reports on the results of a survey of several dozen financial industry professionals including traders, brokers, and exchanges. It found that
risk controls were poorer in high-frequency trading, because of competitive time pressure to execute trades without the more extensive safety checks normally used in slower trades.
"some firms do not have stringent processes for the development, testing, and deployment of code used in their trading algorithms."
"out-of control algorithms were more common than anticipated prior to the study and that there were no clear patterns as to their cause."
The CFA Institute, a global association of investment professionals, advocated for reforms regarding high-frequency trading, including:
Promoting robust internal risk management procedures and controls over the algorithms and strategies employed by HFT firms.
Trading venues should disclose their fee structure to all market participants.
Regulators should address market manipulation and other threats to the integrity of markets, regardless of the underlying mechanism, and not try to intervene in the trading process or to restrict certain types of trading activities.
Flash trading
Exchanges offered a type of order called a "Flash" order (on NASDAQ, it was called "Bolt" on the Bats stock exchange) that allowed an order to lock the market (post at the same price as an order ) for a small amount of time (5 milliseconds). This order type was available to all participants but since HFT's adapted to the changes in market structure more quickly than others, they were able to use it to "jump the queue" and place their orders before other order types were allowed to trade at the given price. Currently, the majority of exchanges do not offer flash trading, or have discontinued it. By March 2011, the NASDAQ, BATS, and Direct Edge exchanges had all ceased offering its Competition for Price Improvement functionality (widely referred to as "flash technology/trading").
Violations and fines
Regulation and enforcement
In March 2012, regulators fined Octeg LLC, the equities market-making unit of high-frequency trading firm Getco LLC, for $450,000. Octeg violated Nasdaq rules and failed to maintain proper supervision over its stock trading activities. The fine resulted from a request by Nasdaq OMX for regulators to investigate the activity at Octeg LLC from the day after the May 6, 2010 Flash Crash through the following December. Nasdaq determined the Getco subsidiary lacked reasonable oversight of its algo-driven high-frequency trading.
In October 2013, regulators fined Knight Capital $12 million for the trading malfunction that led to its collapse. Knight was found to have violated the SEC's market access rule, in effect since 2010 to prevent such mistakes. Regulators stated the HFT firm ignored dozens of error messages before its computers sent millions of unintended orders to the market. Knight Capital eventually merged with Getco to form KCG Holdings. Knight lost over $460 million from its trading errors in August 2012 that caused disturbance in the U.S. stock market.
In September 2014, HFT firm Latour Trading LLC agreed to pay a SEC penalty of $16 million. Latour is a subsidiary of New York-based high-frequency trader Tower Research Capital LLC. According to the SEC's order, for at least two years Latour underestimated the amount of risk it was taking on with its trading activities. By using faulty calculations, Latour managed to buy and sell stocks without holding enough capital. At times, the Tower Research Capital subsidiary accounted for 9% of all U.S. stock trading. The SEC noted the case is the largest penalty for a violation of the net capital rule.
In response to increased regulation, such as by FINRA, some have argued that instead of promoting government intervention, it would be more efficient to focus on a solution that mitigates information asymmetries among traders and their backers; others argue that regulation does not go far enough. In 2018, the European Union introduced the MiFID II/MiFIR regulation.
Order types
On January 12, 2015, the SEC announced a $14 million penalty against a subsidiary of BATS Global Markets, an exchange operator that was founded by high-frequency traders. The BATS subsidiary Direct Edge failed to properly disclose order types on its two exchanges EDGA and EDGX. These exchanges offered three variations of controversial "Hide Not Slide" orders and failed to accurately describe their priority to other orders. The SEC found the exchanges disclosed complete and accurate information about the order types "only to some members, including certain high-frequency trading firms that provided input about how the orders would operate". The complaint was made in 2011 by Haim Bodek.
Reported in January 2015, UBS agreed to pay $14.4 million to settle charges of not disclosing an order type that allowed high-frequency traders to jump ahead of other participants. The SEC stated that UBS failed to properly disclose to all subscribers of its dark pool "the existence of an order type that it pitched almost exclusively to market makers and high-frequency trading firms". UBS broke the law by accepting and ranking hundreds of millions of orders priced in increments of less than one cent, which is prohibited under Regulation NMS. The order type called PrimaryPegPlus enabled HFT firms "to place sub-penny-priced orders that jumped ahead of other orders submitted at legal, whole-penny prices".
Quote stuffing
In June 2014, high-frequency trading firm Citadel LLC was fined $800,000 for violations that included quote stuffing. Nasdaq's disciplinary action stated that Citadel "failed to prevent the strategy from sending millions of orders to the exchanges with few or no executions". It was pointed out that Citadel "sent multiple, periodic bursts of order messages, at 10,000 orders per second, to the exchanges. This excessive messaging activity, which involved hundreds of thousands of orders for more than 19 million shares, occurred two to three times per day."
Spoofing and layering
In July 2013, it was reported that Panther Energy Trading LLC was ordered to pay $4.5 million to U.S. and U.K. regulators on charges that the firm's high-frequency trading activities manipulated commodity markets. Panther's computer algorithms placed and quickly canceled bids and offers in futures contracts including oil, metals, interest rates and foreign currencies, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said. In October 2014, Panther's sole owner Michael Coscia was charged with six counts of commodities fraud and six counts of "spoofing". The indictment stated that Coscia devised a high-frequency trading strategy to create a false impression of the available liquidity in the market, "and to fraudulently induce other market participants to react to the deceptive market information he created".
In November 7, 2019, it was reported that Tower Research Capital LLC was ordered to pay $67.4 million in fines to the CFTC to settle allegations that three former traders at the firm engaged in spoofing from at least March 2012 through December 2013. The New York-based firm entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department.
Market manipulation
In October 2014, Athena Capital Research LLC was fined $1 million on price manipulation charges. The high-speed trading firm used $40 million to rig prices of thousands of stocks, including eBay Inc, according to U.S. regulators. The HFT firm Athena manipulated closing prices commonly used to track stock performance with "high-powered computers, complex algorithms and rapid-fire trades", the SEC said. The regulatory action is one of the first market manipulation cases against a firm engaged in high-frequency trading. Reporting by Bloomberg noted the HFT industry is "besieged by accusations that it cheats slower investors".
Advanced trading platforms
Advanced computerized trading platforms and market gateways are becoming standard tools of most types of traders, including high-frequency traders. Broker-dealers now compete on routing order flow directly, in the fastest and most efficient manner, to the line handler where it undergoes a strict set of risk filters before hitting the execution venue(s). Ultra-low latency direct market access (ULLDMA) is a hot topic amongst brokers and technology vendors such as Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, and UBS. Typically, ULLDMA systems can currently handle high amounts of volume and boast round-trip order execution speeds (from hitting "transmit order" to receiving an acknowledgment) of 10 milliseconds or less.
Such performance is achieved with the use of hardware acceleration or even full-hardware processing of incoming market data, in association with high-speed communication protocols, such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet or PCI Express. More specifically, some companies provide full-hardware appliances based on FPGA technology to obtain sub-microsecond end-to-end market data processing.
Buy side traders made efforts to curb predatory HFT strategies. Brad Katsuyama, co-founder of the IEX, led a team that implemented THOR, a securities order-management system that splits large orders into smaller sub-orders that arrive at the same time to all the exchanges through the use of intentional delays. This largely prevents information leakage in the propagation of orders that high-speed traders can take advantage of. In 2016, after having with Intercontinental Exchange Inc. and others failed to prevent SEC approval of IEX's launch and having failed to sue as it had threatened to do over the SEC approval, Nasdaq launched a "speed bump" product of its own to compete with IEX. According to Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld "the regulator shouldn't have approved IEX without changing the rules that required quotes to be immediately visible". The IEX speed bump—or trading slowdown—is 350 microseconds, which the SEC ruled was within the "immediately visible" parameter. The slowdown promises to impede HST ability "often [to] cancel dozens of orders for every trade they make".
Outside of US equities, several notable spot foreign exchange (FX) trading platforms—including ParFX, EBS Market, and Thomson Reuters Matching—have implemented their own "speed bumps" to curb or otherwise limit HFT activity. Unlike the IEX fixed length delay that retains the temporal ordering of messages as they are received by the platform, the spot FX platforms' speed bumps reorder messages so the first message received is not necessarily that processed for matching first. In short, the spot FX platforms' speed bumps seek to reduce the benefit of a participant being faster than others, as has been described in various academic papers.
See also
Complex event processing
Computational finance
Dark liquidity
Data mining
Erlang (programming language) used by Goldman Sachs
Flash Boys
Flash trading
Front running
Hedge fund
Hot money
Market maker
Mathematical finance
Offshore fund
Pump and dump
Jump Trading
References
External links
Preliminary Findings Regarding the Market Events of May 6, 2010, Report of the staffs of the CFTC and SEC to the Joint Advisory Committee on Emerging Regulatory Issues, May 18, 2010
High-Frequency Trading: Background, Concerns, and Regulatory Developments Congressional Research Service
Where is the Value in High Frequency Trading? (2010) Álvaro Cartea, José Penalva
High Frequency Trading and the Risk Monitoring of Automated Trading (2013) Robert Fernandez
Regulating Trading Practices (2014) Andreas M. Fleckner, The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation
Financial markets
Electronic trading systems
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doc-en-1129 | The Battle of Ramillies (), fought on 23 May 1706, was a battle of the War of the Spanish Succession. For the Grand Alliance – Austria, England, and the Dutch Republic – the battle had followed an indecisive campaign against the Bourbon armies of King Louis XIV of France in 1705. Although the Allies had captured Barcelona that year, they had been forced to abandon their campaign on the Moselle, had stalled in the Spanish Netherlands and suffered defeat in northern Italy. Yet despite his opponents' setbacks Louis XIV wanted peace, but on reasonable terms. Because of this, as well as to maintain their momentum, the French and their allies took the offensive in 1706.
The campaign began well for Louis XIV's generals: in Italy Marshal Vendôme defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Calcinato in April, while in Alsace Marshal Villars forced the Margrave of Baden back across the Rhine. Encouraged by these early gains Louis XIV urged Marshal Villeroi to go over to the offensive in the Spanish Netherlands and, with victory, gain a 'fair' peace. Accordingly, the French Marshal set off from Leuven (Louvain) at the head of 60,000 men and marched towards Tienen (Tirlemont), as if to threaten Zoutleeuw (Léau). Also determined to fight a major engagement, the Duke of Marlborough, commander-in-chief of Anglo-Dutch forces, assembled his army – some 62,000 men – near Maastricht, and marched past Zoutleeuw. With both sides seeking battle, they soon encountered each other on the dry ground between the rivers Mehaigne and Petite Gette, close to the small village of Ramillies.
In less than four hours Marlborough's Dutch, English, and Danish forces overwhelmed Villeroi's and Max Emanuel's Franco-Spanish-Bavarian army. The Duke's subtle moves and changes in emphasis during the battle – something his opponents failed to realise until it was too late – caught the French in a tactical vice. With their foe broken and routed, the Allies were able to fully exploit their victory. Town after town fell, including Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp; by the end of the campaign Villeroi's army had been driven from most of the Spanish Netherlands. With Prince Eugene's subsequent success at the Battle of Turin in northern Italy, the Allies had imposed the greatest loss of territory and resources that Louis XIV would suffer during the war. Thus, the year 1706 proved, for the Allies, to be an annus mirabilis.
Background
After their disastrous defeat at Blenheim in 1704, the next year brought the French some respite. The Duke of Marlborough had intended the 1705 campaign – an invasion of France through the Moselle valley – to complete the work of Blenheim and persuade King Louis XIV to make peace but the plan had been thwarted by friend and foe alike. The reluctance of his Dutch allies to see their frontiers denuded of troops for another gamble in Germany had denied Marlborough the initiative but of far greater importance was the Margrave of Baden's pronouncement that he could not join the Duke in strength for the coming offensive. This was in part due to the sudden switching of troops from the Rhine to reinforce Prince Eugene in Italy and part due to the deterioration of Baden's health brought on by the re-opening of a severe foot wound he had received at the storming of the Schellenberg the previous year. Marlborough had to cope with the death of Emperor Leopold I in May and the accession of Joseph I, which unavoidably complicated matters for the Grand Alliance.
The resilience of the French King and the efforts of his generals, also added to Marlborough's problems. Marshal Villeroi, exerting considerable pressure on the Dutch commander, Count Overkirk, along the Meuse, took Huy on 10 June before pressing on towards Liège. With Marshal Villars sitting strong on the Moselle, the Allied commander – whose supplies had by now become very short – was forced to call off his campaign on 16 June. "What a disgrace for Marlborough," exulted Villeroi, "to have made false movements without any result!" With Marlborough's departure north, the French transferred troops from the Moselle valley to reinforce Villeroi in Flanders, while Villars marched off to the Rhine.
The Anglo-Dutch forces gained minor compensation for the failed Moselle campaign with the success at Elixheim and the crossing of the Lines of Brabant in the Spanish Netherlands (Huy was also retaken on 11 July) but a chance to bring the French to a decisive engagement eluded Marlborough. The year 1705 proved almost entirely barren for the Duke, whose military disappointments were only partly compensated by efforts on the diplomatic front where, at the courts of Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Vienna, Berlin and Hanover, Marlborough sought to bolster support for the Grand Alliance and extract promises of prompt assistance for the following year's campaign.
Prelude
On 11 January 1706, Marlborough finally reached London at the end of his diplomatic tour but he had already been planning his strategy for the coming season. The first option (although it is debatable to what extent the Duke was committed to such an enterprise) was a plan to transfer his forces from the Spanish Netherlands to northern Italy; once there, he intended linking up with Prince Eugene in order to defeat the French and safeguard Savoy from being overrun. Savoy would then serve as a gateway into France by way of the mountain passes or an invasion with naval support along the Mediterranean coast via Nice and Toulon, in connexion with redoubled Allied efforts in Spain. It seems that the Duke's favoured scheme was to return to the Moselle valley (where Marshal Marsin had recently taken command of French forces) and once more attempt an advance into the heart of France. But these decisions soon became academic. Shortly after Marlborough landed in the Dutch Republic on 14 April, news arrived of big Allied setbacks in the wider war.
Determined to show the Grand Alliance that France was still resolute, Louis XIV prepared to launch a double surprise in Alsace and northern Italy. On the latter front Marshal Vendôme defeated the Imperial army at Calcinato on 19 April, pushing the Imperialists back in confusion (French forces were now in a position to prepare for the long-anticipated siege of Turin). In Alsace, Marshal Villars took Baden by surprise and captured Haguenau, driving him back across the Rhine in some disorder, thus creating a threat on Landau. With these reverses, the Dutch refused to contemplate Marlborough's ambitious march to Italy or any plan that denuded their borders of the Duke and their army. In the interest of coalition harmony, Marlborough prepared to campaign in the Low Countries.
On the move
The Duke left The Hague on 9 May. "God knows I go with a heavy heart," he wrote six days later to his friend and political ally in England, Lord Godolphin, "for I have no hope of doing anything considerable, unless the French do what I am very confident they will not … " – in other words, court battle. On 17 May the Duke concentrated his Dutch and English troops at Tongeren, near Maastricht. The Hanoverians, Hessians and Danes, despite earlier undertakings, found, or invented, pressing reasons for withholding their support. Marlborough wrote an appeal to the Duke of Württemberg, the commander of the Danish contingent – "I send you this express to request your Highness to bring forward by a double march your cavalry so as to join us at the earliest moment …" Additionally, the King in Prussia, Frederick I, had kept his troops in quarters behind the Rhine while his personal disputes with Vienna and the States General at The Hague remained unresolved. Nevertheless, the Duke could think of no circumstances why the French would leave their strong positions and attack his army, even if Villeroi was first reinforced by substantial transfers from Marsin's command. But in this he had miscalculated. Although Louis XIV wanted peace he wanted it on reasonable terms; for that, he needed victory in the field and to convince the Allies that his resources were by no means exhausted.
Following the successes in Italy and along the Rhine, Louis XIV was now hopeful of similar results in Flanders. Far from standing on the defensive therefore – and unbeknown to Marlborough – Louis XIV was persistently goading his marshal into action. "[Villeroi] began to imagine," wrote St Simon, "that the King doubted his courage, and resolved to stake all at once in an effort to vindicate himself." Accordingly, on 18 May, Villeroi set off from Leuven at the head of 70 battalions, 132 squadrons and 62 cannon – comprising an overall force of some 60,000 troops – and crossed the river Dyle to seek battle with the enemy. Spurred on by his growing confidence in his ability to out-general his opponent, and by Versailles’ determination to avenge Blenheim, Villeroi and his generals anticipated success.
Neither opponent expected the clash at the exact moment or place where it occurred. The French moved first to Tienen, (as if to threaten Zoutleeuw, abandoned by the French in October 1705), before turning southwards, heading for Jodoigne – this line of march took Villeroi's army towards the narrow aperture of dry ground between the rivers Mehaigne and Petite Gette close to the small villages of Ramillies and Taviers; but neither commander quite appreciated how far his opponent had travelled. Villeroi still believed (on 22 May) the Allies were a full day's march away when in fact they had camped near Corswaren waiting for the Danish squadrons to catch up; for his part, Marlborough deemed Villeroi still at Jodoigne when in reality he was now approaching the plateau of Mont St. André with the intention of pitching camp near Ramillies (see map at right). However, the Prussian infantry was not there. Marlborough wrote to Lord Raby, the English resident at Berlin: "If it should please God to give us victory over the enemy, the Allies will be little obliged to the King [Frederick] for the success."
The following day, at 01:00, Marlborough dispatched Cadogan, his Quartermaster-General, with an advanced guard to reconnoitre the same dry ground that Villeroi's army was now heading toward, country that was well known to the Duke from previous campaigns. Two hours later the Duke followed with the main body: 74 battalions, 123 squadrons, 90 pieces of artillery and 20 mortars, totalling 62,000 troops. At about 08:00, after Cadogan had just passed Merdorp, his force made brief contact with a party of French hussars gathering forage on the edge of the plateau of Jandrenouille. After a brief exchange of shots the French retired and Cadogan's dragoons pressed forward. With a short lift in the mist, Cadogan soon discovered the smartly ordered lines of Villeroi's advance guard some off; a galloper hastened back to warn Marlborough. Two hours later the Duke, accompanied by the Dutch field commander Field Marshal Overkirk, General Daniel Dopff, and the Allied staff, rode up to Cadogan where on the horizon to the westward he could discern the massed ranks of the French army deploying for battle along the front. Marlborough later told Bishop Burnet that, 'the French army looked the best of any he had ever seen'.
Battle
Battlefield
The battlefield of Ramillies is very similar to that of Blenheim, for here too there is an immense area of arable land unimpeded by woods or hedges. Villeroi's right rested on the villages of Franquenée and Taviers, with the river Mehaigne protecting his flank. A large open plain, about wide, lay between Taviers and Ramillies, but unlike Blenheim, there was no stream to hinder the cavalry. His centre was secured by Ramillies itself, lying on a slight eminence which gave distant views to the north and east. The French left flank was protected by broken country, and by a stream, the Petite Gheete, which runs deep between steep and slippery slopes. On the French side of the stream the ground rises to Offus, the village which, together with Autre-Eglise farther north, anchored Villeroi's left flank. To the west of the Petite Gheete rises the plateau of Mont St. André; a second plain, the plateau of Jandrenouille – upon which the Anglo-Dutch army amassed – rises to the east.
Initial dispositions
At 11:00, the Duke ordered the army to take standard battle formation. On the far right, towards Foulz, the British battalions and squadrons took up their posts in a double line near the Jeuche stream. The centre was formed by the mass of Dutch, German, Protestant Swiss and Scottish infantry – perhaps 30,000 men – facing Offus and Ramillies. Also facing Ramillies Marlborough placed a powerful battery of thirty 24-pounders, dragged into position by a team of oxen; further batteries were positioned overlooking the Petite Gheete. On their left, on the broad plain between Taviers and Ramillies – and where Marlborough thought the decisive encounter must take place – Overkirk drew the 69 squadrons of the Dutch and Danish horse, supported by 19 battalions of Dutch infantry and two artillery pieces.
Meanwhile, Villeroi deployed his forces. In Taviers on his right, he placed two battalions of the Greder Suisse Régiment, with a smaller force forward in Franquenée; the whole position was protected by the boggy ground of the river Mehaigne, thus preventing an Allied flanking movement. In the open country between Taviers and Ramillies, he placed 82 squadrons under General de Guiscard supported by several interleaved brigades of French, Swiss and Bavarian infantry. Along the Ramillies–Offus–Autre Eglise ridge-line, Villeroi positioned Walloon and Bavarian infantry, supported by the Elector of Bavaria's 50 squadrons of Bavarian and Walloon cavalry placed behind on the plateau of Mont St. André. Ramillies, Offus and Autre-Eglise were all packed with troops and put in a state of defence, with alleys barricaded and walls loop-holed for muskets. Villeroi also positioned powerful batteries near Ramillies. These guns (some of which were of the three barrelled kind first seen at Elixheim the previous year) enjoyed good arcs of fire, able to fully cover the approaches of the plateau of Jandrenouille over which the Allied infantry would have to pass.
Marlborough, however, noticed several important weaknesses in the French dispositions. Tactically, it was imperative for Villeroi to occupy Taviers on his right and Autre-Eglise on his left, but by adopting this posture he had been forced to over-extend his forces. Moreover, this disposition – concave in relation to the Allied army – gave Marlborough the opportunity to form a more compact line, drawn up in a shorter front between the 'horns' of the French crescent; when the Allied blow came it would be more concentrated and carry more weight. Additionally, the Duke's disposition facilitated the transfer of troops across his front far more easily than his foe, a tactical advantage that would grow in importance as the events of the afternoon unfolded. Although Villeroi had the option of enveloping the flanks of the Allied army as they deployed on the plateau of Jandrenouille – threatening to encircle their army – the Duke correctly gauged that the characteristically cautious French commander was intent on a defensive battle along the ridge-line.
Taviers
At 13:00 the batteries went into action; a little later two Allied columns set out from the extremities of their line and attacked the flanks of the Franco-Bavarian army. To the south the Dutch Guards, under the command of Colonel Wertmüller, came forward with their two field guns to seize the hamlet of Franquenée. The small Swiss garrison in the village, shaken by the sudden onslaught and unsupported by the battalions to their rear, were soon compelled back towards the village of Taviers. Taviers was of particular importance to the Franco-Bavarian position: it protected the otherwise unsupported flank of General de Guiscard's cavalry on the open plain, while at the same time, it allowed the French infantry to pose a threat to the flanks of the Dutch and Danish squadrons as they came forward into position. But hardly had the retreating Swiss rejoined their comrades in that village when the Dutch Guards renewed their attack. The fighting amongst the alleys and cottages soon deteriorated into a fierce bayonet and clubbing mêlée, but the superiority in Dutch firepower soon told. The accomplished French officer, Colonel de la Colonie, standing on the plain nearby remembered – "this village was the opening of the engagement, and the fighting there was almost as murderous as the rest of the battle put together." By about 15:00 the Swiss had been pushed out of the village into the marshes beyond.
Villeroi's right flank fell into chaos and was now open and vulnerable. Alerted to the situation de Guiscard ordered an immediate attack with 14 squadrons of French dragoons currently stationed in the rear. Two other battalions of the Greder Suisse Régiment were also sent, but the attack was poorly co-ordinated and consequently went in piecemeal. The Anglo-Dutch commanders now sent dismounted Dutch dragoons into Taviers, which, together with the Guards and their field guns, poured concentrated musketry- and canister-fire into the advancing French troops. Colonel d’Aubigni, leading his regiment, fell mortally wounded.
As the French ranks wavered, the leading squadrons of Württemberg's Danish horse – now unhampered by enemy fire from either village – were also sent into the attack and fell upon the exposed flank of the Franco-Swiss infantry and dragoons. De la Colonie, with his Grenadiers Rouge regiment, together with the Cologne Guards who were brigaded with them, was now ordered forward from his post south of Ramillies to support the faltering counter-attack on the village. But on his arrival, all was chaos – "Scarcely had my troops got over when the dragoons and Swiss who had preceded us, came tumbling down upon my battalions in full flight … My own fellows turned about and fled along with them." De La Colonie managed to rally some of his grenadiers, together with the remnants of the French dragoons and Greder Suisse battalions, but it was an entirely peripheral operation, offering only fragile support for Villeroi's right flank.
Offus and Autre-Eglise
While the attack on Taviers went on the Earl of Orkney launched his first line of English across the Petite Gheete in a determined attack against the barricaded villages of Offus and Autre-Eglise on the Allied right. Villeroi, posting himself near Offus, watched anxiously the redcoats' advance, mindful of the counsel he had received on 6 May from Louis XIV – "Have particular care to that part of the line which will endure the first shock of the English troops." Heeding this advice the French commander began to transfer battalions from his centre to reinforce the left, drawing more foot from the already weakened right to replace them.
As the English battalions descended the gentle slope of the Petite Gheete valley, struggling through the boggy stream, they were met by Major General de la Guiche's disciplined Walloon infantry sent forward from around Offus. After concentrated volleys, exacting heavy casualties on the redcoats, the Walloons reformed back to the ridgeline in good order. The English took some time to reform their ranks on the dry ground beyond the stream and press on up the slope towards the cottages and barricades on the ridge. The vigour of the English assault, however, was such that they threatened to break through the line of the villages and out onto the open plateau of Mont St André beyond. This was potentially dangerous for the Allied infantry who would then be at the mercy of the Elector's Bavarian and Walloon squadrons patiently waiting on the plateau for the order to move.
Although Henry Lumley's English cavalry had managed to cross the marshy ground around the Petite Gheete, it was soon evident to Marlborough that sufficient cavalry support would not be practicable and that the battle could not be won on the Allied right. The Duke, therefore, called off the attack against Offus and Autre-Eglise. To make sure that Orkney obeyed his order to withdraw, Marlborough sent his Quartermaster-General in person with the command. Despite Orkney's protestations, Cadogan insisted on compliance and, reluctantly, Orkney gave the word for his troops to fall back to their original positions on the edge of the plateau of Jandrenouille. It is still not clear how far Orkney's advance was planned only as a feint; according to historian David Chandler it is probably more accurate to surmise that Marlborough launched Orkney in a serious probe with a view to sounding out the possibilities of the sector. Nevertheless, the attack had served its purpose. Villeroi had given his personal attention to that wing and strengthened it with large bodies of horse and foot that ought to have been taking part in the decisive struggle south of Ramillies.
Ramillies
Meanwhile, the Dutch assault on Ramillies was gaining pace. Marlborough's younger brother, General of Infantry, Charles Churchill, ordered four brigades of foot to attack the village. The assault consisted of 12 battalions of Dutch infantry commanded by Major Generals Schultz and Spaar; two brigades of Saxons under Count Schulenburg; a Scottish brigade in Dutch service led by the 2nd Duke of Argyle; and a small brigade of Protestant Swiss. The 20 French and Bavarian battalions in Ramillies, supported by the Irish who had left Ireland in the Flight of the Wild Geese to join Clare's Dragoons who fought as infantry and captured a colour from the British 3rd Regiment of Foot and a small brigade of Cologne and Bavarian Guards under the Marquis de Maffei, put up a determined defence, initially driving back the attackers with severe losses as commemorated in the song Clare's Dragoons.
Seeing that Schultz and Spaar were faltering, Marlborough now ordered Orkney's second-line British and Danish battalions (who had not been used in the assault on Offus and Autre-Eglise) to move south towards Ramillies. Shielded as they were from observation by a slight fold in the land, their commander, Brigadier-General Van Pallandt, ordered the regimental colours to be left in place on the edge of the plateau to convince their opponents they were still in their initial position. Therefore, unbeknown to the French who remained oblivious to the Allies' real strength and intentions on the opposite side of the Petite Gheete, Marlborough was throwing his full weight against Ramillies and the open plain to the south. Villeroi meanwhile, was still moving more reserves of infantry in the opposite direction towards his left flank; crucially, it would be some time before the French commander noticed the subtle change in emphasis of the Allied dispositions.
At around 15:30, Overkirk advanced his massed squadrons on the open plain in support of the infantry attack on Ramillies. Overkirk's squadrons – 48 Dutch, supported on their left by 21 Danish – steadily advanced towards the enemy (taking care not to prematurely tire the horses), before breaking into a trot to gain the impetus for their charge. The Marquis de Feuquières writing after the battle described the scene – "They advanced in four lines … As they approached they advanced their second and fourth lines into the intervals of their first and third lines; so that when they made their advance upon us, they formed only one front, without any intermediate spaces."
The initial clash favoured the Dutch and Danish squadrons. The disparity of numbers – exacerbated by Villeroi stripping their ranks of infantry to reinforce his left flank – enabled Overkirk's cavalry to throw the first line of French horse back in some disorder towards their second-line squadrons. This line also came under severe pressure and, in turn, was forced back to their third-line of cavalry and the few battalions still remaining on the plain. But these French horsemen were amongst the best in Louis XIV's army – the Maison du Roi, supported by four elite squadrons of Bavarian Cuirassiers. Ably led by de Guiscard, the French cavalry rallied, thrusting back the Allied squadrons in successful local counterattacks. On Overkirk's right flank, close to Ramillies, ten of his squadrons suddenly broke ranks and were scattered, riding headlong to the rear to recover their order, leaving the left flank of the Allied assault on Ramillies dangerously exposed. Notwithstanding the lack of infantry support, de Guiscard threw his cavalry forward in an attempt to split the Allied army in two.
A crisis threatened the centre, but from his vantage point Marlborough was at once aware of the situation. The Allied commander now summoned the cavalry on the right wing to reinforce his centre, leaving only the English squadrons in support of Orkney. Thanks to a combination of battle-smoke and favourable terrain, his redeployment went unnoticed by Villeroi who made no attempt to transfer any of his own 50 unused squadrons. While he waited for the fresh reinforcements to arrive, Marlborough flung himself into the mêlée, rallying some of the Dutch cavalry who were in confusion. But his personal involvement nearly led to his undoing. A number of French horsemen, recognising the Duke, came surging towards his party. Marlborough's horse tumbled and the Duke was thrown – "Milord Marlborough was rid over," wrote Orkney some time later. It was a critical moment of the battle. "Major-General Murray," recalled one eyewitness, " … seeing him fall, marched up in all haste with two Swiss battalions to save him and stop the enemy who were hewing all down in their way." Fortunately Marlborough's newly appointed aide-de-camp, Richard Molesworth, galloped to the rescue, mounted the Duke on his horse and made good their escape, before Murray's disciplined ranks threw back the pursuing French troopers.
After a brief pause, Marlborough's equerry, Colonel Bringfield (or Bingfield), led up another of the Duke's spare horses; but while assisting him onto his mount, the unfortunate Bringfield was hit by an errant cannonball that sheared off his head. One account has it that the cannonball flew between the Captain-General's legs before hitting the unfortunate colonel, whose torso fell at Marlborough's feet – a moment subsequently depicted in a lurid set of contemporary playing cards. Nevertheless, the danger passed, enabling the Duke to attend to the positioning of the cavalry reinforcements feeding down from his right flank – a change of which Villeroi remained blissfully unaware.
Breakthrough
The time was about 16:30, and the two armies were in close contact across the whole front, from the skirmishing in the marshes in the south, through the vast cavalry battle on the open plain; to the fierce struggle for Ramillies at the centre, and to the north, where, around the cottages of Offus and Autre-Eglise, Orkney and de la Guiche faced each other across the Petite Gheete ready to renew hostilities.
The arrival of the transferring squadrons now began to tip the balance in favour of the Allies. Tired, and suffering a growing list of casualties, the numerical inferiority of Guiscard's squadrons battling on the plain at last began to tell. After earlier failing to hold or retake Franquenée and Taviers, Guiscard's right flank had become dangerously exposed and a fatal gap had opened on the right of their line. Taking advantage of this breach, Württemberg's Danish cavalry now swept forward, wheeling to penetrate the flank of the Maison du Roi whose attention was almost entirely fixed on holding back the Dutch. Sweeping forwards, virtually without resistance, the 21 Danish squadrons reformed behind the French around the area of the Tomb of Ottomond, facing north across the plateau of Mont St André towards the exposed flank of Villeroi's army.
The final Allied reinforcements for the cavalry contest to the south were at last in position; Marlborough's superiority on the left could no longer be denied, and his fast-moving plan took hold of the battlefield. Now, far too late, Villeroi tried to redeploy his 50 unused squadrons, but a desperate attempt to form line facing south, stretching from Offus to Mont St André, floundered amongst the baggage and tents of the French camp carelessly left there after the initial deployment. The Allied commander ordered his cavalry forward against the now heavily outnumbered French and Bavarian horsemen. De Guiscard's right flank, without proper infantry support, could no longer resist the onslaught and, turning their horses northwards, they broke and fled in complete disorder. Even the squadrons currently being scrambled together by Villeroi behind Ramillies could not withstand the onslaught. "We had not got forty yards on our retreat," remembered Captain Peter Drake, an Irishmen serving with the French – "when the words sauve qui peut went through the great part, if not the whole army, and put all to confusion"
In Ramillies the Allied infantry, now reinforced by the English troops brought down from the north, at last broke through. The Régiment de Picardie stood their ground but were caught between Colonel Borthwick's Scots-Dutch regiment and the English reinforcements. Borthwick was killed, as was Charles O’Brien, the Irish Viscount Clare in French service, fighting at the head of his regiment. The Marquis de Maffei attempted one last stand with his Bavarian and Cologne Guards, but it proved in vain. Noticing a rush of horsemen fast approaching from the south, he later recalled – " … I went towards the nearest of these squadrons to instruct their officer, but instead of being listened to [I] was immediately surrounded and called upon to ask for quarter."
Pursuit
The roads leading north and west were choked with fugitives. Orkney now sent his English troops back across the Petite Gheete stream to once again storm Offus where de la Guiche's infantry had begun to drift away in the confusion. To the right of the infantry Lord John Hay's 'Scots Greys' also picked their way across the stream and charged the Régiment du Roi within Autre-Eglise. "Our dragoons," wrote John Deane, "pushing into the village … made terrible slaughter of the enemy." The Bavarian Horse Grenadiers and the Electoral Guards withdrew and formed a shield about Villeroi and the Elector but were scattered by Lumley's cavalry. Stuck in the mass of fugitives fleeing the battlefield, the French and Bavarian commanders narrowly escaped capture by General Cornelius Wood who, unaware of their identity, had to content himself with the seizure of two Bavarian Lieutenant-Generals. Far to the south, the remnants of de la Colonie's brigade headed in the opposite direction towards the French held fortress of Namur."
The retreat became a rout. Individual Allied commanders drove their troops forward in pursuit, allowing their beaten enemy no chance to recover. Soon the Allied infantry could no longer keep up, but their cavalry were off the leash, heading through the gathering night for the crossings on the river Dyle. At last, however, Marlborough called a halt to the pursuit shortly after midnight near Meldert, from the field. "It was indeed a truly shocking sight to see the miserable remains of this mighty army," wrote Captain Drake, "… reduced to a handful."
Aftermath
What was left of Villeroi's army was now broken in spirit; the imbalance of the casualty figures amply demonstrates the extent of the disaster for Louis XIV's army: (see below). In addition, hundreds of French soldiers were fugitives, many of whom would never remuster to the colours. Villeroi also lost 52 artillery pieces and his entire engineer pontoon train. In the words of Marshal Villars, the French defeat at Ramillies was – "The most shameful, humiliating and disastrous of routs."
Town after town now succumbed to the Allies. Leuven fell on 25 May 1706; three days later, the Allies entered Brussels, the capital of the Spanish Netherlands. Marlborough realised the great opportunity created by the early victory of Ramillies: "We now have the whole summer before us," wrote the Duke from Brussels to Robert Harley, "and with the blessing of God I shall make the best use of it." Malines, Lierre, Ghent, Alost, Damme, Oudenaarde, Bruges, and on 6 June Antwerp, all subsequently fell to Marlborough's victorious army and, like Brussels, proclaimed the Austrian candidate for the Spanish throne, the Archduke Charles, as their sovereign. Villeroi was helpless to arrest the process of collapse. When Louis XIV learnt of the disaster he recalled Marshal Vendôme from northern Italy to take command in Flanders; but it would be weeks before the command changed hands.
As news spread of the Allies' triumph, the Prussians, Hessians and Hanoverian contingents, long delayed by their respective rulers, eagerly joined the pursuit of the broken French and Bavarian forces. "This," wrote Marlborough wearily, "I take to be owing to our late success." Meanwhile, Overkirk took the port of Ostend on 4 July thus opening a direct route to the English Channel for communication and supply, but the Allies were making scant progress against Dendermonde whose governor, the Marquis de Valée, was stubbornly resisting. Only later when Cadogan and Churchill went to take charge did the town's defences begin to fail.
Vendôme formally took over command in Flanders on 4 August; Villeroi would never again receive a major command – "I cannot foresee a happy day in my life save only that of my death." Louis XIV was more forgiving to his old friend – "At our age, Marshal, we must no longer expect good fortune." In the meantime, Marlborough invested the elaborate fortress of Menin which, after a costly siege, capitulated on 22 August. Dendermonde finally succumbed on 6 September followed by Ath – the last conquest of 1706 – on 2 October. By the time Marlborough had closed down the Ramillies campaign he had denied the French most of the Spanish Netherlands west of the Meuse and north of the Sambre – it was an unsurpassed operational triumph for the English Duke but once again it was not decisive as these gains did not defeat France.
The immediate question for the Allies was how to deal with the Spanish Netherlands, a subject on which the Austrians and the Dutch were diametrically opposed. Emperor Joseph I, acting on behalf of his younger brother King 'Charles III', absent in Spain, claimed that reconquered Brabant and Flanders should be put under immediate possession of a governor named by himself. The Dutch, however, who had supplied the major share of the troops and money to secure the victory (the Austrians had produced nothing of either) claimed the government of the region till the war was over, and that after the peace they should continue to garrison Barrier Fortresses stronger than those which had fallen so easily to Louis XIV's forces in 1701. Marlborough mediated between the two parties but favoured the Dutch position. To sway the Duke's opinion, the Emperor offered Marlborough the governorship of the Spanish Netherlands. It was a tempting offer, but in the name of Allied unity, it was one he refused. In the end England and the Dutch Republic took control of the newly won territory for the duration of the war; after which it was to be handed over to the direct rule of 'Charles III', subject to the reservation of a Dutch Barrier, the extent and nature of which had yet to be settled.
Meanwhile, on the Upper Rhine, Villars had been forced onto the defensive as battalion after battalion had been sent north to bolster collapsing French forces in Flanders; there was now no possibility of his undertaking the re-capture of Landau. Further good news for the Allies arrived from northern Italy where, on 7 September, Prince Eugene had routed a French army before the Piedmontese capital, Turin, driving the Franco-Spanish forces from northern Italy. Only from Spain did Louis XIV receive any good news where Das Minas and Galway had been forced to retreat from Madrid towards Valencia, allowing Philip V to re-enter his capital on 4 October. All in all though, the situation had changed considerably and Louis XIV began to look for ways to end what was fast becoming a ruinous war for France. For Queen Anne also, the Ramillies campaign had one overriding significance – "Now we have God be thanked so hopeful a prospect of peace." Instead of continuing the momentum of victory, however, cracks in Allied unity would enable Louis XIV to reverse some of the major setbacks suffered at Turin and Ramillies.
Casualties
The total number of French casualties cannot be calculated precisely, so complete was the collapse of the Franco-Bavarian army that day. David G. Chandler's Marlborough as Military Commander and A Guide to the Battlefields of Europe are consistent with regards to French casualty figures i.e., 12,000 dead and wounded plus some 7,000 taken prisoner. James Falkner, in Ramillies 1706: Year of Miracles, also notes 12,000 dead and wounded and states 'up to 10,000' taken prisoner. In The Collins Encyclopaedia of Military History, Dupuy puts Villeroi's dead and wounded at 8,000, with a further 7,000 captured. Neil Litten, using French archives, suggests 7,000 killed and wounded and 6,000 captured, with a further 2,000 choosing to desert. John Millner's memoirs – Compendious Journal (1733) – is more specific, recording 12,087 of Villeroi's army were killed or wounded, with another 9,729 taken prisoner. In Marlborough, however, Correlli Barnett puts the total casualty figure as high as 30,000 – 15,000 dead and wounded with an additional 15,000 taken captive. Trevelyan estimates Villeroi's casualties at 13,000, but adds, 'his losses by desertion may have doubled that number'. La Colonie omits a casualty figure in his Chronicles of an old Campaigner; but Saint-Simon in his Memoirs states 4,000 killed, adding 'many others were wounded and many important persons were taken prisoner'. Voltaire, however, in Histoire du siècle du Louis XIV records, 'the French lost there twenty thousand men'.
See also
The battle was used as the name of several Royal Navy ships, HMS Ramillies.
Notes
References
Primary
La Colonie, Jean Martin de. The Chronicles of an Old Campaigner, (trans. W. C. Horsley), (1904)
(1857) Mémoires relatifs à la Guerre de succession de 1706–1709 et 1711, de Sicco van Goslinga, publiés par mm. U. A. Evertsz et G. H. M. Delprat, au nom de la Société d’histoire, d’archéologie et de linquistique de Frise, (Published by G.T.N. Suringar, 1857)
Saint-Simon. Memoirs, vol i. Prion Books Ltd., (1999).
Secondary
Barnett, Correlli. Marlborough. Wordsworth Editions Limited, (1999).
Chandler, David G. A Guide to the Battlefields of Europe. Wordsworth Editions Limited, (1998).
Chandler, David G. Marlborough as Military Commander. Spellmount Ltd, (2003).
Dupuy, R. E & Dupuy, T. N. The Collins Encyclopaedia of Military History 4th ed. HarperCollins Publishers, (1995).
Falkner, James. Ramillies 1706: Year of Miracles. Pen & Sword Books Ltd, (2006).
Gregg, Edward. Queen Anne. Yale University Press, (2001).
Lynn, John A. The Wars of Louis XIV, 1667–1714. Longman, (1999).
Trevelyan, G. M. England Under Queen Anne: Ramillies and the Union with Scotland. Longmans, Green and co., (1932)
Battle of Ramillies
Battles of the War of the Spanish Succession
Battles involving Bavaria
Battles involving France
Battles involving England
Battles involving the Dutch Republic
Battles in Wallonia
1706 in France
Battle of Ramillies | en |
doc-en-4080 | The following is a list of secondary fictional characters from the science fiction media franchise Dune created by Frank Herbert. The characters listed originate in Herbert's novel series (1965–1985), but some also appear in the Prelude to Dune prequel series written by Herbert's son Brian Herbert and science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson.
Leto I Atreides
Leto I Atreides () is the Duke of House Atreides, and father to Paul Atreides. He is introduced in Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, and is later a primary character in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999–2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. According to Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's son and biographer, House Atreides was based on the heroic but ill-fated Greek mythological House Atreus.
Leto is portrayed by Jürgen Prochnow in David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, and by William Hurt in the 2000 Dune miniseries. Hurt was the first actor to be cast in the 2000 adaptation. A fan of the novel, he told The New York Times, "I was a science fiction junkie ... [Director John Harrison] captured Herbert's prophetic reflection of our own age, where nation-states are competing with the new global economy and its corporate elements." Leto is portrayed by Oscar Isaac in the 2021 Denis Villeneuve film Dune.
Emmet Asher-Perrin of Tor.com writes that Hurt "brings a certain reserved calm that works for the character."
Dune
Rising in influence among the Landsraad assembly of noble families, Duke Leto Atreides is given control of the lucrative planetary fief of Arrakis, which has previously been managed by House Atreides' longtime enemies, the Harkonnens. Arrakis—an inhospitable desert planet plagued by giant sandworms—is the only known source of melange, the valuable drug at the center of the galactic empire's economy. Leto suspects treachery on the part of Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, but cannot refuse the assignment. Leto moves his entire household from his ocean homeworld Caladan to the desolate Arrakis, including his Bene Gesserit concubine Lady Jessica, his son and heir Paul, his Weapons Master Gurney Halleck, and his Mentat Thufir Hawat. With the help of his Ginaz Swordmaster Duncan Idaho, Leto reaches out to Arrakis' native Fremen, people tempered by the planet's harsh conditions who Leto realizes are an underestimated and untapped resource, a potential "desert power". The Baron Harkonnen launches an attack, his forces secretly bolstered by Shaddam's fierce Sardaukar warriors and aided by Leto's own trusted Suk doctor, Wellington Yueh. Coerced by the Baron to save his wife from torture, Yueh disables the shields of the Atreides fortress and delivers a drugged Leto to the Baron. Assuming his wife is already dead and seeking revenge against Harkonnen, Yueh provides Leto with a false tooth filled with poison gas. Leto bites down on the tooth in the Baron's presence, but the gas misses the Baron and only kills the Baron's twisted Mentat, Piter De Vries.
Thanks to supplies left by Yueh, Paul and Lady Jessica escape into the desert and find refuge with the Fremen. Paul ultimately binds the Fremen communities across the planet and leads them to take back their planet from Imperial rule. He names his first son Leto in honor of his father; after this child dies in infancy, Paul names his second son Leto II.
Prelude to Dune
In the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy, young Leto is the son and heir to Duke Paulus Atreides of Caladan and his wife, the former Helena Richese. Having ruled Caladan for 26 generations, the Atreides are distantly related to the Imperial House Corrino through Helena's mother, and has feuded with House Harkonnen since the time of Vorian Atreides, founder of the family line. Paulus arranges for Leto to spend a portion of his adolescence on the industrial planet Ix in the care of Earl Dominic Vernius—over the objections of Helena, whose family are the business rivals of House Vernius. On Ix, Leto becomes fast friends with Dominic's son Rhombur, and falls in love with his daughter Kailea. When the Bene Tleilax invade and seize control of Ix (secretly aided by Padishah Emperor Elrood IX), the Vernius heirs flee to Caladan with Leto, and Dominic and Shando go off separately to pull attention from their children. Paulus, an expert bullfighter, is soon killed in the ring. Hoping to rule Caladan as regent through Leto, Helena had arranged for a Salusan bull to be drugged; realizing his mother's culpability, Leto exiles her to a distant convent to avoid the scandal of a public execution. Now the duke, Leto takes Kailea as his concubine, and they have a son named Victor. Obligated to keep open the possibility of a political marriage, Leto declines marrying Kailea or naming Victor as his heir. Leto and Kailea grow apart, and her resentment and insecurities build. After the arrival into his household of the Bene Gesserit acolyte Jessica, who Leto finds attractive, Kailea attempts to kill Leto. She fails, but in the ensuing accident her brother Rhombur is injured and her son Victor is killed. Kailea commits suicide. Leto and Jessica fall in love with one another, and she becomes his concubine, though they too do not wed in case an advantageous marriage alliance presents itself. Though instructed by the Bene Gesserit to bear the mourning Leto a daughter, Jessica intentionally conceives the son he desires. In 10,176 A.G., Jessica gives birth to their son Paul. Leto surrounds himself with loyal and capable individuals, and comes to be known as an effective politician, a fair and just statesman, and a capable leader of his small military. Elrood's son, the new Emperor Shaddam IV, both admires Leto, and dislikes him as a political rival. Framed by Baron Harkonnen for a crime aboard a heighliner, Leto subtly blackmails Shaddam into intervening on his behalf. Leto's military victory over the forces occupying Ix, and his role in the subsequent political censure of Shaddam, ensure Leto a vengeful enemy in the Emperor.
Daniel and Marty
Daniel and Marty are a pair of mysterious observers with advanced technological powers who are introduced in Frank Herbert's 1985 novel Chapterhouse: Dune. Herbert's 1986 death "left fans with an über-cliffhanger" for twenty years, until his son Brian Herbert and author Kevin J. Anderson published two sequels to the original series, Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007).
Chapterhouse Dune
In the final chapter of Chapterhouse Dune, a mysterious old man and woman calling themselves Daniel and Marty observe the escape of the no-ship from Chapterhouse. They speak of themselves as Face Dancers, the shapeshifting minions of the Tleilaxu:
Daniel and Marty hint that they observe and are familiar with various groups in the universe, and allude to their desire to capture and study the passengers of the no-ship. As to their motive, Marty says, "Gather up enough people and you get a big ball of knowledge, Daniel!" Earlier, Duncan Idaho had seen the observers in a vision, and came to his own conclusions:
With the subsequent death of Frank Herbert in 1986, the identities, motives and intentions of Daniel and Marty were left to speculation.
Sequels
In 2006's Hunters of Dune, Daniel and Marty are in constant pursuit of the escaped no-ship Ithaca, on which they believe is the Kwisatz Haderach they require to be victorious in the imminent and long-foretold "battle at the end of the universe" known as kralizec. Their Face Dancer minion Khrone is executing a parallel plan to create their own Kwisatz Haderach, using a Paul Atreides ghola that will be conditioned by a ghola of the Baron Harkonnen. Daniel and Marty themselves have the ability to create illusions, and to inflict pain on any human. At the end of Hunters of Dune, it is revealed that Daniel and Marty are not, in fact, Face Dancers: they are actually incarnations of the thinking machines Omnius (Daniel) and Erasmus (Marty), introduced in the Legends of Dune prequel trilogy (2002–2004) by Brian Herbert and Anderson. In the third Legends novel Dune: The Battle of Corrin (2004), Omnius had sent out a last blast of information before being destroyed in the Battle of Corrin. It is explained in Hunters that this signal had eventually connected with one of the probes disseminated from Giedi Prime several years earlier, uploading versions of Erasmus and Omnius.
In Sandworms of Dune (2007), Omnius and Erasmus finally capture the no-ship and pit the Paul ghola on board against their own twisted version, Paolo, in a duel to the death that will leave them with the strongest of the two. Paul survives, but realizes that Duncan is actually the "ultimate Kwisatz Haderach" that Omnius has been seeking. The Oracle of Time, the immortal founder of the Spacing Guild, transports every aspect of the Omnius network into another dimension forever. Erasmus offers Duncan the choice between continuing their war or ending it; Duncan chooses peace over victory, and he and Erasmus merge minds. Erasmus imparts Duncan with all the codes required to run the Synchronized Worlds, as well as all of Erasmus' knowledge, setting Duncan as the bridge between humans and machines to permanently end the divide and ensure that the two may co-exist. With little left for him, Erasmus again expresses his desire to learn everything possible about what it is to be human—and asks Duncan to deactivate him so that he may experience "death".
Analysis
William F. Touponce states unequivocally that Daniel and Marty are Face Dancers in his 1988 book Frank Herbert:
In an August 2007 review of Sandworms of Dune, John C. Snider of SciFiDimensions.com argues that it "doesn't fit" or "add up" that Frank Herbert's Daniel and Marty are the "malevolent" thinking machines Brian Herbert and Anderson created in their Legends of Dune prequel novels. He further wonders why "Omnius, long established as puzzled by and averse to human unpredictability, would want to breed that ultimate ungovernable—a Kwisatz Haderach".
Farad'n
Farad'n of House Corrino is the grandson of Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV by his daughter, the Princess Wensicia. He appears in Frank Herbert's 1976 novel Children of Dune, and his infancy is chronicled in the 2008 prequel Paul of Dune by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Farad'n is portrayed by Jonathan Brüün in the 2003 miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune.
Children of Dune
In Children of Dune, Farad'n is the grandson and heir to the deposed 81st Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV; his mother is Shaddam's third daughter Princess Wensicia, and his deceased father Dalak is noted to be related to Count Hasimir Fenring, a close friend of Shaddam's since childhood. Shaddam and most of his family are exiled to Salusa Secundus after he is deposed by Paul Atreides in Dune (1965).
As the novel begins, Shaddam is dead and Wensicia plots from exile to restore House Corrino to its former glory and wrest control of the Empire for Farad'n. She attempts to assassinate twins Leto II and Ghanima Atreides, Paul's heirs, by sending mechanically controlled Laza tigers to hunt them in the desert. Leto's growing prescience allows him to thwart the attack, but he pretends to be dead to escape the increasingly murderous ambitions of his father's sister Alia. Farad'n—newly trained in the Bene Gesserit ways by Paul and Alia's mother Lady Jessica—accepts an arrangement brokered by Jessica for him to marry Ghanima and share the throne; his part of the deal is to "denounce and banish" Wensicia for Leto's murder attempt, which he does. Leto reappears, now beginning the transformation into a human-sandworm hybrid, and ascends the throne himself. Leto, who is now physically incapable of siring children, commands Farad'n to father the future Atreides line as Ghanima's mate. Farad'n is also appointed as the Royal Scribe and renamed "Harq al'Ada" (the "breaker of habit"), and relinquishes his control of the Sardaukar to Leto, effectively surrendering House Corrino's claim to the Imperial throne.
Many of the chapter epigraphs in the novel are from the later writings of Farad'n (as Harq al'Ada) in his role as chronicler of the reign of Leto II.
Thufir Hawat
Thufir Hawat is a fictional character in the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert. He primarily appears in the 1965 novel Dune, but also in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999–2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. The character is brought back as a ghola in the Herbert/Anderson sequels which conclude the original series, Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007).
Hawat is portrayed by Freddie Jones in the 1984 film Dune, by in the 2000 Dune miniseries, and by Stephen McKinley Henderson in the 2021 Denis Villeneuve film Dune.
Dune
In Dune, Hawat is the Mentat Master of Assassins who has served House Atreides for multiple generations, until Duke Leto Atreides is killed by a Harkonnen attack. Hawat himself is captured by the Imperial Sardaukar during the attack and acquired by the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen through subterfuge.
Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, recognizing good talent and seeking a replacement for his late Mentat Piter De Vries, wishes to utilize Hawat's immense abilities. Calculating that Hawat would direct his efforts for revenge towards the Imperium instead of House Harkonnen, the Baron manages to enlist Hawat into his service while secretly making him chemically dependent on an antidote to a permanent latent poison developed by Piter De Vries and administered to Hawat in his food after his capture. The Baron, himself a dangerous intellect, also keeps Hawat's abilities in check by feeding him false data, specifically, permitting him to believe that Lady Jessica had been the traitor responsible for the Atreides' destruction.
In spite of these immense obstacles, Hawat very nearly brings down the Harkonnens from within. The Baron's nephew and heir Feyd-Rautha attempts to fight a drugged slave to impress the onlooking Count Fenring and his wife Lady Margot. Hawat arranges for Feyd to confront a trained Atreides soldier with his capacities fully intact, his plan being to discredit the Harkonnen slavemaster and replace him with someone loyal to Feyd. This later leads to an assassination attempt on the Baron, as Hawat encourages the ambitions of Feyd against his uncle. One of the Baron's male slave lovers is implanted with a poison needle; the Baron, warned by Hawat, eludes the attempt on his life and forces Feyd to personally kill every female slave in the pleasure houses.
At the conclusion of the novel, Hawat is coerced to assassinate Leto's son, Paul Atreides. Paul suspects this, but out of gratitude to Hawat's exceptional loyalty, Paul gives him the opportunity to take anything Hawat wishes of him, even his life. Hawat chooses death rather than to betray Paul.
Chapterhouse: Dune
In 1985's Chapterhouse: Dune, the last Tleilaxu Master Scytale is revealed to have a nullentropy capsule embedded in his chest, containing cells from many important past figures, including Hawat.
Hunters of Dune
In the Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Hunters of Dune (2006), the aging Scytale reveals the existence of the capsule to his Bene Gesserit captors out of desperation, and offers to assist in the production of gholas in exchange for a ghola of his own body. The venerable warrior-Mentat Hawat is one of the resurrected. He has a deep admiration for Miles Teg, a warrior-Mentat himself.
Liet-Kynes
Liet-Kynes is the Imperial Planetologist of the desert planet Arrakis. He primarily appears in Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, but also in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999–2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. The character is brought back as a ghola in Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007), the Herbert/Anderson sequels which conclude the original series.
Liet-Kynes is portrayed by Max von Sydow in David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, by Karel Dobrý in the 2000 Dune miniseries, and by Sharon Duncan-Brewster in the 2021 Denis Villeneuve film Dune.
Dune
In Dune, Duke Leto Atreides meets with Dr. Kynes, the Imperial Planetologist, soon after arriving on Arrakis to take over the melange harvesting operations there. Escorted by the planet's native Fremen, Kynes is the liaison between them and the Padishah Empire. The Atreides later hear of a person or deity named "Liet" to whom all the Fremen communities give allegiance. It is only after Leto is killed and his son Paul and concubine Lady Jessica flee into the desert that Liet and Kynes are revealed to be the same person. The son of Pardot Kynes, the first Imperial Planetologist of Arrakis, and a Fremen woman, Kynes is captured by the Harkonnens and left to die in the desert without a stillsuit or water. He is killed by a spice blow, and his last words are, "I am a desert creature!" His daughter, Chani, later becomes Paul's concubine.
Liet-Kynes's wife and Chani's mother is later identified as Faroula, "a noted herbalist among the Fremen".
Prelude to Dune
Liet-Kynes's origin as the son of Pardot and the Fremen woman Frieth is explored in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy. Frieth is the sister of Stilgar, a future leader of Sietch Tabr. Growing up under Fremen tradition, Liet inherits his father's position as planetologist as well as his secret goal of terraforming Arrakis into a temperate planet.
Lucilla
Lucilla is a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother and Imprinter. She appears in Frank Herbert's novels Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985).
Heretics of Dune
In Heretics of Dune, Reverend Mother Lucilla is a young, attractive Bene Gesserit Imprinter sent by Mother Superior Taraza to Gammu. Lucilla is tasked to teach the Duncan Idaho ghola the Sisterhood is raising there and bind his loyalty to through imprinting, while also protecting him from the negative influence—and possible danger—presented by dissenting Bene Gesserit who believe the ghola is a danger to the Sisterhood. Extremely precocious and already having divined the fact that he is a ghola, the young Duncan nurses hatred for the Bene Gesserit, hoping to escape their control of his life. He soon blossoms, however, under the training of Lucilla and Bashar Miles Teg, brought out of retirement in part to protect the ghola. An attempt is made on Duncan's life, and Teg and Lucilla flee with Duncan into the countryside. They hide in a forgotten Harkonnen no-globe, in which Teg uses his strong resemblance to Duke Leto I Atreides (the original Idaho's master) and a variety of relentless physical and mental attacks to awaken Duncan to his original memories. This occurs before Lucilla has imprinted the ghola, and his new self-awareness now makes it impossible for her to attempt it.
During their extraction, Teg and his companions are ambushed, and Teg sacrifices himself to capture while Lucilla and Duncan escape with Teg's protégé Burzmali. Duncan attempts to get off Gammu undetected in the guise of a Tleilaxu Master, but is taken hostage. Lucilla and Burzmali arrive at a Bene Gesserit safe house, but discover that it has been taken over by the Honored Matres. Lucilla manages to impersonate an Honored Matre as one of their number, Murbella, proceeds to seduce the captured Duncan with the Honored Matre imprinting technique. Hidden Tleilaxu conditioning kicks into action within Duncan and he responds with an equal technique, one that overwhelms Murbella in sexual pleasure, draining her energy. Taking advantage of Murbella's post-coital exhaustion, Lucilla knocks her unconscious. Escaping, Teg captures a no-ship and locates Duncan and Lucilla, and they flee with the captured Murbella as their prisoner.
Chapterhouse Dune
In Chapterhouse: Dune, Lucilla manages to escape Lampadas, a center for Bene Gesserit education where she had served as vice chancellor, before it is completely destroyed by the Honored Matres. She carries the salvation of Lampadas: the shared-minds of its millions of murdered Reverend Mothers. Unfortunately, Lucilla's ship is damaged by a mine and she makes a forced landing on Gammu. She seeks refuge with an underground group whom she knows will be sympathetic to the Bene Gesserit: Jews. Long ago, Jews went underground to escape the repeated pogroms against them. They continued to practice their religion in secret, under cover as "religious revivalists," to conceal their unbroken connection to ancient history. They were so successful that they have survived for 26,000 years while history believed them long since annihilated. The Bene Gesserit—with their memories of the past—were not deceived, and have developed a relationship with the Jews. Their leader, trapped in the web of mutual obligation, gives Lucilla temporary sanctuary, but in order to save his organization he must deliver Lucilla to the Honored Matres. To Lucilla's shock he reveals Rebecca, a "wild" Reverend Mother who has gained her Other Memories without Bene Gesserit training. Lucilla shares minds with Rebecca, who promises to take the memories of Lampadas safely back to the Sisterhood. Lucilla is then "betrayed" to the Honored Matres.
Lucilla is taken before the Great Honored Matre Dama, and to her surprise she is not killed outright. A game of words begins, and the Matre tries to persuade her to join the Honored Matres, preserving her life in exchange for Bene Gesserit secrets. It becomes known that the Matres dearly want to learn to modify their biochemistry as the Bene Gesserit do. It is speculated that the Matres were driven from The Scattering by an enemy who used biological weapons. Lucilla's word battles continue for weeks. When she reveals to Dama that although the Bene Gesserit know how to manipulate and control the populace, they practice and believe in democracy, Dama's desire to destroy the sisterhood is redoubled; the Bene Gesserit teach dangerous knowledge and believe in ridiculous ideas like democracy! Dama kills Lucilla. As deceased Taraza's replacement Odrade meets with Dama under the guise of negotiations, a newly awakened ghola of Miles Teg leads the Bene Gesserit forces in an attack on Gammu. In the midst of this battle, the Jews (including Rebecca with her precious memories) take refuge with the Bene Gesserit fleet. Rebecca is able to share these memories with the Bene Gesserit before Duncan, Teg and Sheeana flee Chapterhouse in a no-ship, with Rebecca and the Jews still aboard.
Murbella
Murbella is a young Honored Matre who eventually joins the Bene Gesserit. She appears primarily in Frank Herbert's novels Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985) but also in Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007), Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's sequel novels that complete Frank Herbert's original series.
Heretics of Dune
Murbella is a young Honored Matre who attempts to imprint the Bene Gesserit-loyal Duncan Idaho ghola in Heretics of Dune. She finds that the Tleilaxu have secretly programmed him with the male equivalent of the sexual powers used by the Honored Matres to enslave men. Murbella and Duncan imprint each other, and in her weakened condition Murbella is easily captured by the Bene Gesserit. Her new addiction to Duncan keeps Murbella subdued, and Bene Gesserit soon begin to train her as one of them, though they do not completely trust her.
Chapterhouse Dune
In Chapterhouse: Dune, Duncan and Murbella's mutual imprinting has made them reluctant lovers. Murbella collapses under the pressure of training and her pregnancy, but realizes that she admires and wants to be Bene Gesserit. Murbella submits to the spice agony to become a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother and survives. During a Bene Gesserit attack on the Honored Matres, Murbella kills the Great Honored Matre Logno with her Bene Gesserit-enhanced fighting skills, and the Honored Matres are awed by her physical prowess. The Bene Gesserit Mother Superior Darwi Odrade is also killed, and Murbella secures the leadership of both groups, per Odrade's plan. Murbella intends to merge the two orders into a New Sisterhood, which displeases some of the Bene Gesserit. The dissenters flee Chapterhouse with Duncan, Miles Teg, and Sheeana in a giant no-ship, and Murbella realizes their plan too late to stop them.
Sequels
In the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson sequel Hunters of Dune (2006), Murbella takes the title Mother Commander. She has four daughters by Duncan: Rinya, Janess, Tanidia, and Gianne. Murbella searches her Other Memory for the origin of the Honored Matres. She discovers that they are descendants of Tleilaxu females originally used as axlotl tanks, freed by Fish Speakers and rogue Bene Gesserits who allied in The Scattering. Murbella also discovers that the Honored Matres' "outside enemy" are thinking machines, provoked when the Honored Matres stole technologically advanced weapons, including Obliterators, from them. In the Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson sequel Sandworms of Dune (2007), Murbella now knows that the sentient computer network Omnius and his thinking machine forces are coming, and attempts to rally humankind for a last stand against the thinking machines. She commissions the scientists of Ix to copy the destructive Obliterators for use on the fleet of warships she has ordered from the Spacing Guild. However, Ix is now secretly controlled by Face Dancer leader Khrone. When Murbella is ready to launch her fleet, the Obliterators and Ixian navigation devices all suddenly fail, which Murbella realizes is sabotage. The Oracle of Time appears, destroying Omnius and the thinking machines with her own armada. Murbella is reunited with Duncan, who intends to end the divide between humans and thinking machines, allowing the two to co-exist.
Glossu Rabban
Glossu Rabban (also known as Beast Rabban) is the violent and sadistic nephew of the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. He appears primarily in Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, but also in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999–2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Rabban is portrayed by Paul L. Smith in David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, by in the 2000 Dune miniseries, and by Dave Bautista in the 2021 Denis Villeneuve film Dune.
Dune
Herbert writes in "Appendix IV: The Almanak of en-Ashraf (Selected Excerpts of the Noble Houses)" in Dune:
In the novel, Glossu Rabban is the older nephew of the Baron Harkonnen. He is as cruel and sadistic as his uncle, but lacks the Baron's intelligence. The Baron tasks Rabban to rule the planet Arrakis for a time in the most brutal way possible, so that when his favored nephew Feyd-Rautha takes over, Feyd will be welcomed as a hero by the populace. After the Baron seizes the planet back from Atreides control, Rabban tells his uncle that the Harkonnens have woefully underestimated both the numbers and threat of the Fremen population there. Known as "the Beast Rabban" on Arrakis for his aggression and cruelty, his Fremen nickname is "Mudir Nahya", which translates as "Demon Ruler" or "King Cobra". Rabban is killed by the Fremen and the people of Arrakeen when Paul "Muad'Dib" Atreides retakes Arrakis using Fremen forces. However, in the 1984 movie adaptation, he is executed by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV. Rabban's severed head is shown to the Baron Harkonnen as the Emperor scolds him for assigning to his nephew the governorship of Arrakis.
Travis Johnson of Flicks.com.au describes Rabban as "the Baron's murderous and notably less Machiavellian nephew". Noting that the characters in Dune fit mythological archetypes, novelist Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's son and biographer, writes that "Beast Rabban Harkonnen, though evil and aggressive, is essentially a fool."
Prelude to Dune
In the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy, Rabban kills Duncan Idaho's parents and Gurney Halleck's sister. He earns his nickname "Beast" when he strangles his own father.
Merchandising
When in 1984 toy company LJN released a line of Dune action figures, styled after David Lynch's film, the collection included a figure of Rabban.
Reverend Mother Ramallo
Reverend Mother Ramallo is a spiritual leader among the Fremen of the desert planet Arrakis, a "wild" version of a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother. She appears primarily in Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, but also in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999–2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Ramallo is portrayed by Italian actress Silvana Mangano in David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, and by Drahomíra Fialková in the 2000 Dune miniseries. A younger version of Ramallo was played by Petra Kulíková in this TV adaptation.
Dune
In Dune, Paul Atreides and his mother Lady Jessica flee a Harkonnen attack and find refuge among the Fremen of Sietch Tabr. Jessica soon realizes that their Reverend Mother Ramallo is a "wild" version of the Bene Gesserit equivalent. When Ramallo knows her own end is near, she subjects Jessica to the ritual spice agony to make her Ramallo's replacement. The Fremen ordeal to become a Reverend Mother involves ingesting the poisonous Water of Life. Jessica survives and shares minds with Ramallo, acquiring the older woman's life experiences and collective Other Memory, and then Ramallo dies.
Prelude to Dune
In Dune: House Harkonnen (2000), the second novel of the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy set before the events of Dune, Bene Gesserit Lady Margot Fenring seeks out the Fremen on Arrakis, looking for a group of Bene Gesserit sisters (including Ramallo) who had been sent there to assess the Missionaria Protectiva but who had never returned. The following quote is attributed to Ramallo via an epigraph in Dune: House Harkonnen:
Scytale
Scytale is a Tleilaxu Face Dancer who participates in the conspiracy to topple the rule of Paul Atreides in Frank Herbert's 1969 novel Dune Messiah. He later returns as a ghola and Tleilaxu Master in Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985). Scytale's story continues in Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007), Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's sequel novels that complete Frank Herbert's original series.
The character is portrayed by Martin McDougall in the 2003 miniseries Frank Herbert's Children of Dune.
Dune Messiah
In Dune Messiah (1969), Tleilaxu Face Dancer Scytale is involved with the Guild Navigator Edric, Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, and Princess Irulan of House Corrino (the consort of Emperor Paul Atreides) in a plot planned by Scytale himself to force Paul from the throne through assassination or abdication. Unlike later Face Dancers presented in the series, Scytale appears autonomous, and his high-level dealings with the other conspirators suggest a certain rank and level of trust among the Tleilaxu. Scytale notes of Face Dancers, "We are Jadacha hermaphrodites ... either sex at will." He subsequently kills and assumes the appearance of Lichna, the daughter of the trusted Fremen Otheym, in order to gain entrance to the Atreides Keep at Arrakeen and lure Paul out to Otheym's house, where Scytale has planted an atomic weapon. The attack fails to kill Paul, but the atomic blast blinds him. Scytale soon makes an attempt to force Paul's allegiance. With the Tleilaxu ghola of Duncan Idaho having regained the memories of the deceased original, Scytale has proven that the Tleilaxu can resurrect a human being. He offers Paul a ghola of his concubine Chani, who has just died giving birth to their twin children Leto II and Ghanima, in exchange for Paul surrendering his Empire to Tleilaxu control. Though tempted, Paul refuses. Scytale holds a knife over the newborn twins; unless Paul accepts, he will kill them instantly. Paul instead kills Scytale with a thrown crysknife, guided by a vision sent by his infant son.
Heretics of Dune
A Tleilaxu Master named Scytale is mentioned in Heretics of Dune (1984), 5000 years after the events of Dune Messiah. He is one of Tleilaxu leader Waff's nine councillors, and apparently a ghola of the original Scytale:
Though Herbert notes little about Tleilaxu Masters prior to Heretics, the novel establishes that after learning how to restore a ghola's memories in Dune Messiah, the Masters use this knowledge as a form of immortality. As in God Emperor of Dune (1981), Face Dancers are Tleilaxu servants rather than emissaries. Herbert does not explain how the Scytale of Messiah—a Face Dancer, though autonomous—could ascend to become a Master, or how the Master/Face Dancer relationship may have evolved over the millennia.
Chapterhouse Dune
In Chapterhouse Dune (1985), the Honored Matres have destroyed all of the Tleilaxu worlds in retaliation for the Tleilaxu role in programming the latest Duncan Idaho ghola with knowledge of how to sexually enslave Honored Matres. Scytale, likely the last surviving Tleilaxu Master, barely escapes the attack while leaving his homeworld and is given sanctuary by the Bene Gesserit. Essentially a prisoner, he is kept in a no-ship grounded on the secret Bene Gesserit planet Chapterhouse. In exchange for their protection, Scytale has given the Bene Gesserit the knowledge to create axlotl tanks to grow their own gholas. Desiring his own Face Dancer servants, axlotl tanks, and access to the ship's systems, Scytale has held back the secret to creating artificial melange for future negotiations. His secret bargaining chip is a nullentropy capsule containing cells carefully and covertly collected by the Tleilaxu for millennia:
Bene Gesserit leader Darwi Odrade notes that "Scytale admits to memories of Muad'Dib's times," and Herbert clarifies that Scytale is technically a clone, as the cells used to resurrect him had been taken from his living predecessor rather than a corpse. There is no indication in the text that this "reincarnated" Scytale possesses any of the Face Dancer abilities of his Dune Messiah incarnation.
Sequels
In Hunters of Dune (2006), Scytale remains a prisoner on the no-ship, which has escaped the Bene Gesserit planet Chapterhouse and wanders in deep space. He is desperate; the Tleilaxu sustain their lives indefinitely through the use of gholas; his current body is slowly dying, and he does not have another to replace it. Needing to grow a new ghola of himself, his only bargaining tool is the secret nullentropy capsule. It is noted that other cells in Scytale's possession include those of Duke Leto Atreides, Lady Jessica, Leto II and other legendary figures dating back to Serena Butler and Xavier Harkonnen from the Butlerian Jihad. The Bene Gesserit debate whether to create gholas of any of these historical figures, and despite the controversy, gholas are created a few at a time. Scytale is allowed to have his own once the first few have been born.
In Sandworms of Dune (2007), Scytale finally reawakens his own ghola's past memories using the trauma of watching the elder Scytale die in front of his younger self. Sheeana and the Orthodox Bene Gesserit Sisterhood establish a new home on Synchrony, and with Scytale's assistance have reestablished the ancient Bene Gesserit breeding program. Along with gholas of the Tleilaxu Masters, Scytale has grown Tleilaxu females from newly discovered cells, vowing that they will never again be forced into becoming axlotl tanks, in the hopes that this will prevent the creation of a vengeful enemy such as the Honored Matres from ever occurring again, and also vowing to never again allow the Masters to corrupt the recovering Tleilaxu people.
Stilgar
Stilgar is the leader of Sietch Tabr, a Fremen community on the desert planet Arrakis. He appears in Frank Herbert's novels Dune (1965), Dune Messiah (1969) and Children of Dune (1976). The character's early life is explored in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999–2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and he returns in the form of a ghola in the Herbert/Anderson conclusion to the original series, Sandworms of Dune (2007). Stilgar also appears in the prequels Paul of Dune (2008) and The Winds of Dune (2009).
Novelist Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's son and biographer, writes, "One time I asked my father if he identified with any of the characters in his stories, and to my surprise he said it was Stilgar, the rugged leader of the Fremen ... Mulling this over, I realized Stilgar was the equivalent of a Native American chief in Dune—a person who represented and defended time-honored ways that did not harm the ecology of the planet."
Stilgar is portrayed by Everett McGill in David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, by Uwe Ochsenknecht in the 2000 Dune miniseries, and by Steven Berkoff in the 2003 sequel miniseries Children of Dune. Stilgar is portrayed by Javier Bardem in the 2021 Denis Villeneuve film Dune.
Emmet Asher-Perrin of Tor.com called Ochsenknecht "a wonderfully gruff Stilgar", but later wrote, "Steven Berkoff is an incredible character actor, but there is nothing about him that even remotely invokes the old Fremen leader. Instead, he reads at the beginning like the Atreides family butler before moving onto Old British Wardog Supreme."
Original series
In the 1965 novel Dune, Paul Atreides and his mother Lady Jessica flee into the desert of Arrakis to escape a Harkonnen attack. Stilgar is the leader of Sietch Tabr, a Fremen community in which Paul and Jessica seek refuge. Stilgar has two wives; the first is Tharthar, and he later also marries Harah. Stilgar and his people eventually come to believe that Paul is their long-foretold messiah, the Mahdi. Paul leads them in taking back their planet from under Imperial control, and Paul becomes Emperor.
Subsequently, in Dune Messiah (1969), Stilgar is a staunch supporter and protector of Paul, and one of his inner circle of advisors which includes Paul's concubine Chani, his wife Princess Irulan and his sister Alia. At the end of Messiah, Stilgar executes the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and Spacing Guild Navigator Edric on Alia's orders, after their conspiracy to topple Paul's empire fails. In Children of Dune (1976), Stilgar has asserted his protection over Paul and Chani's orphaned children, Leto II and Ghanima. Later, with Leto presumed dead, Stilgar helps Ghanima and Irulan escape Alia's tyranny.
Prelude to Dune
The Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy establishes that Stilgar Ben Fifrawi had been born on Arrakis in 10,141 A.G. in Umbu Sietch of Tuan. Among the members of Umbu Sietch, he is known as Sahkan or "the Desert Hawk". In his youth, Stilgar and two friends, Turok and Ommun, are cornered by thuggish Harkonnen troops. Badly injured, Stilgar would have died if Pardot Kynes had not come and helped kill the Harkonnens. Because of this water-debt, Stilgar and Kynes become friends. Stilgar, Turok and Ommun promise to help Kynes achieve his dream of turning Arrakis into a paradise. In 10,175 A.G. Stilgar challenges Forad, the leader of Sietch Tabr, and defeats him to become the new leader. When Kynes dies, Stilgar watches over his son Liet-Kynes, and later Liet's daughter Chani.
Merchandising
When in 1984 toy company LJN released a line of Dune action figures, styled after David Lynch's film, the collection included a figure of Stilgar.
Miles Teg
Miles Teg, the former Supreme Bashar of the Bene Gesserit, appears primarily in Frank Herbert's novels Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985), but also in Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007), Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's sequel novels that complete Frank Herbert's original series.
Description
In Heretics of Dune (1984), Miles Teg, the former Supreme Bashar of the Bene Gesserit, is noted to be 296 standard years old, and to have a striking resemblance to his ancestor, Leto I Atreides. The son of the Bene Gesserit Lady Janet Roxbrough of Lernaeus (a Fish Speaker descendant) and Loschy Teg, a "CHOAM station factor" chosen for breeding by the Sisterhood for his "gene potential," Miles Teg had been instructed in the Bene Gesserit ways by his mother before being sent to Lampadas to train as a Mentat, a human computer.
Teg is a military genius, having a very strong sense of honor, loyalty, and many of the characteristics of House Atreides, his ancestors. He is well known for doing the unexpected. Teg is also not a melange addict (unlike most other people), not even resorting to the spice at old age when most others might wish to extend their lives.
By the time of the novel, Teg's wife had been dead for 38 years, his grown children living elsewhere except for his eldest daughter Dimela. She and her husband Firus take control of Teg's farm when he leaves Lernaeus; the couple have three children. Teg had a younger brother, Sabine, who had been poisoned on Romo. During the events of Heretics of Dune, it is revealed that Teg had fathered other children during his younger years, and he discovers that Reverend Mother Darwi Odrade is one of them.
Heretics of Dune
In Heretics of Dune, Bene Gesserit Mother Superior Taraza seeks out a retired Teg at his family home on the planet Lernaeus in hopes he will agree to take over the weapons training of the newest Duncan Idaho ghola. Later, on the planet Gammu, the Bene Gesserit Keep is stormed by the Bene Tleilax, and Teg, the Idaho ghola and Reverend Mother Lucilla escape into hiding in a long-forgotten Harkonnen no-globe discovered by Teg's aide, Patrin. He awakens Idaho's original memories and arranges to be rescued by his favorite student, Burzmali. They are intercepted, and Teg stays behind, giving Lucilla and Idaho time to attempt escape. Teg is then captured by the Honored Matres.
Teg is tortured by the Honored Matres using a T-Probe; under the severe stress and agony produced by the probe's attempts to gain control of his body and his knowledge, his Mentat abilities and Atreides genes elevate him to a higher level of being. He is able to move faster than the eye can see by accelerating his metabolism, and he gains mild prescience, which he describes as a doubled vision which gives him intimations of danger. His accelerated speed comes at the cost of incredible energy expenditure; he has to consume huge amounts of carbohydrates to regain his energy. After escaping his captors, he finds that his safe-house had been taken over by Honored Matres, who attempt to gain his allegiance. Seeing the terrible state their constant drive for power and contempt for the masses has lowered them to, he uses his incredible speed to slaughter them and escape once more. At the end of the book, he gathers a force of veterans who had served under him on previous campaigns from the bars of Ysai (formerly Barony) and manages to capture a no-ship from the Scattering using his tactical genius and new abilities. He takes the ship to Rakis to meet up with Bene Gesserits Sheeana and Odrade. The vast slaughter he had inflicted on the Honored Matres provokes an immense reaction from them; they destroy Rakis using Obliterators, turning the entire planet into a charred ball in order to be certain of killing him.
Chapterhouse Dune
At the beginning of Chapterhouse: Dune (1985), a ghola of Teg is birthed on orders from his daughter, Odrade, who is now Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit after Taraza's death at the end of Heretics of Dune. Odrade needs Teg's military abilities to thwart the worsening threat of the Honored Matres. The Bene Gesserit later reawaken him to his full memories prematurely by using Sheeana to imprint him. As the original Teg has been trained by his mother to resist such manipulation, the attempt subjects the Teg ghola to a heightened amount of stress which also unlocks the superhuman abilities acquired by Teg under Honored Matre torture in Heretics of Dune. A reawakened Teg leads the final assault upon the Honored Matres, but is captured when the Matres pretend to surrender. Murbella, a captive Honored Matre indoctrinated into the Bene Gesserit, kills the Honored Matre leader Logno as Bene Gesserit Mother Superior Odrade is killed, and Murbella manages to secure the leadership of both groups. Teg is released, later joining Sheeana and Duncan Idaho when they escape Bene Gesserit control in a no-ship.
Sequels
In Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's Hunters of Dune (2006), Duncan and Teg run the affairs on the no-ship—now named the Ithaca—being the only two passengers with experience in military leadership. Teg considers himself responsible for the security of the Ithaca and its vital cargo of historical gholas (including those of Teg's own ancestors Paul Atreides and Lady Jessica), produced in transit from genetic material possessed by captive passenger Scytale, purportedly the last Tleilaxu Master.
In Sandworms of Dune (2007), mysterious saboteurs conduct crippling attacks on the no-ship's systems, and Teg suspects that Face Dancers had infiltrated the ship during their escape from the planet of the Handlers in Hunters of Dune. Teg, Duncan, and the unawakened ghola of Thufir Hawat set about tightening the ship's security and hunting for the traitor; they are unsuccessful, and the unborn ghola of Duke Leto Atreides is killed while still gestating in an axlotl tank. Later Teg is shocked to discover that the Thufir ghola he had been training is a Face Dancer substitute. The other Face Dancer is revealed to have replaced the Rabbi, who before he is killed manages to lead the Ithaca to the Unknown Enemy who have been stalking the ship for years.
Caught in the Enemy's tachyon net and critically damaged, the Ithaca is trapped. Duncan sees a way to escape, but the ship is too damaged to do so; Teg decides to use his accelerated metabolism to repair the Ithaca. In mere moments—a period of weeks for Teg's body, in his accelerated time—Teg succeeds in repairing the ship and launches countermeasures against the attacking thinking machines. To sustain himself through this ordeal, he consumes vast quantities of melange and carbohydrates from the ship's stores. Teg returns to the bridge with only the strength to notify Duncan of the changes. His effort having resulted in massive cellular exhaustion, Teg collapses dead. Duncan's final attempt to escape the net fails, and the ship is brought back to the machine world Synchrony. En route, Duncan and Sheeana release the husk that is left of Teg's body into space, vowing that the Bashar will never be captured by the Enemy. Later, after the machines are defeated, Duncan asks Scytale for a new ghola of Teg, whom he'll need at his side in his new position as ruler of both mankind and machines.
Tylwyth Waff
Tylwyth Waff is the leader of the Bene Tleilax, a secretive race of genetic manipulators who traffic in biological products such as artificial eyes, gholas, and "twisted" Mentats. He is a major character in Frank Herbert's Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985). His story continues in Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007), Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson's sequel novels that complete Frank Herbert's original series.
In Heretics of Dune, Herbert describes Waff as "an elfin figure barely a meter and a half tall. Eyes, hair, and skin were shades of gray, all a stage for the oval face with its tiny mouth and line of sharp teeth".
Original series
In Heretics of Dune, Waff successfully replaces High Priest Tuek with a Face Dancer, a genetically-engineered Tleilaxu servant with the ability to mimic any human. He loses control of the duplicate, however, due to its eventual complete assimilation into its new form. Waff decides to ally with the Bene Gesserit after he is tricked into believing that they share the secret religious beliefs of the Tleilaxu. Meanwhile, he has a replacement ghola growing for himself in Bandalong, the capital city of the Tleilaxu homeworld Tleilax.
Sequels
It is revealed in Hunters of Dune that the Honored Matres who conquered Tleilax kept several of Waff's gholas alive, but in vegetative states. In order to recover the supposedly "lost" secret to producing melange in axlotl tanks, the Lost Tleilaxu scribe Uxtal is tasked to create new gholas from Waff's genetic material. Uxtal accelerates the process artificially, and of the first batch of eight Waff gholas, seven fail to regain their memories and are viciously killed. The massacre shocks the last ghola into regaining some of Waff's memories, but not enough to recreate the melange process. Later, the Waff ghola escapes the Bene Gesserit attack on Tleilax, finding refuge with the Spacing Guild by offering Guild Navigator Edrik the genetic knowledge for the Guild to create their own, optimized sandworms to produce melange.
In Sandworms of Dune, Waff alters the DNA of the sandworm's larval sandtrout stage to create an aquatic form of the worms, which are then released into the oceans of Buzzell. Adapting to their new environment, these "seaworms" quickly flourish, eventually producing a highly concentrated form of melange, dubbed "ultraspice". Waff makes a pilgrimage to Arrakis, original homeworld of the sandworms, and sacrifices himself to a worm, which to him is an embodiment of God.
Wellington Yueh
Dr. Wellington Yueh (; 10,082 A.G.−10,191 A.G.) is a Suk doctor, a highly trained physician who has been conditioned so as to be incapable of inflicting harm. He appears primarily in Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, but also in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999–2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. The character is brought back as a ghola in Hunters of Dune (2006) and Sandworms of Dune (2007), the Herbert/Anderson sequels which conclude the original series.
Yueh is portrayed by Dean Stockwell in David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, by Robert Russell in the 2000 Dune miniseries, and by Chang Chen in the 2021 Denis Villeneuve film Dune.
Dune
As Dune begins, the decadent Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is intent on the destruction of his enemy, Duke Leto Atreides. The Harkonnen agent within the Atreides household is Leto's own physician, the trusted Dr. Yueh. Though Suk Imperial Conditioning supposedly makes the subject incapable of inflicting harm, the Baron's twisted Mentat Piter De Vries says, "It's assumed that ultimate conditioning cannot be removed without killing the subject. However, as someone once observed, given the right lever you can move a planet. We found the lever that moved the doctor." Aware of Yueh's conditioning, Leto's Mentat Thufir Hawat is assured that the doctor is not a Harkonnen spy, and Leto's Bene Gesserit concubine Lady Jessica is also fooled, noting that "[Yueh's] wife was a Bene Gesserit slain by the Harkonnens ... Haven't you heard the hate in his voice when he speaks the Harkonnen name?" The Atreides are soon attacked by Harkonnen forces on the desert planet Arrakis, and Yueh follows the Baron's orders and disables the protective shields around the Atreides palace. Yueh takes Leto prisoner, but desiring to slay the Baron in defiance of his conditioning, Yueh provides the captive Leto with a fake tooth filled with poisonous gas as a means to kill the Baron (though Leto would die as well). The Baron is holding Yueh's wife Wanna hostage, and has threatened her with interminable torture unless Yueh complies with his demands. Upon delivering Leto, Yueh confirms his belief that Wanna is already dead moments before De Vries kills him, and Leto's poison gas tooth only kills Leto and De Vries. Leto's son Paul Atreides flees into the desert with his mother, Jessica, aided by survival kits left for them by a compassionate Yueh.
Prelude to Dune
In the Prelude to Dune prequel series, a younger Baron Harkonnen consults with Yueh seeking a cure for the debilitating disease which is slowly but surely rendering him obese; Yueh is aware of no cure, but correctly suggests that the disease's source may be the Bene Gesserit. The early years of Yueh as the physician to House Atreides are also explored in the novels.
Sequels
In Hunters of Dune, set 5,000 years after Dune, Yueh is resurrected as a ghola on the no-ship Ithaca to aid in the coming final battle with mankind's "great enemy."
In Sandworms of Dune, the sequel to Hunters of Dune and finale of the original series, the young Yueh ghola is wracked by feelings of intense guilt over the actions of the "original" Yueh. Though he does not yet possess those memories, he fears that he will repeat those mistakes. A ghola's memories are restored by subjecting the ghola to an intense personal trauma, specific to each individual; Yueh's great fear of having his memories restored becomes the trigger used by the Bene Gesserit to unlock them. Now recalling how Harkonnen had broken the Suk conditioning by forcing him to watch Wanna be brutally tortured, Yueh curses the Sisterhood, saying "I have them back ... And damn you witches to hell for it." Later, Yueh kills the gestating ghola of Leto, having been tricked into believing that it was De Vries, and ultimately also kills the ghola of the Baron Harkonnen. Eleven years later, Yueh lives on the original Atreides homeworld Caladan, helping the Jessica ghola restore it to its former glory.
Notes
References | en |
doc-en-6357 | Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–63), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–72) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Although female authors were published under their own names during her lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype of women's writing being limited to lighthearted romances or other lighter fare not to be taken very seriously. She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her already extensive and widely known work as a translator, editor, and critic. Another factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny, thus avoiding the scandal that would have arisen because of her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.
Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.
Life
Early life and education
Mary Ann Evans was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. She was the third child of Robert Evans (1773–1849) and Christiana Evans (née Pearson, 1788–1836), the daughter of a local mill-owner. She spelled her name differently at different times: Mary Anne was the spelling used by her father for the baptismal record and she uses this spelling in her earliest letters. Within her family, however, it was spelled Mary Ann. By 1852, she had changed to Marian, but she reverted to Mary Ann in 1880 after she married John Cross. Mary Ann Cross (George Eliot) appears on her memorial stone.
Her full siblings were Christiana, known as Chrissey (1814–59), Isaac (1816–1890), and twin brothers who died a few days after birth in March 1821. She also had a half-brother, Robert Evans (1802–64), and half-sister, Frances "Fanny" Evans Houghton (1805–82), from her father's previous marriage to Harriet Poynton (1780-1809). Her father Robert Evans, of Welsh ancestry, was the manager of the Arbury Hall Estate for the Newdigate family in Warwickshire, and Mary Ann was born on the estate at South Farm. In early 1820 the family moved to a house named Griff House, between Nuneaton and Bedworth.
The young Evans was a voracious reader and obviously intelligent. Because she was not considered physically beautiful, Evans was not thought to have much chance of marriage, and this, coupled with her intelligence, led her father to invest in an education not often afforded women. From ages five to nine, she boarded with her sister Chrissey at Miss Latham's school in Attleborough, from ages nine to thirteen at Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, and from ages 13 to 16 at Miss Franklin's school in Coventry. At Mrs. Wallington's school, she was taught by the evangelical Maria Lewis—to whom her earliest surviving letters are addressed. In the religious atmosphere of the Misses Franklin's school, Evans was exposed to a quiet, disciplined belief opposed to evangelicalism.
After age sixteen, Evans had little formal education. Thanks to her father's important role on the estate, she was allowed access to the library of Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her self-education and breadth of learning. Her classical education left its mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only one of her books can be printed correctly without the use of a Greek typeface), and her themes are often influenced by Greek tragedy". Her frequent visits to the estate also allowed her to contrast the wealth in which the local landowner lived with the lives of the often much poorer people on the estate, and different lives lived in parallel would reappear in many of her works. The other important early influence in her life was religion. She was brought up within a low church Anglican family, but at that time the Midlands was an area with a growing number of religious dissenters.
Move to Coventry
In 1836 her mother died and Evans (then 16) returned home to act as housekeeper, but she continued correspondence with her tutor Maria Lewis. When she was 21, her brother Isaac married and took over the family home, so Evans and her father moved to Foleshill near Coventry. The closeness to Coventry society brought new influences, most notably those of Charles and Cara Bray. Charles Bray had become rich as a ribbon manufacturer and had used his wealth in the building of schools and in other philanthropic causes. Evans, who had been struggling with religious doubts for some time, became intimate friends with the radical, free-thinking Brays, whose "Rosehill" home was a haven for people who held and debated radical views. The people whom the young woman met at the Brays' house included Robert Owen, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through this society Evans was introduced to more liberal and agnostic theologies and to writers such as David Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach, who cast doubt on the literal truth of Biblical texts. In fact, her first major literary work was an English translation of Strauss's Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet as The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined (1846), which she completed after it had been left incomplete by Elizabeth "Rufa" Brabant, another member of the "Rosehill Circle".
The Strauss book had caused a sensation in Germany by arguing that the miracles in the New Testament were mythical additions with little basis in fact. Evans's translation had a similar effect in England, The Earl of Shaftesbury calling her translation "the most pestilential book ever vomited out of the jaws of hell." Later she translated Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity (1854). The ideas in these books would have an effect on her own fiction, as detailed below.
As a product of their friendship, Bray published some of Evans's own earliest writing, such as reviews, in his newspaper the Coventry Herald and Observer.
As Evans began to question her own religious faith, her father threatened to throw her out of the house, but his threat was not carried out. Instead, she respectfully attended church and continued to keep house for him until his death in 1849, when she was 30. Five days after her father's funeral, she travelled to Switzerland with the Brays. She decided to stay on in Geneva alone, living first on the lake at Plongeon (near the present-day United Nations buildings) and then on the second floor of a house owned by her friends François and Juliet d'Albert Durade on the rue de Chanoines (now the rue de la Pelisserie). She commented happily that "one feels in a downy nest high up in a good old tree". Her stay is commemorated by a plaque on the building. While residing there, she read avidly and took long walks in the beautiful Swiss countryside, which was a great inspiration to her. François Durade painted her portrait there as well.
Move to London and editorship of the Westminster Review
On her return to England the following year (1850), she moved to London with the intent of becoming a writer, and she began referring to herself as Marian Evans. She stayed at the house of John Chapman, the radical publisher whom she had met earlier at Rosehill and who had published her Strauss translation. Chapman had recently purchased the campaigning, left-wing journal The Westminster Review. Evans became its assistant editor in 1851 after joining just a year earlier. Evans's writings for the paper were comments on her views of society and the Victorian way of thinking. She was sympathetic to the lower classes and criticised organised religion throughout her articles and reviews and commented on contemporary ideas of the time. Much of this was drawn from her own experiences and knowledge and she used this to critique other ideas and organisations. This led to her writing being viewed as authentic and wise but not too obviously opinionated. Evans also focused on the business side of the Review with attempts to change its layout and design. Although Chapman was officially the editor, it was Evans who did most of the work of producing the journal, contributing many essays and reviews beginning with the January 1852 issue and continuing until the end of her employment at the Review in the first half of 1854. Eliot sympathized with the 1848 Revolutions throughout continental Europe, and even hoped that the Italians would chase the "odious Austrians" out of Lombardy and that "decayed monarchs" would be pensioned off, although she believed a gradual reformist approach to social problems was best for England.
In 1850–51, Evans attended classes in mathematics at the Ladies College in Bedford Square, later known as Bedford College, London.
Relationship with George Lewes
The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes (1817–78) met Evans in 1851, and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes was already married to Agnes Jervis, although in an open marriage. In addition to the three children they had together, Agnes also had four children by Thornton Leigh Hunt. In July 1854, Lewes and Evans travelled to Weimar and Berlin together for the purpose of research. Before going to Germany, Evans continued her theological work with a translation of Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, and while abroad she wrote essays and worked on her translation of Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, which she completed in 1856, but which was not published in her lifetime.
The trip to Germany also served as a honeymoon for Evans and Lewes, who subsequently considered themselves married. Evans began to refer to Lewes as her husband and to sign her name as Mary Ann Evans Lewes, legally changing her name to Mary Ann Evans Lewes after his death. It was not so much the adultery itself, but the refusal to conceal the relationship, that was felt to breach the social convention of the time, and attracted so much disapproval.
Career in fiction
While continuing to contribute pieces to the Westminster Review, Evans resolved to become a novelist, and set out a pertinent manifesto in one of her last essays for the Review, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" (1856). The essay criticised the trivial and ridiculous plots of contemporary fiction written by women. In other essays, she praised the realism of novels that were being written in Europe at the time, an emphasis on realistic storytelling confirmed in her own subsequent fiction. She also adopted a nom-de-plume, George Eliot; as she explained to her biographer J. W. Cross, George was Lewes's forename, and Eliot was "a good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word".
In 1857, when she was 37 years of age, "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton", the first of the three stories included in Scenes of Clerical Life, and the first work of "George Eliot", was published in Blackwood's Magazine. The Scenes (published as a 2-volume book in 1858), was well received, and was widely believed to have been written by a country parson, or perhaps the wife of a parson. Evans's first complete novel, published in 1859, was Adam Bede. It was an instant success, and prompted yet more intense curiosity as to the author's identity: there was even a pretender to the authorship, one Joseph Liggins. This public interest subsequently led to Marian Evans Lewes's acknowledgment that it was she who stood behind the pseudonym George Eliot. Adam Bede is known for embracing a realist aesthetic inspired by Dutch visual art.
The revelations about Eliot's private life surprised and shocked many of her admiring readers, but this did not affect her popularity as a novelist. Her relationship with Lewes afforded her the encouragement and stability she needed to write fiction, but it would be some time before the couple were accepted into polite society. Acceptance was finally confirmed in 1877 when they were introduced to Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria. The queen herself was an avid reader of all of Eliot's novels and was so impressed with Adam Bede that she commissioned the artist Edward Henry Corbould to paint scenes from the book.
When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Eliot expressed sympathy for the Union cause, something which historians have attributed to her abolitionist sympathies. In 1868, she supported philosopher Richard Congreve's protests against governmental policies in Ireland and had a positive view of the growing movement in support of Irish home rule.
She was influenced by the writings of John Stuart Mill and read all of his major works as they were published. In Mill's Subjection of Women (1869) she judged the second chapter excoriating the laws which oppress married women "excellent." She was supportive of Mill's parliamentary run, but believed that the electorate was unlikely to vote for a philosopher and was surprised when he won. While Mill served in parliament, she expressed her agreement with Mill's efforts on behalf of female suffrage, being "inclined to hope for much good from the serious presentation of women's claims before Parliament." In a letter to John Morley, she declared her support for plans "which held out reasonable promise of tending to establish as far as possible an equivalence of advantage for the two sexes, as to education and the possibilities of free development", and dismissed appeals to nature in explaining women's lower status. In 1870, she responded enthusiastically to Lady Amberley's feminist lecture on the claims of women for education, occupations, equality in marriage, and child custody.
After the success of Adam Bede, Eliot continued to write popular novels for the next fifteen years. Within a year of completing Adam Bede, she finished The Mill on the Floss, dedicating the manuscript: "To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21 March 1860." Silas Marner (1861) and Romola (1863) soon followed, and later Felix Holt, the Radical (1866) and her most acclaimed novel, Middlemarch (1871–1872).
Her last novel was Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, after which she and Lewes moved to Witley, Surrey. By this time Lewes's health was failing, and he died two years later, on 30 November 1878. Eliot spent the next two years editing Lewes's final work, Life and Mind, for publication, and found solace and companionship with John Walter Cross, a Scottish commission agent 20 years her junior, whose mother had recently died.
Marriage to John Cross and death
On 16 May 1880 Eliot married John Walter Cross (1840–1924) and again changed her name, this time to Mary Ann Cross. While the marriage courted some controversy due to the difference in ages, it pleased her brother Isaac, who had broken off relations with her when she had begun to live with Lewes, and now sent congratulations. While the couple were honeymooning in Venice, Cross, in a reported suicide attempt, jumped from the hotel balcony into the Grand Canal. He survived, and the newlyweds returned to England. They moved to a new house in Chelsea, but Eliot fell ill with a throat infection. This, coupled with the kidney disease with which she had been afflicted for several years, led to her death on 22 December 1880 at the age of 61.
Due to her denial of the Christian faith and her adulterous affair with Lewes, Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey. She was buried in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London, in the area reserved for political and religious dissenters and agnostics, beside the love of her life, George Henry Lewes. The graves of Karl Marx and her friend Herbert Spencer are nearby. In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets' Corner.
Several landmarks in her birthplace of Nuneaton are named in her honour. These include The George Eliot School, Middlemarch Junior School, George Eliot Hospital (formerly Nuneaton Emergency Hospital), and George Eliot Road, in Foleshill, Coventry.
A statue of Eliot is in Newdegate Street, Nuneaton, and Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery has a display of artifacts related to her.
Literary assessment
Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen. From Adam Bede to The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner, Eliot presented the cases of social outsiders and small-town persecution. Felix Holt, the Radical and The Legend of Jubal were overtly political, and political crisis is at the heart of Middlemarch, in which she presents the stories of a number of inhabitants of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill of 1832; the novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits. The roots of her realist philosophy can be found in her review of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review in 1856.
Readers in the Victorian era praised her novels for their depictions of rural society. Much of the material for her prose was drawn from her own experience. She shared with Wordsworth the belief that there was much value and beauty to be found in the mundane details of ordinary country life. Eliot did not, however, confine herself to stories of the English countryside. Romola, a historical novel set in late fifteenth century Florence, was based on the life of the Italian priest Girolamo Savonarola. In The Spanish Gypsy, Eliot made a foray into verse, but her poetry's initial popularity has not endured.
Working as a translator, Eliot was exposed to German texts of religious, social, and moral philosophy such as Friedrich Strauss’s Life of Jesus, Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity, and Spinoza’s Ethics. Elements from these works show up in her fiction, much of which is written with her trademark sense of agnostic humanism. She had taken particular notice of Feuerbach’s conception of Christianity, positing that our understanding of the nature of the divine was to be found ultimately in the nature of humanity projected onto a divine figure. An example of this philosophy appeared in her novel Romola, in which Eliot’s protagonist displayed a "surprisingly modern readiness to interpret religious language in humanist or secular ethical terms." Though Eliot herself was not religious, she had respect for religious tradition and its ability to maintain a sense of social order and morality.
The religious elements in her fiction also owe much to her upbringing, with the experiences of Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss sharing many similarities with the young Mary Ann Evans. Eliot also faced a quandary similar to that of Silas Marner, whose alienation from the church simultaneously meant his alienation from society. Because Eliot retained a vestigial respect for religion, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche excoriated her system of morality for figuring sin as a debt that can be expiated through suffering, which he demeaned as characteristic of "little moralistic females à la Eliot."
She was at her most autobiographical in Looking Backwards, part of her final published work Impressions of Theophrastus Such. By the time of Daniel Deronda, Eliot's sales were falling off, and she had faded from public view to some degree. This was not helped by the posthumous biography written by her husband, which portrayed a wonderful, almost saintly, woman totally at odds with the scandalous life people knew she had led. In the 20th century she was championed by a new breed of critics, most notably by Virginia Woolf, who called Middlemarch "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people". In 1994, literary critic Harold Bloom placed Eliot among the most important Western writers of all time. In a 2007 authors' poll by Time, Middlemarch was voted the tenth greatest literary work ever written. In 2015, writers from outside the UK voted it first among all British novels "by a landslide". The various film and television adaptations of Eliot's books have re-introduced her to the wider reading public.
Works
Novels
Adam Bede, 1859
The Mill on the Floss, 1860
Silas Marner, 1861
Romola, 1863
Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866
Middlemarch, 1871–72
Daniel Deronda, 1876
Poetry
Knowing That I Must Shortly Put Off This Tabernacle, 1840
In a London Drawingroom, 1865
A Minor Prophet, 1865
A Minor Prophet free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
Two Lovers, 1866
Two Lovers free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
The Choir Invisible, 1867
The Choir Invisible free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
The Spanish Gypsy, 1868
The Spanish Gypsy free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
Agatha, 1868
Agatha free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
Brother and Sister, 1869
The Brother and Sister free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
How Lisa Loved the King, 1869
How Lisa Loved the King free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
Armgart, 1870
Armgart free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
Stradivarius, 1873
Stradivarius free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
Arion, 1873
Arion free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
The Legend of Jubal, 1874
The Legend of Jubal free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
I Grant You Ample Leave, 1874
Evenings Come and Go, Love, 1878
Evenings Come and Go, Love free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
Self and Life, 1879
Self and Life free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
A College Breakfast Party, 1879
A College Breakfast Party free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
The Death of Moses, 1879
The Death of Moses free PDF of Blackwood's 1878 Cabinet Edition (the critical standard with Eliot's final corrections) at the George Eliot Archive
Other
Digital facsimile of manuscript "Quarry for Middlemarch", MS Lowell 13, Houghton Library, Harvard University
Translation of Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet (The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined) Volume 2 by David Strauss, 1846
Translation of Das Wesen des Christentums (The Essence of Christianity) by Ludwig Feuerbach, 1854
Translation of The Ethics of Benedict de Spinoza by Benedict de Spinoza, 1856
"Three Months in Weimar", 1855
"Silly Novels by Lady Novelists", 1856
"The Natural History of German Life", 1856
Scenes of Clerical Life, 1857
The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton
Mr Gilfil's Love Story
Janet's Repentance
The Lifted Veil, 1859
Brother Jacob, 1864
"The Influence of Rationalism", 1865
Impressions of Theophrastus Such, 1879
Review of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review, April 1856
Notes
References
Citations
General sources
Ashton, Rosemary (1997). George Eliot: A Life. London: Penguin, 1997.
Bloom, Harold. (1994). The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Cross, J. W. (ed.), (1885). George Eliot's life as related in her letters and journals, 3 vols. London: William Blackwood and Sons.
Haight, Gordon S. (1968). George Eliot: A Biography. New York: Oxford University Press.
Karl, Frederick R., George Eliot: Voice of a Century: A Biography, New York, W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1995, .
Further reading
Stephen, Leslie. George Eliot, Cambridge University Press, 2010, (first edition 1902).
Haight, Gordon S., ed., George Eliot: Letters, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1954, .
Henry, Nancy, The Life of George Eliot: A Critical Biography, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012
Context and background
Beer, Gillian, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, .
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1979, .
Hughes, Kathryn, George Eliot: The Last Victorian, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998, .
Maddox, Brenda, George Eliot in Love, New York, St. Martin's Press, 2010, .
Pinney, Thomas, ed., Essays of George Eliot, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, .
Rignall, John, ed., Oxford Reader's Companion to George Eliot, Oxford University Press, 2000,
Shuttleworth, Sally, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, .
Uglow, Jenny, George Eliot, London, Virago Press, 1987, .
Critical studies
Alley, Henry, The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George Eliot, University of Delaware Press, 1997.
Beaty, Jerome, Middlemarch from Notebook to Novel: A Study of George Eliot's Creative Method, Champaign, Illinois, University of Illinois, 1960.
Carroll, Alicia, Dark Smiles: Race and Desire in George Eliot, Ohio University Press, 2003.
Carroll, David, ed., George Eliot: The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.
Daiches, David, George Eliot: Middlemarch, London, Edward Arnold, 1963.
Arnold, Jean, ed., Marz Harper, Lila, ed., George Eliot: Interdisciplinary Essays, Springer International Publishing, 2019.
Graver, Suzanne, George Eliot and Community: A Study in Social Theory and Fictional Form, Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1984.
Hardy, Barbara Nathan, The Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Form. Oxford UP, 1967.
Harvey, W J, The Art of George Eliot, London, Chatto & Windus, 1961.
Leavis, F R, The Great Tradition, London, Chatto & Windus, 1948.
External links
George Eliot Archive
George Eliot Review Online
George Eliot Scholars
The George Eliot Fellowship
The Victorian Web: George Eliot
George Eliot at the British Library
Online editions
Works by George Eliot at the George Eliot Archive,
Works about George Eliot at the George Eliot Archive, George Eliot Review Online, and George Eliot Scholars
1819 births
1880 deaths
19th-century English women writers
19th-century English novelists
19th-century British philosophers
19th-century British translators
Alumni of Bedford College, London
Alumni of the University of London
British women essayists
Burials at Highgate Cemetery
Deaths from kidney disease
English essayists
English atheists
English agnostics
English humanists
English people of Welsh descent
English philosophers
English sceptics
English translators
English women novelists
English women philosophers
People from Nuneaton
Pseudonymous women writers
Spinozists
Translators of Baruch Spinoza
Victorian novelists
Victorian women writers
19th-century British journalists
English abolitionists
19th-century pseudonymous writers | en |
doc-en-6898 | Nelvana Enterprises, Inc. () (previously known as Nelvana Limited, sometimes known as Nelvana Animation) is a Canadian animation studio and entertainment company owned by Corus Entertainment. Founded on July 30, 1971 by Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert and Clive A. Smith, it was named after Nelvana of the Northern Lights, the first Canadian national superhero, who was created by Adrian Dingle. The company's production logo is a polar bear looking at the North Star.
The company is based in Toronto, Ontario, and it maintains international offices in France, Ireland and Japan, as well as smaller offices in the top three cities in the U.S. Many of its films, shows and specials are based on licensed properties and literature, but original programming is also part of its roster. Although the company specializes in children's media, Nelvana has also co-produced adult animations like Clone High, John Callahan's Quads, Bob & Margaret, and Committed.
Nelvana International distributes Nickelodeon's Taina and the first five seasons of The Fairly OddParents & Wolfoo. , its library comprised more than 1,650 cumulative half-hours of original programming.
History
1970s
Nelvana started in 1971 when two graduates of York University, Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, teamed up with a Vitaphone animator-designer Clive A. Smith in Toronto, Ontario. Hirsh and Loubert, who had a passion for underground filmmaking, had founded a small company called Laff Arts in the late 1960s. Smith, whose interest was in rock n' roll music, had previously been among the crew for the Beatles' animated series and their 1968 film, Yellow Submarine. Hirsh has commented on the background of Nelvana's founding:
Soon after they saw a collection of local comic books from the 1940s and acquired the ownership rights. In turn, they made a half-hour television documentary for the CBC focusing on Canadian comics. Their two-year traveling tour of the art from the National Gallery of Canada, "Comic Art Traditions in Canada, 1941–45", gave locals a chance to revisit the country's past heritage in that field. Meanwhile, Hirsh and Loubert collaborated on a related primer from Peter Martin and Associates, The Great Canadian Comic Books. Amid all this success, Hirsh, Loubert and Smith named their new enterprise Nelvana—after a Canadian comic book superheroine from World War II, Nelvana of the Northern Lights, who was one of the characters in the Canadian Whites canon.
A derelict apartment in downtown Toronto served as the company's first building, and a homemade wooden stand mounted over a toilet was among its first camera equipment. "To create zooms," Hirsh recalled of his early experience with this machine, "we would pile up phone books under the art work." During their first year and a half, the trio lived off a superfluous Chargex credit card that Loubert received at university, spending up to C$7,500 on it before they reclaimed double that cost as their first ever transaction. Under those conditions, Nelvana was involved in the production of documentaries and live-action films during the early 1970s. In the area of part-time animation work, they made ten C$1,500 fillers for the CBC.
Among the studio's first productions was a low-budget CBC short subject series, Small Star Cinema, which combined live-action and animation to tell stories of ordinary life from a child's point of view. It was followed by Nelvana's first ever television special Christmas Two Step in 1975, a similarly styled special in which a girl tries to be a lead dancer at a Christmas pageant. When Nelvana was founded in 1971, their original goal was to create live-action productions involving animation in them during their early days.
Nelvana worked on their first television specials: A Cosmic Christmas (1977), The Devil and Daniel Mouse (1978), Romie-0 and Julie-8 (1979), Please Don't Eat the Planet (better known by its subtitle, Intergalactic Thanksgiving) (1979), Easter Fever (1980) and Take Me Up to the Ball Game (1980). During that time, George Lucas, an aficionado of their work, commissioned the company to work on a 10-minute sequence for the CBS and CTV TV film, Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. This short scene, officially entitled "The Faithful Wookiee", would not only feature the original character's voices including Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels and James Earl Jones, but also introduce audiences to the villainous bounty hunter Boba Fett, who would not make his first theatrical appearance until two years later in 1980's The Empire Strikes Back. This first animated appearance created a great buzz around the new character. Nelvana also started to use the polar bear as its mascot.
1980s
At the beginning of the 1980s, Nelvana was offered the chance to work on Heavy Metal, an animated anthology of science fiction stories that studios in Canada and other countries were working on. Nelvana declined this opportunity, instead going on to concentrate on the production of its first feature film, Rock & Rule.
Based heavily on the earlier special The Devil and Daniel Mouse, and originally titled Drats!, the film was produced for five years using all of the studio's resources, totalling $8 million. Upon its release by MGM/UA in 1983, it received little promotion in the U.S. and quickly disappeared at the box office.
The financial demise of Rock & Rule would have ended Nelvana's operations altogether, had the company never saved themselves from debt by working full-time on children's television series. On its agenda at that time were its first three live-action franchises, The Edison Twins, 20 Minute Workout and Mr. Microchip. With DIC Entertainment, Nelvana worked on the first season of Inspector Gadget, and animated the pilot episode of The Get Along Gang.
Early in the decade, the company worked on four television specials based on American Greetings properties. They were The Magic of Herself the Elf, based on Mattel's toy line; Strawberry Shortcake: Housewarming Surprise; Strawberry Shortcake and the Baby Without a Name; and Strawberry Shortcake Meets the Berrykins, the last three of which featured the eponymous doll. There were two shows from Nelvana based on the AmToy properties, Madballs and My Pet Monster.
Despite the successes of their earlier works, perhaps its greatest success at the time came in the form of the Care Bears, thanks to its acquisition of the character rights from American Greetings, the franchise owners. In early 1985, the first film based on the toy line turned the company's assets around, grossing US$23 million in the U.S., and another $1.5 million in its native Canada. Its tremendous success gave way to two more feature films, A New Generation and Adventure in Wonderland, as well as a television series.
In the area of science fiction, Nelvana produced Droids and Ewoks, two Saturday-morning series based on Star Wars. At one point, there was talk of an animated CBS show from the studio, based on BBC's Doctor Who; the plan never came to fruition, but concept art was created by Ted Bastien.
For Orion Pictures' 1986 live-action western comedy, Three Amigos, the company made use of lip-sync animation for a musical sequence in which the main characters sing a song at a campfire, with their horses singing along. In 1987, Michael Hirsh produced Nelvana's first self-made film of this calibre, the comedy feature Burglar, which was the first live-action feature film the company had ever produced.
Also in 1987, the company, along with independent filmmaker Pierre David, film, video, and television production company Malofilm Group, and home video distributor New Star Entertainment, formed Image Organization, an independent production company that mainly specialized in the thriller genre and tied itself to over 100 films in the international market by 1996. Nelvana and New Star would sell their shares in the company to David and Malofilm in 1989.
In 1988, Nelvana and Scholastic Corporation produced a video series of The Video Adventures of Clifford the Big Red Dog based on the 1962 book. It was also distributed by Family Home Entertainment on the video releases.
The company's fourth live-action series, T. and T., premiered in 1988 on Canada's Global network. The show's titular duo was Mr. T of A-Team fame, playing a former boxer named T.S. Turner, and Canadian actress Kristina Nicoll as an East Coast lawyer by the name of Terri Taler. Nelvana faced bankruptcy for the second time when the show's original U.S. distributor was going out of business; in six weeks, they were saved when they found a replacement. Also that year, Nelvana established BearSpots, a facility for producing television commercials that lasted until 1993.
As the decade came to a close, the revived Nelvana had its next big success with a film and an HBO television show based on Jean de Brunhoff's Babar book series. This franchise, its first international co-production, won many ACE Awards in the U.S. and Geminis in Canada. In September 1989, ABC began to air one of the company's products: an animated series based on Tim Burton's Beetlejuice.
1990s
Following Babar's success, the studio acquired the rights to animated series based on Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, Maurice Sendak's Little Bear, Joanna Cole's The Magic School Bus and the British comic strip Rupert Bear. Nelvana had self-made successes of its own during the 1990s, such as Eek! The Cat, Dog City (with Jim Henson Productions) and Ned's Newt (with TMO Film GmbH). Less successful was its animated series for children, Roseanne Barr's Little Rosey for the American Broadcasting Company, which was cancelled in 1991, after its first season.
In Autumn 1993, Nelvana signed a multi-year project to produce five feature films for Paramount Pictures, with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall producing; the first two began production the following summer, at a cost of over US$20 million each. Three of the projects were based on books by E. B. White (The Trumpet of the Swan), Clive Barker (The Thief of Always) and Graeme Base (The Sign of the Seahorse); an original production called Mask Vision was also in the works.
However, none of those films ever made it past the finishing stage. During the 1990s, another set of features from Nelvana was distributed by various companies. A 1993 live-action psychological thriller called Malice came out under the Columbia Pictures banner; 1997 saw the studio's retelling of Pippi Longstocking from Warner Bros.; and Babar: King of the Elephants was released in Canada by Alliance Atlantis in 1999. Among them, only Malice would go on to achieve box-office success in North America. Its US$46 million gross was the highest ever attained by a Nelvana production, doubling what the first Care Bears Movie received during its original release.
In 1993, Nelvana along with Galaxy Films and De Souza Productions produced Cadillacs and Dinosaurs for the CBS network, based on the comic book of the same name (formally known as Xenozoic Tales) by Mark Schultz. It only lasted one season.
In September 1995, Nelvana produced Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys based on the popular well-known book series. Tracy Ryan portrayed Nancy Drew while Colin Gray and Paul Popowich portrayed Frank and Joe Hardy, respectively. In addition, Jehene Erwin and Joy Tanner portrayed Bess Marvin and George Fayne, respectively, on Nancy Drew, while Fiona Highet played new character Kate Craigen. The series were based on The Nancy Drew Files and The Hardy Boys Casefiles. However, the series was not distributed well, mostly due to it being in first-run syndication, and both series were cancelled in December.
In September 1996, Golden Books Family Entertainment was in talks to acquire the company for US$102 million, just after having purchased the family video library of Broadway Video Entertainment, a subsidiary of Broadway Video. Many of the company's staff members, including Smith and Loubert, expressed interest in the proposition. But Hirsh went up against it, arguing with then COO Eleanor Olmsted about its possible effects on his institution. Two months later Golden Books withdrew from the deal stating that they would concentrate more on children's entertainment.
In November 1996, Virgin Interactive released Toonstruck, a PC-based adventure game featuring animation and artwork produced by Nelvana and Rainbow Animation. The game was set in an animated world using traditional 2D animation, but also featured the digitized likeness of actor Christopher Lloyd as a live-action character trapped in the animated world interacting with the cartoon characters around him. A sequel to the game was planned, but was cancelled due to poor sales.
In 1997, a small computer animation company called Windlight Studios was absorbed into Nelvana's assets. Its co-founder, Scott Dyer, became Nelvana's senior vice-president in charge of production in late 2001.
In late 1997, Nelvana and UK's Channel 4 began work on Bob and Margaret, the company's first animated franchise for adults since Rock & Rule. It was based on the National Film Board of Canada's Bob's Birthday, an Academy Award winner for Best Short, which Channel 4 also produced.
In December 1997, Nelvana began distributing a syndicated programming block, the Nelvana Kidz Klub, through MediaVentures International, a Chicago-based distributor. The block was offered internationally on a barter program distribution model with 1–2 hours of daily sections or 3–4 hours of the weekend block.
In 1998, Nelvana entered into an agreement with U.S. network CBS to program a new Saturday morning animation block for the 1998-99 television season, which would be branded as CBS Kidshow. The block would feature six new series based on children's book properties, and all were to comply with the U.S. government's educational programming guidelines. In April 1998, Nelvana entered into an agreement with ITV franchise Scottish Television to co-produce these new series, and hold distribution rights to them in the United Kingdom. In August 1998, Nelvana acquired Kids Can Press, publishers of the Franklin and Elliot Moose children's books upon which the Franklin and Elliot Moose were based. This turned them into an "integrated company" in which Kids Can's subsequent publications would begin with Nelvana's franchising of those works.
The company's first two computer-animated shows, Donkey Kong Country and Rolie Polie Olie (with Paris-based Sparx* and distributed by Disney Channel) premiered on U.S. television in 1998.
In March 1999, Nelvana reported a 75% increase in earnings in 1998, credited to increased original production and sales of its library programming, the deal with CBS, and the addition of a publishing business with the acquisition of Kids Can Press. In August 1999, Nelvana announced a US$40 million deal to produce six new series based on popular children's books for a planned PBS Kids block. The six series—Timothy Goes to School, Seven Little Monsters, Corduroy, Marvin the Tap-Dancing Horse, George Shrinks and Elliot Moose—were launched the following September as part of the Bookworm Bunch line-up. That same month, it acquired the North American rights to its first anime property, Clamp's Cardcaptor Sakura (which was renamed Cardcaptors for its English dub).
2000s
In April 2000, Nelvana announced that it had filed for two category 2 television licenses from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to launch digital cable channels. The first, titled "The Nelvana Channel," would've presented the company's library of material alongside related information in a picture-in-picture format. The second, "Booknet," was to be focused on adaptations of adult and children's literature, and would have been a 60/40 joint venture between Corus Entertainment and Nelvana. The channels were approved that following November. Both licenses expired as neither launched by the required date of November 24, 2004.
On April 14, 2000, Nelvana announced its purchase of the Palo Alto-based children's book publisher Klutz in a US$74 million deal—at that time, its largest buyout ever— and integrated it into its Branded Consumer Products division. The company, founded in 1977, was best known for its children's series, Books Plus. Nelvana's separate subsidiary, Kids Can, began taking advantage of the acquisition by making its output available through Klutz merchandise.
In September 2000, Corus announced that it would acquire Nelvana for $540 million. The company saw the purchase as being a complement to its children's television networks, including YTV and Treehouse.
A year after Corus' purchase, co-founders and co-CEOs Loubert and Smith left the studio. Loubert voluntarily left in November after Corus eliminated 50 positions from the staff, saying "The time has come that Corus will stop acquiring for a while and start operating. John Cassaday has made that clear, but this makes my job less rather than more".
In 2001, Nelvana acquired the rights to the English-language version of yet another anime series, Medabots. The following January, Beyblade (in association with Hasbro and Mitsubishi) became its third such property.
In October 2002, Corus announced Hirsh's resignation; the following month, Paul Robertson, former president of Corus Television and head of YTV, became leader of the studio's senior management. With Hirsh's departure, Corus announced a C$200 million writedown for the company; by next August, it planned to reduce the staff down to 200. Hirsh has also taken an advisory role in the studio.
The following September, Corus launched their home entertainment division. Texas-based FUNimation, along with British company Maverick, has distributed titles from the studio with this label, including Redwall, Pecola, Tales from the Cryptkeeper, Timothy Goes to School and the holiday special The Santa Claus Brothers. Nelvana's newer titles have been distributed by MGM, Lionsgate and ADV Films, which have no involvement with the label. In 2007, home video distribution rights for the company's catalog were transferred to Shout! Factory.
In 2004, the studio produced an animation anthology, which included 10 recurring shorts. Titled Funpak, it aired on YTV for 13 weeks starting in February 2005, with the winning short announced to be greenlit in May of that year. One of the shorts, Sidekick, was the one adapted into a successful cartoon series from 2010 to 2013.
In May 2006, NBC Universal announced a joint venture with Nelvana, Ion Media Networks, Scholastic, and Classic Media, known as Qubo, which aimed to operate a multi-platform children's educational television brand in the U.S. featuring programming from its partners.
In September 2006, Nelvana was integrated into Corus' children's television division. A spin-off unit, Nelvana Enterprises, was created in the process, to focus on international distribution of the company's shows. Scott Dyer, the studio's executive vice-president of production and development, became the overseer of the division, which includes Treehouse TV, Discovery Kids Canada, and YTV. Doug Murphy, another former EVP at Nelvana, became president of the new distribution unit.
In October 2006, Nelvana announced a co-production agreement with Canadian toy maker Spin Master and Japanese partners TMS Entertainment, Sega Toys and Japan Vistec to create the new anime property Bakugan Battle Brawlers. The series debuted in Canada on Teletoon the following summer and became a quick success. In 2008, merchandising rights were sold by Nelvana to Cartoon Network in the U.S., and the series began airing on the channel in February 2008. The initial incarnation of the franchise ran for four seasons, spanning 189 episodes and stimulated billions in merchandise sales.
2010s
Following Bakugan, Nelvana entered into another anime co-production, this time reviving the Beyblade property with d-rights, Takara Tomy, Hasbro, Tatsunoko Pro and SynergySP. Beyblade: Metal Fusion debuted globally in 2010, running for 141 episodes before inspiring a direct spin-off, as well as a sub-franchise consisting of BeyWheelz, BeyWarriors: BeyRaiderz and BeyWarriors: Cyborg.
Detentionaire was produced between 2011 and 2015. Created for Teletoon, the show has also been aired internationally, including on ABC3, and has been released on a digital platform provided by Cartoon Network.
In 2012, Corus Entertainment acquired Canadian animation software developer Toon Boom. Nelvana had already used the company's software on projects like 6teen, Ruby Gloom as well as the aforementioned Detentionaire. Going forward, all of the studio's internally animated 2D productions would utilize their sister company's suite of products.
After Murphy had been appointed as CEO of Corus Entertainment, Scott Dyer was named president of Nelvana in 2015. The next year, Pam Westman became head of Nelvana Enterprises.
On October 19, 2016, Nelvana redesigned their logo to mark the studio's 45th anniversary, as well as take part in Corus' brand refresh following latter's acquisition of Shaw Media. According to Dyer, this also symbolized a strategic shift from merchandise-based properties to more creator-driven projects, as well as a return to international co-productions. At that year's MIPCOM, the studio showcased new shows Esme & Roy (with Sesame Workshop), Hotel Transylvania: The Series and Mysticons. Nelvana also presented Bravest Warriors, a pre-existing series from Frederator Studios that they were now producing and Corn & Peg, a co-production with Nickelodeon.
The following October, Nelvana announced the launch of a new joint venture with Discovery Communications to create children's content for Canada, Latin America and the rest of the world. Later named redknot, the division's first two projects include The Dog & Pony Show and Agent Binky: Pets of the Universe.
In 2018, Nelvana appointed Cinedigm as the company's new U.S. home video partner. In late 2018, the company relaunched Bakugan with Bakugan: Battle Planet, a co-production between Nelvana, Spin Master Entertainment, TMS Entertainment and Man of Action Studios.
The studio launched its first short film, The Most Magnificent Thing, in 2019 to showcase its technical abilities. Later that year, Dyer announced his retirement, with Westman named as his replacement.
2020s
In October 2020, Nelvana agreed to co-produce Thomas & Friends: All Engines Go (with Mattel Television), a re-imagined revival of the original Thomas & Friends series, marking the franchise's first 2D-animated television series. That same month, the company entered an agreement with Duncan Studio to produce animated feature films. Nelvana is currently working on even more series.
Franchises
Many of Nelvana's TV shows are based on properties from other companies, most of which started in other forms of media (excluding its namesake superhero, which never received an adaptation of any kind). A great deal of them are based on children's literature and comic books; examples include Blazing Dragons, Stickin' Around, Wayside, The Adventures of Tintin, Anatole, Babar, The Berenstain Bears (2003 version), Franklin the Turtle, Jane and the Dragon, Little Bear, The Magic School Bus, Pippi Longstocking, Redwall, Rupert, My Dad the Rock Star, and the shows of the PBS Kids Bookworm Bunch block, as well as Tales From the Cryptkeeper, Beetlejuice, Jacob Two-Two, Sidekick and Teletoon/Nick Jr.'s Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends.
Nelvana has also had considerable success with animated fare based on toys; American Greetings' Care Bears has been the most familiar example of this. Also, there have been series and specials based on Strawberry Shortcake (also from American Greetings), Madballs and My Pet Monster (from AmToy) and Rescue Heroes (from Fisher-Price). Nelvana also produced Fresh Beat Band of Spies, an animated revival of The Fresh Beat Band that is produced by 6 Point Harness for Nickelodeon.
It has also translated big-screen franchises to televised properties, such as Star Wars (Droids and Ewoks), Beetlejuice, An American Tail (Fievel's American Tails), Free Willy and The Neverending Story. It has even ventured into the video game world with a show based on Nintendo's Donkey Kong in Donkey Kong Country.
In the field of anime, the company holds the North American rights to Clamp/Kodansha's Cardcaptor Sakura series. Also, it holds international licensing rights to Beyblade and Medabots and the Bakugan franchise.
As with many other animation studios, Nelvana has a wide range of established original series and characters within its roster. 6teen, Clone High, Birdz, Corn & Peg and Eek! The Cat among others, are some of Nelvana's more notable animated series that were not based on any other source material.
, the studio has made close to 25 feature films for theatrical, home entertainment, and television distribution. Well-known releases include Rock & Rule, the first five Care Bears movies, two Babar films and 1997's Pippi Longstocking.
Live-action has been a part of its mainstay from its early years. The company has had Burglar and Malice as its own feature projects in that area, and has contributed as such to Star Wars Holiday Special and Three Amigos. On television, Nelvana has made live-action shows such as The Edison Twins, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and Life with Boys.
On April 29, 2015 they launched a YouTube channel promoted by YTV as Nelvana Retro, which was renamed "YTV Direct" in 2016 after also deciding to incorporate non-Nelvana content such as Nickelodeon shows. It was later renamed Keep it Weird to incorporate more content from the company.
Around the world
The Fairly OddParents, created by animator Butch Hartman, was distributed by Nelvana outside the U.S. from 2001 to 2004. This show has been in the top of the ratings for Nickelodeon, YTV and the BBC, and has also been successful among viewers in several European markets, Latin America and Australia, Canada.
In the United States, Nelvana's series have been broadcast on terrestrial and cable networks, and internationally on over 360 television stations in more 180 countries, in approximately 50 languages.
Notable personnel
Apart from its three founders, there have been several key personnel from Nelvana's past and present, a great deal of whom have left the company. Among the better-known people to work in the studio are Bill Perkins, John de Klein, Wayne Gilbert, John Halfpenny, Peter Hudecki, Vincenzo Natali, Arna Selznick, Laura Shepherd, Kim Cleary, Natalie Turner, Susan Snooks, and John van Bruggen.
Eight former Nelvana employees, Roger Allers, Charles Bonifacio, Darlie Brewster, Anne Marie Bardwell, Tom Sito, Ralph Palmer, David Soren, Mark Koetsier, Andrew Hickson, Dick Zondag and Ralph Zondag, went on to become staff members at Walt Disney Feature Animation and DreamWorks Animation in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Allers went on to work on Aladdin, The Lion King, and Hercules. Lenora Hume, from the company's early years, is the senior vice-president of DisneyToon Studios.
Influence in popular culture
Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3 episode The Defector featured the planet Nelvana III named in honor of the animation studio.
Nelvana also had a planet named after it in the Star Wars series, on Cartoon Network's expanded universe series Clone Wars. During Chapters 23 to 25, Anakin Skywalker travels to a planet called Nelvaan. Clone Wars also pays homage to the franchise's animation predecessors in the form of the planet's dog-like inhabitants, who resemble characters from Rock & Rule, the studio's first film.
The "Nelvana Independent Short Film Grand Prize", given out at the Ottawa International Animation Festival since 2004, is sponsored by the company. So far, the recipients of this prize have been 2004's Ryan, the Chris Landreth biography about Canadian animator Ryan Larkin; 2005's Milch, from director Igor Kovalyov; and, in 2006, Joanna Quinn's Dreams and Desires: Family Ties.
See also
Cinema of Canada
History of Canadian film
History of Canadian animation
List of Nelvana programs
Related Canadian companies
National Film Board of Canada
Cookie Jar Group (formerly Cinar, bought and folded into DHX Media in 2012)
CinéGroupe
Atkinson Film-Arts (defunct since 1989)
WildBrain
C.O.R.E. (defunct since 2010)
Notes
References
Bibliography
Stoffman, Daniel (2001). The Nelvana Story: Thirty Animated Years. Toronto, Ontario: Nelvana Publishing Company ().
External links
Stamp of the superheroine after whom the company was named
"Three Men and a bear: Nelvana at 25" by Ellen Besen and Marc Glassman, Take One (Autumn 1996) at LookSmart's Find Articles
Canadian Jewish News: "Nelvana has found the formula for success" by Sheldon Kirshner
1971 establishments in Ontario
Canadian companies established in 1971
2000 mergers and acquisitions
American animation studios
Canadian animation studios
Companies based in Toronto
Mass media companies established in 1971
Topcraft
Dubbing (filmmaking)
Television production companies of Canada
Lucasfilm
Corus Entertainment subsidiaries | en |
doc-en-16715 | Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; ) is the urban center of the prefecture-level Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet. The inner urban area of Lhasa City is equivalent to the administrative borders of Chengguan District (), which is part of the wider prefectural Lhasa City.
Lhasa is the second most populous urban area on the Tibetan Plateau after Xining and, at an altitude of , Lhasa is one of the highest cities in the world. The city has been the religious and administrative capital of Tibet since the mid-17th century. It contains many culturally significant Tibetan Buddhist sites such as the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple and Norbulingka Palaces.
Toponymy
Lhasa literally translates to "place of gods" ( , god; , place) in the Tibetan language. Chengguan literally translates to "urban gateway" () in the Chinese language. Ancient Tibetan documents and inscriptions demonstrate that the place was called Rasa (), which meant “goat’s place,” as it was a herding site.. The name was changed to Lhasa, which means “place of gods” upon its establishment as the capital of Tibet, and construction of the Jokhang temple was completed, which housed a holy statue of the Buddha.<ref>Anne-Marie Blondeau and Yonten Gyatso, 'Lhasa, Legend and History,' in Françoise Pommaret-Imaeda (ed.)Lhasa in the seventeenth century: the capital of the Dalai Lamas, BRILL, 2003, pp.15–38, pp.21–22.</ref> Lhasa is first recorded as the name, referring to the area's temple of Jowo, in a treaty drawn up between China and Tibet in 822 C.E.
History
By the mid 7th century, Songtsen Gampo became the leader of the Tibetan Empire that had risen to power in the Brahmaputra River (locally known as the Yarlung Tsangpo River) Valley. After conquering the kingdom of Zhangzhung in the west, he moved the capital from the Chingwa Taktsé Castle in Chongye County (pinyin: Qióngjié Xiàn), southwest of Yarlung, to Rasa (Lhasa) where in 637 he raised the first structures on the site of what is now the Potala Palace on Mount Marpori.
In CE 639 and 641, Songtsen Gampo, who by this time had conquered the whole Tibetan region, is said to have contracted two alliance marriages, firstly to a Princess Bhrikuti of Nepal, and then, two years later, to Princess Wencheng of the Imperial Tang court. Bhrikuti is said to have converted him to Buddhism, which was also the faith attributed to his second wife Wencheng. In 641 he constructed the Jokhang (or Rasa Trülnang Tsulagkhang) and Ramoche Temples in Lhasa in order to house two Buddha statues, the Akshobhya Vajra (depicting the Buddha at the age of eight) and the Jowo Sakyamuni (depicting Buddha at the age of twelve), respectively brought to his court by the princesses.Amund Sinding-Larsen, The Lhasa atlas: : traditional Tibetan architecture and townscape, Serindia Publications, Inc., 2001 p.14 Lhasa suffered extensive damage under the reign of Langdarma in the 9th century, when the sacred sites were destroyed and desecrated and the empire fragmented.
A Tibetan tradition mentions that after Songtsen Gampo's death in 649 C.E., Chinese troops captured Lhasa and burnt the Red Palace. Chinese and Tibetan scholars have noted that the event is mentioned neither in the Chinese annals nor in the Tibetan manuscripts of Dunhuang. Lǐ suggested that this tradition may derive from an interpolation. Tsepon W. D. Shakabpa believes that "those histories reporting the arrival of Chinese troops are not correct."
From the fall of the monarchy in the 9th century to the accession of the 5th Dalai Lama, the centre of political power in the Tibetan region was not situated in Lhasa. However, the importance of Lhasa as a religious site became increasingly significant as the centuries progressed. It was known as the centre of Tibet where Padmasambhava magically pinned down the earth demoness and built the foundation of the Jokhang Temple over her heart. Islam has been present since the 11th century in what is considered to have always been a monolithically Buddhist culture. Two Tibetan Muslim communities have lived in Lhasa with distinct homes, food and clothing, language, education, trade and traditional herbal medicine.
By the 15th century, the city of Lhasa had risen to prominence following the founding of three large Gelugpa monasteries by Je Tsongkhapa and his disciples. The three monasteries are Ganden, Sera and Drepung which were built as part of the puritanical Buddhist revival in Tibet. The scholarly achievements and political know-how of this Gelugpa Lineage eventually pushed Lhasa once more to centre stage.
The 5th Dalai Lama, Lobsang Gyatso (1617–1682), unified Tibet and moved the centre of his administration to Lhasa in 1642 with the help of Güshi Khan of the Khoshut. With Güshi Khan as a largely uninvolved overlord, the 5th Dalai Lama and his intimates established a civil administration which is referred to by historians as the Lhasa state. The core leadership of this government is also referred to as the Ganden Phodrang, and Lhasa thereafter became both the religious and political capital. In 1645, the reconstruction of the Potala Palace began on Red Hill. In 1648, the Potrang Karpo (White Palace) of the Potala was completed, and the Potala was used as a winter palace by the Dalai Lama from that time onwards. The Potrang Marpo (Red Palace) was added between 1690 and 1694. The name Potala is derived from Mount Potalaka, the mythical abode of the Dalai Lama's divine prototype, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. The Jokhang Temple was also greatly expanded around this time. Although some wooden carvings and lintels of the Jokhang Temple date to the 7th century, the oldest of Lhasa's extant buildings, such as within the Potala Palace, the Jokhang and some of the monasteries and properties in the Old Quarter date to this second flowering in Lhasa's history.
By the end of the 17th century, Lhasa's Barkhor area formed a bustling market for foreign goods. The Jesuit missionary, Ippolito Desideri reported in 1716 that the city had a cosmopolitan community of Mongol, Chinese, Muscovite, Armenian, Kashmiri, Nepalese and Northern Indian traders. Tibet was exporting musk, gold, medicinal plants, furs and yak tails to far-flung markets, in exchange for sugar, tea, saffron, Persian turquoise, European amber and Mediterranean coral. The Qing dynasty army entered Lhasa in 1720, and the Qing government sent resident commissioners, called the Ambans, to Lhasa. In November 11 of 1750, the murder of the regent by the Ambans triggered a riot in the city that left more than a hundred people killed, including the Ambans. After suppressing the rebels, Qing Qianlong Emperor reorganized the Tibetan government and set up the governing council called Kashag in Lhasa in 1751.
In January 1904, a British expeditionary force invaded and captured Lhasa during the British expedition to Tibet. The expedition's leader, Sir Francis Younghusband negotiated the Convention Between Great Britain and Tibet with the remaining Tibetan officials after the Dalai Lama had fled to the countryside. The treaty was subsequently repudiated and was succeeded by a 1906 Anglo-Chinese treaty. All Qing troops left Lhasa after the Xinhai Lhasa turmoil in 1912.
By the 20th century, Lhasa, long a beacon for both Tibetan and foreign Buddhists, had numerous ethnically and religiously distinct communities, among them Kashmiri Muslims, Ladakhi merchants, Sikh converts to Islam, and Chinese traders and officials. The Kashmiri Muslims (Khache) trace their arrival in Lhasa to the Muslim saint of Patna, Khair ud-Din, contemporary with the 5th Dalai Lama. Chinese Muslims lived in a quarter to the south, and Newar merchants from Kathmandu to the north of the Barkhor market. Residents of the Lubu neighbourhood were descended from Chinese vegetable farmers who stayed over after accompanying an Amban from Sichuan in the mid-nineteenth century; some later intermarried with Tibetan women and spoke Tibetan as their first language. The city's merchants catered to all kinds of tastes, importing even Australian butter and Scottish whisky. In the 1940s, according to Heinrich Harrer:-
'There is nothing one cannot buy, or at least order. One even finds the Elizabeth Arden specialties, and there is a keen demand for them. . .You can order, too, sewing machines, radio sets and gramophones and hunt up Bing Crosby records.'
After the establishment of Communist Chinese People's Republic of China, "(...) the People's Liberation Army (PLA) invaded the country in 1950. In March 1959, an uprising centered on the capital, Lhasa, prompted a massive crackdown, during which the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1935), fled into exile." Such markets and consumerism came to an abrupt end after the arrival of Chinese government troops and administrative cadres in 1950. Food rations and poorly stocked government stores replaced the old markets, until the 1990s when commerce in international wares once more returned to Lhasa, and arcades and malls with a cornucopia of goods sprang up.
Of the 22 parks (lingkas) which surrounded the city of Lhasa, most of them over half a mile in length, where the people of Lhasa were accustomed to picnic, only three survive today: the Norbulingka, Dalai Lama's Summer Palace, constructed by the 7th Dalai Lama; a small part of the Shugtri Lingka, and the Lukhang. Dormitory blocks, offices and army barracks are built over the rest.
The Guāndì miào (關帝廟) or Gesar Lhakhang temple was erected by the Amban in 1792 atop Mount Bamare south of the Potala to celebrate the defeat of an invading Gurkha army.
The main gate to the city of Lhasa used to run through the large Pargo Kaling chorten and contained holy relics of the Buddha Mindukpa.
Between 1987 and 1989, Lhasa experienced major demonstrations, led by monks and nuns, against the Chinese Government. After Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in 1992, Lhasa was mandated by the government to undergo economic liberalization. All government employees, their families and students were forbidden from practicing their religion, while monks and nuns were not allowed to enter government offices and the Tibet University campus. Subsequent to the introduction of the economic development policies, the influx of migrants has dramatically altered the city's ethnic mix in Lhasa.
In 2000 the urbanised area covered , with a population of around 170,000. Official statistics of the metropolitan area report that 70 percent are Tibetan, 24.3 are Han, and the remaining 2.7 Hui, though outside observers suspect that non-Tibetans account for some 50–70 percent. Among the Han immigrants, Lhasa is known as 'Little Sichuan'.
Geography
Lhasa has an elevation of about and lies in the centre of the Tibetan Plateau with the surrounding mountains rising to . The air only contains 68 percent of the oxygen compared to sea level. The Lhasa River, also Kyi River or Kyi Chu, a tributary of the Yarlung Zangbo River (Brahmaputra River), runs through the southern part of the city. This river, known to local Tibetans as the "merry blue waves", flows through the snow-covered peaks and gullies of the Nyainqêntanglha mountains, extending , and emptying into the Yarlung Zangbo River at Qüxü, forms an area of great scenic beauty. The marshlands, mostly uninhabited, are to the north. Ingress and egress roads run east and west, while to the north, the road infrastructure is less developed.
Administration
Chengguan District is located on the middle reaches of the Lhasa River, a tributary of the Brahmaputra River, with land that rises to the north and south of the river.
It is from east to west and from north to south.
Chengguan District is bordered by Doilungdêqên District to the west, Dagzê County to the east and Lhünzhub County to the north.
Gonggar County of Lhoka (Shannan) Prefecture lies to the south.
Chengguan District has an elevation of and covers .
The urban built-up area covers .
The average annual temperature of .
Annual precipitation is about , mostly falling between July and September.
The term "Chengguan District" is the administrative term for the inner urban area or the urban centre within a prefecture, in this case the Prefectural-city of Lhasa. Outside of the urban area much of Chengguan District is mainly mountainous with a near nonexistent rural population.
Chengguan District is at the same administrative level as a county.
Chengguan District of Lhasa was established on 23 April 1961.
It currently has 12 fully urban subdistricts.
Climate
Owing to its very high elevation, Lhasa has a borderline cool semi-arid (Köppen: BSk)/monsoon-influenced continental climate (Köppen: Dwb) using the isotherm with frosty winters and mild summers, yet the valley location protects the city from intense cold or heat and strong winds. Monthly possible sunshine ranges from 53 percent in July to 84 percent in November, and the city receives nearly 3,000 hours of sunlight annually. It is thus sometimes called the "sunlit city" by Tibetans. The coldest month is January with an average temperature of and the warmest month is June with a daily average of , though nights have generally been warmer in July. The annual mean temperature is , with extreme temperatures ranging from . Lhasa has an annual precipitation of with rain falling mainly in July, August and September. The driest month is December at and the wettest month is August, at . Summer is widely regarded the "best" of the year as rains come mostly at night and Lhasa is still sunny during the daytime.
Demographics
Demographics in the past
The 11th edition of Encyclopædia Britannica published between 1910 and 1911 noted the total population of Lhasa, including the lamas in the city and vicinity was about 30,000; a census in 1854 made the figure 42,000, but it is known to have greatly decreased since. Britannica noted that within Lhasa, there were about a total of 1,500 resident Tibetan laymen and about 5,500 Tibetan women. The permanent population also included Chinese families (about 2,000). The city's residents included traders from Nepal and Ladak (about 800), and a few from Bhutan, Mongolia and other places. The Britannica noted with interest that the Chinese had a crowded burial-ground at Lhasa, tended carefully after their manner and that the Nepalese supplied mechanics and metal-workers at that time.
In the first half of the 20th century, several Western explorers made celebrated journeys to the city, including William Montgomery McGovern, Francis Younghusband, Alexandra David-Néel, and Heinrich Harrer. Lhasa was the centre of Tibetan Buddhism as nearly half of its population were monks, Though this figure may include monks from surrounding monasteries who travelled to Lhasa for various celebrations and were not ordinarily resident there.
The majority of the pre-1950 Chinese population of Lhasa were merchants and officials. In the Lubu section of Lhasa, the inhabitants were descendants of Chinese vegetable farmers, some of whom married Tibetan wives. They came to Lhasa in the 1840s–1860s after a Chinese official was appointed to the position of Amban.
According to one writer, the population of the city was about 10,000, with some 10,000 monks at Drepung and Sera monasteries in 1959. Hugh Richardson, on the other hand, puts the population of Lhasa in 1952, at "some 25,000–30,000—about 45,000–50,000 if the population of the great monasteries on its outskirts be included."
Contemporary demographics
The total population of Lhasa Prefecture-level City is 521,500 (including known migrant population but excluding military garrisons). Of this, 257,400 are in the urban area (including a migrant population of 100,700), while 264,100 are outside. Nearly half of Lhasa Prefecture-level City's population lives in Chengguan District, which is the administrative division that contains the urban area of Lhasa (i.e. the actual city).
The urban area is populated by ethnic Tibetans, Han, Hui and other ethnic groups. The 2000 official census gave a total population of 223,001, of which 171,719 lived in the areas administered by city street offices and city neighborhood committees.
133,603 had urban registrations and 86,395 had rural registrations, based on their place of origin.
The census was taken in November, when many of the ethnic Han workers in seasonal industries such as construction would have been away from Tibet, and did not count the military.
A 2011 book estimated that up to two-thirds of the city's residents are non-Tibetan, although the government states that Chengguan District as a whole is still 63% ethnic Tibetan. , half of Tibet's Han population resided in Chengguan District of Lhasa, where bilingual or wholly Chinese teaching was common in the schools.
Economy
Competitive industry together with feature economy play key roles in the development of Lhasa. With the view to maintaining a balance between population growth and the environment, tourism and service industries are emphasised as growth engines for the future.
Many of Lhasa's rural residents practice traditional agriculture and animal husbandry. Lhasa is also the traditional hub of the Tibetan trading network. For many years, chemical and car making plants operated in the area and this resulted in significant pollution, a factor which has changed in recent years. Copper, lead and zinc are mined nearby and there is ongoing experimentation regarding new methods of mineral mining and geothermal heat extraction.
Agriculture and animal husbandry in Lhasa are considered to be of a high standard. People mainly plant highland barley and winter wheat. The resources of water conservancy, geothermal heating, solar energy and various mines are abundant. There is widespread electricity together with the use of both machinery and traditional methods in the production of such things as textiles, leathers, plastics, matches and embroidery. The production of national handicrafts has made great progress.
With the growth of tourism and service sectors, the sunset industries which cause serious pollution are expected to fade in the hope of building a healthy ecological system. Environmental problems such as soil erosion, acidification, and loss of vegetation are being addressed. The tourism industry now brings significant business to the region, building on the attractiveness of the Potala Palace, the Jokang, the Norbulingka Summer Palace and surrounding large monasteries as well the spectacular Himalayan landscape together with the many wild plants and animals native to the high altitudes of Central Asia. Tourism to Tibet dropped sharply following the crackdown on protests in 2008, but as early as 2009, the industry was recovering. Chinese authorities plan an ambitious growth of tourism in the region aiming at 10 million visitors by 2020; these visitors are expected to be domestic. With renovation around historic sites, such as the Potala Palace, UNESCO has expressed "concerns about the deterioration of Lhasa's traditional cityscape."
Lhasa contains several hotels. Lhasa Hotel is a 4-star hotel located northeast of Norbulingka in the western suburbs of the city. Completed in September 1985, it is the flagship of CITS's installations in Tibet. It accommodates about 1000 guests and visitors to Lhasa. There are over 450 rooms (suites) in the hotel, and all are equipped with air conditioning, mini-bar and other basic facilities. Some of the rooms are decorated in traditional Tibetan style. The hotel was operated by Holiday Inn from 1986 to 1997 and is the subject of a book, The Hotel on the Roof of the World. Another hotel of note is the historical Banak Shöl Hotel, located at 8 Beijing Road in the city. It is known for its distinctive wooden verandas. The Nam-tso Restaurant is located in the vicinity of the hotel and is frequented especially by Chinese tourists visiting Lhasa.
Lhasa contains several businesses of note. Lhasa Carpet Factory, a factory south of Yanhe Dong Lu near the Tibet University, produces traditional Tibetan rugs that are exported worldwide. It is a modern factory, the largest manufacturer of rugs throughout Tibet, employing some 300 workers. Traditionally Tibetan women were the weavers, and men the spinners, but both work on the rugs today.
The Lhasa Brewery Company was established in 1988 on the northern outskirts of Lhasa, south of Sera Monastery and is the highest commercial brewery in the world at and accounts for 85 percent of contemporary beer production in Tibet. The brewery, consisting of five-story buildings, cost an estimated US$20–25 million, and by 1994, production had reached 30,000 bottles per day, employing some 200 workers by this time. Since 2000, the Carlsberg group has increased its stronghold in the Chinese market and has become increasingly influential in the country with investment and expertise. Carlsberg invested in the Lhasa Brewery in recent years and has drastically improved the brewing facility and working conditions, renovating and expanding the building to what now covers 62,240 square metres (15.3 acres).
Architecture and cityscape
Lhasa has many sites of historic interest, including the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, Sera Monastery and Norbulingka. The Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple and the Norbulingka are UNESCO world heritage sites. However, many important sites were damaged or destroyed mostly, but not solely, during China's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.Keith Dowman. The Power-Places of Central Tibet: The Pilgrim's Guide, (1988) pp. 8–13. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., London and New York. . Many have been restored since the 1980s.
The Potala Palace, named after Mount Potala, the abode of Chenresig or Avalokitesvara, was the chief residence of the Dalai Lama. After the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India during the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the government converted the palace into a museum. The site was used as a meditation retreat by King Songtsen Gampo, who in 637 built the first palace there in order to greet his bride Princess Wen Cheng of the Tang dynasty of China. Lozang Gyatso, the Great Fifth Dalai Lama, started the construction of the Potala Palace in 1645 after one of his spiritual advisers, Konchog Chophel (d. 1646), pointed out that the site was ideal as a seat of government, situated as it is between Drepung and Sera monasteries and the old city of Lhasa. The palace underwent restoration works between 1989 and 1994, costing RMB55 million (US$6.875 million) and was inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1994.
The Lhasa Zhol Pillar, below the Potala, dates as far back as circa 764 CE. and is inscribed with what may be the oldest known example of Tibetan writing. The pillar contains dedications to a famous Tibetan general and gives an account of his services to the king including campaigns against China which culminated in the brief capture of the Chinese capital Chang'an (modern Xian) in 763 CE during which the Tibetans temporarily installed as Emperor a relative of Princess Jincheng Gongzhu (Kim-sheng Kong co), the Chinese wife of Trisong Detsen's father, Me Agtsom.Beckwith (1987), p. 148.
Chokpori, meaning 'Iron Mountain', is a sacred hill, located south of the Potala. It is considered to be one of the four holy mountains of central Tibet and along with two other hills in Lhasa represent the "Three Protectors of Tibet.", Chokpori (Vajrapani), Pongwari (Manjushri), and Marpori (Chenresig or Avalokiteshvara). It was the site of the most famous medical school Tibet, known as the Mentsikhang, which was founded in 1413. It was conceived of by Lobsang Gyatso, the "Great" 5th Dalai Lama, and completed by the Regent Sangye Gyatso (Sangs-rgyas rgya-mtsho) shortly before 1697.
Lingkhor is a sacred path, most commonly used to name the outer pilgrim road in Lhasa matching its inner twin, Barkhor. The Lingkhor in Lhasa was long enclosing Old Lhasa, the Potala and Chokpori hill. In former times it was crowded with men and women covering its length in prostrations, beggars and pilgrims approaching the city for the first time. The road passed through willow-shaded parks where the Tibetans used to picnic in summer and watch open air operas on festival days. New Lhasa has obliterated most of Lingkhor, but one stretch still remains west of Chokpori.
The Norbulingka palace and surrounding park is situated in the west side of Lhasa, a short distance to the southwest of Potala Palace and with an area of around , it is considered to be the largest man made garden in Tibet.
It was built from 1755. and served as the traditional summer residence of the successive Dalai Lamas until the 14th's self-imposed exile. Norbulingka was declared a 'National Important Cultural Relic Unit", in 1988 by the State council. In 2001, the Central Committee of the Chinese Government in its 4th Tibet Session resolved to restore the complex to its original glory. The Sho Dun Festival (popularly known as the "yogurt festival") is an annual festival held at Norbulingka during the seventh Tibetan month in the first seven days of the Full Moon period, which corresponds to dates in July/August according to the Gregorian calendar.
The Barkhor is an area of narrow streets and a public square in the old part of the city located around Jokhang Temple and was the most popular devotional circumambulation for pilgrims and locals. The walk was about one kilometre () long and encircled the entire Jokhang, the former seat of the State Oracle in Lhasa called the Muru Nyingba Monastery, and a number of nobles' houses including Tromzikhang and Jamkhang. There were four large incense burners (sangkangs) in the four cardinal directions, with incense burning constantly, to please the gods protecting the Jokhang. Most of the old streets and buildings have been demolished in recent times and replaced with wider streets and new buildings. Some buildings in the Barkhor were damaged in the 2008 unrest.
The Jokhang is located on Barkhor Square in the old town section of Lhasa. For most Tibetans it is the most sacred and important temple in Tibet. It is in some regards pan-sectarian, but is presently controlled by the Gelug school. Along with the Potala Palace, it is probably the most popular tourist attraction in Lhasa. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Historic Ensemble of the Potala Palace," and a spiritual centre of Lhasa. This temple has remained a key center of Buddhist pilgrimage for centuries. The circumambulation route is known as the "kora" in Tibetan and is marked by four large stone incense burners placed at the corners of the temple complex. The Jokhang temple is a four-story construction, with roofs covered with gilded bronze tiles. The architectural style is based on the Indian vihara design, and was later extended resulting in a blend of Nepalese and Tang dynasty styles. It possesses the statues of Chenresig, Padmasambhava and King Songtsan Gampo and his two foreign brides, Princess Wen Cheng (niece of Emperor Taizong of Tang) and Princess Bhrikuti of Nepal and other important items.
Ramoche Temple is considered the most important temple in Lhasa after the Jokhang Temple. Situated in the northwest of the city, it is east of the Potala and north of the Jokhang, covering a total area of 4,000 square meters (almost one acre). The temple was gutted and partially destroyed in the 1960s and its famous bronze statue disappeared. In 1983 the lower part of it was said to have been found in a Lhasa rubbish tip, and the upper half in Beijing. They have now been joined and the statue is housed in the Ramoche Temple, which was partially restored in 1986, and still showed severe damage in 1993. Following the major restoration of 1986, the main building in the temple now has three stories.
The Tibet Museum in Lhasa is the official museum of the Tibet Autonomous Region and was inaugurated on October 5, 1999. It is the first large, modern museum in the Tibet Autonomous Region and has a permanent collection of around 1000 artefacts, from examples of Tibetan art to architectural design throughout history such as Tibetan doors and construction beams. It is located in an L-shaped building west of the Potala Palace on the corner of Norbulingkha Road. The museum is organized into three main sections: a main exhibition hall, a folk cultural garden and administrative offices.
The Monument to the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet was unveiled in the Potala Square in May 2002 to celebrate the 51st anniversary of the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, and the work in the development of the autonomous region since then. The 37-metre-high concrete monument is shaped as an abstract Mount Everest and its name is engraved with the calligraphy of former CCP general secretary and PRC president Jiang Zemin, while an inscription describes the socioeconomic development experienced in Tibet in the past fifty years.
There are four mosques in and around Lhasa. The earliest mosque, called Khache Lingka, dates to 1650 and is located west of the city, and consists of two compounds. The Lhasa Great Mosque is the most prominent and built by the early 1700s. The Dokdé Mosque, north of Lhasa, has an adjacent cemetery and is dated to 1716. The fourth mosque, commonly known as "Small Mosque" (but also Barkor or Rapsel Alley Mosque) was built in the early 1900s.
Culture
Music and dance
There are some night spots that feature cabaret acts in which performers sing in Chinese, Tibetan, and English. Dancers wear traditional Tibetan costume with long flowing cloth extending from their arms. There are a number of small bars that feature live music, although they typically have limited drink menus and cater mostly to foreign tourists.
Education
Tibet University
Tibet University (Tibetan: བོད་ལྗོངས་སློབ་གྲྭ་ཆེན་མོ་) is the main university of Tibet. Its campus is in Chengguan District, Lhasa, east of the city-centre. A forerunner was created in 1952 and the university was officially established in 1985, funded by the Chinese government. About 8000 students are enrolled at the university.
Tibet University is a comprehensive university with the highest academic level in Tibet. It is a member of the prestigious Project 211, and is sponsored under the Double First Class Disciplines initiative.
Transport
Rail
Lhasa has been served by rail since 2006, when the Qinghai–Tibet Railway opened for passenger operations. Reaching an elevation of 5,072 metres above sea level, the Qinghai-Tibet railway is the world's highest railway by elevation. It connects Lhasa with Xining, the capital of Qinghai Province, some away, and ultimately links Lhasa with other major cities with China's extensive railway network. Five trains arrive at and depart from Lhasa railway station each day. Train number Z21 takes 40 hours and 53 minutes from Beijing West, arriving in Lhasa at 13:03 every day. Train Z22 from Lhasa to Beijing West departs at 15:30 and arrives in Beijing at 08:20 on the third day, taking 40 hours, 50 minutes. Trains also arrive in Lhasa from Chengdu, Chongqing, Lanzhou, Xining, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other cities. To counter the problem of altitude differences giving passengers altitude sickness, extra oxygen is pumped in through the ventilation system and available directly on each berth with close open control by a flap for convenience of passenger, and personal oxygen masks are available on request. Within the soft sleeper cabins there are 64 seats per train, which have an electrical plug for electronics. Lhasa is also connected to the second largest city in Tibet, Xigazê, by rail service, since 2014. A third railway, the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, which links Lhasa with Nyingchi County and into the interior ultimately terminating in Chengdu, began construction in June 2015.
For onward rail travel in South Asia, the closest major station in India is New Jalpaiguri, Siliguri in West Bengal. However, extension of the Indian railway system to Sikkim will make it easier for onward connections through the South Asian railway network. There are preliminary plans to link Lhasa by rail with Kathmandu.
As per a Chinese Tibetan spokesperson, extension of this rail line to Kathmandu with tunnelling under Mount Everest was expected to be completed by 2020.
Air
Lhasa Gonggar Airport (IATA: LXA), built in 1965, is the aviation hub of Tibet. It is located south of the city proper. It takes around half an hour to get there by car via the Lhasa Airport Expressway; prior to the completion of the expressway in 2011, the trip to the airport took over an hour. , there are daily flights serving major Chinese cities including Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, and Shanghai, and there are also occasional scheduled services to Kathmandu in Nepal. Lhasa Airport is the hub of Tibet Airlines, which offers regional services to other destinations in Tibet such as Nyingchi, Ngari Prefecture, Shigatse, and Qamdo.
Road
The Qinghai–Tibet Highway (part of G109) runs northeast toward Xining and eventually to Beijing and is the most-used road in Tibet. The Sichuan–Tibet Highway (part of G318) runs east towards Chengdu and eventually to Shanghai. G318 also runs west to Zhangmu on the Nepal border. The Xinjiang-Tibet Highway (G219) runs north from Lhasa to Yecheng, and then to Xinjiang. This road is rarely used due to the lack of amenities and petrol stations. A new , four-lane highway between Lhasa and the Gonggar Airport was built by the Transportation Department of Tibet at a cost of RMB 1.5 billion. This road is part of National Highway 318 and starts from the Lhasa railway station, passes through Caina Township in Qushui County, terminating between the north entrance of the Gala Mountain Tunnel and the south bridgehead of the Lhasa River Bridge, and en route goes over the first overpass of Lhasa at Liuwu Overpass.
Maritime
The closest seaports are Kolkata and Haldia in West Bengal, India. The Nathu La pass offers Chinese companies access to the port of Kolkata (Calcutta), situated about from Lhasa, for trans-shipments to and from Tibet.
Sports
The Lhasa Stadium, which has a capacity of 20,000, is located in Lhasa. It is used mostly for football matches.
See also
List of twin towns and sister cities in China
McLeod Ganj
Leh, India
Mustang, Nepal
Drapchi Prison or Lhasa Prison No.1
References
Citations
Sources
Das, Sarat Chandra. 1902. Lhasa and Central Tibet. Reprint: Mehra Offset Press, Delhi. 1988.
Dorje, Gyurme. 1999. Footprint Tibet Handbook. 2nd Edition. Bath, England. . Also published in Chicago, U.S.A. .
Dowman, Keith. 1988. The Power-Places of Central Tibet: The Pilgrim's Guide, p. 59. Routledge & Kegan Paul. London. (ppk).
Forbes, Andrew; Henley, David (2011). China's Ancient Tea Horse Road. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books. ASIN: B005DQV7Q2
Jianqiang, Liu (2006). chinadialogue - Preserving Lhasa's history (part one).
Miles, Paul. (April 9, 2005). "Tourism drive 'is destroying Tibet' Unesco fears for Lhasa's World Heritage sites as the Chinese try to pull in 10 million visitors a year by 2020". Daily Telegraph (London), p. 4.
Pelliot, Paul. (1961) Histoire ancienne du Tibet. Libraire d'Amérique et d'orient. Paris.
Richardson, Hugh E (1984). Tibet and its History. Second Edition, Revised and Updated. Shambhala Publications, Boston. .
Richardson, Hugh E (1997). Lhasa. In Encyclopedia Americana international edition, (Vol. 17, pp. 281–282). Danbury, CT: Grolier Inc.
Stein, R. A. (1972). Tibetan Civilization, p. 38. Reprint 1972. Stanford University Press. (cloth); (paper).
Tuladhar, Kamal Ratna (2011). Caravan to Lhasa: A Merchant of Kathmandu in Traditional Tibet. Kathmandu: Lijala & Tisa. .
Tung, Rosemary Jones. 1980. A Portrait of Lost Tibet. Thomas and Hudson, London. .
Vitali, Roberto. 1990. Early Temples of Central Tibet. Serindia Publications. London. .
(2006). Lhasa – Lhasa Intro
von Schroeder, Ulrich. (1981). Indo-Tibetan Bronzes. (608 pages, 1244 illustrations). Hong Kong: Visual Dharma Publications Ltd.
von Schroeder, Ulrich. (2001). Buddhist Sculptures in Tibet. Vol. One: India & Nepal; Vol. Two: Tibet & China. (Volume One: 655 pages with 766 illustrations; Volume Two: 675 pages with 987 illustrations). Hong Kong: Visual Dharma Publications, Ltd.).
von Schroeder, Ulrich. 2008. 108 Buddhist Statues in Tibet. (212 p., 112 colour illustrations) (DVD with 527 digital photographs). Chicago: Serindia Publications.
Further reading
Desideri (1932). An Account of Tibet: The Travels of Ippolito Desideri 1712-1727. Ippolito Desideri. Edited by Filippo De Filippi. Introduction by C. Wessels. Reproduced by Rupa & Co, New Delhi. 2005
Le Sueur, Alec (2013). The Hotel on the Roof of the World – Five Years in Tibet.'' Chichester: Summersdale. . Oakland: RDR Books.
External links
People's Government of Chengguan District, Lhasa Official Website
Lhasa Nights art exhibition
Grand temple of Buddha at Lhasa in 1902, Perry–Castañeda Library Map Collection
Tibet Travel Permit
Maps and aerial photos
Map central Lhasa
Old map of central Lhasa from 1959
Chengguan District, Lhasa
Populated places in Tibet
Holy cities
Prefecture-level divisions of Tibet
Capitals of former nations | en |
doc-en-16851 | Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two opposing teams, of nine players each, that take turns batting and fielding. The game proceeds when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball which a player on the batting team tries to hit with a bat. The objective of the offensive team (batting team) is to hit the ball into the field of play, allowing its players to run the bases, having them advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "runs". The objective of the defensive team (fielding team) is to prevent batters from becoming runners, and to prevent runners' advance around the bases. A run is scored when a runner legally advances around the bases in order and touches home plate (the place where the player started as a batter). The team that scores the most runs by the end of the game is the winner.
The first objective of the batting team is to have a player reach first base safely. A player on the batting team who reaches first base without being called "out" can attempt to advance to subsequent bases as a runner, either immediately or during teammates' turns batting. The fielding team tries to prevent runs by getting batters or runners "out", which forces them out of the field of play. Both the pitcher and fielders have methods of getting the batting team's players out. The opposing teams switch back and forth between batting and fielding; the batting team's turn to bat is over once the fielding team records three outs. One turn batting for each team constitutes an inning. A game is usually composed of nine innings, and the team with the greater number of runs at the end of the game wins. If scores are tied at the end of nine innings, extra innings are usually played. Baseball has no game clock, although most games end in the ninth inning.
Baseball evolved from older bat-and-ball games already being played in England by the mid-18th century. This game was brought by immigrants to North America, where the modern version developed. By the late 19th century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball is popular in North America and parts of Central and South America, the Caribbean, and East Asia, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
In the United States and Canada, professional Major League Baseball (MLB) teams are divided into the National League (NL) and American League (AL), each with three divisions: East, West, and Central. The MLB champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series. The top level of play is similarly split in Japan between the Central and Pacific Leagues and in Cuba between the West League and East League. The World Baseball Classic, organized by the World Baseball Softball Confederation, is the major international competition of the sport and attracts the top national teams from around the world.
Rules and gameplay
A baseball game is played between two teams, each usually composed of nine players, that take turns playing offense (batting and baserunning) and defense (pitching and fielding). A pair of turns, one at bat and one in the field, by each team constitutes an inning. A game consists of nine innings (seven innings at the high school level and in doubleheaders in college, Minor League Baseball and, since the 2020 season, Major League Baseball; and six innings at the Little League level). One team—customarily the visiting team—bats in the top, or first half, of every inning. The other team—customarily the home team—bats in the bottom, or second half, of every inning. The goal of the game is to score more points (runs) than the other team. The players on the team at bat attempt to score runs by touching all four bases, in order, set at the corners of the square-shaped baseball diamond. A player bats at home plate and must attempt to safely reach a base before proceeding, counterclockwise, from first base, to second base, third base, and back home to score a run. The team in the field attempts to prevent runs from scoring by recording outs, which remove opposing players from offensive action, until their next turn at bat comes up again. When three outs are recorded, the teams switch roles for the next half-inning. If the score of the game is tied after nine innings, extra innings are played to resolve the contest. Many amateur games, particularly unorganized ones, involve different numbers of players and innings.
The game is played on a field whose primary boundaries, the foul lines, extend forward from home plate at 45-degree angles. The 90-degree area within the foul lines is referred to as fair territory; the 270-degree area outside them is foul territory. The part of the field enclosed by the bases and several yards beyond them is the infield; the area farther beyond the infield is the outfield. In the middle of the infield is a raised pitcher's mound, with a rectangular rubber plate (the rubber) at its center. The outer boundary of the outfield is typically demarcated by a raised fence, which may be of any material and height. The fair territory between home plate and the outfield boundary is baseball's field of play, though significant events can take place in foul territory, as well.
There are three basic tools of baseball: the ball, the bat, and the glove or mitt:
The baseball is about the size of an adult's fist, around 9 inches (23 centimeters) in circumference. It has a rubber or cork center, wound in yarn and covered in white cowhide, with red stitching.
The bat is a hitting tool, traditionally made of a single, solid piece of wood. Other materials are now commonly used for nonprofessional games. It is a hard round stick, about 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) in diameter at the hitting end, tapering to a narrower handle and culminating in a knob. Bats used by adults are typically around 34 inches (86 centimeters) long, and not longer than 42 inches (106 centimeters).
The glove or mitt is a fielding tool, made of padded leather with webbing between the fingers. As an aid in catching and holding onto the ball, it takes various shapes to meet the specific needs of different fielding positions.
Protective helmets are also standard equipment for all batters.
At the beginning of each half-inning, the nine players of the fielding team arrange themselves around the field. One of them, the pitcher, stands on the pitcher's mound. The pitcher begins the pitching delivery with one foot on the rubber, pushing off it to gain velocity when throwing toward home plate. Another fielding team player, the catcher, squats on the far side of home plate, facing the pitcher. The rest of the fielding team faces home plate, typically arranged as four infielders—who set up along or within a few yards outside the imaginary lines (basepaths) between first, second, and third base—and three outfielders. In the standard arrangement, there is a first baseman positioned several steps to the left of first base, a second baseman to the right of second base, a shortstop to the left of second base, and a third baseman to the right of third base. The basic outfield positions are left fielder, center fielder, and right fielder. With the exception of the catcher, all fielders are required to be in fair territory when the pitch is delivered. A neutral umpire sets up behind the catcher. Other umpires will be distributed around the field as well.
Play starts with a member of the batting team, the batter, standing in either of the two batter's boxes next to home plate, holding a bat. The batter waits for the pitcher to throw a pitch (the ball) toward home plate, and attempts to hit the ball with the bat. The catcher catches pitches that the batter does not hit—as a result of either electing not to swing or failing to connect—and returns them to the pitcher. A batter who hits the ball into the field of play must drop the bat and begin running toward first base, at which point the player is referred to as a runner (or, until the play is over, a batter-runner). A batter-runner who reaches first base without being put out is said to be safe and is on base. A batter-runner may choose to remain at first base or attempt to advance to second base or even beyond—however far the player believes can be reached safely. A player who reaches base despite proper play by the fielders has recorded a hit. A player who reaches first base safely on a hit is credited with a single. If a player makes it to second base safely as a direct result of a hit, it is a double; third base, a triple. If the ball is hit in the air within the foul lines over the entire outfield (and outfield fence, if there is one), or otherwise safely circles all the bases, it is a home run: the batter and any runners on base may all freely circle the bases, each scoring a run. This is the most desirable result for the batter. A player who reaches base due to a fielding mistake is not credited with a hit—instead, the responsible fielder is charged with an error.
Any runners already on base may attempt to advance on batted balls that land, or contact the ground, in fair territory, before or after the ball lands. A runner on first base must attempt to advance if a ball lands in play, as only one runner may occupy a base at any given time. If a ball hit into play rolls foul before passing through the infield, it becomes dead and any runners must return to the base they occupied when the play began. If the ball is hit in the air and caught before it lands, the batter has flied out and any runners on base may attempt to advance only if they tag up (contact the base they occupied when the play began, as or after the ball is caught). Runners may also attempt to advance to the next base while the pitcher is in the process of delivering the ball to home plate; a successful effort is a stolen base.
A pitch that is not hit into the field of play is called either a strike or a ball. A batter against whom three strikes are recorded strikes out. A batter against whom four balls are recorded is awarded a base on balls or walk, a free advance to first base. (A batter may also freely advance to first base if the batter's body or uniform is struck by a pitch outside the strike zone, provided the batter does not swing and attempts to avoid being hit.) Crucial to determining balls and strikes is the umpire's judgment as to whether a pitch has passed through the strike zone, a conceptual area above home plate extending from the midpoint between the batter's shoulders and belt down to the hollow of the knee.
While the team at bat is trying to score runs, the team in the field is attempting to record outs. In addition to the strikeout and flyout, common ways a member of the batting team may be put out include the ground out, force out, and tag out. These occur either when a runner is forced to advance to a base, and a fielder with possession of the ball reaches that base before the runner does, or the runner is touched by the ball, held in a fielder's hand, while not on a base. It is possible to record two outs in the course of the same play. This is called a double play. Three outs in one play, a triple play, is possible, though rare. Players put out or retired must leave the field, returning to their team's dugout or bench. A runner may be stranded on base when a third out is recorded against another player on the team. Stranded runners do not benefit the team in its next turn at bat as every half-inning begins with the bases empty.
An individual player's turn batting or plate appearance is complete when the player reaches base, hits a home run, makes an out, or hits a ball that results in the team's third out, even if it is recorded against a teammate. On rare occasions, a batter may be at the plate when, without the batter's hitting the ball, a third out is recorded against a teammate—for instance, a runner getting caught stealing (tagged out attempting to steal a base). A batter with this sort of incomplete plate appearance starts off the team's next turn batting; any balls or strikes recorded against the batter the previous inning are erased. A runner may circle the bases only once per plate appearance and thus can score at most a single run per batting turn. Once a player has completed a plate appearance, that player may not bat again until the eight other members of the player's team have all taken their turn at bat in the batting order. The batting order is set before the game begins, and may not be altered except for substitutions. Once a player has been removed for a substitute, that player may not reenter the game. Children's games often have more lenient rules, such as Little League rules, which allow players to be substituted back into the same game.
If the designated hitter (DH) rule is in effect, each team has a tenth player whose sole responsibility is to bat (and run). The DH takes the place of another player—almost invariably the pitcher—in the batting order, but does not field. Thus, even with the DH, each team still has a batting order of nine players and a fielding arrangement of nine players.
Personnel
Players
The number of players on a baseball roster, or squad, varies by league and by the level of organized play. A Major League Baseball (MLB) team has a roster of 25 players with specific roles. A typical roster features the following players:
Eight position players: the catcher, four infielders, and three outfielders—all of whom play on a regular basis
Five starting pitchers who constitute the team's pitching rotation or starting rotation
Six relief pitchers, including one closer, who constitute the team's bullpen (named for the off-field area where pitchers warm up)
One backup, or substitute, catcher
Two backup infielders
Two backup outfielders
One pinch hitter, or a utility player, or a seventh reliever
Most baseball leagues worldwide have the DH rule, including MLB's American League, Japan's Pacific League, and Caribbean professional leagues, along with major American amateur organizations. The Central League in Japan and the National League do not have the rule, and high-level minor league clubs connected to National League teams are not required to field a DH. In leagues that apply the designated hitter rule, a typical team has nine offensive regulars (including the DH), five starting pitchers, seven or eight relievers, a backup catcher, and two or three other reserve players.
Managers and coaches
The manager, or head coach, oversees the team's major strategic decisions, such as establishing the starting rotation, setting the lineup, or batting order, before each game, and making substitutions during games—in particular, bringing in relief pitchers. Managers are typically assisted by two or more coaches; they may have specialized responsibilities, such as working with players on hitting, fielding, pitching, or strength and conditioning. At most levels of organized play, two coaches are stationed on the field when the team is at bat: the first base coach and third base coach, whom occupy designated coaches' boxes, just outside the foul lines. These coaches assist in the direction of baserunners, when the ball is in play, and relay tactical signals from the manager to batters and runners, during pauses in play. In contrast to many other team sports, baseball managers and coaches generally wear their team's uniforms; coaches must be in uniform to be allowed on the field to confer with players during a game.
Umpires
Any baseball game involves one or more umpires, who make rulings on the outcome of each play. At a minimum, one umpire will stand behind the catcher, to have a good view of the strike zone, and call balls and strikes. Additional umpires may be stationed near the other bases, thus making it easier to judge plays such as attempted force outs and tag outs. In MLB, four umpires are used for each game, one near each base. In the playoffs, six umpires are used: one at each base and two in the outfield along the foul lines.
Strategy
Many of the pre-game and in-game strategic decisions in baseball revolve around a fundamental fact: in general, right-handed batters tend to be more successful against left-handed pitchers and, to an even greater degree, left-handed batters tend to be more successful against right-handed pitchers. A manager with several left-handed batters in the regular lineup, who knows the team will be facing a left-handed starting pitcher, may respond by starting one or more of the right-handed backups on the team's roster. During the late innings of a game, as relief pitchers and pinch hitters are brought in, the opposing managers will often go back and forth trying to create favorable matchups with their substitutions. The manager of the fielding team trying to arrange same-handed pitcher-batter matchups and the manager of the batting team trying to arrange opposite-handed matchups. With a team that has the lead in the late innings, a manager may remove a starting position player—especially one whose turn at bat is not likely to come up again—for a more skillful fielder (known as a defensive substitution).
Tactics
Pitching and fielding
The tactical decision that precedes almost every play in a baseball game involves pitch selection. By gripping and then releasing the baseball in a certain manner, and by throwing it at a certain speed, pitchers can cause the baseball to break to either side, or downward, as it approaches the batter; thus creating differing pitches that can be selected. Among the resulting wide variety of pitches that may be thrown, the four basic types are the fastball, the changeup (or off-speed pitch), and two breaking balls—the curveball and the slider. Pitchers have different repertoires of pitches they are skillful at throwing. Conventionally, before each pitch, the catcher signals the pitcher what type of pitch to throw, as well as its general vertical and/or horizontal location. If there is disagreement on the selection, the pitcher may shake off the sign and the catcher will call for a different pitch.
With a runner on base and taking a lead, the pitcher may attempt a pickoff, a quick throw to a fielder covering the base to keep the runner's lead in check or, optimally, effect a tag out. Pickoff attempts, however, are subject to rules that severely restrict the pitcher's movements before and during the pickoff attempt. Violation of any one of these rules could result in the umpire calling a balk against the pitcher, which permits any runners on base to advance one base with impunity. If an attempted stolen base is anticipated, the catcher may call for a pitchout, a ball thrown deliberately off the plate, allowing the catcher to catch it while standing and throw quickly to a base. Facing a batter with a strong tendency to hit to one side of the field, the fielding team may employ a shift, with most or all of the fielders moving to the left or right of their usual positions. With a runner on third base, the infielders may play in, moving closer to home plate to improve the odds of throwing out the runner on a ground ball, though a sharply hit grounder is more likely to carry through a drawn-in infield.
Batting and baserunning
Several basic offensive tactics come into play with a runner on first base, including the fundamental choice of whether to attempt a steal of second base. The hit and run is sometimes employed, with a skillful contact hitter, the runner takes off with the pitch, drawing the shortstop or second baseman over to second base, creating a gap in the infield for the batter to poke the ball through. The sacrifice bunt, calls for the batter to focus on making soft contact with the ball, so that it rolls a short distance into the infield, allowing the runner to advance into scoring position as the batter is thrown out at first. A batter, particularly one who is a fast runner, may also attempt to bunt for a hit. A sacrifice bunt employed with a runner on third base, aimed at bringing that runner home, is known as a squeeze play. With a runner on third and fewer than two outs, a batter may instead concentrate on hitting a fly ball that, even if it is caught, will be deep enough to allow the runner to tag up and score—a successful batter, in this case, gets credit for a sacrifice fly. In order to increase the chance of advancing a batter to first base via a walk, the manager will sometimes signal a batter who is ahead in the count (i.e., has more balls than strikes) to take, or not swing at, the next pitch. The batter's potential reward of reaching base (via a walk) exceeds the disadvantage if the next pitch is a strike.
History
The evolution of baseball from older bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision. Consensus once held that today's baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, popular among children in Great Britain and Ireland. American baseball historian David Block suggests that the game originated in England; recently uncovered historical evidence supports this position. Block argues that rounders and early baseball were actually regional variants of each other, and that the game's most direct antecedents are the English games of stoolball and "tut-ball". The earliest known reference to baseball is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, by John Newbery. Block discovered that the first recorded game of "Bass-Ball" took place in 1749 in Surrey, and featured the Prince of Wales as a player. This early form of the game was apparently brought to Canada by English immigrants.
By the early 1830s, there were reports of a variety of uncodified bat-and-ball games recognizable as early forms of baseball being played around North America. The first officially recorded baseball game in North America was played in Beachville, Ontario, Canada, on June 4, 1838. In 1845, Alexander Cartwright, a member of New York City's Knickerbocker Club, led the codification of the so-called Knickerbocker Rules, which in turn were based on rules developed in 1837 by William R. Wheaton of the Gotham Club. While there are reports that the New York Knickerbockers played games in 1845, the contest long recognized as the first officially recorded baseball game in U.S. history took place on June 19, 1846, in Hoboken, New Jersey: the "New York Nine" defeated the Knickerbockers, 23–1, in four innings. With the Knickerbocker code as the basis, the rules of modern baseball continued to evolve over the next half-century.
In the United States
Establishment of professional leagues
In the mid-1850s, a baseball craze hit the New York metropolitan area, and by 1856, local journals were referring to baseball as the "national pastime" or "national game". A year later, the sport's first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players, was formed. In 1867, it barred participation by African Americans. The more formally structured National League was founded in 1876. Professional Negro leagues formed, but quickly folded. In 1887, softball, under the name of indoor baseball or indoor-outdoor, was invented as a winter version of the parent game. The National League's first successful counterpart, the American League, which evolved from the minor Western League, was established in 1893, and virtually all of the modern baseball rules were in place by then.
The National Agreement of 1903 formalized relations both between the two major leagues and between them and the National Association of Professional Base Ball Leagues, representing most of the country's minor professional leagues. The World Series, pitting the two major league champions against each other, was inaugurated that fall. The Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 World Series led to the formation of the office of the Commissioner of Baseball. The first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was elected in 1920. That year also saw the founding of the Negro National League; the first significant Negro league, it would operate until 1931. For part of the 1920s, it was joined by the Eastern Colored League.
Rise of Ruth and racial integration
Compared with the present, professional baseball in the early 20th century was lower-scoring, and pitchers were more dominant. The so-called dead-ball era ended in the early 1920s with several changes in rule and circumstance that were advantageous to hitters. Strict new regulations governed the ball's size, shape and composition, along with a new rule officially banning the spitball and other pitches that depended on the ball being treated or roughed-up with foreign substances, resulted in a ball that traveled farther when hit. The rise of the legendary player Babe Ruth, the first great power hitter of the new era, helped permanently alter the nature of the game. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey invested in several minor league clubs and developed the first modern farm system. A new Negro National League was organized in 1933; four years later, it was joined by the Negro American League. The first elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame took place in 1936. In 1939, Little League Baseball was founded in Pennsylvania.
A large number of minor league teams disbanded when World War II led to a player shortage. Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley led the formation of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League to help keep the game in the public eye. The first crack in the unwritten agreement barring blacks from white-controlled professional ball occurred in 1945: Jackie Robinson was signed by the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers and began playing for their minor league team in Montreal. In 1947, Robinson broke the major leagues' color barrier when he debuted with the Dodgers. Latin American players, largely overlooked before, also started entering the majors in greater numbers. In 1951, two Chicago White Sox, Venezuelan-born Chico Carrasquel and black Cuban-born Minnie Miñoso, became the first Hispanic All-Stars. Integration proceeded slowly: by 1953, only six of the 16 major league teams had a black player on the roster.
Attendance records and the age of steroids
In 1975, the union's power—and players' salaries—began to increase greatly when the reserve clause was effectively struck down, leading to the free agency system. Significant work stoppages occurred in 1981 and 1994, the latter forcing the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years. Attendance had been growing steadily since the mid-1970s and in 1994, before the stoppage, the majors were setting their all-time record for per-game attendance. After play resumed in 1995, non-division-winning wild card teams became a permanent fixture of the post-season. Regular-season interleague play was introduced in 1997 and the second-highest attendance mark for a full season was set. In 2000, the National and American Leagues were dissolved as legal entities. While their identities were maintained for scheduling purposes (and the designated hitter distinction), the regulations and other functions—such as player discipline and umpire supervision—they had administered separately were consolidated under the rubric of MLB.
In 2001, Barry Bonds established the current record of 73 home runs in a single season. There had long been suspicions that the dramatic increase in power hitting was fueled in large part by the abuse of illegal steroids (as well as by the dilution of pitching talent due to expansion), but the issue only began attracting significant media attention in 2002 and there was no penalty for the use of performance-enhancing drugs before 2004. In 2007, Bonds became MLB's all-time home run leader, surpassing Hank Aaron, as total major league and minor league attendance both reached all-time highs.
Around the world
With the historic popular moniker as "America's national pastime", baseball is well established in several other countries as well. As early as 1877, a professional league, the International Association, featured teams from both Canada and the US. While baseball is widely played in Canada and many minor league teams have been based in the country, the American major leagues did not include a Canadian club until 1969, when the Montreal Expos joined the National League as an expansion team. In 1977, the expansion Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League.
In 1847, American soldiers played what may have been the first baseball game in Mexico at Parque Los Berros in Xalapa, Veracruz. The first formal baseball league outside of the United States and Canada was founded in 1878 in Cuba, which maintains a rich baseball tradition. The Dominican Republic held its first islandwide championship tournament in 1912. Professional baseball tournaments and leagues began to form in other countries between the world wars, including the Netherlands (formed in 1922), Australia (1934), Japan (1936), Mexico (1937), and Puerto Rico (1938). The Japanese major leagues have long been considered the highest quality professional circuits outside of the United States.
After World War II, professional leagues were founded in many Latin American countries, most prominently Venezuela (1946) and the Dominican Republic (1955). Since the early 1970s, the annual Caribbean Series has matched the championship clubs from the four leading Latin American winter leagues: the Dominican Professional Baseball League, Mexican Pacific League, Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League, and Venezuelan Professional Baseball League. In Asia, South Korea (1982), Taiwan (1990) and China (2003) all have professional leagues.
The English football club, Aston Villa, were the first British baseball champions winning the 1890 National League of Baseball of Great Britain. The 2020 National Champions were the London Mets. Other European countries have seen professional leagues; the most successful, other than the Dutch league, is the Italian league, founded in 1948. In 2004, Australia won a surprise silver medal at the Olympic Games. The Confédération Européene de Baseball (European Baseball Confederation), founded in 1953, organizes a number of competitions between clubs from different countries. Other competitions between national teams, such as the Baseball World Cup and the Olympic baseball tournament, were administered by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) from its formation in 1938 until its 2013 merger with the International Softball Federation to create the current joint governing body for both sports, the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). Women's baseball is played on an organized amateur basis in numerous countries.
After being admitted to the Olympics as a medal sport beginning with the 1992 Games, baseball was dropped from the 2012 Summer Olympic Games at the 2005 International Olympic Committee meeting. It remained part of the 2008 Games. While the sport's lack of a following in much of the world was a factor, more important was MLB's reluctance to allow its players to participate during the major league season. MLB initiated the World Baseball Classic, scheduled to precede its season, partly as a replacement, high-profile international tournament. The inaugural Classic, held in March 2006, was the first tournament involving national teams to feature a significant number of MLB participants. The Baseball World Cup was discontinued after its 2011 edition in favor of an expanded World Baseball Classic.
Distinctive elements
Baseball has certain attributes that set it apart from the other popular team sports in the countries where it has a following. All of these sports use a clock, play is less individual, and the variation between playing fields is not as substantial or important. The comparison between cricket and baseball demonstrates that many of baseball's distinctive elements are shared in various ways with its cousin sports.
No clock to kill
In clock-limited sports, games often end with a team that holds the lead killing the clock rather than competing aggressively against the opposing team. In contrast, baseball has no clock, thus a team cannot win without getting the last batter out and rallies are not constrained by time. At almost any turn in any baseball game, the most advantageous strategy is some form of aggressive strategy. Whereas, in the case of multi-day Test and first-class cricket, the possibility of a draw (which occurs because of the restrictions on time, which like in baseball, originally did not exist) often encourages a team that is batting last and well behind, to bat defensively and run out the clock, giving up any faint chance at a win, to avoid an overall loss.
While nine innings has been the standard since the beginning of professional baseball, the duration of the average major league game has increased steadily through the years. At the turn of the 20th century, games typically took an hour and a half to play. In the 1920s, they averaged just less than two hours, which eventually ballooned to 2:38 in 1960. By 1997, the average American League game lasted 2:57 (National League games were about 10 minutes shorter—pitchers at the plate making for quicker outs than designated hitters). In 2004, Major League Baseball declared that its goal was an average game of 2:45. By 2014, though, the average MLB game took over three hours to complete. The lengthening of games is attributed to longer breaks between half-innings for television commercials, increased offense, more pitching changes, and a slower pace of play with pitchers taking more time between each delivery, and batters stepping out of the box more frequently. Other leagues have experienced similar issues. In 2008, Nippon Professional Baseball took steps aimed at shortening games by 12 minutes from the preceding decade's average of 3:18.
In 2016, the average nine-inning playoff game in Major League baseball was 3 hours and 35 minutes. This was up 10 minutes from 2015 and 21 minutes from 2014.
Individual focus
Although baseball is a team sport, individual players are often placed under scrutiny and pressure. While rewarding, it has sometimes been described as "ruthless" due to the pressure on the individual player. In 1915, a baseball instructional manual pointed out that every single pitch, of which there are often more than two hundred in a game, involves an individual, one-on-one contest: "the pitcher and the batter in a battle of wits". Pitcher, batter, and fielder all act essentially independent of each other. While coaching staffs can signal pitcher or batter to pursue certain tactics, the execution of the play itself is a series of solitary acts. If the batter hits a line drive, the outfielder is solely responsible for deciding to try to catch it or play it on the bounce and for succeeding or failing. The statistical precision of baseball is both facilitated by this isolation and reinforces it.
Cricket is more similar to baseball than many other team sports in this regard: while the individual focus in cricket is mitigated by the importance of the batting partnership and the practicalities of tandem running, it is enhanced by the fact that a batsman may occupy the wicket for an hour or much more. There is no statistical equivalent in cricket for the fielding error and thus less emphasis on personal responsibility in this area of play.
Uniqueness of parks
Unlike those of most sports, baseball playing fields can vary significantly in size and shape. While the dimensions of the infield are specifically regulated, the only constraint on outfield size and shape for professional teams, following the rules of MLB and Minor League Baseball, is that fields built or remodeled since June 1, 1958, must have a minimum distance of from home plate to the fences in left and right field and to center. Major league teams often skirt even this rule. For example, at Minute Maid Park, which became the home of the Houston Astros in 2000, the Crawford Boxes in left field are only from home plate. There are no rules at all that address the height of fences or other structures at the edge of the outfield. The most famously idiosyncratic outfield boundary is the left-field wall at Boston's Fenway Park, in use since 1912: the Green Monster is from home plate down the line and tall.
Similarly, there are no regulations at all concerning the dimensions of foul territory. Thus a foul fly ball may be entirely out of play in a park with little space between the foul lines and the stands, but a foulout in a park with more expansive foul ground. A fence in foul territory that is close to the outfield line will tend to direct balls that strike it back toward the fielders, while one that is farther away may actually prompt more collisions, as outfielders run full speed to field balls deep in the corner. These variations can make the difference between a double and a triple or inside-the-park home run. The surface of the field is also unregulated. While the adjacent image shows a traditional field surfacing arrangement (and the one used by virtually all MLB teams with naturally surfaced fields), teams are free to decide what areas will be grassed or bare. Some fields—including several in MLB—use an artificial surface, such as AstroTurf. Surface variations can have a significant effect on how ground balls behave and are fielded as well as on baserunning. Similarly, the presence of a roof (seven major league teams play in stadiums with permanent or retractable roofs) can greatly affect how fly balls are played. While football and soccer players deal with similar variations of field surface and stadium covering, the size and shape of their fields are much more standardized. The area out-of-bounds on a football or soccer field does not affect play the way foul territory in baseball does, so variations in that regard are largely insignificant.
These physical variations create a distinctive set of playing conditions at each ballpark. Other local factors, such as altitude and climate, can also significantly affect play. A given stadium may acquire a reputation as a pitcher's park or a hitter's park, if one or the other discipline notably benefits from its unique mix of elements. The most exceptional park in this regard is Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies. Its high altitude— above sea level—is partly responsible for giving it the strongest hitter's park effect in the major leagues due to the low air pressure. Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, is known for its fickle disposition: a hitter's park when the strong winds off Lake Michigan are blowing out, it becomes more of a pitcher's park when they are blowing in. The absence of a standardized field affects not only how particular games play out, but the nature of team rosters and players' statistical records. For example, hitting a fly ball into right field might result in an easy catch on the warning track at one park, and a home run at another. A team that plays in a park with a relatively short right field, such as the New York Yankees, will tend to stock its roster with left-handed pull hitters, who can best exploit it. On the individual level, a player who spends most of his career with a team that plays in a hitter's park will gain an advantage in batting statistics over time—even more so if his talents are especially suited to the park.
Statistics
Organized baseball lends itself to statistics to a greater degree than many other sports. Each play is discrete and has a relatively small number of possible outcomes. In the late 19th century, a former cricket player, English-born Henry Chadwick of Brooklyn, was responsible for the "development of the box score, tabular standings, the annual baseball guide, the batting average, and most of the common statistics and tables used to describe baseball." The statistical record is so central to the game's "historical essence" that Chadwick came to be known as Father Baseball. In the 1920s, American newspapers began devoting more and more attention to baseball statistics, initiating what journalist and historian Alan Schwarz describes as a "tectonic shift in sports, as intrigue that once focused mostly on teams began to go to individual players and their statistics lines."
The Official Baseball Rules administered by MLB require the official scorer to categorize each baseball play unambiguously. The rules provide detailed criteria to promote consistency. The score report is the official basis for both the box score of the game and the relevant statistical records. General managers, managers, and baseball scouts use statistics to evaluate players and make strategic decisions.
Certain traditional statistics are familiar to most baseball fans. The basic batting statistics include:
At bats: plate appearances, excluding walks and hit by pitches—where the batter's ability is not fully tested—and sacrifices and sacrifice flies—where the batter intentionally makes an out in order to advance one or more baserunners
Hits: times a base is reached safely, because of a batted, fair ball without a fielding error or fielder's choice
Runs: times circling the bases and reaching home safely
Runs batted in (RBIs): number of runners who scored due to a batter's action (including the batter, in the case of a home run), except when batter grounded into double play or reached on an error
Home runs: hits on which the batter successfully touched all four bases, without the contribution of a fielding error
Batting average: hits divided by at bats—the traditional measure of batting ability
The basic baserunning statistics include:
Stolen bases: times advancing to the next base entirely due to the runner's own efforts, generally while the pitcher is preparing to deliver or delivering the ball
Caught stealing: times tagged out while attempting to steal a base
The basic pitching statistics include:
Wins: credited to pitcher on winning team who last pitched before the team took a lead that it never relinquished (a starting pitcher must pitch at least five innings to qualify for a win)
Losses: charged to pitcher on losing team who was pitching when the opposing team took a lead that it never relinquished
Saves: games where the pitcher enters a game led by the pitcher's team, finishes the game without surrendering the lead, is not the winning pitcher, and either (a) the lead was three runs or less when the pitcher entered the game; (b) the potential tying run was on base, at bat, or on deck; or (c) the pitcher pitched three or more innings
Innings pitched: outs recorded while pitching divided by three (partial innings are conventionally recorded as, e.g., "5.2" or "7.1", the last digit actually representing thirds, not tenths, of an inning)
Strikeouts: times pitching three strikes to a batter
Winning percentage: wins divided by decisions (wins plus losses)
Earned run average (ERA): runs allowed, excluding those resulting from fielding errors, per nine innings pitched
The basic fielding statistics include:
Putouts: times the fielder catches a fly ball, tags or forces out a runner, or otherwise directly effects an out
Assists: times a putout by another fielder was recorded following the fielder touching the ball
Errors: times the fielder fails to make a play that should have been made with common effort, and the batting team benefits as a result
Total chances: putouts plus assists plus errors
Fielding average: successful chances (putouts plus assists) divided by total chances
Among the many other statistics that are kept are those collectively known as situational statistics. For example, statistics can indicate which specific pitchers a certain batter performs best against. If a given situation statistically favors a certain batter, the manager of the fielding team may be more likely to change pitchers or have the pitcher intentionally walk the batter in order to face one who is less likely to succeed.
Sabermetrics
Sabermetrics refers to the field of baseball statistical study and the development of new statistics and analytical tools. The term is also used to refer directly to new statistics themselves. The term was coined around 1980 by one of the field's leading proponents, Bill James, and derives from the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).
The growing popularity of sabermetrics since the early 1980s has brought more attention to two batting statistics that sabermetricians argue are much better gauges of a batter's skill than batting average:
On-base percentage (OBP) measures a batter's ability to get on base. It is calculated by taking the sum of the batter's successes in getting on base (hits plus walks plus hit by pitches) and dividing that by the batter's total plate appearances (at bats plus walks plus hit by pitches plus sacrifice flies), except for sacrifice bunts.
Slugging percentage (SLG) measures a batter's ability to hit for power. It is calculated by taking the batter's total bases (one per each single, two per double, three per triple, and four per home run) and dividing that by the batter's at bats.
Some of the new statistics devised by sabermetricians have gained wide use:
On-base plus slugging (OPS) measures a batter's overall ability. It is calculated by adding the batter's on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
Walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) measures a pitcher's ability at preventing hitters from reaching base. It is calculated by adding the number of walks and hits a pitcher surrendered, then dividing by the number of innings pitched.
Wins Above Replacement (WAR) measures number of additional wins his team has achieved above the number of expected team wins if that player were substituted with a replacement-level player.
Popularity and cultural impact
Writing in 1919, philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen described baseball as the national religion of the US. In the words of sports columnist Jayson Stark, baseball has long been "a unique paragon of American culture"—a status he sees as devastated by the steroid abuse scandal. Baseball has an important place in other national cultures as well: Scholar Peter Bjarkman describes "how deeply the sport is ingrained in the history and culture of a nation such as Cuba, [and] how thoroughly it was radically reshaped and nativized in Japan."
In the United States
The major league game in the United States was originally targeted toward a middle-class, white-collar audience: relative to other spectator pastimes, the National League's set ticket price of 50 cents in 1876 was high, while the location of playing fields outside the inner city and the workweek daytime scheduling of games were also obstacles to a blue-collar audience. A century later, the situation was very different. With the rise in popularity of other team sports with much higher average ticket prices—football, basketball, and hockey—professional baseball had become among the most blue-collar-oriented of leading American spectator sports.
Overall, baseball has a large following in the United States; a 2006 poll found that nearly half of Americans are fans. In the late 1900s and early 2000s, baseball's position compared to football in the United States moved in contradictory directions. In 2008, MLB set a revenue record of $6.5 billion, matching the NFL's revenue for the first time in decades. A new MLB revenue record of more than $10 billion was set in 2017. On the other hand, the percentage of American sports fans polled who named baseball as their favorite sport was 9%, compared to pro football at 37%. In 1985, the respective figures were pro football 24%, baseball 23%. Because there are so many more major league games played, there is no comparison in overall attendance. In 2008, total attendance at major league games was the second-highest in history: 78.6 million, 0.7% off the record set the previous year. The following year, amid the U.S. recession, attendance fell by 6.6% to 73.4 million. Eight years later, it dropped under 73 million. Attendance at games held under the Minor League Baseball umbrella set a record in 2008, with 43.3 million. While MLB games have not drawn the same national TV viewership as football games, MLB games are dominant in teams' local markets and regularly lead all programs in primetime in their markets during the summer.
Caribbean
Since the early 1980s, the Dominican Republic, in particular the city of San Pedro de Macorís, has been the major leagues' primary source of foreign talent. In 2017, 83 of the 868 players on MLB Opening Day rosters (and disabled lists) were from the country. Among other Caribbean countries and territories, a combined 97 MLB players were born in Venezuela, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Hall-of-Famer Roberto Clemente remains one of the greatest national heroes in Puerto Rico's history. While baseball has long been the island's primary athletic pastime, its once well-attended professional winter league has declined in popularity since 1990, when young Puerto Rican players began to be included in the major leagues' annual first-year player draft.
Asia
In Asia, baseball is among the most popular sports in Japan and South Korea. In Japan, where baseball is inarguably the leading spectator team sport, combined revenue for the twelve teams in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), the body that oversees both the Central and Pacific Leagues, was estimated at $1 billion in 2007. Total NPB attendance for the year was approximately 20 million. While in the preceding two decades, MLB attendance grew by 50 percent and revenue nearly tripled, the comparable NPB figures were stagnant. There are concerns that MLB's growing interest in acquiring star Japanese players will hurt the game in their home country. In Cuba, where baseball is by every reckoning the national sport, the national team overshadows the city and provincial teams that play in the top-level domestic leagues. Revenue figures are not released for the country's amateur system. Similarly, according to one official pronouncement, the sport's governing authority "has never taken into account attendance ... because its greatest interest has always been the development of athletes".
Among children
, Little League Baseball oversees leagues with close to 2.4 million participants in over 80 countries. The number of players has fallen since the 1990s, when 3 million children took part in Little League Baseball annually. Babe Ruth League teams have over 1 million participants. According to the president of the International Baseball Federation, between 300,000 and 500,000 women and girls play baseball around the world, including Little League and the introductory game of Tee Ball.
A varsity baseball team is an established part of physical education departments at most high schools and colleges in the United States. In 2015, nearly half a million high schoolers and over 34,000 collegians played on their schools' baseball teams. By early in the 20th century, intercollegiate baseball was Japan's leading sport. Today, high school baseball in particular is immensely popular there. The final rounds of the two annual tournaments—the National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament in the spring, and the even more important National High School Baseball Championship in the summer—are broadcast around the country. The tournaments are known, respectively, as Spring Koshien and Summer Koshien after the 55,000-capacity stadium where they are played. In Cuba, baseball is a mandatory part of the state system of physical education, which begins at age six. Talented children as young as seven are sent to special district schools for more intensive training—the first step on a ladder whose acme is the national baseball team.
In popular culture
Baseball has had a broad impact on popular culture, both in the United States and elsewhere. Dozens of English-language idioms have been derived from baseball; in particular, the game is the source of a number of widely used sexual euphemisms. The first networked radio broadcasts in North America were of the 1922 World Series: famed sportswriter Grantland Rice announced play-by-play from New York City's Polo Grounds on WJZ–Newark, New Jersey, which was connected by wire to WGY–Schenectady, New York, and WBZ–Springfield, Massachusetts. The baseball cap has become a ubiquitous fashion item not only in the United States and Japan, but also in countries where the sport itself is not particularly popular, such as the United Kingdom.
Baseball has inspired many works of art and entertainment. One of the first major examples, Ernest Thayer's poem "Casey at the Bat", appeared in 1888. A wry description of the failure of a star player in what would now be called a "clutch situation", the poem became the source of vaudeville and other staged performances, audio recordings, film adaptations, and an opera, as well as a host of sequels and parodies in various media. There have been many baseball movies, including the Academy Award–winning The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and the Oscar nominees The Natural (1984) and Field of Dreams (1989). The American Film Institute's selection of the ten best sports movies includes The Pride of the Yankees at number 3 and Bull Durham (1988) at number 5. Baseball has provided thematic material for hits on both stage—the Adler–Ross musical Damn Yankees—and record—George J. Gaskin's "Slide, Kelly, Slide", Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson", and John Fogerty's "Centerfield". The baseball-inspired comedic sketch "Who's on First?", popularized by Abbott and Costello in 1938, quickly became famous. Six decades later, Time named it the best comedy routine of the 20th century.
Literary works connected to the game include the short fiction of Ring Lardner and novels such as Bernard Malamud's The Natural (the source for the movie), Robert Coover's The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., and W. P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe (the source for Field of Dreams). Baseball's literary canon also includes the beat reportage of Damon Runyon; the columns of Grantland Rice, Red Smith, Dick Young, and Peter Gammons; and the essays of Roger Angell. Among the celebrated nonfiction books in the field are Lawrence S. Ritter's The Glory of Their Times, Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer, and Michael Lewis's Moneyball. The 1970 publication of major league pitcher Jim Bouton's tell-all chronicle Ball Four is considered a turning point in the reporting of professional sports.
Baseball has also inspired the creation of new cultural forms. Baseball cards were introduced in the late 19th century as trade cards. A typical example featured an image of a baseball player on one side and advertising for a business on the other. In the early 1900s they were produced widely as promotional items by tobacco and confectionery companies. The 1930s saw the popularization of the modern style of baseball card, with a player photograph accompanied on the rear by statistics and biographical data. Baseball cards—many of which are now prized collectibles—are the source of the much broader trading card industry, involving similar products for different sports and non-sports-related fields.
Modern fantasy sports began in 1980 with the invention of Rotisserie League Baseball by New York writer Daniel Okrent and several friends. Participants in a Rotisserie league draft notional teams from the list of active MLB players and play out an entire imaginary season with game outcomes based on the players' latest real-world statistics. Rotisserie-style play quickly became a phenomenon. Now known more generically as fantasy baseball, it has inspired similar games based on an array of different sports. The field boomed with increasing Internet access and new fantasy sports-related websites. By 2008, 29.9 million people in the United States and Canada were playing fantasy sports, spending $800 million on the hobby. The burgeoning popularity of fantasy baseball is also credited with the increasing attention paid to sabermetrics—first among fans, only later among baseball professionals.
Derivative games
Informal variations of baseball have popped up over time, with games like corkball reflecting local traditions and allowing the game to be played in diverse environments. Two variations of baseball, softball and Baseball5, are internationally governed alongside baseball by the World Baseball Softball Confederation.
British baseball
American professional baseball teams toured Britain in 1874 and 1889, and had a great effect on similar sports in Britain. In Wales and Merseyside, a strong community game had already developed with skills and plays more in keeping with the American game and the Welsh began to informally adopt the name "baseball" (Pêl Fas), to reflect the American style. By the 1890s, calls were made to follow the success of other working class sports (like Rugby in Wales and Soccer in Merseyside) and adopt a distinct set of rules and bureaucracy. During the 1892 season rules for the game of "baseball" were agreed and the game was officially codified.
Finnish baseball
Finnish baseball, known as pesäpallo, is a combination of traditional ball-batting team games and North American baseball, invented by Lauri "Tahko" Pihkala in the 1920s. The basic idea of pesäpallo is similar to that of baseball: the offense tries to score by hitting the ball successfully and running through the bases, while the defense tries to put the batter and runners out. One of the most important differences between pesäpallo and baseball is that the ball is pitched vertically, which makes hitting the ball, as well as controlling the power and direction of the hit, much easier. This gives the offensive game more variety, speed, and tactical aspects compared to baseball.
See also
Baseball awards
Baseball clothing and equipment
List of organized baseball leagues
Women in baseball
Related sports
Baseball5, the official ball-only version of baseball
Brännboll (Scandinavian bat-and-ball game)
Cricket
Comparison of baseball and cricket
Lapta (game) (Russian bat-and-ball game)
Oină (Romanian bat-and-ball game)
Pesäpallo, also known as Finnish baseball (a demonstration sport at the 1952 Summer Olympics)
Rounders
Stickball
Stoop ball
Vitilla
Wiffle ball
References
Sources
Further reading
Dickson, Paul. The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, 3d ed. (W. W. Norton, 2009).
Fitts, Robert K. Remembering Japanese Baseball: An Oral History of the Game (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005).
Gillette, Gary, and Pete Palmer (eds.). The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, 5th ed. (Sterling, 2008).
Peterson, Robert. Only the Ball was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams (Oxford University Press, 1992 [1970]).
Reaves, Joseph A. Taking in a Game: A History of Baseball in Asia (Bison, 2004).
Ward, Geoffrey C., and Ken Burns. Baseball: An Illustrated History (Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).
External links
World Baseball Softball Confederation
"Baseball". Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Baseball Prospectus
Society for American Baseball Research
Mister Baseball European baseball news
Baseball Heritage Museum at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio
"Perils of Base Ball Playing", historical perspective on statistics of baseball injuries, Scientific American, 13 July 1878, p. 21
American culture
Team sports
Ball and bat games
Sports originating in England
Sports originating in the United States
Summer Olympic sports
1846 introductions
Articles containing video clips | en |
doc-en-1892 | Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational financial services company with corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California, operational headquarters in Manhattan, and managerial offices throughout the United States and internationally. The company has operations in 35 countries with over 70 million customers globally. It is considered a systemically important financial institution by the Financial Stability Board.
The firm's primary subsidiary is Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., a national bank chartered in Wilmington, Delaware, which designates its main office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It is the fourth largest bank in the United States by total assets and is one of the largest as ranked by bank deposits and market capitalization. Along with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup, Wells Fargo is one of the "Big Four Banks" of the United States. It has 8,050 branches and 13,000 ATMs. It is one of the most valuable bank brands.
Wells Fargo in its present form is a result of a merger between the original Wells Fargo & Company and Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation in 1998. While Norwest was the nominal survivor, the merged company took the better-known Wells Fargo name and moved to Wells Fargo's hub in San Francisco, while its banking subsidiary merged with Wells Fargo's Sioux Falls-based banking subsidiary. With the 2008 acquisition of Charlotte-based Wachovia, Wells Fargo became a coast-to-coast bank.
Wells Fargo is ranked 37th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest companies in the US.
The company has been the subject of several investigations by regulators; on February 2, 2018, account fraud by the bank resulted in the Federal Reserve barring Wells Fargo from growing its nearly $2 trillion-asset base any further until the company fixed its internal problems to the satisfaction of the Federal Reserve. In September 2021, Wells Fargo incurred further fines from the United States Justice Department charging fraudulent behavior by the bank against foreign-exchange currency trading customers.
History
In 1852, Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, the two founders of American Express, formed Wells Fargo & Company to provide express and banking services to California, which was growing rapidly due to the California Gold Rush.
In March 1860, Wells Fargo gained control Butterfield Overland Mail Company, after Congress failed to pass the annual post office appropriation bill, thereby leaving the post office with no way to pay for the Overland Mail Company's services, and leaving Overland no way to pay Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo then operated the western portion of the Pony Express.
In 1866, the "Grand consolidation" united Wells Fargo, Holladay, and Overland Mail stage lines under the Wells Fargo name.
In 1872, Lloyd Tevis, a friend of the Central Pacific "Big Four" and holder of rights to operate an express service over the Transcontinental Railroad, became president of the company after acquiring a large stake, a position he held until 1892.
In 1892, John J. Valentine, Sr., a long time Wells Fargo employee, was made president of the company. Valentine died in late December 1901 and was succeeded as president by Dudley Evans on January 2, 1902.
In 1905, Wells Fargo separated its banking and express operations; Wells Fargo's bank merged with the Nevada National Bank to form the Wells Fargo Nevada National Bank.
In 1918, as a wartime measure, the United States government nationalized Wells Fargo's express franchise into a federal agency known as the US Railway Express Agency (REA). The federal government took control of the express company. The bank began rebuilding but with a focus on commercial markets. After the war, the REA was privatized and continued service until 1975.
In 1923, Wells Fargo Nevada merged with the Union Trust Company to form the Wells Fargo Bank & Union Trust Company.
In 1929, Northwest Bancorporation was formed as a banking association.
The company did well during the Great Depression; during a Bank Holiday in March 1933, the company actually gained $2 million of deposits.
In 1954, Wells Fargo & Union Trust shortened its name to Wells Fargo Bank.
In 1960, Wells Fargo merged with American Trust Company to form the Wells Fargo Bank American Trust Company.
In 1962, Wells Fargo American Trust shortened its name to Wells Fargo Bank.
In 1968, Wells Fargo was converted to a federal banking charter, becoming Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. Wells Fargo merges with Henry Trione's Sonoma Mortgage in a $10.8 million stock transfer, making Trione the largest shareholder in Wells Fargo until Warren Buffett and Walter Annenberg surpassed him.
In 1969, Wells Fargo & Company holding company was formed, with Wells Fargo Bank as its main subsidiary.
In 1982, Northwest Bancorporation acquired consumer finance firm Dial Finance, which was renamed Norwest Financial Service the following year.
In 1983, Northwest Bancorporation was renamed Norwest Corporation.
In September 1983, a Wells Fargo armored truck depot in West Hartford, Connecticut was the victim of the White Eagle robbery, involving an insider who worked as an armored truck guard, in the largest US bank theft to date, with $7.1 million stolen and two co-workers tied up. The robbery was carried out with the support of the government of Cuba and the cash was initially moved to Mexico City.
In 1986, Wells Fargo acquired Crocker National Bank from Midland Bank.
In 1987, Wells Fargo acquired the personal trust business of Bank of America.
In 1988, Wells Fargo acquired Barclays Bank of California from Barclays plc.
In 1991, Wells Fargo acquired 130 branches in California from Great American Bank for $491 million.
In May 1995, Wells Fargo became the first major US financial services firm to offer internet banking.
In 1996, Wells Fargo acquired First Interstate Bancorp for $11.6 billion. Integration went poorly as many executives left.
In 1998, Wells Fargo Bank was acquired by Norwest Corporation of Minneapolis, with the combined company assuming the Wells Fargo name.
In 2000, Wells Fargo Bank acquired National Bank of Alaska. It also acquired First Security Corporation.
In 2001, Wells Fargo acquired H.D. Vest Financial Services for $128 million, but sold it in 2015 for $580 million.
In June 2007, John Stumpf was named chief executive officer of the company and Richard Kovacevich remained as chairman.
In 2007, Wells Fargo acquired Greater Bay Bancorp, which had $7.4 billion in assets, in a $1.5 billion transaction. It also acquired Placer Sierra Bank. It also acquired CIT Group's construction unit.
In 2008, Wells Fargo acquired United Bancorporation of Wyoming.
In 2008, Wells Fargo acquired Century Bancshares of Texas.
On October 3, 2008, after Wachovia turned down an inferior offer from Citigroup, Wachovia agreed to be bought by Wells Fargo for about $14.8 billion in stock. On October 4, 2008, a New York state judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the transaction from going forward while the competing offer from Citigroup was sorted out. Citigroup alleged that it had an exclusivity agreement with Wachovia that barred Wachovia from negotiating with other potential buyers. The injunction was overturned late in the evening on October 5, 2008, by New York state appeals court. Citigroup and Wells Fargo then entered into negotiations brokered by the FDIC to reach an amicable solution to the impasse. Those negotiations failed. Citigroup was unwilling to take on more risk than the $42 billion that would have been the cap under the previous FDIC-backed deal (with the FDIC incurring all losses over $42 billion). Citigroup did not block the merger, but sought damages of $60 billion for breach of an alleged exclusivity agreement with Wachovia.
On October 28, 2008, Wells Fargo received $25 billion of funds via the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in the form of a preferred stock purchase by the United States Department of the Treasury. As a result of requirements of the government stress tests, the company raised $8.6 billion in capital in May 2009. On December 23, 2009, Wells Fargo redeemed $25 billion of preferred stock issued to the United States Department of the Treasury. As part of the redemption of the preferred stock, Wells Fargo also paid accrued dividends of $131.9 million, bringing the total dividends paid to $1.441 billion since the preferred stock was issued in October 2008.
In April 2009, Wells Fargo acquired North Coast Surety Insurance Services.
In 2011, the company hired 25 investment bankers from Citadel LLC.
In April 2012, Wells Fargo acquired Merlin Securities. In December 2012, it was rebranded as Wells Fargo Prime Services.
In December 2012, Wells Fargo acquired a 35% stake in The Rock Creek Group LP. The stake was increased to 65% in 2014 but sold back to management in July 2018.
In 2015, Wells Fargo Rail acquired GE Capital Rail Services and merged in with First Union Rail. In late 2015, Wells Fargo acquired three GE units focused on business loans equipment financing.
In March 2017, Wells Fargo announced a plan to offer smartphone-based transactions with mobile wallets including Wells Fargo Wallet, Android Pay and Samsung Pay.
In June 2018, Wells Fargo sold all 52 of its physical bank branch locations in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio to Flagstar Bank.
In September 2018, Wells Fargo announced it would cut 26,450 jobs by 2020 to reduce costs by $4 billion.
In March 2019, CEO Tim Sloan resigned amidst the Wells Fargo account fraud scandal and former general counsel C. Allen Parker became interim CEO.
In July 2019, Principal Financial Group acquired the company's Institutional Retirement & Trust business.
On September 27, 2019, Charles Scharf was announced as the firm's new CEO.
In 2020, the company sold its student loan portfolio.
In May 2021, the company sold its Canadian Direct Equipment Finance business to Toronto-Dominion Bank.
In 2021, the company sold its asset management division, Wells Fargo Asset Management (WFAM) to private equity firms GTCR and Reverence Capital Partners for $2.1 billion. WFAM had $603 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2020, of which 33% was invested in money market funds. WFAM was rebranded as Allspring Global Investments.
Environmental record
In 2009, Wells Fargo ranked 1st among banks and insurance companies, and 13th overall, in Newsweek Magazine's inaugural "Green Rankings" of the country's 500 largest companies.
In 2013, the company was recognized by the EPA Center for Corporate Climate Leadership as a Climate Leadership Award winner, in the category "Excellence in Greenhouse Gas Management (Goal Setting Certificate)"; this recognition was for the company's aim to reduce its absolute greenhouse gas emissions from its US operations by 35% by 2020 versus 2008 levels.
In 2017, Wells Fargo ranked 182nd out of 500 in Newsweek Magazine's "Green Rankings" of the largest US companies;
Newsweek's 2020 listing of "America's Most Responsible Companies" did not include Wells Fargo.
Wells Fargo has provided more than $10 billion in financing for environmentally beneficial business opportunities, including supporting commercial-scale solar photovoltaic projects and utility-scale wind projects nationwide.
In 2010, Wells Fargo launched what it believes to be the first blog among its industry peers to report on its environmental stewardship and to solicit feedback and ideas from its stakeholders.
Wells Fargo History Museum
The company operates the Wells Fargo History Museum at 420 Montgomery Street, San Francisco. Displays include original stagecoaches, photographs, gold nuggets and mining artifacts, the Pony Express, telegraph equipment, and historic bank artifacts. The museum also has a gift shop. In January 2015, armed robbers in an SUV smashed through the museum's glass doors and stole gold nuggets. The company previously operated other museums but those have since closed.
Operations and services
Consumer Banking and Lending
The Consumer Banking and Lending segment includes Regional Banking, Diversified Products, and Consumer Deposits groups, as well as Wells Fargo Customer Connection (formerly Wells Fargo Phone Bank, Wachovia Direct Access, the National Business Banking Center, and Credit Card Customer Service). Wells Fargo also has around 2,000 stand-alone mortgage branches throughout the country. There are also mini-branches located inside of other buildings, which are almost exclusively grocery stores, that usually contain ATMs, basic bank teller services, and an office for private meetings with customers.
Consumer lending
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage is the second largest retail mortgage originator in the United States, originating one out of every four home loans. Wells Fargo services $1.8 trillion in home mortgages, the one of the largest servicing portfolios in the US.
Equipment lending
Wells Fargo has various divisions, including Wells Fargo Rail, that finance and lease equipment to different types of companies.
Wealth and Investment Management
Wells Fargo offers investment products through its subsidiaries, Wells Fargo Investments, LLC, and Wells Fargo Advisors, LLC, as well as through national broker/dealer firms. The company also serves high-net-worth individuals through its private bank and family wealth group.
Wells Fargo Advisors is the brokerage subsidiary of Wells Fargo, located in St. Louis, Missouri. It is the third-largest brokerage firm in the United States as of the third quarter of 2010 with $1.1 trillion retail client assets under management.
Wells Fargo Advisors was known as Wachovia Securities until May 1, 2009, when it was renamed following Wells Fargo's acquisition of Wachovia Corporation.
Securities
Wells Fargo Securities (WFS) is the investment banking division of Wells Fargo & Co. headquartered in Charlotte, with other U.S. offices in New York, Minneapolis, Boston, Houston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles and with international offices in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo.
Wells Fargo Securities was established in 2009 after the acquisition of Wachovia Securities. It provides merger and acquisition, high yield, leveraged finance, equity underwriting, private placement, loan syndication, risk management, and public finance services
Cross-selling
A key part of Wells Fargo's business strategy is cross-selling, the practice of encouraging existing customers to buy additional banking services. Customers inquiring about their checking account balance may be pitched mortgage deals and mortgage holders may be pitched credit card offers in an attempt to increase the customer's profitability to the bank. Other banks have attempted to emulate Wells Fargo's cross-selling practices (described by The Wall Street Journal as a hard sell technique).
International operations
Wells Fargo has banking services throughout the world, with overseas offices in Hong Kong, London, Dubai, Singapore, Tokyo, and Toronto. Back-offices are in India and the Philippines with more than 20,000 staff.
In 2010, hedge fund administrator Citco purchased the trust company operation of Wells Fargo in the Cayman Islands.
Charter
Wells Fargo operates under Charter #1, the first national bank charter issued in the United States. This charter was issued to First National Bank of Philadelphia on June 20, 1863, by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Traditionally, acquiring banks assume the earliest issued charter number. Thus, the first charter passed from First National Bank of Philadelphia to Wells Fargo through its 2008 acquisition of Wachovia, which had inherited it through one of its many acquisitions.
Lawsuits, fines and controversies
1981 MAPS Wells Fargo embezzlement scandal
In 1981, it was discovered that a Wells Fargo assistant operations officer, Lloyd Benjamin "Ben" Lewis, had perpetrated one of the largest embezzlements in history, through its Beverly Drive branch. During 1978 - 1981, Lewis had successfully written phony debit and credit receipts to benefit boxing promoters Harold J. Smith (né Ross Eugene Fields) and Sam "Sammie" Marshall, chairman and president, respectively, of Muhammed Ali Professional Sports, Inc. (MAPS), of which Lewis was also listed as a director; Marshall, too, was a former employee of the same Wells Fargo branch as Lewis. In excess of $300,000 was paid to Lewis, who pled guilty to embezzlement and conspiracy charges in 1981, and testified against his co-conspirators for a reduced five-year sentence. (Boxer Muhammed Ali had received a fee for the use of his name, and had no other involvement with the organization.)
Higher costs charged to African-American and Hispanic borrowers
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed suit against Wells Fargo on July 31, 2009, alleging that the bank steers African Americans and Hispanics into high-cost subprime loans. A Wells Fargo spokesman responded that "The policies, systems, and controls we have in place – including in Illinois – ensure race is not a factor..." An affidavit filed in the case stated that loan officers had referred to black mortgage-seekers as "mud people," and the subprime loans as "ghetto loans." According to Beth Jacobson, a loan officer at Wells Fargo interviewed for a report in The New York Times, "We just went right after them. Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans." The report presented data from the city of Baltimore, where more than half the properties subject to foreclosure on a Wells Fargo loan from 2005 to 2008 now stand vacant. And 71 percent of those are in predominantly black neighborhoods. Wells Fargo agreed to pay $125 million to subprime borrowers and $50 million in direct down payment assistance in certain areas, for a total of $175 million.
Failure to monitor suspected money laundering
In a March 2010 agreement with US federal prosecutors, Wells Fargo acknowledged that between 2004 and 2007 Wachovia had failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers, including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine into Mexico.
Overdraft fees
In August 2010, Wells Fargo was fined by United States district court judge William Alsup for overdraft practices designed to "gouge" consumers and "profiteer" at their expense, and for misleading consumers about how the bank processed transactions and assessed overdraft fees.
Settlement and fines regarding mortgage servicing practices
On February 9, 2012, it was announced that the five largest mortgage servicers (Ally Financial, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo) agreed to a settlement with the US Federal Government and 49 states. The settlement, known as the National Mortgage Settlement (NMS), required the servicers to provide about $26 billion in relief to distressed homeowners and in direct payments to the federal and state governments. This settlement amount makes the NMS the second largest civil settlement in U.S. history, only trailing the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. The five banks were also required to comply with 305 new mortgage servicing standards. Oklahoma held out and agreed to settle with the banks separately.
On April 5, 2012, a federal judge ordered Wells Fargo to pay $3.1 million in punitive damages over a single loan, one of the largest fines for a bank ever for mortgaging service misconduct, after the bank improperly charged Michael Jones, a New Orleans homeowner, with $24,000 in mortgage fees, after the bank misallocated payments to interest instead of principal. Elizabeth Magner, a federal bankruptcy judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana, cited the bank's behavior as "highly reprehensible", stating that Wells Fargo has taken advantage of borrowers who rely on the bank's accurate calculations. The award was affirmed on appeal in 2013.
In May 2013, New York attorney-general Eric Schneiderman announced a lawsuit against Wells Fargo over alleged violations of the national mortgage settlement. Schneidermann claimed Wells Fargo had violated rules over giving fair and timely serving. In 2015, a judge sided with Wells Fargo.
SEC fine due to inadequate risk disclosures
On August 14, 2012, Wells Fargo agreed to pay around $6.5 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charges that in 2007 it sold risky mortgage-backed securities without fully realizing their dangers.
Lawsuit by FHA over loan underwriting
In 2016, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $1.2 billion to settle allegations that the company violated the False Claims Act by underwriting over 100,000 Federal Housing Administration (FHA) backed loans when over half of the applicants did not qualify for the program.
In October 2012, Wells Fargo was sued by United States Attorney Preet Bharara over questionable mortgage deals.
Lawsuit due to premium inflation on forced place insurance
In April 2013, Wells Fargo settled a suit with 24,000 Florida homeowners alongside insurer QBE Insurance, in which Wells Fargo was accused of inflating premiums on forced-place insurance.
Lawsuit regarding excessive overdraft fees
In May 2013, Wells Fargo paid $203 million to settle class-action litigation accusing the bank of imposing excessive overdraft fees on checking-account customers.
Violation of New York credit card laws
In February 2015, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $4 million, including a $2 million penalty and $2 million in restitution for illegally taking an interest in the homes of borrowers in exchange for opening credit card accounts for the homeowners.
Tax liability and lobbying
In December 2011, Public Campaign criticized Wells Fargo for spending $11 million on lobbying during 2008–2010, while increasing executive pay and laying off workers, while having no federal tax liability due to losses from the Great Recession. However, in 2013, the company paid $9.1 billion in income taxes.
Prison industry investment
The company has invested its clients' funds in GEO Group, a multi-national provider of for-profit private prisons. By March 2012, its stake had grown to more than 4.4 million shares worth $86.7 million. As of November 2012, Wells Fargo divested 33% of its holdings of GEO's stock, reducing its stake to 4.98% of Geo Group's common stock, below the threshold of which it must disclose further transactions.
Discrimination against African Americans in hiring
In August 2020, the company agreed to pay $7.8 million in back wages for allegedly discriminating against 34,193 African Americans in hiring for tellers, personal bankers, customer sales and service representatives, and administrative support positions. The company agreed to provide jobs to 580 of the affected applicants.
SEC settlement for insider trading case
In May 2015, Gregory T. Bolan Jr., a stock analyst at Wells Fargo agreed to pay $75,000 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle allegations that he gave Joseph C. Ruggieri, a stock trader, insider information on probable ratings charges. Ruggieri was not convicted of any crime.
Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal
In September 2016, Wells Fargo was issued a combined total of $185 million in fines for opening over 1.5 million checking and savings accounts and 500,000 credit cards on behalf of customers without their consent. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued $100 million in fines, the largest in the agency's five-year history, along with $50 million in fines from the City and County of Los Angeles, and $35 million in fines from the Office of Comptroller of the Currency. The scandal was caused by an incentive-compensation program for employees to create new accounts. It led to the firing of nearly 5,300 employees and $5 million being set aside for customer refunds on fees for accounts the customers never wanted. Carrie Tolstedt, who headed the department, retired in July 2016 and received $124.6 million in stock, options, and restricted Wells Fargo shares as a retirement package.
On October 12, 2016, John Stumpf, the then chairman and CEO, announced that he would be retiring amidst the scandals. President and Chief Operating Officer Timothy J. Sloan succeeded Stumpf, effective immediately. Following the scandal, applications for credit cards and checking accounts at the bank plummeted. In response to the event, the Better Business Bureau dropped accreditation of the bank. Several states and cities ended business relations with the company.
An investigation by the Wells Fargo board of directors, the report of which was released in April 2017, primarily blamed Stumpf, who it said had not responded to evidence of wrongdoing in the consumer services division, and Tolstedt, who was said to have knowingly set impossible sales goals and refused to respond when subordinates disagreed with them. Wells Fargo coined the phrase, “Go for Gr-Eight” – or, in other words, aim to sell at least 8 products to every customer. The board chose to use a clawback clause in the retirement contracts of Stumpf and Tolstedt to recover $75 million worth of cash and stock from the former executives.
In February 2020, the company agreed to pay $3 billion to settle claims by the United States Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The settlement did not prevent individual employees from being targets of future litigation. The Federal Reserve put a limit to Wells Fargo's assets, as a result of the scandal. In 2020, Wells Fargo sold $100 million in assets to stay under the limit.
Racketeering lawsuit for mortgage appraisal overcharges
In November 2016, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $50 million to settle allegations of overcharging hundreds of thousands of homeowners for appraisals ordered after they defaulted on their mortgage loans. While banks are allowed to charge homeowners for such appraisals, Wells Fargo frequently charged homeowners $95 to $125 on appraisals for which the bank had been charged $50 or less. The plaintiffs had sought triple damages under the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act on grounds that sending invoices and statements with fraudulently concealed fees constituted mail and wire fraud sufficient to allege racketeering.
Financing of Dakota Access Pipeline
Wells Fargo is a lender on the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,172-mile-long (1,886 km) underground oil pipeline transport system in North Dakota. The pipeline has been controversial regarding its potential impact on the environment.
In February 2017, the city councils of Seattle, Washington and Davis, California voted to move $3 billion of deposits from the bank due to its financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline as well as the Wells Fargo account fraud scandal.
Failure to comply with document security requirements
In December 2016, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined Wells Fargo $5.5 million for failing to store electronic documents in a "write once, read many" format, which makes it impossible to alter or destroy records after they are written.
Doing business with the gun industry and NRA
From December 2012 through February 2018, Wells Fargo reportedly helped two of the biggest firearms and ammunition companies obtain $431.1 million in loans. It also handled banking for the National Rifle Association and provided bank accounts and a $28-million line of credit. In 2020, the company said that it is winding down its business with the National Rifle Association.
Discrimination against female workers
In June 2018, about a dozen female Wells Fargo executives from the wealth management division met in Scottsdale, Arizona to discuss the minimal presence of women occupying senior roles within the company. The meeting, dubbed "the meeting of 12", represented the majority of the regional managing directors, of which 12 out of 45 were women. Wells Fargo had previously been investigating reports of gender bias in the division in the months leading up to the meeting. The women reported that they had been turned down for top jobs despite their qualifications, and instead the roles were occupied by men. There were also complaints against company president Jay Welker, who is also the head of the Wells Fargo wealth management division, due to his sexist statements regarding female employees. The female workers claimed that he called them "girls" and said that they "should be at home taking care of their children."
Overselling auto insurance
On June 10, 2019, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $385 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of allegedly scamming millions of auto-loan customers into buying insurance they did not need from National General Insurance.
Failure to Supervise Registered Representatives
On August 28, 2020, Wells Fargo agreed to pay a fine of $350,000 as well as $10 million in restitution payments to certain customers after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority accused the company of failing to reasonably supervise two of its registered representatives that recommended that customers invest a high percentage of their assets in high-risk energy securities in 2014 and 2015.
Steering customers to more expensive retirement accounts
In April 2018, the United States Department of Labor launched a probe into whether Wells Fargo was pushing its customers into more expensive retirement plans as well as into retirement funds managed by Wells Fargo itself.
Alteration of documents
In May 2018, the company discovered that its business banking group had improperly altered documents about business clients in 2017 and early 2018.
Executive compensation
With CEO John Stumpf paid 473 times more than the median employee, Wells Fargo ranked number 33 among the S&P 500 companies for CEO—employee pay inequality. In October 2014, a Wells Fargo employee earning $15 per hour emailed the CEO—copying 200,000 other employees—asking that all employees be given a $10,000 per year raise taken from a portion of annual corporate profits to address wage stagnation and income inequality. After being contacted by the media, Wells Fargo responded that all employees receive "market competitive" pay and benefits significantly above US federal minimums.
Pursuant to Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, publicly traded companies are required to disclose (1) the median total annual compensation of all employees other than the CEO and (2) the ratio of the CEO's annual total compensation to that of the median employee.
Carbon footprint
Wells Fargo & Company reported Total CO2e emissions (Direct + Indirect) for the twelve months ending 31 December 2020 at 776 Kt (-87 /-10.1% y-o-y). There has been a consistent declining trend in reported emissions since 2015.
In popular culture
Wells Fargo stagecoaches are mentioned in the song "The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away!)" in the 1953 film Calamity Jane performed by Doris Day: "With a fancy cargo, care of Wells and Fargo, Illinois - Boy!"..
Wells Fargo is also shown as the delivery service bringing the instruments for the town band in the 1962 film The Music Man.
See also
List of Wells Fargo directors
List of Wells Fargo presidents
Wells Fargo Arena
Wells Fargo Center
Big Four banks
References
External links
1852 establishments in New York (state)
American companies established in 1852
Banks based in California
Banks established in 1852
Companies based in San Francisco
Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Financial District, San Francisco
Mortgage lenders of the United States
Online brokerages
Systemically important financial institutions | en |
doc-en-9387 | Pacific Lutheran University (PLU) is a private Lutheran university in Parkland, Washington. It was founded by Norwegian Lutheran immigrants in 1890. PLU is sponsored by the 580 congregations of Region I of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. PLU has approximately 3,100 students enrolled. As of 2017, the school employs approximately 220 full-time professors on the woodland campus.
PLU consists of the College of Arts and Sciences (including of the Divisions of Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences), the School of Arts and Communication, the School of Business, the School of Education and Kinesiology, and the School of Nursing.
History
Early years
Pacific Lutheran University was chartered by the State of Washington on December 11, 1890. In naming the university, the Norwegian pioneers who founded it recognized the role that a Lutheran educational institution on the Western frontier could play in the region. They wanted the institution to help immigrants adjust to their new land and find jobs, but they also wanted it to produce graduates who would serve church and community. Education—and educating for service—was a venerated part of the Scandinavian traditions from which these pioneers came.
Classes first began in 1894 with the student body consisting of 30 students. Tuition at the time cost $1 per week. Bjug Harstad was the school's first president. The entire university was housed in one building from 1894 to 1912. This building was formerly known as Old Main but has since been renamed Harstad Hall in honor of the school's founding president.
In 1898 the university's name was changed to Pacific Lutheran Academy and Business College. Attempting to eliminate the debt plaguing the school, Bjug Harstad left for Alaska to search for gold. He spent one and one half years there but was unable to discover any gold. In 1902 the PLA athletic club celebrated its first victory in men's basketball with a 15–12 win over the University of Washington. Five years later women would be allowed to play basketball.
In 1912 a second building, a gymnasium, was constructed on the university campus. It included a track, a stage, and a science laboratory in the basement. Two years later students built a tennis court in what is now Red Square. By 1914 PLA received full accreditation meaning students could transfer to universities and retain their credits.
Although founded as a university, the institution functioned primarily as an academy until 1918, when it suspended instruction for two years. It reopened as the two-year Pacific Lutheran College, after merging with Columbia College, previously located in Everett. Further consolidations occurred when Spokane College merged with PLC in 1929. Four-year baccalaureate degrees were first offered in education in 1939 and in the liberal arts in 1942. The institution was reorganized as a university in 1960, reclaiming its original name.
Pacific Lutheran College
In 1920 the school merged with Columbia College in Everett, Washington, and reopened as Pacific Lutheran College. The reopening of the school also saw the construction of a new building, the chapel. Classes were held in the chapel until 1967. The chapel was also the home of Trinity Lutheran Church until the congregation built its own church in 1937.
The school's first football team was launched in 1926. They were originally known as the "Greyhounds", then the "Gladiators" (although they are unofficially referred to as the "Lutes"). That same year Polly Langlow, a member of PLC's women's basketball team, scored 270 points in 12-games setting a national record. A year later in 1927 the college's great musical tradition, the Choir of the West, was founded. The Choir acquired its name on a trip to the Great Lakes region.
Another merger occurred in 1929 when Spokane College, another Northwest Norwegian Lutheran school, closed. Its academic records were merged with PLC's, and several of its faculty members came to PLC. In 1937 the university acquired the golf course through a generous donation. The same year the cornerstone was laid for the new library. 1939 saw the first of several visits by Norwegian royalty when Crown Prince Olav and Crown Princess Märtha came to PLC's campus.
During the early 1940s PLC's student body was almost all female as most men were fighting in World War II. People returning to college post-war, specifically veterans using the G.I. Bill, caused a boom in enrollment. The student body at that time was half veteran and no longer mostly female. A number of new buildings were completed in the following years including Ramstad Hall, Memorial Gymnasium, and the Student Union Building (now renamed as Anderson University Center). In 1952 the new Chapel-Music-Speech Building was constructed and later named Eastvold Chapel (renamed in 2013 as the Karen Hille Phillips Center for the Performing Arts). Chapel became mandatory for the first time with attendance being taken and seats being assigned. Two years later North and South Halls, the first dormitories, were built (later renamed Hong Hall and Hinderlie Hall, respectively.) Until that time students had lived in Old Main or boarded with Parkland families.
University status
Reclaiming the original name, Pacific Lutheran College became known as Pacific Lutheran University in 1960. Along with the name of the school being changed the PLU mascot was also changed from the Gladiators to the Knights. The 1960s saw decade-long construction boom as ten buildings were built by 1970, almost as many as had been built in the previous 70 years.
The 1960s and 1970s were a time of great change on PLU's campus when restrictions on student life began to loosen. Chapel was no longer required and two dormitories become coed. Girls' dormitories' restrictive hours were replaced with a card-key system, and opposite-sex visitation was allowed 3 times a week instead of 2 times a year. Dancing was allowed for the first time on campus in 1963. Several well known entertainers performed at PLU including Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, The Steve Miller Band, The Righteous Brothers, B.B. King, Ike & Tina Turner, Bob Hope and The Psychedelic Furs performing hits 'Pretty in Pink' and 'Heartbreak Beat'.
Throughout its history PLU has remained close to its Scandinavian roots. In 1975 the school played host to King Olav V of Norway. Three years later in 1978, 14 members of Stortinget, the Norwegian Parliament, visited PLU. In 1982 King Carl XVI Gustav and Queen Silvia of Sweden visited PLU and the following year Princess Astrid of Norway also paid a visit to the university. That same year a monument was erected in Valle, Norway, to honor the Rev. Bjug Harstad, founder of PLU. By 1989 a Scandinavian Cultural Center would be completed on the lower floor of the University Center. King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway came to PLU in 1995 with Queen Sonja receiving an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. Crown Prince Haakon of Norway visited PLU in 1999. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, PLU awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree upon King Harald V of Norway.
Presidents
The first President of the Pacific Lutheran University was Rev. Bjug Harstad. The entire university was housed in one building from 1894 to 1912. This building was formerly known as Old Main but has since been renamed Harstad Hall in honor of the founding president.
The 14th and current President of the Pacific Lutheran University is L. Allan Belton, appointed in 2017.
AAUP censure
In June 2020, PLU was added to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) list of censured administrations. An AAUP report found that a long-serving PLU faculty member had been dismissed in violation of the AAUP's 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
Cuts
In April 2021, the board of regents at PLU announced its approval for cuts to 36 full-time faculty equivalent (FTE) positions, which will include some tenured faculty members losing their jobs. The university also will cut several majors (German, Nordic Studies), minors (Classical Studies, Norwegian, German), and one master's program (Master of Science in finance). All cuts will be implemented beginning with the fall 2022 semester. These cuts are expected to save between $2.5 million and $4 million.
The cuts announced in April 2021 follow cuts of about 31 FTE faculty announced during the 2017–2018 academic year, with savings of around $2.8 million. Cuts announced in 2018 also affected some majors and minors. PLU had 376 faculty members in September 2017. More than 1 in 6 FTE faculty positions (67 positions) will have been eliminated as a result of the cuts announced in 2017-2018 and April 2021. The faculty cuts announced in 2017-2018 were made largely through attrition or enticing professors close to retirement to retire early, whereas the cuts announced in April 2021 will involve more involuntary cuts, with some tenured and tenure-track and most contingent professors involuntarily losing their jobs.
Admission and financial aid
Tuition for the 2019–20 school year is $43,264 with room and meals costing $10,876. More than 97 percent of PLU students receive some sort of financial support. The 2020 U.S. News College and University rankings listed PLU as the seventh most innovative school, ninth best undergraduate teaching, and tenth best value school in the west region.
The 2019–2020 student body is as follows: 64 percent female, 36 percent male; 41 percent are students of color; 75 percent are from Washington state; 13 percent are Lutheran; 3 percent are international students representing 23 countries.
Academics
The academic calendar at PLU is divided into two semesters, fall and spring, with a one-month term during January known as J-term. Summer classes are also offered. During J-term students take one class for the entire month of January which counts as a normal 4-credit class one would take during a semester. PLU offers 44 majors and 54 minors in a wide array of disciplines.
New American University
PLU is a member of The New American Colleges and Universities, a national consortium of 22 selective, medium-sized (2,000–7,500 students) independent colleges and universities dedicated to the purposeful integration of liberal education, professional studies, and civic engagement.
This type of institution was called a New American College by Ernest Boyer in a series of influential essays and speeches in the 1990s. Since Boyer coined this term, most of the institutions that have aligned with this identity are referred to as universities; so, the term has tended to become New American University.
Study away
In 2009 PLU received the Senator Paul Simon Award for Campus Internationalization. In the same year PLU matched a $1 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create an endowment to assist low-income students to participate in study away programs. The Wang Center for International Programs opened in 2002 as the result of a $4 million donation from Peter, a 1960 PLU graduate, and Grace Wang. PLU maintains a partnership with Sichuan University, a university on the Entity List of the United States Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. Nearly 50% of PLU students study away.
Campus
The Pacific Lutheran University campus is located six miles (10 km) south of Tacoma, Washington, in suburban Parkland, on a 156-acre (63 ha) woodland campus. Joint Base Lewis-McChord is less than a half-mile (800 m) west of Parkland. The campus is unofficially divided into two sections, upper campus and lower campus.
Upper campus is home to many of the academic and administration buildings including the Phillip Hauge Administration Building, Mortvedt Library, Ramstad Hall and Xavier Hall. In 1964, the Board of Regents engaged Richard Haag—'the father of Northwest Landscape Architecture'—to design the landscape architecture plan for upper campus. Haag is famous for his work on Gas Works Park in Seattle, Washington and on the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island as well as the Seattle Center.
The Mortvedt Library offers over 260,000 volumes of books as well as over 23,000 full-text journals. The oldest book in the PLU collection is a psalter by Johann Bugenhagen published in 1524. Built in 1937, Xavier Hall served as the library until the Mortvedt Library was built in 1967. Since then the Division of Social Sciences has been housed in Xavier. In 2000 Xavier underwent a $5 million renovation project that saw the addition of the Philip Nordquist Lecture Hall. The University Center is also located on upper campus. This building houses the all-campus cafeteria, called the University Commons, and the Old Main Market. In addition it houses the offices of Campus Ministry, Student Involvement and Leadership, Residential Life, the Diversity Center, the Scandinavian Center, Student Media, Residence Hall Association, the Associated Students of PLU (ASPLU), Dining Services, Conferences and Events, and the Chris Knutzen Lecture Hall.
Along with the academic and administration buildings upper campus also houses PLU's art programs. The Mary Baker Russell Music Center was built in 1997 and is the home of PLU's Department of Music. The acoustically impressive and well-known Lagerquist Concert Hall houses the Gottfried and Mary Fuchs Organ (the largest University-based mechanical action organ on the West Coast) as well as state-of-the-art practice and performance facilities. Ingram Hall is home to a communication computer lab, a digital photography/graphic design lab, and studio art classrooms for painting, ceramics, sculpture, photography and printmaking. Ingram boasts two galleries: the University Gallery (which houses major shows and exhibitions) and the Wekell Gallery (which generally houses student and class work). Eastvold Auditorium, formal called Eastvold Chapel, seats 1100 and is the home of PLU Theatre. Eastvold hosts all main stage productions as well as a range of smaller productions throughout the year. In October 2011, PLU Theatre premiered a new addition to its arts department, the Karen H. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Named after the former Regent, this space is a symbol of the completion of phase one in Eastvold Auditorium's renovations. Eastvold is set to reopen with a new performing arts center in the fall of 2013.
Lower campus is home to many of the university's athletic facilities. These include Olson Auditorium, Memorial Gymnasium, Names Fitness Center, and the university swimming pool. Also located on lower campus are the Rieke Science Center, Morken Center for Learning and Technology, Martin J. Neeb Building, and the Keck Observatory.
Additional buildings around the perimeter of campus are also used for University purposes, including offices, the Wang Center for International Studies, East Campus, the Women's Center, the University House and Trinity Lutheran Church.
Residential life
PLU requires that all students under 20 years of age or junior status on or before September 1 live on campus or at home with a parent, spouse or child. Approximately half of all students enrolled at PLU live on campus. There are ten residence halls at PLU, with six located on upper campus and four located on lower campus.
Every year, the PLU Football team helps move new students into their PLU home.
The ten on campus residence halls:
Harstad Hall, built in 1894, is the oldest building on campus and housed the entire university from 1894 to 1912. It became a residence hall in 1960. It is an all-female hall, the only single sex hall on campus. Harstad is five stories tall and houses approximately 200 female residents. In 1984 the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Hinderlie Hall, built in 1954, Hinderlie Hall was first named South Hall but changed to Hinderlie in 1966 in honor of Berent and Ragna Hinderlie, university staff members between 1923 and 1955. The hall is four stories tall, with resident rooms on each floor including the south side of the basement, which is open to the hillside. Approximately 130 residents reside in Hinderlie.
Hong International Hall, built in 1954, was originally named North Hall. In 1966 the building was renamed in honor of Nils Joseph Hong, president from 1898 until 1918 and a faculty member at Pacific Lutheran College until he retired in 1938. The hall has five language wings (Norwegian, Chinese, French, German, and Spanish) and the International Honors wing. Approximately 75 residents reside in Hong.
Kreidler Hall, built in 1957, was originally named West Hall. In 1966 the hall was renamed Kreidler Hall after Lora Bradford Kreidler, the Dean of Women and teacher of arts from 1921 to 1943. All rooms in Kreidler are single rooms and students must be 20 years of age or junior standing to reside in Kreidler. Approximately 65 students reside in Kreidler.
Stuen Hall, built in 1966, is named after Ole J. Stuen, faculty member and administrator from 1913 to 1952. Approximately 100 residents reside in Stuen.
Ordal Hall, built in 1967, is named in honor of Ola J. Ordal, president of Pacific Lutheran College from 1921 to 1928. The Hall was originally built to house 187 female students but has since become co-ed.
Pflueger Hall, built in 1962, was the first residence hall built on lower campus. The building is named after Jesse P. Pflueger, professor of religion and philosophy from 1930 to 1958. It was designed to be a three-story hall to house 212 men, but since then has been converted to house both men and women.
Foss Hall, built in 1965, is named after Rev. Halfdan L. Foss, chairman of the Pacific Lutheran Board of Trustees from 1942 to 1964. The hall originally housed 188 men but has since become co-ed. It was taken offline after Spring 2015.
Tingelstad Hall, built in 1967, was originally designed to house 396 men but has since then become co-ed. The hall was named to honor Oscar A. Tingelstad, president of Pacific Lutheran College from 1928 to 1943. Standing nine stories tall Tingelstad is the tallest building in Parkland. The hall is divided into four houses, Alpine, Cascade, Evergreen and Ivy with every two floors sharing a common lounge.
South Hall, built in 2000, is an apartment-style complex located on the south edge of campus. Students must be 20-years of age or junior standing to reside in South.
Commitment to sustainability
PLU has a long history of being committed to a sustainable campus and leading the way as an example for institutions around the world. A certification program in environmental studies was developed in the 1970s, and a major was established in the 1990s. On April 22, 2004, PLU President Loren Anderson signed the Talloires Declaration, making PLU the first Pacific Northwest University to sign the declaration. Leading the nation as a charter signatory to the American College and University presidents Climate Commitment in 2007, PLU accepted the challenge, showing commitment to achieving carbon neutrality. The agreement called for universities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but PLU has taken the initiative to set their goal of becoming carbon neutral by December 31, 2020. The 2015 edition of The Princeton Review's Guide to 353 Green Colleges recognized PLU as a green college leader. Highlights of the review include PLU dining services using 25 percent of its food budget to buy local and/or organic food and 95 percent of the products used by the cleaning services crew being Green Seal Certified.
PLU is currently in the process of remodeling and reconstructing multiple buildings throughout campus. The goal is for each building to obtain a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating of Gold. Currently two buildings have been awarded a Gold rating by LEED. In 2006 the Morken Center for Learning and Technology became the first building to earn the award. The Morken Building is home to the School of Business and the Computer Science department. This , $21 million building requires no fossil fuel to operate and is heated and cooled by using a geothermal heat-pump system that regulates its temperature with water stored in 85 wells located 300 feet (100 m) underground. In 2009 a second building would earn the LEED Gold rating when the Martin J. Neeb Center was completed. This building was home to the radio station 88.5 KPLU and at the time of the award being presented it was the only radio facility in the nation with a LEED Gold ranking. The University Center was the third building to receive a LEED rating. Following the completion of the 2006–2007 academic year, the University Center underwent $14 million in construction renovations and as a result earned a LEED Silver rating.
As of 2013, PLU diverted more than 70% of its waste. For its record on sustainability, the university was recognized with a Gold Award from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE). In 2008, a student-led initiative brought awareness about saving money by consuming tap water instead of buying bottled water. Bottled water is not sold in campus restaurants as a result of the student-run initiative in 2011. All of the programs in the PLU Sustainability Office are student-led i.e. Bike Coop, Community Garden, surPLUs store, and habitat restoration.
Student activities
Music
PLU's instrumental groups include the University Symphony Orchestra, Wind Ensemble, Concert Band, Jazz Ensemble, Jazz Combo, and Chamber Music. Along with these groups the university has a variety of vocal groups which include the Choir of the West, University Chorale, University Singers, University Men's Chorus, Choral Union, and Chapel Choir.
Founded in 1925, the Choir of the West has toured in America, Europe, and Asia. In 1964 the choir performed the world premier of Hungarian composer Miklós Rózsa's major vocal piece, "The Vanities of Life." A decade later the choir performed the west coast premier of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki's Passion According to St. Luke. In 1987, the choir gave the first performance in the northwest of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem. The choir has been chosen to perform at several American Choral Directors Association conventions, performing most recently in 2013. In 2015, the Choir of the West won the Anton Bruckner Choir grand prize in an international competition in Linz, Austria. The choir recorded a professional album in April 2018 with composer Eriks Esenvalds and recording artist Adrian Peacock which is expected to be released in fall 2018. Since its founding in 1925 the Choir of the West has had six conductors. They are Joseph Edwards (1927–1935), Gunnar Malmin (1937–1964), Maurice Skones (1964–1983), Richard Sparks (1983–2001), Kathryn Lehmann (2001–2006) and Richard Nance (2006–present).
The Pacific Lutheran University Chorale is a mixed choir composed primarily of freshmen and sophomore singers. The choir tours regionally and appears on PLU Christmas compact discs. The Chorale performed for conferences of the Washington Music Educators Association (2010) and American Choral Directors Association (2006). In March 2012, the ensemble performed for the ACDA Northwest Division Conference. University Chorale is conducted by Brian Galante.
The Mast
The Mast is PLU's student-run newspaper. It was first printed in 1924 in the basement of the university chapel. It is now a converged media group which includes Mast TV and Lute Air Student Radio. It was originally named "The Mooring Mast", but was changed in Fall 2015 to simply "The Mast." The unusual, original name "The Mooring Mast" came from the USS Shenandoah, a U.S. Navy airship. In nearby Fort Lewis there was a large mooring structure for the airship and the students derived the name from this in honor of the famed ship.
Army ROTC
PLU has a US Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) detachment that each year commissions officers into the active Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve. In addition to Army scholarships, PLU provides a room and board scholarship. The Lute Battalion of Army ROTC won the McArthur Award—the highest award available—in 2010, 2012 and 2013.
KPLU-FM
KPLU-FM (88.5 MHz) is a news and jazz format National Public Radio member station that was owned by Pacific Lutheran University. While PLU held the license for the radio station and all KPLU staff members were also university employees, the university took a hands-off approach to on-air content. PLU supported the station with infrastructure amounting to more than $1.5 million annually.
Sale of KPLU
On November 12, 2015, it was announced to KPLU staff that PLU intended to sell the radio station to the University of Washington, which already operated KUOW. On May 26, 2016, Friends of 88.5 FM announced that they had raised $7 million to match the offer made by the University of Washington. On June 28, 2016, PLU announced that it had reached an agreement to transfer the license for 88.5 FM to Friends of 88.5 FM. The sale was consummated on August 30, 2016.
Athletics
PLU is a member of National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III, as well as the Northwest Conference. PLU has a rich tradition of athletic success: in the Northwest Conference, no other school has won the All-Sports Trophy as many times as PLU has. In 2014, PLU was honored as first recipient of Diversity Spotlight award for LGBTQ inclusion efforts by student-athletes.
PLU offers the following varsity sports: Baseball, Men's and Women's Basketball, Men's and Women's Cross Country, Football, Men's and Women's Golf, Women's Rowing, Men's and Women's Soccer, Softball, Men's and Women's Swimming, Men's and Women's Tennis, Men's and Women's Track and field, and Women's Volleyball. Along with these varsity sports PLU also offers Men's Rowing, both Men's and Women's Lacrosse and Ultimate Frisbee as club sports.
Traditions
During the academic processional at commencement, Processional of Joy by Dr. Lawrence J. Meyer is traditionally played by the University Symphony Orchestra. Composed as a unique ceremonial score in 1969, Processional of Joy has been played at each commencement since 1970.
Notable alumni
Athletics
Lisa Cole, head coach of the Boston Breakers in the National Women's Soccer League
Chris Egan, Emmy award-winning sports anchor/reporter for KING-TV
Ken Flajole, National Football League coach, formerly the inside linebacker coach for the Cleveland Browns
Craig Fouhy, sports broadcaster
Marv Harshman, nation's winningest college basketball coach at the time of his retirement
Doug Herland, rower and winner of bronze medal for the coxed pair at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Megan Jendrick, swimmer, record holder, and winner of two gold medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics and a silver medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics
Craig Kupp, former National Football League quarterback
Don Poier, radio and television voice for the Vancouver and Memphis Grizzlies from 1995 to 2005
Scott Squires, CFL football coach
Kirk Talley, college football coach
Marv Tommervik, professional football player and college coach
John Zamberlin, former National Football League linebacker and head football coach at Central Washington University and Idaho State University
Art and music
Crystal Aikin, gospel singer-songwriter and reality television personality
Angela Meade, operatic soprano
Marissa Meyer, writer of The Lunar Chronicles
Aaron Padilla, artist and art educator
Michael Peterson, country music artist
Connor Trinneer, actor most notable for playing Commander 'Trip' Tucker in Star Trek: Enterprise
Business
Brad Tilden, CEO of Alaska Airlines
Law and politics
Joyce A. Barr, diplomat; Assistant Secretary of State for Administratio, and former ambassador to Namibia
Lois Capps, former member of the United States House of Representatives from California's 22nd congressional district
Jane Gillette, dentist and member of the Montana House of Representatives
Calvin Goings, youngest Washington state senator
Rick Larsen, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Washington's 2nd congressional district
Jack Metcalf, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Washington's 2nd congressional district
John Nilson, Canadian politician; member of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan.
Sean Parnell, lawyer and former governor of Alaska
Science and medicine
William Foege, director of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Carter Center; 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient
Martin W. Johnson, marine biologist and author
Gene Strandness, pioneer in the field of vascular surgery, and "founding father" of the University of Washington School of Medicine and Medical Center
David B. Wake, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley and internationally respected expert on speciation
Scott Ransom, partner in the Health & Life Sciences Advisory at Oliver Wyman; past president of the University of North Texas Health Science Center
Neil L. Kelleher, Walter and Mary Elizabeth Glass Professor of Chemistry, Molecular Biosciences, and Medicine at Northwestern University
Other
Lute Jerstad, mountaineer and mountain guide and one of the first Americans to climb Mount Everest
Rosanna Pansino, YouTuber and cookbook author
References
External links
Official website
Official athletics website
Universities and colleges in Tacoma, Washington
Educational institutions established in 1890
Universities and colleges accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
Private universities and colleges in Washington (state)
1890 establishments in Washington (state) | en |
doc-en-10980 | The "Rivers of Blood" speech was made by British Member of Parliament (MP) Enoch Powell on 20 April 1968, to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham, United Kingdom. His speech strongly criticised mass immigration, especially Commonwealth immigration to the United Kingdom and the proposed race relations bill. It became known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech, although Powell always referred to it as "the Birmingham speech".
The expression "rivers of blood" did not appear in the speech but is an allusion to a line from Virgil's Aeneid which he quoted: "as I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'."
The speech caused a political storm, making Powell one of the most talked about and divisive politicians in the country, and leading to his controversial dismissal from the Shadow cabinet by Conservative Party leader Edward Heath. According to most accounts, the popularity of Powell's perspective on immigration may have been a decisive factor in the Conservatives' surprise victory in the 1970 general election, and he became one of the most persistent opponents of the subsequent Heath government.
Background
Powell, the Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence, was addressing the general meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre. The Labour government's 1968 race relations bill was to have its second reading three days later, and the Conservative Opposition had tabled an amendment significantly weakening its provisions. The bill was a successor to the Race Relations Act 1965.
The Birmingham-based television company ATV saw an advance copy of the speech on the Saturday morning, and its news editor ordered a television crew to go to the venue, where they filmed sections of the speech. Earlier in the week, Powell had said to his friend Clement ("Clem") Jones, a journalist and then editor at the Wolverhampton Express & Star, "I'm going to make a speech at the weekend and it's going to go up 'fizz' like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up."
In preparing his speech, Powell had applied Clem Jones's advice that to make hard-hitting political speeches and short-circuit interference from his party organisation, his best timing was on Saturday afternoons, after delivering embargoed copies the previous Thursday or Friday to selected editors and political journalists of Sunday newspapers. This tactic could ensure coverage of the speech over three days through Saturday evening bulletins, then Sunday newspapers, so that the coverage would be picked up in Monday newspapers.
Speech
In the speech Powell recounted a conversation with one of his constituents, a middle-aged working man, a few weeks earlier. Powell said that the man told him: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country... I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas." The man finished by saying to Powell: "In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man".
Powell went on:
Powell quoted a letter he received from a woman in Northumberland, about an elderly woman living on a Wolverhampton street where she was the only white resident. The woman's husband and two sons had died in World War II and she had rented out the rooms in her house. Once immigrants had moved into the street in which she lived, her white lodgers left. Two black men had knocked on her door at 7:00 am to use her telephone to call their employers, but she refused, as she would have done to any other stranger knocking at her door at such an hour, and was subsequently verbally abused.
The woman had asked her local authority for a rates reduction, but was told by a council officer to let out the rooms of her house. When the woman said the only tenants would be black, the council officer replied: "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this country."
Powell advocated voluntary re-emigration by "generous grants and assistance" and he mentioned that immigrants had asked him whether it was possible. He said that all citizens should be equal before the law, and that:
He argued that journalists who urged the government to pass anti-discrimination laws were "of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it". Powell described what he perceived to be the evolving position of the indigenous population:
Powell warned that if the legislation proposed for the then–race relations bill were to be passed it would bring about discrimination against the native population:
Powell was concerned about the current level of immigration and argued that it must be controlled:
Powell argued that he felt that although "many thousands" of immigrants wanted to integrate, he felt that the majority did not, and that some had vested interests in fostering racial and religious differences "with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population". Powell's peroration of the speech gave rise to its popular title. He quotes the Sibyl's prophecy in the epic poem Aeneid, 6, 86–87, of "wars, terrible wars, / and the Tiber foaming with much blood".
Reaction
Political
According to C. Howard Wheeldon, who was present at the meeting in which Powell gave the speech, "it is fascinating to note what little hostility emerged from the audience. To the best of my memory, only one person voiced any sign of annoyance." The day after the speech, Powell went to Sunday Communion at his local church, and when he emerged, there was a crowd of journalists, and a local plasterer (Sidney Miller) said to Powell: "Well done, sir. It needed to be said." Powell asked the assembled journalists: "Have I really caused such a furore?" At midday, Powell went on the BBC's World This Weekend to defend his speech, and he appeared later that day on ITN news.
The Labour MP Edward Leadbitter said he would refer the speech to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe spoke of a prima facie case against Powell for incitement. Lady Gaitskell called the speech "cowardly", and the West Indian cricketer Sir Learie Constantine condemned it.
The leading Conservatives in the Shadow Cabinet were outraged by the speech. Iain Macleod, Edward Boyle, Quintin Hogg and Robert Carr all threatened to resign from the front bench unless Powell was sacked. Margaret Thatcher, who was then the Shadow Cabinet's Fuel and Power Spokesman, thought that some of Powell's speech was "strong meat", and said to the Conservative leader, Edward Heath when he telephoned her to inform her Powell was to be sacked: "I really thought that it was better to let things cool down for the present rather than heighten the crisis". Heath sacked Powell from his post as Shadow Defence Secretary, telling him on the telephone that Sunday evening (it was the last conversation they would have). Heath said of the speech in public that it was "racialist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions". Conservative MPs on the right of the party—Duncan Sandys, Gerald Nabarro, Teddy Taylor—spoke against Powell's sacking. On 22 April 1968, Heath went on Panorama, telling Robin Day: "I dismissed Mr Powell because I believed his speech was inflammatory and liable to damage race relations. I am determined to do everything I can to prevent racial problems developing into civil strife ... I don't believe the great majority of the British people share Mr Powell's way of putting his views in his speech."
The Times newspaper declared it "an evil speech", stating "This is the first time that a serious British politician has appealed to racial hatred in this direct way in our postwar history." The Times went on to record incidents of racial attacks in the immediate aftermath of Powell's speech. One such incident, reported under the headline "Coloured family attacked", took place on 30 April 1968 in Wolverhampton itself: it involved a slashing incident with 14 white youths chanting "Powell" and "Why don't you go back to your own country?" at patrons of a West Indian christening party. One of the West Indian victims, Wade Crooks of Lower Villiers Street, was the child's grandfather. He had to have eight stitches over his left eye. He was reported as saying, "I have been here since 1955 and nothing like this has happened before. I am shattered." An opinion poll commissioned by the BBC television programme Panorama in December 1968 found that eight per cent of immigrants believed that they had been treated worse by white people since Powell's speech, 38 per cent would like to return to their country of origin if offered financial help, and 47 per cent supported immigration control, with 30 per cent opposed.
The speech generated much correspondence to newspapers, most markedly with the Express & Star in Wolverhampton itself, whose local sorting office over the following week received 40,000 postcards and 8,000 letters addressed to its local newspaper. Clem Jones recalled:
At the end of that week there were two simultaneous processions in Wolverhampton, one of Powell's supporters and another of opponents, who each brought petitions to Clem Jones outside his office, the two columns being kept apart by police.
On 23 April 1968, the race relations bill had its second reading in the House of Commons. Many MPs referred or alluded to Powell's speech. For Labour, Paul Rose, Maurice Orbach, Reginald Paget, Dingle Foot, Ivor Richard, and David Ennals were all critical. Among the Conservatives, Quintin Hogg and Nigel Fisher were critical, while Hugh Fraser, Ronald Bell, Dudley Smith, and Harold Gurden were sympathetic, while Powell was present for the debate but did not speak.
Earlier that day, 1,000 London dockers had gone on strike in protest of Powell's sacking and marched from the East End to the Palace of Westminster carrying placards with sayings such as "we want Enoch Powell!", "Enoch here, Enoch there, we want Enoch everywhere", "Don't knock Enoch" and "Back Britain, not Black Britain". Three hundred of them went into the palace, 100 to lobby the MP for Stepney, Peter Shore, and 200 to lobby the MP for Poplar, Ian Mikardo. Shore and Mikardo were shouted down and some dockers kicked Mikardo. Lady Gaitskell shouted: "You will have your remedy at the next election." The dockers replied: "We won't forget." The organiser of the strike, Harry Pearman, headed a delegation to meet Powell and said after: "I have just met Enoch Powell and it made me feel proud to be an Englishman. He told me that he felt that if this matter was swept under the rug he would lift the rug and do the same again. We are representatives of the working man. We are not racialists."
On 24 April 600 dockers at St Katharine Docks voted to strike and numerous smaller factories across the country followed. Six hundred Smithfield meat porters struck and marched to Westminster and handed Powell a 92-page petition supporting him. Powell advised against strike action and asked them to write to Harold Wilson, Heath or their MP. However, strikes continued, reaching Tilbury by 25 April and he allegedly received his 30,000th letter supporting him, with 30 protesting against his speech. By 27 April, 4,500 dockers were on strike. On 28 April, 1,500 people marched to Downing Street chanting "Arrest Enoch Powell". Powell claimed to have received 43,000 letters and 700 telegrams supporting him by early May, with 800 letters and four telegrams against. On 2 May, the attorney-general, Sir Elwyn Jones, announced he would not prosecute Powell after consulting the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The Gallup Organization took an opinion poll at the end of April and found that 74 per cent agreed with what Powell had said in his speech; 15 per cent disagreed. 69 per cent felt Heath was wrong to sack Powell and 20 per cent believed Heath was right. Before his speech Powell was favoured to replace Heath as Conservative leader by one per cent, with Reginald Maudling favoured by 20 per cent; after his speech 24 per cent favoured Powell and 18 per cent Maudling. 83 per cent now felt immigration should be restricted (75 per cent before the speech) and 65 per cent favoured anti-discrimination legislation. According to George L. Bernstein, the speech made the British people think that Powell "was the first British politician who was actually listening to them".
Powell defended his speech on 4 May through an interview for the Birmingham Post: "What I would take 'racialist' to mean is a person who believes in the inherent inferiority of one race of mankind to another, and who acts and speaks in that belief. So the answer to the question of whether I am a racialist is 'no'—unless, perhaps, it is to be a racialist in reverse. I regard many of the peoples in India as being superior in many respects—intellectually, for example, and in other respects—to Europeans. Perhaps that is over-correcting." On 5 May the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, made his first public statement on race and immigration since Powell's speech. He told Labour supporters at a May Day rally in Birmingham Town Hall:
I am not prepared to stand aside and see this country engulfed by the racial conflict which calculating orators or ignorant prejudice can create. Nor in the great world confrontation on race and colour, where this country must declare where it stands, am I prepared to be a neutral, whether that confrontation is in Birmingham or Bulawayo. In these issues there can be no neutrals and no escape from decision. For in the world of today, while political isolationism invites danger and economic isolationism invites bankruptcy, moral isolationism invites contempt.
In a speech to the Labour Party conference in Blackpool that October, Wilson said:
We are the party of human rights—the only party of human rights that will be speaking from this platform this month. (Loud applause.) The struggle against racialism is a worldwide fight. It is the dignity of man for which we are fighting. If what we assert is true for Birmingham, it is true for Bulawayo. If ever there were a condemnation of the values of the party which forms the Opposition it is the fact that the virus of Powellism has taken so firm a hold at every level.
During the 1970 general election the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party did not wish to "stir up the Powell issue". However, Labour MP Tony Benn said:
According to most accounts, the popularity of Powell's perspective on immigration may have played a decisive contributory factor in the Conservatives' surprise victory in the 1970 general election, although Powell became one of the most persistent opponents of the subsequent Heath government. In "exhaustive research" on the election, the American pollster Douglas Schoen and University of Oxford academic R. W. Johnson believed it "beyond dispute" that Powell had attracted 2.5 million votes to the Conservatives, but nationally the Conservative vote had increased by only 1.7 million since 1966. In his own constituency at that election – his last in Wolverhampton – his majority of 26,220 and a 64.3 per cent share of the vote were then the highest of his career.
Powell's reflection on the speech
Powell reflected on the speech in an interview in 1977 when the interviewer asked him, "nine years after the speech, are we still in your view on a kind of funeral pyre?":
The interviewer then asked him, "what do you see as the likely prospect now? Still the 'River Tiber foaming with blood'?":
Cultural
Polls in the 1960s and 1970s showed that Powell's views were popular among the British population at the time. A Gallup poll, for example, showed that 75% of the population were sympathetic to Powell's views. An NOP poll showed that approximately 75% of the British population agreed with Powell's demand for non-white immigration to be halted completely, and about 60% agreed with his call for the repatriation of non-whites already resident in Britain.
The Rivers of Blood speech has been blamed for leading to violent attacks against British Pakistanis and other British Asians, which became frequent after the speech in 1968; however, there is "little agreement on the extent to which Powell was responsible for racial attacks". These "Paki-bashing" attacks later peaked during the 1970s and 1980s.
Powell was mentioned in early versions of the 1969 song "Get Back" by the Beatles. This early version of the song, known as the "No Pakistanis" version, parodied the anti-immigrant views of Enoch Powell.
On 5 August 1976, Eric Clapton provoked an uproar and lingering controversy when he spoke out against increasing immigration during a concert in Birmingham. Visibly intoxicated, Clapton voiced his support of the controversial speech, and announced on stage that Britain was in danger of becoming a "black colony". Among other things, Clapton said "Keep Britain white!" which was at the time a National Front (NF) slogan.
In November 2010, the actor and comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar recalled the fear which the speech instilled in Britons of Indian origin: "At the end of the 1960s, Enoch Powell was quite a frightening figure to us. He was the one person who represented an enforced ticket out, so we always had suitcases that were ready and packed. My parents held the notion that we may have to leave."
Whilst a section of the white population appeared to warm to Powell over the speech, the author Mike Phillips recalls that it legitimised hostility, and even violence, towards black Britons like himself.
In his book The British Dream (2013), David Goodhart claims that Powell's speech in effect "put back by more than a generation a robust debate about the successes and failures of immigration".
Identity of the woman mentioned in the speech
After Powell delivered the speech, there were attempts to locate the Wolverhampton constituent whom Powell described as being victimised by non-white residents. The editor of the local Wolverhampton newspaper the Express & Star, Clem Jones (a close friend of Powell who broke off relations with him over the controversy) claimed he failed to identify the woman using the electoral register and other sources.
Shortly after Powell's death, Kenneth Nock, a Wolverhampton solicitor, wrote to the Express and Star in April 1998 to claim that his firm had acted for the woman in question, but that he could not name her owing to rules concerning client confidentiality. In January 2007, the BBC Radio Four programme Document claimed to have uncovered the woman's identity. They said she was Druscilla Cotterill (1907–1978), the widow of Harry Cotterill, a battery quartermaster sergeant with the Royal Artillery who had been killed in World War II. (She was also the second cousin of Mark Cotterill, a figure in British far-right politics.) She lived in Brighton Place in Wolverhampton, which by the 1960s was dominated by immigrant families. In order to increase her income, she rented rooms to lodgers, but did not wish to rent rooms to West Indians and stopped taking in any lodgers when the Race Relations Act 1968 banned racial discrimination in housing. She locked up the spare rooms and lived only in two rooms of the house.
Support for the speech
In the United Kingdom, particularly in England, "Enoch [Powell] was right" is a phrase of political rhetoric, inviting comparison of aspects of current English society with the predictions made by Powell in the "Rivers of Blood" speech. The phrase implies criticism of racial quotas, immigration and multiculturalism. Badges, T-shirts and other items bearing the slogan have been produced at different times in the United Kingdom. Powell gained support from both right-wing and traditionally left-leaning, working-class voters for his anti-immigration stance.
Powell gained the support of the far-right in Britain. Badges, T-shirts and fridge magnets emblazoned with the slogan "Enoch was right" are regularly seen at far-right demonstrations, according to VICE News. Powell also has a presence on social media, with an Enoch Powell page on Facebook run by the far-right Traditional Britain Group which amassed several thousands of likes, and similar pages which post "racist memes and Daily Mail stories" have been equally successful, such as British nationalist and anti-immigration Britain First's Facebook page.
In The Trial of Enoch Powell, a Channel 4 television broadcast in April 1998, on the thirtieth anniversary of his Rivers of Blood speech (and two months after his death), 64% of the studio audience voted that Powell was not a racist. Some in the Church of England, of which Powell had been a member, took a different view. Upon Powell's death, Barbados-born Wilfred Wood, then Bishop of Croydon, stated, "Enoch Powell gave a certificate of respectability to white racist views which otherwise decent people were ashamed to acknowledge".
In March 2016, right-wing German writer Michael Stürmer wrote a retrospective pro-Powell piece in Die Welt, opining that nobody else had been "punished so mercilessly" by fellow party members and media for their viewpoints.
Trevor Phillips wrote in May 2016 "Rome may not yet be in flames, but I think I can smell the smouldering whilst we hum to the music of liberal self-delusion" by ignoring the effects of mass immigration. He explicitly compared his warning to Powell's: "He too summoned up echoes of Rome with his reference to Virgil's dire premonition of the River Tiber 'foaming with much blood'". From the damage the reaction to the speech did to Powell's career, Phillips wrote, "Everyone in British public life learnt the lesson: adopt any strategy possible to avoid saying anything about race, ethnicity (and latterly religion and belief) that is not anodyne and platitudinous".
In October 2018, support for the speech was expressed by the Plymouth University Conservatives who referenced the phrase "Enoch was Right" on one of the apparel worn for a society gathering.
Acknowledgement from politicians
In an interview for Today shortly after her departure from office as Prime Minister in 1990, Margaret Thatcher, said that Powell had "made a valid argument, if in sometimes regrettable terms".
Thirty years after the speech, Edward Heath said that Powell's remarks on the "economic burden of immigration" had been "not without prescience".
The Labour Party MP Michael Foot remarked to a reporter that it was "tragic" that this "outstanding personality" had been widely misunderstood as predicting actual bloodshed in Britain, when in fact he had used the Aeneid quotation merely to communicate his own sense of foreboding.
In November 2007, Nigel Hastilow resigned as Conservative candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis after he wrote an article in the Wolverhampton Express & Star that included the statement: "Enoch, once MP for Wolverhampton South-West, was sacked from the Conservative front bench and marginalised politically for his 1968 'Rivers of Blood' speech, warning that uncontrolled immigration would change Britain irrevocably. He was right and immigration has changed the face of Britain dramatically."
In January 2014, UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, after being told during an interview that a statement just read to him had come from Powell's speech, said: "Well what he was warning about was the large influx of people into an area, that change an area beyond recognition, there is tension – the basic principle is right." In June of that year, in response to the alleged Islamist Operation Trojan Horse, Conservative peer and former minister Norman Tebbit wrote in The Daily Telegraph, "No one should have been surprised at what was going on in schools in Birmingham. It is precisely what I was talking about over 20 years ago and Enoch Powell was warning against long before that. We have imported far too many immigrants who have come here not to live in our society, but to replicate here the society of their homelands." Conservative MP Gerald Howarth said on the same issue, "Clearly, the arrival of so many people of non-Christian faith has presented a challenge, as so many of us, including the late Enoch Powell, warned decades ago."
In April 2018, the leader of UKIP in Wales, Neil Hamilton, said that "the idea that Enoch Powell was some kind of uniquely racist villain is absolute nonsense". Hamilton said that Powell had been "proved right by events" in terms of social change if not violence. In response, the leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood, accused Hamilton of "keeping Powell's racist rhetoric going". Labour AM Hefin David described Hamilton's comments as "outrageous".
Dramatic portrayals
The speech is the subject of a play, What Shadows, written by Chris Hannan. The play was staged in Birmingham from 27 October to 12 November 2016, with Powell portrayed by Ian McDiarmid and Clem Jones by George Costigan.
The Speech, a novel by author Andrew Smith set in Wolverhampton during the ten days before and after the speech and featuring Powell as a character, was published in October 2016 by Urbane Publications.
In April 2018 the BBC announced that Archive on 4 would transmit 50 Years On: Rivers of Blood, a programme marking the 50th anniversary of the speech. Ian McDiarmid would read the entire speech, the first time it would be broadcast on British radio, and it would be discussed and analysed. In the days before the broadcast, there was criticism from a number of commentators of the BBC's decision to broadcast the still-controversial speech.
See also
Criticism of multiculturalism
Demographics of the United Kingdom
Le bruit et l'odeur
Protests of 1968
Racism in the UK Conservative Party
References
Further reading
Bourne, Jenny. "The beatification of Enoch Powell". Race & Class 49.4 (2008): 82–87. Argues "we are witnessing the beginnings of his rehabilitation as an authoritative political figure."
Crines, Andrew, Tim Heppell, and Michael Hill. "Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech: A rhetorical political analysis". British Politics 11#1 (2016): 72–94. online
Deakin, N. and Bourne, J. "Powell, and the minorities and the 1970 election". Political Quarterly (1970) 44#4: 399–415.
Norton, P. "The Oratory of Enoch Powell" in Hayton R. and Crines, A. (eds.) Conservative Orators from Baldwin to Cameron (Manchester University Press, 2015).
Whipple, Amy. "Revisiting the 'Rivers of Blood' Controversy: Letters to Enoch Powell". Journal of British Studies 48#3 (2009): 717–735.
Primary sources
External links
Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech, The Daily Telegraph, 6 November 2007 – Full text of the speech
Document – The Woman Who Never Was? BBC Radio 4, 22 January 2007
Radio Interview on Immigration Powell interviewed shortly after his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech, BBC News (Audio clip, 3:31 mins, requires RealPlayer to listen)
Speech that has raised a storm Press reaction from the Birmingham Post, 22 April 1968
"Rivers of Blood, The Real Source", BBC Radio 4, 3 March 2008
50 Years On: Rivers of Blood, BBC Radio 4, Archive on 4, 14 April 2018
1968 in British politics
1968 in England
1968 speeches
1960s in Birmingham, West Midlands
Anti-immigration politics in the United Kingdom
April 1968 events in the United Kingdom
Criticism of multiculturalism
Enoch Powell
History of Birmingham, West Midlands
History of immigration to the United Kingdom
History of the Conservative Party (UK)
Works about immigration | en |
doc-en-15143 | Frederick Walter Stephen West (29 September 1941 – 1 January 1995) was an English serial killer who committed at least twelve murders between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire, the majority with his second wife, Rosemary West.
All the victims were young women. At least eight of these murders involved the Wests' sexual gratification and included rape, bondage, torture and mutilation; the victims' dismembered bodies were typically buried in the cellar or garden of the Wests' Cromwell Street home in Gloucester, which became known as the "House of Horrors". Fred is known to have committed at least two murders on his own, while Rose is known to have murdered Fred's stepdaughter, Charmaine. The couple were arrested and charged in 1994.
Fred fatally asphyxiated himself while detained on remand at HM Prison Birmingham on 1 January 1995, at which time he and Rose were jointly charged with nine murders, and he with three further murders. In November 1995, Rose was convicted of ten murders and sentenced to ten life terms with a whole life order.
Early life
Childhood
Frederick Walter Stephen West was born on 29 September 1941 at Bickerton Cottage, Much Marcle, Herefordshire, the first surviving child born to Walter Stephen West (1914–1992) and Daisy Hannah Hill (1922–1968). Fred was from a poor family of farm workers, close-knit and mutually protective; his father was a disciplinarian and his mother overprotective.
In 1946, the family moved to Moorcourt Cottage at Moorcourt Farm, where Fred's father worked as a milking herdsman and harvest hand. The cottage had no electricity and was heated by a log fireplace. By 1951, Fred's mother had given birth to eight children, six of whom survived, but Fred was always his mother's favourite. He was seen as a mother's boy and relied mostly on his siblings for companionship.
The West children were expected to perform assigned chores and all six did seasonal work, the three girls picking hops and strawberries, the three boys harvesting wheat and hunting rabbits. The necessity of working to earn a living, or even just to survive, instilled a strong work ethic in Fred, who also developed a lifelong habit of petty theft.
Classmates recall Fred as scruffy, dim, lethargic, and regularly in trouble. Throughout his life, he remained barely literate, yet displayed an aptitude for woodwork and artwork. He left school in December 1956 at age 15, initially working as a labourer at Moorcourt Farm.
Fred claimed he was introduced to sex by his mother at 12, to have engaged in acts of bestiality with animals in his early teens, and that his belief in incest being normal stemmed from his father's incest with Fred's sisters. Fred's youngest brother, Doug, dismissed these claims as fantasy on Fred's part.
Adolescence
By 1957, Fred and his brother John frequently socialised at a youth club in nearby Ledbury, where his distinct and guttural Herefordshire accent marked him as a "country bumpkin". He aggressively pestered women and girls, whom he objectified as sources of pleasure to be used as he saw fit, and would abruptly approach and fondle them. When a girl accepted his advances, she would find his sexual performance unsatisfying, as his primary objective was his own gratification.
Shortly after his 17th birthday, Fred bought a motorcycle, and two months later suffered a fractured skull, a broken arm, and a broken leg in an accident. He was unconscious for seven days and walked with braces for several months; because of this incident, he developed an extreme fear of hospitals and became prone to fits of rage. Two years later, Fred suffered a further head injury when a girl he groped on a fire escape outside the Ledbury Youth Club punched him, sending him falling two floors.
In June 1961, Fred's 13-year-old sister, Kitty, told her mother that Fred had been raping her since the previous December, and had impregnated her. Arrested the same month, Fred freely admitted to police he had been molesting young girls since his early teens and asked, "Doesn't everybody do it?" He was tried on 9 November at Herefordshire Assizes. Though disgusted by her son's actions, Fred's mother had been prepared to testify in his defence. Kitty refused to testify, and the case collapsed. Much of Fred's family effectively disowned him, his mother banished him from the household, and he moved into the Much Marcle house of his aunt Violet. By mid-1962, he had reconciled with his parents, but his relationship with most of his family remained fraught.
Catherine "Rena" Costello
Marriage
Fred became re-acquainted with Catherine Bernadette Costello in September 1962, when he was 21. He had first met Costello, who came from Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, at a Much Marcle dance hall in 1960, and dated her for several months before she returned to Scotland. Costello was pregnant by an Asian bus driver at the time of her marriage to Fred, and may have relocated from Glasgow to England due to members of her family expressing their displeasure at her being pregnant with a mixed-race child. She married Fred in Ledbury on 17 November, the sole guest being Fred's younger brother John. The couple initially lived in Fred's aunt's home, then moved to Coatbridge, where Fred worked as an ice cream van driver. Rena's daughter, Charmaine, was born in March 1963; to explain the child's mixed ancestry, Rena and Fred claimed that she had suffered a miscarriage and that Charmaine was adopted. Shortly thereafter, the couple relocated to Savoy Street, in the Bridgeton district of Glasgow.
In July 1964, Rena bore Fred a daughter, Anna Marie. The child was born at the couple's Savoy Street home. The family nanny, Isa McNeill, and neighbours of the Wests, recall Rena as a considerate mother "struggling to bring up two children"; Fred treated the children harshly. He kept the girls in the bottom of a bunk bed with bars fitted to the space between the bunks, effectively caging them; they were allowed out only when he was at work.
Via McNeill, the Wests became acquainted with her friend, 16-year-old Anne McFall, who was despondent over the death of her boyfriend in a workplace accident. McFall spent a great deal of time at the Wests' flat.
Fred later admitted to having engaged in numerous affairs in the early years of his marriage, and fathered one illegitimate child with a woman from the Gorbals. When Rena discovered her husband's infidelity, she began an affair with a man named John McLachlan. On one occasion, Fred discovered the pair in an embrace. He punched Rena, making her scream. In response, McLachlan punched Fred, who drew a knife and grazed McLachlan's abdomen. When punched by McLachlan a second time, Fred stopped defending himself. Years later, McLachlan recollected this incident: "He couldn't tackle a man, but he wasn't so slow in attacking women." He and Rena continued their affair, and McLachlan became increasingly aghast at Rena's bruises and black eyes. On each occasion it became apparent Fred had beaten his wife, McLachlan extensively beat Fred. Another time, McLachlan witnessed Charmaine—little older than a toddler—ask Fred for an ice cream from his van; in response, Fred struck her across the head, triggering another beating from McLachlan.
On 4 November 1965, Fred accidentally ran over and killed a small boy in Glasgow with his van. Fred was cleared of any wrongdoing by police, but feared the hostile reaction and potential reprisals for the accident from the locals, whom he relied upon to make his living. In December, he returned to Gloucester with Charmaine and Anna Marie, renting a caravan at the Timberland Caravan Park in Bishop's Cleeve. Rena joined him in February 1966, accompanied by Isa McNeill and Anne McFall, who also moved into Fred's caravan. (McNeill and McFall both came from impoverished backgrounds; both hoped to find work in England.) Shortly after the move south, Fred found employment driving a lorry for a local abattoir.
By early 1966, Fred had begun to exhibit dominance and control over all three women. He was also prone to violent mood swings, and Rena and McNeill typically bore the brunt of his fury; Fred also physically attacked his stepdaughter more than once. He is also reported to have begun sexually abusing Charmaine, and to have encouraged Rena to turn to prostitution to supplement his meagre income.
To escape Fred's domestic abuse and increasingly sadistic sexual demands, Rena phoned McLachlan, begging him to rescue her, McNeill and her children. Together, McLachlan, Rena, and McNeill devised a plan; he and McNeill's boyfriend, John Trotter, would secretly drive to Bishop's Cleeve in McLachlan's Mini and discreetly take Rena, her children and McNeill back to Scotland. McFall had by this stage become infatuated with Fred, who had promised to marry her. It is likely she informed Fred of the plan, as he arrived at the meeting time, and McFall was "oddly calm" as she informed McNeill she intended to remain with Fred to work as the children's nanny. An altercation ensued between Fred and McLachlan, resulting in Fred being struck several times as he clutched onto Charmaine and Anna Marie. Police were called and McLachlan, Trotter, McNeill, and Rena left, with Fred threatening to kill Rena should he ever see her again.
To ensure her daughters' well-being, Rena frequently travelled to England to visit Charmaine and Anna Marie while they lived with Fred at Bishop's Cleeve. Despite initially maintaining her friendship with McFall, Rena soon began to resent her matriarchal presence around her daughters. On 11 October, in an act of resentment, Rena stole some belongings from Fred's caravan and returned to Glasgow. She was arrested the following month and returned to Gloucester to face trial. On 29 November, Rena was sentenced to three years' probation. Fred testified at the hearing, admitting he and McFall were living together, but falsely claiming McFall intended to return to Scotland imminently.
After the trial, McFall moved into a caravan at the Timberland Caravan Park; Rena alternated between living with Fred and returning to Glasgow. Letters McFall posted to her family and McNeill in Glasgow between 1966 and 1967 indicate she believed a relationship with Fred could offer her a better life than that she had experienced in Scotland, and she tried to persuade Fred to divorce his wife in order that he could marry her.
Murder of Anne McFall
In July 1967, McFall, aged 18 and eight months pregnant with Fred's child, vanished. She was never reported missing, but her dismembered remains were found buried at the edge of a cornfield between Much Marcle and Kempley in June 1994. Her limbs had been carefully disarticulated, and many phalange bones were missing from her body—likely to have been retained as keepsakes; her unborn child may also have been cut from her womb. Fred initially denied he had killed McFall, but confided to one visitor following his arrest that he had stabbed her to death following an argument. This explanation is inconsistent with the fact that her wrists were found with sections of dressing gown cord wrapped around them, suggesting she had been restrained prior to her murder.
The following month, Rena returned to live with Fred, and the couple relocated to the Lake House Caravan Park. Their relationship initially improved, but Rena left the following year, again leaving the children in his care. On these occasions when Fred had no woman to supervise and care for the girls, he temporarily placed them in the care of Gloucestershire social services.
Rosemary Letts
Fred first encountered Rosemary Letts in early 1969, shortly after her 15th birthday. The pair first met at Cheltenham bus station. Initially, Rose was repulsed by Fred's unkempt appearance and deduced he was a tramp, but she quickly became flattered by the attention Fred continued to lavish on her over the following days as he invariably sat alongside her at the same bus stop. Rose twice refused to go on a date with Fred, but allowed him to accompany her home. In their initial conversations, Fred quickly discovered that although Rose had never had a boyfriend, she was overtly promiscuous. He also extracted a degree of sympathy from her by claiming he and his two daughters had been abandoned by his wife, and that he wished for more children.
Having discovered Rose worked in a nearby bread shop, a few days after their first encounter, Fred persuaded an unknown woman to enter the premises and present her with a gift accompanied by the explanation that a "man outside" had asked her to present this gift to her. Minutes later, Fred entered the premises and asked Rose to accompany him on a date that evening; an offer she accepted. Shortly thereafter, Rose began a relationship with Fred, becoming a frequent visitor at the Lake House Caravan Park and a willing childminder to Charmaine and Anna Marie, whom she noted were neglected and whom she initially treated with care and affection. On several occasions in the early days of their courtship, Rose insisted she and Fred take the girls on excursions to gather wildflowers.
Within weeks of her first meeting Fred, Rose left her job at the bread shop in order to become the nanny to Charmaine and Anna Marie; this decision was made with the agreement that Fred would provide her with sufficient money to give to her parents on Fridays to convince them she was still obtaining a salary at the bread shop. Several months later, Rose introduced Fred to her family, who were aghast at their daughter's choice of partner. Rose's mother, Daisy Letts, was unimpressed with Fred's braggadocio, and correctly concluded he was a pathological liar; her father, Bill Letts—a diagnosed schizophrenic who is believed to have molested his daughter—vehemently disapproved of the relationship, threatening Fred directly and promising to call social services if he continued to date Rose.
Relationship
Rose's parents forbade their daughter from continuing to date Fred, but she defied their wishes, prompting them to visit Gloucestershire social services to explain that their 15-year-old daughter was dating an older man, and that they had heard rumours that she had begun to engage in prostitution at his caravan. In response, Rose was placed in a home for troubled teenagers in Cheltenham in August 1969, and only allowed to leave under controlled conditions. When allowed to return home to visit her parents at weekends, Rose almost invariably took the opportunity to visit Fred.
On her 16th birthday, Rose left the home for troubled teenagers to return to her parents (Fred at the time serving a 30-day sentence for theft and unpaid fines). Upon Fred's release, Rose left her parents' home to move into the Cheltenham flat Fred then lived in. Shortly thereafter, Fred collected Charmaine and Anna Marie from social services. Bill Letts made one final effort to prevent his daughter from seeing Fred, and Rose was examined by a police surgeon in February 1970, who confirmed she was pregnant. In response, Rose was again placed into care, but was discharged on 6 March on the understanding she would terminate her pregnancy and return to her family. Instead, Rose opted to live with Fred, resulting in her father forbidding his daughter from ever again setting foot in his household.
Three months later, the couple vacated the Cheltenham flat and relocated to the ground floor flat of a two-story house in Midland Road, Gloucester. On 17 October 1970, Rose gave birth to their first child: a daughter they named Heather Ann (speculation remains that Heather may have been sired by Rose's own father). Two months later, Fred was imprisoned for the theft of car tyres and a vehicle tax disc. He remained imprisoned until 24 June 1971. As he served this six-and-a-half-month sentence, Rose, having just turned 17, looked after the three girls, with Charmaine and Anna Marie being told to refer to Rose as their mother.
According to Anna Marie, she and Charmaine were frequently subjected to criticism, beatings, and other forms of punishment throughout the time they lived under Rose's care at Midland Road. Although Anna Marie was generally submissive and prone to display emotion in response to the physical and mental hardships she and her sister endured, Charmaine repeatedly infuriated Rose by her stoic refusal to either cry or display any sign of grief or servitude no matter how severely she was physically punished. Despite the years of neglect and abuse, Charmaine's spirit had not been broken, and she talked wistfully to Anna Marie of the belief she held that her "mummy will come and save me". Anna Marie later recollected her sister repeatedly antagonised Rose by making statements such as: "My real mummy wouldn't swear or shout at us" in response to Rose's scathing language. A childhood friend of Charmaine's named Tracey Giles, who had lived in the upper flat of 25 Midland Road, would later recollect an incident in which she had entered the Wests' flat, unannounced, only to see Charmaine, naked and standing upon a chair, gagged and with her hands bound behind her back with a belt, as Rose stood alongside the child with a large wooden spoon in her hand. According to Giles, Charmaine had been "calm and unconcerned", while Anna Marie had been standing by the door with a blank expression on her face.
Hospital records reveal Charmaine had received treatment for a severe puncture wound to her left ankle in the casualty unit of the Gloucester Royal Hospital on 28 March 1971. This incident was explained by Rose to have resulted from a household accident.
Murder of Charmaine West
Rose is believed to have killed Charmaine shortly before Fred's prison release date of 24 June 1971. She is known to have taken Charmaine, Anna Marie and Heather to visit Fred on 15 June. It is believed to be on or very shortly after this date that Charmaine was murdered. As well as forensic odontology confirmation that Charmaine had died while Fred was still incarcerated, further testimony from Tracey Giles' mother, Shirley, corroborated the fact that Charmaine had been murdered before Fred had been released on 24 June. In her later testimony at Rose's trial, Shirley stated she and her family had lived in the upper flat of Midland Road in 1971 and that her two daughters had been playmates of Charmaine and Anna Marie. She stated that after her family had vacated the upper flat of Midland Road in April 1971, on one day in June, she had brought Tracey to visit Charmaine, only for Tracey to be told by Rose: "She's gone to live with her mother, and bloody good riddance!" before Tracey began to weep. Giles was adamant Fred was still in prison on this occasion.
As with the Giles family, Rose explained Charmaine's disappearance to others who enquired about her whereabouts by claiming that Rena had called and taken her eldest daughter to live with her in Bristol; she informed staff at Charmaine's primary school that the child had moved with her mother to London. When Fred was released from prison on 24 June, he allayed Anna Marie's concerns for her sister's whereabouts by claiming her mother had collected Charmaine and returned to Scotland. In her autobiography, Out of the Shadows, Anna Marie recollected that when she asked why her mother had collected Charmaine but not her, Fred callously replied: "She wouldn't want you, love. You're the wrong colour."
Charmaine's body was initially stowed in the coal cellar of Midland Road until Fred was released from prison. He later buried her naked body in the yard close to the back door of the flat, and he remained adamant he had not dismembered her. A subsequent autopsy suggested the body had been severed at the hip; this damage may have been caused by building work Fred conducted at the property in 1976. Several bones—particularly patellae, finger, wrist, toe and ankle bones—were missing from her skeleton, leading to the speculation the missing parts had been retained as keepsakes (this proved to be a distinctive discovery in all the autopsies of the victims exhumed in 1994).
Murder of Catherine "Rena" West
Rena maintained sporadic contact with her children on each occasion she and Fred separated. She is also known to have visited Moorcourt Cottage to enquire as to her children's whereabouts and welfare in the latter half of August 1971. Fred's sister-in-law, Christine, later recollected Rena was depressed and extremely anxious about her children's welfare. Being provided with Fred's Midland Road address, Rena sought to confront him—likely to discuss or demand custody of her daughters. This was the final time Rena was seen alive. She is believed to have been murdered by strangulation, possibly in the back seat of Fred's Ford Popular and likely while intoxicated. When her body was discovered, a short length of metal tubing was found with her remains, leaving an equal possibility she had been restrained and subjected to a sexual assault prior to her murder. Rena's body was extensively dismembered, placed into plastic bags, and buried close to a cluster of trees known as Yewtree Coppice at Letterbox Field, about from Much Marcle.
Marriage to Letts
On 29 January 1972, Fred and Rosemary married. The ceremony took place at Gloucester Register Office, with Fred incorrectly describing himself as a bachelor upon the marriage certificate. No family or friends were invited apart from Fred's brother John, who acted as best man. Several months later, with Rose pregnant with her second child, the couple moved from Midland Road to an address nearby: 25 Cromwell Street. Initially, the three-storey home was rented from the council; Fred later purchased the property from the council for £7,000. To facilitate the Wests' purchasing the property from the council, many of the upper floor rooms were initially converted into bedsits to supplement the household income. To maintain a degree of privacy for his own family, Fred installed a cooker and a washbasin on the first-floor landing in order that their lodgers need not enter the ground floor where the West family lived, and only he and his family were permitted access to the garden of the property. On 1 June, Rose gave birth to a second daughter. The date of her birth led Fred and Rose to name the child Mae June.
Prostitution
Shortly after giving birth to her second child, Rose began to work as a prostitute, operating from an upstairs room at their residence and advertising her services in a local contact magazine. Fred encouraged Rose to seek clients in Gloucester's West Indian community through these advertisements. In addition to her prostitution, Rose engaged in casual sex with both male and female lodgers within their household, and individuals Fred encountered via his work; she also bragged to several people that no man or woman could completely satisfy her. When engaging in sexual relations with women, Rose would gradually increase the level of brutality to which she subjected her partner with acts such as partially suffocating her partner, or inserting increasingly large dildos into her partner's body. If the woman resisted or expressed any pain or fear, this would greatly excite Rose, who would typically ask: "Aren't you woman enough to take it?"
To many of these women, it became apparent Rose and her husband (who regularly participated in threesomes with his wife and her lovers) took a particular pleasure from seeking to take women beyond their sexual limits—typically via sessions involving bondage, as the Wests openly admitted to taking a particular pleasure from any form of sex involving a strong measure of dominance, pain and violence. To cater to these fetishes, they amassed a large collection of bondage and restraining devices, magazines and photographs—later expanding this collection to include videos depicting bestiality and graphic child sexual abuse.
Rose controlled the West family finances, Fred giving her his pay packets. The room Rose used for prostitution was known throughout the West household as "Rose's Room", and had several hidden peepholes allowing Fred—a longtime voyeur—to watch her entertain her clients. He also installed a baby monitor in the room, allowing him to listen from elsewhere in the house. The room included a private bar, and a red light outside the door warned when Rose was not to be disturbed. Rose carried the sole key to this room around her neck, and Fred installed a separate doorbell to the household which Rose's clients were instructed to ring whenever they visited the household. Much of the money earned from Rose's prostitution was spent on home improvements.
By 1977, Rose's father had come to tolerate his daughter's marriage, and to develop a grudging respect for Fred. Together, he and Fred opened a café they named The Green Lantern, which was soon insolvent. When Bill Letts discovered Rose's prostitution, he would also visit to have sex with his daughter. By 1983, she had given birth to eight children, at least three of whom were conceived by clients. Fred willingly accepted these children as his own, and falsely informed them the reason their skin was darker than that of their siblings was because his great-grandmother was a black woman.
Domestic violence
When each of the West children reached the age of seven, they were assigned numerous daily chores to perform in the house; they were rarely allowed to socialise outside the household perimeters unless either of their parents were present, and had to follow strict guidelines imposed by their parents, with severe punishment—almost always physical—being the penalty for not conforming to the household rules. The children feared being the recipients of violence from their parents, the vast majority inflicted by Rose, occasionally by Fred. The violence was sometimes irrational, indiscreet or just inflicted for Rose's gratification; she always took great care not to mark the children's faces or hands in these assaults. Heather, then her younger brother Stephen (born 1973), ran away from home; both returned to Cromwell Street after several weeks of alternately sleeping rough or staying with friends, and both were beaten when they returned home. Between 1972 and 1992, the West children were admitted to the Accident and Emergency department of local hospitals 31 times; the injuries were explained as accidents and never reported to social services.
On one occasion, as Stephen was mopping the kitchen floor with a cloth, Rose accidentally stepped into the bowl of water he had been using. In response, Rose hit the boy over the head with the bowl, then repeatedly kicked him in the head and chest as she shouted: "You did that on purpose, you little swine!" On another occasion, Rose became furious about a missing kitchen utensil, then grabbed a knife she had been using to cut a slab of meat, repeatedly inflicting light scour marks to Mae's chest until her rib cage was covered with light knife wounds. All the while, Mae screamed, "No, Mum! No, Mum!" as Stephen and Heather stood by, helplessly sobbing.
Even Fred occasionally became the recipient of his wife's violence. On one occasion in August 1974, Rose chased after Fred with a carving knife in her hand; Fred was able to slam shut the door of the room into which he had run as Rose lunged at him with the knife, resulting in the knife embedding itself in the door, and three of Rose's fingers sliding down the blade, almost severing them from her hand. In response, Rose calmly wrapped her hand in a towel and said: "Look what you done, fella. You've got to take me to the hospital now."
Initial sexual assaults
Anna Marie West
In September 1972, the Wests led eight-year-old Anna Marie to the cellar at 25 Cromwell Street, where the child was ordered to undress, with Rose tearing her dress from her body upon noting the child's hesitation. She was then stripped naked, bound to a mattress and gagged before Fred raped her with Rose's active encouragement. After the rape, Rose followed Anna Marie to the bathroom—laughing as she observed Anna Marie struggling to walk. She then handed her a sanitary towel, explaining to the child: "I'm sorry. Everybody does it to every girl. It's a father's job. Don't worry, and don't say anything to anybody." Making clear these sexual assaults would continue, Fred and Rose then threatened the child with severe beatings if they ever received word she had divulged the sexual abuse she endured at their hands.
Rose occasionally sexually abused Anna Marie herself, and later took extreme gratification in degrading her with acts such as binding Anna Marie to various items of furniture before encouraging Fred to rape her, and forcing her to perform household chores while wearing sexual devices and a mini-skirt. From the age of 13, Fred and Rose forced Anna Marie to prostitute herself within the household, with her clients being informed Anna Marie was 16. Rose was always present in the room when these acts occurred, to ensure Anna Marie did not reveal her true age. On one occasion when Anna Marie was aged 13 or 14, Rose took her to a local pub, insisting she drink several glasses of barley wine. Several hours later, Fred arrived at the pub to collect Rose and Anna Marie. Once they had left the premises, Anna Marie was bundled into her father's van and beaten by Rose, who asked her: "Do you think you could be my friend?" before she was sexually abused by her father and stepmother.
Caroline Owens
In October 1972, the Wests hired 17-year-old Caroline Owens as their children's nanny. They had picked her up one night on a secluded country road as she hitchhiked from Tewkesbury to her Cinderford home, having visited her boyfriend. Learning that Owens disliked her stepfather and was looking for a job, the Wests offered her part-time employment as a nanny to the three children then in their household, with a promise she would be driven home each Tuesday. Several days later, Owens moved into 25 Cromwell Street, sharing a room with Anna Marie, who Owens noted was "very withdrawn".
Rose, who had begun to engage in prostitution by this time, explained to Owens that she worked as a masseuse when the younger woman enquired about the steady stream of men visiting her. According to Owens, Fred also said he was a skilled abortionist, who was available should she ever need such a service. Owens also noted Fred talked about sex almost incessantly; her suspicions as to his sexual overtones were further heightened when Fred boasted that many of the women he claimed to have performed abortions upon were so overjoyed that they would offer him their sexual services as a reward. When Owens herself became the recipient of the Wests' overt sexual advances, she announced her intentions to leave Cromwell Street and return home.
Knowing Owens' habits of hitchhiking along the A40 between Cinderford and Tewkesbury, the Wests formulated a plan to abduct her for their shared gratification. Fred later admitted that the specific intent of this abduction was the rape and likely murder of Owens, but that his initial incentive was to determine whether his wife would be willing to at least assist him in an abduction. On 6 December 1972, the couple lured Owens into their vehicle with an apology for their conduct and the offer of a lift home. Initially, Owens believed the Wests had been sincere in their apologies to her and obliged, believing she had simply mistaken their earlier intentions. Rose joined her in the back seat, with the explanation she wanted a "girls' chat" as Fred drove.
Shortly thereafter, Rose began to fondle her, as Fred questioned whether she had had sex with her boyfriend that evening. When Owens began to protest, Fred stopped the car, referred to Owens as a "bitch", and punched her into unconsciousness before he and Rose bound and gagged her with a scarf and duct tape. In her subsequent statement to police, Owens stated that, at Cromwell Street, she was given a drugged cup of tea to drink, then again gagged and subjected to a prolonged sexual assault from Fred and Rose. At one stage, Fred remarked that Owens' clitoris was unusual then lashed her genitals with a leather belt. When Owens screamed, Rose again smothered her with a pillow and further restrained her about the neck, and performed cunnilingus on her. Quickly realising the gravity of her situation, Owens ceased resisting their sexual assaults.
The following morning, having noted Owens' screaming when one of his children had knocked on the door of the room in which she was restrained, Fred threatened that he and his wife would keep her locked up in the cellar and allow his "black friends" to abuse her, and that when they had finished, he would bury her body beneath "the paving stones of Gloucester". Fred then claimed he had killed hundreds of young girls, adding that Owens had primarily been brought to the house for "Rose's pleasure". He and Rose then calmly asked Owens whether she would consider returning to work as their nanny. Seeing her escape avenue, Owens agreed, and vacuumed the house to indicate her belief in becoming an extended member of the family. Later that day, Owens escaped from a launderette she and Rose had entered and returned home. Although initially too ashamed to divulge to her mother what had happened, when her mother noted the welts, bruises and exposed subcutaneous tissues on her daughter's body, Owens burst into tears and confided what had happened.
Owens' mother immediately reported her daughter's ordeal to the police, and the Wests were arrested and charged with assault, indecent assault, actual bodily harm, and rape. The case was tried at Gloucester Magistrates Court on 12 January 1973, but by this date, Owens had decided she could not face the ordeal of testifying in court. All charges pertaining to her sexual abuse were dropped, and the Wests agreed to plead guilty to the reduced charges of indecent assault and causing actual bodily harm; each was fined £50, and the couple were allowed to walk free from court. When Owens heard this news, she attempted suicide.
Murders
Three months after the Wests' assault trial, the couple committed their first known murder. The victim was a 19-year-old named Lynda Gough, with whom Fred and Rose became acquainted through a male lodger in early 1973. Gough regularly visited Cromwell Street, and engaged in affairs with two male lodgers. On 19 April, she moved into their home on Cromwell Street. On or about 20 April, other tenants were told that she had been told to leave the household after she had hit one of their children. This story was repeated to Gough's mother when she contacted the Wests to enquire about her whereabouts.
When Gough's dismembered body was found, the jaw was completely wrapped in adhesive and surgical tape to silence her screams, and two small tubes had likely been inserted into her nasal cavities to allow breathing. Long sections of string and sections of knotted fabric were also discovered with her remains. Gough had likely been suspended from holes carved into the wooden beams supporting the ceiling of the cellar Fred later admitted he had devised for the purpose of suspending his victims' bodies, and likely died of either strangulation or suffocation. Her dismembered body, missing five cervical vertebrae, the patellae and numerous finger bones, was buried in an inspection pit beneath the garage.
From their later investigations, police and forensic experts concluded all the victims found in the cellar at 25 Cromwell Street had been murdered in this location, and that, like Gough, each had been dismembered in this location. Five victims were murdered and buried in the cellar at Cromwell Street between November 1973 and April 1975. The first of these victims, 15-year-old Carol Ann Cooper, was abducted on 10 November 1973. Cooper lived in the Pines Children's Home in Worcester, and was abducted after spending the evening at a cinema with her boyfriend. She had been waiting for a bus in Warndon when she vanished, and was likely dragged into Fred's car, where her face was bound with surgical tape and her arms bound with braiding cloth before she was driven to Cromwell Street. At the Wests' address, Cooper was suspended from the wooden beams of the cellar ceiling before her abuse and murder. As had been the case with Lynda, Cooper died from strangulation or asphyxiation, before her body was dismembered and buried in a shallow, cubical grave in the cellar.
Over the following 17 months, four further victims between the ages of 15 and 21 suffered a similar fate to that endured by Gough and Cooper, although the disarticulation conducted upon each successive victim, plus the paraphernalia discovered in each shallow grave, suggests each victim was likely subjected to greater abuse and torture than those previously murdered.
Following the murder of 18-year-old Juanita Mott in April 1975, Fred concreted over the floor of the entire cellar. He later converted this section of the household into a bedroom for his oldest children, and he and his wife are not known to have committed any further murders until May 1978, when Fred—either with or without Rose's participation but certainly with her knowledge—murdered an 18-year-old lodger named Shirley Robinson. Robinson had first met Fred at The Green Lantern café in April 1977, and had taken lodgings with the Wests the same month. She was heavily pregnant at the time of her murder. Although Rose—herself pregnant at the time—initially boasted to neighbours the child Robinson was carrying was her husband's; she soon developed a deep resentment of Robinson, and the motive for her murder is likely to have been the removal of a threat to the stability of the Wests' relationship. Her body was buried in the garden of 25 Cromwell Street. It was extensively dismembered, but no restraining devices were found with these remains, making a sexual motive for this murder unlikely. The unborn baby had been removed and had several bones missing. Shortly thereafter, Rose unsuccessfully submitted a claim for maternity benefit in Robinson's name with Gloucester social services. As had earlier been the case with Charmaine and Lynda, Fred and Rose allayed the suspicions of anyone who asked about Robinson's whereabouts by claiming she had relocated to live with her father in West Germany.
The final murder Fred and Rose are known to have committed with a definite sexual motive occurred on 5 August 1979. The victim was a 16-year-old named Alison Chambers, who had run away from a local children's home to become the Wests' live-in nanny in the middle of 1979. Chambers is believed to have lived within their household for several weeks before her murder, and Rose promised Chambers she could live at a rural "peaceful farm" she claimed she and her husband owned. Her body was also buried in the garden of Cromwell Street, close to the bathroom wall, and although Chambers was likely dismembered, her skeleton was not marked by striations as the earlier victims' bodies had been. In an effort to allay any concerns from Chambers' family (with whom she maintained regular correspondence), Fred and Rose later posted a letter written by Chambers to her mother prior to her murder from a Northamptonshire post box.
Abuse
Heather and Mae West became the focus of Fred's incestuous sexual attentions after Anna Marie ran away from home in 1979 after enduring a particularly severe beating from Rose to her stomach just days after being discharged from hospital for treatment of an ectopic pregnancy. The frequency of the abuse endured by Heather and Mae increased when both girls reached puberty. Fred was overt and unapologetic in his conduct, and would justify his actions with the simple explanation: "I made you; I can do what I like with you." He further referred to his intentions to impregnate both his daughters on at least one occasion, and would occasionally force all his children to watch pornography with him. As Heather, Mae and their younger brother Stephen were very close in age, the trio resolved that if their father asked either of the two girls to be alone in a room with him, they would only do so if at least one other member of the trio were present to avoid either girl being raped. Both girls also developed a regime whereby they would only shower or undress when their father was either out of the house, or as her sister stood guard at the door. Stephen was also informed by his father that he would have to have sex with his mother by the age of 17 (in the event, his parents evicted him from their home when he was 16).
Although the girls were repulsed by their father's behaviour, Mae—having once endured Fred's throwing a vacuum cleaner at her when she remonstrated against his fondling her—developed a mechanism whereby she would tolerate Fred's sexually fondling her, then jokingly brush aside any efforts he made to take the molestation further, whereas in her autobiography, Mae recollected that Heather "was affected quite badly by all of this. Even more than me." A strong suspicion remains that, by 1985 or 1986, Heather had been forced to engage in intercourse with her father, as by the mid-1980s, she developed classic symptoms of the distress felt by victims of child abuse: these included habits of her biting her nails until they bled; drinking alcohol; of warily watching her father through the corner of her eye wherever she was sitting or standing; expressing nervous fragility whenever in the presence of males; her sleep being repeatedly broken by nightmares; and her repeatedly bouncing back and forth as she sat on any chair. This distressful behaviour led to Fred and Rose suspecting Heather had lesbian inclinations, and also resulted in her becoming the increasing recipient of taunts from her father (who had never particularly liked Heather) that she was "ugly" and a "bitch". On the occasions Heather remonstrated about the abuse to her mother, Rose would simply laugh at her distress.
Heather also expressed to Mae and Stephen her desire to run away from home and live a nomadic lifestyle in the Forest of Dean, and to never again see any human beings.
Murder of Heather West
Heather did complain to friends about the abuse she and her siblings endured, and her external signs of psychological distress were noted by several of them. Staff at the Hucclecote Secondary School, which Heather and her siblings attended, are also known to have expressed concern as to why Heather—a studious and obedient pupil—refused to obey orders either to change her clothing for, or shower after, sporting activities. On one occasion, she was forced to take a shower, resulting in her peers and staff noting her arms, legs and torso were covered in welts and bruises in various stages of healing. Heather attempted to excuse these injuries as having been obtained in fights with her siblings, but confided in one close friend that they had been inflicted by her parents, adding that her mother considered her a "little bitch" who deserved her beatings.
By the mid-1980s, rumours of Rose's sex life had reached several of the children's classmates, and although the West children had been instructed never to divulge details of their home lives to their peers, Heather confided to her friends that many of these rumours were true. The father of one of these classmates was a friend of the Wests; as such, word soon reached Fred and Rose that Heather had divulged details of her home life—including details of her mother's promiscuity—to her classmates. Fred was so concerned by these revelations that he began to escort Heather to and from school.
After Heather left school in 1986, she applied for numerous jobs in an effort to leave Cromwell Street. By June of the following year, she had pinned her hopes on escaping the household via obtaining a job as a chalet cleaner at a holiday camp in the seaside town of Torquay; she received notification that this application had been unsuccessful on 18 June. In response, she crumpled into tears before her siblings Mae and Stephen. That same evening, her whole family heard Heather sobbing aloud as she attempted to sleep, and according to Mae, she "cried all the way through the night." The following morning, on 19 June, Heather was "back to her usual self, looking miserable, biting her nails and sitting on the couch bouncing back and forth as she sat" as her siblings left the house to go to school.
When Heather's siblings returned home, they were informed Heather had left to accept the job she had previously been refused in Torquay, although Rose told an enquiring neighbour that she and Heather had had a "hell of a row", and that Heather had run away from home. Later, to answer their children's questions about why Heather failed to contact or visit her siblings, the parents claimed that Heather had eloped with a lesbian lover. When Mae and Stephen suggested they report Heather's disappearance to police, Fred changed his story yet again, saying it would be unwise to initiate a search for Heather as she was involved in credit card fraud. On more than one occasion, Fred and Rose persuaded an unknown acquaintance to fake a phone call from Heather to her parents.
In the years following Heather's disappearance, Fred occasionally jokingly threatened the children that they would "end up under the patio like Heather" if they either misbehaved or divulged the mistreatment they endured to anyone outside the household. With Rose's approval, he later constructed a barbecue pit immediately opposite where Heather had been buried, and placed a pine table on her grave for the children of the family to sit upon whenever the Wests held family gatherings in their garden.
Heather's disappearance, Fred and Rose's constantly changing stories about their daughter's whereabouts, plus their allusions to foul play, ultimately led to police enquiries as to Heather's whereabouts. These enquiries culminated in a search warrant being issued to excavate the Wests' garden in February 1994.
Arrest
In May 1992, Fred asked his 13-year-old daughter, Louise, to bring some bottles to a room on the first floor of their home. Rose was not present in the home at the time. Shortly thereafter, the girl's siblings heard her scream, "No, don't!" Later, Fred returned downstairs. Louise was found by her siblings writhing in pain, sobbing that her father had raped and sodomised her, at one stage partially strangling her. When Rose returned home, Louise confided in her mother that she had been raped by Fred; Rose replied, "Oh well. You were asking for it." Over the following weeks, Louise was raped on three further occasions, with Rose personally witnessing one of these rapes before following her distressed and bleeding daughter into the bathroom and asking the child, "Well, what did you expect?" Fred also filmed one of these rapes. Several weeks later, Louise garnered the courage to confide in a close friend what her father had done; this friend told her own mother what had happened on 4 August. In response, the friend's mother anonymously informed the police.
On 6 August 1992, the police searched the West household on the pretext of searching for stolen property. Although numerous objects of sexual paraphernalia—including 99 pornographic videos of both home-made and commercial nature—were discovered, police did not find the video depicting the rape of Fred's daughter. The 13-year-old made a full statement through a specially-trained solicitor, describing her father's actions, the fact the sexual abuse had begun when she was 11, and that her mother had been casually indifferent to her plight. All the children in the household were placed in foster care the following day. Medical examinations revealed evidence of physical and sexual abuse.
The West children also divulged their mother had inflicted most of the physical abuse and that their father frequently said that if they told anyone about the goings-on in the household they would be "buried under the patio" like their sister Heather.
Investigation
Police began a full-scale investigation, eventually leading to Fred being charged with three counts of rape, and one of buggery, with Rose as an accomplice. She was also charged with child cruelty, inciting her husband to engage in sex with their daughter, and obstructing the police. The Wests were questioned as to the whereabouts of their eldest daughter, and although Fred claimed Heather was "alive and well" and supporting herself via prostitution, Rose initially claimed to have no knowledge of Heather's whereabouts, or why she had left home. She claimed on 11 August that she could "remember now" that her daughter had left home at her own persuasion due to Rose's concerns her other children may discover Heather's supposed lesbian inclinations. Rose then added she had also given her daughter £600 to incentivise her to leave the household, before further claiming to have maintained sporadic telephone contact with her daughter over the years. The following day, Rose was granted bail on the condition she did not maintain contact with her children, her stepdaughter, or her husband prior to her upcoming trial.
As Fred awaited trial, he was held on remand in Birmingham. Learning that her father had denied any wrongdoing, Anna Marie also contacted police to offer a full statement detailing her experiences as a child. In a statement given to Detective Constable Hazel Savage, Anna Marie recounted the extensive physical, mental and sexual abuse she had endured as a child at the hands of her father and stepmother, before agreeing to testify against both parents at their upcoming trial. Anna Marie also added she had, for several years, been unsuccessfully attempting to trace her mother Rena and half-sisters Charmaine and Heather. Further enquiries conducted with Anna Marie's husband, Chris Davis, revealed that Heather had confided in him just how unhappy she was shortly before her disappearance, and of her desire to leave home. Davis elaborated that although Heather had not divulged any details about her enduring any sexual abuse, he had been so concerned for her welfare he had offered to confront her parents, and Heather had dissuaded him from doing so, blurting: "For Christ's sake don't, because they'll kill us both!" Davis then suggested they might wish to speak with Heather to garner further details of her abuse.
In their efforts to gather further evidence, police and social services also spoke with Mae, who, having spoken with her 13-year-old sister and learned Louise did not wish to see her father charged, initially denied she had endured any molestation as an adolescent. Police then focused their attentions on tracing Heather in efforts to corroborate Anna Marie's claims of sexual abuse, but enquiries to the Inland Revenue and the Social Security department held no records attesting to her being alive. Two months later, Gloucester social services also contacted police to stress their concern over the whereabouts of Heather.
This case against the Wests collapsed when Anna Marie and her 13-year-old half-sister Louise declined to testify at the court case on 7 June 1993, with the child rape victim expressing her desire to return to her family, and Anna Marie choosing to withdraw her statement because of her noting the misery of her younger siblings, and her fear of Rose's vindictiveness. Shortly thereafter, Anna Marie spoke further with DC Savage, further emphasising that her mother Rena and half-sister Charmaine were also missing.
Search warrant
Although the Wests were acquitted of all charges, all their younger children remained in foster care, albeit with permitted supervised visitations to Cromwell Street. Despite the Wests claiming to the few relatives from whom they were not already estranged by 1993 that the charges had been fabricated by police, almost all of their remaining family members severed contact with them. Meanwhile, police continued investigating the disappearance of Heather, noting no records existed indicating she was still alive. When Anna Marie was questioned as to the colloquial "family joke" regarding Heather being buried beneath the patio, she confirmed that the sole time she had heard her father recite this claim, he had immediately burst into laughter, leading to her refusing to take this claim seriously.
In retracing Fred's history, police also discovered that although Rena and Charmaine had disappeared in 1971, no missing person report had ever been filed on either of them. DC Savage and her colleagues were convinced Heather was dead, and that Fred's repeated statement to his children that her body lay beneath the family patio might be true. On 23 February 1994, Gloucester police successfully applied for a search warrant authorising the search of 25 Cromwell Street to locate Heather's remains.
When police visited the address on 24 February and showed the warrant to Rose, she turned pale, before becoming hysterical and shouting over her shoulder to her eldest son, Stephen, "Get Fred!" Rose became contradictory in her informal questioning as to the circumstances surrounding Heather's disappearance. When reminded of these contradictions, she became distraught and abusive, shouting at the officers: "I can't fucking remember! It's a bloody long time ago! What do you think I am? A bloody computer?"
Fred had been working in Stroud at the time; upon hearing of the police's intentions, he assured Stephen he would be home immediately. When Fred arrived three hours later, he informed his family of his intention to voluntarily offer a witness statement to police regarding his daughter's whereabouts. Despite Fred's insistence in this statement that Heather had been "alive and well", albeit involved in a drugs cartel, and that the claims he and his wife had made as to Heather being buried beneath the family patio were simply "rubbish", police were unassuaged. In response, Fred abruptly changed tactics, claiming they simply held a grudge against him due to his 1993 acquittal of the rape of his daughter.
That evening, with the search team having left their premises and a uniformed officer remaining at Cromwell Street to guard the excavation site, Mae and Stephen observed their parents talking in hushed tones as they repeatedly glanced towards the garden from their kitchen window.
In the early hours of the following morning, as his son Stephen was about to leave for work, Fred informed him: "Look son, look after mum and sell the house [...] I've done something really bad. I want you to go to the papers and make as much money as you can." Shortly thereafter, police returned to Cromwell Street to continue their search for Heather's body. Upon their arrival, Fred indicated his wish to be arrested for Heather's murder and to be taken to Bearland police station to provide a full confession; he was then arrested and formally cautioned.
Discoveries
At 11:15 that morning, Fred formally admitted to police he had indeed killed his daughter, albeit in an act of manslaughter. He confessed to strangling Heather in a fit of rage, then dismembering her body in the ground floor bathroom with a heavy serrated knife he normally used for cutting slabs of frozen meat. Her remains had been stored in a dustbin as he waited for an opportunity to dig her grave. Fred was insistent his wife had no knowledge of her daughter's murder, claiming he had committed this murder as Rose was preoccupied with one of her clients, adding the fact the search team had not yet unearthed Heather's remains was because they had been excavating the wrong section of his garden. He then volunteered to accompany police to the house to pinpoint the precise location of Heather's body. Upon receipt of this confession, Fred's solicitor, Howard Ogden, and Janet Leach, his appointed appropriate adult, informed Mae and Stephen their father had confessed to their sister's murder. In response, Stephen slumped against a wall and began sobbing; Mae entered a state of shock, before stammering that her father had not killed her sister.
The following day (26 February), police began excavating the section of the garden at Cromwell Street where Fred indicated he had buried his daughter's body. Shortly after 4 p.m., police found a human thigh bone protruding from a section of the garden Fred had insisted police need not look in. Excavating the section of the garden where Fred had indicated he had buried his daughter's body, investigators discovered a mass of jumbled human remains encased in the remnants of a bin bag and intertwined with two lengths of rope. These dismembered remains were taken to the police headquarters for further examination, where they were determined to be those of a young woman, with one kneecap and several phalanges missing. The decedent's fingernails were discovered in a pile, suggesting they may have been torn from her fingers as a means of torture. Several hours later, the body was identified via dental records as being that of Heather West.
That evening, having been formally charged with his daughter's murder and questioned as to why police had also discovered a third thigh bone, Fred confessed there were two further sets of human remains in his garden, and agreed to return to Cromwell Street to reveal the locations of both graves; one of whom he named as Shirley Robinson, whom he described as being a former tenant and a lesbian who had been heavily pregnant with his child at the time of her 1978 murder; the other victim he described (incorrectly) as being "Shirley's mate", but either could not or would not elaborate as to her identity. Both sets of remains were discovered on 28 February, and Fred was charged with both murders two days later.
Having discovered three sets of human remains in the garden, a decision was made to thoroughly search the entire property. Rose was placed into a safe house in the nearby town of Dursley as police commenced their search inside 25 Cromwell Street. Informed of this fact, and with the formal interviews conducted by the investigative team lasting up to 16 hours each day and including persistent questioning as to the whereabouts of his first wife Rena and stepdaughter Charmaine, Fred authorised his solicitor to pass a note he had written to the leader of the murder investigation: Superintendent John Bennett of the Gloucestershire Police. This note—dated 4 March—read: "I, Frederick West, authorise my solicitor, Howard Ogden, to advise Superintendent Bennett that I wish to admit a further (approx) nine killings, expressly Charmaine, Rena, Lynda Gough and others to be identified. F. West."
Questioned further as to his claims, Fred calmly explained there were a further five bodies buried in his cellar, and a sixth body beneath the ground-floor bathroom. Most of these victims, Fred claimed, had been hitchhikers or girls he had murdered in the 1970s after picking them up at bus stops. Initially, Fred claimed these six victims had been killed when they had threatened to inform Rose of his infidelity with women, and that he had transported their bodies to Cromwell Street to abuse, dismember, and then bury in shallow graves. The dismemberment, Fred claimed, had made it easier to bury the remains in shallow, cubical graves, and he agreed to return to Cromwell Street to indicate precisely where he had buried each victim.
Between 5 and 8 March, police found six further bodies of young females at 25 Cromwell Street. Each victim had been extensively mutilated, and each body bore evidence of having been subjected to extreme sexual abuse prior to the act of murder. For example, the third set of remains discovered in the cellar was found with a length of cloth wrapped around the skull, and an oval of adhesive tape 16 inches in circumference found with the remains had likely been used to gag this victim, whose ankles and wrists were also bound with a large section of rope. Also found in this grave was a large, serrated knife. The second set of remains was found with a section of tubing twisted into a U-shape alongside her severed limbs, and her skull was found encased in adhesive tape which had been wrapped around the section where her face had been 11 or 12 times, with a narrow plastic tube inserted where the nasal cavities had been in an effort to allow her to breathe prior to her murder. Each set of remains was missing numerous bones, particularly phalanges; when questioned, Fred refused to divulge the whereabouts of the bones missing from each set of remains, or the reason for their absence.
Arrest of Rose West
Despite Fred's insistence that his wife held no knowledge of any of the murders, investigators suspected otherwise. Rose was arrested on 20 April 1994, initially on offences relating to the rape of an 11-year-old girl, and the physical assault of an eight-year-old boy—both charges dating from the mid-1970s. The following day, she was refused bail, and transferred to Pucklechurch Prison to be held in the maximum security wing. Here, she was questioned more closely about the murders, in particular those of her daughter Heather and Lynda Gough, and on 25 April she was formally charged with Gough's murder.
By 6 May, Fred and Rose were jointly charged with five counts of murder, with Rose simply replying, "I'm innocent" upon hearing each formal charge - a response that proved to be a theme throughout each of the 46 interviews investigators held with Rose prior to her trial.
As well as the murders of the victims exhumed from Cromwell Street, Fred had confessed to the murders of his first wife and stepdaughter, and to knowing the location of Anne McFall's remains (although he always denied killing her). Fred agreed to identify each burial location, and the remains were unearthed between 10 April and 7 June. He was then transferred to Birmingham's HM Prison Birmingham, where a strict suicide watch called for his cell to be checked every 15 minutes.
Formal charges
Fred and Rose West were brought before a magistrates' court in Gloucester on 30 June 1994; he was charged with 12 murders and she with nine. This was the first time the couple had seen each other since Fred's February arrest. Prior to hearing the formal charges against them, Fred leaned toward his wife and gently placed his hand upon her shoulder; in response, Rose—having ignored her husband's presence—visibly winced in discomfort. Both were ordered held on remand.
As police attempted to lead Fred from the hearing, he resisted their efforts, and again attempted to move towards Rose, who again winced and attempted to writhe away from his grasp.
Immediately after this court appearance, Fred was re-arrested on suspicion of murdering Anne McFall, whose body had been found on 7 June but had not been officially identified until this date; he was formally charged with McFall's murder on 3 July, appearing in court the following morning.
Diversion of culpability
As he was held on remand at HM Prison Birmingham in the months following his arrest, Fred became increasingly depressed. This became worse after Rose's public rejection of him at Gloucester Magistrates Court on 30 June, her refusal to reply to letters he sent her, and reports leaked to the press in which she (Rose) had assumed the role of a grieving mother who had lost a daughter and stepdaughter to her husband and in which she declared both her innocence of murder, and her hatred of him.
Fred pleaded with Stephen and Anna Marie (the only children to visit their father while on remand) to convey to Rose that he loved her, but Rose never acknowledged these overtures. In response, Fred withdrew his earlier confessions to having acted alone in the murders, and instead accused his wife of almost total culpability in all the murders to which he had been charged, excluding that of Anne McFall, which he claimed had been committed by his first wife.
Death
The initially strict suicide watch having been relaxed, on 1 January 1995 Fred West asphyxiated himself in his cell by wrapping an improvised rope he had constructed from a blanket and tags he had stolen from prison laundry bags around his neck, then binding this device to a door handle and window catchment, and sinking to his knees.
At the bottom of the suicide note found in his cell was a drawing of a gravestone, within which was written: "In loving memory. Fred West. Rose West. Rest in peace where no shadow falls. In perfect peace he waits for Rose, his wife."
Trial of Rose West
At pretrial proceedings in February, Rose pleaded not guilty to ten charges of murder (the murder of Charmaine West having been added to the original nine after Fred's suicide, and two counts of rape and indecent assault of young girls having been dropped with a view for later resubmission), though her counsel conceded that circumstantial evidence indicated Rose's willingness to subject young girls to sadistic physical and sexual abuse.
Her trial at Winchester Crown Court began on 3 October 1995.
An important early decision by the judge was to admit testimony related to the sexual mistreatment of three women by Fred and Rose, accepting the prosecution's argument that it established a pattern of behaviour repeated in the murders.
Prosecution
In his opening statement, prosecutor Brian Leveson portrayed the Wests as sex-obsessed sadistic murderers, terming the bodies discovered at Cromwell Street and Midland Road "secrets more terrible than words can express... [The victims'] last moments on Earth were as objects of the depravity of this woman and her husband".
He pointed out that Fred was incarcerated when Charmaine West was killed; claimed that the Wests had each learned from their mistake in allowing Caroline Owens to live (they "would never be so trusting again"); and said that the gag on victim Thérèse Siegenthaler had a "feminine" toucha scarf tied in a bow.
He promised to demonstrate Rose's controlling and sexually sadistic character and her efforts to deflect suspicion about the disappearance of their victims.
Prosecution witnesses included Cromwell Street lodgers; victims' relatives; Rose's mother Daisy and sister Glenys; and surviving victims including Anna Marie West, Kathryn Halliday (a former lover of the Wests), Caroline Owens, and a "Miss A" (who had been sexually assaulted at 14 by Fred and Rose in 1977, and who described Rose as the more aggressive perpetrator of the two). Neighbours described Charmaine's 1971 disappearance while Fred was imprisoned, and Rose's casual indifference to Heather's disappearance.
Rosemary's counsel, Richard Ferguson, tried to discredit prosecution witnesses as either having financially exploited their connection to the case, or motivated by grudges. Owens, though admitting to receiving £20,000 for her story, described her extreme survivor's guilt: "I only want to get justice for the girls who didn't make it. I feel like it was my fault."
Defence testimony
Ferguson emphasised that Fred, before meeting Rose, had committed at least one murder strikingly similar to those at issue in the present trial, and that the prosecution's case was largely circumstantial. He contended that Rose was unaware of the extent of Fred's sadism, and urged the jury to not be prejudiced by her promiscuity and domineering manner.
Against the advice of her counsel, Rose herself testified; her manner sometimes morose and tearful, sometimes upbeat and humorous. She wept while describing herself as a victim of child abuse and rape who naively married a violent and domineering man, but joked about issues such as her "always being pregnant", and laughed while describing one victim's "grandfather glasses". She also claimed never to have met six of the victims buried at Cromwell Street, and to recall very little of her assault on Caroline Owens. When shown photographs of the victims buried in the cellar and victim Alison Chambers and asked by Brian Leveson whether she recognised any of their faces, Rose's face turned bright red, and she repeatedly stuttered as she replied, "No, sir."
When questioned as to life at Cromwell Street, Rose claimed she and Fred had lived separate lives, which was inconsistent with the earlier testimony of witnesses who had visited or lodged at their address. In reference to her relationship with her eldest child, Rose admitted her relations with Heather were strained, before claiming to the court that her daughter was a lesbian who had physically and psychologically abused her siblings. Despite these allegations, Rose stated she had loved her daughter, and held no knowledge of her murder. Further questioned as to the contradictory explanations she and her husband had given as to Heather's disappearance, Rose claimed these discrepancies had stemmed from telephone conversations she had had with Heather after she had left home.
The defence next called a succession of women who claimed to have been attacked or assaulted by a lone male whose physical description matched that of Fred West between 1966 and 1975. These seven women each testified they had recognised their attacker as Fred West when his photograph appeared in the media in 1994. The intention of this testimony was to illustrate to the jury that Fred was capable of abducting, assaulting or attempting to attack women without Rose, which the prosecution had never disputed. The physical recollections of several of these women varied greatly.
The final witness to testify at Rose's trial was Fred's appointed appropriate adult, Janet Leach, whom the prosecution had called to testify on 7 November in rebuttal to the tape recordings of Fred's confession which had been played to the court on 3 November and in which he had stressed Rose had "known nothing at all" about any of the murders. Leach testified that through this role, Fred had gradually begun to view her as a confidante, and had confided in her that on the evening prior to his 25 February arrest, he and Rose had formed a pact whereby he would take full responsibility for all the murders, many of which he had privately described to her as being "some of Rose's mistakes". He had further divulged that Rose had indeed murdered Charmaine while he had been incarcerated, and had also murdered Shirley Robinson. Fred had also confided that he had dismembered the victims, and Rose had participated in the mutilation and dismemberment of Shirley Robinson, having personally removed Robinson's unborn child from her womb after her death. In reference to the remaining eight murders for which Rose was charged, Leach testified that Fred had confided Rose had "played a major part" in these murders.
Upon cross examination, Leach did concede to Richard Ferguson she had earlier lied under oath about having sold her story to a national newspaper for £100,000, although she was adamant as to the sincerity of her testimony. While delivering this testimony, Leach collapsed, and the trial was adjourned for six days. She returned to complete her cross examination on 13 November.
Conviction
After seven weeks of evidence the judge instructed the jury, emphasising that circumstantial evidence can be sufficient for a finding of guilt, and that if two people take part in a murder, the law considers them equally guilty regardless of which of them did the deed.
On 21 and 22 November, the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts for all ten murders. Terming her crimes "appalling and depraved", the judge sentenced Rosemary to life in prison, emphasising that she should never be paroled.
Initially, Rose was incarcerated at HMP Bronzefield as a Category A prisoner; she was later transferred to HM Prison Low Newton before, in 2019, being transferred to HM Prison New Hall, where she continues to protest her innocence.
Victims
Fred and Rose West are known to have committed at least 12 murders between 1967 and 1987; many of those connected to the case believe there are several other victims whose bodies have never been found. Prior to his suicide, police had recorded over 108 hours of tape-recorded interviews with Fred, both when he had claimed to have acted alone in the commission of the murders, and when he had attempted to portray Rose as being the more culpable participant. On several occasions, Fred made cryptic hints he had claimed several other victims, but refused to divulge any further information beyond that he had murdered 15-year-old Mary Bastholm in 1968 and buried the body on farmland near Bishop's Cleeve. He also claimed to have killed one victim while working on a construction project in Birmingham, and that other bodies had been buried in Scotland and Herefordshire.
To his appropriate adult, Fred claimed there were up to 20 further victims he and his wife had killed, "not in one place but spread around", and he intended to reveal the location of one body per year to investigators.
While on remand, Fred made several admissions as to the fate of the victims buried at Cromwell Street to his son Stephen. Much of this information was disjointed or told in a third party manner; Fred claimed that he had extensively tortured the victims prior to their murder, but had not raped them, instead engaging in acts of necrophilia with their bodies at or shortly after the point of death. He also claimed the reason many phalange bones had been missing from the victims' bodies was because the removal of their fingers and toes had been one of the forms of torture the victims had endured, with other torture methods including the extraction of their nails, acts of mutilation, and cigarettes being stubbed out on their bodies. Furthermore, the locations of almost all the burial sites of victims—both discovered and undiscovered—was symbolic to Fred, as each had been buried at or very close to the location he had lived in or worked at the time of the victim's murder.
1967
July: Anne McFall, (18). McFall's remains were found on 7 June 1994 in Fingerpost Field, Much Marcle. Her body had been placed in a rectangular pit and covered with loose topsoil. She had been pregnant with a daughter, and her pregnancy had been in its eighth month.
1968
6 January: Mary Bastholm, (15). A teenage waitress at a café Fred frequented. Bastholm was abducted from a bus stop on Bristol Road, Gloucester. Fred confessed to police he had killed Bastholm after raping her in his car. She is believed to have been buried in Bishop's Cleeve. Police were unable to charge Fred with this crime as they had no evidence. Her body has never been found.
1971
c. 20 June: Charmaine West, (8). Fred's stepdaughter. Charmaine was killed by Rose shortly before Fred's release from Leyhill Prison on 24 June, likely in a fit of domestic violence. Her remains were initially stored in the cellar at Midland Road before Fred buried the child's body in the rear garden of the flat.
August: Catherine "Rena" Costello, (27). Rena is believed to have travelled to the Wests at 25 Midland Road to either enquire about or obtain custody of her two daughters in mid- to late-August 1971. It is believed Fred killed Rena to avoid any investigation into Charmaine's whereabouts. She is believed to have been strangled to death by Fred before her extensively mutilated body was buried in Letterbox Field.
1973
c. 20 April: Lynda Gough, (19). The first sexually motivated killing the Wests are known to have committed together. Gough was a lodger at 25 Cromwell Street, and shared sex partners with Rose. Following her disappearance, Gough's mother travelled to Cromwell Street to enquire as to her daughter's whereabouts, and saw Rose wearing her daughter's clothes and slippers. She was informed that Lynda had moved to find work in Weston-super-Mare. Lynda Gough's remains were buried in an inspection pit beneath the garage, which was later converted into a bathroom.
10 November: Carol Ann Cooper, (15). Cooper had been placed into care following her mother's death in 1966. She was last seen alive by her boyfriend in the suburb of Warndon boarding a bus to her grandmother's home. Fred referred to Cooper as "Scar Hand" in reference to a recent firework burn she had sustained. Cooper was the final victim unearthed from the cellar. Her skull was bound with surgical tape and her dismembered limbs bound with cord and braiding cloth.
27 December: Lucy Partington, (21). Partington was an Exeter University student and the cousin of novelist Martin Amis. She was abducted from a bus stop along the A435. Her precise date of death may have been one week after her disappearance, as Fred admitted himself into the casualty unit of the Gloucester Royal Hospital with a serious laceration of his right hand on 3 January, possibly sustained as he dismembered Partington's body. Her body was discovered in the Cromwell Street cellar on 6 March 1994.
1974
16 April: Thérèse Siegenthaler, (21). A sociology student at Greenwich Community College. Siegenthaler was abducted by the Wests as she hitchhiked from South London to Holyhead. Fred mistook her Swiss accent to be a Dutch one, and always referred to her as either "the Dutch girl" or "Tulip". She was reported missing to Scotland Yard by her family in Switzerland when communication from their daughter ceased. Fred later further concealed Siegenthaler's remains by building a false chimney breast on her grave.
15 November: Shirley Hubbard, (15). A foster child abducted from a Droitwich bus stop close to the River Severn as she travelled home from a date. Aged 15 when murdered, Hubbard had been attending work experience in Worcester, and was last seen by her boyfriend, having promised to meet him the next day. Hubbard's dismembered remains were found in a section of the cellar known to the family as the "Marilyn Monroe area". Her head had been completely covered in tape, with a one-eighth-of-an-inch diameter rubber tube inserted three inches into her nasal cavity to enable her to breathe.
1975
12 April: Juanita Mott, (18). Mott had been a former lodger at 25 Cromwell Street, but was living with a family friend in Newent when she disappeared. Mott is believed to have been abducted by the Wests as she hitchhiked along the B4215. In his subsequent confessions to police, Fred would refer to Mott as "the girl from Newent".
1978
10 May: Shirley Robinson, (18). Another former lodger at 25 Cromwell Street, Robinson was bisexual and engaged in casual sex with Fred and Rose. At the time of her disappearance, she had been eight months pregnant with Fred's child, and her baby boy had been due to be born on 11 June. No sexual motive existed for this murder, and the prosecution contended at Rose's trial that Robinson had been murdered as her pregnancy threatened the stability of the Wests' relationship. Fred had originally planned to sell their baby to a childless couple and had photographs taken with Robinson for this purpose.
1979
5 August: Alison Chambers, (16). Chambers had been placed into foster care at the age of 14, and had repeatedly absconded from Jordan's Brook House. She became acquainted with the Wests in mid-1979, and Fred later claimed to his solicitor that Chambers had died as a result of Rose becoming "too bloody vicious" with her. Her dismembered body, missing several bones and with a leather belt looped beneath her jaw and tied at the top of her head, was buried in the garden of Cromwell Street. This was the final murder where a definite sexual motive was established.
1987
19 June: Heather West, (16). Heather was likely to have been murdered because Fred and Rose considered her efforts to leave the household as a threat, as she divulged to her classmates the extensive physical and sexual abuse which occurred at Cromwell Street. Fred claimed he had not intended to kill his daughter, but carpet fibres found on two lengths of rope, discovered with her remains, suggested that she had been restrained and subjected to a sexual assault prior to her murder. Her body was dismembered with a heavy serrated knife and later buried in a hole in the garden which Fred had his son dig, under the pretence of installing a fish pond. The 1994 police investigation into Heather's disappearance led to the discovery of her body, and the arrest of both her parents.
Footnotes
As well as the 12 confirmed victims, police firmly believe Fred is also responsible for the 1968 disappearance of 15-year-old Mary Bastholm, but to date no body has been found. West's son, Stephen, has said he firmly believes the missing teenager was an early victim of his father, as Fred had openly boasted of having committed Bastholm's murder while on remand.
In May 2021, police announced their intentions to excavate the grounds of a café in Gloucester after receiving information that the body of Mary Bastholm may have been buried at this location. This search yielded no human remains. At the time of her disappearance, Bastholm worked at this café and Fred is known to have frequented the premises. Furthermore, he is known to have conducted repair work on the drains of this café in late 1967.
No forensic evidence linked Fred to the murder of Anne McFall, and he always denied killing her. However, her body had been extensively dismembered, and was missing several phalange bones. Furthermore, the cubic dimensions of the grave in which her body was buried match the modus operandi of Fred's later murders.
Possible additional victims
Police firmly believe the Wests were responsible for further unsolved murders and disappearances. They believed they committed ten murders between 1971 and 1979, at least seven of which were for sexual purposes. Following the rash of murders between 1973 and 1975, Fred and Rose are not known to have committed any murders until 1978. They committed one further murder in 1979, followed by an eight-year lull until they murdered their daughter in 1987. Police do not know of any further murders they committed before their 1994 arrest.
During interview, Fred confessed to murdering up to 30 people, indicating up to 18 other undiscovered victims.
Fred's remarkably relaxed, emotionally sterile attitude towards all aspects of his crimes startled many members of the enquiry team. This prompted Superintendent John Bennett to seek the assistance of a criminal psychologist for an expert opinion on Fred's state of mind. After analysing Fred's behaviour throughout the extensive 1994 interviews, psychologist Paul Britton advised Superintendent Bennett that Fred's blasé manner indicated he had committed so many offences over such a long period that he was now indifferent to the acts of torture, mutilation and murder. Britton added that although an offender of this nature may come to offend less frequently, he would be unlikely to cease killing altogether.
One theory which may explain the sudden lull in the frequency of their murders is the fact that by the mid-1970s, the Wests had begun a practice of befriending teenage girls from nearby care homes, many of whom they sexually abused, with others encouraged to engage in prostitution within their home. The Wests established acquaintances—including several of their lodgers—willing to partake in their shared fetishes, which may have satiated the couple to a degree.
Caroline Owens, Anna Marie West, and several other survivors of sexual assaults at the Wests' hands each testified at Rose's trial that she had been by far the more calculating, aggressive and controlling of the two. Owens stated that, at one stage in her ordeal, Fred said that they had abducted Owens primarily for Rose's gratification. It is possible Rose's increasing family size, plus the fact she and her husband had, by the mid-1970s, begun seeking avenues to exploit girls from care homes in addition to acquiring contacts—willing or unwilling—to submit to their fetishes, may have led Fred and Rose to decide that these avenues of control and domination were sufficient for their satisfaction.
Four young women similar in age and physical characteristics to those Fred was later charged with murdering in Gloucestershire are known to have disappeared during the time Fred lived in Glasgow—one of whom, Margaret McAvoy, Fred had been acquainted with via his employment as an ice cream van driver. He had also rented a garden allotment adjacent to his house and which he frequently visited, although only a small section of this plot was ever cultivated. To one neighbour, Fred remarked that he used the remainder for "something special", about which he refused to elaborate. Much of the supposed cultivation of this allotment occurred in the early hours of the morning.
Police were unable to investigate whether any further bodies were buried at this location, as these allotments were built over in the 1970s as a section of the M8 motorway.
Aftermath
Fred's body was cremated in Coventry on 29 March 1995 in a funeral that was attended by just four of his children. In a five-minute service, in which no hymns were sung, the Reverend Robert Simpson quoted sections of Psalm 23, then added a solemn reminder to those present that they must "also remember everyone else who has also suffered because of these tragic events". His ashes are believed to have been scattered at the Welsh seaside resort of Barry Island, a location he had regularly visited both as a child and as an adult with his family.
After the 1994 arrest of their parents, the four youngest West children (born between 1978 and 1983), were given new identities to protect them from the notoriety of their family. Each child remained in foster care.
The remains of Charmaine and Rena were cremated in Kettering. At the insistence of Anna Marie West, mother and daughter shared the same coffin, and no roses were to be brought to the service by any mourners.
As a direct result of her tenacity in investigating the Wests, DC Hazel Savage was placed upon the annual New Year's honours list. The following year, she was awarded an MBE.
Fred's younger brother, John, hanged himself in the garage of his Gloucester home in November 1996. At the time of his suicide, he had been awaiting the jury verdict in his trial for the alleged multiple rapes of his niece, Anna Marie, at Cromwell Street in the 1970s.
In March 1996, Rose announced her intentions to appeal against her sentence, contending extensive press coverage had rendered witness testimony unreliable, that no physical evidence existed to attest she had participated in any of the murders, that the final instructions delivered by the judge to the jury had been biased in favour of the prosecution, and that undue weight had been given to the similar fact evidence introduced at her trial. This appeal was rejected by Lord Chief Justice Taylor, who contended Rose had received a fair trial and efficient legal representation. In July 1997, then-Home Secretary Jack Straw subjected Rose to a whole life tariff, effectively denying her any possibility of parole. Rose again announced that she would appeal against her sentence via her solicitor Leo Goatley in October 2000; in September 2001, she announced her intentions to cancel her appeals, stating she would never feel free even if released. She maintains her innocence in any of the murders.
Both of Rose's oldest biological children and her stepdaughter, Anna Marie, initially visited her in prison on a regular basis, although by 2006, she had ceased contact with them after Mae began asking questions about her culpability in the murders. Rose justified her decision with the explanation: "I was never a parent [then] and could never be now." The sole visitor Rose continues to receive in prison is Anna Marie, who later changed her name to Anne Marie.
The body of the Wests' former friend and housemate, Terrence Crick, was found in his car in the Scarborough district of Hackness in January 1996. He was 48 years old. Crick had become acquainted with Fred while he had lived at the Lake House Caravan Park in 1969; he had reported Fred to the authorities on several occasions after having been shown surgical instruments Fred claimed to have used to perform illegal abortions, and Polaroid images of the subjects' genitals he claimed to have taken immediately after the procedures. Crick had further informed authorities Fred had asked him to assist in finding pregnant girls to perform abortions upon.
Crick had believed the information he had provided to police was ignored as Fred was a known police informant. The stress and guilt Crick had felt over the fact the information he had provided had not resulted in charges being brought apparently led him to take his own life. An inquest later recorded a verdict of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning.
In 2004, one of the Wests' youngest children, Barry, claimed to have witnessed the murder of his sister Heather. According to Barry (who was seven at the time), Fred and Rose had restrained, then sexually and physically abused Heather, before Rose had repeatedly stamped upon her head until she ceased to move.
The Wests' house in Cromwell Street was demolished in October 1996, with every piece of debris destroyed to discourage potential souvenir hunters. It had been referred to in the press as the "House of Horrors". The site was later redeveloped into a public pathway.
In 1999, Anna Marie West attempted suicide by drowning herself in the River Severn. Stephen West is also known to have made a suicide attempt in 2002, by attempting to hang himself. In 2004, he was jailed for nine months for having unlawful sex with a 14-year-old girl on multiple occasions. The couple's youngest son, Barry, took his own life via a suspected drug overdose in October 2020 at the age of 40. He is known to have battled a drug addiction and psychiatric problems as a result of the abuse he witnessed and endured as a child.
Television
Channel 5 commissioned a three-part documentary series about the murders. The series, entitled Fred and Rose: The West Murders, was first broadcast in October 2001. This series includes extensive archive footage, interviews and imagery pertaining to the case. The series was screened a second time in 2014.
Discovery Networks Europe commissioned a documentary focusing on the West Murders as part of their Crimes that Shook the World series. Entitled Crimes that Shook the World: The Wests, this documentary was released in 2006 and is narrated by Tim Pigott-Smith.
The two-part crime drama television mini-series, Appropriate Adult, was screened in September 2011. Commissioned by ITV and directed by Julian Jarrold, Appropriate Adult concerns the role of Janet Leach, the woman asked by police to sit in interviews with Fred West as his appropriate adult.
A second documentary commissioned by Channel 5 about the West murders, When Fred met Rose, was screened in November 2014. This documentary includes interviews with family members of Fred West, and survivors of the couple's assaults.
The ITV documentary Fred and Rose West: The Real Story, narrated by Trevor McDonald, was scheduled for broadcast in the UK on 31 January 2019, although broadcasting of this documentary was postponed for what has been described as "legal reasons". The documentary was broadcast on 21 February 2019.
See also
List of murderers by number of victims
List of prisoners with whole-life tariffs
Notes
References
Cited works and further reading
External links
Crime & Investigation article upon Fred and Rose West
Detailed police report pertaining to the police enquiry into the West murders
The West Murders: A website transcribing a documentary pertaining to the murders committed by Fred and Rose West, first screened by Channel 5 in 2001
1996 City Journal article detailing the West murders
2016 BBC News article exploring the possibility of the Wests' link to wider sex abuse circles
1941 births
1995 deaths
1995 suicides
20th-century English criminals
British people convicted of theft
Crime in Gloucester
Criminal duos
Criminals from Herefordshire
English murderers of children
English people convicted of child sexual abuse
English people convicted of indecent assault
English people who died in prison custody
English rapists
English serial killers
Female murder victims
Filicides in England
Incest
Male serial killers
Murder in England
People from Gloucester
Prisoners who died in England and Wales detention
Rape in England
Serial killers who committed suicide in prison custody
Suicides by asphyxiation
Suicides by hanging in England
Torture in England
Violence against women in England
1967 murders in the United Kingdom
1968 murders in the United Kingdom
1971 murders in the United Kingdom
1973 murders in the United Kingdom
1974 murders in the United Kingdom
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1987 murders in the United Kingdom | en |
doc-en-17023 | Beetle Bailey is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Mort Walker, published since September 4, 1950. It is set on a fictional United States Army post. In the years just before Walker's death in 2018 (at age 94), it was among the oldest comic strips still being produced by its original creator. Over the years, Mort Walker had been assisted by (among others) Jerry Dumas, Bob Gustafson, Frank Johnson and Walker's sons, Neal, Brian and Greg Walker, who are continuing the strip after his death.
Overview
Beetle was originally a college student at Rockview University. The characters in that early strip were modeled after Walker's Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers at the University of Missouri. On March 13, 1951, during the strip's first year, Beetle quit school and enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he has remained ever since.
Most of the humor in Beetle Bailey revolves around the inept characters stationed at Camp Swampy (inspired by Camp Crowder, where Walker had once been stationed while in the Army), which is located near the town of Hurleyburg at "Parris Island, S.C." (a real-life Marine Corps base). Private Bailey is a lazy sort who usually naps and avoids work, and thus is often the subject of verbal and physical chastising from his senior NCO, Sergeant Snorkel. The characters never seem to see combat themselves, with the exception of mock battles and combat drills. In fact, they seem to be in their own version of stereotypical comic strip purgatory (initially basic training, they now appear to be stuck in time in a regular infantry division).
The uniforms of Beetle Bailey are still the uniforms of the late 1940s to early 1970s Army, with green fatigues and baseball caps as the basic uniform, and the open jeep as the basic military vehicle. Sergeant First Class Snorkel wears a green Class A Army dress uniform with heavily wrinkled garrison cap; the officers wear M1 helmet liners painted with their insignia. Despite this 'anachronism,' modern weapons and equipment do make rare appearances. While Beetle Bailey's unit is Company A, one running gag is that the characters are variously seen performing activities associated with different types of units in the Army, such as artillery, armor, infantry and paratroops. Occasionally dream sequences have appeared where the characters see themselves as seasoned combat veterans, such as Sarge having a dream he was General "Storming Snorkel" briefing on Operation Desert Shield, or Beetle imagining himself getting out of the Army and going to back to school on the GI Bill, where cute coeds all know him as "Bombshell Bailey, the famous war hero".
Beetle is always seen with a hat or helmet covering his forehead and eyes. Even on leave, his "civvies" include a pork pie hat worn in the same style. He can only be seen without it once—in the original strip when he was still a college student. The strip was pulled and never ran in any newspaper. It has only been printed in various books on the strip's history. One daily strip had Sarge scare Beetle's hat off, but Beetle was wearing sunglasses.
One running gag has Sergeant Snorkel hanging helplessly from a small tree branch after having fallen off a cliff (first time August 16, 1956). While he is never shown falling off, or even walking close to the edge of a cliff, he always seems to hold on to that same branch, yelling for help.
Publication history
During the first two years of Beetle Baileys run (1950-1952), Walker did all work on the strip himself, including writing, penciling, inking and lettering; however, in 1952 he hired cartoonist Fred Rhoads as his first assistant. After that, numerous people would assist Walker on the strip through the years.
As of 2016, the strip was being syndicated (by King Features) in 1,800 papers in the United States and the rest of the world.
In Sweden, the strip received a dedicated magazine in 1970, with a Norwegian version being added the following year, which is published to this day as of 2020. Denmark also has dedicated (albeit not exclusive) magazine, named "Basserne", first published in 1973.
Characters and story
Beetle Bailey is unusual in having one of the largest and most varied permanent casts of any comic strip. While many of the older characters are rarely seen, almost none have been completely retired.
Main characters
Private Carl James "Beetle" Bailey—the main character and strip's namesake, a feckless, shirking, perpetual goof-off and straggler known for his chronic laziness and generally insubordinate attitude. Slack, hapless, lanky and freckled, Beetle's eyes are always concealed, whether by headgear or, in the rare instance of not wearing any (e.g., in the shower), by his hair. He is an expert in camouflage as he is often hiding from Sarge. In early strips, it was revealed that he is the brother of Lois Flagston (from the Hi and Lois comic strip, which Mort Walker wrote, and Dik Browne drew). Beetle is a member of "Kilo Company" 3rd Battalion of the 9th Infantry Regiment (United States), 13th Division {fictional}. Beetle's and Lois's grandmother came from Dublin, Ireland. He has an enforced chef's palate from being forced to taste Cookie's questionable preparations.
Sergeant 1st Class Orville P. Snorkel—Beetle's platoon sergeant and nemesis, introduced in 1951. Sarge is known to frequently beat up Beetle for any excuse he can think of, leaving Beetle a shapeless pulp. Once, in the February 2, 1971 strip, he even shoved Beetle through a knothole in the floorboard. Sarge is too lovable to be a villain, however. Obese, snaggle-toothed and volatile, Sarge can be alternately short-tempered and sentimental. He and Beetle seem to have a mutual love/hate relationship; much of the time there is an implied truce between them. They share an uneasy alliance that sometimes borders on genuine (albeit unequal) friendship. Sarge is also a helpless foodie, loves food like crazy and does not miss even a single chance where he can lay his hands on food. He is seen gobbling up cookies and cakes that Beetle's mother lovingly sends him. In some early strips Sarge was married, but he was later retconned into an unmarried Army lifer, who knows next to nothing about civilian life. Despite his grouchiness and bossiness, Sarge does have a soft side, which he usually keeps concealed. He is from Pork Corners, Kansas. He was also known to be very foul-mouthed, even compared to the rest of the cast. Sarge's mother's maiden name is "Papadopoulos", suggesting that he is of Greek heritage.
Otto—Sgt. Snorkel's anthropomorphic, look-alike bulldog whom Sarge dresses up the same as himself, in an army uniform. Otto is fiercely protective of Sarge and seems to have a particular antipathy towards Beetle. His first appearance was July 17, 1956; originally he was a regular dog who walked on all fours, but Mort Walker finally decided to make him more humanlike. As Walker put it, "I guess he's funnier that way." Otto got his army uniform in the June 6, 1958 strip.
Brigadier General Amos T. Halftrack—the inept, frustrated, semi-alcoholic commander of Camp Swampy, introduced in 1951. He loves to golf, much to his wife Martha's dismay. He sometimes harasses his secretary, Miss Buxley. He is 78 years old, from Kenner, Louisiana—though according to Capt. Scabbard he was born in China (April 28, 1971).
Miss Buxley—Halftrack's beautiful, blonde, buxom civilian secretary—and occasional soldier's date (as well as a constant distraction for Halftrack). She used to live in Amarillo, Texas. Miss Buxley has an apparent interest in Beetle and later becomes his girlfriend, but is constantly pursued by Killer.
Lieutenant Sonny Fuzz—very young (with noticeably pointy eyebrows and very little facial hair), overly earnest, anal-retentive and "by the book" and highly susceptible to squeaky furniture. The apple-polishing Fuzz is always trying to impress uninterested superiors (especially Halftrack), and "rub it in the noses" of his subordinates. He was introduced March 7, 1956. Mort Walker said he modeled the character and personality of Lt. Fuzz on himself, having taken himself too seriously after completing Officer Training. Lt. Fuzz has also managed to get on Sarge's bad side, albeit not as much as the enlisted men. A strip had Lt. Fuzz discussing with Sarge about the fact that Beetle Bailey has been a private for a long time and recommends he be sent before a promotion board. Sarge is given flashbacks of all of Beetle's errors, then yells in anger at Lt. Fuzz, who has no idea what he did to anger Sgt. Snorkel (the flashbacks being thought balloons).
Lieutenant Jackson Flap—the strip's first black character, often touchy and suspicious—but effortlessly cool, introduced in 1970. Originally wore an afro hairstyle, but later shaved it off as later regulations disallowed many hairdos. Has often been seen with a beard.
Cookie (Cornelius) Jowls—the mess sergeant, who smokes cigarettes while preparing the mess hall's questionable menu (infamous for rubbery meatballs and tough-as-rawhide steaks). He practices no sanitary food preparation measures aside from wearing a chef hat, and is almost always seen wearing a tank top. Walker once described him as "the sum of all Army cooks I've met in my life." He bears a striking resemblance to SFC Snorkel and has also been known to occasionally beat up on Beetle. Like Sarge, he also loves food, though he is not above using Beetle as a guinea pig (which Beetle loathes). Although similar to Sarge, Cookie has had the most tension with Snorkel, particularly when Sarge raided the mess hall after Cookie stopped working and the kitchen was off-limits. In the strip of February 8, 2022, he reveals his real first name to be Cornelius.
Private "Killer" Diller—the notorious ladies' man and Beetle's frequent crony—introduced in 1951.
Private Zero—the buck-toothed, naïve farm boy who takes commands literally and misunderstands practically everything. Sometimes Zero serves to enrage Sarge even more than Beetle. Was briefly promoted from Private to Lieutenant during a military exercise (September 29, 2013). Following the exercise, he was returned to his normal rank of E-1 Private (shown in his next strip appearance on Saturday, October 12, 2013). He was raised in Cornpone, Nebraska.
Private Plato—the Camp's resident intellectual; bespectacled, given to scrawling long-winded, analytical, often philosophical graffiti. Named after Plato but based on Walker's pal, fellow cartoonist Dik Browne. Plato is the only character other than Beetle to evolve from the early "college" months of the strip. Asked his full name, he tells Beetle "Aristotle Anaximenes Heraclitus Papagelis".
Supporting characters
Private Blips—Gen. Halftrack's competent, jaded, not-at-all-buxom secretary ("blips" are small points of light on a radar screen). She resents Halftrack's constant ogling of Miss Buxley, and though envious of the latter's beauty maintains a polite working relationship with her.
Chaplain Stainglass—"He's praying... he's looking at the food... he's praying again!" According to Mort Walker's Private Scrapbook, Walker based the chaplain on Irish actor Barry Fitzgerald's priest character from Going My Way (1944). He often tries to get Sarge to not beat up Beetle or the men but his efforts are either futile or backfire.
Martha [Knips] Halftrack—the General's formidable, domineering wife. She is 70 years old and is from Morganfield, Kentucky. Her brother Sgt Knips is the senior NCO at Camp Swampy
Private Rocky—Camp Swampy's long-haired, disgruntled social dissident, a former biker gang member and rebel-without-a-clue, introduced in 1958. Is the editor of the "Camp Swampy Muckateer".
Private Cosmo—Camp Swampy's sunglass-wearing, resident "shady entrepreneur" and huckster. Loosely based on William Holden's Sefton character from Stalag 17; almost forgotten in the 1980s.
Captain Sam Scabbard—hard-nosed, flat-top wearing officer, commander of A Company and usually depicted as competent. Can be firm with Sarge, but also trusts him.
Major Greenbrass—staff officer, golf partner, and brother-in-law of Gen. Halftrack. He is most often simply a sounding-board for the general, reacting to his superior's shenanigans instead of causing his own.
Private Julius Plewer—fastidious fussbudget, who eventually became Halftrack's chauffeur.
Corporal Yo—the strip's first and only Asian character, introduced in 1990. Like Major Greenbrass' relationship to General Halftrack, Cpl. Yo is most often simply a conversation partner for Sarge or one of the lieutenants. He is rarely, if ever, shown to be goofing off like the rest of the enlisted men.
Dr. Bonkus—Camp Swampy's loopy staff psychiatrist, whose own sanity is questionable.
Sergeant 1st Class Louise Lugg—a tough soldier who hopes to be Sarge's girlfriend, introduced in 1986. Lt. Flap wondered why Lugg was sent to the camp; Halftrack commented that she showed up after he called the Pentagon to request an overseas assignment—"I asked them to send me abroad." Although more competent than the male enlisted personnel, she has shown moments of stupidity herself. When attempting to try to get Sarge's attention, Beetle advised Sgt. Lugg "to soften him up, then whammo, nail him!" Sarge is then seen getting gifts of beer and comic books "from Louise Lugg", then says to himself he had her figured out all wrong and how sensitive she was. As Sarge is walking, Lugg is seen around a corner with a baseball bat and chains, having taken Beetle's advice too literally.
Bella—Sgt. Louise Lugg's female cat.
Specialist Chip Gizmo— Camp Swampy's resident computer geek, was named by a write-in contest in 2002. The contest, sponsored by Dell Computer Corp., received more than 84,000 entries. It raised more than $100,000 for the Fisher House Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides housing for families of patients at military and veterans hospitals. Due to his expertise in information technology, he was often seen working near General Halftrack's office aiding him and Miss Buxley.
Retired characters
Bunny Piper—Was Beetle's seldom-seen girlfriend (from 1959), before he started dating Miss Buxley.
Buzz—Was Beetle's girlfriend before 1959.
Canteen (early 1950s)—always eating.
Snake Eyes (early 1950s)—the barracks gambler, replaced by Cosmo, Rocky and others.
Big Blush (early 1950s)—tall, innocent, and a great attraction to the girls; many of his characteristics incorporated into both Sarge and Zero.
Fireball (early 1950s)—neophyte who always seems to be in the way, forerunner of both Zero and Lt. Fuzz.
Bammy (early 1950s)—the southern patriot from Alabama who is still fighting the Civil War.
Dawg (early 1950s)—the guy in every barracks who creates his own pollution.
Ozone (late 1950s)—Zero's bigger, even more naïve friend.
Moocher (early 1960s)—stingy and always borrowing things.
Pop (1960s)—married private: gets yelled at by Sarge all day and goes home at night for more abuse from his wife.
Sergeant Webbing—variously described as being from either B Company or D Company. He somewhat resembles Snorkel, except that he lacks the trademark wrinkles in Snorkel's garrison cap and has wavy hair and thick eyebrows. He has pointy teeth. On at least two separate occasions, Webbing engaged Sgt. Snorkel in a cussing duel. He also attempted to one-up Snorkel in anthropomorphizing dogs, leading to Otto's first appearance in uniform, and was most recently seen (recognizably, but not mentioned by name) in 1983.
Rolf (early 1980s)—civilian tennis instructor, very popular with the female cast (including both Mrs. Halftrack and Miss Buxley, much to General Halftrack's consternation). Originally introduced in response to complaints about the constant ogling of Miss Buxley by the male characters. First appearance was in the September 9, 1982 strip, disappeared completely by the mid-1980s.
The early strip was set at Rockview University. When Beetle joined the Army, all of the other characters were dropped (although both incarnations of the strip include a spectacled intellectual named Plato). Four characters from the original cast (Bitter Bill, Diamond Jim, Freshman, and Sweatsock) made at least one appearance, in the January 5, 1963 strip.
Extras, one-shots and walk-ons
Beetle's family, etc.:
Mr. and Mrs. Bailey, parents of Beetle, Lois, and Chigger. (The 2/7/52 strip names Beetle's father as Gurney.)
Lois Flagston (née Bailey), Beetle's sister; she and her husband are the title characters of the Hi and Lois comic strips. Beetle was shown in a crossover where he is first telling Zero and Plato he has taken leave to visit his sister and brother-in-law. He then appears the next day in Hi & Lois, wearing civilian clothes.
Chigger, the younger brother of Beetle and Lois
Hiram "Hi" Flagston, Beetle's brother-in-law and Lois's husband
Chip, Dot, Ditto, and Trixie Flagston, Hi and Lois's children, Beetle's nephews and nieces
Mr. and Mrs. Piper, Bunny's parents
Camp Swampy:
A camp doctor whose appearance is consistent, but who is apparently unnamed
An unnamed officers' club bartender, frequent intermediary between the Halftracks
An unnamed Secretary of Defense who has made numerous appearances
Popeye the Sailor once made an indirect appearance in the form of a Halloween mask worn by Zero. He made a one-time appearance in a strip dated July 16, 2012.
2012 NCS Cartoonist of the Year Tom Richmond made an appearance in a Sunday page.
Numerous one-shot characters have appeared over the years, mostly unnamed, including an inspector general who looks like Alfred E. Neuman, and various officers and civilians. Among the few to be given names is Julian, a nondescript chauffeur eventually replaced by Julius.
Censorship
In 1962, the comic strip was censored because it showed a belly button, and in 2006, the description of Rocky's criminal past was replaced with a non-criminal past.
Self-censoring
Sometimes Mort Walker created strips with raunchy subject matter for his own amusement. This was done at the sketch stage, and those strips were never meant to be published in the U.S. They "end[ed] up in a black box in the bottom drawer", according to Walker. These sketches were sometimes published in Scandinavia, however, with a translation underneath. In Norway, they appeared in the Norwegian Beetle Bailey comic book, Billy, with the cover of the comic marked to show it contained censored strips. To offset any possible negative reaction, the publisher experimented with "scrambling" the strips in the mid-1990s. To see them, the reader had to view them through a "de-scrambling" plastic card. This was discontinued soon afterwards, and the strips later were printed without scrambling. In Sweden, some of these strips were collected in the Alfapocket series.
Animation
A television series based on the strip, consisting of 50 six-minute animated cartoon shorts produced by King Features Syndicate, was animated by Paramount Cartoon Studios in the U.S. and Artransa Film Studios in Sydney, Australia. The series was first broadcast in 1963 as part of The King Features Trilogy. 50 episodes were produced.
The opening credits included the sound of a bugle reveille, followed by a theme song specifically composed for the cartoon.
In the closing credits Geoff Pike was listed as Director.
Beetle was voiced by comic actor and director Howard Morris with Allan Melvin as the voice of Sarge. Other King Features properties, such as Snuffy Smith and Krazy Kat, also appeared in the syndicated series, under the collective title Beetle Bailey and His Friends. June Foray did the voice of Bunny, plus all of the female characters involved.
Beetle and Sgt. Snorkel were featured prominently in the cartoon movie "Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter", which debuted on October 7, 1972 as an episode of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie. In the beginning of the show, General Halftrack and Lt. Flap also appeared in the Chinese Restaurant scene.
1989 special
A 30-minute animated TV special co-written by Mort Walker and Hank Saroyan was produced for CBS in 1989, but did not air due to management changes at the CBS network. It has been released on DVD alongside the 1960s cartoons. Greg Whalen played Beetle, Bob Bergen portrayed Killer, Henry Corden was Sgt. Snorkel, Frank Welker was both Zero and Otto, Linda Gary voiced both Miss Buxley and Ms. Blips and General Halftrack was Larry Storch. This special was one of a number of specials made in the same timeframe by King Features/Hearst for TV as potential series pilots; others included Blondie & Dagwood (co-produced with Marvel Productions, who had also collaborated with King Features for the Defenders of the Earth series a few years before) and Hägar the Horrible (co-produced with Hanna-Barbera Productions).
Musical theatre
In 1988, a musical based on the comic strip premiered at Candlewood Playhouse in New Fairfield, Connecticut for a limited run. Music and lyrics were by Neil and Gretchen Gould. In addition to the familiar characters from the strip, the plot introduced a wayward computer that promoted Bailey to three-star general.
Licensing
Over the years, Beetle Bailey characters have been licensed for dolls, T-shirts, salt and pepper shakers, toys, telephones, music boxes, handpuppets, coffee mugs, cookie jars, neckties, lunchboxes, paperback books, games, bobblehead nodders, banks, lapel pins and greeting cards. The Multiple Plastics Corporation manufactured a 1964 Camp Swampy playset, a tie-in with the cartoon TV show, with character figures accompanying the usual MPC toy GIs and military vehicles.
In 2000, Dark Horse Comics issued two collectible figures of Beetle and Sarge as part of their line of Classic Comic Characters—statues No. 11 and 12, respectively. In honor of the strip's 50th anniversary, DHC also produced a boxed PVC figure set of seven Beetle Bailey characters (Beetle, Sarge, Gen. Halftrack, Miss Buxley, Otto, Lt. Flap and Cookie).
BCI Eclipse has released 20 episodes of Beetle Bailey as part of Animated All Stars, a 2-DVD set (BCI 46952). Rhino Home Video also released a DVD containing 10 episodes, along with a couple of Hägar the Horrible and Betty Boop cartoons. In 2007, Beetle Bailey: The Complete Collection was released to DVD, containing all 50 shorts grouped randomly into 13 episodes, plus a previously unaired 1989 TV special.
For Beetle Baileys 50th anniversary in 2000, Gate offered a 1/18th Willys MB with figurines of Beetle, Sarge and Otto. The figures were the same scale as the Jeep and were molded in seated poses, so they could be placed in the seats of the model. The Jeep could also be ordered without the figures, with figurines of Laurel and Hardy, or figurines of Laurel and Hardy in sailor suits.
In 2010, fashion designer Dr. X and Bloomingdale's unveiled a limited edition retro/punk rock style line of clothing including T-shirts, leather jackets, Beetle-themed Chuck Taylors shoes and various accessories.
In 2012, Rolex and Bamford Watch Department created a Beetle Bailey Rolex watch.
Further reading
(All titles by Mort Walker. Published by Ace Tempo/Grosset & Dunlap, unless otherwise noted. Year of publication is often based on King Features Syndicate copyright dates for lack of a book date. Book numbers for mass-market paperbacks (from the cover of the earliest available copy) are given before year of publication, for chronological purposes.
Beetle Bailey and Sarge (1958) Dell (trade PB; illustrations, reprinted 1954-58 strips)
Beetle Bailey: A Strip Book (1966) Saalfield Books
Beetle Bailey (No. 1) (T-884, 1968)
Fall Out Laughing, Beetle Bailey (No. 2) (5305, 1969)
At Ease, Beetle Bailey (No. 3) (5329, 1970)
I Don't Want to Be Out Here Any More Than You Do, Beetle Bailey (No. 4) (5348, 1970)
What Is It Now, Beetle Bailey (No. 5) (5377, 1971)
Beetle Bailey on Parade (No. 6) (5416, 1972)
We're All in the Same Boat, Beetle Bailey (No. 7) (5561, 1973)
I'll Throw the Book at You, Beetle Bailey (No. 8) (5582, 1973)
Shape Up or Ship Out, Beetle Bailey (No. 9) (5708, 1974)
Backstage at the Strips (1975) Mason/Charter
Take Ten, Beetle Bailey (No. 10) (1975) (see also unnumbered 1989 Jove edition)
I've Got You on My List, Beetle Bailey (12104, No. 11) (1975)
Take a Walk, Beetle Bailey (No. 12) (12603, 1976)
I Thought You Had the Compass, Beetle Bailey (No. 13) (12605, 1976)
Is That All, Beetle Bailey (No. 14) (12613, 1976)
About Face, Beetle Bailey (No. 15) (12618, 1976)
I'll Flip You for It, Beetle Bailey (No. 16) (0-448-14037-3, 1977) ($.95 copy)
I'll Flip You for It, Beetle Bailey (16861, 1977) (1.75 copy)
I Just Want to Talk to You, Beetle Bailey (No. 17) (14142, 1977)
Lookin' Good, Beetle Bailey (No. 18) (14143, 1977)
I Don't Want to Hear About it, Beetle Bailey (0-141-05305-X, 1977) (distributed by Ace)
Give Us a Smile, Beetle Bailey (No. 19) (17029-9, 1979)
Peace, Beetle Bailey (No. 20) (1979; 0-441-05248-7 for 1984 Charter edition))
Don't Make Me Laugh, Beetle Bailey (No. 21) (16977-0, 1979)
Up, Up and Away, Beetle Bailey (17203-8, 1980)
You're Out of Hup, Beetle Bailey (No. 22) (17332-8, 1980)
Who's in Charge Here, Beetle Bailey (No. 23) (16932-0, 1980)
Is This Another Complaint, Beetle Bailey (No. 24) (0-448-13777-1, 1981)
Would It Help to Say I'm Sorry, Beetle Bailey (No. 25) (0-441-91840-9, 1981)
Beetle Bailey: You Crack Me Up (US 50846-7, 1981) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Flying High (49-003-8, 1981) Tor
Otto (16839-1, 1982)
Miss Buxley: Sexism in Beetle Bailey? (1982) Comicana
Beetle Bailey: Activity Game Challenge (0-448-15530-3, 1982)
Beetle Bailey: Potato Fancakes! (Pinnacle 41-338-6, 1980-84?) Tor
Beetle Bailey: In the Soup (1980-84?) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Dog-Gone (1980-84?) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Not Reverse! (49-001-1, 1980-84?) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Flying High Giant Size (49-003-8, 1981) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Hey There! (1982) Tor
Beetle Bailey Joke Book (1982) Tor
Beetle Bailey: The Rough Riders (1982) Tor
Beetle Bailey: General Alert (1982) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Rise and Shine (49-051-8, 1983) Tor, $1.75
Beetle Bailey: Rise and Shine Giant Size (still 49-051-8, 1983) Tor, $2.50 (includes strips from another book, possibly Play to Win)
Beetle Bailey: Double Trouble (1983) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Take Ten (US 56-092-2, 1984) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Surprise Package (US 56105-8, 1984) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Tough Luck Giant Size (US 56098-11984)
Beetle Bailey: Operation Good Times (No. 26) (0-441-05250-9, 1984) Charter
You'll Get a Bang Out of This, Beetle Bailey (No. 27) (0-441-05254-1, 1984) Charter
Beetle Bailey in "Friends" (1984) Dargaud
Beetle Bailey in Too Many Sergeants (1984) Dargaud
Beetle Bailey in The System (1984) Dargaud
The Best of Beetle Bailey (1984, 2005) HRW
The Best of Beetle Bailey: A Thirty-Three Year Treasury (1984, 2007) Comicana
Beetle Bailey: Strategic Withdrawal Giant Size (US 56105-8, 1985) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Thin Air Giant Size (56109-0, 1985) Tor
You're All Washed Up, Beetle Bailey (No. 28) (0-441-05298-3, 1985) Charter
Beetle Bailey: Hard Knocks (No. 29) (0-441-05260-61985)
Beetle Bailey: Three's a Crowd Giant Size (US 56112-1, 1986) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Revenge (1986) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Uncle Sam Wants You (US 56115-5, 1986) Tor
Big Hits from Beetle Bailey (No. 30) (0-441-05263-0, 1986) Charter
Did You Fix the Brakes, Beetle Bailey (No. 31) (1986) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Life's a Beach! (US 56117-1, 1987) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Undercover Operation (US 56119-8, 1987)
What's the Joke, Beetle Bailey (No. 32) (0-441-05279-7, 1987) Charter
Let's Change Places, Beetle Bailey (No. 33) (0-515-09088-3, 1987) Jove
Beetle Bailey: That Sinking Feeling (US 56124-4, 1988) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Behind the Eight Ball Again! (No. 34) (0-515--09529-X, 1988) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Quit Hangin' Around! (No. 35) (0-515-09890-8, 1988) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Welcome to Camp Swampy! (US 56126-0, 1989)
Beetle Bailey: Separate Checks (US 56128-7, 1989) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Quit Clowning Around (US 56130-9, 1989) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Wiped Out! (No. 36) (0-515-10040-4, 1989) Jove
Beetle Bailey: World's Laziest Private (No. 37) (0-515-10134-6, 1989) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Celebration (1989) Andrews McMeel
Beetle Bailey: Beetle Mania! (1990) Tor
Beetle Bailey: A Flying Beetle? (1990) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Advanced Planning (US 50868-8, 1990)
Beetle Bailey: Sarge Is a Dope! (1990) Tor
Beetle Bailey: Basket Case (No. 38) (0-5-10219-9, 1990) Jove
Beetle Bailey: New Outfit! (No. 39) (0-515-10313-6, 1990) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Another Request for Furlough (No. 40) (0-515-10406-X, 1990) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Table Service (No. 41) (0-515-10499-X, 1991) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Let's Grab a Bite! (No. 42) (0-515-10575-9, 1991) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Wha' Happen? (No. 43) (0-515-10673-9, 1991) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Beetle Bugged (No. 44) (0-515-10759-X, 1992) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Corporal Punishment (No. 45) (1992) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Keep Peeling (No. 46) (0-515-11086-8, 1992) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Tattle "Tail" (No. 47) (0-515-10988-6, 1992) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Dream Team (No. 48) (1993) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Camp Swampy Strikes Again! (No. 49) (0-515-11288-7, 1993) Jove
Beetle Bailey: Still Lazy After All These Years (1999) NBM
50 Years of Beetle Bailey (2000) NBM
Beetle Bailey Book and Figure Set: Sarge (2001) Dark Horse Comics
Beetle Bailey Book and Figure Set: Beetle (2001) Dark Horse Comics
Beetle Bailey Book and Figure Set: Miss Buxley (2001) Dark Horse Comics
Beetle Bailey Book and Figure Set: General Halftrack (2001) Dark Horse Comics
Mort Walker's Private Scrapbook (2001) Andrews McMeel
Beetle Bailey, The First Years: 1950–1952 (2008) Checker
Beetle Bailey, Daily and Sunday Strips: 1965 (2010) Titan Books
Beyond the strip
Beetle Bailey also successfully appeared in comic books from 1953 to 1980. The first series was published by Dell Comics, then Gold Key Comics, King Comics and Charlton Comics. Harvey Comics ran a much-later second series from 1992 to 1994.
The comic strip Hi and Lois, co-created by Mort Walker and Dik Browne, is a spin-off from Beetle Bailey (Beetle's sister is Lois Flagston). Hi and Lois, also syndicated by King Features, debuted in 1954. Characters from one strip occasionally make guest appearances in the other.
A Beetle Bailey parody in Mad from the late 1960s portrays Sarge and Captain Scabbard finally wresting the cap off Beetle's face—revealing the words "Get Out of Viet Nam!" tattooed on his forehead.
Beetle appeared again in Mad, this time in a Mort Drucker spoof of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Beetle is seen as a soldier alongside Killer attempting to quash the ape rebellion, with Killer commenting "When we trained for gorilla warfare, I never dreamed we would actually need to use it!"
Beetle again appeared in Mad alongside Sad Sack in issue 140 in the parody of Patton retitled Put*On, where in a scene General Put*On is beating up a soldier who is shell-shocked and in the panel Beetle says to Sad Sack "Stop him! He'll tear that man's head off! Quick-get the Chief Surgeon!" which Sad Sack responds, "I've got news for you...that IS the Chief Surgeon!" Then Beetle replies, "That explains it! No WONDER he said he can't fight! Better call the Chaplain!", which Sack retorts, "I can't! He's in bed with a broken jaw! Don't you remember? HE told the General he couldn't fight, TOO!"
Beetle yet again appeared in a 1988 issue of Mad, alongside Sarge, in a segment explaining human anatomy according to cartoonists. Sarge's head shape was used as an example of a "sloping, subhuman skull type" which was also noted in Michael Patterson of For Better or for Worse. Beetle was featured in the section on eyes about having concealed eyes; beetlus yardbirdus, the pupil-less eyes of Little Orphan Annie; annius orphanus, and the X-ray eyes of Superman; kryptonius xrayvisionus.
Beetle and Sarge guest-starred in the 75th anniversary party of Blondies Blondie and Dagwood in 2005.
An animated segment featuring Beetle Bailey and his company was seen during the 1970s and 1980s on Sesame Street'', demonstrating to young viewers the concept of "first" and "last".
A life-size bronze sculpture of Beetle designed by Mort Walker with his son Neal assisting in the sculpting was unveiled at Walker's alma mater, the University of Missouri, on October 23, 1992.
See also
Explanatory notes
References
External links
Beetle Bailey at King Features
BeetleBailey.com
NCS Awards
The TV version at IMDB
Mort Walker Collection at the University of Missouri (primary source material)
1950 comics debuts
Bailey, Beetle
American comic strips
Comics adapted into animated series
Comics adapted into plays
Comics adapted into television series
Bailey, Beetle
Bailey, Beetle
Gag-a-day comics
Bailey, Beetle
Military humor
Military comics | en |
doc-en-11996 | Oleksandr Valentynovych Turchynov (; born 31 March 1964) is a Ukrainian politician, screenwriter, Baptist minister and economist. He is the former Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.
In 2005, Turchynov served as the head of the Security Service of Ukraine. Turchynov is a former acting President of Ukraine from the removal from power of President Viktor Yanukovych on 21 February 2014, until Petro Poroshenko was sworn in as Ukrainian President on 7 June 2014. He then became Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament until 27 November 2014. Turchynov also served as acting Prime Minister in 2010 (when he was the First Vice Prime Minister in the absence of a prime minister after Yulia Tymoshenko's government was dismissed on 3 March 2010) until the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) appointed Mykola Azarov as Prime Minister on 11 March 2010.
Turchynov was the first deputy chairman of the political party Batkivshchyna (All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland") and a close associate of party leader Yulia Tymoshenko. He started the new political party People's Front in September 2014, now together with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. In June 2020 Turchynov became one of the managers of the headquarters of European Solidarity, a political party led by former president Petro Poroshenko.
Biography
Oleksandr Turchynov was born in Dnipropetrovsk. He graduated from the Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute in 1986, after which he worked at Kryvorizhstal, a large Ukrainian steel producer. From 1987 to 1990, he served as head of the agitation and propaganda division of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Komsomol (Communist Youth League) Committee, which was led by Serhiy Tihipko. Tihipko and Turchynov became political advisers of Leonid Kuchma, then head of Dnipropetrovsk-based Pivdenmash missile manufacturer. Kuchma and his entire team, including Tihipko and Turchynov moved to Kyiv in 1992, after Kuchma was appointed Prime Minister. In 1993 Turchynov was formally appointed an advisor on economic issues to Prime Minister Kuchma.
Turchynov is an old ally of Yulia Tymoshenko, another prominent Ukrainian political figure from Dnipropetrovsk. They used to have a common business in Dnipropetrovsk. In December 1993, Turchynov co-founded and became Vice President of Ukrainian Union of Industrialist and Entrepreneurs. In 1994 he created the political party Hromada together with Pavlo Lazarenko, a business ally of Tymoshenko. Turchynov was also director of the Economic Reforms Institute from January 1994 to March 1998 and was head of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences' Laboratory of Shadow Economy Research.
Political life
In 1998, he was elected to parliament as a member of Hromada but after the scandal around Lazarenko, he left the faction and party (during May 1999) together with Yulia Tymoshenko's All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland". He was re-elected to parliament in 2002 and 2006 as part of the BYuT.
On 4 February 2005, Turchynov was appointed and served as the first‐ever civilian head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). With the approval of Turchynov as the head of the SBU, he dissolved the investigation team that was investigating the Georgiy Gongadze case since 2002. According to the first deputy head of the Main Investigation Department of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine Roman Shubin, Turchynov ordered not to provide operational data on the Gongadze case to the investigation group of the Security Service of Ukraine.
On 15 June 2005 after the SBU had started an investigation by Turchynov in May 2005, Timoshenko charged that Dmitro Firtash and others and his Nicosia, Cyprus based Highrock Holdings had been central to over $1 billion stolen from Ukraine through his Turkmenistan gas scheme involving both Eural Trans Gas and RosUkrEnergo. On 8 September 2005, Yushchenko dismissed Timoshenko and subsequently, on 23 September 2005, the SBU investigation into the missing money was halted by direct order of Yushchenko according to Turchynov.
In August 2007, Turchynov replied to the accusation that his stance on same-sex marriage is typically conservative, "I do not agree. If a man has normal views, then you label him a conservative, but those who use drugs or promote sodomy, you label them a progressive person. All of these are perversions".
In the spring of 2008, he was the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and the Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc candidate for the Mayor of Kyiv election he placed second at the election with 218,600 votes (19.13% of total vote).
In December 2009, during the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election campaign Turchynov accused President Viktor Yushchenko and opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych of coordinating their actions in their attempts to topple the Second Tymoshenko Government. From December 2009 till March 2010, the adviser to Turchynov in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine was Andriy Slyusarchuk, a Ukrainian fraudster.
On 4 March 2010, after the fall of the second Tymoshenko Government, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko resigned from that post on 4 March 2010 and Turchynov was empowered to fulfill the Prime Minister's duties until a new government was formed. On 11 March 2010 the Azarov Government was elected and Mykola Azarov was appointed Prime Minister the same day.
According to WikiLeaks, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Oleksandr Medvedko ordered former Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko to arrest Yulia Tymoshenko's teammates – Oleksandr Turchynov and Andriy Kozhemiakin – for destroying the documents of the Security Service of Ukraine in which the connection between Tymoshenko and the criminal businessman Semion Mogilevich was proved.
In 2012 he was re-elected into parliament on the party list of "Fatherland".
At final days of Euromaidan, on 21 February 2014 the parliament passed a law that reinstated the 8 December 2004 amendments of the constitution. This was passed under simplified procedure without any decision of the relevant committee and was passed in the first and the second reading in one voting by 386 deputies. The law was approved by 140 MPs of the Party of Regions, 89 MPs of Batkivshchyna, 40 MPs of UDAR, 32 of the Communist Party, and 50 independent lawmakers. According to Radio Free Europe, however, the measure was not signed by the then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who was subsequently removed from office. The reinstitution of the 2004 amendments was proscribed in the Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine to be adopted within 48 hours after signing of the agreement (21 February 2014). All of that was taking place during the already ongoing concealed annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Under the provision of the Constitution with 2004 amendments, a chairman of parliament is the next in succession of power in the country and such provision existed before adaptation of the Constitution back in 1996.
On 22 February 2014, he was elected as speaker of Verkhovna Rada. On 23 February 2014, Turchynov was designated as acting Prime Minister of Ukraine following the impeachment of Viktor Yanukovych per the reinstated constitutional provisions of the 2004 amendments. On 25 February Turchynov assumed the (Presidential power of) command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. A day earlier were also scheduled early presidential elections on 25 May, for which Oleksandr Turchynov did not register.
Early March 2014 Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, stated he did not regard Turchynov as the legitimate Ukrainian President.
Following attacks on law enforcement, security institutions and capture of government buildings, Turchynov offered for the unmarked militants with Russian flags to lay down arms and vacate government buildings for negotiations. Upon refusal, he finally sanctioned a big scale anti-terrorist operation headed by the Security Service of Ukraine. Earlier on 8 April 2014 another short-term anti-terrorist operation led by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine freed up government buildings in Kharkiv.
On 13 April 2014, Russia confirmed that it began a large scale military exercise in the regions of Rostov, Belgorod and Kursk on the border with Ukraine, involving more than 8,000 troops and which would continue until the end of March. In April 2014 Russia announced another military exercise in the same region (Southern Russia).
On 14 April 2014, while talking on the phone with Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, Turchynov asked for the United Nations's support regarding the crisis in eastern Ukraine, to which the Secretary-General replied that peacekeepers may be sent in should Russia withhold its veto. Meanwhile, Turchynov issued a deadline to the pro-Russian insurgents to disarm and dismantle their barricades, but the deadline passed without incident. Before he issued a deadline, which was scheduled for 9 am, he tried to negotiate with insurgents and even proposed to hold referendum on the same day as elections which will be on 25 May. His proposition was questioned by journalists who feared that the referendum might be sabotaged by pro-Russia insurgents.
Petro Poroshenko was elected President of Ukraine on 25 May 2014. Poroshenko was sworn in as Ukrainian President on 7 June 2014, this ended the presidential powers of Turchynov.
On 10 September 2014, Turchynov became founding member the new party People's Front.
In an interview with the BBC, Turchynov admitted that in 2014, when the first volunteers went to war, he was personally giving them weapons, but not all were clean in the eyes of the law: "And I personally signed the orders for the weapons, many were worried about what would happen if they did not follow those orders with a weapons. Indeed, we didn't check anyone at that time, if they were convicted previously or not – whoever said that they are ready to defend the country, signed up, received weapons and went to the East of our country." In an interview given to VICE, he declared concerning his decision: "If it happened again, I would do the same thing"
On 21 September 2014, he said that Russia doesn't admit that their soldiers are fighting in Ukraine. He also stated that Russia is the main aggressor and that during the conflict his nation had lost over 1,000 lives with 100s missing. During the same Facebook message he compared the conflict to the butterflies, a metaphor to one of Ray Bradbury's works.
Turchynov was elected his party's faction leader on 27 November 2014.
On 16 December 2014, President Poroshenko appointed Turchynov as Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.
According to the social poll of the "Sofia" centre, in June 2017, only 0.9% of respondents said that they completely trust Turchynov, 9.5% trust him, 24.1% do not trust him, 57.4% do not trust him at all.
On 1 November 2018, Oleksandr Turchynov was included in the Russian sanctions list in connection with Ukraine's unfriendly actions towards citizens and legal entities of the Russian Federation.
On 11 December 2018, in response to the fact that 66 city councils and 12 regional councils had adopted the term "gender" instead of "sex", he published on his website an article he wrote called "Neo-Marxism or a trip to the abyss". In this article he drew a parallel between marxists and "neo-marxists", he declared the latter "offe[r] society a struggle for the rights of the new "oppressed", assigning to them the role of emancipated women, homosexuals, lesbians, transgender people, and others like that." In his article he also criticized LGBT activists and compared the "invented subjects" of gender studies to the academic degrees of "Scientific Communism" and "Marxist-Leninist philosophy". He also called for the restoration of the term "sex" instead of the term "gender" in the national registration where the term "gender" was in use. In response to this, 160 church communities and 130 public organizations publicly supported his article. In March 2019, at the All-Ukrainian Forum of the Family, Turtchynov declared he opposed the "hundreds of genders" in the Ukrainian legislation and declared his support for "eternal gospel values".
On 17 May 2019, after the Ukrainian elections, he resigned from his office as secretary of the NSDC; his resignation was accepted on 19 May.
In June 2020 Turchynov became head of the 2020 Ukrainian local elections headquarters of the party European Solidarity. Turchynov stated he was "not interested in a parliamentary mandate or public positions, but to help the unification process and train quality staff of effective managers".
Business activity
On 10 September 2014, Oleksandr Turchynov published a letter in which he urged retailers to take a closer look at the products of Tarasove Dzherelo, a small producer of mineral water. He proposed to conclude deals with that company. Some market experts assessed the actions of Turchinov as lobbyism.
According to the journalistic investigation, Turchinov's mother-in-law, Tamara Beliba, owns the largest data center in the Baltic states — MC-office. Beliba owns the Ekonomikos Institutas company, which owns a data center located in Kaunas, Lithuania. The total volume of investments was $200 million. Tamara Beliba is also the owner of the company "Ekostilkom", which in turn owns a house near Kyiv with a size of 1,000 m2 with a plot of land of 0.5 hectares. Turchynov's mother-in-law is the owner of warehouses with a total area of 6,000 m2 in Kyiv on the Akademika Koroleva Prospect. Another company of Tamara Beliba owns three facilities with the size of more than 200 m2 each in the centre of Kyiv on Konovalets street.
According to the United State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs and Public Organizations of Ukraine, the entire business in the Turchynov family is executed on his mother-in-law Tamara Beliba, mother Valentina and wife Anna. The family is engaged in economic research, film production, providing communication services and building data centres. This business is related with economic research, film production, the provision of telecommunications services and data centers.
On 1 May 2017, the journalistic investigation of the program Our money with Denis Bigus (channel 24) proved the connection between Oleksandr Turchynov and people's deputy Ruslan Lukyanchuk with three large companies (Absolut Finance, Magnate and Octave Finance) that own 1,200 exchange points of 3,500 legal currency exchange offices in Ukraine. These points exchanged currencies without cash registers, which violates the requirements of the law, since in this case automatic tax reporting is not provided to the State Fiscal Service. All these companies are listed on the nominees — Oksana and Ilona Brodovskaya and Hryhoriy Pron'ko (Oksana's father). However, their connection with the joint business of Turchinov and Lukyanchuk was proved by journalists — Oksana and her husband Valentin Brodovsky were assistants of Ruslan Lukyanchuk during four convocations of the Verkhovna Rada. Investigations on this subject were published in the Ukrainian media earlier.
Oleksandr Turchynov's father-in-law Vladimir Beliba together with businessman Ihor Tynnyy opened in 2013 in the center of Kyiv a restaurant of Italian cuisine "Montecchi v Capuleti". This was reported in May 2016 by the journalists of Nashi hroshi project.
According to media reports, Turchynov is involved in establishment of the following companies: "Institute for Economic Reforms" LLC, "Information Technologies of the 21st Century" CJSC, "Pharmacor" LLC, "ZET" LLC, "Europe-X" LLC, "Editorial board of Vecherniye Vesti newspaper" LLC, "VV" LLC, "SVV" LLC, "Janus" Real Estate Agency LLC.
Controversies
In June 2003, the Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin announced his intention to send the proposal to the Ukrainian Parliament an idea to bringing to trial the deputies Oleksandr Turchynov, Stepan Khmara and Mykolay Rudkovsky. According to Shokin, the People's deputies were insulting and beating the staff of the Lukyanivska Prison. Deputies demanded the release of Gennady Tymoshenko and Antonina Bolyura. They were incriminated with three cases of the Criminal Code: "Capturing state buildings", "Threat to law enforcement officers", and "Excess of power with the use of weapons and verbal insulting of law enforcement officers."
On 13 September 2003, tax officials detained at the office of the "Fatherland" party Ruslan Lukyanchuk, one of the assistants of Oleksandr Turchynov. He was charged with involvement in illegal currency exchange. The Prosecutor General of Ukraine Svyatoslav Piskun then stated that the detention of Turchynov's assistant was part of a planned process of initiating a criminal case. According to Piskun, about hundreds of thousands of illegally converted dollars were sent to the office of the "Fatherland" party.
In February 2006 state prosecutors opened a criminal case against Turchynov and his SBU deputy Andriy Kozhemyakin for destroying a file about FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive, organized crime boss Semyon Mogilevich, from the SBU archive. The case was dismissed four months later. WikiLeaks documents mention Turchynov, then head of Ukraine's SBU, as having destroyed documents implicating Yulia Tymoshenko's alleged connections to Mogilevich.
According to the Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine newspaper referring to deputy mayor of Kyiv Leonid Chernovetskyi, Mr. Turchynov is related to unlawful construction in the Landscape Valley (Peyzazhna aleya) district of Kyiv. In autumn of 2004 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine signed an investment contract with JSC Ukrainian Property (OAO "Ukrayinsʹke mayno") on the construction of an apartment building in this district. With this the share of the MFA in the project made just 20%. The Ministry actually became a cover for the businessmen. As of 1 January 2007, 91.1% of the JSC Ukrainian Property shares belonged to Eclad Invest Ltd. (USA), and 8.2% to Valery Kovalenko. Previously, the shares of JSC Ukrainian Property belonged to JSC Financial holding "L-Holding", the largest shareholder of which was JSC Centre of Financial Technologies. Oleksandr Turchinov owned 26.2% of the shares of this company. On 23 April 2008, the Kyiv District Administrative Court ruled that Oleksandr Turchinov had no personal relationship with the construction of the Landscape Valley.
In 2005, Oleksandr Turchinov ordered to organize an illegal wiretapping of the journalist of Segodnya newspaper Oleksandr Korchinsky. This fact was made public at a press conference by Viktor Shokin, former Prosecutor General of Ukraine. The telephone of the journalist was tapped from 25 June – 12 July 2005. Turchinov personally took this decision. The journalist's phone was bugged without sanctions of the court. On 14 March 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine have opened a criminal case on the fact of illegal wiretapping of senior officials. Most of these wiretapping took place in 2005, when Oleksandr Turchynov was the head of SSU.
In August 2016, journalists of the Economichna Pravda (Ukrayinska Pravda project) accused Oleksandr Turchinov of influencing the leadership of the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine (DSTSZI). Despite the introduction of the system of electronic declarations on the incomes of civil servants and officials, those declarations without a DSTSZI's security certificate could not have legal force in court cases. A number of analysts accused Turchinov of disrupting the launch of the e-declaration system.
On 15 August 2016, Serhiy Kaplin, Secretary of the Committee for National Security and Defense of the Verkhovna Rada, published an open appeal to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Prosecutor General demanding to confirm the attitude of Oleksandr Turchinov to private arms manufacturers. Turchinov actively lobbies the entry of these manufacturers to the market. Kaplin also demands the Prosecutor General to open cases against Turchynov and Serhiy Pashynskyi on the surrender of Crimea and Donbas.
In March 2017, former people's deputy Oleksandr Shepelev accused Turchinov and Ruslan Lukyanchuk of stealing and withdrawing $800 million from the state budget with the assistance of the International Monetary Fund. According to Shepelev, in 2009 Turchinov and Lukyanchuk "were taxed by the heads of ministries and state enterprises", and received money from them to the accounts of the European Bank for Rational Financing (EBRD). There, hryvnias were converted into the cash dollars, which then were withdrawn to offshores through the Baltic banks and shell companies. The largest of these companies was Fortex, owned by Lukyanchuk and registered in the UK. Turchinov urged the NABU to investigate the charges against him.
According to the Ukrainian lawyer living in Russia and disgraced former First Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Renat Kuzmin, the court ordered National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to initiate the criminal proceedings against Turchynov for theft and withdrawal of $800 million to offshore companies. The NSDC press service said that Kuzmin's publication contains false information that "Russian secret services are replicating in order to discredit the Secretary of the Turchinov Council." Turchynov later appealed to the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau with a request to conduct a check of the statements of the former members of the Yanukovych team hiding out in Russia that he withdrew $800 million from the state budget to the offshore.
Non-official activities
In 2004 Turchynov published a book Illusion of Fear. In 2005 he also wrote a script to the same name movie that is based on the book. The movie was released in Ukraine in September 2008 and was the 2008 Ukrainian submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Earnings
According to the electronic declaration, in 2019, Oleksandr Turchinov received 410,690 hryvnias (US$15,210) as salary. He received interest of 1.319 million hryvnias (US$48,852) from bank deposits. Another 250 thousand hryvnias formed an income from other sources. On bank accounts, Turchinov had 236 thousand hryvnias, US$1 052 thousand, and about € 10 thousand. He also declared US$675 thousand, €3 thousand, and 57 thousand hryvnias in cash. Additionally, Turchinov had a collection of ancient Bibles, paintings, as well as copyrights to books and films. His spouse has declared 446 thousand grivnas of income. Oleksandr Turchinov also declared a 2018 TOYOTA LC 150 Prado car and a 2015 LEXUS LX570 car.
Awards
On 31 October 2014, at the ceremony of rewarding the participants of the special operation in Donbas, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov awarded Oleksandr Turchinov a compact self-loading pistol PSM-05 for services to the ministry. The Minister expressed the hope that he will assist the Ministry in the future.
Turchinov also has three more award weapons - a revolver of Alfa 3541 caliber .357 Magnum (30 April 2014), a pistol machine gun Fort-226 (30 March 2015), and a semi-automatic pistol Mauser C96 with 105 bullets.
In May 2016, Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov confirmed that Turchinov was awarded the Maxim's machine gun model 1910 (PM M1910).
On 2 May 2018, by the decree of the President of Ukraine, he was awarded the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise of the Fifth Class.
Personal life
Oleksandr Turchynov's wife, Hanna Turchynova (born 1970), PhD, works as dean of the faculty of natural geography and ecology at National Pedagogical Dragomanov University. They have one son, Kyrylo (born 1994), who finished his master's degree thesis in 2014.
Turchynov is known to abstain from tobacco and alcohol. He belongs to the 1.9% of Ukraine's population that identify as Protestant. Although some in the media have labelled him a pastor, the Associated Baptist Press and the European Baptist Federation report that he is an elder and occasional lay preacher at his Kyiv church, the Word of Life Center, which is a member of the Evangelical Baptist Union of Ukraine. Social networks have nicknamed him the "Bloody Pastor" (). He responds to this nickname with irony: "I think this nickname is much better than what the Ukrainians gave to Putin". Some media occasionally regard Turchynov as the "Consigliere of Yulia Tymoshenko".
References
External links
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1964 births
All-Ukrainian Union "Fatherland" politicians
Chairmen of the Verkhovna Rada
Third convocation members of the Verkhovna Rada
Fourth convocation members of the Verkhovna Rada
Fifth convocation members of the Verkhovna Rada
Sixth convocation members of the Verkhovna Rada
Seventh convocation members of the Verkhovna Rada
Eighth convocation members of the Verkhovna Rada
Directors of the Security Service of Ukraine
Hromada (political party) politicians
People's Front (Ukraine) politicians
Living people
National Metallurgical Academy of Ukraine alumni
Politicians from Dnipro
People of the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation
People of the Euromaidan
Acting presidents of Ukraine
Ukrainian Baptists
Ukrainian economists
Pro-Ukrainian people of the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine
Acting prime ministers of Ukraine
First vice prime ministers of Ukraine
Secretaries of National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine
Pro-Ukrainian people of the war in Donbas
Ukrainian people of Russian descent | en |
doc-en-8454 | The black church (sometimes termed Black Christianity or African-American Christianity) is the faith and body of Christian congregations and denominations in the United States that minister predominantly to African Americans, as well as their collective traditions and members. The term "black church" can also refer to individual congregations.
While most black congregations belong to predominantly African-American Protestant denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) or Church of God in Christ (COGIC), many others are in predominantly white Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ (which developed from the Congregational Church of New England), or in integrated denominations such as the Church of God. There are also many Black Catholic churches.
Most of the first black congregations and churches formed before 1800 were founded by freed blacks – for example, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Springfield Baptist Church (Augusta, Georgia); Petersburg, Virginia; and Savannah, Georgia. The oldest black Baptist church in Kentucky, and third oldest in the United States, was founded about 1790 by the slave Peter Durrett. The oldest black Catholic church, St Augustine in New Orleans, was founded by free blacks in 1841.
After slavery in the United States was abolished, segregationist attitudes towards blacks and whites worshiping together were not as predominant in the North as compared to the South. Many white Protestant ministers moved to the South after the Civil War to establish churches where black and white people worshiped together. In Wesleyan Holiness denominations such as the Church of God, the belief that "interracial worship was a sign of the true Church" was taught, with both whites and blacks ministering regularly in Church of God congregations, which invited people of all races to worship there. In some parts of the country, such as New Orleans, black and white Catholics had worshiped together for almost 150 years before the Civil War—albeit without full equality and primarily under French and Spanish rule.
Attacks by the Ku Klux Klan or other whites opposed to such efforts thwarted those attempts and even prevented Blacks from worshiping in the same buildings as whites. In communities where black and white people worshiped together in the South shortly after the Civil War, the persecution of African Americans was less severe. Yet, freed blacks most often established congregations and church facilities separate from their white neighbors, who were often their former owners. In the Catholic Church, the rising tide of segregation eventually resulted in segregated parishes across the South, even in places where segregation had not previously been the norm.
These new black churches created communities and worship practices that were culturally distinct from other churches, including forms of Christian worship that derived from African spiritual traditions, such as call and response. These churches also became the centers of communities, serving as school sites, taking up social welfare functions such as providing for the indigent, and going on to establish orphanages and prison ministries. As a result, black churches were particularly important during the Civil Rights Movement.
History
Slavery
Evangelical Baptist and Methodist preachers traveled throughout the South in the Great Awakening of the late 18th century. They appealed directly to slaves, and a few thousand slaves converted. Black individuals found opportunities to have active roles in new congregations, especially in the Baptist Church, where slaves were appointed as leaders and preachers. (They were excluded from such roles in the Anglican or Episcopal Church.) As they listened to readings, slaves developed their own interpretations of the Scriptures and found inspiration in stories of deliverance, such as the Exodus out of Egypt. Nat Turner, an enslaved Baptist preacher, was inspired to armed rebellion against slavery, in an uprising that killed about 50 white people in Virginia.
Both free blacks and the more numerous slaves participated in the earliest black Baptist congregations founded near Petersburg, Virginia, Savannah, Georgia, and Lexington, Kentucky, before 1800. The slaves Peter Durrett and his wife founded the First African Church (now known as First African Baptist Church) in Lexington, Kentucky about 1790. The church's trustees purchased its first property in 1815. The congregation numbered about 290 by the time of Durrett's death in 1823.
The First African Baptist Church had its beginnings in 1817 when John Mason Peck and the former enslaved John Berry Meachum began holding church services for African Americans in St. Louis. Meachum founded the First African Baptist Church in 1827. It was the first African-American church west of the Mississippi River. Although there were ordinances preventing blacks from assembling, the congregation grew from 14 people at its founding to 220 people by 1829. Two hundred of the parishioners were slaves, who could only travel to the church and attend services with the permission of their owners.
Following slave revolts in the early 19th century, including Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, Virginia passed a law requiring black congregations to meet only in the presence of a white minister. Other states similarly restricted exclusively black churches or the assembly of blacks in large groups unsupervised by whites. Nevertheless, the black Baptist congregations in the cities grew rapidly and their members numbered several hundred each before the Civil War. (See next section.) While mostly led by free blacks, most of their members were slaves.
In plantation areas, slaves organized underground churches and hidden religious meetings, the "invisible church", where slaves were free to mix evangelical Christianity with African beliefs and African rhythms. With the time, many incorporated Wesleyan Methodist hymns, gospel songs, and spirituals. The underground churches provided psychological refuge from the white world. The spirituals gave the church members a secret way to communicate and, in some cases, to plan a rebellion.
Slaves also learned about Christianity by attending services led by a white preacher or supervised by a white person. Slaveholders often held prayer meetings at their plantations. In the South until the Great Awakening, most slaveholders were Anglican if they practiced any Christianity. Although in the early years of the First Great Awakening, Methodist and Baptist preachers argued for manumission of slaves and abolition, by the early decades of the 19th century, they often had found ways to support the institution. In settings where whites supervised worship and prayer, they used Bible stories that reinforced people's keeping to their places in society, urging slaves to be loyal and to obey their masters. In the 19th century, Methodist and Baptist chapels were founded among many of the smaller communities and common planters.
During the early decades of the 19th century, they used stories such as the Curse of Ham to justify slavery to themselves. They promoted the idea that loyal and hard-working slaves would be rewarded in the afterlife. Sometimes slaves established their own Sabbath schools to talk about the Scriptures. Slaves who were literate tried to teach others to read, as Frederick Douglass did while still enslaved as a young man in Maryland.
Free blacks
Free blacks in both northern and southern cities formed their own congregations and churches before the end of the 18th century. They organized independent black congregations and churches to practice religion apart from white oversight. Along with white churches opposed to slavery, free blacks in Philadelphia provided aid and comfort to slaves who escaped and helped all new arrivals adjust to city life.
In 1787 in Philadelphia, the black church was born out of protest and revolutionary reaction to racism. Resenting being relegated to a segregated gallery at St. George's Methodist Church, Methodist preachers Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and other black members, left the church and formed the Free African Society. It was at first non-denominational and provided mutual aid to the free black community. Over time, Jones began to lead Episcopal services there. He led most of its members to create the African Church, in the Episcopal tradition. (Butler 2000, DuBois 1866).
In the fall of 1792, several black leaders attending services at St. George's Methodist Church and had recently helped to expand the church. The black churchgoers were told to sit upstairs in the new gallery. When they mistakenly sat in an area not designated for blacks, they were forcibly removed from the seats they had helped build. According to Allen, "...we all went out of the church in one body, and they were no longer plagued by us". While he and Jones led different denominations, they continued to work closely together and with the black community in Philadelphia.... It was accepted as a parish and on July 17, 1794 became the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. In 1804 Jones was the first black priest ordained in the Episcopal Church. (Butler 2000, DuBois 1866).
Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, wanted to continue with the Methodist tradition. He built a congregation and founded the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). By July 29, 1794, they also had a building ready for their worship. The church adopted the slogan: "To Seek for Ourselves." In recognition of his leadership and preaching, in 1799 Bishop Francis Asbury ordained Allen as a Methodist minister. Allen and the AME Church were active in antislavery campaigns, fought racism in the North, and promoted education, starting schools for black children.
Finding that other black congregations in the region were also seeking independence from white control, in 1816 Allen organized a new denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first fully independent black denomination. He was elected its first bishop in 1816. While he and Jones led different denominations, they continued to work closely together and with the black community in Philadelphia. Soon thereafter, Allen. Jones, and others began soliciting funds, again with the help of Rush. Their appeals met with resistance from white church leaders, many of whom had been supportive of the black community, but disapproved of a separate black church.
Petersburg, Virginia had two of the oldest black congregations in the country, both organized before 1800 as a result of the Great Awakening: First Baptist Church (1774) and Gillfield Baptist Church (1797). Each congregation moved from rural areas into Petersburg into their own buildings in the early 19th century. Their two black Baptist congregations were the first of that denomination in the city and they grew rapidly.
In Savannah, Georgia, a black Baptist congregation was organized by 1777, by George Liele. A former slave, he had been converted by ordained Baptist minister Matthew Moore. His early preaching was encouraged by his master, Henry Sharp. Sharp, a Baptist deacon and Loyalist, freed Liele before the American Revolutionary War began. Liele had been preaching to slaves on plantations, but made his way to Savannah, where he organized a congregation. After 1782, when Liele left the city with the British, Andrew Bryan led what became known as the First African Baptist Church. By 1800 the church had 700 members, and by 1830 it had grown to more than 2400 members. Soon it generated two new black congregations in the city.
Before 1850, First African Baptist in Lexington, Kentucky grew to 1,820 members, making it the largest congregation in that state. This was under its second pastor, Rev. London Ferrill, a free black, and occurred as Lexington was expanding rapidly as a city. First African Baptist was admitted to the Elkhorn Baptist Association in 1824, where it came somewhat under oversight of white congregations. In 1841, Saint Augustine Catholic Church was established by the Creole community of New Orleans. This church is the oldest black Catholic parish in the United States. In 1856, First African Baptist built a large Italianate church, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. By 1861 the congregation numbered 2,223 members.
Reconstruction
After emancipation, Northern churches founded by free blacks, as well as those of predominantly white denominations, sent missions to the South to minister to newly freed slaves, including to teach them to read and write. For instance, Bishop Daniel Payne of the AME Church returned to Charleston, South Carolina in April 1865 with nine missionaries. He organized committees, associations and teachers to reach freedmen throughout the countryside. In the first year after the war, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church gained 50,000 congregants.
By the end of Reconstruction, AME congregations existed from Florida to Texas. Their missioners and preachers had brought more than 250,000 new adherents into the church. While it had a northern base, the church was heavily influenced by this growth in the South and incorporation of many members who had different practices and traditions. Similarly, within the first decade, the independent AME Zion church, founded in New York, also gained tens of thousands of Southern members. These two independent black denominations attracted the most new members in the South.
In 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee, with support from white colleagues of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, more than 40 black Southern ministers, all freedmen and former slaves, met to establish the Southern-based Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church (now Christian Methodist Episcopal Church), founded as an independent branch of Methodism. They took their mostly black congregations with them. They adopted the Methodist Doctrine and elected their first two bishops, William H. Miles of Kentucky and Richard H. Vanderhorst of South Carolina. Within three years, from a base of about 40,000, they had grown to 67,000 members, and more than ten times that many in 50 years.
The Church of God, with its beginnings in 1881, held that "interracial worship was a sign of the true Church", with both whites and blacks ministering regularly in Church of God congregations, which invited people of all races to worship there. Those who were entirely sanctified testified that they were "saved, sanctified, and prejudice removed." When Church of God ministers, such as Lena Shoffner, visited the camp meetings of other denominations, the rope in the congregation that separated whites and blacks was untied "and worshipers of both races approached the altar to pray". Though outsiders would sometimes attack Church of God services and camp meetings for their stand for racial equality, Church of God members were "undeterred even by violence" and "maintained their strong interracial position as the core of their message of the unity of all believers".
At the same time, black Baptist churches, well-established before the Civil War, continued to grow and add new congregations. With the rapid growth of black Baptist churches in the South, in 1895 church officials organized a new Baptist association, the National Baptist Convention. This was the unification of three national black conventions, organized in 1880 and the 1890s. It brought together the areas of mission, education and overall cooperation. Despite founding of new black conventions in the early and later 20th century, this is still the largest black religious organization in the United States. These churches blended elements from underground churches with elements from freely established black churches.
The postwar years were marked by a separatist impulse as blacks exercised the right to move and gather beyond white supervision or control. They developed black churches, benevolent societies, fraternal orders and fire companies. In some areas they moved from farms into towns, as in middle Tennessee, or to cities that needed rebuilding, such as Atlanta. Black churches were the focal points of black communities, and their members' quickly seceding from white churches demonstrated their desire to manage their own affairs independently of white supervision. It also showed the prior strength of the "invisible church" hidden from white eyes.
Black preachers provided leadership, encouraged education and economic growth, and were often the primary link between the black and white communities. The black church established and/or maintained the first black schools and encouraged community members to fund these schools and other public services. For most black leaders, the churches always were connected to political goals of advancing the race. There grew to be a tension between black leaders from the North and people in the South who wanted to run their churches and worship in their own way.
Since the male hierarchy denied them opportunities for ordination, middle-class women in the black church asserted themselves in other ways: they organized missionary societies to address social issues. These societies provided job training and reading education, worked for better living conditions, raised money for African missions, wrote religious periodicals, and promoted Victorian ideals of womanhood, respectability, and racial uplift.
Civil Rights Movement
Black churches held a leadership role in the American Civil Rights Movement. Their history as a centers of strength for the black community made them natural leaders in this moral struggle. In addition they had often served as links between the black and white worlds. Notable minister-activists of the 1950s and 1960s included Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Abernathy, Bernard Lee, Fred Shuttlesworth, Wyatt Tee Walker and C. T. Vivian.
Black Power Movement
After the assassination of Dr. King in 1968, Black Catholics began organizing en masse, beginning with the clergy that April. A Black Catholic revolution soon broke out, fostering the integration of the traditions of the larger (Protestant) Black Church into Black Catholic parishes. Soon there were organizations formed for Black religious sisters (1968), permanent deacons, seminarians, and a brand-new National Black Catholic Congress organization in 1987, reviving the late 19th-century iteration of the same. This era saw a massive increase in Black priests, and the first crop of Black bishops and archbishops.
Black theology
One formalization of theology based on themes of black liberation is the black theology movement. Its origins can be traced to July 31, 1966, when an ad hoc group of 51 black pastors, calling themselves the National Committee of Negro Churchmen (NCNC), bought a full-page ad in The New York Times to publish their "Black Power Statement", which proposed a more aggressive approach to combating racism using the Bible for inspiration.
Black liberation theology was first systematized by James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. They are considered the leading theologians of this system of belief, although now there are many scholars who have contributed a great deal to the field. In 1969, Cone published the seminal work that laid the basis for black liberation theology, Black Theology and Black Power. In the book, Cone asserted that not only was black power not alien to the Gospel, it was, in fact, the Gospel message for all of 20th century America.
In 2008, approximately one quarter of African-American churches followed a liberation theology. The theology was thrust into the national spotlight after a controversy arose related to preaching by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, former pastor to then-Senator Barack Obama at Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago. Wright had built Trinity into a successful megachurch following the theology developed by Cone, who has said that he would "point to [Trinity] first" as an example of a church's embodying his message.
Scholars have seen parallels between the Black church and the 21st Century Black Girl Magic movement, with social media interactions involving the Black Girl Magic hashtag seen as a modern extension of "[t]he Black church traditions of testimony, exhortation, improvisation, call and response, and song," which Black women can use to form a "cyber congregation."
Womanist theology
From the Black theology movement also came a more feminine form, in reaction to both the male-dominated nature of the field and the White-dominated nature of Feminist theology. Major figures in this reaction included Afro-Latino thinkers as well as Black women. Black Catholic womanists also played a major role, including Sr Jamie Phelps, OP, M. Shawn Copeland, and Diana L. Hayes.
Politics and social issues
The black church continues to be a source of support for members of the African-American community. When compared to American churches as a whole, black churches tend to focus more on social issues such as poverty, gang violence, drug use, prison ministries and racism. A study in 1996 found that black Christians were more likely to have heard about health care reform from their pastors than were white Christians.
Most surveys indicate that while blacks tend to vote Democratic in elections, members of traditionally African-American churches are generally more socially conservative than white Protestants as a whole. Same-sex marriage and other LGBT issues have been among the leading causes for activism in some black churches, though a majority of black Protestants remain opposed to this stance. Nevertheless, some denominations have been discussing this issue. For example, the African Methodist Episcopal Church prohibits its ministers from officiating same-sex weddings, but it does not have a clear policy on ordination.
Some members of the black clergy have not accepted same-sex marriage. A group known as the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), maintains their disdain for gay marriage. The CAAP president, Reverend William Owens, claims that the marriage equality act will cause corruption within the United States. The organization insists that a real union is between a man and a woman. They also believe that the law prohibiting gay marriage should have been upheld. The CAAP members agree that the Supreme Court had no right to overturn the constitutional ruling.
As neighborhood institutions
Although black urban neighborhoods in cities that have deindustrialized may have suffered from civic disinvestment, with lower quality schools, less effective policing and fire protection, there are institutions that help to improve the physical and social capital of black neighborhoods. In black neighborhoods the churches may be important sources of social cohesion. For some African Americans the kind of spirituality learned through these churches works as a protective factor against the corrosive forces of poverty and racism.
Churches may also do work to improve the physical infrastructure of the neighborhood. Churches in Harlem have undertaken real estate ventures and renovated burnt-out and abandoned brownstones to create new housing for residents. Churches have fought for the right to operate their own schools in place of the often inadequate public schools found in many black neighborhoods.
Traditions
Like many Christians, African-American Christians sometimes participate in or attend a Christmas play. Black Nativity by Langston Hughes is a re-telling of the classic Nativity story with gospel music. Productions can be found at black theaters and churches all over the country. The Three Wise Men are typically played by prominent members of the black community.
The watchnight service held on New Year's Eve in many Christian denominations, especially those of the Methodist and Moravian traditions, is widely attended by African American Christians.
Denominations
Throughout U.S. history, religious preferences and racial segregation have fostered development of separate black church denominations, as well as black churches within white denominations.
Methodism (inclusive of the holiness movement)
African Americans were drawn to Methodism due to the father of Methodism, John Wesley's "opposition to the whole system of slavery, his commitment to Jesus Christ, and the evangelical appeal to the suffering and the oppressed."
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The first of these churches was the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). In the late 18th century, former slave Richard Allen, a Methodist preacher, was an influential deacon and elder at the integrated and affluent St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia. The charismatic Allen had attracted numerous new black members to St. George's. White members had become so uncomfortable that they relegated black worshipers to a segregated gallery. After white members of St. George's started to treat his people as second-class citizens, in 1787 Allen, Absalom Jones, also a preacher; and other black members left St. George's.
They first established the non-denominational Free African Society, which acted as a mutual aid society. Religious differences caused Jones to take numerous followers to create an Episcopal congregation. They established the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, which opened its doors in 1794. Absalom Jones was later ordained by the bishop of the Philadelphia diocese as the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church.
Allen continued for some years within the Methodist denomination but organized a black congregation. By 1794 he and his followers opened the doors of the all-black Mother Bethel AME Church.
Over time, Allen and others sought more independence from white supervision within the Methodist Church. In 1816 Allen gathered four other black congregations together in the mid-Atlantic region to establish the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church as an independent denomination, the first fully independent black denomination. The ministers consecrated Allen as their first bishop.
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion or AME Zion Church, like the AME Church, is an offshoot of the ME Church. black members of the John Street Methodist Church of New York City left to form their own church after several acts of overt discrimination by white members. In 1796, black Methodists asked the permission of the bishop of the ME Church to meet independently, though still to be part of the ME Church and led by white preachers. This AME Church group built Zion chapel in 1800 and became incorporated in 1801, still subordinate to the ME Church.
In 1820, AME Zion Church members began further separation from the ME Church. By seeking to install black preachers and elders, they created a debate over whether blacks could be ministers. This debate ended in 1822 with the ordination of Abraham Thompson, Leven Smith, and James Varick, the first superintendent (bishop) of the AME Zion church. After the Civil War, the denomination sent missionaries to the South and attracted thousands of new members, who shaped the church.
Other Methodist connexions
African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church and Connection
Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A.
Lumber River Conference of the Holiness Methodist Church
Baptists
National Baptist Convention
The National Baptist Convention was first organized in 1880 as the Foreign Mission Baptist Convention in Montgomery, Alabama. Its founders, including Elias Camp Morris, stressed the preaching of the gospel as an answer to the shortcomings of a segregated church. In 1895, Morris moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and founded the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., as a merger of the Foreign Mission Convention, the American National Baptist Convention, and the Baptist National Education Convention.
The National Baptist Convention USA, Inc. reports to have 7.5 million members around the globe from 31,000 congregations, thus making it the largest black religious organization in the United States.
Other Baptist denominations
Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship
National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.
National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
Progressive National Baptist Convention
Pentecostalism
Church of God in Christ
In 1907, Charles Harrison Mason formed the Church of God in Christ (COGIC) after his Baptist church expelled him. Mason was a member of the Holiness movement of the late 19th century. In 1906, he attended the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. Upon his return to Tennessee, he began teaching the Holiness Pentecostal message. However, Charles Price Jones and J. A. Jeter of the Wesleyan Holiness movement disagreed with Mason's teachings on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Jones changed the name of his COGIC church to the Church of Christ (Holiness) USA in 1915.
At a conference in Memphis, Tennessee, Mason reorganized the Church of God in Christ as a Holiness Pentecostal body. The headquarters of COGIC is Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. It is the site of Martin Luther King's final sermon, "I've Been to the Mountaintop", delivered the day before he was assassinated.
Other Pentecostal denominations
United Holy Church of America
Apostolic Faith Mission
Apostolic Faith Mission Church of God
Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith
Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God of the Americas
Mount Sinai Holy Church of America
Pentecostal Assemblies of the World
United House of Prayer for All People
United Pentecostal Council of the Assemblies of God, Incorporated
Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith
Black Catholicism
Birthed from the pre-US communities in New Orleans, the DC area, Florida, and California, the presence of African-American Catholics in the United States territories constitute some of the earliest Black communities on the entire continent. Beginning in the early 19th century, Black Catholic religious sisters began forming congregations to serve their communities, beginning with Mary Elizabeth Lange and Henriette DeLille, who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence and Sisters of the Holy Family, respectively. They were soon followed by the emergence of openly Black priests, the first being Fr Augustus Tolton in 1886.
The Society of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (aka the Josephites), a group of priests tasked with serving African-Americans specifically, were formed in 1893 and began ordaining Black men immediately—though in small numbers. They staffed and formed Black parishes throughout the country, and today continue to serve in the same way (as do the two aforementioned sisterhoods, as well as the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary).
After the Civil Rights Movement, various new Black Catholic organizations were founded for Black priests, sisters, deacons, and seminarians, and the National Black Catholic Congress arrived in 1987. African-American Catholic priests greatly increased in number and African-American bishops began being appointed, including archbishops. The first African-American cardinal was named in 2020.
See also
Traditional Black gospel
Black sermonic tradition
Black theology
Louisiana Black church fires
Our Lady of Ferguson
Our Mother of Africa Chapel
African diaspora religions
General:
Religion in Black America
Racial segregation of churches in the United States
References
Further reading
External links
Black Past: Historic African American Churches
African-American Christianity
Church
1790 in Christianity
Christian terminology | en |
doc-en-14246 | Elvis Presley has inspired artistic and cultural works since he entered the national consciousness. From that point, interest in his personal and public life has never stopped. Some scholars have studied many aspects of his profound cultural influence. Billboard historian Joel Whitburn declared Presley the "#1 act of the Rock era".
The following lists cover various media which include items of historic interest, enduring works of high art, and recent representations in popular culture. Only people and works with Wikipedia articles are included.
For purposes of classification, popular culture music is a separate section from operas and oratorios. Television covers live action series, TV movies, miniseries, and North American animation but not Japanese anime, which appears with manga and graphic novels.
Portrayals
Actors' last names in alphabetical order
Advertising and branding
Elvis & Kresse, a company owned by Kresse Wesling and James (nicknamed Elvis at university) Henrit whose upcycling of industrial waste, mostly turning old fire hoses into new luxury products including bags and other carry-on accessories yield profits half of which are donated to various charities.
In 2018, the discount store Poundland changed the voice of its self-service checkouts to that of Elvis in all of its stores throughout the United Kingdom.
Other examples include Audi's 2001 Wackel-Elvis campaign, and State Farm's 2015 "Magic Jingle Elvis" commercial, directed by Roman Coppola
Art
Elvis-related artwork, or those based on known earlier works focusing on Elvis.
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol's "Portrait of Jean-Michel as David" (1986) is a silver-screen of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat which revisits Warhol's seminal 1963 painting "Double Elvis." It was sold at Sotheby's in New York City on 14 May 2014 for US$3,189,000.
Known silkscreens by American artist Andy Warhol featuring the image(s) of Elvis Presley and their current location, including art museums worldwide, as well as prices met and identified buyers and/or sellers. Prices paid (at either auctions houses or privately) for ten of the silkscreens below, as of end of April 2020 total US$344,000,000.
Cartoons
Cartoon illustrations of Elvis include:
Bloom County, by Berkeley Breathed, in which Elvis is a character in the comic strip;
Dark Future by Kim Newman, in which Elvis is a major character;
"Happy Times," a two-part series in Richie Rich/Jackie Jokers;;
Elvis at the Gates of Heaven, a filmed cartoon by Stan Lee;
Bubba Ho-Tep x Army of Darkness I and II, a comic book series by Scott Duvall with art by Vincenzo Federici; and
Agent King, an adult animated fictional series about the artist leading a double life as a spy and a singer (to be released by Netflix, 2020).
Academia
University of Iowa's "American Popular Arts, Elvis as Anthology", 1992 3-credit course, Iowa City, IA, USA
Norwalk Community College's Elvis Presley and the American Dream, 1995 3-credit course, Norwalk, CT, USA
University of Mississippi's International Six-day Conference on Elvis Presley, August 1995, Oxford, MS, USA
Open University's Master of Arts in popular culture: Elvis Presley", 2005, Milton Keynes, UK
Lakehead University's lectures on "Looking for Elvis", June 2009, Orillia, Ontario, Canada
Arizona State University' Elvis- MUSIC 354, Summer of 2015, 3-credit course, Phoenix, AZ, USA
University of Oviedo's "Elvis, a synthesis of an América in B&W" 2016, Oviedo, Gijón y Avilés campuses, Spain.
University of Kent's Elvis Presley Seminar, June 3, 2017, Canterbury, UK
Stonehill College's 2018 periodical Seminar on the death of Elvis Presley, Easton, MA
University of Adelaide's MUSGEN 2001 - 2018 From Elvis to YouTube Seminar, Adelaide, Australia
York University's "All thing Elvis" June 10, 2019 lecture, Toronto, Canada
Events
The Memphis Summer Storm of 2003 was nicknamed "Hurricane Elvis"
Festivals
Michigan ElvisFest, first held in 1989, then annually, in Riverside Park and Depot Town in Ypsilanti, Michigan
Parkes Elvis Festival, first held in 1993, then annually since 2005 in Parkes, New South Wales, Australia
Collingwood Elvis Festival, first held in 1995, then annually in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada
Tupelo Elvis Festival, first held in 1998, yearly since. Tupelo, MS
Mesquite, Nevada 's Elvis Rocks Mesquite competition, annually since 2009. Mesquite, NV, USA
Penticton Elvis Festival, first in 2002, annually since 2010, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada
Kobe Elvis Festival, annually since 2010 in Kobe, Japan
Brunswick Elvis Festival, first held in 2011, then annually in Brunswick, Georgia, USA
Niagara Falls Elvis Festival, first in 2017, then annually in Niagara Falls, New York, USA
Nashville Elvis Festival, first held in 2017, then annually in Nashville, Tennessee, USA
"Starring Louisiana", Krewe of Bacchus Parade, 2019, "King Creole" float, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Film
According to John Beyfuss, who reviews films for Memphis' Commercial Appeal since 1998, there has been since then an average of eighteen movies per year which carry some allusion to Elvis. There were an additional one hundred before 1998, which puts the number of such Elvis referencing in motion pictures, from numerous countries, at a minimum of four hundred since 1957, when the first such mention was made as part of the BBC-TV movie documentary A Night in the City. The list below is only a partial account and will be updated accordingly.
A Brighter Summer Day: Sir and his friends send tapes to Elvis; film's title is from "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"
Bubba Ho-Tep
Bye Bye Birdie: hysteria ensues when an Elvis-like singer is drafted into the US Army
God Is the Bigger Elvis, Oscar-nominated documentary about the life of Dolores Hart
Elmo in Grouchland: Huxley points to a Velvet Elvis as one of his possessions
Elvis & Nixon
Elvis and the Beauty Queen
Elvis Meets Nixon
Elvis Has Left the Building
Finding Graceland
Happy Feet: The character Memphis is based on Presley's personality and vocals, and he is named after Presley's famous hometown Memphis, Tennessee. Hugh Jackman, who provides the speaking and singing voice of the character, did his own Elvis impersonation for the film's soundtrack.
Honeymoon in Vegas: Jack is aided by a band of Elvis impersonators
Hounddog: Lou gives Lewellen some Elvis records
Idol on Parade about a British rock and roll star being drafted to the English Army.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: Harry briefly brings Elvis back to life
Looney Tunes: Back in Action: the song "Viva Las Vegas" plays upon arrival in Las Vegas.
Heartbreak Hotel: Elvis is kidnapped by a fan's son
Independence Day: upon escaping the Mother Ship, Hiller declares "Elvis has left the building!" to which Levinson imitates Elvis saying, "Thank you, thank you very much."
Let's Make Love: Elvis is satirized in an off-Broadway revue
Lilo & Stitch franchise: Presley's songs and images are featured throughout, with title character Lilo Pelekai portrayed as a huge fan of Presley. Stitch also regularly impersonates Elvis in the TV series of the same name and makes a few references to Presley in some Disney crossover video games.
Lilo & Stitch: Lilo uses Presley as a role model for Stitch to follow in an attempt to tame him. During a sequence, Stitch plays ukulele to the guitar solo of "(You're the) Devil in Disguise" twice, the second time while impersonating Elvis. In a photo shown at the beginning of the closing credits, Lilo, Stitch, Nani, and David pose before Graceland.
Stitch! The Movie: "Slicin' Sand" is used as the film's opening song.
Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch: Lilo looks to Elvis for inspiration to come up with an idea for her hula dance; she and Stitch go to several spots around Kauai where Presley supposedly visited, including a bench he supposedly sat on in Blue Hawaii.
Leroy & Stitch: Lilo gives Jumba an Elvis record as a parting gift; he uses Presley's cover of "Aloha ʻOe" on said record to program a fail-safe in Leroy that shuts him down upon hearing it.
Man on the Moon: Jim Carrey's take on Andy Kaufman's Elvis impersonation.
Men in Black: In the car, Agent K sings along to a cassette tape of Elvis' version of the song 'Promised Land'. When Agent J sarcastically ask if he knows that Elvis is dead K responds, "No, Elvis is not dead, he just went home", implying Elvis was in fact an alien visiting Earth.
Mystery Train: Elvis's ghost appears in a dream to Luisa; every room in the hotel has an Elvis portrait
Oblivion: Jack has an Elvis bobble-head doll
The Outsiders: the Greasers emulate Elvis
Pulp Fiction: an Elvis impersonator performs at Jackrabbit Slim's
RoboCop 2: Elvis's skeletal remains with a picture of Elvis near it is seen by RoboCop at the sludge plant where the villain Cain and his Nuke Cult are hiding out.
Rock-A-Doodle. The main character of Chanticleer resembles Elvis Presley, and is also referred to as The King.
Scary Prairie, animated short by Erik Winkowski depicting Elvis attempting to save Marilyn Monroe from a string of Japanese monsters.
This is Spinal Tap: the band visits Graceland
3000 Miles to Graceland: a group plans a robbery in Las Vegas dressed as Elvis impersonators
Touched by Love, also known as To Elvis, with Love
Top Secret!: Nick performs "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"; film parodies Elvis's musicals
Tropico: Elvis is shown in the Garden of Eden alongside Adam, Eve, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe
True Romance: Elvis's ghost mentors Clarence
Wild at Heart: Sailor and Powermad perform "Love Me"
Wired: John Belushi impersonates Elvis
Internet
In the shared alternate history of Ill Bethisad (1997 and after), an analogue of Presley called "Elvis Pressler" appears. Just like the real-life Presley, his alternate universe counterpart Pressler was a famous Rock singer who was also an actor though there are also several notable differences between the two. First, Presley's identical twin brother, Jesse was stillborn, but Pressler's twin brother (also called Jesse) was born alive. Next, Pressler withdrew from public life in 1973 after he divorced his wife, Drusilla. While the real Elvis Presley was addicted to prescription drugs and had poor health during the mid-1970s, those were only rumors in the case of Pressler who spent most of 1973 to 1976 in his mansion helping doctors treat his twin Jesse for depression and alcoholism. Unlike Presley whose comeback happened in 1968 with a TV special, Pressler's comeback occurred in 1976 with the release of a new album Hope. Finally, both die on the same day (August 16, 1977) but Pressler dies in a more dignified manner (resembling how John Denver died in reality, though Denver, called both "Jean de Cournouaille" and "John Cornwall" and isn't an analogue, doesn't die that way in Ill Bethisad but is still alive and performing as of the mid-2000s) compared to the real-life Presley. Pressler, a few hours before a planned concert in Thunder Bay decides to fly on his personal autogyro (a much more common aircraft in Ill Bethisad then in reality) which he often did to relax, but while flying, the autogyro crashes and Pressler is killed. Neither his body or the craft were found until 1981. In the meantime, rumors and conspiracy theories circulated purporting to explain what really happened to Pressler.
Literature
Ace Tucker Space Trucker by James R. Tramontana
Almost famous (novel by Cameron Crowe written in 1996, but only published in 2019)
The Armageddon trilogy by Robert Rankin
Biggest Elvis by P. F. Kluge
Elvissey by Jack Womack (1993)
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: Mostly Harmless
The Kane Chronicles: Carter has to rob Elvis's tomb to obtain an important clue
Letters from Elvis, by Gary Lindberg
Love me tender by Roy Paul Shields
King Clone by Ted Harrison
Nightmares & Dreamscapes: "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band"
The Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz
Raised on Rock, by Thomas Drago
Refried Elvis, Erik Zolov
Rey Criollo, Parmenides Garcia Saldaña
Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris
Truth like the sun by Jim Lynch, 2012.
Big bang by David Bowman, 2019 (posthumous)
Science and technology
Elvis (text editor)
Elvis operator, a type of conditional operator in programming
Elvis, a code name for the Nokia Lumia 1020
17059 Elvis, an asteroid
Elvis (helicopter)
Popular culture
"Elvis has left the building"
Memphis Mafia
Elvis sightings
Elvis impersonator
Elvis Herselvis
Music and stage production
Are You Lonesome Tonight?
All Shook Up
All the King's women by Luigi Jannuzzi
Aye, Elvis by Morna Young, Directed By Ken Alexander
Beach Blanket Babylon
Bye Bye Birdie: hysteria ensues when an Elvis-like singer is drafted into the Army
Coming back like a song, a play about stopping Elvis' reign in 1956 by Lee Kalcheim
Cooking with Elvis
The Elvis Dead: a comic retelling of horror film Evil Dead II in the style of Elvis.
Elvis sings "Old Shep", by Anne McKee
Four Weddings and an Elvis by Nancy Frick.
Graceland by Ellen Byron, directed by Tommy Wooten
Grease: Main character's Elvis idiosincracies a main theme of the play.
Happy Days
Heartbreak Hotel by Floyd Mutrux
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: Pharaoh is acted in the style of Presley
Million Dollar Quartet by Floyd Mutrux
Nunsense II: Sister Mary Hubert impersonates Elvis
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
Smokey Joe's Cafe: features the Elvis songs "Trouble" and "Treat Me Nice"
When Elvis Met Che, play by Sol Biderman
Elvis Radio
Television
Notable references
ALF: "Suspicious Minds", ALF and Willie suspect their new neighbor is Elvis
Boy Meets World: "Danger Boy", Elvis eats at Chubbie's and plays poker with Alan
Celebrity Deathmatch: "Nick In A Coma", in a morpheme-induced dream, Nick dreams of a fight between Elvis and Jerry Garcia
Civil Wars: "Pilot", an Elvis impersonator is served with divorce papers
Coach: "Viva Las Ratings", Luther travels to Las Vegas, planning to "invest" his life's savings at an Elvis memorabilia auction
Crossing Jordan: "Miracles & Wonders", Nigel thinks a dead Elvis impersonator may actually be Elvis
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: "Blood Moon", the team encounters an Elvis vampire
DC's Legends of Tomorrow: "Amazing Grace", the Legends encounter Elvis after he comes into possession of the Death Totem
Designing Women:
Charlene is an Elvis fan
"E.P. Phone Home", the ladies travel to Memphis for a tour of Graceland
"Shovel Off to Buffalo", Mary Jo's shovel has Elvis' face impressed on it
E Street: "Episode 385", Ernie and Sally are married by an Elvis impersonator
Eerie, Indiana: Elvis walks of out his home to get the newspaper in several episodes
Elvis TV series
Elvis TV mini-series
Family Matters: "Ain't Nothing but an Urkel", Steve accidentally transforms into Elvis via his Transformation Chamber
Father Ted: "Competition Time"
Fireman Sam: Fireman Elvis Cridlington is named after and inspired by Elvis
Full House: Jesse is obsessed with Elvis, and once had a job as an Elvis impersonator
Give My Head Peace: Uncle Andy is an Elvis fan
Hannah Montana: Hannah's brother Jackson is a celebrity impersonator, most notably, Elvis and Ozzy Osbourne
The Golden Girls:
"The President's Coming! The President's Coming! Part 1", the ladies encounter an Elvis impersonator
"Sophia's Wedding: Part 1", Sophia is married before an audience of Elvis impersonators
The Killing: "Unraveling", Holder references a Velvet Elvis
Las Vegas: theme song is "A Little Less Conversation"
The Last Precinct: King is an Elvis impersonator
Married... with Children: "I'm Going to Sweatland", the Bundys are inundated with fans when a perspiration stain on Al's shirt resembles a silhouette of Elvis
Miami Vice: Crockett owns an alligator named Elvis; Switeck is an Elvis fan
The Miraculous Mellops: several episodes features Elvis impersonators
The New WKRP in Cincinnati: "Long Live the King", Les's editorial denouncing a rival station's Elvis look-alike contest prompts a call from a man who claims to be Elvis
Nightmares & Dreamscapes: "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band", Elvis is the Mayor of Oregon
Nip/Tuck: "Joyce & Sharon Monroe", an Elvis impersonator wants to look more like Elvis
Pizza: "Dangerous Pizza", a group of Elvis impersonators get into a fight with a group of KISS impersonators
Quantum Leap: "Memphis Melody - July 3, 1954", Sam leaps into Elvis
Red Dwarf: "Meltdown", Elvis is part of a group of Heroes (including Pythagoras, Stan Laurel, Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe) that Rimmer and Kryten lead against the Villains faction
Renegade: "The King and I", Reno thinks a stranger who helped him during a fight may be Elvis
Saturday Night Live:
"Jackie Chan/Kid Rock", played by Karen Lynn Gorney
"Matthew Broderick/The Sugarcubes", played by Kevin Nealon
"John Madden/Jennifer Holliday", played by Andy Kaufman
"Shelley Duvall/Joan Armatrading", played by John Belushi
7th Heaven: "The Heart of the Matter", an anesthetized Eric thinks he's Elvis
Shake, Rattle and Roll: An American Love Story
The Simpsons:
"Viva Ned Flanders"
"Viva Los Simpsons" 2005 DVD episode collection, Homer apes Elvis on the cover
Sledge Hammer: "All Shook Up", Hammer goes undercover as an Elvis impersonator to catch an Elvis impersonator killer
Sliders: "Pilot", Quinn sees a billboard of an elderly Elvis in Las Vegas
Spitting Image: Elvis parody "I'm Sure Livin' Since I Died"
The Twilight Zone: "The Once and Future King"
Vinyl: "The King and I", Finestra attempts to lure Elvis away from Colonel Tom Parker, and sign with American Century
Walker, Texas Ranger: "Suspicious Minds", the daughter of an Elvis impersonator witnesses a murder
The X-Files: "Never Again", Mulder travels to Graceland
Appearances and other programming
Stage Show, 6 episodes in 1956 filmed at CBS Studio 50 in New York City on January 28, February 4, 11, 18, March 17 and 24, for the so-called " Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey's show", a program produced by Jackie Gleason as a lead-in for his show. Each episode was watched by an estimated audience of 6 million viewers, averaging an 18.4% share. Jazz and pop musician Quincy Jones, then 23 years old and on a somewhat extended three-month visit to his family in New York, played second trumpet on all Presley's performances.
Texaco Star Theater, 2 episodes in 1956:
April 3 aboard the 24 Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Hancock in San Diego, CA.
June 5 from NBC studios Los Angeles, CA. Audience estimated to have been 18 and 22 million viewers respectively. Segments of the latter were shown in the 1994 blockbuster Forrest Gump.
Teenage Dance Party, June 16, 1956; hosted by Wink Martindale, WHBQ-TV Memphis, TN
Hy Gardner Calling, July 1, 1956 television interview, WRCA-TV, New York City, NY
The Steve Allen Show, July 1, 1956 from the NBC studio at The Hudson Theatre, in New York City. This show was watched by 40 million viewers representing a 20.2 rating and a 55.3% share, the highest in the history of the Steve Allen Show. Also, according to interviewers from Sidlinger & Company, it was the most talked about show in the preceding 52 weeks, with 38 million adults, or 31% of the US population acknowledging having discussed the show in the period from 1 to 7 July, the highest ever since the interviews were first launched.
The Ed Sullivan Show. 3 episodes. All three episodes were released in their entirety on DVD format on November 21, 2006, by Image Entertainment, selling 100,000 copies during its first year alone.
September 9, 1956, live feed from CBS Television City in Fairfax District, CA, garnering some 60.7 million viewers and a 57.1 rating, both records up to that time. The % share, an 82.6% and also a record, remains the largest ever garnered, by any network or group of networks, for any single program in the history of US television.
October 28, 1956 from CBS Studio 50, New York City, drawing a 34.6 rating with a 57% share and an estimated audience of 56.5 million and....
January 6, 1957, also from Studio 50, New York City, drawing a 47.4 share and reaching some 54.6 million viewers.
The Frank Sinatra Timex Show: Welcome Home Elvis : Taped March 26, 1960 at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, FL; it aired on ABC May 12, 1960. Nielsen reported a 41.5 rating and 67.7% share, with an audience at 50 million, the top-rated show of 1960 and of Frank Sinatra's 21-year television special career (1960–1981). It was released on DVD by Quantum Leap on February 10, 2004
Elvis (also known as the Elvis Comeback Special or the 68 Comeback Special). Taping in June 1968 was at NBC Studios in Burbank, CA; the air date being December 3. 1968. With a 47.8 share, the telecast garnered the highest ratings of any program in 1968, viewed by an estimated audience of 50 million. Released on VHS in 1986, RIAA Platinum; on DVD format in 2004, RIAA 4X Platinum; as DVD Special Edition in 2006, RIAA 2X Platinum. Presented by Ann Margret.
Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite, was a Kui Lee Cancer Fund benefit concert at Honolulu's Neal S. Blaisdell Center, presented by Ann Margret. It was broadcast by NBC worldwide, live on January 14, 1973, and in the US as a deferred telecast on April 4, 1973. Ratings for the US telecast were the highest of the week reaching a 33.8 rating, a 57% share, as well as a viewership estimated at 50 million. Global viewership reached about a billion when shown live by INTELSAT on January 14, 1973. It attracted 91.8 percent of viewers in the Philippines, 70-80 percent in both Hong Kong and South Korea, as well as almost 40% percent in Japan. It was first released on VHS in 1986, earning an RIAA Platinum award; on DVD in 2004, RIAA 4X Platinum; as Special Edition DVD 2006, RIAA Platinum
Elvis in Concert. His last concert tour, filmed 2 months before his death, then broadcast by CBS as a one-hour special after his death and airing on October 3, 1977. This posthumous presentation was the top-rated program of the week, with a 34.1 rating, reaching a little over 24.1 million households and an estimated audience of 50 million viewers.
The Elvis Cover-Up. Special airing in 1979. According to Nielsen, it obtained a 43% share, equivalent to an estimated audience of over 50 million viewers, the 2nd highest audience ever garnered for the "20/20" series, a popular news-magazine program on the ABC network.
One Night with You. HBO Special airing on August 15, 1985. Released by Light Year Video Entertainment on VHS on November 24, 1992, and on DVD on August 1, 2000 [19]
Elvis and Me. An ABC TV two-part miniseries which aired on the nights of February 7 and 8, 1988. According to Nielsen it was the highest rated TV film of 1987–88 season as seen by 32.4 and 31.4 million viewers, respectively.
Elvis: The Tribute. This was an ABC TV Special, originally on pay per view and airing on October 8 of 1994 live from the Pyramid Arena in Memphis. It then aired on ABC in 1995, as hosted by John Stamos and with the then Mr.and Mrs Michael Jackson in the audience.
He Touched Me: The Gospel Music of Elvis Presley. Three-hour documentary airing on various channels in 1998 and 1999 and released in DVD by Coming Home Studios in 2000, RIAA Platinum and RIAA 2X Platinum, respectively.
Elvis Lives. NBC special made in conjunction with the release of ELV1S: 30 No. 1 Hits and airing on 28 November 2002.
Elvis by the Presleys. CBS special airing May 13, 2005, receiving an 8.1 rating and a 15% share and winning its time slot with an audience of 12 million viewers. Released on DVD in 2005, RIAA 2X Platinum.
Idol Gives Back. The Elvis and Celine Dion segment dueting on "If I can dream" was broadcast by Fox through rotoscoping on April 25, 2007. It drew a 24% share and an audience of 26.4 million viewers while raising US$79 million in donations by year's end. It was also the top show of the week and the top rated "Idol Gives Back" in its 3-year history (2007–2010).
Elvis Presley: The Searcher. An HBO Special airing on 14 April 2018, whose parts 1 and 2 reaching close to 900,000 viewers. Released on DVD format by Sony Legacy on April 6, 2018
1968 Special's 50th anniversary (All Star Tribute). Elvis and 19 other performers (Blake Shelton, Shawn Mendes, Keith Urban, Post Malone, John Fogerty, Ed Sheeran, Kelsea Ballerini, Jennifer Lopez, Darius Rucker, Alessia Cara, Mac Davis, John Legend, Little Big Town, Adam Lambert, Pistol Annies, Carrie Underwood, Yolanda Adams, Dierks Bentley, and Josh Groban). Aired February 17.2019. Filmed October 2018 at NBC Studios in Los Angeles, CA. The telecast earned one of the top 5 highest ratings for any program in its time slot (Sunday, 8–10 pm ET, a 3% share with an audience estimated by Nielsen at 6.3 million viewers)
Sports
King Elvis the First, mascot of the Kenosha Kingfish, a baseball team playing at a collegiate summer baseball league in the state of Wisconsin,
Kid Galahad, name taken from an Elvis film by world champion boxer Kid Galahad
Las Vegas Raiders: Giant murals by Michael Godard of Elvis wearing a # 20 football jersey with the name Presley, and of Marilyn Monroe as a cheerleader recently unveiled inside Las Vegas' new Allegiant Stadium.
Memphis 901 FC: Crown logo dedicated to Elvis and BB King.
New England Patriots: Flying Elvis logo
Stamps
U.S. Postal Service, US$0.29 stamp. Dedicated on January 8, 1993, the actual image chosen, amongst 60 entries, being that of a watercolor airbrush and acrylic on board portrait of a young Elvis, as presented by artist Mark Stutzman. Some 517 million were printed and sold, with 124.1 million of them saved, and thus making it the most popular commemorative stamp, as well as the largest earner, a profit of US$32.5 million, to have ever been issued by the USPS as noted by the Washington Post.
U.S. Postal Service, US$0.49 Elvis Presley Forever stamp. Dedicated on August 12, 2015, making Elvis Presley, the only US national, other than Martin Luther King Jr. and several US Presidents, who has been the subject of two commemorative stamps since the USPS's founding in 1971. The image chosen was a 1955 photograph of Elvis by William Speer, with complementary work by designers Antonio Alcalá and Leslie Badani
There are 69 countries and territories, from Albania to Zaire, which have used Presley's image for their commemorative stamps.
Video games
Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure: Elvis is one of sixteen "historical dudes" who can be rescued.
Civilization I, Civilization II, and Civilization III: In the city screen the citizens assigned as entertainers depicted as Elvis Presley.
Civilization II: The "Attitude" Advisor in the player's "High Council", who advises on the peoples' happiness, is an Elvis Presley caricature, wearing sunglasses even in the Ancient period.
Fallout: New Vegas: one faction is called "The Kings", raiders who come across an Elvis Impersonator School. Although The Kings impersonate Elvis and know his songs, they don't know Presley's real name as none of the Elvis material they found at the school used it (The game is set two centuries after a nuclear war and as a result, knowledge of Elvis was lost until they found the school). They instead call Elvis "The King".
Leisure Suit Larry III: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals: Elvis Presley may randomly appear at the bar in Patti's piano lounge.
Perfect Dark: The Extraterrestrial Maian Diplomat, known as Protector1, adopts the name Elvis as he becomes enamored with terrestrial culture, going as far to own a pair of blue suede shoes during the climax of the game.
Theme Hospital: In later levels, patients arrive at the hospital suffering from "King Complex". Symptoms included the patient dressing up like Elvis, wearing a white/grey jacket with a red music note at its back, matching trousers, sunglasses and Elvis' famous hairdo. It was cured by visiting a psychologist, who would tell the patient how ridiculous he/she looked.
Wayne's World: Elvis appears as a level boss.
WMS Gaming: Casinos a 5-reel, 60-line slot online game.
Other eponymous uses
Elvis (comic strip), a Swedish comic strip
Elvis Rock, in Ceredigion, Wales
Debby Ryan's cat (Elvis)
Fictional characters
Elvis Cridlington, a firefighter in Fireman Sam
Elvis "EJ" DiMera, a character on the American soap opera Days of Our Lives
Elvis, a character in Perfect Dark
Elvis, a character in God Hand
Elvis, a host of The Dog House
Elvis, a fictional alligator in Miami Vice
Elvis, a guide dog in Growing Up Fisher
See also
Cultural impact of Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley filmography
List of halls of fame inducting Elvis Presley
References
External links
Dynamic lists
American art
Popular culture
American music history
Presley | en |
doc-en-14918 | Super Bowl LI was an American football game played at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, on February 5, 2017, to determine the champion of the National Football League (NFL) for the 2016 season. The American Football Conference (AFC) champion New England Patriots defeated the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Atlanta Falcons, 34–28. Super Bowl LI featured the largest comeback in Super Bowl history, with the Patriots overcoming a 28–3 deficit to emerge victorious. Due to the comeback, the game is nicknamed 28–3. The game was also the first and currently only Super Bowl to be decided in overtime.
The Patriots' victory was their fifth, moving them into a three-way tie with the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers for the second-most Super Bowl wins. After finishing the regular season with a league-best 14–2 record, New England advanced to their record-setting ninth Super Bowl appearance and their seventh under the leadership of head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. The Falcons, led by the league's top offense and MVP quarterback Matt Ryan, finished the regular season an 11–5 record and were seeking their first Super Bowl title in their second appearance.
Atlanta scored three consecutive touchdowns to take a 21–3 halftime lead, which they increased to 28–3 midway through the third quarter. However, the Patriots scored 25 unanswered points to tie the game in the final seconds of regulation. In overtime, New England received the kickoff after winning the coin toss and scored a touchdown to claim the Super Bowl title. More than 30 team and individual Super Bowl records were broken or matched, including Patriots running back James White's 14 receptions and 20 points scored and Brady's 43 completed passes, 62 pass attempts, and 466 passing yards. Brady was named Super Bowl MVP for a record fourth time and was the oldest player to receive the honor at 39; he would surpass both records in Super Bowl LV.
Fox's broadcast of the game averaged around 111.3 million viewers, slightly down from the 111.9 million viewers of the previous year's Super Bowl, while the total number of viewers for all or part of the game hit a record number of 172 million. Average television viewership for the halftime show, headlined by Lady Gaga, was higher at 117.5 million. The game is regarded by many media outlets as the greatest Super Bowl of all time.
Background
Host-selection process
The NFL selected the sites for Super Bowl 50 and Super Bowl LI at the owners' spring meetings in Boston on May 21, 2013. On October 16, 2012, the NFL announced that Reliant Stadium in Houston, which was renamed NRG Stadium in 2014, was a finalist to host Super Bowl LI. Houston then competed against the runner-up for the site of Super Bowl 50: Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. The South Florida bid for either Super Bowl partially depended on whether the stadium underwent renovations. However, on May 3, the Florida Legislature refused to approve the funding plan to pay for the renovations, dealing a blow to South Florida's chances. The NFL ultimately selected Houston as the host city of Super Bowl LI.
This was the second Super Bowl to be held at NRG Stadium, the other being Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004, which also featured the New England Patriots against that season's NFC South champion Carolina Panthers. It was also the third time the Super Bowl has been played in Houston, with Super Bowl VIII in 1974 having been held at Rice Stadium. With the Astros baseball team reaching the World Series eight months later, Houston would become just the fourth city to host both the Super Bowl and Fall Classic in the same calendar year, following San Diego (1998), Detroit (2006) and Arlington, Texas (2011), and the first among the four to win the Major League Baseball championship.
Proposition 1 controversy
Proposition 1, an ordinance which would have prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity in Houston's housing, employment, public accommodations, and city contracting, was rejected by voters (60.97% opposing) during the November 3, 2015 elections. Subsequently, the NFL announced it would not alter plans to have the city host Super Bowl LI. Houston Texans owner Bob McNair donated $10,000 to Campaign for Houston, an organization that opposes the ordinance, which he later rescinded.
Teams
New England Patriots
In 2016, New England tied an NFL record, earning 12+ wins for the seventh consecutive season. Even though starting quarterback Tom Brady was suspended for the first four games, and All-Pro tight end Rob Gronkowski was lost to injury in midseason, the Patriots still recorded an NFL-best 14–2 record; their only losses were a shutout loss to the Buffalo Bills in Week 4 and a loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 10. They scored 441 points (third in the NFL) while allowing the fewest in the league (250).
Brady missed the first four games of the year on suspension due to a 2014-2015 postseason incident known as Deflategate. Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett each started two games in Brady's place. After his suspension ended, Brady took back command of the offense and went on to earn his 12th Pro Bowl selection, passing for 3,554 yards and 28 touchdowns, with only two interceptions, while his 112.2 passer rating ranked second in the NFL. The team's leading receiver was Julian Edelman, who caught 98 passes for 1,106 yards and added 135 more returning punts. Wide receivers Chris Hogan (38 receptions for 680 yards) and Malcolm Mitchell (32 receptions for 401 yards) were also significant receiving threats. Gronkowski caught 25 passes for 540 yards before suffering a season-ending back injury in week 13. Tight end Martellus Bennett stepped up in his absence, hauling in 55 receptions for 701 yards and a team-leading seven touchdown catches. Running back LeGarrette Blount was the team's top rusher with 1,168 yards and a league-leading 18 touchdowns. In passing situations, the team relied heavily on running back James White, who caught 60 passes for 551 yards and added another 166 on the ground. Running back Dion Lewis was also a valuable asset to the offense, rushing for 283 yards on offense and catching 17 passes for 94 yards.
Despite trading All-Pro outside linebacker Jamie Collins to the Cleveland Browns in the middle of the season, the Patriots defensive line was led by tackle Trey Flowers, who ranked first on the team with seven quarterback sacks, and Jabaal Sheard, who recorded five sacks of his own. Linebacker Dont'a Hightower earned his first Pro Bowl selection and made the second All-Pro team, compiling 65 tackles and sacks. Linebacker Rob Ninkovich also made a big impact, recording 34 tackles, two forced fumbles, and four sacks. In the secondary, cornerback Malcolm Butler led the team with four interceptions, while Logan Ryan led the team in tackles and intercepted two passes. Safety Devin McCourty ranked second on the team with 83 tackles and notched one interception while earning his third career Pro Bowl selection. The team also had a defensive expert on special teams, Matthew Slater, who made the Pro Bowl for the sixth consecutive year.
By advancing to play in Super Bowl LI, the Patriots earned their NFL-record ninth Super Bowl appearance, as well as their seventh in the past 16 years under Brady and head coach Bill Belichick. The Patriots have also participated in the only other Super Bowl to be held at NRG Stadium; they won Super Bowl XXXVIII over the Carolina Panthers by a 32–29 score 13 years earlier. The Patriots entered Super Bowl LI with an overall record of 4–4 in their previous eight Super Bowl appearances, with all four of their wins and two of their four losses coming under the leadership of Belichick and Brady.
With his appearance in Super Bowl LI, Belichick broke the tie of six Super Bowls as a head coach that he had shared with Don Shula. It was also his record tenth participation in a Super Bowl in any capacity, which overtook the mark of nine that he had shared with Dan Reeves. This was also Brady's seventh Super Bowl appearance, the most appearances by a player in Super Bowl history.
Atlanta Falcons
The Atlanta Falcons, under second-year head coach Dan Quinn, finished the 2016 season with an 11–5 record, earning them the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs. It was a big reversal of declining fortunes for the team, who had failed to qualify to play in the playoffs in each of the last three seasons.
The Falcons were loaded with offensive firepower, leading all NFL teams in scoring with 540 points. Nine-year veteran quarterback Matt Ryan earned the NFL MVP and the AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year Award, as well as his fourth career Pro Bowl selection, leading the league in passer rating (117.1). While he ranked only ninth in completions (373), his passing yards (4,944) and touchdowns (38) both ranked second in the NFL. His favorite target was receiver Julio Jones, who caught 83 passes for 1,409 yards (second in the NFL) and six touchdowns. But Ryan had plenty of other options, such as newly acquired wide receivers Mohamed Sanu (59 receptions for 653 yards) and Taylor Gabriel (35 receptions for 579 yards and six touchdowns). Pro Bowl running back Devonta Freeman was the team's leading rusher, with 1,078 yards, 11 touchdowns, and 4.8 yards per rush. He was also a superb receiver out of the backfield, catching 54 passes for 462 yards and two more scores. Running back Tevin Coleman was also a major asset on the ground and through the air, with 520 rushing yards, 31 receptions for 421 yards, and 11 total touchdowns. The Falcons also had an excellent special teams unit led by veteran kick returner Eric Weems. His 24 punt returns for 273 yards gave him the sixth highest return average in the NFL (11.4), and he added another 391 yards returning kickoffs. Pro Bowl kicker Matt Bryant led the league in scoring with 158 points, while also ranking third in field goal percentage (91.8%). Atlanta's offensive line featured center Alex Mack, who earned his fourth Pro Bowl selection.
The Falcons defensive line was led by defensive ends Adrian Clayborn, who recorded five sacks and a fumble recovery, and long-time veteran Dwight Freeney, who ranks as the NFL's 18th all-time leader in sacks (). Behind them, linebacker Vic Beasley was the team's only Pro Bowl selection on defense, leading the NFL in sacks with ; he also forced six fumbles. Rookie linebacker Deion Jones was also an impact player, leading the team in combined tackles (108) and interceptions (three). The Falcons secondary featured hard-hitting safety Keanu Neal, who had 106 tackles and forced five fumbles. Safety Ricardo Allen added 90 tackles and two interceptions. But overall, the defense ranked just 27th in the league in points allowed (406).
This game marked the Falcons' second Super Bowl appearance in franchise history, after having lost Super Bowl XXXIII in January 1999 to the Denver Broncos.
Playoffs
The Patriots, with the AFC's #1 seed, began their postseason run by defeating the fourth-seeded Houston Texans in the Divisional Round, 34–16. The next week, in the AFC Championship Game, the Patriots defeated the third-seeded Pittsburgh Steelers 36–17.
The Falcons, with the NFC's #2 seed, began their postseason run by defeating the third-seeded Seattle Seahawks in the Divisional Round, 36–20, racking up 422 yards. The next week, in the last NFL game ever played at the Georgia Dome, the Falcons racked up 493 total yards as they defeated the fourth-seeded Green Bay Packers 44–21 to win the NFC Championship.
Pre-game notes
As the designated home team in the annual rotation between AFC and NFC teams, the Falcons elected to wear their red home jerseys with white pants, which meant that the Patriots wore their white road jerseys. The game featured Atlanta's #1 scoring offense versus New England's #1 scoring defense. This was the sixth Super Bowl since the AFL–NFL merger in 1970 to feature a #1 scoring offense against a #1 scoring defense, with the team with the #1 scoring defense winning four of the previous five matchups.
Gambling establishments had the Patriots as 3 point favorites.
Super Bowl week events
Fan-oriented activities during the lead-up to Super Bowl LI were centered around the George R. Brown Convention Center and Discovery Green park. Discovery Green hosted Super Bowl Live, a 10-day festival which featured live concerts and other attractions, including projection shows, fireworks shows, and a virtual reality attraction, Future Flight, in conjunction with NASA. The neighboring George R. Brown Convention Center hosted the annual NFL Experience event, which featured interactive activities and appearances by players. Super Bowl Opening Night, the second edition of the game's revamped media day, was held on January 30, 2017 at nearby Minute Maid Park.
Super Bowl Live was organized by the Houston Super Bowl Host Committee, which was led by Honorary Chairman James A. Baker, III, Chairman Ric Campo, and President and CEO Sallie Sargent.
According to Bloomberg story two most anticipated pre-Super Bowl parties were invite-only 13th annual ESPN party and the Rolling Stone party. ESPN party was hosted by Fergie and DJ Khaled and took place in a 65,000-square-foot warehouse in the Houston Arts District. The Rolling Stone party celebrated the magazine 50th anniversary. It took place at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and featured the performance of Big Sean, DJ Cassidy, Nas, Diplo and Busta Rhymes.
Team facilities
The Patriots stayed at the JW Marriott Houston and practised at the University of Houston. The Falcons stayed at the Westin Houston Memorial City and practised at Rice University.
Tickets
In the beginning of February 2017 the NFL and law enforcement announced that tickets to Super Bowl LI would feature heat-sensitive logos to deter counterfeit tickets. On the front of each ticket was a full polymer graphic that was raised and the back featured a true color security label with Houston's skyline and the Super Bowl logo. The final security feature was a graphic on the lower portion of the back of each ticket printed with thermochromic ink. The HTX logo and the NRG Stadium image faded when heat was applied and returned when the heat source was removed.
Transportation issue
In late 2016, Uber had threatened to leave Houston ahead of the Super Bowl LI festivities, insisting various city regulations, including fingerprint background checks of drivers, were too burdensome and prevented drivers from working. Houston officials and Uber reached a compromise in December, which determined that Houston would continue to require a fingerprint check for drivers but eliminate requirements for driver drug testing and physicals through at least February 5.
Broadcasting
U.S. television
In the United States, Super Bowl LI was televised by Fox, as part of a cycle between the three main broadcast television partners of the NFL. The game was carried in Spanish by sister cable network Fox Deportes. Online streams of the game were provided via Fox Sports Go; although normally requiring a television subscription to use, Fox made the service available as a free preview for the Super Bowl. Due to Verizon Communications exclusivity, streaming on smartphones was exclusive to Verizon Wireless subscribers via the NFL Mobile app.
As with Super Bowl 50, the stadium was equipped for Intel freeD instant replay technology, using an array of 36 5K resolution cameras positioned around the stadium to enable 360-degree views of plays. Fox introduced a new feature utilizing the system known as Be the Player, which composited the various camera angles into a single view of a play from the point-of-view of a player on the field. Fox constructed a temporary, two-floor studio in Discovery Green, which originated pre-game coverage, and broadcasts of Fox Sports 1 studio programs during the week leading up to the game, such as Fox Sports Live with Jay and Dan, The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Skip and Shannon: Undisputed, NASCAR Race Hub, and UFC Tonight.
Ratings
An average of 111.3 million viewers watched Super Bowl LI, marking Super Bowl's second consecutive year of average viewership drop since its all-time average high in 2015. However, viewership steadily increased since the end of halftime when it later on tallied the first overtime in Super Bowl history. Fox stated that 1.72 million viewers utilized its online streams, and by the conclusion of overtime, the broadcast gained 172 million viewers (more than half of the U.S. population of 340 million people that same year). As of , this still stands as the largest overall audience ever tallied by any broadcast in U.S. television history.
Advertising
Fox set the base rate for a 30-second commercial at $5 million, the same rate CBS charged for Super Bowl 50, leading to advertising revenue of $534 million for the single day event. Snickers announced that it would present a live commercial during the game. Nintendo broadcast an ad showcasing its upcoming Nintendo Switch video game console. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles broadcast three spots for Alfa Romeo, as part of an effort to re-launch the Italian brand in the U.S.
A spot from longtime advertiser Budweiser garnered controversy before the game for depicting Anheuser-Busch co-founder Adolphus Busch's emigration to the United States from Germany, its broadcast coming on the heels of U.S. President Donald Trump signing an executive order that bans travelers from several Muslim nations. Meanwhile, 84 Lumber aired a commercial depicting a mother and daughter journeying from Mexico to the United States, which had been edited following Fox's objection to its depiction of a border wall for sensitivity reasons.
Many films were advertised with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Logan, Transformers: The Last Knight, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, The Fate of the Furious and Ghost in the Shell. AMC and Netflix advertised their shows, The Walking Dead and Stranger Things, respectively, while Fox-owned National Geographic Channel teased its new historical anthology drama series Genius with an ad featuring Albert Einstein and a nod to Lady Gaga's halftime performance.
Fox was able to earn an estimated $20 million by airing four extra commercials due to the additional overtime period. Even without historical precedent, Fox negotiated deals with a handful of advertisers in case overtime were to occur.
International broadcasts
Canadian broadcast
Canadian broadcast rights to Super Bowl LI were subject to a still-ongoing legal dispute; although U.S. network affiliates are carried by pay TV providers in the country, Canadian law grants domestic broadcast stations the right to require that these signals be substituted with their own if they are carrying the same program in simulcast with a U.S. station ("simsub"). This policy is intended to help protect Canadian advertising revenue from being lost to viewers watching via U.S. feeds of a program. In 2016, as part of a larger series of regulatory reforms, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) banned the Super Bowl from being substituted under these circumstances, meaning that the telecast on CTV—a simulcast of the U.S. telecast with Canadian advertising inserted, would co-exist with feeds of the game from U.S. network affiliates. The CRTC cited dissatisfaction surrounding the practice from Canadian viewers—particularly the unavailability of the U.S. commercials, which the CRTC cited as being an "integral part" of the game based on this reception, but also other technical problems caused by poorly implemented simsubs (such as reduced quality and missing content due to mistimed transitions back into the U.S. program feed).
The NFL's Canadian rights holder Bell Media, as well as the league itself, have displayed objections to the policy; Bell felt that the decision devalued its exclusive Canadian rights to the game, and violated Canada's Broadcasting Act, which forbids the "making of regulations singling out a particular program or licensee." On November 2, 2016, Bell was granted the right to challenge the ruling in the Federal Court of Appeal. Bell, the NFL, and government representatives from both Canada and the U.S., have lobbied the CRTC for the rule to be retracted. However, court action on the ruling was not taken in time for the game, meaning that it was in effect for the first time during Super Bowl LI. Bell Media cited the decision, among other factors, as justification for a planned series of layoffs it announced on January 31, 2017.
The simsub prohibition only applied to the game itself, and not pre-game or post-game programming (which was simulcast with Fox and subject to simsub). In an attempt to mitigate the loss of de facto exclusivity to the clean U.S. feeds, Bell simulcast the game across CTV Two and TSN in addition to CTV, and organized a sponsored sweepstakes in which viewers could earn entries to win cash and automobile prizes by texting keywords displayed during the Canadian telecast. Montreal Gazette media analyst Steve Faguy felt that these promotions were an attempt to offset the loss of viewership by carrying the game across as many of its channels as possible, and providing incentives for viewers to watch the game on CTV instead of Fox. He further noted that Bell still had exclusive rights to stream the game in Canada via CTV's TV Everywhere services, as the CRTC does not regulate web content, and Fox's online stream is only available to U.S. users. Consequently, some Canadian companies (such as Leon's and Pizza Pizza) took advantage of the CRTC decision by buying local advertising time during the game from Fox affiliates distributed in Canada in order to target these viewers, such as KAYU-TV in Spokane (which is widely carried by television providers in the significantly larger markets of Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta).
Viewership of Super Bowl LI across the three English-language Bell Media properties broadcasting it was down by 39% in comparison to Super Bowl 50, with only 4.47 million viewers. Viewership on the French-language telecast presented by TSN's sister network RDS was in line with that of Super Bowl 50. It is not known how many Canadian viewers watched the game via Fox, as neither Nielsen or Canadian ratings provider Numeris calculate Canadian viewership of American broadcasters.
Radio
In the United States, Westwood One carried the broadcast nationwide, with Kevin Harlan on play-by-play, Boomer Esiason and Mike Holmgren on color commentary, and sideline reports from Tony Boselli and James Lofton. The Westwood One broadcast was simulcast in Canada on TSN Radio. Each team's network flagship station carried the local feed: WBZ-FM for the Patriots (with Bob Socci and Scott Zolak announcing), and WZGC for the Falcons (with Wes Durham and Dave Archer announcing); under the league's contract with Westwood One, no other stations in the teams' usual radio networks were allowed to carry the local broadcast, and unlike in recent years when at least one of the two flagships was a clear-channel station, both the Patriots and Falcons use FM radio stations as their local flagships, limiting listenership to those within the local metropolitan areas or with access to those feeds via Sirius XM satellite radio or TuneIn Premium.
Spanish-language radio rights are held by Entravision as part of a three-year agreement signed in 2015. Erwin Higueros served as the play-by-play announcer.
The United Kingdom's BBC Radio 5 Live produced a commercial-free broadcast, with Darren Fletcher and Rocky Boiman returning.
Entertainment
Pre-game
During pre-game festivities, the NFL honored members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame that had played college football at historically black colleges and universities. Of the 303 members of the Hall of Fame, 29 were from HBCUs.
The Patriots took the field first as the designated away team to Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train". The Falcons took the field second as the designated home team to Trick Daddy's "Let's Go". Both teams' season recaps were presented by Ving Rhames.
Before the game, American country music singer and songwriter Luke Bryan sang the US national anthem. Bryan was the first male performer to sing the national anthem at a Super Bowl since Billy Joel at Super Bowl XLI. Immediately before Bryan sang the national anthem, Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Jasmine Cephas Jones, who originated the roles of the Schuyler sisters in the Broadway musical Hamilton, performed "America the Beautiful".
After the national anthem, former President George H. W. Bush performed the coin toss alongside his wife, Barbara. The Patriots called heads, but the Falcons won the coin toss with tails. The Falcons chose to defer to the second half.
Halftime show
On September 29, 2016, Lady Gaga, who had performed the national anthem the previous year at Super Bowl 50, confirmed that she would be performing at the Super Bowl LI halftime show on her Instagram account with the message: "It's not an illusion. The rumors are true. This year the SUPER BOWL goes GAGA!" Fox Sports president and executive producer of the show, John Entz, confirmed Gaga's involvement adding "[She] is one of the most electric performers of our generation, and we couldn't be happier with the choice to have her headline the Super Bowl LI Halftime Show... It is going to be an incredible night."
Lady Gaga opened the halftime show with a combination of "God Bless America" and "This Land Is Your Land". Her performance also included some of her biggest hit songs, such as "Poker Face", "Born This Way", "Million Reasons", and "Bad Romance" and was accompanied by a swarm of 300 LED-equipped Intel drones forming an American flag in the sky in a pre-recorded segment.
Mohamed Sanu stated the long length of the halftime show played a part in Atlanta ultimately losing the game. Teams on average are off the field for fifteen minutes during halftime, but Super Bowl halftimes are considerably longer. Unlike the Falcons it appears Bill Belichick actually incorporated the length of the show into the team's practices. Sanu's argument was discounted by the fact that Atlanta marched the ball downfield and scored a touchdown right out of halftime.
Game summary
First half
The first quarter of Super Bowl LI was a scoreless defensive match with each team punting twice. The longest play from scrimmage was a 37-yard carry by Falcons running back Devonta Freeman, which did not lead to any points, though it would be the longest run of the game for either team.
On the first play of the second quarter, New England's quarterback Tom Brady completed a 27-yard pass to wide receiver Julian Edelman on the Falcons 33-yard line. But on the next play, linebacker Deion Jones stripped the ball from running back LeGarrette Blount; the fumble was recovered by defensive back Robert Alford on the 29-yard line. On the next two plays, Matt Ryan completed passes to Julio Jones for gains of 19 and 23 yards. Freeman ran the ball on the next three plays, covering the remaining 29 yards to the end zone, with the last carry being a 5-yard touchdown run that put Atlanta on the board with a 7–0 lead.
New England failed to get a first down on the series following the Freeman score, and the Falcons moved the ball 62 yards in five plays. Ryan started the drive with a 24-yard completion to Taylor Gabriel, then completed a pass to Jones for an 18-yard gain. On 3rd-and-9, he threw a 19-yard touchdown pass to tight end Austin Hooper, giving the Falcons a 14–0 lead. It was the largest deficit Brady had ever faced in his seven Super Bowl appearances, and it would soon grow larger.
New England responded with a drive to the Falcons 23, aided by three defensive holding penalties against the Atlanta defense, each one giving them a first down on a third down play. However, on 3rd-and-6, Brady threw a pass that was intercepted by Alford and returned 82 yards for a touchdown, increasing Atlanta's lead to 21–0. It was the first time in his career that Brady had thrown a pick-six (interception returned for a touchdown) in his 33 postseason games, and Alford's 82-yard return was the second longest interception return in Super Bowl history.
Getting the ball back with 2:20 left in the second quarter, Brady completed a 15-yard pass to Martellus Bennett, and then a short pass to running back James White, who took off for a 28-yard gain. The drive stalled at the Falcons 20-yard line, but Stephen Gostkowski successfully made a field goal with two seconds left on the clock to send the teams into their locker rooms with the score 21–3.
Second half
New England had an early third quarter scoring opportunity when Edelman returned a punt 26 yards to the Patriots' 47-yard line, but they could not gain a first down on the drive. Following the Patriots' punt, the Falcons started their drive on their own 15-yard line; Ryan completed two long passes to wide receiver Taylor Gabriel for gains of 17 and 35 yards to bring the ball to the New England 28-yard line. Four plays later, Ryan finished the 85-yard drive with a 6-yard touchdown pass to running back Tevin Coleman, giving the Falcons a 28–3 lead with 8:31 left in the quarter.
On the next series, Brady led the Patriots 75 yards in 13 plays for an answering touchdown, completing five of seven passes for 43 yards, the longest a 17-yard completion to Danny Amendola on 4th-and-3 from the New England 46-yard line. Brady, not known for running the ball, also ran for a 15-yard gain (the longest rushing play by the Patriots that day) on 3rd-and-8 from the Atlanta 35-yard line. Three subsequent carries by Blount moved the ball 15 yards to the 5-yard line, and then Brady threw the ball to White for a touchdown. Gostkowski missed the extra point, the ball hitting the goalpost, leaving the score 28–9.
New England then attempted an onside kick, but the ball was recovered by Falcons linebacker LaRoy Reynolds, and a penalty against Gostkowski for touching the ball before it went ten yards gave Atlanta even better field position. Ryan completed a 9-yard pass to Hooper to the Patriots 32-yard-line, but on the next play, a holding penalty on Atlanta offensive lineman Jake Matthews pushed the team back ten yards. Then, after an incompletion, Trey Flowers and Kyle Van Noy shared a sack on Ryan that forced the Falcons to punt on the first play of the fourth quarter.
Matt Bosher's 42-yard punt pinned the Patriots back on their own 13-yard line. Brady led the next drive down the field, completing three passes to wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell for 40 yards and one to Bennett for 25 to bring the ball to the Falcons 7-yard line. However, Brady was sacked twice by defensive tackle Grady Jarrett over the next three plays. The Patriots had to settle for a field goal – Gostkowski's 33-yard attempt was good. This cut their deficit to 28–12, with less than 10 minutes left in the game. Atlanta had used two of their three time outs on defense and equipment malfunction.
On the third play of Atlanta's ensuing drive, Freeman missed his blocking assignment on a New England blitz that allowed linebacker Dont'a Hightower to sack Ryan as he was winding up for a pass, resulting in a fumble that was recovered by defensive tackle Alan Branch on the Falcons 25-yard line. It was Ryan's first turnover in two months. New England soon cashed in their scoring opportunity, with Brady throwing a 6-yard touchdown pass to Amendola. Then White took a direct snap in for a two-point conversion to make the score 28–20 in favor of Atlanta with 5:56 left on the clock. The Patriots had run the same play for a two-point conversion with Kevin Faulk in their Super Bowl XXXVIII victory.
On the first play of Atlanta's next possession, Freeman caught a short pass from Ryan and ran it for a 39-yard gain, the longest play of the game for either team. Then on 2nd-and-9 from the Patriots 49-yard line, Ryan threw a deep pass to Jones, who made an acrobatic catch at the right sideline for a 27-yard gain, giving the Falcons a first down on the Patriots 22-yard line with 4:40 left on the clock and a chance for a late-game two-score lead that would have clinched the game. On the next play, Freeman ran for a 1-yard loss on a tackle by Devin McCourty. Atlanta tried to pass the ball on second down, but Flowers sacked Ryan for a 12-yard loss on the Patriots 35-yard line. Ryan then completed a 9-yard pass to Mohamed Sanu on 3rd-and-23 to get back into field goal range, but this was nullified by an offensive holding penalty on Matthews. Now out of field goal range and faced with 3rd-and-33 from the New England 45-yard line, Ryan threw an incomplete pass, and the team was forced to punt the ball to New England.
Bosher's 36-yard kick gave the Patriots the ball on their own 9-yard line with 3:30 left on the clock and two of their timeouts left. After two incompletions, Brady picked up a first down with a 16-yard pass to Chris Hogan. After an 11-yard pass to Mitchell, Brady threw a pass that was nearly intercepted by Alford. Instead, he batted the ball in the air, and it fell into the arms of Edelman, who made a diving catch as it bounced off Alford's shoe. Edelman just barely managed to get his hands under the ball before it hit the ground, securing the football for what would be ruled as a 23-yard pass completion. Atlanta challenged the on-field ruling, but referee Carl Cheffers announced that the call stood, and Atlanta was charged with their final timeout.
Brady's next pass to Amendola gained 20 yards to the Falcons' 21-yard line as the clock ran down below the two-minute warning. Two more passes to White gained 20 yards and gave New England a first down at the 1-yard line. With 58 seconds left, White scored on a 1-yard touchdown run, and Brady completed a two-point conversion pass to Amendola, tying the score at 28 points apiece, thereby coming back from a 25-point deficit.
With the hopes of winning their first championship on the line, Atlanta started their drive deep in their own end with just under a minute and no timeouts. The Falcons failed to get in range to score a possible game-winning field goal and punted, with the Patriots fair catching the ball at their own 35-yard line. The Patriots considered attempting a fair catch kick, which would be the first ever attempted in a Super Bowl. Instead, New England attempted a fake quarterback kneel running play for Dion Lewis, who gained several yards but failed to score. This ended the fourth quarter and forced the game into overtime, the first ever Super Bowl to go to overtime, and the first NFL title game to do so since the 1958 meeting between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants.
Overtime
The Patriots won the coin toss to start overtime, and elected to receive the ball. Starting at their 25-yard line after a touchback, Brady completed passes to White, Amendola, and Hogan for gains of 6, 14, and 18 yards, respectively. Then, after White was dropped for a 3-yard loss, Brady completed a 15-yard pass to Edelman to the Falcons 25-yard line. White then took a lateral throw from Brady to the 15-yard line.
Brady's pass to Bennett in the end zone fell incomplete, but Falcons linebacker De'Vondre Campbell was called for pass interference, giving the Patriots first-and-goal from the Falcons' 2-yard line. On first down, Brady threw another incomplete pass to Bennett that was deflected and nearly intercepted by Vic Beasley. On second down, White took a pitch and ran the ball right. He was hit by Falcons defenders at the 1-yard line, but managed to stretch forward and get the ball across the goal line before his knee hit the ground, scoring the winning touchdown.
The Patriots won the game 34–28 for their fifth Super Bowl title after trailing by 25 points. It also marked the first time in NFL postseason history that a team leading by 17 points or more at the start of the fourth quarter went on to lose the game. Previously, dating back to 1940, teams leading by 17 or more points after three quarters in playoff games were 133–0 in such situations.
Statistics and records
Super Bowl LI had more than 30 records either broken or tied by the time it was finished. Brady completed 43 of 62 passes for 466 yards and two touchdowns, with one interception, while also rushing for 15 yards. His completions, attempts, and passing yards were all single-game Super Bowl records. Brady ultimately became the first quarterback to win a Super Bowl in which he threw a ball that was intercepted for a touchdown. He also set the career Super Bowl records for games played (7), completions (207), attempts (309), yards (2,071), and touchdown passes (15). James White caught a Super Bowl record 14 passes for 110 yards, rushed for 29 yards, and tied a Super Bowl record with three touchdowns. He also set the record for most points scored with 20. After the game, Brady said he felt White deserved the MVP award more than he did. Brady planned to give White the vehicle that has traditionally been awarded to Super Bowl MVPs (he'd given the truck he received after Super Bowl XLIX to Malcolm Butler) but found out after the game that there was no vehicle to give to White because the sponsor had decided to end its practice of donating one. Edelman caught five passes for 87 yards and returned three punts for 39 yards. Amendola recorded eight receptions for 78 yards and one touchdown. Flowers recorded six tackles and 2.5 sacks. The Patriots overall gained an NFL postseason record 37 first downs in the game.
For Atlanta, Ryan completed 17 of 23 passes for 284 yards and two touchdowns. Freeman was the top rusher of the game with 11 carries for 75 yards and a touchdown, while also catching two passes for 46 yards. Jones was Atlanta's leading receiver with four receptions for 87 yards. Robert Alford had 11 tackles (9 solo), an interception returned for a touchdown, and a fumble recovery. Grady Jarrett had five tackles and tied a Super Bowl record with three sacks.
Atlanta became the first team in Super Bowl history to return an interception for a touchdown and lose the game. Prior to Super Bowl LI, teams returning an interception for a touchdown in the Super Bowl had been a perfect 12–0. New England had two turnovers for the game, while Atlanta only turned the ball over once. This made New England the fifth team to win a Super Bowl despite losing the turnover battle, joining the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl V, the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowls XIV and XL, and the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX.
The game set the record for the largest deficit overcome to win the Super Bowl (the previous record was ten points, set by the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII and matched by the New Orleans Saints in Super Bowl XLIV and by the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX); it is the third-largest comeback win in NFL playoff history, behind The Comeback (32-point deficit; Buffalo Bills trailed 35–3 and won 41–38) and the wild card game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Kansas City Chiefs during the 2013–14 NFL playoffs (28-point deficit; Colts trailed 38–10 and won, 45–44). In addition to being the largest Super Bowl comeback, the game set the record for the largest fourth-quarter comeback in NFL playoff history, as no team had previously won a playoff game after trailing by 17 or more points entering the final quarter; the Patriots were trailing by 19 points at the start of the fourth quarter by a score of 28–9. The Patriots won their fifth franchise championship, all under the leadership of starting quarterback Tom Brady, the most by a single quarterback. Brady won his fourth Super Bowl MVP, the most such awards by a single player in history. This game represented the largest comeback in the history of the New England Patriots' regular season or post-season games, and Tom Brady's NFL career.
Super Bowl LI became the first Super Bowl in history in which the winning team had never held the lead at any point during regulation time, and it also became the first Super Bowl in history in which the winning team did not score on a PAT kick, as the Patriots missed their only PAT attempt during the game, which occurred following their first touchdown, opted for two-point conversions after each of their next two touchdowns, and did not have to attempt the extra point after their game-winning touchdown in overtime.
Late in the third quarter, the Falcons' chances of winning were estimated at 99.8%.
Box score
Final statistics
Statistical comparison
Individual statistics
Sources: The Football Database Super Bowl LI
1Completions/attempts2Carries3Long gain4Receptions5Times targeted
Starting lineups
Officials
Super Bowl LI had eight officials. The numbers in parentheses below indicate their uniform numbers.
Referee: Carl Cheffers (51)
Umpire: Dan Ferrell (64)
Head linesman: Kent Payne (79)
Line judge: Jeff Seeman (45)
Field judge: Doug Rosenbaum (67)
Side judge: Dyrol Prioleau (109)
Back judge: Todd Prukop (30)
Replay official: Tom Sifferman
References
External links
Super Bowl 051
2016 National Football League season
2017 in American football
2017 in American television
2017 in Houston
2017 in sports in Texas
Super Bowl 051
American football in Houston
February 2017 sports events in the United States
New England Patriots postseason
Sports competitions in Houston
Tom Brady | en |
doc-en-4635 | Mahmud II (, ; 20 July 1785 – 1 July 1839) was the 30th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1808 until his death in 1839.
His reign is recognized for the extensive administrative, military, and fiscal reforms he instituted, which culminated in the Decree of Tanzimat ("reorganization") that was carried out by his sons Abdulmejid I and Abdülaziz. Often described as "Peter the Great of Turkey", Mahmud's reforms included the 1826 abolition of the conservative Janissary corps, which removed a major obstacle to his and his successors' reforms in the Empire. The reforms he instituted were characterized by political and social changes, which would eventually lead to the birth of the modern Turkish Republic.
Notwithstanding his domestic reforms, Mahmud's reign was also marked by nationalist uprisings in Ottoman-ruled Serbia and Greece, leading to a loss of territory for the Empire following the emergence of an independent Greek state.
In the general structure of the Ottoman Empire, Mahmud's reign was characterized by showing major interest to Westernization; institutions, palace order, daily life, clothing, music and many other areas saw radical reform as the Ottoman Empire opened up to the modernisation.
Early life
Mahmud II was born on 20 July 1785, in the month of Ramadan. He was the son of Abdul Hamid I and his wife Nakşidil Sultan. He was the youngest son of his father, and the second child of his mother, he had an elder brother, Şehzade Seyfullah Murad, two years older than him, and a younger sister, Saliha Sultan, one year younger than him. According to tradition, he was confined in the Kafes after the death of his father.
Accession
His mother was Nakşidil Valide Sultan. In 1808, Mahmud II's predecessor, and half-brother, Mustafa IV ordered his execution along with his cousin, the deposed Sultan Selim III, in order to defuse the rebellion. Selim III was killed, but Mahmud was safely kept hidden by his mother and was placed on the throne after the rebels deposed Mustafa IV. The leader of this rebellion, Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, later became Mahmud II's vizier. Western historians give Mahmud a poor reputation for simply being the Sultan during a time of deterioration of the Ottoman Empire.
There are many stories surrounding the circumstances of his attempted murder. A version by the 19th-century Ottoman historian Ahmed Cevdet Pasha gives the following account: one of his slaves, a Georgian girl named Cevri, gathered ashes when she heard the commotion in the palace surrounding the murder of Selim III. When the assassins approached the harem chambers where Mahmud was staying, she was able to keep them away for a while by throwing ashes into their faces, temporarily blinding them. This allowed Mahmud to escape through a window and climb onto the roof of the harem. He apparently ran to the roof of the Third Court where other pages saw him and helped him come down with pieces of clothes that were quickly tied together as a ladder. By this time one of the leaders of the rebellion, Alemdar Mustafa Pasha arrived with his armed men, and upon seeing the dead body of Selim III proclaimed Mahmud as padishah. The slave girl Cevri Kalfa was awarded for her bravery and loyalty and appointed haznedar usta, the chief treasurer of the Imperial Harem, which was the second most important position in the hierarchy. A plain stone staircase at the Altınyol (Golden Way) of the Harem is called Staircase of Cevri (Jevri) Kalfa, since the events apparently happened around there and are associated with her.
Reign overview
The vizier took the initiative in resuming reforms that had been terminated by the conservative coup of 1807 that had brought Mustafa IV to power. However, he was killed during a rebellion in 1808 and Mahmud II temporarily abandoned the reforms. Mahmud II's later reformation efforts would be much more successful.
Russo-Turkish War of 1806-12
After Mahmud II became sultan, Turkish border wars with the Russians continued. In 1810, the Russians surrounded the Silistre fortress for the second time. When Emperor Napoleon I of France declared war on Russia in 1811, Russian repression on the Ottoman border diminished, a relief to Mahmud. By this time, Napoleon was about to embark on his invasion of Russia. He also invited the Ottomans to join his march on Russia. However, Napoleon, who had invaded all of Europe except the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire, could not be trusted and accepted as an ally; Mahmud rejected the offer. The Bucharest Agreement was reached with the Russians on 28 May 1812. According to the Treaty of Bucharest (1812), the Ottoman Empire ceded the eastern half of Moldavia to Russia (which renamed the territory as Bessarabia), although it had committed to protecting that region. Russia became a new power in the lower Danube area, and had an economically, diplomatically, and militarily profitable frontier. In Transcaucasia, Turkey regained nearly all it had lost in the east: Poti, Anapa and Akhalkalali. Russia retained Sukhum-Kale on the Abkhazian coast. In return, the Sultan accepted the Russian annexation of the Kingdom of Imereti, in 1810. The treaty was approved by Emperor Alexander I of Russia on June 11, some 13 days before Napoleon's invasion began. The Russian commanders were able to get many of their soldiers in the Balkans back to the western areas of the empire before the expected attack of Napoleon.
War against the Saudi state
During the early years of Mahmud II's reign, his governor of Egypt Mehmet Ali Paşa successfully waged the Ottoman-Saudi War and reconquered the holy cities of Medina (1812) and Mecca (1813) from the First Saudi State.
Abdullah bin Saud and the First Saudi State had barred Muslims from the Ottoman Empire from entering the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina; his followers also desecrated the tombs of Ali ibn Abi Talib, Hassan ibn Ali and Husayn ibn Ali. Abdullah bin Saud and his two followers were publicly beheaded for their crimes against holy cities and mosques.
Greek War of Independence
His reign also marked the first breakaway from the Ottoman Empire, with Greece gaining its independence following a revolution that started in 1821. In the wake of continued unrest he had ecumenical patriarch Gregory V executed on Easter Sunday 1821 for his inability to stem the uprising. During the Battle of Erzurum (1821), part of the Ottoman-Persian War (1821-1823), Mahmud II's superior force was routed by Abbas Mirza, resulting in a Qajar Persian victory which got confirmed in the Treaties of Erzurum. Several years later, in 1827, the combined British, French and Russian navies defeated the Ottoman Navy at the Battle of Navarino; in the aftermath, the Ottoman Empire was forced to recognize Greece with the Treaty of Constantinople in July 1832. This event, together with the French conquest of Algeria, an Ottoman province (see Ottoman Algeria) in 1830, marked the beginning of the gradual break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Non-Turkish ethnic groups living in the empire's territories, especially in Europe, started their own independence movements.
The Auspicious Incident
One of Mahmud II's most notable acts during his reign was the destruction of the Janissary corps in June 1826. He accomplished this with careful calculation using his recently reformed wing of the military intended to replace the Janissaries. When the Janissaries mounted a demonstration against Mahmud II's proposed military reforms, he had their barracks fired upon effectively crushing the formerly elite Ottoman troops and burned the Belgrade forest outside Istanbul to incinerate any remnants. This permitted the establishment of a European-style conscript army, recruited mainly from Turkish speakers of Rumelia and Asia Minor. Mahmud was also responsible for the subjugation of the Iraqi Mamluks by Ali Ridha Pasha in 1831. He ordered the execution of the renowned Ali Pasha of Tepelena. He sent his Grand Vizier to execute the Bosniak hero Husein Gradaščević and dissolve the Bosnia Eyalet.
Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29
Another Russo-Turkish War (1828-29) broke out during Mahmud II's reign and was this time was fought without janissaries. Marshal Diebitsch was armed (in the words of Baron Moltke) "with the reputation of invincible success". He was to earn the name Sabalskanski (the crosser of the Balkans). Bypassing the Shumla fortress, he forcibly marched his troops over the Balkans, appearing before Adrianople. Sultan Mahmud II kept his head, unfurled the sacred banner of the prophet and declared his intention of taking command personally. Preparing to do so, he appeared, ill-advisedly, not on horseback but in a carriage. The Divan, British and French ambassadors urged him to sue for peace.
Tanzimat Reforms
In 1839, just prior to his death, he began preparations for the Tanzimat reform era which included introducing a Council of Ministers or the Meclis-i Vukela. The Tanzimat marked the beginning of modernization in Turkey and had immediate effects on social and legal aspects of life in the Empire, such as European style clothing, architecture, legislation, institutional organization, and land reform.
He was also concerned for aspects of tradition. He made great efforts to revive the sport of archery. He ordered archery master Mustafa Kani to write a book about the history, construction, and use of Turkish bows, from which comes most of what is now known of Turkish archery.
Mahmud II died of tuberculosis, in 1839. His funeral was attended by crowds of people who came to bid the Sultan farewell. His son Abdulmejid I succeeded him and would continue to implement Tanzimat reform efforts.
Reforms
Legal reforms
Among his reforms are the edicts (or firmans), by which he closed the Court of Confiscations, and took away much of the power of the Pashas.
Previous to the first of the Firmans the property of all persons banished or condemned to death was forfeited to the crown; and a sordid motive for acts of cruelty was thus kept in perpetual operation, besides the encouragement of a host of vile delators.
The second firman removed the ancient rights of Turkish governors to doom men to instant death by their will; the Paşas, the Ağas, and other officers, were enjoined that "they should not presume to inflict, themselves, the punishment of death on any man, whether Raya or Turk, unless authorized by a legal sentence pronounced by the Kadi, and regularly signed by the judge." Mahmud also created an appeal system by a criminal to one of the Kazasker (chief military judge) of Asia or Europe, and finally to the Sultan himself, if the criminal chose to persist in his appeal.
About the same time that Mahmud II ordained these changes, he personally set an example of reform by regularly attending the Divan, or state council, instead of secluding himself from the labors of state. The practice of the Sultan avoiding the Divan had been introduced as long ago as the reign of Suleiman I, and was considered one of the causes of the decline of the Empire by a Turkish historian nearly two centuries before Mahmud II's time.
Mahmud II also addressed some of the worst abuses connected with the vakıfs, by placing their revenues under state administration. However, he did not venture to apply this vast mass of property to the general purposes of the government. His modernizations included the relaxation of much of the restrictions on alcoholic beverages in the Empire, and the sultan himself was known to drink socially with his ministers. By the end of his reign, his reforms had mostly normalized drinking among the upper classes and political figures in the Empire.
In his time the financial situation of the Empire was troubling, and certain social classes had long been under the oppression of heavy taxes. In dealing with the complicated questions that therefore arose, Mahmud II is considered to have demonstrated the best spirit of the best of the Köprülüs. A Firman of February 22, 1834, abolished the vexatious charges which public functionaries, when traversing the provinces, had long been accustomed to take from the inhabitants. By the same edict all collection of money, except for the two regular half-yearly periods, was denounced as abuses. "No one is ignorant," said Sultan Mahmud II in this document, "that I am bound to afford support to all my subjects against vexatious proceedings; to endeavour unceasingly to lighten, instead of increasing their burdens, and to ensure peace and tranquility. Therefore, those acts of oppression are at once contrary to the will of God, and to my imperial orders."
The haraç, or capitation-tax, though moderate and exempting those who paid it from military service, had long been made an engine of gross tyranny through the insolence and misconduct of the government collectors. The Firman of 1834 abolished the old mode of levying it and ordained that it should be raised by a commission composed of the Kadı, the Muslim governors, and the Ayans, or municipal chiefs of Rayas in each district. Many other financial improvements were affected. By another important series of measures, the administrative government was simplified and strengthened, and a large number of sinecure offices were abolished. Sultan Mahmud II provided a valuable personal example of good sense, and economy, organising the imperial household, suppressing all titles without duties, and all salaried officials without functions.
Military reforms
Mahmud II dealt effectively with the military fiefs, the "Tımar"s, and the "Ziamet"s. These had been instituted to furnish the old effective military force, but had long ceased to serve this purpose. By attaching them to the public domains, Mahmud II materially strengthened the resources of the state, and put an end to a host of corruptions. One of the most resolute acts of his ruling was the suppression of the Dere Beys, the hereditary local chiefs (with power to nominate their successors in default of male heirs), which, in one of the worst abuses of the Ottoman feudal system, had made themselves petty princes in almost every province of the empire.
The reduction of these insubordinate feudatories was not affected at once, or without severe struggles and frequent rebellions. Mahmud II steadily persevered in this great measure and ultimately the island of Cyprus became the only part of the empire in which power that was not emanating from the Sultan was allowed to be retained by Dere Beys.
One of his most notable achievement was the abolition (through use of military force, execution and exile, and banning of the Bektashi order) of the Janissary Corps, event known as The Auspicious Incident, in 1826 and the establishment of a modern Ottoman Army, named the Asakir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye (meaning 'Victorious Soldiers of Muhammad' in Ottoman Turkish).
Following the loss of Greece after the Battle of Navarino against the combined British-French-Russian flotilla in 1827, Mahmud II gave top priority to rebuilding a strong Ottoman naval force. The first steamships of the Ottoman Navy were acquired in 1828. In 1829 the world's largest warship for many years, the 201 x 56 kadem (1 kadem = 37.887 cm) or ship of the line Mahmudiye, which had 128 cannons on 3 decks and carried 1,280 sailors on board, was built for the Ottoman Navy at the Imperial Naval Arsenal (Tersâne-i Âmire) on the Golden Horn in Constantinople (kadem, which translates as "foot", is often misinterpreted as equivalent in length to one imperial foot, hence the wrongly converted dimensions of "201 x 56 ft, or 62 x 17 m" in some sources.)
Other reforms
During his reign, Mahmud II also made sweeping reforms of the bureaucracy in order to reestablish royal authority and increase the administrative efficiency of his government. This was accomplished by abolishing old offices, introducing new lines of responsibility, and raised salaries in an attempt to end bribery. In 1838 he founded two institutions aimed towards training government officials. In 1831, Mahmud II also established an official gazette, Takvim-i Vekayi (Calendar of Events). This was the first newspaper to be published in the Ottoman-Turkish language and was required reading for all civil servants.
Clothing was also an essential aspect of Mahmud II's reforms. He began by officially adopting the fez for the military after the Janissary eradication in 1826, which signified a break from the old style of military dress. On top of this, he ordered civilian officials to also adopt a similar, but plain, fez to distinguish them from the military. He planned for the population to adopt this as well, as he desired a homogeneous look for Ottoman society with an 1829 regulatory law. Unlike past Sultanic clothing decrees and those of other societies, Mahmud II wanted all levels of government and civilians to look the same. He faced significant resistance to these measures specifically from religious groups, laborers, and military members because of traditional, religious, and practical reasons. Mahmud II's portraits also give a valuable insight into his clothing mentality, as he switched to a more European-style and fez after 1826.
On top of these reforms, Mahmud II was also critical in the establishment and flourishing of an Ottoman foreign affairs office. While he built upon Selim III's foundational elements of international diplomacy, Mahmud II was the first to create the title of Foreign Minister and Undersecretary in 1836. He placed enormous importance on this position and equated salary and rank with the highest military and civilian positions. Mahmud II also expanded the Language Office and Translation Office, and by 1833 it began to grow in both size and importance. After the reorganization of these offices, he also resumed Selim's efforts to create a system of permanent diplomatic representation in Europe. In 1834, permanent European embassies were established with the first in Paris. Despite the difficulties that came along with these actions, the expansion of diplomacy increased the transmission of ideas that would have a revolutionary effect on the development of bureaucracy and Ottoman society as a whole.
Family
Consorts
Mahmud had sixteen consorts:
Unnamed (died 20 April 1809), Senior Consort;
Dilseza Kadın (died at Beşiktaş Palace, Istanbul, May 1816, buried in Dolmabahçe Palace Mausoleum), Second Consort→Senior Consort;<ref>{{cite news|title=455 yıllık Kuran-ı Kerim restore ediliyor|url=https://www.milatgazetesi.com/haber/455-yillik-kuran-i-kerim-restore-edilmez-211904/|access-date=9 November 2020|work=miletgazetesi.com|date=20 July 2019}}</ref>
Kamerfer Kadın (died 1823, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum), Third Consort→Second Consort→Senior Consort;
Nevfidan Kadın (died at Nafiz Pasha Palace, Beylerbeyi, Istanbul, 11 November 1855, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum), Third Consort→Second Consort→Senior Consort;
Hoşyar Kadın (died Mecca, 1859, buried there), Fourth Consort→Third Consort→Second Consort;
Aşubcan Kadın (died at Maçka Palace, 10 June 1870, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum), Fifth Consort→Fourth Consort→Third Consort;
Mislinayab Kadın (died 22 May 1818, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum), Sixth Consort→Fifth Consort;
Nurtab Kadın (died 10 January 1886, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum), Fourth Consort;
Bezmiâlem Sultan (died at Beşiktaş Palace, Istanbul, 2 May 1853, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum, Divanyolu, Istanbul), Fifth Consort;
Ebrureftar Kadın (died 1825, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum), Sixth Consort;
Pervizifelek Kadın (died at Akıntıburnu Palace, 21 September 1863, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum), Seventh Consort→Sixth Consort;
Hüsnümelek Hanım (died at Beylerbeyi Palace, 1887, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum), Senior Fortunate;
Pertevniyal Sultan (died at Örtaköy Palace, Istanbul, 26 January 1884, buried in Pertevniyal Sultan Mausoleum), Second Fortunate;
Tiryal Hanım (died at Çamlıca Palace, Istanbul, 1882–3, buried in Imperial ladies Mausoleum), Third Fortunate;
Zernigar Hanım (died 1830, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum), Fourth Fortunate;
Lebrizifelek Hanım (died at Örtaköy Palace, Istanbul, 9 February 1865, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum), Fourth Fortunate;
Sons
Mahmud had fourteen sons, of which only two lived to adulthood:
Şehzade Murad (26 December 1811 – 5 July 1812, buried in Tomb of Abdul Hamid I, Fatih, Istanbul);
Şehzade Bayezid (26 March 1812 – 10 July 1812, buried in Abdul Hamid I Mausoleum, Fatih, Istanbul), with Dilseza Kadın;
Şehzade Abdul Hamid (6 March 1813 – 20 April 1825, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum, Fatih Mosque, Istanbul), with Mislinayab Kadın;
Şehzade Osman (Beşiktaş Palace, 17 June 1813 – 10 April 1814, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul), with Nevfidan Kadın;
Şehzade Ahmed (25 July 1814 – 16 July 1815, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul);
Şehzade Mehmed (Beşiktaş Palace, 25 August 1814 – 31 October 1814, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul), with Dilseza Kadın;
Şehzade Suleiman (29 August 1817 – 14 December 1819, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul);
Şehzade Ahmed (13 October 1819 – 24 December 1819, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul);
Şehzade Mehmed (18 February 1822 – 23 September 1822, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul);
Şehzade Ahmed (6 July 1822 – 9 April 1823, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul);
Sultan Abdulmejid I (25 April 1823 – 25 June 1861, buried in Yavuz Selim Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul), with Bezmiâlem Sultan;
Şehzade Abdul Hamid (18 February 1827 – 15 November 1828, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum, Fatih Mosque, Istanbul);
Sultan Abdulaziz (8 February 1830 – 4 June 1876, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum, Divanyolu, Istanbul), with Pertevniyal Sultan;
Şehzade Nizameddin (29 December 1833 – 28 February 1838, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum, Fatih Mosque, Istanbul), with Tiryal Hanım;
Daughters
Mahmud had seventeen daughters, of which only six lived to adulthood:
Fatma Sultan (4 February 1809 – 5 August 1809, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul), with unnamed Senior Consort;
Ayşe Sultan (5 July 1809 – February 1810, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul), with Kamerfer Kadın;
Fatma Sultan (20 April 1811 – April 1825, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum, Fatih Mosque, Istanbul), with Dilseza Kadın;
Saliha Sultan (16 June 1811 – 19 February 1843, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum, Divanyolu, Istanbul), with Aşubcan Kadın;
Şah Sultan (Beşiktaş Palace, 22 May 1812 – September 1814, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul), with Aşubcan Kadın;
Mihrimah Sultan (Beşiktaş Palace, 29 June 1812 – 31 August 1838, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum, Fatih Mosque, Istanbul), with Hoşyar Kadın;
Emine Sultan (July 1813 – July 1814, buried in Nurosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul), with Dilseza Kadın;
Şah Sultan (14 October 1814 – 13 April 1817, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul), with Hoşyar Kadın;
Emine Sultan (7 December 1815 – 24 September 1816, buried in Dolmabahçe Palace Mausoleum, Istanbul), with Dilseza Kadın;
Zeynep Sultan (18 April 1815 – 8 January 1816, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul), with Nevfidan Kadın;
Hamide Sultan (4 July 1818 – 15 February 1819, buried in Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Fatih, Istanbul);
Atiye Sultan (2 January 1824 – 11 August 1850, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum, Divanyolu, Istanbul), with Pervizifelek Kadın;
Münire Sultan (16 October 1824 – 22 May 1825, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum, Fatih Mosque, Istanbul);
Hatice Sultan (6 September 1825 – 19 December 1842, buried in Mahmud II Mausoleum, Divanyolu, Istanbul), with Pervizifelek Kadın;
Adile Sultan (23 May 1826 – 12 February 1899, buried in Adile Sultan Mausoleum, Eyüp, Istanbul), with Zernigar Hanım;
Fatma Sultan (20 July 1828 - 23 October 1830, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum, Fatih Mosque, Istanbul), with Pervizifelek Kadın;
Hayriye Sultan (22 January 1832 – 29 January 1833, buried in Nakşidil Sultan Mausoleum, Fatih Mosque, Istanbul);
In fiction
The 2006 historical detective novel The Janissary Tree, by Jason Goodwin, is set in 1836 Constantinople, with Mahmud II's modernising reforms (and conservative opposition to them) forming the background of the plot. The Sultan himself and his mother appear in several scenes.
The 1989 film Intimate Power, also known as The Favorite, is adapted from a historical fiction novel by Prince Michael of Greece. It portrays a legend about Aimée du Buc de Rivéry as a young captured French girl who, after spending years in an Ottoman harem, outlives two Sultans and protects Mahmud as his surrogate mother. Mahmud is a minor role in the film but is portrayed as both an adult and a child. The film concludes with a variation of his dramatic succession.
See also
Atçalı Kel Mehmet Efe
Sened-i İttifak
References
Incorporates text from Edward Shepherd Creasy, History of the Ottoman Turks; From the beginning of their empire to the present time (1878).
Bibliography
Further reading
Levy, Avigdor. "The Officer Corps in Sultan Mahmud II's New Ottoman Army, 1826–39." International Journal of Middle East Studies (1971) 2#1 pp: 21–39. online
Levy, Avigdor. "The Ottoman Ulema and the military reforms of Sultan Mahmud II." Asian and African Studies 7 (1971): 13–39.
Levy, Avigdor. "The Ottoman Corps in Sultan Mahmud II New Ottoman Army." International Journal of Middle East Studies 1 (1971): pp 39+
Palmer, Alan. The Decline and Fall of the Ottoman Empire'' (1992) ch 6
External links
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Leaders who took power by coup | en |
doc-en-11083 | The history of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) from 1933 to 1951 covers the first attempts at transatlantic travel, the establishment of a consortium and finally the establishment of the consolidated SAS. Aerotransport, the national airline of Sweden, and Det Norske Luftfartselskap (DNL), the national airline of Norway, both started planning transatlantic routes in the mid-1930s. By 1939, negotiations were started with Det Danske Luftfartselskab (DDL) of Denmark, and by 1940 services were to begin. Because of the German occupation of Denmark and Norway, the plans collapsed. In Sweden, Svensk Interkontinental Lufttrafik (SILA) was founded to start private transatlantic flights, which commenced in 1945. Negotiations were started again, and in 1946 the consortium Overseas Scandinavian Airlines System (OSAS) was established to start routes to New York and South America.
From 1948, the airlines pooled all their aircraft into European Scandinavian Airlines System (ESAS), which used the SAS brand for all domestic and European services. However, ESAS was only a business agreement, and when DNL threatened to leave to cooperation in 1950, it was agreed to merge the operations of the three airlines into a consolidated consortium. With the merger, the national governments secured a 50% ownership of their respective holding companies. In the 1940s, SAS operated a fleet of Douglas DC-3, DC-4 and DC-6, Vickers VC.1 Viking, Saab Scandia land planes, and Short Sandringham and Junkers Ju 52 seaplanes.
Pre-war attempts
The first discussion of a Scandinavian transatlantic route was in 1933, when DDL and Aerotransport conducted discussions with Charles Lindbergh. However, no specific plans were made. For Denmark, part of the interest was spurred with the possibility of reaching Greenland. DDL started a partnership with British interests, creating European & American Airways, which was planned to operate transatlantic flights from Denmark via United Kingdom. The company was inaugurated on 21 October 1935 in London, with GBP 5,000 in share capital. While the company remained in existence until the late 1940s, it never operated any aircraft.
In 1936, DNL started negotiations with Pan American Airways (Pan Am) about cooperation on the transatlantic route between Norway and the United States. DNL argued that Norway's location made it an ideal base for the European flights to North America. Pan Am would operate from New York to Reykjavík, while DNL would operate the service from Reykjavík to Bergen and onwards to various destinations in Europe. The contract was signed in March and DNL bought a Sikorsky S-43 flying boat, registered as LN-DAG and christened Valkyrien. However, after the aircraft was delivered and three weeks before the route was to be inaugurated, Pan Am changed their mind, canceled the agreement and decided that the transatlantic route should instead operate via Newfoundland to Foynes, Ireland, and via the Azores in the winter.
Rudolf Olsen, a major owner of DNL, stated afterwards that DNL was too small in comparison to Pan Am to make a stable alliance. Instead, Olsen wanted the four Nordic flag carriers to cooperate on transcontinental operations. Representatives from DNL, DDL, Aerotransport and the Finnish Aero met in Geilo, Norway, on 18 April 1937 to discuss possible strategies. The initial discussions regarded a closer cooperation between the four companies in Nordic and European routes, as well as agreement to try to coordinate legislation, fleets and contracts.
In 1936, Aerotransport and Aeroflot had started a cooperation on a route between Stockholm and Moscow, with connections from Stockholm to Siberia and Irkutsk and Vladivostok. Aerotransport wanted to connect westwards via DNL's network to Foynes, with connection to Pan Am's flights. However, the proposal was rejected by Aeroflot. The other problem was that Imperial Airways wanted to prioritize British, rather than Scandinavian, mail on west-bound flights, causing DNL to cancel their plans to connect to Ireland. In a meeting in Berlin on 10 January 1939, the four Nordic airlines agreed to let DNL continue to negotiate with Pan Am about pooling transatlantic flights, with DNL representing all four companies. Support was gained from the Nordic post companies, who would guarantee for the use of the route. DNL's Bernt Balchen went to the United States to negotiate with American authorities and suppliers to start a route.
In mid-1939, Aerotransport, DNL and DDL met in Oslo to negotiate possible transatlantic routes. By then, Shannon Airport in Ireland was under construction, and both Imperial Airways, Deutsche Lufthansa and KLM were planning to start transatlantic services. There was agreement that a route to Foynes should be established, and at the same time planning of a Scandinavian transatlantic route. A committee was established with representation from all four Nordic airlines. With the break-out of World War II, Pan Am terminated its Foynes route, instead moving it to the Azores to avoid the war zone. DNL started negotiations with Pan Am again, and proposed a pooling, where DNL chartered Pan Am aircraft and crew for the west-bound flights, while Pan Am flew the east-bound flights. With the Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, Aero's interest in the cooperation was reduced, as the Finnish authorities concentrated on their war effort. On 2 January 1940, the committee presented a calculation for the post offices, whereby post per flight would cost SEK 1.3 million per year. This was agreed to, and nine days later a delegation was sent to the US to negotiate.
The basis was that Stavanger Airport, Sola on the Norwegian West Coast was to be the hub. The delegation hoped to procure a Boeing 314, giving a capacity for 20 passengers and of freight. One intermediate landing, planned at Botwood in Newfoundland, was needed before reaching New York. The trip was planned to take 26 and a half hours, comparing to the 13 days it took the delegation to reach Washington, D.C. Preparatory meetings with the Scandinavian ambassadors started on 26 January, followed by two months of negotiations with American authorities, manufacturers, airlines and airports, to insure rights to all aspects of the operations, including training of crew, insurance, agreements with the United States Postal Service, choice of route, weather services and schedules. The neutral American authorities were interested in establishing a route to the then-neutral Scandinavian countries, and the negotiations went well, with all necessary permissions and contracts gained. Pan Am and Juan Trippe set as a condition that the four countries establish a single consortium to function as Pan Am's counter-party. It was decided that Aerotransport initially would function as the counter-party.
The only lack of permission was from the Scandinavian authorities, from which the delegation had not had time to receive permission before it left. However, on 5 March, Aerotransport, DDL and DNL made an agreement with Pan Am to operate a route using a Boeing 314 Clipper flying boat from New York via Botwood and Reykjavík to Bergen. It was the American authorities who wanted a landing in Iceland, and Bergen was chosen instead of Stavanger because the latter lay within the area defined by American authorities as part of the war zone. The route would commence during the summer and operate eight times, with twelve services the following year. The aircraft was chartered from Pan Am for US$15,000 per trip. All formalities with external parties were completed on 12 March, and the operations approved by the board of the three Scandinavian airlines on 6 April. Representatives from the Scandinavian delegation visited Douglas, Lockheed and Pratt & Whitney, and planned to use Douglas DC-4 land planes from 1942, with up to two weekly round trips.
World War II
On 9 April 1940, Germany invaded Norway and Denmark, canceling the immediate plans for a transatlantic route. In Denmark, DDL received continued permission to operate domestic services from June, and to Berlin from 24 June. It was later extended to Munich, Vienna and Malmö, Sweden, and along with the main Copenhagen–Århus route continued throughout the war. In June 1943, DDL increased its share capital from DKK 3 to 15 million.
In Norway, DNL was permitted to operate a limited route in Northern Norway, until the pilots fled to Britain in 1941 to join the resistance. The airline suffered from a general mistrust both from the German and Allied authorities. The Germans regarded Norwegian shipowners as highly suspicious people, since these had their fleet organized in Nortraship and used in Allied convoys. The Norwegian authorities in exile were also distrustful of DNL, because the airline had taken initiative to operate a route, essentially helping the German forces. There was also an uncertainty as to whether the national airline of Norway should continue to be private, or if a state-owned airline should be established. To look at the issue, the Norwegian government-in-exile established the Norwegian Civil Aviation Board to look at all matters regarding civil aviation. It was this board which was permitted to negotiate traffic rights with other countries, make purchase rights of aircraft and participated in the foundation of the International Air Transport Association and the International Civil Aviation Organization. Throughout the war, the board took no steps to procure civilian aircraft for after the war.
Sweden, although neutral, became isolated in relation to North America, as all mail had to be sent eastward via the Soviet Union, or westwards via Portugal. The first became impossible after the Soviet Union and Germany went to war on 22 June 1941, and the latter from 7 December when the United States entered the war. The British Royal Air Force started a route from Leuchars, Scotland, to Stockholm, but this was limited to transport of mail and passengers used for the Allied forces. From 1942, Aerotransport introduced mail flights from Stockholm to Scotland, which were relayed onwards to North America. On 10 September 1942, the board of Aerotransport recommended that Sweden start its own intercontinental services. SEK 6 million was needed to purchase two four-engine planes; the plans called for the other Nordic flag carriers to join after the end of the war. The government did not want to threaten the Swedish neutrality, and therefore instructed the state-owned company not to negotiate with an Allied power. Instead, they wanted a private company to make the arrangements, and the privilege was granted to the Wallenberg family.
Marcus Wallenberg jr. contacted several of the shipping companies in Gothenburg to join the venture, but these were skeptical. They required that the head office and hub be located there, and Aerotransport was excluded from participating. This was not acceptable for Wallenberg, and instead the capital was raised from Stockholm-companies; the largest owner became the Wallenberg-controlled, Gothenburg-based Svenska Amerika Linien. Svensk Interkontinental Lufttrafik (SILA) was founded on 22 February 1943 with SEK 12 million in share capital. The work of maintenance of the aircraft was subcontracted to Aerotransport.
Five days later, a delegation from SILA was sent to the UK and US to purchase aircraft and receive traffic rights. The negotiations in the US were led by Per A. Norlin, who attempted to procure Douglas DC-4 aircraft. Because of Aerotransport's route to Moscow, the connection would allow a service between the allied US and Soviet Union, via a neutral country. However, the US was not willing to sell any aircraft until after the war, so Norlin agreed to purchase ten converted Douglas C-54 (DC-4) for delivery after the war for SEK 20 million. This was the first contract for delivery of civilian planes for after the war made by Douglas. Loans were secured from the First National City Bank of New York and Stockholms Enskilda Bank.
The procurement of ten aircraft was more than initially needed by SILA, so negotiations were held with DDL and DNL about selling some of the aircraft to them. Because the owners of DNL were not able to hold meetings and the airline inactive, and in part because of the transfer of Norwegian negotiation power to the Norwegian Civil Aviation Board, DNL did not attempt to procure any aircraft. Still, negotiations continued between the flag carriers, and DNL stated in 1944 that they were interested in procuring some aircraft. US authorities urged the Scandinavian airlines to make a common bid for the traffic rights, and the flag carriers started discussing creating a consortium. Among the issues was the distribution of ownership: DDL suggested a 40% stake for SILA and 30% for DDL and DNL, with the latter two granting Aero 10% if they should join; DNL proposed an equal ownership between the three.
In 1943, a fleet of seven American B-17 Flying Fortress had emergency landed in Sweden, and the pilots and planes were being held by Sweden. Norlin started to negotiate with the US Air Force for a trade; the US was in more of a need of pilots than aircraft, and agreed to sell the aircraft for US$1 each to SILA in exchange for the release of the pilots. In June 1944, the aircraft were transferred to Saab for conversion to passenger aircraft. However, permission to operate routes from Sweden to the United States was never agreed upon during the war.
Establishment
After the end of the war, DNL had no assets or personnel, while DDL had a single airworthy aircraft. SILA, on the other hand, had a fleet of intercontinental B-17 aircraft and started flights to New York on 27 June. By 1946, the DC-4 were gradually delivered, with three sold to Aerotransport, two to DDL and two to DNL. In Norway, the Norwegian Civil Aviation Board and the Royal Norwegian Air Force conducted all flights in 1945. Capital was raised during the year, including a 20% stake by the government, and a 20-year concession was granted in February 1946.
Negotiations between the three flag carriers started in Copenhagen on 2 February 1946. For Sweden, Aerotransport and SILA had partially opposing opinions about a Scandinavian cooperation. In the government and the state-owned Aerotransport, it was considered desirable that Sweden operate the route on its own, because of the country's size and its established airline. There was also a conflict, where forces were wanting to merge Aerotransport and SILA, in part to nationalize the intercontinental airline, in part to achieve economy of scale.
Among the issues of the negotiations, was the need for a workshop that met American standards. At the time, only Aerotransport had such facilities, although DDL planned to establish one at Copenhagen Airport. Initially the US had also required a single counter-party, in a consortium, but this was later withdrawn, so the airlines were free to instead establish a pool. However, the advantages of the consortium were preferred by the negotiators, because it would remove the nationality from the employees and operations. A holistic proposal was launched on 7 June, where DDL and DNL would receive two parts ownership, and SILA three parts; each partner would receive two board members. All employees would work for the consortium, while the aircraft were to be leased from the partners. The head office was to be located in Stockholm.
Disagreement existed over which airport should be used as a hub. To have a nationally neutral CEO, Canadian–American Peter Redpaths was selected. There was also agreement that the airline should have a single brand name, and both "Scandinavian Airlines System" and "Scandinavian United Airlines" was suggested. It was also agreed that the consortium should take over SILA's operations to South America and to Ethiopia (although SILA lost the traffic rights there the same year).
When the Swedish delegation returned to Stockholm, they were instructed by the government and Aerotransport to set higher demands. The Swedish government did not want to participate with less than a 50% share, and preferably as a majority owner. It was stated that this was because they had half the population and the only organization capable of operating intercontinental routes. They also required a pool solution with employees in the national companies. When the parties met in Copenhagen on 25 June, the Swedish demands were rejected and the meeting quickly dissolved, with DDL and DNL stating that they would establish their own consortium. SILA was willing to accept the Danish–Norwegian terms, and even threatened to liquidate themselves—and thereby eliminate all private capital from the Swedish airlines—if Aerotransport did not compromise. Another meeting was held on 18 July, without any progress.
On 31 July, a delegation from the companies met in Oslo. The governments of Denmark and Norway had both stated that unless Sweden accepted a minority stake, there would be no deal. The Swedish Minister for Communications, Torsten Nilsson (Social Democrat) had instructed SILA and Aerotransport to find a Scandinavian solution, even with a Swedish minority stake. After eight hours negotiation in Oslo, the three delegation leaders, Marcus Wallenberg (SILA), Thomas Falck (DNL) and Per Kampmann (DDL) went to a separate room to solve the last issues. These were related to whether operations should be done by a consortium; the distribution of ownership; the personnel responsibility; the composition of the board; the right to leave the cooperation; and the responsibility to cover the costs of maintenance. After three hours, the three men had reached an agreement: a five-year agreement was made, and Aerotransport would temporarily supply all maintenance; employees would be employed by the national airlines, but paid by and work for the consortium; a 3–2–2 ownership split would be established, but with equal board representation; and the head office would be located in Stockholm. The contract was signed at 03:00 on 1 August 1946.
Overseas Scandinavian Airlines System
Each of the national airlines had to select employees to be based in Stockholm. While DNL and SILA had ample crew to choose between, DDL chose to hire American and British airmen. The allocation of crew and aircraft were to follow the 3–2–2 distribution. The thirty-first and last transatlantic round trip flight by SILA was completed on 30 July. The new SAS service would provide two round services per week, both originating at Bromma, where Aerotransport had its technical base. One weekly service would operate via Oslo Airport, Fornebu, another via Copenhagen. Refuelling stops would have to be made at Glasgow Prestwick Airport and Gander International Airport, Newfoundland, before landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York. Travel time was 24 hours.
The first SAS aircraft to operate was a DC-4 belonging to DNL, which landed at Bromma on 5 August. The DC-4s had a theoretic capacity of 44, but SAS chose to install 28 seats to increase comfort. The first flight with the SAS livery was flown on 17 September, and included a large delegation from SAS's management. Prior to this, SAS had established an American subsidiary, SAS Inc, which was able to sell as many tickets as those sold in Scandinavia. A large group of west-bound travelers were Eastern European emigrants, who had their fares paid by American relatives. The cabin load was good, and the frequency increased until daily services were introduced from 16 June 1947.
Operations to South America operated from Stockholm via Copenhagen onwards to Lyon, Lisbon, Dakar, Natal, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Aires. The first flight departed on 30 September, and for the first few months the service terminated in Montevideo. The route had a low cabin load, was constantly delayed because of the six intermediate stops, and failed to gain patronage owing to its flying only two round services each month.
Per A. Norlin became SAS's first CEO. In the first 17 months until the end of 1947, SAS carried 10,000 passengers and achieved revenue of SEK 37 million. In mid 1946, SAS placed an order for four Stratocruisers from Boeing. In late 1946, Douglas launched the DC-6; reports from the Boeing plant showed delays and concerns that the aircraft would not meet expectations. On 15 November, the SAS board decided to order seven DC-6, to supplement the Stratocruisers. The Stratocruisers ordered from Boeing were not delivered until 1949, two years after order and very delayed.
SAS planned to use Stavanger Airport, Sola as its hub, providing feeder traffic to the capital cities. Stavanger was in part chosen because it had the only suitable runway. Reports from Boeing showed that the maintenance costs would be very high for the aircraft, and SAS decided that it would be cheaper to contract with British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), which had also ordered the Stratocruiser, to perform maintenance. When it became clear that the aircraft would not be delivered until 1950, SAS started negotiations to sell them, and reached an agreement with BOAC to purchase the aircraft for the same cost as SAS had paid.
In 1946, Norwegian ship-owner Ludvig G. Braathen had establish Braathens SAFE, and started charter traffic, mainly to Asia. From 14 January 1949, Braathens SAFE received a five-year concession to operate a route from Oslo to various cities in Asia. This forced OSAS to plan its Asia-routes using only Swedish and Danish crew and planes and not operate from Oslo. This was followed by SAS on 26 October, when they opened a DC-6 route to Bangkok with seven intermediate stops. At first there were two round trips per month, but from 1950 this was increased to two per week.
European Scandinavian Airlines System
DDL, DNL and Aerotransport all had their respective national concessions for domestic and European routes. On intra-Scandinavian and internal European routes the companies operated in direct competition with each other. While SAS's New York route was profitable, the European operations were less so, and in 1947 Aerotransport lost SEK 1.1 million, DNL NOK 6 million and DDL DDK 3.3 million. In addition to sales offices in the other Scandinavian countries, each airline had its own office in cities served by each airline. That year, there were informal discussions to expand SAS to operate the European routes as well, but this proved impossible as long as SILA only held intercontinental concessions while Aerotransport held European and domestic concessions.
In August 1946, Torsten Nilsson suggested merging Aerotransport and SILA, but this had been rejected by both companies. A meeting was held on 28 May 1947 with the main owners of SILA, where Nilsson proposed a 50–50 state–private ownership in a merged company. While both parties saw the advantage of merging to rationalize operations, neither party was willing to let the other receive the chair. At the time, Aerotransport had just ordered ten DC-6 and was planning to start intercontinental flights to Africa and Asia. The minister appointed Torsten Nothin to lead a board to make a recommendation, and then negotiate with SILA's owners for a merger. One issue was that the Swedes perceived that the privately owned DDL and DNL would not agree with a nationalization of SILA. The Swedish government chose not to contact the two other social democratic Scandinavian governments about partially nationalizing their own flag carriers.
Following the tentative agreement for a merger in Sweden, negotiations to create a European branch of SAS started on 1 December 1947. It was agreed that the SAS-brand was to be used to brand all international flights as SAS. European SAS (ESAS) was, unlike the transatlantic agreement, only a business agreement, whereby the three companies agreed to pool their flights and operate a single set of facilities abroad. Each company would close its own operations and offices in the other two Scandinavian countries, leaving that to the national airline. In all European cities, only the best office and employees would remain, rationalizing operations and presenting the three airlines' operations under a single brand. ESAS was launched on 18 April 1948, and was led by a main committee and had Viggo J. Rasmussen as director. The head office and operational center for ESAS was located at Copenhagen Airport, in part because of a long-term mechanics strike at Bromma. At the same time, the SAS consortium was internally named Overseas SAS (OSAS).
Agreement for the merger between SILA and Aerotransport was reached, and passed by parliament on 14 May 1948, and realized on 1 July. The new company was named Aerotransport, took over SILA's ownership of SAS and received a share capital of SEK 50 million, of which the Government of Sweden owned 50%. Per A. Norlin was appointed CEO of Aerotransport, replacing Carl Florman. Per M. Backe was then hired as SAS' CEO.
ESAS and OSAS had a fleet consisting of sixteen DC-6, nine DC-4, thirty-nine DC-3, eleven C-47 Cargo, four Vickers VC.1 Viking and three Short Sandringham, plus four Stratocruisers and ten Saab Scandia under order. ESAS had two opposing goals: to operate the partner's aircraft along the 3–2–2 ratio, and operate them most rationally. Because of the diverse composition of the fleet, these goals were often impossible to combine. In 1948, DDL lost DDK 11.8 million, DNL lost NOK 17 million and Aerotransport lost SEK 10.7 million (18 months). OSAS was responsible for SEK 9.3 million between the three. Most of OSAS's deficit was due to the Bromma strike, which had hit operations from Stockholm and Oslo hard. DNL received NOK 35 million in capital from the state through loans.
While ESAS proved profitable for Aerotransport and DDL, it became a burden for DNL. The former two had a much closer overlap between their routes, while DNL had operated without direct competition with the other two on most of its routes. Instead of coordinating resources, ESAS had become another administrative level; there were also concerns from Norway that administrative and operative staff were leaking to the ESAS head office in Copenhagen and the OSAS head office in Stockholm, without any similar build-up of competence in Norway. Because of the way the costs were divided between the pool partners, DNL was also receiving smaller margins that the others.
Merger
In September 1949, the Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications announced that DNL would be forced to leave ESAS at the latest on 1 April 1950. To keep the cooperation going, a committee was established, consisting of Wallenberg, Kampmann and Einar Isdahl from DNL. It recommended a full merger of the OSAS, ESAS and the operative divisions of the three national airlines. SAS would be established as a multi-national consortium, and the three national airlines would remain as holding companies. The consortium would be exempt from taxation, although the liability would be passed on to the holding companies, who would also own the aircraft and all real estate in the respective countries. The aircraft would be leased to SAS, who would also take over all employees.
There were two main areas of disagreement. First was the location of the head office, which the Danish wanted located in Copenhagen and the Swedes wanted in Stockholm. Second was the distribution of technical facilities. While a single, large facility would give the lowest costs, the authorities in each country wanted to keep a large reserve of aircraft mechanics for the military. The committee also stated that a merged SAS would need to have identical concessions from all countries.
In 1949, OSAS gave a profit of SEK 31,000, but all the national airlines had losses, with Aerotransport losing most at SEK 10.7 million. In political circles, there was an increasing understanding that the Swedish model with an equal private and state ownership should be followed by DDL and DNL. At the time, the Danish state owned 17.6% of DDL, and the Norwegian state 20% of DNL. As both companies were in need of increased share capital, processes were started whereby both governments would purchase shares to increase their ownership to 50%. Both the Danish and the Norwegian states bought shares for NOK and DDK 14 million, respectively, while in Norway private investors bought for additional NOK 11 million.
The final negotiations were made in October 1950; it was agreed to locate the head office in Stockholm, while it was understood that the main hub would be Copenhagen Airport. Norway was left without a key asset, and the negotiators feared that Norwegian politicians would reject the merger if not granted additional benefits. It was therefore agreed that the allocation of maintenance facilities was to follow the 3–2–2 ratio, even if it would incur higher costs. The agreement was given a duration of 25 years. At the time, OSAS had seven DC-6 and one DC-3 used for training. ESAS had about 60 aircraft, including both DC-3, DC-4, DC-6, Sandringham, Vickers Viking, Saab Scandia and Ju 52.
When passed in the Parliament of Denmark, the agreement received 77 against 14 votes in the Folketing, and with only one opposing vote in the Landsting. The opposing votes were cast by members of the Justice Party, who were principally opposed to state the state owning any companies, and the Communist Party, who were opposed to the private ownership. In Norway, there were supporters and opponents in all the parties. The debate took ten hours, and even among those who were in favor were skeptical. The proposal passed with 107 against 26 votes. The proposal was passed unanimously by the Parliament of Sweden.
The final agreement was signed on 8 February 1951 at the same location as the former, in the head office of the Norwegian Shipowners' Association in Oslo. It was made retroactively valid from 1 October 1950, giving OSAS a profit of SEK 4.2 million in the first three quarters of 1950. OSAS had then made 2641 flights across the North Atlantic, 657 across the South Atlantic and 64 to the Far East, transporting 130,000 without accidents. From OSAS, 1,076 were transferred, along with 5,554 people from the national airlines and ESAS. The company had a capital of SEK 157 million (DDK 210 million or NOK 217 million), 59 aircraft and 6630 employees. Norlin was appointed CEO, deputized by Backe and Rasmussen.
References
Bibliography
SAS Group
Scandinavian Airlines
Scandinavian Airlines System
Scandinavian Airlines System (1933-1952)
Scandinavian Airlines | en |
doc-en-11271 | The Wonder World Tour was the second concert tour by American singer Miley Cyrus. The tour was held in support of her second studio album Breakout (2008) and first extended play (EP) The Time of Our Lives (2009). It began in September 2009 and concluded on December 29, visiting cities in the United States and United Kingdom; thus, the Wonder World Tour became Cyrus' first world tour. It also became Cyrus' first tour not to incorporate performances as Hannah Montana, although "Let's Get Crazy" and "Spotlight", both songs credited to Montana, were performed. Alternative band Metro Station served as opening act for all tour venues. It was sponsored by Wal-Mart and promoted by AEG Live. All tickets from the Wonder World Tour were sold using paperless ticketing, in order to prevent ticket scalping similar to what had occurred during Cyrus' previous tour. One dollar from each ticket sold was donated to the City of Hope National Medical Center, an organization devoted to the fight against cancer.
The Wonder World Tour has been described as part of Cyrus' transitional period, with more elaborate and edgier characteristics. Each concert was divided into seven segments, each of which bared different themes, the subject of matter for the tour's title. The show opened with Cyrus performing rock-oriented songs. It also featured her and backup dancers being suspended above the stage with aerial rigging various times. At one point, she mounted a Harley-Davidson motorcycle as it was elevated and made its path across the venue. Cyrus also rendered a tribute to the deceased singer Michael Jackson and performed two Hannah Montana-credited songs as herself.
The tour received positive to mixed reception from critics. Some praised it and deemed it a spectacle, while others believed it lacked profundity and portrayal of Cyrus' personality. The Wonder World Tour was commercially successful despite the financial recession that was present in 2009. It was able to sell-out all European dates in ten minutes and marks the largest attendance at The O2 Arena in London. During the first leg of the tour, one bus overturned several times on a highway. The accident resulted in the injury of one person and the death of another. The cause of the accident is yet to be specified, yet multiple theories for it exist. A filtered version of the Wonder World Tour was broadcast on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) on June 18, 2010 and received a total of over 2.6 million viewers. The full-length concert film was released on the limited, deluxe edition of Cyrus' third studio album Can't Be Tamed (2010).
Background
Cyrus is a singer-songwriter and actress who starred on the Disney Channel television series Hannah Montana as Miley Stewart, a girl with a secret double life as the popstar Hannah Montana. Through the television series, Cyrus developed fame as a teen idol and released music credited to Hannah Montana. Cyrus' debut studio album, titled Meet Miley Cyrus, was released as the second disc of the Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (2007) double-disc album. In order to promote the album, Cyrus embarked on her debut tour, the Best of Both Worlds Tour (2007–08), a North American tour where she performed both under character, as Hannah Montana, and as herself. With the release of Cyrus' second studio album, Breakout (2008), her first not be affiliated with the Hannah Montana franchise, and an extended play (EP) The Time of Our Lives (2009), Cyrus decided to embark on tour again with the Wonder World Tour, however, without incorporating performances as Hannah Montana, a step which the media interpreted as furthering her distance from the Hannah Montana franchise.
The concert tour was announced alongside Cyrus' joint apparel line with Max Azria on June 3, 2009, through various outlets, including Miley's Twitter account, a press release, and MileyWorld, Cyrus' official fan club. It was confirmed that the tour would be sponsored by American retailing company Wal-Mart and promoted by AEG Live. It would expand throughout the United States, from September 14, 2009 in Portland, Oregon to December 2, 2009 in Miami, Florida, with a total of forty-five dates. Alternative rock band Metro Station, where Cyrus' older brother, Trace Cyrus, integrates in, was confirmed as the opening act for all dates. Two days later, a European leg, with nine dates in the United Kingdom, was announced, marking Cyrus' first concerts to visit another continent. On June 16, 2009, two more dates were annexed, and one final date was annexed in October 2009, in order to meet demand.
All tickets for the Wonder World Tour were sold exclusively through paperless ticket delivery, meaning that fans did not receive a physical concert ticket for their entry into the event. Ticket buyers were required to bring the credit card used to make the purchase and photo identification to the concert venue in order to gain entry. All groups were to enter the concert together, and ushers issued seat locator slips. The method of ticket sales was relatively new at the time, although Ticketmaster first experimented it with AC/DC's Black Ice World Tour (2008–10). However, it marked the first time for an arena tour to sell all tickets through paperless ticketing. This was done in response to the extensive ticket scalping that occurred during the Best of Both Worlds Tour and in order to give fans the opportunity to purchase good tickets at face value. Cyrus' manager and president of Morey Management Group, Jason Morey, stated, "The focus was, 'How do we take all the information we gathered last time out and do a better job of it?' It was important to us to address the issue of demand. We thought that of every single option that was available out there, this was a really viable option, to go with the paperless ticketing." As with the Best of Both Worlds Tour, one dollar from each ticket purchased was donated to the City of Hope National Medical Center, a center dedicated to the prevention, treatment and research for the cure of cancer.
Development
The tour was titled the Wonder World Tour because of its diversity in themes and styles. Cyrus believed the tour was good transition for solidifying a more rock music-based career. She described the tour to be edgy and "more of a mature show", with the target audience being teenagers relatively her age, which was sixteen at the time. However, performances that would please younger audiences were added to the setlist. It was conceptualized to be a more elaborate than Cyrus' previous tour and to reflect Cyrus as an individual. The reason for this to occur was because Cyrus felt more confident as a vocalist to perform stunts and use props while singing. Also, more resources were available, for more companies were willing to invest in the tour. Ideas were suggested by different individuals and were tested during filmed rehearsals in order to decide which would make the final cut. "Each person has their own character and their own story. So, we've added everyone's kind of specialty into our show [...] This is not just a concert, it is an absolute show", Cyrus said. After having completed filming for The Last Song (2010) in Tybee Island, Georgia, Cyrus returned to Los Angeles for tour rehearsals at The Forum in mid-August. Due to filming The Last Song, Cyrus was only able to rehearse for three weeks although the average rehearsal period for musicians is about three months.
Jammal Simms was hired as the tour's director and main choreographer. Octavious Terry served as an assistant for directing, meanwhile Dondraico Johnson assisted choreography. They, along with twelve other members, composed the tour's creative team. In total, the Wonder World Tour included 124 traveling workers, 19 truckloads of equipment, and 15 buses. The stage was quite different from that of the Best of Both Worlds Tour. It consisted of a rectangular main stage, which featured staircases that elevated the center of the stage, and a narrow runway, which connected the main stage to a B-stage that ran the length of the main stage. Regarding the stage, Cyrus noted that it was "something not many people get to have. I'm able to move around to each side so there's no one person who feels like they don't have the best seat. Every seat is the best seat." Six LED multi-screen video units were located throughout the stage; the three largest were placed as the upstage wall, while the other three were hung by rigs above the stage. The center unit consisted of three screens that faced outward; two others were hung right and left to the center unit, both were double faced toward the center of the venue at a 45° angle, while the backside faced the upper-seat audience. The structure of the video panels was designed by Sims to ensure that all seats within the 270° angle at each venue received an equal view of the video screens. Video content and lighting were designed by Seán Burke; the latter was provided by Production Resource Group (PRG).
The tour used seven individual rigs for performers and props to become airborne. For dancers to be flown to the center of each upstage, a winch, which dropped 18 inches off the face of the panel, was placed in the rig. Cyrus' flying required two winches, one for a vertical lift and one for a horizontal move that coursed the audience and back to the stage. Four elevators, or trap doors, were located throughout the stage, some of which had the option of a 4×4 or an 8×8 foot opening. All of the fly rigs and elevators were built and operated by Show Group Production Services (SGPS)/Showrig. The challenge that presented the most difficulty for SGPS was time constraint, as there were only three weeks of rehearsal. Brian White, co-owner of SGPS, explained,
Special effects and pyrotechnics were provided by Pyritz Pyrotechnics Group. Terry Ritz, founder of the organization, and his partner Steve Aleff had created various ideas based on the tour soundtrack that was provided to them by the Wonder World Tour's personnel. They met with the tour's choreographer, band manager, and lighting designer, asking them to bring their "hopes, wishes, and dreams." Out of these meetings, the show was completed and a lighting crew, who monitored the stage with a four-camera monitor system when cues were executed, was selected. The pyrotechnics for the show were described as more elegant and subtle, being composed of pink flames with accentuation of silver and white glitter. Because of the extensive automation executed throughout the concert, two personnel were in charge of running it. Neville Emerton ran the automation from under the stage, and Sean Conner ran all of the flying moves from a position at the front of each venue. Meanwhile, assistant stage manager Seth Posner called cues for each concert. "Normally, in a rock show you don’t need someone calling the show. In this one we had to take a more theatrical approach with someone calling cues every step of the way because there was so much going on at once between props and automation", explained production manager Omar Abderrahman. One of the props that required much attention on the part of Posner was a car made to resemble a tractor, designed and built by effects designer and stage manager Scott "Stryker" Christensen. Because it came along late in the design process, the main elevator was not built to handle the weight of the car, though it was eventually reinforced to support the weight and movement of the car. The car was also modified; it was made electric, instead of using a combustion engine, for fire-safety and changed to turn around by adjusting its turning radius to automate steering with all four wheels. In order to translate the concert tour overseas to the United Kingdom, the Wonder World Tour paired with Sound Moves, a company that was already providing minor support for the North American leg of the tour.
Concert synopsis
The main show commenced with Cyrus emerging from the bottom of the stage inside a large, crystal-like glacier. She wore a black leather hot pantsuit, a tank top, and a white fur vest with a silver sequined hood as she escaped the cocoon to perform the concert's opening number, "Breakout". Numerous backup dancers accompanied her and, towards the conclusion, she performed atop movable scaffolding. After removing the fur vest, Cyrus performed "Start All Over" atop the scaffolding and continued the remainder of the first segment of the show with "7 Things" and "Kicking and Screaming". Cyrus then executed the show's second segment with a performance of "Bottom of the Ocean", which featured an aquatic theme for the stage and Cyrus donning a silver, flowing evening gown that bared a bejeweled bodysuit underneath. The performance ended with Cyrus diving into the stage, succeeded by a simulation of her underwater on the video screens. Cyrus returned to the stage for the show's third segment atop a tractor-resembling car to perform "Fly on the Wall". During the performance, Cyrus wore an extravagant white dress with a feathered skirt. Backup dancers were flown up into contact with panels in order to resemble a fly on a window; meanwhile, Cyrus was flown across the arena. Once back in the stage, Cyrus and backup dancers performed a brief dance interlude of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (1984). Replacing the feathered bottom with a tutu, Cyrus performed the Hannah Montana-credited song "Let's Get Crazy" and "Hoedown Throwdown". The latter was followed by a video in which will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas spoke about Cyrus, as she left the stage. When the video was completed, the dancers performed a remix of the Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow" (2009).
The show's fourth segment opened with "These Four Walls", in which Cyrus wore a black high-low dress. The song was performed in B-stage with various acoustic musicians. The show proceeded with "When I Look at You", a performance that featured the trailer for Cyrus' film The Last Song (2010) and her performing with a grand piano. It concluded with "Obsessed", which the singer performed atop a simple suspension bridge. She re-entered the stage, clothed by a black tee, red cheetah-patterned hot pants, and black boots, to perform the second Hannah Montana-credited song "Spotlight" and, later, "G.N.O. (Girl's Night Out)", replacing the prior hot pants with black ones and adding a denim vest. She followed with a cover of Arrows' "I Love Rock 'n' Roll", where Cyrus mounted a red Harley-Davidson Dyna Fat Bob FXDF 2010 that was suspended above the stage and traveled in a semi-oval path across the venue. Performances of "Party in the U.S.A.", which made use of a luggage cart, and "Hovering", which featured Cyrus' older brother Trace Cyrus, rounded off the segment. The sixth segment of the show featured Cyrus performing "Simple Song", in which she dressed in a long, white shirt and a black tuxedo, in order to simulate a music conductor. Midway through the performance, Cyrus stepped onto an elevator that rose eight feet from the stage. She exited the stage and returned for the final section. During the encore, Cyrus dressed in a white tank top and shorts, boots, and a metallic vest to perform "See You Again", later removing the vest to conclude the concert with "The Climb". Immediately after finishing, she exited through a passageway in the stage as fireworks were fired above.
Critical reception
Mikael Wood of The Los Angeles Times, in reference to Hannah Montana, commented, "Once again, make-believe Miley was more compelling than the real thing." Wood believed Cyrus possessed charisma, commenting that she portrayed superstar authority, but failed because she was unable or unwilling to "give her fans a deeper idea of who she is and what her music means. For all its eye-popping detail, the concert offered nothing that viewers of her TV show or buyers of her records don't already know about her." Dave Paulson of The Tennessean stated, "Cyrus' spectacle sets her apart from nearly every other A-list act touring today. She's not a renowned vocalist by any stretch, but her show's choreography barely provides a moment for her to catch her breath, and she's still able to deliver." Michael Hann of the United Kingdom-based Guardian was impressed by the concert, praising the setlist and deeming it enjoyable for both children and adults. He continued, "Good as the best songs are, though, they take a backseat to the staging [...] The one misstep is when a trailer for her next movie is shown during a costume change. It's a tacky moment and doesn't reflect the attention to detail that makes the rest of it a laugh-out-loud delight." Lael Loewenstein of Variety magazine said, "Cyrus knows how to deliver the goods without losing her core audience." Loewenstein deemed the concert a mission accomplished because of inevitable hits and Cyrus' charisma, drive, spunk, and a merely-limited vocal range. Erik Ensrst of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel praised the show, stating that it was "a pure visual spectacle", but commented that producers forgot a place for Cyrus' personality.
Jim Harrington of The Oakland Tribune described the show as a human embodiment of Britney Spears' "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" (2002). He presumed that the tour was a conscious transition for fans who did not want Cyrus to separate herself from the Hannah Montana franchise. Kirsty Cameron of The Daily Telegraph wrote, "Despite her relatively young age, Cyrus showed her unfailing capability as performer. With the help of her back-up dancers, Cyrus provided her audience with choreographed set pieces and a different spectacle for each song." James Reed of The Boston Globe noted that the Wonder World Tour presented Cyrus as both a "PG-rated tween pop star and an edgy rocker eager". He stated that although she played both roles well, it was apparent that she was more at ease with the latter. Reed also felt the concert did little to display Cyrus' personality and ability to engage with the audience. "We know she's got impressive vocal chops, but now we need to feel what she's trying to put across in her songs, something beyond the standard 'You guys are awesome!' banter." Scott Iwasaki of Deseret News reviewed a concert in which Cyrus was ill. He mentioned that because of her illness, her voice went flat. Iwasaki also expressed his viewpoint that "if there [were] any worries that Miley Cyrus would become another Britney Spears train wreck, those worries were quelled during Tuesday night's show. She kept the show family-friendly and, although obviously sick, looked like she had a good time." Marlin Levison of The Star Tribune believed the concert lacked much profundity until the last performance.
Commercial performance
The Wonder World Tour was commercially successful and represented stability in the touring industry, despite the financial recession. In North America, the tour sold out twenty-nine out of forty-five concert dates and grossed over US $45.2 million. The tour was able to remain as one of the hottest tours in the United States during its expansion. The Wonder World Tour's entire, ten-date European leg sold out in only ten minutes. In order to meet demand, an eleventh date was added and scheduled for December 29, 2009. In December 2009, the tour ranked atop Billboards Hot Tours, based on the tour's European performances. For the month, box office grossed US $21.9 million for eleven shows in four markets. The five concerts held at The O2 Arena in London produced ticket sales that topped $11 million (£6.8 million). On December 19, 2009, with an audience of 16,196, Cyrus broke the record for the largest attendance at The O2 Arena; a record that surpassed the previously tied records by Beyoncé's I Am... Tour (2009–10), Bon Jovi's Lost Highway Tour (2007–08), and Coldplay's Viva la Vida Tour (2008–10). In total, the tour grossed over $67.1 million, $15 million which were earned by Cyrus.
Bus accident
On November 20, 2009, in its attempt to arrive at the destination of Greensboro, North Carolina, one of the buses for the Wonder World Tour overturned on a Virginian highway. The accident occurred around 8:15 A.M. in Dinwiddie County, about 40 miles south of Richmond, Virginia. The bus ran off the left side of Interstate 85, struck an embankment, rolled onto its right side. An eye witness of the accident explained that the bus appeared to have drifted off the road for a fairly long stretch before tipping over. The bus had nine passengers aboard, including members of the lighting crew, though Cyrus was not on board during the incident. Most of the passengers on the bus suffered only minor injuries and escaped the crashed bus through the broken front windshield. One person, Assistant Stage Manager Martin Zilio, required medical attention and was hospitalized overnight. Zilio recovered from his injuries and was later able to return to work on the tour. One person, bus driver Bill "Uncle Bill" Douglas, a 53-year-old of Austin, Texas, died at the scene of the accident.
In response to the accident, the Cyrus family released a statement via Cyrus' official website; it stated, "We are deeply saddened by the loss of Bill 'Uncle Bill' Douglas. Members of our tour are like members of our family. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family in the midst of this tragedy. He will truly be missed." Omar Abderrahman, the tour's production manager, said, "That was real tough. It's always a tragedy to lose anyone. Uncle Bill was a great driver and a good friend. He’d done a lot of tours with me, and we’re all going to miss him." Although the cause for the accident remains undefined, authorities confirmed the roads were wet from overnight rain. However, CBS News reported that speed and weather were not attributed as factors for the accident's occurrence. Despite the incident, the tour's following concert on November 22, 2009 at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, North Carolina proceeded as scheduled. During the concert, Cyrus dedicated the performance of "The Climb" to Douglas as overhead screens displayed a video commemorating him.
Broadcast and recordings
The concerts held on December 13, 14, 19, 20, and 29, 2009 at The O2 Arena in London were filmed. On May 26, 2010, it was announced that the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) would broadcast an hour-long television special entitled Miley Cyrus: Live from London on June 18, 2010, as part of promotion for Cyrus' third studio album Can't Be Tamed (2010). The special was executively produced by Leticia "Tish" Cyrus, Cyrus' mother, and Jason Morey, Cyrus' manager. It was directed by Russell Thomas and produced by Jim Parsons. Miley Cyrus: Live from London was described by Cyrus' official website with the following statement: "The program captures how Miley, who has grown up in the public eye, has grown as an artist and reveals her natural progression and sophistication." The concert special was watched by over 2.6 million viewers in the United States. Miley Cyrus: Live from Londons airing on ABC was a filtered version of the full-length concert, which became available on the limited, deluxe edition of Can't Be Tamed, released on June 21, 2010. The deluxe edition featured the audio CD, containing the album's music, and a DVD, which contains nineteen live performances and behind-the-scenes footage with Cyrus. "We anticipate an overindexing, if you will, of those who buy the CD/DVD over just the music because it's never been seen before", stated Abbey Konowitch, general manager of Hollywood Records. The performances of "Fly on the Wall" and "Start All Over" were included in Cyrus' second video album Can't Be Tamed: Mini DVD (2010), released only in the United Kingdom and Japan.
Set list
"Breakout"
"Start All Over"
"7 Things"
"Kicking and Screaming"
"Bottom of the Ocean"
"Fly on the Wall"
"Let's Get Crazy"
"Hoedown Throwdown"
"These Four Walls"
"When I Look at You"
"Obsessed"
"Spotlight"
"G.N.O. (Girl's Night Out)"
"I Love Rock 'n' Roll"
"Party in the U.S.A."
"Wake Up America"
"Simple Song"
"See You Again"
Encore
"The Climb"
Notes
During the performance of "7 Things" in Salt Lake City, Cyrus ran off the stage because of illness from strep throat and the necessity of medical attention. Her band and back up singers covered for her, and, fifteen minutes later, Cyrus returned to resume the concert. "Kicking and Screaming" and "Wake Up America" were both omitted from the set list to make up for the loss of time.
Starting with the performance in Milwaukee, "Hovering" replaced "Wake Up America".
Shows
Notes
Personnel
Creative Team
Director, Choreographer – Jamal Sims
Assistant Director – Octavious Terry
Assistant Choreographer – Dondraico Johnson
Assistant – Christopher Scott
Creative Consultant – Jeffery Hornaday
Production Designer ( Lighting, Video, Stage ) – Seán Burke
Wardrobe Designer – Simone Harouche
Screens Content Director – Richard Turner
Screen Content Producer – Justine Catterall
Content Creation & Direction – Ben Ib, Seán Evans
Content Creation & Animation – Colin Walsh
Scenic Consultant – Chris Medvitz
Effects Designer – Scott Christensen
Flying By Foy – Joe Mcgeough
Sound Effects – Clay Janes
Band
Music Direction, Drummer – Stacy Jones
Guitar – Jamie Arentzen, Jaco Caraco
Keyboards – Mike Schmid
Bass – Vashon Johnson
Background vocals – Sara Mann, Carmel Helene
Staff and Crew
Staff & Crew Production Manager – Omar Abderrahman
Tour Manager – Steve Brumbach
Stage Manager – Scott "Striker" Christensen
Production Designer – Seán Burke
FOH – Paul Hager
Monitors – Vish Wadi
Assistant Tour Managers – Lauren Abderrahman, Mick Adkins
Production Coordinator – Jon Bumgarner
Production Assistants – Dillan Esco, Lauren Temple
Stage Manager Assistant – Seth Posner
Security – Sal Pietripaoli, Thomas Rosehaley
Hair Stylist – Scott Cunha
Make Up Artist – Denika Bedrossian
Prop Master – Chris Malta
Props Assistant – Sage Christensen
Backline – John Ciasulli, Benoit Brideau
Dancers – Jennifer Talarico, Christina Glur, Ashlee Nino, Bianca Brewton, Ryan Novak, Mike Dizon, Cory Graves, Christopher "War" Martinez, Nolan Padilla, Jabari Odom
Pro Tools – Clay Janes, Trevor Robinson
Carpenters – Joe Rogers, Carl Ciasulli, Carl Chadwick, Kyle Hoffman
Foy Tech – Patrick Leonard
Lighting Director - Seán Burke
Lighting Crew Chief – Ronald Beal
Lighting Techs – Peter Feher, Thomas Dubas, Robert Simoneaux, Jason Winfree, Allison Triplet
Pyro Techs – Steve Aleff, Brien Capenter, Travis Jameson
Riggers – Art Mcconnell, Seyton Pooley, Jeremy Benauer, Antar Abderrahman, Craig "Miami" Powell, Martin Zilio
Showrig – Sean Conner, Neville Emerton, James Ford, Jeremy Bryden, Charles Veal, Terry Parker
Sound Crew Chief – Tim Holder
Sound Techs – Adam Stuart, Jeffery Lutgen, Nyle Wood, Dustin Ponscheck
Video Director – Rob Darcy
Media Server Programmer & Operator - Richard Turner
Video Techs – Bob Boynton, Adam Sion, Bruce Ramos, Redo Jackson, Tommy Kalogiannis, Joe Wolohan
Wardrobe Supervisor – Jill Focke
Wardrobe – Tiffany Fellar, Zhenni Li-Cagle
Wal-Mart (Sponsor Manager) – Paul Douglas
Wal-Mart Representatives – Joseph Cesaretti, Jerry Farantatos, Nicholas Farantatos, Ryan Norris, Andria Goodrow
Merch (Show Day Team) – Ty Zigler
Merch Assistant (Show Day Team) – Luke Underwood
Merch (Advance Team) – Jon Kohl
Merch Assistant (Advance Team) – Matt Parillo
Bus Drivers – John Fry, Joe Reed, George Hampton, Keith Kaminski, Larry Cyrus, Tracy Morgan, Ronny Knox, Bryan Stevensen, Todd Harrison, Bill Douglas, Matt Selah, Charlie Mcpherson, Grant Whitman, Eric Smith
Lead Truck Driver – James Johnston
Truck Drivers – Larry Hockensmith, Bryan Roddy, Jorge Delgado, Jerry Burnett, Joe Harrison, Jon Mcclain, Danny Martin, Tim Faye, Herchel Cook, Toby Williams, Alex Nino, Jimmy Edelen, Phillip Pedigo, Julie Sword, Leo Johnson, Adam Morris, Neil Lilly, Terry Beebe
Merch Truck Driver – Robert Pinkey
Merch Advance Truck Driver – Hans Smith
Source:
References
External links
Miley Cyrus: Live in London full episode on ABC.go.com
2009 concert tours
Miley Cyrus concert tours | en |
doc-en-15105 | Arturo Toscanini (; ; March 25, 1867January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his eidetic memory. He was at various times the music director of La Scala in Milan and the New York Philharmonic. Later in his career he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–54), and this led to his becoming a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire.
Biography
Early years
Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied the cello. Living conditions at the conservatory were harsh and strict. For example, the menu at the conservatory consisted almost entirely of fish; in his later years, Toscanini steadfastly refused to eat anything that came from the sea.
He joined the orchestra of an opera company, with which he toured South America in 1886. While presenting Aida in Rio de Janeiro on June 25, Leopoldo Miguez, the locally hired conductor, reached the summit of a two-month escalating conflict with the performers due to his rather poor command of the work, to the point that the singers went on strike and forced the company's general manager to seek a substitute conductor. Carlo Superti and Aristide Venturi tried unsuccessfully to finish the work.
In desperation, the singers suggested the name of their assistant Chorus Master, who knew the whole opera from memory. Although he had no conducting experience, Toscanini was eventually persuaded by the musicians to take up the baton at 9:15 pm, and led a performance of the two-and-a-half hour opera, completely from memory. The public was taken by surprise, at first by the youth, charisma and sheer intensity of this unknown conductor, then by his solid musicianship. The result was astounding acclaim. For the rest of that season, Toscanini conducted 18 operas, each one an absolute success. Thus began his career as a conductor, at age 19.
Upon returning to Italy, Toscanini set out on a dual path. He continued to conduct, his first appearance in Italy being at the Teatro Carignano in Turin, on November 4, 1886, in the world premiere of the revised version of Alfredo Catalani's Edmea (it had had its premiere in its original form at La Scala, Milan, on February 27, of that year). This was the beginning of Toscanini's lifelong friendship and championing of Catalani; he even named his first daughter Wally after the heroine of Catalani's opera La Wally. He also returned to his chair in the cello section, and participated as cellist in the world premiere of Verdi's Otello (La Scala, Milan, 1887) under the composer's supervision. Verdi, who habitually complained that conductors never seemed interested in directing his scores the way he had written them, was impressed by reports from Arrigo Boito about Toscanini's ability to interpret his scores. The composer was also impressed when Toscanini consulted him personally about Verdi's Te Deum, suggesting an allargando where it was not set out in the score. Verdi said that he had left it out for fear that "certain interpreters would have exaggerated the marking".
National and international fame
Gradually, Toscanini's reputation as an operatic conductor of unusual authority and skill supplanted his cello career. In the following decade, he consolidated his career in Italy, entrusted with the world premieres of Puccini's La bohème and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci. In 1896, Toscanini conducted his first symphonic concert (in Turin, with works by Schubert, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner). He exhibited a considerable capacity for hard work, conducting 43 concerts in Turin in 1898. By 1898, Toscanini was Principal Conductor at La Scala, where he remained until 1908, returning as Music Director, from 1921 to 1929. During this time he collaborated with Alfredo Antonini – a young pianist and organist in La Scala Orchestra.
In 1920, he brought the La Scala Orchestra to the United States on a concert tour during which he made his first recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company.
In 1908, Toscanini joined the Metropolitan Opera in New York, along with Giulio Gatti-Casazza who left La Scala to assume the
post as the Met's general manager. During Toscanini's seven seasons at the Met (1908–1915), he made several reforms and set many standards in opera production and performance which are still in practice today. At the end of his final season with the Metropolitan Opera in May 1915, Toscanini was set to return to Europe aboard the doomed RMS Lusitania, but instead cut his concert schedule short and left a week early, aboard the Italian liner Duca degli Abruzzi. Toscanini conducted the New York Philharmonic from 1926 until 1936; he toured Europe with the Philharmonic in 1930. At each performance, he and the orchestra were acclaimed by both critics and audiences. Toscanini was the first non-German conductor to appear at Bayreuth (1930–1931), and the New York Philharmonic was the first non-German orchestra to play there. In the 1930s, he conducted at the Salzburg Festival (1934–1937), as well as the 1936 inaugural concert of the Palestine Orchestra (later renamed the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra) in Tel Aviv, later conducting them in Jerusalem, Haifa, Cairo and Alexandria. During his engagement with the New York Philharmonic, his concert master was Hans Lange, the son of the last Master of the Sultan's Music in Istanbul, who, later, became conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the founder of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra as a professional ensemble.
During his career as an opera conductor, Toscanini collaborated with such artists as Enrico Caruso, Feodor Chaliapin, Ezio Pinza, Giovanni Martinelli, Geraldine Farrar and Aureliano Pertile.
Departure from Italy to the United States
In 1919, Toscanini unsuccessfully ran as a Fascist parliamentary candidate in Milan. He had been called "the greatest conductor in the world" by Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Toscanini had already become disillusioned with fascism before the October 1922 March on Rome and repeatedly defied the Italian dictator. He refused to display Mussolini's photograph or conduct the Fascist anthem Giovinezza at La Scala. He raged to a friend, "If I were capable of killing a man, I would kill Mussolini."
At a memorial concert for Italian composer Giuseppe Martucci on May 14, 1931, at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, Toscanini was ordered to begin by playing Giovinezza, but he flatly refused, despite the presence of fascist communications minister Costanzo Ciano in the audience. Afterwards, he was, in his own words, "attacked, injured and repeatedly hit in the face" by a group of Blackshirts. Mussolini, incensed by the conductor's refusal, had his phone tapped, placed him under constant surveillance, and confiscated his passport. His passport was returned only after a world outcry over Toscanini's treatment. Upon the outbreak of World War II, Toscanini left Italy. He returned in 1946 to conduct a concert for the opening of the restored La Scala Opera House, which was heavily damaged by bombing during the war.
NBC Symphony Orchestra
In 1936, Toscanini resigned from the New York Philharmonic, returned to Italy and was considering retirement; David Sarnoff, president of the Radio Corporation of America, proposed creating a symphony orchestra for radio concerts and engaging Toscanini to conduct it. Toscanini was initially uninterested in the proposal, but Sarnoff sent Toscanini's friend Samuel Chotzinoff to visit the conductor in Milan; Chotzinoff was able to persuade the wary Toscanini to accept Sarnoff's offer. Toscanini returned to the United States to conduct his first broadcast concert with the NBC Symphony Orchestra on December 25, 1937, in NBC Studio 8-H in New York City's Rockefeller Center. The infamous dry acoustics of the specially built radio studio gave the orchestra, as heard on early broadcasts and recordings, a harsh, flat quality; some remodeling in 1942, at Leopold Stokowski's insistence, added a bit more reverberation. In 1950, 8-H was converted into a television studio, and the NBC Symphony broadcast concerts were moved to Carnegie Hall. Studio 8-H has been home to NBC's Saturday Night Live since 1975. In January 1980, Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic began a series of special televised NBC concerts called Live From Studio 8H, the first one being a tribute to Toscanini, punctuated by clips from his NBC television concerts.
The NBC broadcasts were initially preserved on large 16-inch transcription discs recorded at 33-1/3 rpm, until NBC began using magnetic tape in 1949. NBC employed special RCA high fidelity microphones for the broadcasts, and they can be seen in some photographs of Toscanini and the orchestra. Some of Toscanini's recording sessions for RCA Victor were mastered on sound film in a process developed around 1930, as detailed by RCA Victor producer Charles O'Connell in his memoirs, On and Off The Record. In addition, hundreds of hours of Toscanini's rehearsals with the NBC Symphony were preserved and are now housed in the Toscanini Legacy archive at the New York Public Library.
Toscanini was sometimes unjustly criticized for neglecting American music, but on November 5, 1938, he conducted the world premieres of two orchestral works by Samuel Barber, Adagio for Strings and Essay for Orchestra. The performance received significant critical acclaim. In 1945, he led the orchestra in recording sessions of the Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofé in Carnegie Hall, attended by Grofé, and An American in Paris by George Gershwin in NBC's Studio 8-H. Both works had earlier been performed on broadcast concerts. He also conducted broadcast performances of Copland's El Salón México; Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with soloists Earl Wild and Benny Goodman and Piano Concerto in F with pianist Oscar Levant; and music by other American composers, including marches of John Philip Sousa. He even wrote his own orchestral arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner, which was incorporated into the NBC Symphony's performances of Verdi's Hymn of the Nations, together with the Soviet Internationale. (Earlier, while music director of the New York Philharmonic, he conducted music by Abram Chasins, Bernard Wagenaar, and Howard Hanson.)
In 1940, Toscanini took the NBC Symphony on a tour of South America, sailing from New York on the ocean liner on May 14. Later that year, Toscanini had a disagreement with NBC management over their use of his musicians in other NBC broadcasts. This, among other reasons, resulted in a letter of resignation which Toscanini wrote on March 10, 1941, to RCA's president David Sarnoff. He stated that he now wished "to withdraw from the militant scene of Art" and thus declined to sign a new contract for the up-coming winter season, but left the door open for an eventual return "if my state of mind, health and rest will be improved enough". Leopold Stokowski was engaged on a three-year contract to conduct the orchestra and served as the NBC Symphony's music director from 1941 until 1944. Toscanini's state of mind soon underwent a change and he returned as Stokowski's co-conductor for the latter's second and third seasons, resuming full control in 1944.
One of the more-remarkable broadcasts was in July 1942, when Toscanini conducted the American premiere of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7. Because of World War II, the score was microfilmed in the Soviet Union and brought by courier to the United States. Stokowski had previously given the US premieres of Shostakovich's First, Third and Sixth Symphonies in Philadelphia, and in December 1941, urged NBC to obtain the score of the Seventh Symphony as he desired to conduct its premiere as well; but Toscanini coveted this for himself and there were a number of remarkable letters between the two conductors (reproduced by Harvey Sachs in his Toscanini biography), before Stokowski agreed to let Toscanini have the privilege of conducting the first performance. Unfortunately for New York listeners, a major thunderstorm virtually obliterated the NBC radio signals there, but the performance was heard elsewhere and preserved on transcription discs. RCA Victor first issued the recording on LP in 1967, and on compact disc in 1991. In Toscanini's later years, the conductor expressed dislike for the work and amazement that he had actually bothered to memorize the music and conduct it.
In the spring of 1950, Toscanini led the NBC Symphony on the orchestra's only extensive
tour of the United Sates. It was during this tour that the well-known photograph of Toscanini riding the ski lift at Sun Valley, Idaho, was taken. Toscanini and the musicians traveled on a special train chartered by NBC.
The NBC Symphony concerts continued in Studio 8-H until 1950. That summer, 8-H was remodeled for television broadcasting, and the concerts were moved briefly to Manhattan Center, then soon thereafter moved again to Carnegie Hall at Toscanini's insistence, where many of the orchestra's recording sessions had been held due to the acrid acoustics of Studio 8-H. Toscanini's final broadcast performance, an all-Wagner program, took place on April 4, 1954, in Carnegie Hall. During this final concert, the aging Toscanini suffered a minor lapse of concentration which became a cause célèbre when broadcast technicians overreacted with panic and took the music off the air for about a minute, substituting Toscanini's recording of the Brahms First Symphony and making the lapse appear to be much worse than it actually was; many people still believe the orchestra stopped playing, but it did not; Toscanini quickly regained his composure and the concert continued.
In June 1954, Toscanini participated in his final RCA Victor sessions, recording re-takes of isolated unsatisfactory passages from his NBC radio broadcasts of the Verdi operas Aida and Un Ballo in Maschera, for release on records. Toscanini was 87 years old when he finally stepped down. After his retirement, NBC disbanded the Symphony in 1954. Most of the orchestra's membership reorganized as the Symphony of the Air, The ensemble appeared in concert and made recordings until its disbandment in 1963. NBC used the "NBC Symphony Orchestra" name once more for its 1963 telecast of Gian Carlo Menotti's Christmas opera for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors.
Toscanini prepared and conducted seven complete operas for NBC radio broadcasts: Fidelio, La bohème, La Traviata, Otello, Aida, Falstaff and Un Ballo in Maschera (the two-part concert performances of Aida were also broadcast on television). All of these performances were eventually released on records and CD by RCA Victor, thus enabling modern listeners an opportunity to hear what an opera conducted by Toscanini sounded like. He also conducted, broadcast and recorded entire acts and various excerpts from several other operas.
Last years
With the help of his son Walter, Toscanini spent his remaining years evaluating and editing tapes and transcriptions of his broadcast performances with the NBC Symphony for possible future release on records. Many of these recordings were eventually issued by RCA Victor.
Sachs and other biographers have documented the numerous conductors, singers, and musicians who visited Toscanini during his retirement. He reportedly enjoyed watching boxing and wrestling matches, as well as comedy programs on television.
Toscanini suffered a stroke on New Year's Day 1957, and he died on January 16, at the age of 89 at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx in New York City. It was his daughter Wally's 57th birthday. His body was returned to Italy and was entombed in the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan. His epitaph is taken from one account of his remarks concluding the 1926 premiere of Puccini's unfinished Turandot: "Qui finisce l'opera, perché a questo punto il maestro è morto" ("Here the opera ends, because at this point the maestro died").
During his funeral service, Leyla Gencer sang an excerpt from Verdi's Requiem.
In his will, he left his baton to his protégée Herva Nelli, who sang in the broadcasts of Otello, Aida, Falstaff, the Verdi Requiem, and Un ballo in maschera.
Toscanini was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987.
Personal life
Toscanini married Carla De Martini on June 21, 1897, when she was not yet 20 years old. Their first child, Walter, was born on March 19, 1898. A daughter, Wally, was born on January 16, 1900. Carla gave birth to another boy, Giorgio, in September 1901, but he died of diphtheria on June 10, 1906, in Buenos Aires. Then, that same year (1906), Carla gave birth to their second daughter, Wanda.
Toscanini worked with many great singers and musicians throughout his career, but few impressed him as much as pianist Vladimir Horowitz. They worked together a number of times and recorded Brahms' second piano concerto and Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto with the NBC Symphony for RCA Victor. Horowitz also became close to Toscanini and his family. In 1933, Wanda Toscanini married Horowitz, with the conductor's blessings and warnings; they remained married until Vladimir Horowitz' death in 1989. It was Wanda's daughter, Sonia, who was once photographed by Life playing with the conductor.
During World War II, Toscanini lived in Wave Hill, a historic home in Riverdale.
Despite the reported infidelities revealed in Toscanini's letters documented by Harvey Sachs (most famously, with soprano Geraldine Farrar), he remained married to Carla until she died on June 23, 1951, and Toscanini remained widowed.
Innovations
At La Scala, which had what was then the most modern stage lighting system installed in 1901 and an orchestral pit installed in 1907, Toscanini pushed through reforms in the performance of opera. He insisted on dimming the house-lights during performances. As his biographer Harvey Sachs wrote: "He believed that a performance could not be artistically successful unless unity of intention was first established among all the components: singers, orchestra, chorus, staging, sets, and costumes."
Toscanini favored the traditional orchestral seating plan with the first violins and cellos on the left, the violas on the near right, and the second violins on the far right.
Premieres
Toscanini conducted the world premieres of many operas, four of which have become part of the standard operatic repertoire: Pagliacci, La bohème, La fanciulla del West and Turandot. He also took an active role in Alfano's completion of Puccini's Turandot. He conducted the first Italian performances of Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Salome, Pelléas et Mélisande, and Euryanthe, as well as the South American premieres of Tristan und Isolde and Madama Butterfly and the North American premieres of Boris Godunov and Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7. He also conducted the world premiere of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.
Operatic premieres
Edmea (revised version) by Alfredo Catalani – Turin, November 4, 1886
Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo – Milan, May 21, 1892
Guglielmo Swarten by Gnaga – Rome, November 15, 1892
Savitri by Natale Canti – Bologna, December 1, 1894
Emma Liona by Antonio Lozzi – Venice, May 24, 1895
La bohème by Giacomo Puccini – Turin, February 1, 1896
Forza d'Amore by Arturo Buzzi-Peccia – Turin, March 6, 1897
La Camargo by Enrico De Leva – Turin, March 2, 1898
Anton by Cesare Galeotii – Milan, December 17, 1900
Zaza by Leoncavallo – Milan, November 10, 1900
Le Maschere by Pietro Mascagni – Milan, January 17, 1901
Mosè by Don Lorenzo Perosi – Milan, November 16, 1901
Germania by Alberto Franchetti – Milan, March 11, 1902
Oceana by Antonio Smareglia – Milan, January 22, 1903
Cassandra by Vittorio Gnecchi – Bologna, December 5, 1905
Gloria by Francesco Cilea – Milan, April 15, 1907
La fanciulla del West by Puccini – New York, December 10, 1910
Madame Sans-Gène by Umberto Giordano – New York, January 25, 1915
Debora e Jaele by Ildebrando Pizzetti – Milan, December 16, 1922
Nerone by Arrigo Boito (completed by Toscanini and Vincenzo Tommasini) – Milan, May 1, 1924
La Cena delle Beffe by Giordano – Milan, December 20, 1924
I Cavalieri di Ekebu by Riccardo Zandonai – Milan, March 7, 1925
Turandot by Puccini – Milan, April 25, 1926 (Note: Toscanini informed the audience that the opera was incomplete due to Puccini's death.)
Fra Gherado by Pizzetti – Milan, May 16, 1928
Il re by Giordano – Milan, January 12, 1929
Orchestral premieres
Adagio for Strings and First Essay for Orchestra by Samuel Barber – NBC Symphony Orchestra, New York, November 5, 1938
Western Suite by Elie Siegmeister – NBC Symphony Orchestra, New York, November 1945.
Recorded legacy
Overview
Toscanini made his first recordings in December 1920 with the La Scala Orchestra in the Trinity Church studio of the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey, and his last with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in June 1954 in Carnegie Hall. His entire catalog of commercial recordings was issued by RCA Victor, save for two recordings for Brunswick in 1926 (his first by the electrical process) with the New York Philharmonic and a series of excellent recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1939 for EMI's His Master's Voice label (issued in the US by RCA Victor, HMV/EMI's American affiliate). Toscanini also conducted the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall for RCA Victor in several recordings in 1929 and 1936. He made a series of long-unissued recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra for RCA Victor in Philadelphia's Academy of Music in 1941 and 1942. All of Toscanini's commercially issued RCA Victor and HMV recordings have been digitally remastered and released on compact disc. There are also recorded concerts with various European orchestras, especially with La Scala Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
In 2012, RCA Red Seal released a new 84 CD boxed set reissue of Toscanini's complete RCA Victor recordings and commercially issued HMV recordings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 2013, EMI Classics issued a 6-CD set containing Toscanini's complete HMV recordings with the BBC Symphony.
Toscanini's dislike of recording was well-known; he especially despised the acoustic method, and for several years he recorded only sporadically as a result. He was fifty-three years old and had been conducting for thirty-four years when he made his first records in 1920, and did not begin recording on a regular basis until 1938, after he became conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra at the age of seventy. As the recording process improved, so did Toscanini's attitude towards making records and he eventually became more interested in preserving his performances for posterity. The majority of Toscanini's recordings were made with the NBC Symphony and cover the bulk of his repertoire. These recordings document the final phase of his 68-year conducting career.
Specialties
Toscanini was especially famous for his performances of Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Debussy and his own compatriots Rossini, Verdi, Boito and Puccini. He made many recordings, especially towards the end of his career, most of which are still in print. In addition, there are many recordings available of his broadcast performances, as well as his remarkable rehearsals with the NBC Symphony.
Charles O'Connell on Toscanini
Charles O'Connell, who produced many of Toscanini's RCA Victor recordings in the 1930s and early 1940s, said that RCA Victor decided to record the NBC Symphony Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, whenever possible, after numerous customer complaints about the flat and dull-sounding early recordings made in Studio 8-H in 1938 and 1939. (Nevertheless, some recording sessions in Studio 8-H persisted as late as June 1950, probably because of alterations to the studio beginning in 1939, including installation of an acoustical shell in 1941 at Leopold Stokowski's insistence, before he would temporarily replace Toscanini as principal conductor in the fall.) O'Connell and others often complained the Maestro was little interested in the details of recorded sound and, as Harvey Sachs wrote, Toscanini was frequently disappointed that the microphones failed to pick up everything he heard as he led the orchestra. O'Connell even complained of Toscanini's failure to cooperate with him during the sessions. Toscanini himself was often disappointed that the 78-rpm discs failed to fully capture all of the instruments in the orchestra or altered their sound to such an extent they became unrecognizable. Those fortunate to attend Toscanini's concerts later said the NBC string section was especially outstanding.
Philadelphia Orchestra recordings
O'Connell also extensively documented RCA's technical problems with the Philadelphia Orchestra recordings of 1941–42, which required extensive electronic editing before they could be issued (well after Toscanini's death, beginning in 1963, with the rest following in 1977). Harvey Sachs also recounts that the masters were damaged during processing, possibly because of the use of somewhat-inferior materials imposed by wartime restrictions. Toscanini had listened to several of the test pressings and had given his approval to some of the recordings, rejected others and was prepared to re-record the unsatisfactory sides. Unfortunately, the 1942-44 Petrillo/AFM recording ban had begun and prevented immediate retakes; by the end of the ban over two years later, the Philadelphia Orchestra's contract with RCA Victor had expired and the orchestra had signed with Columbia Records. RCA Victor apparently was hesitant to promote the orchestra any further, especially since it now recorded for arch-rival, Columbia. RCA Victor had declared the defective masters unsalvageable and Toscanini eventually re-recorded all of the same music with the NBC Symphony. When told that RCA had finally decided to scrap the Philadelphia recordings, Toscanini vehemently exclaimed, "I worked like a dog!". The best sounding of the recordings is the Schubert Symphony No. 9 (The "Great"), which had been successfully restored and issued by RCA Victor in 1963. In 1968, the Philadelphia Orchestra returned to RCA and the company was more favorable toward issuing all of the discs. When RCA finally released a complete edition of the recordings in 1977, Sachs and others suggested that some of the masters may have deteriorated further. As for the historic nature of the recordings, even on the first RCA Victor compact disc issue, released in 1991, some of the sides have considerable surface noise and some distortion, especially during the louder passages. Nevertheless, despite the occasional problems, the sound has been markedly improved on CD, and the entire set is an impressive document of Toscanini's collaboration with the Philadelphia musicians. A second RCA CD reissue from 2006 makes more-effective use of digital editing and processing in an attempt to produce improved sound. Longtime Philadelphia conductor Eugene Ormandy expressed his admiration for what Toscanini achieved with the orchestra.
High fidelity and stereo
In the late 1940s when magnetic tape replaced direct wax disc recording and high fidelity long-playing records were introduced, Toscanini said he was much happier making recordings. Sachs wrote that an Italian journalist, Raffaele Calzini, said Toscanini told him, "My son Walter sent me the test pressing of the [Beethoven] Ninth from America; I want to hear and check how it came out, and possibly to correct it. These long-playing records often make me happy."
NBC recorded all of Toscanini's broadcast performances on 16-inch rpm transcription discs from the start of the Maestro's broadcasts in December 1937, but the infrequent use of higher-fidelity sound film for recording sessions began as early as 1933 with the Philharmonic, and by December 1948, improved high fidelity made its appearance when RCA began using magnetic tape on a regular basis. High fidelity quickly became the norm for the company and the industry. NBC Radio followed, adopting the new technology in the fall of 1949 for its NBC Symphony broadcasts, among others. The first Toscanini recording sessions in Carnegie Hall followed immediately thereafter, although individual takes continued as with 78s, each running only about minutes. RCA continued in this vein with 7-inch tape reels until 1953, when long takes on 10-inch reels were finally implemented for the recording of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. With RCA's experiments in stereo beginning in early 1953 when two-track decks were first delivered by the engineers to the record producers (per Jack Pfeiffer, 11/77 interview, NYC, by CWR), stereo tapes were eventually made of Toscanini's final two broadcast concerts, plus the dress rehearsal for the final broadcast, as documented by Samuel Antek in This Was Toscanini and by Pfeiffer. These followed test sessions in New York's Manhattan Center in December of Delibes with members of the Boston Symphony under Pierre Monteux, in February 1954 with the full Boston Symphony under Charles Munch in Berlioz' Damnation of Faust, and in early March with the NBC Symphony in Manhattan Center again under Stokowski doing the Beethoven Pastoral symphony. For Toscanini, later in March and in early April, the microphones were placed relatively close to the orchestra with limited separation, so the stereo effects were not as dramatic as the commercial "Living Stereo" recordings RCA Victor began to make in March with the Chicago Symphony, just a few weeks earlier. Two days after the final concert, Guido Cantelli took the podium in a hastily organized session to record the Franck Symphony in D minor, for RCA Victor using the same microphone and equipment set-up put in place for the Maestro. The stereo version of the recording was finally released on LP by RCA in 1978 (Warner Music Group now holds the rights and has issued several CD versions). Toscanini's June sessions were recorded monophonically to correct unsatisfactory portions of the broadcast recordings of Aida and Un Ballo in Maschera.
One more example of Toscanini and the NBC Symphony in stereo now also exists in a commercially available edition. This one is of the January 27, 1951, concert devoted to the Verdi Requiem, previously recorded and released in high-fidelity monophonic sound by RCA Victor. Recently a separate NBC tape of the same performance, using a different microphone in a different location, was acquired by Pristine Audio. Using modern digital technology the company constructed a stereophonic version of the performance from the two recordings which it made available in 2009. The company calls this an example of "accidental stereo".
Notable recordings
Among his most critically acclaimed recordings are the following (with the NBC Symphony unless otherwise shown):
(Many of these were never released officially during Toscanini's lifetime)
Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" (1953; also 1939 and 1949 recordings)
Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral" (1952)
Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 (1936, Philharmonic-Symphony of New York)
Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 (1952 and 1938) (only the 1952 recording was released officially)
Beethoven, Missa Solemnis, (1953 and 1940 NBC broadcast) (Only the 1953 version was released officially.)
Berlioz, Roméo et Juliette (1947 NBC broadcast) (only excerpts released during Toscanini's lifetime)
Brahms, Symphony No. 1 (1941)
Brahms, Symphony No. 2 (1952 and February 1948 broadcast)
Brahms, Symphony No. 3 (February 1948 broadcast) (October 1952 concert, Philharmonia Orchestra)
Brahms, Symphony No. 4 (1951 and 1948 broadcast)
Brahms, Four Symphonies, Tragic Overture and Haydn Variations, 1952, Philharmonia Orchestra, London (his only appearances with that orchestra, produced by Walter Legge).
Debussy, La mer (1950 and 1940 broadcast; only the 1950 version was released officially)
Dvořák, Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" (1953)
Mendelssohn, Incidental Music from A Midsummer Night's Dream, (NBC 1947, studio and broadcast versions; Philadelphia 1941); Scherzo, New York Philharmonic, (1929)
Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 4 "Italian", (1954, exists in two versions: one as approved by Toscanini with excerpts from the rehearsals, and the unedited broadcast)
Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 5 "Reformation", (1942 broadcast, 1953 studio recording. The 1953 version is the one officially released.)
Puccini, La bohème (1946 broadcast)
Mozart, Die Zauberflöte (1937, Salzburg Festival; poor sound)
Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition (1938, 1948 and 1953 broadcast, studio recording 1953, all of them in the version orchestrated by Maurice Ravel. The studio recording from January 1953 is the only one to have been officially released.)
Schubert, Symphony No. 9 (Philadelphia, 1941; NBC 1947 and 1953)
Tchaikovsky, Piano concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, Vladimir Horowitz and NBC Symphony, (live recording of April 25, 1943 War Bonds benefit concert at Carnegie Hall, first issued in 1959 on LP by RCA Victor)
Verdi, Requiem (1940 NBC broadcast; and 1951 studio recording)
Verdi, Un ballo in maschera (1954 NBC broadcast)
Verdi, Falstaff (1937, Salzburg Festival with restored sound on the Treasury of Immortal Performances label (Andante version out of print); 1950 NBC broadcast)
Verdi, Rigoletto (Act IV only, 1944; from World War II Red Cross benefit concert held in Madison Square Garden, with the combined forces of the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony; the entire concert, complete with an auctioning of one of Toscanini's batons, was released on an unofficial recording in 1995)
Verdi, Otello (1947 NBC broadcast)
Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1937, Salzburg Festival; original Selenophone sound-on-film recording restored on Treasury of Immortal Performances label (Andante version out of print).)
Rarities
There are many pieces which Toscanini never recorded in the studio; among these, some of the most-interesting-surviving recordings (off-the-air) include:
Meyerbeer Overture to Dinorah (1938, on Testament)
Stravinsky, Suite from Petrushka (ballet) (1940, on RCA Victor)
Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3 "Scottish" (1941, on Testament)
Franz Schubert, Symphony No. 2 (1940, on Testament)
Dmitri Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7 "Leningrad" (1942, on RCA Victor)
Vasily Kalinnikov, Symphony No. 1 (1943, on Testament)
Schumann, Symphony No. 2 (1946, on Testament)
Boito, scenes from Mefistofele and Nerone, La Scala, Milan, 1948 – Boito Memorial Concert.
Mussorgsky, Prelude to Khovanshchina (1953)
Rehearsals and broadcasts
Many hundreds of hours of Toscanini's rehearsals were recorded. Some of these have circulated in limited edition recordings. Many broadcast recordings with orchestras other than the NBC have also survived, including: The New York Philharmonic from 1933 to 1936, 1942, and 1945; The BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1935 to 1939; The Lucerne Festival Orchestra; and broadcasts from the Salzburg Festival in the late 1930s. Documents of Toscanini's guest appearances with the La Scala Orchestra from 1946 until 1952 include a live recording of Verdi's Requiem with the young Renata Tebaldi. Toscanini's ten NBC Symphony telecasts from 1948 until 1952 were preserved in kinescope films of the live broadcasts. These films, issued by RCA on VHS tape and laser disc and on DVD by Testament, provide unique video documentation of the passionate yet restrained podium technique for which he was well known.
Recording guide
A guide to Toscanini's recording career can be found in Mortimer H. Frank's "From the Pit to the Podium: Toscanini in America" in International Classical Record Collector (1998, 15 8–21) and Christopher Dyment's "Toscanini's European Inheritance" in International Classical Record Collector (1998, 15 22–8). Frank and Dyment also discuss Maestro Toscanini's performance history in the 50th anniversary issue of Classic Record Collector (2006, 47) Frank with 'Toscanini – Myth and Reality' (10–14) and Dyment 'A Whirlwind in London' (15–21) This issue also contains interviews with people who performed with Toscanini – Jon Tolansky 'Licia Albanese – Maestro and Me' (22–6) and 'A Mesmerising Beat: John Tolansky talks to some of those who worked with Arturo Toscanini, to discover some of the secrets of his hold over singers, orchestras and audiences.' (34–7). There is also a feature article on Toscanini's interpretation of Brahms's First Symphony – Norman C. Nelson, 'First Among Equals ... Toscanini's interpretation of Brahms's First Symphony in the context of others' (28–33)
Arturo Toscanini Society
In 1969, Clyde J. Key acted on a dream he had of meeting Toscanini by starting the Arturo Toscanini Society to release a number of "unapproved" live performances by Toscanini. As the magazine Time reported, Key scoured the U.S. and Europe for off-the-air transcriptions of Toscanini broadcasts, acquiring almost 5,000 transcriptions (all transferred to tape) of previously unreleased material—a complete catalogue of broadcasts by the Maestro between 1933 and 1954. It included about 50 concerts that were never broadcast, but which were recorded surreptitiously by engineers supposedly testing their equipment.
A private, nonprofit club based in Dumas, Texas, it offered members five or six LPs annually for a $25-a-year membership fee. Key's first package offering included Brahms' German Requiem, Haydn's Symphonies Nos. 88 and 104, and Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben, all NBC Symphony broadcasts dating from the late 1930s or early 1940s. In 1970, the Society releases included Sibelius' Symphony No. 4, Mendelssohn's "Scottish" Symphony, dating from the same NBC period; and a Rossini-Verdi-Puccini LP emanating from the post-War reopening of La Scala on May 11, 1946, with the Maestro conducting. That same year it released a Beethoven bicentennial set that included the 1935 Missa Solemnis with the Philharmonic and LPs of the 1948 televised concert of the ninth symphony taken from an FM radio transcription, complete with Ben Grauer's comments. (In the early 1990s, the kinescopes of these and the other televised concerts were released by RCA with soundtracks dubbed in from the NBC radio transcriptions; in 2006, they were re-released by Testament on DVD.)
Additional releases included a number of Beethoven symphonies recorded with the New York Philharmonic during the 1930s, a performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 27 on February 20, 1936, at which Rudolf Serkin made his New York debut, and a 1940 broadcast version of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.
Because the Arturo Toscanini Society was nonprofit, Key said he believed he had successfully bypassed both copyright restrictions and the maze of contractual ties between RCA and the Maestro's family. RCA's attorneys were soon looking into the matter to see if they agreed. As long as it stayed small, the Society appeared to offer little real competition to RCA. But classical-LP profits were low enough even in 1970, and piracy by fly-by-night firms so prevalent within the industry at that time (an estimated $100 million in tape sales for 1969 alone), that even a benevolent buccaneer outfit like the Arturo Toscanini Society had to be looked at twice before it could be tolerated.
Magazine and newspaper reports subsequently detailed legal action taken against Key and the Society, presumably after some of the LPs began to appear in retail stores. Toscanini fans and record collectors were dismayed because, although Toscanini had not approved the release of these performances in every case, many of them were found to be further proof of the greatness of the Maestro's musical talents. One outstanding example of a remarkable performance not approved by the Maestro was his December 1948 NBC broadcast of Dvořák's Symphonic Variations, released on an LP by the Society. (A kinescope of the same performance, from the television simulcast, has been released on VHS and laser disc by RCA/BMG and on DVD by Testament.) There was speculation that the Toscanini family itself, prodded by his daughter Wanda, had sought to defend the Maestro's original decisions (made mostly during his last years) on what should be released. Walter Toscanini later admitted that his father likely rejected performances that were satisfactory. Whatever the real reasons, the Arturo Toscanini Society was forced to disband and cease releasing any further recordings.
Television
Arturo Toscanini was one of the first conductors to make extended appearances on live television. Between 1948 and 1952, he conducted ten concerts telecast on NBC, including a two-part concert performance of Verdi's complete opera Aida starring Herva Nelli and Richard Tucker, and the first complete telecast of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. All of these were simulcast on radio. These concerts were all shown only once during that four-year span, but they were preserved on kinescopes.
The telecasts began on March 20, 1948, with an all-Wagner program, including the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin; the overture and bacchanale from Tannhäuser; "Forest Murmurs" from Siegfried; "Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey" from Götterdämmerung; and "The Ride of the Valkyries" from Die Walküre. On the very same day that this concert was telecast live, conductor Eugene Ormandy also made his live television concert debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. They performed Weber's overture to Der Freischutz and Rachmaninoff's Symphony no. 1, which had been recently rediscovered. The Ormandy concert was telecast by rival network CBS, but the schedules were arranged so that the two programs would not interfere with one another.
Less than a month after the first Toscanini televised concert, a complete performance by the conductor of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was telecast on April 3, 1948. On November 13, 1948, there was an all-Brahms program, including the Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra in A minor (Mischa Mischakoff, violin; Frank Miller, cello); Liebeslieder-Walzer, Op. 52 (with two pianists and a small chorus); and Hungarian Dance No. 1 in G minor. On December 3, 1948, Toscanini conducted Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor; Dvořák's Symphonic Variations; and Wagner's original overture to Tannhäuser.
There were two Toscanini telecasts in 1949, both devoted to the concert performance of Verdi's Aida from studio 8H. Acts I and II were telecast on March 26 and III and IV on April 2. Portions of the audio were rerecorded in June 1954 for the commercial release on LP records. As the video shows, the soloists were placed close to Toscanini, in front of the orchestra, while the robed members of the Robert Shaw Chorale were on risers behind the orchestra.
There were no Toscanini telecasts in 1950, but they resumed from Carnegie Hall on November 3, 1951, with Weber's overture to Euryanthe and Brahms' Symphony No. 1. On December 29, 1951, there was another all-Wagner program that included the two excerpts from Siegfried and Die Walküre featured on the March 1948 telecast, plus the Prelude to Act II of Lohengrin; the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde; and "Siegfried's Death and Funeral Music" from Götterdämmerung.
On March 15, 1952, Toscanini conducted the Symphonic Interlude from Franck's Rédemption; Sibelius's En saga; Debussy's "Nuages" and "Fêtes" from Nocturnes; and the overture of Rossini's William Tell. The final live Toscanini telecast, on March 22, 1952, included Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, and Respighi's Pines of Rome.
The NBC cameras were often left on Toscanini for extended periods, documenting not only his baton techniques but his deep involvement in the music. At the end of a piece, Toscanini generally nodded rather than bowed and exited the stage quickly. Although NBC continued to broadcast the orchestra on radio until April 1954, telecasts were abandoned after March 1952.
As part of a restoration project initiated by the Toscanini family in the late 1980s, the kinescopes were fully restored and issued by RCA on VHS and laser disc beginning in 1989. The audio portion of the sound was taken, not from the noisy kinescopes, but from 33-1/3 rpm 16-inch transcription disc and high fidelity audio tape recordings made simultaneously by RCA technicians during the televised concerts. The hi-fi audio was synchronized with the kinescope video for the home video release. Original introductions by NBC's longtime announcer Ben Grauer were replaced with new commentary by Martin Bookspan. The entire group of Toscanini videos has since been reissued by Testament on DVD, with further improvements to the sound.
Film
In December 1943, Toscanini made a 31-minute film for the United States Office of War Information called Hymn of the Nations, directed by Alexander Hammid. It was mostly filmed in NBC's Studio 8-H and consists of Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony in a performance of Verdi's overture, La forza del destino and Verdi's cantata Inno delle nazioni (Hymn of the Nations), which contains national anthems of England, France, and Italy (the World War I allied nations), to which Toscanini added the Soviet "Internationale" and "The Star-Spangled Banner". Tenor Jan Peerce and the Westminster Choir performed in the latter work and the film was narrated by Burgess Meredith.
The film was released by RCA/BMG on DVD in 2004. Long before this time, the "Internationale" had been cut from the 1943 film, but the complete recording of Hymn of the Nations including the "Internationale" can be heard on all RCA LP and CD releases of the cantata. Hymn of the Nations was nominated for a 1944 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
Toscanini: The Maestro is a 1985 documentary made for cable television. The film features archival footage of the conductor and interviews with musicians who worked with him. This film was released on VHS and in 2004 on the same DVD which included the film, Hymn of the Nations.
Toscanini is the subject of the 1988 fictionalized biography Il giovane Toscanini (Young Toscanini), starring C. Thomas Howell and Elizabeth Taylor, and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. It received scathing reviews and was never officially released in the United States. The film is a fictional recounting of the events that led up to Toscanini making his conducting debut in Rio de Janeiro in 1886. Although nearly all of the plot is embellished, the events surrounding the sudden and unexpected conducting debut are based on fact.
Acclaim and criticism
Throughout his career, Toscanini was virtually idolized by the critics, as well as by most fellow musicians and the public alike. He enjoyed the kind of consistent critical acclaim during his life that few other musicians have had. He was featured three times on the cover of Time magazine, in 1926, 1934, and again in 1948. In the magazine's history, he is the only conductor to have been so honored.
On March 25, 1989, the United States Postal Service issued a 25 cent postage stamp in his honor. Some online critics such as Peter Gutmann have dismissed much of what was written about Toscanini during his lifetime and for about ten years afterwards as "adoring puffery". Nevertheless, composers and others who worked with Toscanini, including Aaron Copland in an audio interview, readily acknowledged what they felt was his greatness.
Over the past thirty years or so, as a new generation has appeared, an increasing amount of revisionist criticism has been directed at Toscanini. These critics contend that Toscanini was ultimately a detriment to American music rather than an asset because of the tremendous marketing of him by RCA as the greatest conductor of all time and his preference to perform mostly older European music. According to Harvey Sachs, Mortimer Frank, and B. H. Haggin, this criticism can be traced to the lack of focus on Toscanini as a conductor rather than his legacy. Frank, in his 2002 book Toscanini: The NBC Years, rejects this revisionism quite strongly, and cites the author Joseph Horowitz (author of Understanding Toscanini) as perhaps the most extreme of these critics. Frank writes that this revisionism has unfairly influenced younger listeners and critics, who may have not heard as many of Toscanini's performances as older listeners, and as a result, Toscanini's reputation, extraordinarily high in the years that he was active, has suffered a decline. Conversely, Joseph Horowitz contends that those who keep the Toscanini legend alive are members of a "Toscanini cult", an idea not altogether refuted by Frank, but not embraced by him, either.
Some contemporary critics, particularly Virgil Thomson, also took Toscanini to task for not paying enough attention to the "modern repertoire" (i.e., 20th-century composers, of which Thomson was one). It may be speculated, knowing Toscanini's antipathy toward much 20th-century music, that perhaps Thomson had a feeling that the conductor would never have played any of his (Thomson's) music, and that perhaps because of this, Thomson bore a resentment against him. During Toscanini's middle years, however, such now widely accepted composers as Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy, whose music the conductor held in very high regard, were considered to be radical and modern. Toscanini also performed excerpts from Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka, two of Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonies (Nos. 1 and 7), and three of George Gershwin's most famous works, Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and the Piano Concerto in F, though his performances of these last three works have been criticized as not being "jazzy" enough.
Another criticism leveled at Toscanini stems from the constricted sound quality that comes from many of his recordings, notably those made in NBC's Studio 8-H. Studio 8-H was foremost a radio and later a television studio, not a true concert hall. Its dry acoustics lacking in much reverberation, while ideal for broadcasting, were unsuited for symphonic concerts and opera. It is widely held that Toscanini favored it because its close miking enabled listeners to hear every instrumental strand in the orchestra clearly, something in which the conductor strongly believed.
Toscanini has also been criticized for metronomic (rhythmically too rigid) performances:
Toscanini has also been noted for his temper in rehearsals. Apparently less controlled later in life, he was known to vent his anger in front of the orchestra when he thought they were not playing well. One well-known example comes from a recording of a rehearsal for La Traviata in which he yells in frustration when the double basses aren't quite together.
Legacy
Beginning in 1963, NBC Radio broadcast a weekly series of programs entitled Toscanini: The Man Behind The Legend, commemorating Toscanini's years with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The show, hosted by NBC announcer Ben Grauer, who had also hosted many of the original Toscanini broadcasts, featured interviews with members of the conductor's family, as well as musicians of the NBC Symphony, David Sarnoff, and noted classical musicians who had worked with the conductor, such as Giovanni Martinelli. It spotlighted partial or complete rebroadcasts of many of Toscanini's recordings. The program ran for at least three years, and did not feature any of the revisionist commentary about the conductor one finds so often today in magazines such as American Record Guide. The series was rebroadcast by PBS radio in the late 1970s.
In 1986, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts purchased the bulk of Toscanini's papers, scores and sound recordings from his heirs. Named The Toscanini Legacy, this vast collection contains thousands of letters, programs and various documents, over 1,800 scores and more than 400 hours of sound recordings. A finding aid for the scores and sound recordings is available on the library's website. In-house finding aids are available for other parts of the collection.
The library also has many other collections that have Toscanini materials in them, such as the Bruno Walter papers, the Fiorello H. La Guardia papers, and a collection of material from Rose Bampton.
The Maestro Revisited
In 1967, The Bell Telephone Hour telecast a program entitled Toscanini: The Maestro Revisited, written and narrated by New York Times music critic Harold C. Schonberg, and featuring commentary by conductors Eugene Ormandy, George Szell, Erich Leinsdorf and Milton Katims (who had played viola in the NBC Symphony Orchestra). The program also featured clips from two of Toscanini's television concerts, in the days before they were remastered for video and DVD.
Quotations
Of German composer Richard Strauss, whose political stance during World War II was controversial: "To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again."
"The conduct of my life has been, is, and will always be the echo and reflection of my conscience."
"Gentlemen, be democrats in life but aristocrats in art."
Referring to the first movement of the Eroica: "Some say this is Napoleon, some Hitler, some Mussolini. Bah! For me it is simply allegro con brio."
At the point where Puccini left off writing the finale of his unfinished opera, Turandot: "Here Death triumphed over art". (Toscanini then left the opera pit, the lights went up and the audience left in silence.).
While in California in 1940, Toscanini was invited to visit a movie set at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. There he said with tears in his eyes, "I will remember three things in my life: the sunset, the Grand Canyon and Eleanor Powell's dancing."
References
Further reading
Antek, Samuel (author) and Hupka, Robert (photographs), This Was Toscanini, New York: Vanguard Press, 1963 (Essays by an NBC Symphony musician who played under Toscanini; also includes rehearsal photographs from the latter part of Toscanini's career.)
Frank, Mortimer H., Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years, New York: Amadeus Press, 2002. (Complete list and analysis of Toscanini's NBC Symphony performances and recordings.)
Haggin, B. H., Arturo Toscanini: Contemporary Recollections of the Maestro, New York: Da Capo Press, 1989 (A reprint of Conversations with Toscanini and The Toscanini Musicians Knew.)
Horowitz, Joseph, Understanding Toscanini, New York: Knopf, 1987 (contains many inaccuracies corrected by Sachs in Reflections on Toscanini and Frank in Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years)
Marek, George R., Toscanini, New York: Atheneum, 1975. (contains inaccuracies corrected by Sachs in Toscanini)
Marsh, R. C. Toscanini on Records – Part I: High Fidelity, vol. 4, 1954, pp. 55–58
Marsh Part II: vol 4,1955, pp. 75–81
Marsh Part III: vol 4,1955, pp. 83–91
Matthews, Denis, Arturo Toscanini. New York: Hippocrene, 1982. (includes discography)
Meyer, Donald Carl, The NBC Symphony Orchestra. UMI Dissertation Services, 1994.
O'Connell, Charles, The Other Side of the Record. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1947.
Sachs, Harvey, Toscanini, New York: Prima Publishing, 1995. (Reprint of standard and best biography originally published 1978)
Harvey Sachs, Reflections on Toscanini, New York: Prima Publishing, 1993. (Series of essays on various aspects of Toscanini's life and impact)
Harvey Sachs, ed., The Letters of Arturo Toscanini, New York: Knopf, 2003.
Harvey Sachs, Toscanini: Musician of Conscience, New York/London: Liveright, 2017. (Completely new and more detailed biography.)
(contains inaccuracies corrected by Sachs in Toscanini)
Teachout, Terry, Toscanini Lives, Commentary Magazine, July/August 2002
External links
Toscanini and the History of the NBC Symphony plus Live WWII broadcast
NPR special on the selection of the 1938 radio broadcast of Toscanini conducting the NBC Orchestra to the 2005 National Recording Registry
Four lists compiled by Harvey Sachs as addenda to his new biography: chronological list of all performances, alphabetical list by composer of all works in repertoire, select bibliography, and reference notes for the biography itself.
Arturo Toscanini recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
1867 births
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doc-en-14909 | Martello towers, sometimes known simply as Martellos, are small defensive forts that were built across the British Empire during the 19th century, from the time of the French Revolutionary Wars onwards. Most were coastal forts.
They stand up to high (with two floors) and typically had a garrison of one officer and 15–25 men. Their round structure and thick walls of solid masonry made them resistant to cannon fire, while their height made them an ideal platform for a single heavy artillery piece, mounted on the flat roof and able to traverse, and hence fire, over a complete 360° circle. A few towers had moats or other batteries and works attached for extra defence.
The Martello towers were used during the first half of the 19th century, but became obsolete with the introduction of powerful rifled artillery. Many have survived to the present day, often preserved as historic monuments.
In the second half of the 19th century, during the premiership of Lord Palmerston, there was another spate of tower and fort building. The Palmerston Forts are also circular in design and resemble Martello towers.
Origins
Martello towers were inspired by a round fortress, part of a larger Genoese defence system, at Mortella (Myrtle) Point in Corsica. The designer was Giovan Giacomo Paleari Fratino (el Fratin), and the tower was completed in 1565.
Since the 15th century, the Corsicans had built similar towers at strategic points around the island to protect coastal villages and shipping from North African pirates. The towers stood one or two storeys high and measured in diameter, with a single doorway five metres off the ground that one could access only via a ladder that the occupants could remove.
Local villagers paid for the towers and watchmen, known as torregiani, who would signal the approach of unexpected ships by lighting a beacon fire on the tower's roof. The fire would alert the local defence forces to the threat. Although the pirate threat subsequently dwindled, the Genovese built a newer generation of circular towers (the Genoese towers), that warded off later foreign raids.
On 7 February 1794 as part of the siege of Saint-Florent, two British warships, (74 guns) and (32 guns), unsuccessfully attacked the tower at Mortella Point; the tower eventually fell to land-based forces under Sir John Moore after two days of heavy fighting. What helped the British was that the tower's two 18-pounder guns fired seaward, while only the one 6-pounder could fire land-ward.
Vice-Admiral Lord Hood reported:
Late in the previous year, the tower's French defenders had abandoned it after (32 guns) had fired two broadsides at it. The British removed the guns to arm a small vessel; consequently, the French were easily able to dislodge the garrison of Corsican patriots that had replaced them. Still, the British were impressed by the effectiveness of the tower when properly supplied and defended, and copied the design. But, they got the name wrong, misspelling "Mortella" as "Martello" (which means "hammer" in Italian). When the British withdrew from Corsica in 1803, with great difficulty they blew up the tower, leaving it in an unusable state.
Design and construction
The towers were about high with walls about thick. In some towers the rooms were not built in the centre, but more to the landside, leaving the walls thicker on seaside. These were cases where an attack with a cannon from the landside was thought very unlikely. Entry was by ladder to a door about from the base above which was a machicolated (slotted) platform which allowed for downward fire on attackers. The flat roof or terreplein had a high parapet and a raised platform in the centre with a pivot (sometimes a converted cannon) for a cannon that would traverse a 360° arc. (Some towers were designed to carry more than one gun, with each having a more limited arc of fire.) The walls had narrow slits for defensive musket fire.
The interior of a classic British Martello tower consisted of two storeys (sometimes with an additional basement). The ground floor served as the magazine and storerooms, where ammunition, water, stores and provisions were kept. The garrison of 24 men and one officer lived in a casemate on the first floor, which was divided into several rooms and had fireplaces built into the walls for cooking and heating. The officer and men lived in separate rooms of almost equal size. A well or cistern within the fort supplied the garrison with water. An internal drainage system linked to the roof enabled rainwater to refill the cistern.
Martello towers around the world
During the first half of the 19th century, the British government embarked on a large-scale programme of building Martello towers to guard the British and Irish coastlines. Around 140 were built, mostly along the south coast of England. Governments in Australia, Canada, Menorca, South Africa and Sri Lanka also constructed towers. The construction of Martello towers abroad continued until as late as the 1870s but was discontinued after it became clear that they could not withstand the new generation of rifled artillery weapons.
The French built similar towers along their own coastline that they used as platforms for communication by optical telegraphs (using the Chappe Telegraph). The United States government also built a number of Martello towers along the east coast of the US that copied the British design with some modifications.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Great Britain and Ireland were united as a single political entity, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, from 1801 to 1922, spanning the time during which most Martello towers were erected (the initial scheme started under the previous entities of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Kingdom of Ireland). Consequently, the Martello towers of Great Britain and Ireland can be considered to have been part of a single defensive system, designed to protect the coastlines of the two main islands of the British Isles as a whole.
This is most clearly visible on the south and east coasts of England and the east coast of Ireland, where chains of Martello towers were built. Elsewhere in the world, individual Martello towers were erected to provide point defence of strategic locations.
England
Between 1804 and 1812 the British authorities built a chain of towers based on the original Mortella tower to defend the south and east coast of England, Ireland, Jersey and Guernsey to guard against possible invasion from France, then under the rule of Napoleon I. A total of 103 Martello towers were built in England, set at regular intervals along the coast from Seaford, Sussex, to Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Most were constructed under the direction of General William Twiss (1745–1827) and a Captain Ford. The northernmost tower at Aldeburgh is of quatrefoil design, i.e. four in one. and there are two towers at Clacton-on-Sea, one near the town and the other to the west near the local Golf Course (see the pictures on the right).
Included in the scheme were three much larger circular forts or redoubts that were constructed at Harwich, Dymchurch and Eastbourne; they acted as supply depots for the smaller towers as well as being powerful fortifications in their own right.
The effectiveness of Britain's Martello towers was never actually tested in combat against a Napoleonic invasion fleet. They were, however, effective in hindering smuggling. After the threat had passed, the Martello towers in England met a variety of fates. The Coastguard took over many to aid in the fight against smuggling.
Fifteen towers were demolished to enable the re-use of their masonry. The sea washed thirty away and the military destroyed four in experiments to test the effectiveness of the new rifled artillery. During the Second World War, some Martello towers returned to military service as observation platforms and firing platforms for anti-aircraft artillery.
Forty-seven Martello towers have survived in England, a few of which have been restored and transformed into museums (e.g., the towers at St Osyth and Seaford), visitor centres, and galleries (such as Jaywick Martello Tower). Some are privately owned or are private residences, The remainder are derelict. A survey of the East Coast towers in 2007 found of the 17 remaining, most were in a reasonable condition.
Many remaining Martello Towers are now Listed Buildings.
A fuller list of British towers, with photographs, is available.
Scotland
Three Martello towers were built in Scotland, the first on offshore rocks facing the Firth of Forth in 1807–09 to defend Leith Harbour. The Tally Toor now lies land-locked within the eastern breakwater.
Two towers were then built at Hackness and Crockness, near Longhope in Orkney. They were constructed between 1813 and 1815 to guard against the threat of French and American raiders attacking convoys assembling offshore. Historic Scotland now operates the Hackness tower as a museum.
Wales
A small number of Martello towers were also built in Wales, of which few survive. The most notable surviving towers are the two located in Pembroke Dock, which were built between 1848 and 1857 to protect the naval base there. Today, one of the towers is privately owned. The other is located on the town's riverfront, next to the old entrance of the naval base. It was converted into a small museum that focused on the local history of the dock and its defences. The museum has now shut down because of water influx. Recently Pembrokeshire County Council has decided to put the tower up for sale.
Ireland
About fifty Martello towers were built around the Irish coastline, especially along the east coast, from Millmount (Drogheda), to Bray, around Dublin Bay (29 installations) but also around Cork Harbour on the south coast. On the east coast, concentrated mainly around Dublin Bay, twenty-six towers were in line of sight of each other, providing the ability to communicate with one another, or warn of any incoming attacks.
Possibly the most famous is the Martello tower in Sandycove, near Dún Laoghaire, in which James Joyce lived for a few days. Joyce shared the tower with Oliver St. John Gogarty, then a medical student but later to become famous in Irish history as a surgeon, politician and writer. In Ulysses, the fictional character Stephen Dedalus lives in the tower with a medical student, Malachi "Buck" Mulligan, whom Joyce based on Gogarty. The James Joyce Tower, as the tower is now known, houses a museum dedicated to Joyce.
A number of other Martello towers are extant nearby at Bullock Harbour, Dalkey Island, Williamstown, Seapoint and Sandymount and Martello towers feature in many literary works set in Dublin. During the 1980s, Bono owned the Martello tower in Bray, County Wicklow.
Martello Tower South No.7, on Tara Hill, Killiney Bay, is unique, as is its location as an enfilading tower. The Tower is privately owned and has been fully restored, to include a proofed, working King George 3rd Blomefield 18-pounder cannon mounted on a traversing carriage on the crown of the Tower. There is a three-gun battery below the tower, with a glacis. There is also a coach house, artillery store, tool shed, and gunner's cottage, with resident gunner and gunpowder store. The battery, while restored, remains to be armed and the coach house and artillery store still require some restoration.
On the north side of Dublin, one can find Martello towers in Balbriggan, Shenick Island and Red Island at Skerries, Drumanagh Fort, Rush, Tower Bay in Portrane, Donabate, Malahide (Hicks tower), Portmarnock, Ireland's Eye, Howth, and Sutton.
There were seven Martello towers in the vicinity of Cork Harbour of which five are extant. During the 19th century Fenian uprising, the famous Captain Mackey briefly captured and held the Monning Martello tower near Fota Island in Cork Harbour; this tower is believed to have been the only Martello tower ever captured, other than the original. The other Cork Harbour towers are at Ringaskiddy, Haulbowline Island (now part of the Irish Naval Service HQ) and at Belvelly and Rossleague on the Great Island (near Cobh). There are also Martello towers at Little Island and Rostellan, though these are no longer intact.
The British built two Martello towers on the Hook Peninsula to protect the fort near Duncannon, Co. Wexford and the entrance to Waterford Harbour. There is a third tower on the headland at Baginbun Bay in Co. Wexford.
One of the most interesting Martello towers is Meelick Martello Tower at Clonahenoge, County Offaly, guarding the Shannon river crossing to Meelick, County Galway. As this tower supports three guns (unlike the normal Martello tower which is circular on plan and carries only one gun), it is cam shaped on plan. Currently a rampant growth of ivy covers the tower.
The tower at Seapoint, County Dublin, which was the property of Blackrock Urban District Council was formerly the clubhouse of the Seapoint Boat Club from 1916 to 1931, and was subsequently the headquarters of the Genealogical Society of Ireland (GSI). The GSI vacated the tower when it found that the atmosphere was not conducive to the preservation of records.
The restored tower at Ilnacullin is a feature of an island garden in Glengarriff, County Cork. Several other towers are still extant, including one at Rathmullan in County Donegal and two in County Clare on the south coast of Galway Bay in the townlands of Finavarra and Aughinish. There is also an extant Martello tower located near the settlement of Magilligan Point in County Londonderry, built between 1812 and 1871 to defend against a possible French invasion during the Napoleonic Wars; it is now a visitor attraction.
A Martello-like tower was built on Achill Island, according to local memory during the Napoleonic Wars. It is square rather than round, unlike the traditional Martello tower. This tower is known locally as the Gabhla Fhranca ("French Tower") or the Napoleonic Tower. It is marked on an 1838 Ordnance Survey chart and denoted "Signal Tower," suggesting it was used with a series of other stations for communication. The tower's position offers a view of the sea both to the north and south of the island and is therefore well-suited for that purpose. By the 1830s the tower was described as a "watch-house of the coast-guard."
Elsewhere
Antigua and Barbuda
The British originally constructed River Fort Martello Tower in the early 19th century, on the site of a previous fort (presumed to have been built by the Spanish) to guard nearby River Landing, which was Barbuda's original quay. Confusion with the previous fort presumably explains the claims made in Barbudan tourism publications that this was the World's first, and is its oldest, Martello tower, built in 1745. The tower is located on the south coast of the island, a mile or so from River Landing and some seven miles south of the island's main village of Codrington. The tower is 56 feet high, has a raised gun platform and extremely thick walls, but is missing the floors. It the first such tower constructed in the Caribbean, was built in 1745 by Sir William Codrington, and was designed by Commodore Charles Knowles RN, later Admiral Sir Charles Knowles Bt, who was then commanding the Leeward Islands station.
It is attached to what remains of the pre-existing fort. The tower mounted three cannon, and in all the fort mounted ten cannons, none of which remain. The tower is the highest building on Barbuda and serves as a daymark from land or sea. Today the fort is a popular location for weddings.
Australia
The last Martello tower built in the British Empire is said to be that which composes a part of the larger Fort Denison, built on a small island, Pinchgut Island, in Sydney Harbour, New South Wales. It is the only Martello tower to have been built in Australia.
Fortification of the island began in 1841 but was not completed. The construction had begun following an 1839 night-time incursion into Sydney Harbour by two American warships. Concern with the threat of foreign attack had caused the government to review the harbour's inner defences, which were found to be inadequate, and the establishment of a fort was recommended to help protect Sydney Harbour from attack by foreign vessels. Construction resumed in 1855 to provide Sydney with protection against the threat of a naval attack by the Russians during the Crimean War of the 1850s. However, construction was completed only in 1857, well after the war had ended. Fort Denison is well preserved and is now a popular tourist attraction.
Bermuda
There is a Martello tower located at Ferry Reach in St George's Parish. The tower is the third fortification on the site. Major Thomas Blanshard built it of Bermuda limestone between 1822 and 1823. The tower shows the effect of thirty years of evolution on the design of coastal fortifications, between the 1790s and 1822. The earlier Ferry Island Fort nearby had multiple guns arrayed to cover the water westward, while the Martello tower used a single gun with 360° traverse to cover all of the surrounding area.
Like its predecessors in the UK, it has an ovoid footprint with the thickness of its walls ranging from nine to 11 feet. It is surrounded by a dry moat. The tower's purpose was to defend the Ferry Reach Channel and so impede any attack on St. George's Island from the main island of Bermuda, and attacking vessels from slipping through Castle Harbour and the channel between Ferry Reach and Coney Island. The main channel by which vessels reach most parts of Bermuda west of St. George's, including the Royal Naval Dockyard, on Ireland, the Great Sound, Hamilton Harbour, The Flatts, Murray's Anchorage, and other important sites, carries them around the east ends of St. David's and St. George's Islands, where the coastal artillery was always most heavily concentrated. Two more Martello towers to protect the Dockyard were planned, but never built.
The tower was restored in 2008 and an 18-pounder cannon brought from Fort St. Catherine was mounted on top. The site is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday to Friday in the summer and in the winter by appointment only, by calling the Parks Department. It is part of the Bermuda Railway Trail.
British Virgin Islands
When the British rebuilt Fort Recovery on the west end of Tortola they added a Martello tower.
Canada
Nine of the fourteen Martello towers built in Canada still survive. (In addition, the existing fortifications at Fort Henry received two thin towers between 1845 and 1848. However, these are dry ditch defence towers, rather than true Martello towers.) A common characteristic of Canadian Martello towers was removable cone-shaped roofs to protect against snow. Today, many of the restored towers have permanent roof additions – for ease of upkeep, not historical accuracy.
Quebec City originally had four Martello towers. Tower No. 1 stands on the Plains of Abraham, overlooking the St Lawrence River. It has been restored as a museum and can be visited during the summer months. Tower no. 2 stands close nearby and currently hosts an 1812 Murder Mystery Dinner. Tower No. 3 was demolished in 1904 after being used as a residence. The McKenzie Memorial Building of Jeffery Hale Hospital now occupies the site. The fourth surviving Martello Tower in Quebec, No. 4, is located in a residential area on the north side of the Upper City overlooking Lower Town. It is now used as an escape game tourist activity by The National Battlefield Commission.
Halifax, Nova Scotia, had five towers, the oldest of which, the Prince of Wales Tower located in Point Pleasant Park, is the oldest Martello-style tower in North America. It was built in 1796 and was used as a redoubt and a powder magazine. Restored, it is now a National Heritage site. The Duke of York Martello Tower was built in 1798 at York Redoubt. Its lower level still stands, though it has been boarded up for conservation purposes. The Duke of Clarence Martello Tower stood on the Dartmouth shore. Sherbrooke Martello Tower stood opposite York Redoubt on McNabs Island; it was demolished in 1944 and replaced by a concrete lighthouse at Maughers Beach. Another Martello tower stood on Georges Island.
Four Martello towers were built at Kingston, Ontario to defend its harbour and naval shipyards in response to the Oregon Crisis. Their builders intended for the towers to serve as redoubts against marine attacks. Murney Tower and the tower at Point Frederick (at the Royal Military College of Canada) are now museums that are open during the summer.
Fort Frederick has the most elaborate defences as it includes earthen ramparts and a limestone curtain wall. The Shoal Tower, the only tower completely surrounded by water, stands in Kingston's Confederation Basin. Since 2005, it is open to the public as part of Doors Open Ontario for one day only in June each year. Cathcart Tower, the fourth tower, stands unused on Cedar Island near Point Henry.
Carleton Martello Tower, overlooking the harbour of Saint John, New Brunswick, is now a museum and a National Historic Site.
The Canadian Press reported on April 16, 2006 that the Canadian military has named a Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Afghanistan FOB Martello. The logo of the International Hockey Hall of Fame and Museum in Kingston, Ontario, features a Martello tower. Since the amalgamation of the Township of Kingston in 2000, the city's flag has also borne a Martello tower.
Guernsey
There are three similar Martello towers in Guernsey, all built in 1804: Fort Grey, Fort Hommet and Fort Saumarez.
In addition, there are a number of earlier towers in Guernsey (the Guernsey loophole towers), that many people refer to as Martello towers, though they are not Martellos. They were built in the late 18th century, i.e., before the Martellos, and differ from them in a number of ways. One may think of them as precursors, like the Genoese towers they resemble.
Lastly, Bréhon Tower, built in 1856, is an oval tower that represents the final evolution of the Martello tower.
India
Although European in origin, a primitive form of Martello tower had existed in Punjab by the time it was conquered by the East India Company. There is a Martello Tower that the Portuguese built at the southern tip of the island where the Arnala fort stands. The Portuguese are said to have built many of these towers, but Arnala's is the best surviving specimen. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British erected Martello towers at the British Residency in Hyderabad, which were demolished in 1954. An earlier example of such is the one found in Pakur, a town in the state of Jharakhand. This tower was built in 1856 by Sir Martin with view to protect the British Raj from the Santhals. It was an important position for the British forces watching fighting the rebellion of the Santhals. This example is reported to still be in good condition, but decaying due to a lack of maintenance.
Indonesia
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa caused a tsunami that damaged Menara Martello, which the Dutch East India Company built in 1850 on Bidadari Island (Pulau Bidadari), one of the Thousand Islands (Kepulauan Seribu), as part of a set of fortifications that protected the approaches to Batavia. Photos suggest that Martello Menara was not a true Martello, but rather a circular fort. The tower was operational until 1878, when it became a storage site, and was abandoned in 1908. Bidadari Island was also known as Pulau Sakit (Sick Island) as it housed a leper colony during the 17th century. More recently, the island came to be called "Angel Island", to honour the leprosarium that had been there.
Italy
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, during the British "Protectorate" of Sicily after the escape of the Bourbons from Naples, Sicily began to build towers to resist an invasion by Napoleon's armies led by Joachim Murat. The new higher rate of fire of ships' guns led to the choice of the Martello tower as the model.
The Sicilian Martello towers were built around 1810. The estimate rests on the historical context and on the descriptions of the topographer W.H. Smyth, who carried out his research in 1814 and 1815.
Of the seven towers built in Sicily, only four remain. One is the Mazzone Tower (or the British Fort) at Faro Point, Messina. The second is the Magnisi tower at Priolo Gargallo, Syracuse. The Italian Navy used this tower as an observation post during the Second World War. Third is the Cariddi tower at Ganzirri in Messina. Lastly, the fourth tower is situated on a rocky outcrop overlooking the sea from where it can defend the Castello Maniace in Syracuse.
Jamaica
There is a Martello tower located at what was Fort Nugent. In 1709, the Spanish slave agent in Jamaica, James Castillo, built a fort in Harbour View, to guard his home against attack. An English Governor, George Nugent, later strengthened the fort to guard the eastern entrance of the city of Kingston Harbour. The tower was probably built between 1808 and 1811, at a reported cost of £12,000.
Jersey
The British built eight true Martello towers in Jersey, three between 1808 and 1814, and five between 1834 and 1837, one of which, L'Etacq, the German occupation forces destroyed during World War II. The three original towers are:
Icho Tower (1811)
Portelet Tower (1808)
La Tour de Vinde (AKA Noirmont; 1808–1814)
The four surviving, later towers are:
Lewis Tower (AKA St Ouen 1; 1835)
Kempt Tower (AKA St Ouen 2; 1834)
La Collette Tower – Absorbed into the 19th-century artificers' barracks and workshops
Victoria Tower (1837)
In addition, there are a number of towers in Jersey (the Jersey Round Towers), that are frequently referred to as Martello towers, though they are not Martellos. They were built in the late 18th century, i.e., before the Martellos, and differ from them in a number of ways. One may think of them as precursors, like the Genoese towers they resemble.
Malta
The British never built any true Martello Towers in Malta. However, Madliena Tower, which was one of thirteen De Redin towers built in Malta in 1658–1659, began to be used as if it was a Martello Tower and it is sometimes considered as such. Various modifications were made, including mounting a 64-pound rifled muzzle loading (RML) gun on the roof for coastal defence. From the late 19th century onwards it defended part of the Victoria Lines. The tower remained in use until World War II. It still stands today, despite having some minor modifications to its original structure, and it was recently restored.
Mauritius
The British built five Martello Towers between 1832 and 1835 at Grand River North West (2), Black River (2), and Port Louis (1), of which three survive.
One tower, named Cunningham Tower after Lieutenant-Colonel Cunningham, the commanding Royal Engineer, was constructed as part of Fort George at the northern side of the entrance to Port Louis harbour. Two towers were built at Grand River North West; on the south-west side of the river bay the tower was built at Pointe aux Sables whilst Fort Victoria was built covering the north-eastern flank. The remaining two were built to support existing batteries, which were also improved, at the mouth of the Black River; one to the north at La Preneuse and the other south of Grande-Rivière-Noire at Batterie de l'Harmonie. Cunningham Tower disappeared after 1914. The Tower at Fort Victoria was last mentioned in 1880. In 1865, the Mauritius Almanac and Civil Service Register listed "Two Artillery Men, at 1s each per diem", for the towers at Fort George and Grand River. The Friends of the Environment have restored one Martello tower near the La Preneuse public beach, in the Rive Noire/Black River district. The Friends operate it as a museum for visitors. The original entrance to the tower is raised above ground but a new entrance has been constructed at ground level. The other tower in Rive Noire/Black River district [L’Harmonie] still exists but has remained neglected for many years. The other existing tower is at Pointe aux Sables, Grand River North West.
Sierra Leone
A Martello tower was built on Tower Hill at Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1805 to defend the port from attacks by the Temne people. It was significantly modified in 1870 when it was truncated to allow the installation of a water tank to supply Government House (Fort Thornton) with water. The tower has now been incorporated into Sierra Leone's Parliament Buildings.
South Africa
The British built three Martello towers in South Africa, one at Simon's Town Naval base near Cape Town, one at Cape Town, and the third at Fort Beaufort. The tower at Simon's Town and Cape Town were both built in 1795. The tower at Cape Town was demolished over 100 years ago, but the tower at Simon's Town now is sometimes claimed as the oldest Martello in the world. It is arguable as to whether one should properly call it a Martello Tower.
That said, Vice Admiral George Elphinstone, who commanded the force that captured the colony and then served briefly as its governor, had served with the Mediterranean fleet off Corsica in 1794. The British built the tower at Fort Beaufort in 1837, and it is probably the only example of an inland Martello tower.
Spain
During the last period of British occupation (1798–1802) of Menorca, Sir Charles Stuart, the then British governor, ordered Engineer Captain Robert D´Arcy to build some 12 Martello towers along the coast. These, when added to the three Spanish towers already in place, gave Menorca 15 towers.
The British built five towers to protect Mahón: Phillipet on Lazareto Island, Cala Taulera (St. Clair) and Los Freus (Erskine) on the peninsula of La Mola, Stuart's Tower, and a tower on the Punta de Sant Carlos, which the Spanish destroyed when they took regained possession of Menorca. To the northwest of Mahón the British built two more towers, Sa Torreta and Sa Mezquita.
One tower, the Princess Tower, or the Erskine Tower, was incorporated into the Fortress of Isabel II, built between 1850 and 1875. The tower was converted to a powder magazine, which led to its destruction in 1958, when lightning struck the tower. The explosion destroyed the tower, blowing out large sections of its walls.
The British erected Stuart's Tower in 1798 on Turks Hill or Hangman's Hill to the south of the port of Mahón at San Esteban or Saint Stephen's bay on the southern side of the Fortress of San Felipe. In 1756 and again in 1781, batteries on the hill had supported successful attacks on the Fortress. The tower was built both to secure the hill and protect the entrance to the bay. The tower's name was later changed to Torre d´en Penjat, or Hangman's Tower.
To protect the harbor of Fornells, the British built a tower on the rocky headland overlooking the harbor's mouth, and a small tower on the island of Sargantana. They complemented these two towers with two more small towers nearby, one at Sa Nitsa and one at Addaya.
Lastly, the British built one tower at Santandria to protect the old capital of Ciutadella.
In addition to the 12 towers that they built, the British made use of three towers that the Spanish had built earlier. In 1781, Captain Francisco Fernandez de Angulo had built towers south of Port Mahon at Punta Prima and Alcufar, based on the design of those that the Spanish had built in Gando, Gran Canaria, in 1740. At Ciutadella the British used the St. Nicholas's Tower, built in 1690. The Treaty of Amiens returned Menorca to Spain in 1802. Around 1804, the Spanish built a tower at Punta Na Radona to protect the beach at Son Bou, Menorca. In 1808, Captain Lord Cochrane, commanding the 38-gun fifth-rate frigate , sent ashore a landing party that destroyed the unarmed tower. (Frederick Marryat, later a naval captain and author, was serving as a midshipman aboard Imperieuse at the time.)
(This fort has 17 walls)
There are also four towers on the island of Formentera, and one on the nearby island of S'Empalmador ().
Another tower was erected by English troops stationed in the fortress of Cartagena, during the Peninsular War. The tower was erected in the center of 1799 fort, in mount St. Julian, dominating port and mouth. In the summer of 1812 English engineers destroyed the fort and erected a tower.
The later constructions that gave rise to the present fortress of San Julián is still in good condition and is used as a base for telephone aerials & antennas. The interior, which is only accessible to technicians, is supposedly well preserved.
Saint Helena
There is a Martello tower at Saint Helena that was incorporated into High Knoll Fort. The tower was very similar in design to the tower at Simon's Town, with a diameter of about and a height of approximately .
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has one Martello tower, located at Hambantota on the south coast, which was restored in 1999. This tower may have been involved in repelling a French attack though there is nothing more than circumstantial support for the notion. British engineers commenced work on three towers to protect Trincomalee but never completed them.
United States
The United States government built several Martello towers at locations along the eastern seaboard. Two are at Key West, Florida; others were built at the harbours of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Charleston, South Carolina and New York City. Two more Martello towers stood at Tybee Island, Georgia and Bayou Dupre, Louisiana.
Although the Americans copied the design from the towers the British erected in Canada, the American Martello towers differed in some significant respects from the British. The Martello tower built at Tybee Island, Georgia was constructed around 1815 utilizing wood and tabby, a common local building material at the time, instead of the brick or stone that the British towers used. Also unlike the British towers, the Tybee tower featured gun loops on the garrison floor that enabled muskets to be fired through the walls. It was never tested in battle and by the time of the American Civil War was in a state of disrepair. Its unfamiliar design confused local writers, who often said that the Spanish had built the tower when Georgia was Spain's colony.
The Key West towers, though the locals refer to them as Martellos, were square instead of round and had thin walls with long gun loops. In addition, a curtain wall of heavy guns encircled the Key West towers making them, effectively, keeps instead of standalone towers.
A Martello tower figures in the arms of the 41st Infantry Regiment of the United States Army.
List of Martello towers outside Great Britain
See also
Blockhouse
Fortified tower
Scottish Broch
Lists:
List of castles
List of fortifications
List of forts
Notes, citations, and references
Notes
Citations
References
Abram, David (2003) The Rough Guide to Corsica Rough Guides.
Bolton, J., Carey, T., Goodbody, R. & Clabby, G. (2012) The Martello Towers of Dublin. (Dublin: Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown & Fingal County Council).
Brock, B.B. & Brock, B.G. (1976) Historical Simon's Town. (Cape Town).
Ciucevich, Robert A. (2005) Tybee Island: The Long Branch of the South (Arcadia Publishing).
Clements, William H. (1998) Towers of Strength: Story of Martello Towers. (London: Pen & Sword). .
Grimsley, E.J. (1988) The Historical Development of the Martello Tower in the Channel Islands. (Sarnian Publications).
Rooke, Octavius (1857) The Channel islands: pictorial, legendary and descriptive.
Saunders, Ivan J. (1976) "A History of the Martello Towers in the Defence of British North America, 1796–1871", Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History #15, National Historic Parks and Sites Branch, Thorn Press Limited.
Sutcliffe, Sheila (1973) Martello Towers. (Cranbury, NJ: Associated Universities Press).
Vigano, M. (2001) Fort (Fortress Study Group) 29.
External links
Martello Towers Encyclopedia
Martello Tower No.24 in Dymchurch, Kent
YouTube video showing a 3D reconstruction of a Martello tower
English Heritage Report into Martello Towers on the East Coast of England
Location list and explanatory article of most Martello towers in the UK, with pictures
Restoration of No.7 Tower, Killiney Bay
Interactive Google Map of Killiney Bay defences
Carleton Martello Tower National Historic Site of Canada
English Heritage Martello towers definition and description
The Dymchurch tower: English Heritage
James Joyce Tower, Dun Laoghaire
Note on Sir John Moore – pictures of the original tower at Mortella
Mortella Point (Punta Mortella) in Corsica – the ancestor of Martello towers all over the world
Restoration of an Irish Martello tower The Genie Gazette, Newsletter of the Genealogical Society of Ireland: Seapoint Martello Tower, County Dublin
Eastbourne Redoubt Fortress Military Museum
Coastal fortifications
Forts in Key West, Florida
Round towers | en |
doc-en-6583 | "See" is the second episode of the supernatural drama television series, Preacher, which originally aired on AMC in the United States on June 5, 2016. The episode was written by series showrunner Sam Catlin, and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
The episode "See" introduces Graham McTavish and Jackie Earle Haley as the Cowboy and Odin Quincannon, respectively. Jesse (Dominic Cooper) begins struggling with God's silence. Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) opens up to Jesse about his true identity. Government agents Fiore (Tom Brooke) and DeBlanc (Anatol Yusef) sneak into the church for Jesse but Cassidy arrives in time to slaughter the duo. Tulip (Ruth Negga) once again attempts her campaign to recruit Jesse to the dark side. Later, Jesse discovers his new abilities, using them to silence barking dogs and to remove the memory of "the Girl" from the mind of a dangerous pedophile. The episode ends with Jesse using his power to try to revive a girl in a coma.
"See" received praise from critics who noted the outstanding visuals, wonderfully demented set pieces, the fight between Cassidy, Fiore and DeBlanc, and great character moments that provides the series with a thematic throughline beneath the blood and carnage. The episode garnered a Nielsen rating of 0.8 in the 18–49 demographic, translating to 2.08 million viewers.
Plot
Prologue, in Texas
In 1881, a cowboy (Graham McTavish) leaves his home, searching for medicine for his sick daughter. Along the way, he encounters some travelers from St. Louis, who believe the American frontier was a paradise. The patriarch of the family asks "Do you agree," to the cowboy, "That this is paradise?" The mystery cowboy turns toward his host: "It ain't." The next day, he rides past a hanging tree, dead Native Americans hanging scalped from the branches. He rides his horse straight into Ratwater.
Present
In the present day, Jesse (Dominic Cooper) baptizes his congregants, with DeBlanc (Anatol Yusef) and Fiore (Tom Brooke) watching from a distance. Tulip (Ruth Negga) asks for her sins to be washed away and is begrudgingly baptized by Jesse. Tulip, once again, asks Jesse for help with that "job". After the baptisms, the congregants head into the church. Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) asks Emily (Lucy Griffiths) for an advance for "fixing" the air conditioner, which she denies him. Soon after, Emily tells Jesse that Cassidy drank a cask of communion wine and tells him to drop by and visit Tracy Loach (Gianna Lepera). As the Roots are leaving, a parishioner yells out, "Murderer!". Sheriff Hugo Root (W. Earl Brown) confronts them, but his son tells him to let it go. Meanwhile, Linus (Ptolemy Slocum) confesses to Jesse that he has urges to "do stuff" to a girl he drives on his school bus. Jesse tells Linus that though his urges are wrong, he has not acted upon them and shouldn't. Jesse finishes by telling Linus that he must stop sinning.
Odin Quincannon (Jackie Earle Haley) and his employees arrive at an unnamed couple's home. Odin purchases their land and immediately has his men tear their house down. As Quincannon's men leave, Donnie Schenck (Derek Wilson) breaks Clive's nose against the steering wheel for usurping his position as Quincannon's right-hand man during the visit to the couple's home.
Jesse and Emily solicit suggestions at a local grocery store. During this time, Jesse watches as Linus drives by in his school bus. When Jesse returns to his truck, he finds his steering wheel is missing. Tulip then drives by and mocks Jesse for choosing a dull life. Jesse eventually makes his way back to his church, where he's greeted by Cassidy. Jesse learns from Cassidy that the latter is a vampire. When Cassidy takes a sip from his flask, Jesse asks what it is, and Cassidy states that it is too potent for a human, listing its improbable ingredients. Doubting that Cassidy is a vampire and the potency of the drink, Jesse drains the flask and passes out instantly.
At a hotel, DeBlanc and Fiore leave with a large trunk. During this time, Cassidy takes a cruise in Jesse's truck. DeBlanc and Fiore arrive at All Saints Congregational church, standing over Jesse. The two attempt a mysterious ritual to remove the Genesis with a lullaby, but fail. The two then attempt to release Genesis, revving up a chainsaw to cut Jesse open. Before the two can dismember Jesse, Cassidy returns and calls them out, believing they are vampire-hunters searching for him. Cassidy is shot by DeBlanc, bites into DeBlanc's leg and in the ensuing struggle, bludgeons DeBlanc to death with a large bible. Cassidy then fights Fiore for the chainsaw managing to cut off Fiore's right arm, using Fiore's chainsaw wielding left arm. The chainsaw, with Fiore's right arm still attached, proceeds to move toward an unconscious Jesse, but Cassidy manages to stop it in time.
Meanwhile, at Toadvine Whorehouse, Tulip beats a group of Quincannon Meat & Power employees in a game of poker. After defeating the men, she receives a call from a man called "Danny", telling him she will see him soon. Back at All Saints Congregational, Cassidy cleans up the blood and has DeBlanc and Fiore stuffed in their large trunk. As Cassidy brings them outside to bury them, he's upset as the sun had already risen.
Jesse wakes up shortly after, and Emily brings him a casserole to deliver to Terri Loach when he visits Terri (Bonita Friedericy) and her comatose daughter. As he tries to comfort Terri, she tells Jesse that his words can't heal Tracy. Upon leaving the Loach residence, Jesse sees Linus drive by again. Later while driving at night, Jesse stops to investigate a car seat in the middle of the road, and is stealthily tasered. He awakens to find himself bound in chains, in a room at Toadvine. Soon after, Tulip, revealing herself as Jesse's captor, tells him she won't take the job without him and that she'll keep nagging him until he agrees. Tulip then tells Jesse he will eventually revert to his old ways. When Jesse asks to be released, Tulip comments that there is nothing keeping him there.
Jesse returns to his church to cut the chains off with a saw. He's interrupted by a guilt-ridden Eugene (Ian Colletti), asking to be baptized again. However, Jesse tells him it is too late. Eugene believes that no matter how hard he tries, he will always be the same. Inspired by Eugene's words, Jesse goes to Linus' home, enters uninvited and searches for Linus. Finding him in the bathroom, Jesse confronts Linus quietly, preparing the tub as a baptismal and neatly hanging up his jacket and rolling up his sleeve. All the while, Linus rants penitently. Using the Word of God while "baptizing" Linus again, Jesse commands Linus to "Forget the Girl." Linus' memory of the girl is wiped clean and he's seemingly left confused as to why Jesse's there in the first place.
Cassidy buries the trunk of body parts on a hilltop that features the same tree seen outside of Ratwater in the flashback. The next day, however, the mystery men are back in their motel room being interrogated by Sheriff Root. When asked by the Sheriff who they are, they merely answer, "We’re from the Government".
The following day, after witnessing his new powers in action, Jesse visits the Loach residence and tells Tracy that he's going to try something new and tells her to open her eyes.
Production
Writing
"See" was written by the series showrunner Sam Catlin. Some elements in the episode are based on the first seven issues in the Preacher series, Gone to Texas, as well as Ancient History, of which the script was first read and reviewed by Preacher co-creator Garth Ennis, as with the other episodes of the series. The elements adapt, or at least provides allusions to The Saint of Killers from Preacher Special: Saint of Killers, in the form of an opening flashback sequence.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Catlin acknowledges that it was only a question of when and how the Saint would appear in the series. He describes the Saint "[setting] up an interesting dilemma", as the first season of Preacher is built around the town of Annville. Caitlin remarks that, "The Saint is unstoppable. It works in the comic because Jesse's on the move, but in this, he's not. He's easily found. We didn't want to put off the Saint of Killers, so we felt this was an opportunity to introduce him and have him be in the world and be a character, and in its own way, tell the audience that he's coming and he's connected to everything that's happening and he's connected to the town."
Catlin also spoke of Ennis allowing his team and he to construct the standalone chapters involving the Cowboy, while noting that the end of season one would center on the connection between the Cowboy and Jesse, with Catlin concluding, "The story of the cowboy will continue to be told over the first season. Then, by the end of the first season, you'll realize why he has everything in the world to do with Jesse." Ennis spoke about his feelings of seeing this character come alive on screen: "That was great. That's where I thought, 'Holy f—ing shit, it's a Western.' That goes back to the very beginning, to me being three or four and watching Westerns with my grandfather. It was stunning."
Joseph Gilgun, who has portrays Cassidy, spoke with AMC about Catlin's reference to The Big Lebowski (1998) in "See", with Gilgun expressing, "The first time [Catlin] wrote that, I was furious because I adore The Big Lebowski. I love the Dude and I'd do anything to be him. The story is a fantastic one and we both love the Coen Brothers. He knows that I love The Big Lebowski and he tried to wind me up when he wrote that line."
Casting
The episode saw the addition of several new actors to the cast such as Jackie Earle Haley. Earle Haley was cast in the role of Odin Quincannon, whom had previously been referenced in the pilot of the series, and had been described as "[...] a small, decrepit man with the unscrupulous iron will necessary to be the most powerful man in Annville County, Texas. The chief employer in town, Odin runs Quincannon Meat & Power, a 125-year-old family-operated slaughterhouse business." Actor Graham McTavish, known for appearing in The Hobbit Trilogy, was cast as the Cowboy.
Actress Bonita Friedericy, known for her role as Diane Beckman in Chuck, was cast as Terri Loach, with Gianna LePera playing daughter Tracy Loach. "See" shows the introduction of Ptolemy Slocum appearing as Linus, a sick man with an unhealthy interest in a little girl he sees every day in his school bus. The episode also marks the second appearance of the Canadian actor Ricky Mabe as Miles Person.
Derek Wilson was promoted to series regular, with the decision to elevate the role to regular from recurring being made after the pilot was shot.
Filming
"See" was directed by series creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Rogen and Goldberg also directed the previous episode for Preacher, "Pilot", their directorial debut for the series. Prior to directing for the series, Rogen and Goldberg's directorial filmography included; This Is the End (2013) and The Interview (2014). Shortly after the airing of "See", AMC released a featurette titled "Making Of Preacher: See" which went into greater detail about the creation of the episode, while going behind the scenes of the church chainsaw fight between Cassidy, Fiore and DeBlanc. The episode title is an allusion to the last scene of the episode.
Tom Brooke, who was cast to play Fiore, spoke with Entertainment Weekly in an interview about the filming the fight scene between Cassidy, "I ended up wanting to do a good job for the fight guys, because we spent about a week working on it, and they were so good and helpful that it became really important to make sure that we did right by them. There was so much blood that the carpet tiles in the motel room were sticking to the bottom of our feet. They were soaked in blood." Fellow co-star Anatol Yusef, who portrays DeBlanc, spoke of preparation required to film scene, to which he stated, "It was kind of mad, really, because it was one of the first things, if not the first thing we did. We had a very special stunt team who were very, very helpful. And so we rehearsed it pretty solidly and on the day it went really well. It was an interesting way to establish our characters, our relationship, what we were trying to do. In a way, the actor experience and the character experience was quite similar in trying to get this job done, and, before we were allowed to do it, in walks Cassidy. And Hell ensues."
Yusef noted, about the church scene in an interview with Variety, that the challenge of the scene wasn't remembering the choreography but instead attempting to establish the characters within those scenes, as "[...] it was the first scene we shot after the pilot. These scenes are a bit like a dance and we all dance quite well. On a film, a fight that size, you might have three days but we did it in one. We were really well supported by the stunt team."
Gilgun, spoke of the fun and element of challenge to involve one's self in the choreography and shooting aspects of the fights, specifically that of the episode "See" to which Gilgun stated, "You read it and you’re just like, “For f—k's sake! That's so incredibly awesome that I get to do that!” I remember [Goldberg] literally taking me by the collar of my neck and telling me about the chainsaw fight. That's the kind of excitement you're dealing with. You pick up a brand new script and you can't read it fast enough." He continued: "We're a real family and it’s organic and very honest on set. When we film the scenes where there’s a lot of work involved, everybody knows what to do and is patient with each other. It's always good fun [...] There's a lot to do and we're all friends. I truly believe that the attitude we have towards filming rubs off and you see that."
Rogen and Goldberg film the entire first half of the sequence — from Jesse breaking into the house, to wandering around the various rooms, to punching out Linus, to engaging in a tense stand-off as the tub fills with water — in one continuous take.
Cinematography
"See" was shot with the Sony F55 in 4K raw in a distributed aspect ratio of 16:9 by John Grillo. For lenses, Grillo uses Panavision PVintage primes, which are rehoused Ultra Speeds from the 1970s. He also uses Angenieux Optimo lenses, including the 15-40, 28-76, 45-120 and 24-290mm. Grillo used a Tiffen Black Pro-Mist 1/8 filter in front of the lens, as according to Grillo it "helps take some of the edge off the sharpness of the sensor. We have some characters who wear prosthetics, so it definitely helps."
Cinematographer Grillo took inspiration from the "Pilot", and admired Bill Pope's ability to balance all the comic book elements of Preacher, which includes dark comedy, gore, horror and drama, though Grillo remarked that one of his biggest challenges was the visual translation of the graphic novel format into that of the language of cinema, to which he stated, "Usually graphic novels have a loose way of framing. There are rectangles, squares, ovals, and sometimes no frame at all. One shot that’s extreme wide can lead to another shot that is an extreme close-up on someone's eyes. The graphic novel can pretty much do anything that it puts its mind to, while filmmakers have certain limitations that we have to adhere to: time, budget, schedules, etc. It’s been a challenge to visually amp it up, but I think we’ve been quite successful."
Grillo spoke of another challenge in the form of sans luxury of preparation, as had very little time to prep episodes with each director, which included, Michael Slovis, Craig Zisk, Scott Winant, Guillermo Navarro, Michael Morris and Kate Dennis, including a short shooting schedule of eight days per show. To deal with his challenge Grillo typically sent gaffer Jim Tynes and key grip Pat Daily on tech scouts; with both men coming back with photos, videos and drawings of each location for him, with Grillo acknowledging that working in this format makes him "very nimble".
For the American frontier, particularly the prologue in "See", Grillo looked at a number of Andrew Wyeth paintings for their "simplicity, framing and textures." He also looked at films such as Terrence Malick's Badlands (1973) and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men (2007) for their "Americana-influenced" feel. According to Grillo, Albuquerque has a certain color and quality of light that consists mainly of browns, yellows and golden sunlight, which he also incorporates into the look.
He stated that there haven't been many lighting challenges, although Albuquerque's clouds are "very choppy" and can go from shadow to sunlight in a single take. For interiors, Grillo often uses a particular photograph by Robert Frank: "It's shot in a dive bar where there are really hot windows and it's kind of smoky". Grillo continues by adding, "There's smoke, sunlight coming through the windows, and you can see the shafts of light and it’s kind of burned out and [contrasty]. Sometimes an image stays in your head and you apply it to your work. There are two or three sets that I light this way."
Grillo concluded by praising the cast of Preacher, with him remarking, "My job has been to give them a platform to do their thing, in terms of framing, composition and lighting. We have a fantastic cast and they're just so interesting to look at. The actors have found each character so perfectly that it's fun coming to set every day."
Visual effects
Kevin Lingenfelser was the overall Visual Effects Supervisor and visual effects company FuseFX worked on most of the visual effects for "See".
Marketing
Prior to Preachers public release, AMC provided the first four episodes of the season 1 for review, only available to critics. On May 23, 2016, AMC released a new teaser trailer for the upcoming episode "See", as well as the official synopsis of the episode. AMC debuted a sneak-peak on June 2, 2016, featuring new footage from "See" with Ruth Negga, as well an exclusive clip from "See," with Fiore and DeBlanc performing a strange ritual over Jesse's unconscious body. On June 4, 2016, the third new footage from "See" featuring Negga and Dominic Cooper, respectively, debuted on Twitter.
On June 6, 2016, Entertainment Weeklys weekly column, The Entertainment Geekly, began podcasting Preacher to which issues regarding problems, spoilers, as well as the addressing the complete run of the original Preacher were discussed. Following the premiere of "See", Entertainment Weekly unveiled the main title sequence of Preacher, featuring music from composer Dave Porter, which made its debut in the opening credits of the third episode, "The Possibilities". Prior to the premiere of "See", Funko had unveiled three more upcoming range of Pop! Television Vinyl figures which include Jesse Custer, Tulip O'Hare and Cassidy, set to be released in the summer of 2016.
On June 6, 2016, Preachers "See" became available to stream or purchase on AMC.com's website, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Xbox Video and more.
Themes
Free will is an underlying theme in "See". Cooper acknowledges that Jesse makes all the wrong choices with this newly bequeathed gift, while commenting on the "despicable" manner in which he handles this power. Though Cooper makes mention of the storyline in which Custer asks Tracy to open her eyes:
[...] It's so true, it wouldn't do anything. It wouldn't change her ... He misses the fundamental points, and you can't force someone to make those decisions. They have to learn them, they have to discover those things for themselves. That's why he has no idea. He's completely useless, ultimately. You [still] can't help but appreciate what he's trying to do ... You're filming this stuff so quickly, it's on from one scene to the next, and you forget there were moments like that, where he's completely missed the whole point of everything.
Cooper, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, insisted that Jesse hasn't completely lost his faith, more so struggling with it, as he stated, "[...] struggling with it because of this silence ... he's deafened by the silence because he's made the decision to leave the life of crime he'd been leading and to remember what was important to him, and the memory of his father. But he's getting no direction, he's getting no help. He's feeling alone. There's all of these wonderful bits of writing that keep coming about. “We are who we are.” And it's like, “Actually, maybe I am just this piece of crap who can't change."
Reception
Ratings
"See" was viewed by 2.08 million American households on its initial viewing, which was slightly less than the previous two weeks' rating of 2.38 million viewers for the episode "Pilot", airing opposite Game of Thrones and without the benefit of Fear the Walking Dead as a lead-in. The episode also acquired a 0.8 rating in the 18–49 demographic, making it the fifth-highest rated show on cable television of the night.
Critical reception
"See" garnered praise from critics, who noted the outstanding visuals, wonderfully demented set pieces, the fight between Cassidy, Fiore and DeBlanc, and great character moments that provides the series with a thematic throughline beneath all the blood and carnage. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 95% of critics gave the episode a "Certified Fresh" rating, based on 21 reviews with an average score of 7.5/10, with the site's consensus stating, ""See" asks more questions than it answers, but the cavalcade of entertaining characters and innovative sequences is enough to keep us coming back."
Emma Fraser of The Observer spoke most highly of Ruth Negga's performance, with her writing: "'[...] Preacher is only two episodes in, but it is clear that Tulip is a TV style icon we need [...] There's toughness to her demeanor and yet her costuming has flashes of femininity mixed in with leather, jeans and boots", while fellow journalist Sean T Collins highly praised the performance from Joseph Gilgun, by stating, "This dude is a fucking supernova in this role, for real. He has the rangy physicality of a guy who’s had just enough to drink to give his every movement a tiny bit more momentum than required to get the job done — he always seems to be leaning, slouching, lunging, weaving, careening, even when sitting still." Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode an 'A-' grade, and described it as "the start of something new".
Eric Goldman of IGN evaluated "See" as a "[...] very good hour of TV, with a lot of entertaining moments". He added that: "The second episode of Preacher slowed down from the pilot, as we got some interesting new elements but left things murky as far as what’s going on with the overall mysterious situation and where things are headed." Goldman praised the opening flashback sequence, Cassidy vs. Fiore and DeBlanc, and Jesse's confrontation with Linus. Evan Valentine of Collider scored "See" four stars, writing, "The series continues to be extremely solid and the cast is firing on all cylinders fairly early, which is a feat unto itself."
James White of Empire reacted positively to "See", remarking that "[...] Catlin, [Rogen] and [Goldberg] are going to take their inspiration from Breaking Bad [...], and let things unfold at a leisurely pace", and exclaiming that the "fight between Cassidy, Fiore and DeBlanc. Blood, guts, and a scene that wouldn't look out of place in an Evil Dead movie." Scott Meslow of Vulture, gave "See" a four-star rating and said: "We're just two episodes into Preacher, but the series has already raised difficult, fascinating questions. Jesse is certainly grappling with these questions as he tests the limits of his powers." Mark Rozeman wrote, in his review for Paste, "“See” proves to be every bit as rich as the pilot entry, with outstanding visuals, wonderfully demented set pieces and great character moments that provides the series with a thematic throughline beneath all the blood and carnage." Kimber Myers of The Playlist highly praised "See", commenting that it "successfully whipsaws between contemplating the nature of good and evil and covering the screen with blood while referencing Scarface."
JoBlos Paul Shirey appraised the episode as "a great follow-up to the pilot, which builds on every character and their place in the show. It's a slower burn, but not without progress, especially in highlighting Jesse’s internal struggle with being a good Preacher, while fighting his true nature to accomplish said good in more violent means." Shirey spoke highly of Coopers's performance whilst commending "[...] the interactions between Jesse and Cassidy". PopMatters writer Sean Fennell felt that "See" was an extension of the pilot; "[...] striking the same impressive balance of unadulterated rambunctiousness and clever, well-placed exposition, making its ongoing world-building process feel effortless." Jeff Stone of Indiewire gave the episode a 'B+' grade, and stated, "Preacher is playing a long game when it comes to getting to the comic’s central premise, but the major players are being set up."
Cory Barker of TV Guide summarized that, "[...] it managed to produce such a fun, propulsive second episode without the normal post-pilot drop-off is both an achievement in of itself, and a great sign for the rest of Season 1 and beyond." Barker also commented that: "the church sequence ran the gamut from intensely violent to surprisingly comedic, striking a tonal balance that simply shouldn't work... But does." Alan Sepinwall of HitFix praised the Rogen and Goldberg's presentation of their "gorgeous bit of imagery", such as, "Jesse baptizing his flock, the camera remaining lock still as the house Odin Quincannon has just bought is bulldozed; Cassidy staring wistfully out at the open plains when he realizes it's now too light for him to safely go outside, and every beat of bonkers, intricately-choreographed action when Cassidy takes on the two mystery men at the church."
References
External links
at AMC.com
2016 American television episodes
Preacher (TV series) episodes | en |
doc-en-8397 | WGN (720 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Chicago, Illinois, with studios on the 18th floor of 303 East Wacker Drive in the Chicago Loop. WGN has a news/talk format, along with broadcasts of Chicago Blackhawks hockey and Northwestern University football and basketball.
WGN is the only radio station owned by Nexstar Media Group, which primarily owns television stations. From 1924 to 2014, WGN was owned by Tribune Media, which also owned the Chicago Tribune, whose "World's Greatest Newspaper" slogan served as the basis for the WGN call sign.
WGN is a clear channel, Class A station, broadcasting at the maximum power of 50,000 watts, and using a non-directional antenna. The transmitter is on Martingdale Road in Elk Grove Village, near Interstate 290. During daytime hours, near-perfect ground conductivity gives WGN at least secondary coverage to almost two-thirds of Illinois (as far south as Springfield) as well as large slices of Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Iowa. During nighttime skywave hours, with a good radio, it is audible over most of the Eastern and Central United States and Central Canada. The station also streams its programming on its website and supplies podcasts as well.
WGN is responsible for the activation of the Chicago metropolitan area Emergency Alert System when hazardous weather alerts, disaster area declarations, and child abductions are issued.
Programming
News and talk
Weekdays begin with a news and information show hosted by Bob Sirott. Midday programs from John Williams and Anna Davlantes are heard. In PM drive time, the station features "Chicago’s Afternoon News with Steve Bertrand." In the evening, shows from John Records Landecker, Rollye James and Dave Plier are heard. Weekends feature shows on home repair, law, pets, the outdoors and travel. John Williams hosts a Sunday evening adult standards show and Dave Plier plays the music of Frank Sinatra on Sunday mornings.
WGN is one of the few talk stations in the U.S. to broadcast all local talk shows during the day and evening. But in recent years, it has added some nationally syndicated talk shows at night. Monday through Saturday, it carries "The Jim Bonhannon Show" from Westwood One during late night hours. On Sundays it runs "Live on Sunday Night, It's Bill Cunningham" from WLW Cincinnati. WGN was the longtime Chicago outlet for Paul Harvey from 1951 until his death on February 28, 2009. Harvey's news and commentary shows were carried nationally by ABC Radio, although he was based in Chicago and the programs aired locally on WGN.
WGN airs local news headlines, weather forecasts supplied by WGN-TV, traffic reports and sports headlines every half-hour on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and every hour nights and weekends. Also during weekdays, the radio station simulcasts the 4:00 a.m. hour of the WGN Morning News.
Sports teams
WGN serves as the flagship radio outlet for Chicago Blackhawks hockey and Northwestern University football and men's basketball. For the 2018 and 2019 seasons, WGN was the flagship station for the Major League Baseball Chicago White Sox. WLS 890 AM previously had the contract to carry the White Sox, but its parent company, Cumulus Media, ran into financial problems and gave up the rights to White Sox broadcasts. With the 2020 season, WMVP 1000 AM became the White Sox flagship radio outlet.
WGN had a long association with the MLB Chicago Cubs from 1925 to 2014, the last 56 years of that period as the exclusive flagship station. Following the 2014 season, Cubs radio broadcasts moved to 780 AM WBBM.
Shortly after Nexstar took control of WGN, the station began to broadcast national NFL play-by-play on Sunday afternoons from Compass Media Networks.
The station used ABC News Radio for national news reports as the network's Chicago affiliate. On September 1, 2020, WGN Radio dropped ABC News Radio in favor of being an "audio news hub" for the co-owned NewsNation TV channel.
History
WDAP
The station first signed on the air on May 19, 1922. It was granted the sequentially issued call letters WDAP to Mid West Radio Central, Inc. in Chicago. The corporation was headed by Thorne Donnelley and Elliott Jenkins.
WDAP was originally located at the Wrigley Building. The studios were moved to the Drake Hotel the following July. In mid-1923 ownership was transferred to the Board of Trade, and the next year the Whitestone Company, managers of the Drake Hotel, took control.
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune purchased WDAP, and on June 1, 1924, renamed it WGN. The call letters came from "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan used since 1911.
This was the second Tribune-affiliated radio station to hold the WGN call letters. The original WGN began operating on the evening of March 29, 1924, after the newspaper took over programming of the former WJAZ. The WGN call sign had been assigned to a Great Lakes vessel, SS Carl D. Bradley. However the ship's skipper (and namesake) agreed to relinquish it in order to free it for adoption by the newspaper. The ship's call letters were changed to KFSI.
Shows and programming
Early programming was noted for its creativity and innovation. It included live music, political debates, comedy routines, and some of radio's first sporting event broadcasts, including the 1924 Indianapolis 500, and a live broadcast of the 1925 Scopes Trial from Dayton, Tennessee. In 1926, WGN broadcast Sam & Henry, a daily serial with comic elements created and performed by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll. After a dispute with the station in 1927, Gosden and Correll took the program's concept and announcer Bill Hay across town to WMAQ and created the first syndicated radio show, Amos 'n' Andy.
By the fall of 1928, the owners of the Tribune company and its sister publication, Liberty magazine, controlled two stations in addition to WGN in the Chicago area: WLIB and WTAS. On September 1, 1928 the Federal Radio Commission (FRC) ruled that this was two stations too many, and ordered that their operations be consolidated. WTAS was deleted, and the other two stations were merged with a dual call letter assignment of WGN-WLIB, although the latter call sign would be rarely if ever used. On May 15, 1933, after the FRC requested that stations using only one of their assigned call letters drop those that were no longer in regular use, WLIB was eliminated and the station reverted to just WGN.
CBS and Mutual Broadcasting System
On November 1, 1931, WGN's network affiliation changed from NBC to CBS as a result of NBC's purchase of a half-interest in WMAQ, which then became Chicago's NBC station. During this period, Count Cutelli installed one of the most advanced sound effects system to date into the WGN studios, the same system used in Hollywood films.
In 1934, WGN became a founding member of the Mutual Broadcasting System. WGN joined with WOR New York City, WXYZ Detroit and WLW Cincinnati to form the network, a rival to NBC and CBS. During the "Golden Age of Radio," Mutual was the home of The Lone Ranger, The Adventures of Superman and The Shadow. For many years, it was a national broadcaster for Major League Baseball, the National Football League and Notre Dame football.
In the fall of 1937, WGN was one of several Chicago radio stations to donate airtime to Chicago Public Schools for a pioneering program in which the school district provided elementary school students with distance education amid a polio outbreak-related school closure.
In 1939, Carole Mathews, the "Miss Chicago" of 1938, launched a WGN radio program entitled Breakfast Time with Carole Mathews. It ended later that year when she left the station for an acting career in Hollywood.
FM and TV stations
In 1941, WGN began operating an FM station. Most of its short history, WGNB was found at 98.7 MHz, which today is the frequency for classical music station WFMT. WGNB's schedule was primarily simulcast from the AM station with some FM-only music shows broadcast as well. But with few people owning FM radio receivers in that era, management did not think WGNB would become profitable. It decided to take the FM station off the air and hand in the license in the early 1950s.
In 1946, the Tribune Company applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build a television station. On April 5, 1948, WGN-TV Channel 9 signed on the air. Because CBS, NBC and ABC had their own network stations in Chicago, WGN-TV became an independent television station, responsible for most of its own programming or airing old movies and syndicated TV shows.
Change in ownership
After McCormick died from pneumonia-related complications on April 1, 1955, ownership of WGN-AM-TV, the Chicago Tribune and the News Syndicate Company properties transferred to the McCormick-Patterson Trust, assigned to the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation in the names of the non-familial heirs of McCormick (whose two marriages never produced any children) and familial heirs of Patterson. (The trust was dissolved in January 1975, with a majority of the trust's former beneficiaries, including descendants of the McCormick and Patterson families, owning stock in the restructured Tribune Company entity – which assumed oversight of all properties previously overseen by the trust – afterward.)
In November 1958, WGN became the first radio station in Chicago to broadcast helicopter traffic reports featuring Police Officer Leonard Baldy. Flying Officer Baldy was killed in a helicopter crash, while on duty, on May 2, 1960. Eleven years later, WGN suffered another helicopter-related tragedy when Flying Officer Irv Hayden and his pilot were killed on August 10, 1971, after their helicopter struck a utility pole in the Chicago suburb of Bellwood.
Move to North Center
In 1961, the WGN radio and television stations moved to a studio facility on West Bradley Place in the North Center neighborhood, a move undertaken for civil defense concerns in order to provide the station a safe base to broadcast in case of a hostile attack targeting downtown Chicago. WGN radio moved back to North Michigan Avenue in 1986, relocating its operations to a studio in the Pioneer Court extension (WGN-TV remained at the Bradley Place facility, where that station operates to this day). The former WGN annex onto Tribune Tower is now used as a retail space containing Dylan's Candy Bar.
Over many decades, WGN was a "full service" radio station. The station played small amounts of music during the mornings and afternoon hours, moderate amounts of music on weekends during the day, aired midday and evening talk shows, and sports among other features. The station aired middle of the road (MOR) music until the 1970s, when its switched to more of an adult contemporary-type sound. Music programming was phased out during the 1980s, and by 1990, the station's lineup mainly consisted of talk shows.
Past personalities
Some former well-known personalities on WGN include longtime morning hosts Wally Phillips, Bob Collins, Spike O'Dell, Paul Harvey and Roy Leonard. Orion Samuelson had been the station's farm reporter since 1960, he retired in 2020. Late-night hosts over the years have included Franklyn MacCormack, Ed "Chicago Eddie" Schwartz, Don Vogel and the husband-and-wife team of Steve King and Johnnie Putman.
The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign holds the WGN Radio Station Studio Orchestra Music Library and Records, 1925–1956, which consists of scripts, programs, production notes, correspondence, music library rental records, sheet music manuscripts, and music scores with annotations that document the WGN Studio Symphonic Orchestra from 1925 to 1956.
Controversial management
WGN continues to recover from the controversial rule of former Tribune head Randy Michaels, who resigned under pressure in 2010 amid allegations of inappropriate and sexist behavior in the workplace, and former WGN Program Director Kevin Metheny. Industry observers described Metheny's tenure as one that nearly destroyed the venerable WGN, with staff moves that included replacing a popular evening host with radio rookie Jim Laski, a Chicago politician and convicted felon.
Metheny and Laski were both fired weeks after Michaels was forced to resign by a Tribune Board of Directors facing spiraling losses at the hands of Michaels' management style. In 2005, Tom Langmyer was appointed as vice president and general manager of WGN.
On April 30, 2008, the station entered into a three-year deal to broadcast Chicago Blackhawks hockey games through the 2010–2011 season.
New ownership
On April 1, 2007, Chicago-based real estate investor Sam Zell announced plans to purchase the Tribune Company in an $8.2-billion leveraged buyout that gave Tribune employees stock and effective ownership of the company. The transaction and concurring privatization of the company was completed upon termination of Tribune stock at the close of trading on December 20, 2007. Prior to the sale's closure, WGN-TV was one of two commercial television stations in the Chicago market, not counting network-owned stations, to have never been involved in an ownership transaction (along with WCIU-TV, which has been owned by Weigel Broadcasting since its February 1964 sign-on). On December 8, 2008, Tribune filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing a debt load of around $13 billion – making it the largest media bankruptcy in American corporate history – that it accrued from the Zell buyout and related privatization costs as well as a sharp downturn in revenue from newspaper advertising. After a protracted four-year process, on December 31, 2012, Tribune formally exited from bankruptcy under the control of its senior debt holders, Oaktree Capital Management, JPMorgan Chase and Angelo, Gordon & Co..
On July 10, 2013, Tribune announced plans to split off its broadcasting and newspaper interests into two separate companies. WGN-TV and WGN Radio would remain with the original entity, which was renamed Tribune Media and was restructured to focus on the company's broadcasting, digital and real estate properties; the newspaper division – which, in addition to the Chicago Tribune, included publications such as the Los Angeles Times, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Baltimore Sun – was spun off into the standalone entity Tribune Publishing (known as Tronc from June 2016 until the company reverted to its former name in October 2018). The split was completed on August 4, 2014, ending the Tribunes joint ownership with WGN-TV and WGN Radio after 66 and 94 years, respectively. However, WGN-TV continues to maintain a content partnership with the Tribune.
Programming changes
In October 2008, WGN-TV began to provide forecasts for WGN radio (prepared by Tom Skilling and other members of the sister television station's weather staff), after it ended a ten-year forecast partnership with The Weather Channel. That year, morning host Spike O'Dell retired from radio; WGN then moved the station's midday host at the time, John Williams to the morning slot. Williams' former timeslot, 1-4 p.m. was left vacant for several months, with the station's other radio hosts filling in on a rotating basis – including weekend host Nick Digilio, and Bob Sirott, who formerly hosted "The Noon Show" on the same station, in addition to a weekend program that is pre-recorded with his wife, Marianne Murciano (Sirott was also a prominent news anchor at NBC owned-and-operated station WMAQ-TV, channel 5, and later at Fox-owned WFLD, channel 32).
In March 2009, longtime Chicago radio host Garry Meier was given an audition for the 1-4 p.m. slot. Meier hosted four shows, which is believed to have caused a surge in interest among younger people, who traditionally rarely listened to WGN. Chicago media message boards exploded with traffic and posts, many excited over a possible permanent Meier presence on the station. After the four Meier auditions, Jerry Springer was given a four-day stint as "guest host", followed by Rita Cosby a few weeks later. On April 2, 2009, WGN announced that Meier would join the station full-time as host of a program in the 1-4 p.m. slot (airing most weekdays when the program is not pre-empted by Chicago Cubs broadcasts); his first official show occurred that same day. On May 22, 2009, WGN announced the cancellation of The Kathy and Judy Show effective after that day's broadcast. The final show was largely a retrospective of the program's 20 years on WGN radio; this occurred shortly after the replacement of much of the station's weekend lineup.
On June 15, 2009, the station announced that Greg Jarrett would become its new morning-drive host starting on June 22, with John Williams being shifted to Kathy and Judys former late morning timeslot. In June 2010, WGN announced the hiring of longtime Cincinnati-based host Mike McConnell from WLW for the late morning (8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.) slot, shifting Williams back to his original midday time slot (now from 12:30-3:00 p.m.) on August 9, 2010.
Coinciding with the hire of Jarrett, WGN dropped its "News/Talk 720" brand and began identifying itself simply as "Chicago's WGN Radio 720." This new identity was implemented in all station promos, and used by all on-air talent. On August 13, 2010, the station's branding changed again to "News 720 WGN." In November, after the firing of controversial program director Kevin Metheny, Tom Langmyer instructed staff to identify the station as "720 WGN." Weekend hosts Jerry Agar and the "News Junkie" Sean Wasson left the station, in a shift towards more general and less controversial talk programming.
On December 2, 2011, WGN announced that Jonathon Brandmeier was named the new morning drive time host, effective December 9. With Brandmeier's addition to WGN radio's weekday lineup, the morning drive timeslot shifted to 5:30-9 a.m., followed by Mike McConnell from 9 a.m.-12 p.m., John Williams from 12-3 p.m., and Garry Meier from 3-7 p.m. News anchor Steve Bertrand moved to mornings with Brandmeier and Jim Gudas shifted to the midday/afternoon slot. Former morning host Greg Jarrett was released from the station. Overnight hosts Steve King and Johnnie Putman left WGN on December 9 after a week-long series of live "Farewell Celebration" shows. Bill Leff took over the midnight to 5:30 a.m. slot on December 12. 2011.
In 2012, John Williams announced his departure from the station upon the December 31 expiration of his contract (leaving on December 21, 2012), in order to concentrate exclusively on his program on WCCO in Minneapolis instead of splitting time between stations. In October 2012, then back into Tribune Tower in October 2012. On December 17, 2012, WGN Radio executives announced that the long-running program "Extension 720", hosted by Dr. Milton J. Rosenberg, would end its 39-year run three days later on December 20.
In June 2013, Tribune Broadcasting CEO Larry Wert hired Jimmy DeCastro as WGN radio's president and general manager. In addition, Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano's program moved to the weekday lineup and Steve Cochran was announced to be returning to WGN. The changes are an attempt to shift WGN closer to the programming format it had prior to Kevin Metheney and Randy Michaels' tenure with WGN and Tribune, while placing more emphasis on new media; this included the move of Mike McConnell's program to the station's secondary Internet radio station WGN Plus (formerly WGN-2) until the remainder of his contract was bought out around October 10, 2013, the move of Jonathon Brandmeier's morning show to a new station branded "The G" (which has since launched as an additional Internet-only station but is planned to eventually move to an FM frequency to be acquired by Tribune) in favor of Cochran, and increased synergy with WGN-TV (including the replacement of WGN radio's "Voice of Chicago" slogan with WGN-TV's longtime slogan, "Chicago's Very Own"). On May 21, WGN Radio announced that their schedule would change again effective May 27, 2014, which includes the return of John Williams to the airwaves of WGN Radio that he will pretty much do the show live from Minneapolis, while still doing his afternoon show on WCCO 830. His time slot announced was 10:00 A.M to 12:00 P.M, which moved then mid morning hosts Bill Leff and Wendy Snyder to the afternoon drive from 3:00-7:00 p.m. Garry Meier would be moved to WGN.FM, with Steve Cochran's morning show getting expended by 1 hour, and Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano still having their 12:00-3:00 p.m. show.
Chicago Cubs leave WGN
On June 5, 2014, the Chicago Cubs announced that radio broadcasts of its games would move from WGN to WBBM for the 2015 season under a seven-year deal. The deal ends the team's 90-year association with WGN.
On November 20, 2014, Chicago media blogger Robert Feder reported that WGN management planned to end operation of both WGWG-LP and internet station WGN.FM on December 31, 2014. Jonathan Brandmeier and Garry Meier were released and their programs canceled immediately, with repeat shows airing through the end of December. While Brandmeier was reportedly not under contract with Tribune Media at the time of his release, Meier's contract with Tribune continued through September 2015.
On December 31, 2014, the WGN.FM website was redirected to the WGN Plus website, where Tribune offers various digital media content. WGWG-LP began an interim simulcast of WGN radio at 10 p.m. on December 31, 2014. The Chicago Tribune reported that the simulcast would continue through January 2015, after which Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting was expected to assume operation of 87.7 FM; Weigel eventually began programming what is now WRME-LD on February 23, 2015.
On October 5, 2016, Jimmy DeCastro announced he was planning to leave WGN Radio at the end of the month. He told Robert Feder "I've done everything I can to respect and build on the legacy of this amazing place, and I believe I accomplished everything I set out to do." At the time of his leaving he had spent 3 years serving as the President and General Manager of WGN Radio. His last day at WGN Radio was October 31. He said he plans to focus on The Content Factory, his Evanston-based national syndication and new media company, and to expand into the area of sports representation. Larry Wert has said he has not decided on naming a successor to DeCastro, so for now the sales and programming operations will report directly to Wert.
On July 25, 2017, it was reported that WGN would leave Tribune Tower in 2018 and relocate to a new studio and office across the Chicago River. The station began using its new studios on Wacker Drive for news reports in May 2018, with the final show originating from Tribune Tower on June 18, 2018.
Chicago White Sox broadcasts
On February 14, 2018, WGN was named the new flagship station of the Chicago White Sox, who were left without a station after Cumulus Media voided their contract to air on WLS as part of their Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The agreement is for three years.
Tribune Media was acquired by Nexstar Media Group for $4.1 billion in September 2019, marking the first time since 1924 that WGN radio would not be owned by any iteration of the Tribune Company. The sale made WGN the only radio property owned by Nexstar, which primarily owns television stations; in an interview with Crain's Chicago Business in December 2018, shortly after the deal was announced, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook stated that he "doesn’t have an allergic reaction to radio" and that there were no immediate plans to sell WGN radio, adding that he did not expect Nexstar to acquire additional radio stations.
Under Nexstar, several changes were made to the station's lineup, management, and branding. Bob Sirott was hired to replace Steve Cochran during morning drive hours, longtime mid-day duo Bill Leff and Wendy Snyder were ousted, and at a later date, evening host Justin Kaufmann was let go as well. These staffing changes were made over the course of months after Sean Compton began to oversee radio operations as Nexstar's Executive Vice President of WGN America, WGN Radio & Director of Content Acquisition. Morning producer Mary Boyle was appointed General Manager of the station after former Station Manager Todd Manley was terminated on the first day of Nextar's takeover. Veteran Chicago News Anchor Bill Kurtis was replaced in his role as voiceover talent by New York based voiceover artist Steve Kamer. Similarly, new radio jingles from JAM Creative Productions and sister company PAMS of Dallas were introduced to the station. Cuts from JAM jingle packages Top News, Talktrax, Talking Points, Non-Stop Power, You'll Like Our Style, Follow The Leader, Variety Pack, Nothing But Class, and Ameritalk are regularly featured in station identifications, sounders, and promotions. Nexstar also dropped their affiliation with ABC News Radio and instead is supplying national news updates for WGN America's national newscast, NewsNation with WGN newscasters and audio from Nexstar-owned television stations.
Notable former on-air personalities
Wally Phillips
Jonathon Brandmeier
Garry Meier
Marianne Murciano
Dave Hoekstra – Nocturnal Journal host
Ji Suk Yi – Monday-Friday Evening Host host now Digital anchor for NewsNation (WGN America).
Roe Conn – afternoon drive host
Nick Digilio – Former Sunday-Thursday overnight host 11PM-4AM and fill-in
References
External links
WGN Radio – official website
WGN Radio schedule
(covering 1927-1981)
GN
Nexstar Media Group
News and talk radio stations in the United States
Radio stations established in 1922
Chicago Stags
Mutual Broadcasting System
Clear-channel radio stations | en |
doc-en-5045 | Air is a Japanese adult visual novel developed by Key and released on September 8, 2000, for Windows PCs. Key later released versions of Air without the erotic content, and the game was ported to the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita and Nintendo Switch. The story follows the life of Yukito Kunisaki, a traveling showman searching for the "girl in the sky". He arrives in a quiet, seaside town where he meets three girls, one of whom is the key to the end of his journey.
The gameplay in Air follows a branching plot line which offers pre-determined scenarios with courses of interaction, and focuses on the appeal of the three female main characters by the player character. The game is divided into three segments—Dream, Summer, and Air—which serve as different phases in the overall story. The title of the game reflects the prominent themes of the air, skies, and use of wings throughout gameplay. The game ranked as the best-selling PC game sold in Japan for the time of its release, and charted in the national top 50 several more times afterwards. Air has sold over 300,000 units across several platforms.
Following the game's release, Air made several transitions into other media. A manga by Yukimaru Katsura was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's Comptiq, and later published into two volumes. Comic anthologies and art books were also published, as were audio dramas and several albums of music. Kyoto Animation produced a 13-episode anime television series and a two-episode anime mini-series in 2005, and Toei Animation produced an anime film in 2005. The anime adaptations are licensed by Funimation who released them in North America.
Gameplay
Air is a romance visual novel in which the player assumes the role of three characters. Much of its gameplay is spent on reading the story's narrative and dialogue. Air follows a branching plot line with multiple endings, and depending on the decisions that the player makes during the game, the plot will progress in a specific direction. With the consumer ports, if an undesired choice was selected, there would be an option to rewind the story to correct the mistake. However, if the player reaches a bad end to a storyline, the player does not have this option and must reload the game at the last saved point.
There are five main plot lines that the player will have the chance to experience, three which are initially available and two more which can later become available. Throughout gameplay, the player is given multiple options to choose from, and text progression pauses at these points until a choice is made. To view all plot lines in their entirety, the player will have to replay the game multiple times and choose different choices to further the plot to an alternate direction.
When first playing the game, the player assumes the role of Yukito Kunisaki and the scenarios for the three heroines are available in what is called the Dream story arc. After the plot lines for these three heroines have been completed, an additional scenario called Summer is made available where the player assumes the role of Ryūya. Summer is a linear novel arc in which no choices are presented to the player. Upon the completion of the Summer route, another scenario called Air is made available, which serves as the true ending to the story. In Air, the player assumes the role of a crow named Sora. In the adult versions of the game, there are scenes with sexual CGs depicting Yukito and a given heroine having sex. Later, Key released versions of Air without the erotic content.
Plot
Setting and themes
There are important locations featured in Air that are based on places in the city Kami in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Air is set in the Kasumi district of Kami; during the course of the series' creation, Kasumi was an individual town that has since merged with two others to form the city of Kami. Many of the locales in Air, such as the seawall, the train station, the shrine, and the school are based on real places. As Air is set in the middle of summer, the season offers bright, sunny skies for the town during the day. In the manga adaptation, the town is described as a "quiet town with few people...with nothing but beaches and countryside." Scenario assistant Yūichi Suzumoto has commented that his impression of Air is similar to that of a folk song due to the rural setting and heartwarming story progression.
As indicated by the title, air, skies and wings are important themes: Yukito is searching for the "girl in the sky", and Misuzu believes that her other self is flying in the sky above her. Other characters show a similar relationship to the sky, such as Minagi who is a member of the astronomy club, and Michiru who has a fondness for bubbles that float in the air. Kano wants wings to fly, and Kanna already has them. Misuzu names a crow she finds —Japanese for "sky". Another major theme is the maternal bond, as the four heroines' stories, as well as Yukito's, revolve around their mothers, either biological or adoptive. Main scenario writer Jun Maeda commented that he prefers to include mothers in games if given the choice between only including a mother or a father, as is what happened with Air, though he backs this up by noting that in bishōjo games, women are the main focus anyway. Complicated relationships involving family members and friends play a key part throughout the story. One of the sub-themes in the story is magic. Uraha, Yukito's mother, and Yukito himself have the ability to use magic, though Yukito is the least skilled among them. Kano was told by her sister that when she grows up and takes off her yellow ribbon, she will gain the power to do magic. However, the problems of parents leaving their offspring and poverty are displayed realistically.
Characters
The player assumes the role of Yukito Kunisaki, the protagonist of Air. He lives a poor life going from town to town with little money, trying to make a living off his show with a puppet. By being an adolescent or young adult, Yukito sometimes acts childishly if provoked. Yukito tends to be helpful to those around him while trying to earn any money at the same time, and does his best to look after Misuzu in the Dream arc. Misuzu Kamio, the main heroine of Air, makes Yukito quite mistrustful at first by being too friendly, but eventually earns his affection. She is a cheerful but introverted, slightly clumsy and simplistic high school girl, and often utters the pseudo-dinosauric phrase gao when she feels troubled, a habit she retained from childhood. Misuzu has a great love of dinosaurs, finding the story of their glory and extinction "romantic". As a child, her fascination with dinosaurs stemmed from thinking chicks would grow into them; her adoptive mother Haruko Kamio thinks it is ridiculous.
The second of the three heroines Yukito meets after Misuzu is Kano Kirishima, a girl attending the same school as Misuzu. She is usually energetic, playful, and tells jokes by saying nonsensical things. Kano is friends with a strange stray dog named Potato that follows her around and is able to communicate in his strange manner of speech. Kano still believes in things she was told by her older sister Hijiri as a child as a way of coping with her past. The third and final heroine Yukito meets is a girl in Misuzu's class at school named Minagi Tohno, a top student in the school who is introverted as well. Until she met Yukito, her only friend was Michiru, with whom she often blows bubbles at the abandoned train station in town.
Story
Air story revolves around three girls whose lives are connected to the same man. In the first story arc, Dream, Yukito Kunisaki is a showman traveling across Japan, continuing his late mother's search for the "girl in the sky". The story opens on Monday, July 17, 2000, when Yukito comes across a small seaside town where the story takes place. On his first day in town, Yukito tries to earn money by putting on a mysterious puppet show where he manipulates a doll magically without strings for a small audience of kids passing by. Yukito is unsuccessful in gaining the children's favor, and the children leave without paying him for his performance. That night, Yukito sleeps on the town's seawall by the beach. Yukito collapses from heat stroke the next day and is taken to a nearby fisherman's guild; after he awakens, they feed him, and give him some very large rice balls to take with him as he is leaving. As he sits on the town's seawall eating one of the rice balls, he notices a young girl beside him who introduces herself as Misuzu Kamio—a sincere yet clumsy girl who is eager to become friends with him. Misuzu persistently attempts to play with him, while Yukito tries to refuse her efforts. He eventually follows her home lured by the chance to eat. After Haruko, Misuzu's aunt and foster mother, is persuaded, it is decided that he will stay with them for the time being.
The next day, Yukito meets a girl named Kano Kirishima and a stray dog named Potato; Kano and Misuzu go to the same high school. Later that day, Yukito meets a third girl named Minagi Tohno, Misuzu's classmate, and her friend Michiru. Like Misuzu, both Kano and Minagi have strange personalities connected with mysterious pasts. Before long, a legend of "one thousand summers" begins to unfold where the mysteries of the past are framed primarily by the relationship between Yukito and Misuzu. The cursed "girl in the sky" Yukito has been searching for turns out to be Misuzu. By the time he figures this out, she has already grown to love him and has passed her 15th birthday. Once these things have come to pass, the "girl in the sky" is cursed to die. The remainder of this arc is dedicated to Yukito's attempt to save her, trying to effectively break the curse.
The next arc, Summer, reveals events that occurred in the summer of one thousand years before the Dream arc, taking place in the Heian period. Kannabi no mikoto, or Kanna, is one of the last winged beings in Airs fictional setting and is held as a prisoner in her own castle. Since she bears wings on her back, she is not permitted to leave the castle walls or see her mother, who is in a similar situation elsewhere. With Ryūya, a member of her samurai guard, and Uraha, a fledgling telekinetic, Kanna escapes and traverses feudal Japan to find her mother. However, the rest of the guard and a sect of Buddhist monks follow them. After catching up, they place a curse on Kanna where she must endure constant reincarnation and death whenever she finds love; Misuzu is one such reincarnation.
In the last arc, Air, Yukito's final wish to save Misuzu's life is heard. The timeline of the Dream arc has been reset, although it is now seen through the viewpoint of a crow Misuzu finds and names Sora. New things are revealed that were not seen following Yukito in the Dream arc. After Misuzu finds Sora and brings him back home, her condition worsens and eventually she forgets even who Haruko is. Misuzu's father, Keisuke Tachibana, shows up during this arc wanting to take Misuzu back to his home, but Haruko pleads with him to grant her more time, and they agree on extending the time for three more days. After the three days pass, Keisuke comes back and sees the love between Misuzu and Haruko; he decides to let them stay together. The remainder of this arc has Misuzu and Haruko spending time together like mother and daughter, culminating in Misuzu's death.
Development
After the completion of Kanon, the Key staff started production on Air and expanded the number of people involved in this project compared to Kanon. The executive producer for Air was Takahiro Baba from VisualArt's, the publishing company that Key is under. The planning for Air was headed by Jun Maeda who was also one of two main scenario writers, the other being Takashi Ishikawa. Scenario assistance was provided by four more people: Tomotaka Fujii, Kai, Tōya Okano, and Yūichi Suzumoto. Art direction was headed by Key's artist Itaru Hinoue who worked on the character design. Further computer graphics were split between three people—Miracle Mikipon, Na-Ga, and Shinory—and background art was provided by Din and Torino. The music in the game was composed primarily by Shinji Orito, Jun Maeda, and Magome Togoshi, who had started working with Key since before Kanons release. After the completion of Air, two of the staff—Tomotaka Fujii and Takashi Ishikawa—left Key.
Jun Maeda, the main scenario writer of Air, commented that in the early stages of Air production, it was already decided that it was to be an adult game, and he further assumes that if it was not at least first released with adult content, that it would not have been as commercially successful. Maeda also commented that he wanted to write Air to give players the chance to experience the entire story as a whole rather than just a sum of differing parts as typical bishōjo games do, including Kanon. While attempting to do this, Maeda also tried to simultaneously make it seem similar to typical visual novels in the same genre as Air to give the game appeal to the players who often play such games. As such, while the game incorporates stories from several characters, they are all of varying lengths.
Release history
Air was released as an adult game on September 8, 2000, as a limited edition, playable on a Windows PC as a 2-disc CD-ROM set. The limited edition came bundled with the remix album Ornithopter remixing background music tracks featured in the visual novel. The regular edition was released on July 27, 2001. Key released on all ages version on July 27, 2001, for Windows. An updated adult version called the Air Standard Edition was released on April 8, 2005, with added support for Windows 2000/XP as a DVD-ROM. An updated all ages version of Air compatible for Windows Vista PCs was released by Key on July 31, 2009, in a box set containing five other Key visual novels called Key 10th Memorial Box. Another updated all ages version compatible for Windows 7 PCs called Air Memorial Edition was released on May 28, 2010.
The first consumer console port of the game was released for the Dreamcast (DC) on September 20, 2001, by NEC Interchannel. A PlayStation 2 (PS2) version was released on August 8, 2002, also by NEC Interchannel. The PS2 version was re-released as a "Best" version on September 1, 2005. The PS2 version was bundled in a "Key 3-Part Work Premium Box" package together with the PS2 versions of Kanon and Clannad released on July 30, 2009. To compensate for the lack of erotic content in the consumer ports, extra scenes were added. A version playable on SoftBank 3G mobile phones was released by Prototype through VisualArt's Motto on May 1, 2006. Prototype later released a VGA edition produced by NTT DoCoMo playable on FOMA phones on February 5, 2008. The version for the FOMA phones was split into two separate files: the Dream story arc comprised the first file, and the remaining Summer and Air arcs comprised the second file.
A version of the Dream story arc playable on Android devices was released on July 27, 2012. A version containing the Summer and Air arcs for Android devices was released on August 15, 2012. A full version Air on Android devices was released on October 24, 2012, in two editions: one without voice acting, and one with voice acting, including Yukito. Two versions were released on May 2, 2013: an adult version for Android devices and an all ages version playable on iOS devices. A PlayStation Portable (PSP) version of the game was released in Japan on November 22, 2007, by Prototype. A downloadable version of the PSP release via the PlayStation Store was released by Prototype on September 2, 2010. A PlayStation Vita (PSV) version was released by Prototype on September 8, 2016. A Nintendo Switch version was released in Japan on September 9, 2021. Both the PSV and Switch versions contained a visual novel version of Yūichi Suzumoto's short story as a prequel to the Summer story arc about how Kanna and Uraha met. In the original release, there was no voice acting for the characters, though this was later changed for the DC version, which except for Yukito included full voice acting, and the PS2, PSP, PSV and Switch versions, which had full voice acting.
Adaptations
Print
A short story, titled and written by Yūichi Suzumoto, was published in the Kanowo appendix to Kadokawa Corporation's Comptiq magazine on December 1, 2000. Jive published two volumes of an anthology titled Air Anthology Novel between September 1 and December 1, 2004.
An Air manga was serialized in the Japanese computer game magazine Comptiq between August 10, 2004, and February 10, 2006. The individual chapters were later collected into two separate volumes published by Kadokawa Shoten. The story was adapted from the visual novel version that preceded it, and was illustrated by Japanese artist Yukimaru Katsura. Between the two volumes, there are 15 main chapters (nine in volume one and six in volume two), and two bonus chapters included at the end of each volume. The manga version goes through the Dream and Air arcs in detail while the Summer arc is only touched upon briefly throughout the manga. The main focus is on Misuzu's story with Kano and Minagi serving as minor characters in comparison. However, Minagi's story is explained in the bonus installment at the end of volume two.
There are also five sets of manga anthologies produced by different companies and drawn by a multitude of different artists. The first volume of the earliest anthology series, released by Ichijinsha under the title Air Comic Anthology, was released on January 25, 2001, under their DNA Media Comics label. Volumes for this series continued to be released until December 25, 2001, with the seventh volume. The second anthology, Air Anthology Comic, was released in a single volume by Softgarage on December 20, 2002. On April 17, 2004, Ohzora released an anthology composed of works based on both Kanon and Air titled Haru Urara: Kanon & Air. Ohzora also released three other anthologies under the title Air, the last of which came out on March 24, 2005. The last manga anthology was released as a single volume on April 2, 2005, by Jive titled Comic Anthology Air: Kimi no Iru Basho. Each of the anthology series are written and drawn by an average of 20 people per volume.
Drama CDs
There were nine drama CDs released based on Air released by Lantis. The first three focused solely on each of the main heroines separately per CD where the cover of the album would depict which of the girls to be presented. These three albums were released on August 24, 2005. The next set of three was done the same way and released on October 21, 2005. The last three were released in one month increments after the second batch of three drama CDs went on sale. The seventh CD focused on the events of the Summer arc in the story while the last two were based on the Air arc. At least the last CD released on January 25, 2006, contained original stories in addition to the story from the visual novel.
Anime series
On November 17, 2004, a teaser DVD named "Air prelude" was produced containing interviews with the anime's cast, clean opening and ending theme video sequences, and promotional footage of the anime itself; it was a limited edition DVD, with only 20,000 copies produced. The anime television series is produced by Kyoto Animation, directed by Tatsuya Ishihara, written by Fumihiko Shimo, and features character design by Tomoe Aratani who based the designs on Itaru Hinoue's original concept. Thirteen episodes were produced by Kyoto Animation: 12 regular episodes, and a final recap episode which summarizes Misuzu's story arc. The anime also follows the game by splitting the series into three parts; Dream (episodes one through seven), Summer (episodes eight and nine), and Air (episodes 10 through 12), with the recap episode (episode 13) following. The episodes aired between January 6 and March 31, 2005, on the BS-i Japanese television network. The theme songs from the Air visual novel are used for the anime's opening theme, ending theme and soundtrack. After the conclusion of the anime series, a mini-series which added to the Summer arc of the story called Air in Summer aired on August 28 and September 4, 2005, a week later on BS-i. Air in Summer consisted of two episodes and was produced by the same staff as the anime series.
A DVD released on March 31, 2005, called "Air Memories" contained promotional commercials for the series, staff commentaries, and clean ending sequences from the 12th and 13th episodes, lasting 92 minutes. The episodes were released to Region 2 DVD between April 6 and September 7, 2005, by Pony Canyon in limited and regular editions containing two episodes per volume. The DVD for Air in Summer was later released on October 5, 2005, in Japan. Additionally, Air became one of the first anime series to be released in Blu-ray Disc format on December 22, 2006. A new version of the Blu-ray Disc box set was released on November 28, 2008, in Japan.
On April 27, 2007, ADV Films co-founder and executive Matt Greenfield announced the acquisition of both the anime series and the film during a panel at the anime convention Anime Matsuri; it paid $145,000 for the TV series. The 12 main episodes and two Air in Summer episodes were licensed for North American distribution by ADV Films. The episodes were released on four DVD compilations between August 14 and November 27, 2007. The second DVD volume was sold in two editions, with the difference between the two being a series box all four DVDs could fit inside. In July 2008, the license for the anime series and film was transferred to Funimation, which continued to produce them in North America in English. Funimation released a three-disc series box set of the Air anime on April 21, 2009, which did not include the recap episode. MVM Entertainment announced a UK DVD release of Air with Air in Summer to be released on April 4, 2022.
Film
An Air animated film directed by Osamu Dezaki premiered in Japanese theaters on February 5, 2005. The film, animated by Toei Animation, is a reinterpretation of the original Air storyline which centers on the story arc of the female lead Misuzu Kamio. Yukito Kunisaki arrives in the town of Kami for a chance to earn money at the summer festival and meets Misuzu on his first day in town. They soon become friends and a story one thousand years old begins to unfold. The film was later sold on DVD and released in three editions: the Collector's Edition, the Special Edition, and the Regular Edition on August 5, 2005. The Air film was originally released on DVD by ADV Films in North America on December 11, 2007. Funimation continued the release of the film as of July 2008 when the license was transferred from ADV to Funimation; Funimation re-released the film on April 21, 2009.
Music
The visual novel has three main theme songs: the opening theme , the ending theme "Farewell song", and as an insert song. Each song is sung by Lia of I've Sound and the lyrics were written by Jun Maeda. Five of the characters have leitmotifs, or background music theme songs—the three heroines, Kanna, and Michiru. Misuzu's theme is ; Kano's theme is ; Minagi's theme is ; Kanna's theme is ; lastly, Michiru's theme is . Of the six music tracks not used in the visual novel, but of which were included on the game's original soundtrack, the first two were failed attempts at creating a theme for Minagi.
The first album, Ornithopter, came bundled with the original release of Air in September 2000. The next album was released in August 2001 as a maxi single titled "Natsukage / Nostalgia" containing a vocal version of "Natsukage", and a B-side track; both songs were sung by Lia and the rest of the single was produced by Jun Maeda. The game's original soundtrack was released in September 2002 containing two discs with 31 different tracks along with remix and instrumental versions of the opening and ending themes. A piano arrange album was released in December 2003 called Re-feel which contained five tracks from Air and five from Kanon. An EP containing original versions of the three theme songs and remixed versions of the opening and ending themes was released in May 2006 called Air Analog Collector's Edition: Tori no Uta / Farewell song. Each of the albums released for the visual novel version were released on Key's record label Key Sounds Label. The film's original soundtrack was released in March 2005 by Frontier Works. A bonus symphony CD titled Shinwa e no Izanai was released with the special edition Air film DVD on August 5, 2005. Overall, Air music has been well received, and the original soundtrack for the visual novel has met with high sales. The opening theme was involved in copyright infringement in 2005.
Reception and sales
According to a national ranking of how well bishōjo games sold nationally in Japan, the original Air PC release premiered at number one in the rankings. The game ranked twice at 42 in November and December 2000, at 20 in January 2001, and twice more at 42 through February 2001. The original release appeared on the charts twice more: the first in late September to early October 2001 at 26, and again in the last two weeks of May 2002, ranking in at 43. The regular edition of the Air PC release premiered at number 13, ranked in at number 41 in the following ranking, and 42 in the ranking after that. The PC all ages version premiered at number seven in the rankings and had a final ranking at 30 in the next ranking. The Air Standard Edition premiered at number one in the rankings. The Air Standard Edition ranked in twice more, at 34 and at 28 in the next two rankings. Air was the highest selling game of 2000 selling 102,080 units, which was about 25,000 more units than the second highest game, Inagawa de Ikō!. The Dreamcast version sold 42,445 units in its first week, and was the fourth highest selling console game in Japan that week. The video game magazine Famitsu scored this version a 30 out of 40, and it ultimately sold 50,406 units to rank as the 53rd highest selling Japanese Dreamcast game ever, as of 2007. NTT Publishing reported that over 300,000 units of Air have been sold.
Air was described as a game that stands out, much like Key's first title Kanon, due to an intricate plot that keeps the player interested, and has a good replay value as well. In an interview of Jun Maeda and Yūichi Suzumoto, they were both surprised to find out that the Japanese public (in March 2001) felt Air to be a soothing game, but Maeda and Suzumoto made it clear that this impression is completely at odds with their impression of the game, and they remark that there was not one person who worked on Air who thought that. Characters from Air have appeared in dōjin works not directly based on the Air series. Games such as Eternal Fighter Zero -Blue Sky Edition- by Twilight Frontier where most of the playable characters either came from Air or from the earlier Key games Kanon or One. In the October 2007 issue of Dengeki G's Magazine, poll results for the 50 best bishōjo games were released. Out of 249 titles, Air ranked eighth with 43 votes.
Notes
References
External links
Key's official Air website
Air anime official website
2000 video games
2004 manga
2005 anime television series debuts
ADV Films
Android (operating system) games
Bishōjo games
Dreamcast games
Eroge
Fantasy video games
Funimation
Ichijinsha manga
IOS games
Japan-exclusive video games
Kadokawa Shoten manga
Key (company) games
Kyoto Animation
Lantis (company)
Nintendo Switch games
PlayStation 2 games
PlayStation Portable games
PlayStation Vita games
Romance video games
School life in anime and manga
Single-player video games
Video games developed in Japan
Video games scored by Jun Maeda
Video games scored by Magome Togoshi
Visual novels
Windows games | en |
doc-en-16597 | The Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official World's Fair to be held in the United States, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 10 to November 10, 1876, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Officially named the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine, it was held in Fairmount Park along the Schuylkill River on fairgrounds designed by Herman J. Schwarzmann. Nearly 10 million visitors attended the exposition, and 37 countries participated in it.
Precursor
The Great Central Fair on Logan Square in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1864 (also known as the Great Sanitary Fair), was one of the many sanitary fairs held during the Civil War. They provided a creative and communal means for ordinary citizens to promote the welfare of Union soldiers and dedicate themselves to the survival of the nation, and the Great Central Fair bolstered Philadelphia's role as a vital center in the Union war effort. It anticipated the combination of public, private, and commercial investments that were necessary to mount the Centennial Exposition. Both had a similar neo-Gothic appearance, the waving flags, the huge central hall, the "curiosities" and relics, handmade and industrial exhibits, and also a visit from the president and his family.
Planning
The idea of the Centennial Exposition is credited to John L. Campbell, a professor of mathematics, natural philosophy, and astronomy at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana. In December 1866, Campbell suggested to Philadelphia Mayor Morton McMichael that the United States Centennial be celebrated with an exposition in Philadelphia. Naysayers argued that the project would not be able to find funding, other nations might not attend, and domestic exhibits might compare poorly to foreign ones.
The Franklin Institute became an early supporter of the exposition and asked the Philadelphia City Council for use of Fairmount Park. With reference to the numerous events of national importance that were held in the past and related to the city of Philadelphia, the City Council resolved in January 1870 to hold the Centennial Exposition in the city in 1876.
The Philadelphia City Council and the Pennsylvania General Assembly created a committee to study the project and seek support of the U.S. Congress. Congressman William D. Kelley spoke for the city and state, and Daniel Johnson Morrell introduced a bill to create a United States Centennial Commission. The bill, which passed on March 3, 1871, provided that the U.S. government would not be liable for any expenses.
The United States Centennial Commission organized on March 3, 1872, with Joseph R. Hawley of Connecticut as president. The Centennial Commission's commissioners included one representative from each state and territory in the United States. On June 1, 1872, Congress created a Centennial Board of Finance to help raise money. The board's president was John Welsh, brother of philanthropist William Welsh, who had raised funds for the Great Sanitary Fair in 1864. The board was authorized to sell up to $10 million in stock via $10 shares. The board sold $1,784,320 ($ today) worth of shares by February 22, 1873. Philadelphia contributed $1.5 million and Pennsylvania gave $1 million. On February 11, 1876, Congress appropriated $1.5 million in a loan. Originally, the board thought it was a subsidy, but after the exposition ended, the federal government sued for the money back, and the United States Supreme Court ultimately forced repayment. John Welsh enlisted help from the women of Philadelphia who had helped him in the Great Sanitary Fair. A Women's Centennial Executive Committee was formed with Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, a great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, as president. In its first few months, the group raised $40,000. When the group learned the planning commission was not doing much to display the work of women, it raised an additional $30,000 for a women's exhibition building.
In 1873, the Centennial Commission named Alfred T. Goshorn as the director general of the Exposition. The Fairmount Park Commission set aside of West Fairmount Park for the exposition, which was dedicated on July 4, 1873, by Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson. The Commission decided to classify the exhibits into seven departments: agriculture, art, education and science, horticulture, machinery, manufactures, and mining and metallurgy. Newspaper publisher John W. Forney agreed to head and pay for a Philadelphia commission sent to Europe to invite nations to exhibit at the exposition. Despite fears of a European boycott and high American tariffs making foreign goods not worthwhile, no European country declined the invitation.
To accommodate out-of-town visitors, temporary hotels were constructed near the exposition's grounds. A Centennial Lodging-House Agency made a list of rooms in hotels, boarding houses, and private homes and then sold tickets for the available rooms in cities promoting the Centennial or on trains heading for Philadelphia. Philadelphia streetcars increased service, and the Pennsylvania Railroad ran special trains from Philadelphia's Market Street, New York City, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad ran special trains from the Center City part of Philadelphia. A small hospital was built on the exposition's grounds by the Centennial's Medical Bureau, but despite a heat wave during the summer, no mass health crises occurred.
Philadelphia passed an ordinance that authorized Mayor William S. Stokley to appoint 500 men as Centennial Guards for the exposition. Among soldiers and local men hired by the city was Frank Geyer, best known for investigating one of America's first serial killers, H. H. Holmes. Centennial Guards policed exhibits, kept the peace, reunited lost children, and received, recorded, and when possible, returned lost items, the most unusual of which were front hair pieces and false teeth. Guards were required to live onsite and were housed at six police stations strategically located throughout the Exposition. A magistrate's office and courtroom were located at the only two-story police station located on the grounds and was used to conduct prisoner hearings. Officers slept in cramped quarters, which fostered health issues. Eight guards died while working the Exposition, six from typhoid fever, one from smallpox, and one from organic disease of the heart.
The Centennial National Bank was chartered on January 19, 1876, to be the "financial agent of the board at the Centennial Exhibition, receiving and accounting for daily receipts, changing foreign moneys into current funds, etc.," according to an article three days later in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Its main branch, designed by Frank Furness, was opened that April on the southeast corner of Market Street and 32nd Street. A branch office operated during the exposition on the fairgrounds. The Centennial Commission ran out of funds for printing and other expenses. Philadelphia city officials appropriated $50,000 to make up for the shortfall.
Herman J. Schwarzmann
Herman J. Schwarzmann, an engineer for the Fairmount Park Commission, was appointed the main designer of the exposition. In 1869 Schwarzmann had begun working for the Fairmount Park Commission, which administered the site of the 1876 Centennial Exposition. It is one of the great urban parks of America, its importance in landscape history surpassed only by Central Park. Schwarzmann was the chief architect for the Centennial Exposition, designing Memorial Hall, Horticultural Hall, other small buildings, and the landscaping around them. His work for the Centennial Exposition was informed by the Vienna International Exposition in 1873, which Schwarzmann visited to study the buildings and the grounds layout. The Vienna International Exposition in 1873 was marred by disastrous logistic planning and was taken as a cautionary example.
At the Vienna Exposition, there was no convenient way for visitors to reach the fairgrounds, and exorbitant rates were charged by carriage drivers. Drawing lessons from this failure, the Philadelphia expo was ready for its visitors, with direct railroad connections to service passenger trains every 30 minutes, trolley lines, street cars, carriage routes, and even docking facilities on the river.
Structures
More than 200 buildings were constructed within the Exposition's grounds, which were surrounded by a fence nearly three miles long. There were five main buildings in the exposition. They were the Main Exhibition Building, Memorial Hall, Machinery Hall, Agricultural Hall, and Horticultural Hall. Apart from these buildings, there were separate buildings for state, federal, foreign, corporate, and public comfort buildings. This strategy of numerous buildings in one exposition set it apart from the previous fairs around the world that had relied exclusively on having one or a few large buildings.
The Centennial Commission sponsored a design competition for the principal buildings, conducted in two rounds; winners of the first round had to have details such as construction cost and time prepared for the runoff on September 20, 1873. After the ten design winners were chosen, it was determined that none of them allowed enough time for construction and limited finances.
The architecture of the exposition mainly consisted of two types of building, traditional masonry monuments and buildings with a structural framework of iron and steel.
Main Exhibition Building
The Centennial Commission turned to third-place winner's architect Henry Pettit and engineer Joseph M. Wilson for design and construction of the Main Exhibition Building. A temporary structure, the Main Building was the largest building in the world by area, enclosing . It measured in width and in length.
It was constructed using prefabricated parts, with a wood and iron frame resting on a substructure of 672 stone piers. Wrought iron roof trusses were supported by the columns of the superstructure.
The building took eighteen months to complete and cost $1,580,000. The building was surrounded by portals on all four sides. The east entrance of the building was used as an access way for carriages, and the south entrance of the building served as a primary entrance to the building for streetcars. The north side related the building to the Art Gallery and the west side served as a passageway to the Machinery and Agricultural Halls.
In the Main Exhibition Building, columns were placed at a uniform distance of . The entire structure consisted of 672 columns, the shortest column in length and the longest in length. The construction included red and black brick-laid design with stained glass or painted glass decorations. The Interior walls were whitewashed, and woodwork was decorated with shades of green, crimson, blue, and gold. The flooring of the building was made of wooden planks that rested directly on the ground without any air space underneath them.
The orientation of the building was east-west in direction, making it well lit, and glass was used between the frames to let in light. Skylights were set over the central aisles of the structure. The corridors of the building were separated by fountains that were attractive and also provided cooling.
The structure of the building featured a central avenue with a series of parallel sheds that were wide, long, and high. It was the longest nave ever introduced into an exhibition building up to that time. On both sides of the nave were avenues in width and in length. Aisles wide were located between the nave and the side avenues, and smaller aisles in width were on the outer sides of the building.
The exterior of the building featured four towers, each high, at each of the building's corners. These towers had small balconies at different heights that served as observation galleries.
Within the building, exhibits were arranged in a grid, in a dual arrangement of type and national origin. Exhibits from the United States were placed in the center of the building, and foreign exhibits were arranged around the center, based on the nation's distance from the United States. Exhibits inside the Main Exhibition Building dealt with mining, metallurgy, manufacturing, education, and science. Offices for foreign commissioners were placed in proximity to the products exhibited along in the aisles along the sides of the building. The walkways leading to the exit doors were ten feet wide.
After the Exposition, the structure was turned into a permanent building for the International Exhibition. During the auction held on December 1, 1876, it was bought for $250,000. It quickly ran into financial difficulties but remained open through 1879 and was finally demolished in 1881.
Agricultural Hall
The third-largest structure at the exposition was Agricultural Hall. Designed by James Windrim, Agricultural Hall was long and wide. Made of wood and glass, the building was designed to look like various barn structures pieced together. The building's exhibits included products and machines used in agriculture and other related businesses.
Horticultural Hall
Situated high atop a hill presiding over Fountain Avenue, Horticultural Hall epitomized floral achievement, which attracted professional and amateur gardeners. Unlike the other main buildings, it was meant to be permanent. Horticultural Hall had an iron and glass frame on a brick and marble foundation and was long, wide, and tall. The building was designed in the Moorish style and intended as a tribute to the Crystal Palace of London's Great Exhibition of 1851. Inside, nurserymen, florists, and landscape architects exhibited a variety of tropical plants, garden equipment, and garden plans. In dramatic fashion, the exposition introduced the general public to the notion of landscape design, as exemplified the building itself and the grounds surrounding it. A long, sunken parterre leading to Horticultural Hall became the exposition's iconic floral feature, reproduced on countless postcards and other memorabilia. This sunken garden enabled visitors on the raised walkways to see the patterns and shapes of the flowerbeds. After the Exposition, the building continued to be used for horticultural exhibits until it was severely damaged by Hurricane Hazel in 1954 and was subsequently demolished. As a replacement, the Fairmount Park Horticulture Center was built on the site in 1976 as part of the United States Bicentennial exposition.
Machinery Hall
Designed by Joseph M. Wilson and Henry Pettit, Machinery Hall was the second largest structure in the exposition and located west of the Main Exhibition Building. With a superstructure made of wood and glass resting on a foundation of massive masonry, it had a main hall painted light blue, 1,402 ft long and 360 ft wide, with a wing of 208 ft by 210 ft attached on the south side of the building. The length of the building was 18 times its height. With eight entrances, it occupied 558,440 square feet, had 1,900 exhibitors, and took six months to construct. The exhibits focused on machines and evolving industries. Machinery Hall was the show case for the state of the art industrial technology that was being produced at the time. The United States of America alone took up two-thirds of the exhibit space in the building.
One of the major attractions on display in the building was the Corliss Centennial Steam Engine that ran power to all the machinery in the building as well as other parts of the world's fair. The 1,400 horsepower engine was 45 feet tall, weighed 650 tons, and had one mile of overhead line belts connecting to the machinery in the building. It symbolized the technology that was transforming the United States into an industrial powerhouse.
Amenities available to the visitors within the hall were rolling chairs, telegraph offices, and dinner for fifty cents. Machinery Hall had 8,000 operating machines and was filled with a wide assortment of hand tools, machine tools, material handling equipment, and the latest fastener technology.
Some of the sandstone that was used to build the hall was from Curwensville, PA.
Memorial Hall
The Art Gallery building (now known as Memorial Hall) is the only large exhibit building still standing on the exposition site. Constructed of brick, glass, iron, and granite in the beaux-arts style, it was the largest art hall in the country when it opened, with a massive 1.5-acre footprint and a 150-foot dome atop a 59-foot-high structure. The central domed area is surrounded by four pavilions on the corners, with open arcades to the east and west of the main entrance. It provided 75,000 square feet of wall surface for paintings and 20,000 square feet of floor space for sculptures. The exposition received so many art contributions that a separate annex was built to house them all. Another structure was built for the display of photography. Memorial Hall was designed by Herman J. Schwarzmann, who basically adopted an art museum plan submitted by Nicholas Félix Escalier to the Prix de Rome competition in 1867–69. Memorial Hall became the prototype, both from a stylistic and organizational standpoint, for other museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago (1892–1893), the Milwaukee Public Museum (1893–1897), the Brooklyn Museum (1893–1924), and the Detroit Institute of Art (1920–1927). Libraries such as the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the Free Library of Philadelphia also emulated its form. Finally, Memorial Hall was the architectural inspiration for the German capitol, the Reichstag building in Berlin.
After the exposition, Memorial Hall reopened in 1877 as the Pennsylvania Museum of Art and included the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art. In 1928 the museum moved to Fairmount at the head of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and in 1938 was renamed the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Memorial Hall continued to house the school, and afterward was taken over by the Fairmount Park Commission in 1958. The museum school is now the University of the Arts. Used for a time as a police station, the building now houses the Please Touch Museum, which includes a faithful 20x30-foot model of the exposition grounds and 200 buildings.
Women's Pavilion
The Women's Pavilion was the first structure at an international exposition to highlight the work of women, with exhibits created and operated by women. Female organizers drew upon deep-rooted traditions of separatism and sorority in planning, fundraising, and managing a pavilion devoted entirely to the artistic and industrial pursuits of their gender. They had to build their own structure because they lost their spot in one of the larger pavilions (the Main Building) due to an unexpected increase in the participation of foreign countries. Their aim was to employ only women in the construction of the pavilion and even to power it, and they succeeded with the exception of the design by Hermann J. Schwarzmann. Their overarching goal was to advance women's social, economic, and legal standing, abolish restrictions discriminating against their gender, encourage sexual harmony, and gain influence, leverage, and freedom for all women in and outside of the home by increasing women's confidence and ability to choose.
A project of the Women's Centennial Executive Committee, the Women's Pavilion was commissioned in 1873 by the United States Centennial Board of Finance with the expectation that it would generate enthusiasm for the celebration of the fair and increase subscriptions to exposition stock. Elizabeth Duane Gillespie, president of the Women's Centennial Committee, led the effort to gather 82,000 signatures in two days to raise money for the pavilion. Gillespie also helped convince Congress to grant additional funding. It took only four months to raise the funds for the pavilion.
Much of the pavilion was devoted to human ecology and home economics. On exhibit were over 80 patented inventions, including a reliance stove, a hand attachment for sewing machines, a dishwasher, a fountain griddle-greaser, a heating iron with removable handle, a frame for stretching and drying lace curtains, and a stocking and glove darner. The Centennial women not only showed domestic production but also employed a popular means for justifying female autonomy outside of the home by demonstrating to visitors the many ways women were making a profitable living. Exhibits demonstrated positive achievements and women's influence in domains such as industrial and fine arts (wood-carvings, furniture-making, and ceramics), fancy articles (clothing and woven goods), and philanthropy as well as philosophy, science, medicine, education, and literature.
Mexico participated in the pavilion's exhibits, indicating the growth of a sector of elite women during the Porfirio Díaz regime of the late nineteenth century, with many individual women sending examples of woven textiles and embroidery.
Other buildings
Eleven nations had their own exhibition buildings, and others contributed small structures, including the Swedish School house referenced below, now in Central Park, New York City. The British buildings were extensive and exhibited the evolved bicycle, with tension spokes and a large front wheel. Two English manufacturers, Bayless Thomas and Rudge, displayed their high-wheel bikes (called "ordinary bikes" or "penny farthings") at the exposition. The bicycle displays inspired Albert Augustus Pope to begin making high-wheel bikes in the United States. He started the Columbia Bike Company and published a journal called "LAW Bulletin and Good Roads", which was the beginning of the Good Roads Movement.. The main British building, also known as St. George's Hall or the English Commission Building, survived at its original site as Fairmount Park offices until it was demolished in 1961.
26 of the 37 U.S. states constructed buildings along States Drive in the exhibition grounds. Only three such state houses are still extant: the Ohio House at its original location in Fairmount Park, the Maryland House, which was moved to Druid Hill Park in Baltimore, MD, where it is extant today, and the Missouri House, which was moved to Spring Lake, New Jersey, along with several other exhibition buildings, some of which are still extant in various Jersey Shore towns.
The United States government had a cross-shaped building that held exhibits from various government departments. The remaining structures were corporate exhibitions, administration buildings, restaurants, and other buildings designed for public comfort.
Exposition
The formal name of the exposition was the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine, but the official theme was the celebration of the United States centennial. This was reinforced by promotional tie-ins, such as the publication of Kate Harrington's Centennial, and Other Poems, which celebrated the exposition and the centennial. At the same time, the exposition was designed to show the world the United States' industrial and innovative prowess. The exposition was originally scheduled to open in April, marking the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, but construction delays caused the date to be pushed back to May 10. Bells rang all over Philadelphia to signal the exposition's opening. The opening ceremony was attended by President Ulysses Grant and his wife as well as Emperor Pedro II of Brazil and his wife. The opening ceremony concluded in Machinery Hall, with Grant and Pedro II turning on the Corliss Steam Engine which powered most of the other machines at the exposition. The official number of first day attendees was 186,272 people, with 110,000 entering with free passes.
In the days following the opening ceremony, attendance dropped dramatically, with only 12,720 people visiting the exposition the next day. The average daily attendance for May was 36,000 and for June 39,000. A severe heat wave began in mid-June and continued into July, hurting attendance. The average temperature was , and on ten days during the heat wave the temperature reached . The average daily attendance for July was 35,000, but it rose in August to 42,000 despite the return of high temperatures at the end of the month.
Cooling temperatures, news reports, and word of mouth began increasing attendance in the final three months of the exposition, with many of the visitors coming from farther distances. In September the average daily attendance rose to 94,000 and in October to 102,000. The highest attendance date of the entire exposition was September 28. The day, which saw about a quarter of a million people attend, was Pennsylvania Day. It celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, and exposition events included speeches, receptions, and fireworks. The final month of the exposition, November, had an average daily attendance of 115,000. By the time the exposition ended on November 10, a total of 10,164,489 had visited the fair. Among the attendees who were duly impressed by the exposition were Princeton University sophomore Woodrow Wilson and his minister father, Dr. Joseph Ruggles Wilson, visiting from North Carolina.
Although not financially successful for investors, the Centennial Exposition impressed foreigners with the industrial and commercial growth of the country. The level of exports increased, the level of imports decreased, and the trade balance grew in favor of the United States.
Inventions
The Centennial Monorail featured a steam locomotive and passenger car that straddled a single elevated iron rail. Mass-produced products and new inventions were on display within Machinery Hall. Inventions included the typewriter and electric pen along with new types of mass-produced sewing machines, stoves, lanterns, guns, wagons, carriages, and agricultural equipment.
The exposition also featured many well-known products including Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone, set up at opposite ends of Machinery Hall, Thomas Edison's automatic telegraph system, screw-cutting machines that dramatically improved the production of screws and bolts from 8,000 to 100,000 per day, and a universal grinding machine by the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company.
Air-powered tools along with a mechanical calculator by George B. Grant were exhibited. John A. Roebling & Sons Company displayed a slice of their 5 ¾ inch diameter cable to be used for the Brooklyn Bridge. New food products such as popcorn and ketchup, along with root beer, were also exhibited.
Consumer products first displayed to the public include:
Alexander Graham Bell's telephone
The Sholes and Glidden typewriter (also known as the Remington No. 1)
Heinz Ketchup
Wallace-Farmer Electric Dynamo, precursor to electric light
Hires Root Beer
Kudzu erosion control plant species
Exhibits
The right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty were showcased at the exposition. For a fee of 50 cents, visitors could climb the ladder to the balcony, and the money raised this way was used to fund the pedestal for the statue.
Technologies introduced at the fair include the Corliss Steam Engine. Pennsylvania Railroad displayed the John Bull steam locomotive that was originally built in 1831. The Waltham Watch Company displayed the first automatic screw-making machinery and won the Gold Medal in the first international watch precision competition. Until the start of 2004, many of the exposition's exhibits were displayed in the Smithsonian Institution's Arts and Industries Building in Washington, D.C., adjacent to the Castle building.
Still basking in afterglow of its victory in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the newly founded German Empire foregrounded its arms industry, especially the powerful Krupp guns and heavy cannons that were sold and exported to numerous nations in the following years. By way of contrast, the craftsmanship of France, which had been defeated in the Franco-Prussian War, was represented by the Gothic Revival high altar that Edward Sorin, founder of University of Notre Dame, had commissioned from the workshop of Désiré Froc-Robert & Sons in Paris. After the exposition, the altar was installed at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus where it remains to this day.
For Mexico, which was emerging from a long period of internal disorder and foreign invasions, the exposition was an opportunity for the Liberal regime of President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada to garner international recognition of his regime and to counter anti-Mexican public opinion in the United States. Prominent Mexican painters including José María Velasco, José Obregón, and Santiago Rebull exhibited there. Velasco's work was greatly admired, gaining him international recognition and enhancing his standing in Mexico.
The Swedish Cottage, representing a rural Swedish schoolhouse of traditional style, was re-erected in Central Park, New York, after the exposition closed. It is now the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre.
The official State Pavilion of New Jersey was a reconstruction of the Ford Mansion in Morristown, New Jersey, which served as General George Washington's headquarters during the winter of 1779–80. Featuring costumed presenters and a "colonial kitchen" complete with a spinning wheel, the reconstructed mansion was accompanied by a polemical narrative about "old-fashioned domesticity". This quaint hearth-and-home interpretation of the colonial past was counterposed to the theme of progress, with the overarching theme of the exposition serving to reinforce a view of American progress as evolving from a small, hardy colonial stock rather than from a continual influx of multi-ethnic waves of immigration. It sparked an era of "Colonial Revival" in American architecture and house furnishings.
Beaver Falls Cutlery Company exhibited the "largest knife and fork in the world" made by Chinese immigrant workers, among others.
See also
Arts and Industries Building, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., built in 1879–1881 to house exhibits from the Centennial Exposition
Centennial Arboretum
Centennial comfort stations
Sesquicentennial Exposition, the 150th anniversary of the United States (1926)
United States Bicentennial, the 200th anniversary (1976)
United States Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary (2026)
List of world expositions
List of world's fairs
References
Further reading
Strahan, Edward, ed. A Century After, Picturesque Glimpses of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Allen, Lane & Scott and J. W. Lauderbach 1875.
"Centennial Exhibition: Exhibition Facts." Centennial Exhibition: Exhibition Facts. N.p., 2001. Web. 06 Dec. 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20151116042008/http://libwww.library.phila.gov/CenCol/exhibitionfax.htm
Weber, Austin. "Then & Now: The 1876 Centennial Exposition." Assembly. Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development, 1 Sept. 2001. http://www.assemblymag.com/articles/83790-then-now-the-1876-centennial-exposition
"Machinery Hall, Centennial Exposition 1876, Philadelphia." 123HelpMe.com. 06 Dec 2015 http://www.123HelpMe.com/view.asp?id=154804
"Centennial Exhibition: Tours." Centennial Exhibition: Tours. Free Library of Philadelphia, 2001. Web. 06 Dec. 2015. https://libwww.freelibrary.org/CenCol/tours.htm
Calney, Mark. "The Centennial Exhibition—The State Buildings." Sci Am Scientific American 34.21 (1876): 322-24. The International Centennial Exhibition of 1876; or Why the British Started a World War. Mark Calney 2010, 7 May 2006. Web. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304064854/http://larouchejapan.com/japanese/drupal-6.14/sites/default/files/text/1876-Centennial-Exhibition.pdf
Hunt, John Dixon A World of Gardens. London: Reaktion Books, 2012.
Bruno Giberti, Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia, University Press of Kentucky, 2002.
International Exhibition. 1876, Official Catalogue, John R Nagle and company.
Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio, Mexico at the World's Fairs: Crafting a Nation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1996
(Frank Geyer was hired to work as a centennial guard for the Centennial Exposition. He later became famous for his investigation of H. H. Holmes, one of America's first serial killers).
External links
Expo 1876 Philadelphia at the Bureau International des Expositions
United States Centennial Exhibition at the Free Library of Philadelphia
Centennial Exposition Described and Illustrated by J. S. Ingram; published by Hubbard Bros., Philadelphia, 1876 (Internet Archive)
Centennial International Exhibition – collection at Winterthur Library
Centennial Exhibition Collection at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia Exhibition 1876 Report to the Federal High Council – horological report by Ed. Favre-Perret at Richard Watkins Horological Books
American and Swiss Watchmaking in 1876 by Jacques David at Richard Watkins Horological Books
Fairmount Park, Along Schuylkill River, Philadelphia – description of Schuylkill River villas and site plans at the Library of Congress
Centennial Exhibition Photograph and Ephemera Collection at the Hagley Museum and Library
Historical Society of Pennsylvania's collection of paintings (Internet Archive) by David J. Kennedy
A collection of stereoviews (Internet Archive)
1876 Philadelphia - approximately 160 links
General LeRoy Stone's Centennial Monorail at The Self Site
United States historical anniversaries
1876 festivals
1876 in Pennsylvania
1876 in the United States
Fairmount Park
Regional centennial anniversaries
United States Declaration of Independence | en |
doc-en-13562 | Social security, in Australia, refers to a system of social welfare payments provided by Australian Government to eligible Australian citizens, permanent residents, and limited international visitors. These payments are almost always administered by Centrelink, a program of Services Australia. In Australia, most payments are means tested.
History
Prior to 1900 in Australia, charitable assistance from benevolent societies, sometimes with financial contributions from the authorities, was the primary means of relief for people not able to support themselves. The 1890s economic depression and the rise of the trade unions and the Labor parties during this period led to a movement for welfare reform.
In 1900, the states of New South Wales and Victoria enacted legislation introducing non-contributory pensions for those aged 65 and over. Queensland legislated a similar system in 1907 before the Australian labor Commonwealth government led by Andrew Fisher introduced a national aged pension under the Invalid and Old-Aged Pensions Act 1908. A national invalid disability pension was started in 1910, and a national maternity allowance was introduced in 1912.
During the Second World War, Australia under a labor government created a welfare state by enacting national schemes for: child endowment in 1941 (superseding the 1927 New South Wales scheme); a widows’ pension in 1942 (superseding the New South Wales 1926 scheme); a wife's allowance in 1943; additional allowances for the children of pensioners in 1943; and unemployment, sickness, and special benefits in 1945 (superseding the Queensland 1923 scheme).
The Social Services Legislation Amendment (Welfare Reform) Bill 2017 has changed several aspects of social security in Australia, and has been given assent to as of 11 April 2018. It includes a demerit-point system for not meeting welfare obligations. As of June 2018, former social security recipients who owe a debt to Centrelink will not be allowed to travel outside Australia until they have repaid their debt, with interest.
Contemporary welfare attitudes
Current attitudes toward welfare in Australia can be separated into support for the welfare system and support for welfare recipients. A multivariate analysis using canonical correlation analysis identified five distinct profiles of welfare attitudes and socio-demographic characteristics. The main attitude cluster was one toward support for the welfare system and welfare recipients. Having received government welfare in the past strongly predicted a person supporting the welfare system and its beneficiaries. The next most prominent attitude profile was summarized as 'the welfare system is good but the people on it are lazy and dependent'. This attitude profile was found among people receiving welfare payments that were either normative (e.g., the age pension) or where there is little expectation that a person will return to work (e.g. disability support pension). Overall, Australians hold more negative attitudes toward welfare recipients than they do the welfare system. People with a history of receiving unemployment benefits tend to have more negative welfare attitudes if they live in areas where other community members have more negative attitudes.
Legal framework
Social security payments and other benefits are currently made available under the following acts of parliament:
Social Security Act 1991
A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999
Student Assistance Act 1973
Paid Parental Leave Act 2010
Payments under the Social Security Act and the Student Assistance Act
ABSTUDY – offers a range of allowances to assist Indigenous students and New Apprentices.
Age Pension – for people planning for retirement or who are already retired aged 65 years and over.
Assistance for Isolated Children – for families with a child who cannot attend school locally because of distance or special needs.
Austudy Payment – for full-time students and New Apprentices aged 25 years or over.
Carer Allowance – for people who care for minors 16–17 and adults over 18 years with a disability.
Carer Allowance (Child) – for people who care for a child under 16 years with a disability.
Carer Payment – for people who provide full-time care for someone with a disability
Disability Support Pension – for people unable to work for 2 years due to illness, injury or disability.
Double Orphan Pension – for people who are raising children who have lost both parents.
Maternity Payment – for help with those extra costs after the birth of a new baby.
JobSeeker Payment – for people who are looking for employment.
Parenting Payment – for parents or guardians to help with the cost of raising children under 6 for partnered parents and under 8 for sole parents.
Pensioner Education Supplement – for people on pensions with education expenses.
Special Benefit – for people who are in financial hardship, have no way of supporting themselves and are not entitled to another payment (normally due to residency requirements)
Youth Allowance – for full-time students or New Apprentices aged 15 (under some circumstances) 16 to 24 and people aged under 21 who are undertaking job search or a combination of approved activities.
Income support
All Centrelink income support payments are payable fortnightly, usually by direct deposit into the recipient's bank account. They are also subject to a means test which calculates the recipient (and their partner's) fortnightly income and assets and affects the rate of their payment accordingly. As such, people on lower incomes may be entitled to part-payment of their allowance (subject to other qualification requirements). The assessment of income and assets varies greatly between different social security payments and the effect that income and assets have on each payment differs in that they have different income thresholds (i.e. how much income one can earn before it affects their payment) and different taper rates (the amount the payment drops by per dollar above these thresholds).
An individual may be precluded from claiming any of income support payments listed below for a certain number of weeks following receipt of a lump sum compensation payment, made wholly or partly in respect of lost earnings or lost capacity to earn resulting from personal injury (often received in settlement of a Workers' Compensation claim). The number of weeks for which the preclusion period applies to an individual is proportional the size of the lump sum payment they received. Centrelink has a discretion to reduce the duration of the preclusion period if it is satisfied that there exist special circumstances that make an individual's case out of the ordinary: for example, extreme financial hardship.
Age Pension
The age pension was the first payment made by the Australian Government, dating back to 1909. There is no automatic entitlement to an age pension in Australia, unlike in countries such as the UK or New Zealand. Taxpayer-funded pensions are means tested (similar to the UK's Pension Credit), effectively making them another type of benefit. Except for the mandatory superannuation scheme, workers do not contribute to a pension or insurance scheme in Australia, unlike pension schemes in many other countries.
The age pension is subject to a number of requirements:
the age pension is available to persons over what is referred to as the Age Pension age. The pension age has been increasing since 2017 by six-month periods every two years from the previous pension age of 65 years. On 1 July 2021, the pension age became 66 years and 6 months, and from 1 July 2023, the pension age will increase to 67, the proposed cap.
a residency requirement requires an applicant to have been a resident in Australia for the last 10 years, with no break in residency for 5 of those years, and be in Australia on the day the application is lodged. If the applicant is a resident in one of the 31 country with which Australia has an International Social Security Agreement, residence in that country may count towards the minimum 10-year residence requirement. The applicant may be entitled to other residency exemptions.
income and assets tests apply and determine how much an applicant can receive, if anything. Deeming rules are used to assess income from financial assets. Since 1 January 2015, the deeming rules also apply to account-based income streams.
JobSeeker Payment
JobSeeker Payment is the main unemployment benefit paid to eligible Australians and permanent residents aged 22 to 64. To be eligible, a person must apply for the benefit and be actively seeking work, undertaking approved training or performing approved volunteer work. On 1 July 1991, the "Newstart Allowance" replaced the Unemployment Benefit (UB) which had been unchanged since 1945. It was part of a government reform called Newstart - the Active Employment Strategy.
The Newstart Allowance was formally renamed to the JobSeeker Payment on 20 March 2020.
A job seeker receiving this payment is paid on the basis of a 'mutual agreement' between the customer and Centrelink, where Centrelink will continue to pay fortnightly payments to the customer for so long as the customer attempts to find employment and fulfills their mutual obligation requirements. These mutual agreements are negotiated between Centrelink and the job seeker, and often includes participation in the jobactive program. These agreements are then recorded in a "Job Plan", a written document which outlines the personal process for an individual to no longer need the JobSeeker Payment. Activities to which a job seeker may have to agree, in order to continue receiving the Newstart Allowance, include applying for a specific number of jobs (usually ten) per fortnight and recording these applications in a Centrelink issued diary, undertaking vocational education or training, paid work experience, participation in a labour market program or Work for the Dole project, and other activities, such as voluntary work if considered appropriate by Centrelink. For example, more elderly customers who have been made redundant and are approaching the age pension age, and who may face considerable difficulties re-entering the labour market, are often permitted to fulfil their plan by engaging in voluntary activities alone. A job seeker has to nominate and engage in one activity (for example, either a vocational education activity or Work for the Dole activity) in any one mutual obligation period (lasting six months at a time).
Clients are not expected to engage in the more intensive of these activities as soon as their receipt of the allowance commences. The amount of activity required on behalf of the client in order to continue receiving his/her benefit is usually staggered as follows:
Ordinarily, during the first three months of unemployment, a job seeker has no other obligations but to submit a fortnightly Application For Payment form at the local office. The form asks the applicant a number of questions about his /her circumstances and for the basic details of four positions for which the job seeker applied in the last fortnight. Customers may also be required to make up to 10 'Job Search Contacts' per fortnight (dependent on the local labour market and their personal circumstances) and record the details of these jobs within a specifically issued Job Seeker Diary for a given period of time. The job seeker then takes the Application For Payment form personally to the local Centrelink Office. He will then attend a short one-on-one interview with a Centrelink officer. The interview is usually for the purposes of checking that the application form is in order and that the applicant is aware of any appointments that may need to be attended, and obligations that may need to be met. The client at this stage also has the opportunity to talk to a Centrelink officer about any problems the client may be encountering without having to make a prior appointment first.
If after an initial three months of unemployment, during which the job seeker has only to hand in the fortnightly application form and record the Job Seeker Diary, the client remains unemployed; the client will be required to attend appointments with a Job Services Australia provider whose responsibility it is to assist the client to re-enter the workforce. The job seeker also has to attend a two-week training course which focuses on job-searching skills such as writing resumes and attending interviews.
If the customer remains unemployed for twelve months, they are then subject to the Work Experience Phase of their Employment Pathway Plan, which consists of more intensive assistance involving the activities listed above such as Work for the Dole, accredited study, part-time work, volunteer work or a combination of these. A Job Services Australia provider may require a JobSeeker recipient to do voluntary work (up to 15 hours a week), for which clients receive a supplement to their benefit of $20.80 per fortnight. The supplement is also paid to Work for the Dole participants. They must also continue to apply for 4 or more positions at the same time to meet their mutual obligations.
If the client becomes long-term unemployed (24 months or longer), the client's activity requirements will usually consist of another Work Experience Phase style activity for six months in any twelve-month period. (Australia's unemployment benefits do not have a time limit: it is, in theory, possible to remain on unemployment benefits for the whole of one's adult life).
The JobSeeker rates are adjusted on 20 March and 20 September each year. , the basic JobSeeker rate for a single unemployed person without children was A$501 per fortnight. However, this basic rate does not include supplemental payments—including include Rent Assistance of up to A$121.00 per fortnight—and other supplements such as Pharmaceutical Allowance, Telephone Allowance, Remote Area Allowance, Training Supplement, and the Work For The Dole Supplement; which are paid depending on personal circumstances and activity. Rates differ for married couples, registered relationships or de facto couples (including same-sex or opposite-sex couples) and persons with children. Despite significant increases in the cost of living, the increases to Newstart/JobSeeker have not kept pace with inflation. The initial income threshold has only risen from 1987's $60 to $62 in 2000.
On 1 March 2010, the Australian Government introduced changes to Disability Employment Services (DES). Multiple existing programs were streamlined into two clearly distinct programs, making assessment and referral processes less complex.
All eligible job seekers with disability have access to individually tailored services which meet their needs including capacity building, training, work experience and other 'interventions' to help participants obtain and maintain suitable employment. DES providers support and manage a participant's condition in the workplace, along with providing ongoing support in the workplace for as long as it is required.
New compliance rules were introduced on 1 July 2011, dealing with client meetings with a DES provider and payment suspension. Data released in mid-November 2013 showed that the number of welfare recipients had grown by 55%. In 2007 228,621 Newstart Allowance recipients were registered, a total that increased to 646,414 in March 2013.
In January 2014, Patrick McClure was appointed by the Abbott Government to a review targeting benefits on people in receipt of Newstart Allowance and the Disability Support Pension, due to report in February 2014.
In the 2016 Australian federal budget, the Turnbull Government planned to cease the clean-energy supplement of $4.40 for people beginning Newstart after 20 September.
In October 2017, the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) stated that the Newstart Allowance was $160 below the poverty line. In May 2018, the Business Council of Australia also advocated for increasing the Newstart Allowance, saying that it is impossible to live on. In March 2018, Newstart was raised by 50 cents per day, which was criticised as inadequate. After handing down the 2018 Australian federal budget, Treasurer Scott Morrison rejected calls to increase the rate of the Newstart Allowance, saying "my priority is to give tax relief to people who are working and paying taxes". Newstart had not been increased since 1994, when it was increased by $2.95 per week.
In 2018, the Anti-Poverty Network of South Australia, with the Newstart Choir, recorded a revised version of the 'It's Time' song used by the Australian Labor Party in 1972 to win the election after 23 years of Conservative Government. The song is a campaign to the Australian Labor Party to commit, if elected at the next federal election, to raising Newstart.
In September 2018, the base Newstart rate was raised by $2.20 per week.
On 22 February 2021, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that the JobSeeker base rate would be increased by A$50 a fortnight from April 2021. The JobSeeker Payment will rise to A$614 a fortnight, with an estimated cost over forward estimates of A$9 billion. It is also intended to increase the threshold amount recipients can earn before their payment starts to be reduced. The mutual obligations that a recipient must follow also became more demanding.
Coronavirus assistance
In 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and to assist people in isolation and encourage Australia's economic recovery, supplementary payments were added to the basic welfare payments. An additional -per-fortnight 'Coronavirus Supplement' was paid, originally only for six months, starting on 27 April and finishing on 24 September 2020.
On 20 July, it was announced that the Supplement would be extended, but in altered form, beyond 24 September. After 24 September, the rate was reduced to $250 per fortnight. On 1 December, it reduced to $150 per fortnight. The Supplement ceased on schedule after 31 March 2021.
The Coronavirus Supplement was paid to recipients of:
JobSeeker Payment, Partner Allowance, Widow Allowance, Sickness Allowance and Wife Pension
Youth Allowance for job seekers
Youth Allowance for students and apprentices
Austudy for students and apprentices
ABSTUDY for students getting Living Allowance
Parenting Payment partnered and single
Farm Household Allowance
Special Benefit
In addition, there was also a once-off $750 Economic Support Payment (ESP) paid from late March to eligible JobSeeker Payment and other recipients. A second ESP was only available to those who did not receive the Coronavirus Supplement.
Temporary COVID Disaster Payment
On 3 June 2021, after Victoria's fourth COVID lockdown was extended by a week, the Federal Government announced the 'Temporary COVID Disaster Payment' for people who lose work as a result of lockdowns, of at least 7 days length. These people may be eligible to receive A$325 or A$500 per week, depending on hours of work lost.
Youth Allowance
Youth Allowance is an income support payment available to unemployed young people aged 16 to 21 (aged 18 to 24 if a full-time student and Australian Apprentices). Youth Allowance recipients are considered to either be dependent on a caregiver(s), or independent. The underlying philosophy of Youth Allowance is that legal guardians are responsible for supporting their children where they have the means if that young person has not lived independently from them.
Dependent recipients are subject to the Parental Income Test and Family Assets Test, unless a parent is in receipt of a specified income support payment themselves. A dependent Youth Allowance recipients may be exempt from the Parental Income Test if their parent is in receipt of an income support payment themselves. A dependent recipient's rate of payment will be reduced as a result of parental income above the parental income free area, although the parental income free area can be increased by sibling concessions.
Dependent Youth Allowance recipients may also be subject to the Family Actual Means Test (FAMT) which applies where the parent is self-employed, involved in a trust or company or several other categories. The rationale behind the FAMT is that the taxable income on which Youth Allowance is normally based may not accurately reflect the true financial means of parents in these categories. It asks for details of the family's spending on living expenses during the relevant tax year and extrapolates an equivalent notional taxable income from this. Sole traders involved in primary production and parents receiving drought assistance such as Exceptional Circumstances Relief Payment are exempt.
All Youth Allowance recipients are subject to the Personal Income Test, which takes into account any income they may earn through part-time or casual work. If an independent Youth Allowance customer has a partner, then their income will be included under the Partner Income Test.
Youth Allowance has lower payment rates for recipients who live with a parent or guardian compared to those who live away from home. Recipients living 'away from home' may also be eligible for Rent Assistance.
15-year-olds can also receive Youth Allowance if they are defined as independent and are over the school leaving age in the state of residence. The school leaving age is 17 in all states and territories of Australia.
Youth Allowance was introduced from July 1998 and replaced Youth Training Allowance and Newstart Allowance for job seekers under 21 and AUSTUDY for students under 25.
In 2009 a number of significant changes to Youth Allowance were announced in that year's Federal Budget. Some of the proposed changes included introducing new scholarships for university students, and changes to the independence criteria and Parental Income Test. These changes were passed by Parliament on 17 March 2010. The changes will be implemented over a number of years, beginning with the introduction of new scholarships from 1 April 2010.
In the 2011–12 Budget, the Australian Government announced that from 1 July 2012, Youth Allowance (other) was to be extended to 21-year-olds (21-year-olds were eligible for Newstart Allowance). 21-year-olds who were on Newstart Allowance, or who had applied for it, by 1 July 2012 were not affected by the change.
Austudy Payment
The Austudy Payment was originally known as the AUSTUDY Scheme (January 1987–June 1998), an all-ages study allowance, but since the introduction of Youth Allowance (see above) it has been reserved for the over-25s. To qualify, one must be an Australian resident, over 25, and studying full-time at an approved education institution. However, students who were receiving a Youth Allowance prior to turning 25 and are still pursuing the same course of study continue to receive a Youth Allowance until they finish (or otherwise terminate) their course.
Unlike Youth Allowance, Austudy recipients are considered to be independent and are not subject to the Parental Income Test, Family Assets Test and the Family Actual Means Test. As part of the 2007 Australian federal budget, Austudy Payment recipients were eligible for Rent Assistance from 1 January 2008. Prior to 1 January 2008, Rent Assistance was not payable with Austudy. Like most Centrelink payments, Austudy Payments are subject to a personal and/or partner income and assets test.
ABSTUDY
ABSTUDY (The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Study Assistance Scheme) is a welfare payment for Indigenous Australians undergoing some form of study. All Indigenous students at secondary or tertiary institutions, as well as those studying by correspondence, and primary students who turned 14 prior to 1 January of their current year of study. To qualify as Indigenous, a student must be of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent by Centrelink standards and be a current Australian citizen. ABSTUDY is tailored according to income tests, and the status of partners, guardians, and dependent children.
Whilst this payment is administered through Centrelink, the payment is made under ABSTUDY Policy. The responsibility for ABSTUDY Policy rests with the Minister of Education and the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and is not contained within the Social Security Act 1991.
Disability Support Pension
The Disability Support Pension (DSP) provides income support for people who suffer a long-term disability, which in the opinion of an assessor they will not recover from in the next two years, and which will render them unable to work or participate in a training activity enabling them to work. The basic rate for a single person is A$782.20 (as at March 2015); different rates apply to persons under 18 with no children, and to couples, married, de facto or in a same-sex relationship. The payment is income and assets-tested. However, if an applicant is permanently blind, they can receive DSP without income and assets tests, and without needing to prove any inability to work, etc. DSP can take a while to process, so as a temporary measure claimants are placed on another payment (e.g. Newstart with a medical certificate to cover the activity tests) while the payment is being assessed; once granted it is backdated to the claim date at the higher DSP rate.
In the 2011 Australian federal budget, there were changes introduced to the Disability Support Pension, including that people under the age of 35 would be placed onto the Newstart Allowance for the first 18 months. Furthermore, the eligibility criteria for the DSP became more strict under the Gillard Government.
Patrick McClure was in January 2014 appointed by the Abbott Government to a review targeting benefits on people in receipt of Newstart Allowance and the Disability Support Pension, reporting in February 2014. Eligibility criteria for the DSP has been made more strict, and unsuccessful claimants can only receive the Newstart Allowance, which pays $170 less per week. According to the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS), between 2010 and 2016 there was a large drop in successful claims to the DSP. To be eligible for the DSP, a person's condition must be “fully diagnosed, fully treated and fully stabilised”, which has had the unintended consequence of making it harder for cancer patients to access the DSP - unless their condition is terminal.
Sickness Allowance
A Sickness Allowance was paid for those currently suffering an illness, injury, or disability (short-term i.e. less than two years), are employed, and have no access to leave or have used all their leave. It was paid under the Newstart system without an Activity Test. Sickness Allowance was equal to the Newstart Allowance but only one of these payments can be claimed (you don't get both). In order to be granted a Sickness Allowance you had to be registered with Centrelink, which includes reporting your earned income each fortnight through your myGov account. You automatically ceased being eligible for either payment if your earned income exceeds the allowance-rate over three consecutive fortnightly reporting periods. Once ineligible you become subject to a waiting period before being paid any applicable welfare payment (whether it be Newstart or Sickness, or any other payment). This waiting period, known as the exclusion period was generally six weeks however can be up to ten weeks in which you will have to survive on your own, without any government benefits. This waiting/exclusion period was not backdated, so any payment approved by Centrelink will start only once the exclusion period is exhausted.
Carer Payment
A Carer Payment is made to those providing a level of care to someone who is ill, injured or has a disability. A medical certificate and other supporting documentation is required. Centrelink does not offer any related services for Carers, nor does it provide any other support or welfare follow-up, nor does it carry out any process to ensure, or validate, actual service delivery. Carers are wholly responsible for their caring duties which is negotiated between the Carer and Caree' on an individual and personal-needs basis.
Parenting Payment
A payment for those who are principal carers of dependent children under the age of 6 for partnered customers and children under the age of 8 for single customers. Parenting Payment Partnered is classified as an allowance and Parenting Payment Single is classified as a pension.
A controversial decision by the Labor party in 2006 and 2013, to transfer sole parents to the lower Newstart payment, has placed sole parents well below the poverty line. Welfare groups have reported these parents, 82.3% of which are women (ABS 2011), are turning to prostitution (because of the cash in hand options), have given up their education and are sleeping in their cars. This decision was made as an incentive for parents to seek work, as 57% of primary residential mothers work and 70% of primary residential fathers work (ABS 2011). With one quarter of single parent households headed by a single parent being 896,542 families (17.7% male & 82.3% female, ABS 2011)
Parenting Payment Partnered uses an individual and a partner income test to determine the rate of payment with benefit withdrawal rates of 60 cents in the dollar (as of 1 July 2007) on income over the legislated limits. A partner's gross earnings are assessed as shared, regardless of individual tax already paid. If, for example, the breadwinner is currently paying 30 per cent personal tax, the effective marginal tax rate (EMTR) after benefit withdrawal is 90 percent of earnings above the legislated limit (the EMTR prior to 1 July 2007 is 100% as the benefit withdrawal rate is 70% of the partner's earnings above the legislated income limit).
Additional and supplementary payments
Rent Assistance
Income support recipients who are classed as non-homeowners and pay more than a required amount of board or rent for accommodation are eligible for Rent Assistance payments. This payment is paid as part of the income support payment. Verification of the rent details is required, either a lease or by completing a Rent Certificate every six months. The amount of rent assistance a recipient is eligible for depends on the amount of rent one is paying. The basic rate for a single person with no children and not sharing accommodation is as follows. As at 28 January 2010, Rent Assistance begins to be paid when a renter's fortnightly rent is in excess of A$99.40. For every dollar in excess of this amount, Rent Assistance pays A$0.75, up to a maximum of A$111.80 per fortnight. The maximum amount payable is lower for those sharing accommodation, in which case it is A$74.53. Different rates apply to couples, couples separated by illness, couples temporarily separated and singles and couples with dependent children. An example of an income support payment is the Newstart Allowance which comprises a base rate plus rent assistance. An "income support payment" is an umbrella term (or classification of payment) which is sometimes used instead of detailing the name of the particular payment. It does not represent a payment of its own but could mean any one of Centrelink's welfare payments, e.g. the Newstart Allowance is an income support payment.
Pharmaceutical Allowance
A payment of A$6.00 per fortnight for those receiving certain Centrelink payments, to help cover the cost of prescription medicines. The amount covers the cost of one prescription per fortnight for a concession card holder eligible for the concessional rate of medicines (A$5.90 per script from 1 January 2013). This payment is only given if you are able to prove to Centrelink that you require prescribed medication. A Centrelink Medical Certificate can be obtained online from my.gov.au or from a branch, which will need to be filled out by a registered medical professional and then submitted to Centrelink for consideration. This allowance can drop-off on its own so recipients must call Centrelink to notify them of this, when or if this occurs. Undercalculated payments can take one business day to correct however an underpayment is more likely to be paid in your next fortnightly pay with your regular entitlement. which are covered under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which covers most prescription medicines available.
Telephone Allowance
A payment issued quarterly to eligible customers receiving pension payments, to help cover the cost of telephone bills. Eligible customers must have a telephone service subscribed in their name to be eligible for Telephone Allowance. There are two rates payable: a basic rate of A$23.40 and a higher rate of A$35.20. JobSeeker Recipients are not eligible.
Payments made under the A New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act
Family Tax Benefit Part A – for parents or carers to help with the cost of raising children.
Family Tax Benefit Part B – for single income families or sole parents.
Maternity Immunisation Allowance – for fully immunised children or those exempt from immunisation
Child Care Benefit – for families to help with the cost of child care.
Schoolkids Bonus - for families for the cost of education for children in primary and secondary school.
Family Tax Benefit
Family Tax Benefit is a per-child payment made through Services Australia to the people with at least 35 per cent of care for a child. Family Tax Benefit is income-tested on a family's adjusted taxable income in the given financial year. Income support recipients are exempt from the income test and are entitled to the maximum rate of payment.
Payments can be paid in fortnightly instalments or as a lump sum payment at the end of the year. For Family Tax Benefit paid in instalments, the income test is based on an estimate of adjusted taxable income that is reconciled after the recipient has lodged their tax return. The reconciliation process compares the estimated income with their actual income.
Centrelink debt is accrued for overpayments, when customers underestimate their income.
A top-up payment is granted at the end of the year, when customers overestimate their income which can be used to repay outstanding Centrelink debt.
Childless persons, or non-parents, are not entitled to the Family Tax Benefit payments.
Family Tax Benefit Part B is paid based on the lower of the recipient and their partner's income, or, for a single parent at the maximum rate.
Maternity Immunisation Allowance
Maternity Immunisation Allowance is paid to parents whose children who have received all immunisations specified by the national immunisation schedule by the time they are 2 years old. Alternatively, if the parents object to immunisation on any grounds and inform Centrelink of this, they may also receive this allowance. The allowance ceased on 1 July 2012.
Child Care Benefit
Child Care Benefit assists Australian parents with the cost of approved and registered child care. It is a means tested payment and is based on the recipient's taxable income; low income families receive the highest rate of Child Care Benefit.
The Australian Government spent approximately $2.1 billion on Child Care Benefit to assist families with the cost of child care in the financial year ending 30 June 2011.
Schoolkids Bonus
In May 2012, the Australian Government abolished the Education Tax Refund (ETR) that allowed families to claim a refund for education expenses through the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). The Schoolkids Bonus replaced the ETR from 1 January 2013. The Schoolkids Bonus aimed to assist families and students with the costs of education for children in primary and secondary school. The School Kids Bonus is paid in 2 equal instalments each year in January and July.
Paid Parental Leave Scheme
The Paid Parental Leave Scheme provides financial support to eligible working parents of newborn or recently adopted children. Under the scheme, the government funds employers to provide Parental Leave Pay or Dad and Partner Pay to their eligible employees.
Parental Leave Pay is paid to the child's primary carer and eligible parents for up to 18 weeks of pay based on the rate of National Minimum Wage. Dad and Partner Pay is for eligible working dads or partners (including adopting parents and same-sex couples) for up to two weeks of pay based on the rate of National Minimum Wage.
This scheme does not apply to casual employees who do not have paid leave entitlements. Women who are engaged in casual rate employment who are ineligible for paid maternity leave and who are unable to continue employment due to pregnancy are not entitled to the Paid Parental Leave Scheme. Unemployed pregnant women may be eligible to apply for an income support payment however normal eligibility criteria applies.
Concession cards
The following concession cards are issued by Centrelink:
Health Care Card – primarily entitles holder to PBS medications at the concession rate. This green paper card is the basic and most common Health Care Card which is sent to a recipient of a payment by post shortly after receiving their first payment and then each year before expiry, if still eligible. This card is given to those not eligible for a Commonwealth Seniors Concession, or Pensioner Concession Card. This card has secondary benefits, including cheaper public transport in some states, upon application. In order to gain a transport concession a separate application for concession needs to be made to the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure and if successful, a transport concession card will be mailed to you. Heavy fines apply for using public transport on a concession-priced ticket without holding a valid transport concession card. A general Health Care Card does not entitle the bearer to transport concessions. Only Pensioner and Commonwealth Seniors Concession Card holders can apply for a transport concession card.
Commonwealth Seniors Health Card – a HCC issued to senior citizens
Pensioner Concession Card – this offers additional benefits to the Pensioner, including pensioner transportation fares (in some areas), and a certain number of free country rail journeys within the holder's state. Pensioners can enjoy discounted postal services including discounted stamps, and a whole range of discounted services including discounted cinema tickets, discounted meals when dining out, discounted hair cuts and discounts on all utility and home service costs.
Prisons and psychiatric hospitals
Persons imprisoned or admitted to a psychiatric institution are generally not eligible to receive benefits for the duration of imprisonment or admission. (However, it may be payable if a psychiatric stay is classed as rehabilitation.) The benefits resume upon release or discharge. However, upon release or discharge from imprisonment or psychiatric hospitalisation of more than two weeks, the claimant is entitled to an additional payment equal to seven days of their regular payment, to help with adjustment.
Review of social security decisions
Every decision made under social security law is to be in writing and given sufficient notice, usually in a letter. Applications for review of such decisions may be lodged at any time, but depending on the decision remedial action may only be taken if the review is received within 13 weeks of receiving notice, for decisions made under the Social Security act, or 52 weeks for decisions made under Family assistance law. At the bottom of each letter informing customers of a Centrelink decision, a "your rights" box informs individuals of potential avenues for review.
Internal review
Legislation ultimately governs the decision-making process, and Centrelink policy guidelines provide the lens through which legislation is interpreted by Centrelink Customer Service Advisers (CSAs). However, notwithstanding legislation and policy, there are still many areas in which significant discretion is afforded to the decision maker, which may be subject to internal and external review.
Original decision maker (ODM) review
Centrelink possesses a prescribed two-tiered system of internal review. The initial stage is the ODM Review, where the matter is brought back to the CSA for reconsideration. This is a wholly intra-office process and functions as an initial check on the decision, and the appeal progresses further from the ODM only if necessary. Many reviews are due to legislative changes, administrative errors, provision of new customer documentation, or customer disagreement with the decision. There is also the opportunity for the customer to make a formal written complaint. However, many individuals may not wish to have the same CSA make another decision, which may even lead to confusion as to whether internal review has actually taken place.
Once the ODM review has been completed it should contain the relevant legislative provisions, any new information considered, and a determination stating whether the original decision has been set aside, affirmed or varied.
Authorised review officer (ARO) review
If the individual is not satisfied, an Authorised Review Officer (ARO), an officer delegated review powers from the Secretary for the purposes of social security law, may affirm, vary, or set aside the original decision. Although an employee of the Centrelink, an ARO is not to defend ODM decisions as it is a strong principle that the ARO is independent of the situation and has no previous involvement in the case. Nevertheless, AROs also look at legislation with the same policy guidelines as CSAs.
External review
The Social Security Appeals Tribunal – SSAT
A customer dissatisfied with an internal review of a decision may apply to the Social Security Appeals Tribunal (SSAT) to review a decision affirmed, varied or set aside by internal review, subject to some exceptions. The SSAT generally has the same powers as the Secretary, and may affirm, vary, set aside and substitute a decision or return the matter to Centrelink with recommendations. SSAT hearings are generally informal, confidential and not bound by the Laws of Evidence.
Experience has indicated that at the SSAT more weighting goes towards the legislation as opposed to policy guidelines. Welfare advocacy groups such as the Welfare Rights Centre are often involved in providing legal help to individuals affected by Centrelink decisions. There is no Welfare Rights Centre in South Australia so complaints are to be raised with Centrelink directly.
As of 1 July 2015, the SSAT is no longer is a separate tribunal. Alongside the Migration Review Tribunal and the Refugee Review Tribunal, the SSAT has instead merged with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). Decisions deemed reviewable by the ARO are now heard in the Social Services and Child Support Division of the AAT. The primary functions of the SSAT as the first tier of the review process have been converted and are now known as the 'AAT first review'. Therefore, the traditional two-tier review process has morphed in light of the amalgamation but it has nevertheless been preserved within the AAT.
2019, SACAT South Australian Civil Administrative Tribunal deals with rental properties and issues between renters and landlords and agents, as well as deals with various licensing matters and handles reviews of mental health treatment orders including investigating and revoking involuntary psychiatric confinement orders, commonly enforced by the authoritarian Government.
The AAT and the Courts
A decision may be reviewed by the AAT on AAT 'first review', after which it can be reviewed again on AAT 'second review' if an applicant is unhappy after the first review. Further appeals (on questions of law only) are available to the Federal Court and High Court.
The Ombudsman
The Commonwealth Ombudsman does not conduct a merits review (as would the ARO, SSAT or AAT), but considers the administrative decision-making process employed by Centrelink to reach the decision or carry out the action complained of.
Where the Ombudsman concludes that there has been a deficiency in Centrelink's action (for examples) the Ombudsman may make recommendations to Centrelink for remedial action. This may result in Centrelink changing their decision, or providing a better explanation of their decision.
Investigations by the Ombudsman are usually result from a complaint about a decision or action of Centrelink, and in the process of an investigation the Ombudsman is entitled to view Centrelink records and ask questions of Centrelink staff. While the Ombudsman does not have coercive powers to make Centrelink change a decision or act in a certain way, recommendations made by the Ombudsman are rarely rejected.
See also
Economic history
Cashless Welfare Card
Welfare
Social safety net
Welfare reform
Unemployment benefits
References
External links
Services Australia
Commonwealth Ombudsman
Administrative Appeals Tribunal
Retirement in Australia | en |
doc-en-3132 | Catharism (; from the Greek: , , "the pure [ones]") was a Christian dualist or Gnostic movement between the 12th and 14th centuries which thrived in Southern Europe, particularly in northern Italy and southern France. Followers were described as Cathars and referred to themselves as Good Christians, and are now mainly remembered for a prolonged period of religious persecution by the Catholic Church, which did not recognize their unorthodox Christianity. Catharism arrived in Western Europe in the Languedoc region of France in the 11th century. The adherents were sometimes referred to as Albigensians, after the city Albi in southern France where the movement first took hold. The belief may have originated in the Byzantine Empire. Catharism was initially taught by ascetic leaders who set few guidelines and so some Catharist practices and beliefs varied by region and over time. The Catholic Church denounced its practices, including the consolamentum ritual by which Cathar individuals were baptised and raised to the status of "Perfect".
Catharism was greatly influenced by the Bogomils of the First Bulgarian Empire, and may have also had roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and eastern Byzantine Anatolia through Paulicians resettled in Thrace (Philipoupolis). Though the term Cathar () has been used for centuries to identify the movement, whether it identified itself with the name is debated. In Cathar texts, the terms Good Men (), Good Women (), or Good Christians () are the common terms of self-identification.
The idea of two gods or deistic principles, one good and the other evil, was a point of criticism asserted by the Catholic Church against Cathar beliefs. The Catholic Church asserted this was antithetical to monotheism, a fundamental principle that there is only one God, who created all things visible and invisible. Cathars believed that the good God was the God of the New Testament, creator of the spiritual realm, whereas the evil God was the God of the Old Testament, creator of the physical world whom many Cathars identified as Satan. Cathars believed human spirits were the sexless spirits of angels trapped in the material realm of the evil god, destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the consolamentum, a form of baptism performed when death is imminent, when they would return to the good God.
From the beginning of his reign, Pope Innocent III attempted to end Catharism by sending missionaries and by persuading the local authorities to act against them. In 1208, Pierre de Castelnau, Innocent's papal legate, was murdered while returning to Rome after excommunicating Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who, in his view, was too lenient with the Cathars. Pope Innocent III then abandoned the option of sending Catholic missionaries and jurists, declared Pierre de Castelnau a martyr and launched the Albigensian Crusade in 1209. The Crusade ended in 1229 with the defeat of the Cathars. Catharism underwent persecution by the Medieval Inquisition, which succeeded in eradicating it by 1350.
There is academic controversy about whether Catharism was an organized movement or rather a construct of the medieval Church, which alleged the existence of a heretical group. The lack of any central organization among Cathars, regional differences in beliefs and practices as well as the lack of sources from the Cathars themselves has prompted some scholars to question whether Catharism existed. Other scholars say that there is evidence of the existence of Catharism, and also evidence that the threat of it was exaggerated by its persecutors in the Church.
Origins
The origins of the Cathars' beliefs are unclear, but most theories agree they came from the Byzantine Empire, mostly by the trade routes and spread from the First Bulgarian Empire to the Netherlands. The name of Bulgarians () was also applied to the Albigensians, and they maintained an association with the similar Christian movement of the Bogomils ("Friends of God") of Thrace. "That there was a substantial transmission of ritual and ideas from Bogomilism to Catharism is beyond reasonable doubt." Their doctrines have numerous resemblances to those of the Bogomils and the Paulicians, who influenced them, as well as the earlier Marcionites, who were found in the same areas as the Paulicians, the Manicheans and the Christian Gnostics of the first few centuries AD, although, as many scholars, most notably Mark Pegg, have pointed out, it would be erroneous to extrapolate direct, historical connections based on theoretical similarities perceived by modern scholars.
John Damascene, writing in the 8th century AD, also notes of an earlier sect called the "Cathari", in his book On Heresies, taken from the epitome provided by Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion. He says of them: "They absolutely reject those who marry a second time, and reject the possibility of penance [that is, forgiveness of sins after baptism]". These are probably the same Cathari (actually Novations) who are mentioned in Canon 8 of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in the year 325, which states "... [I]f those called Cathari come over [to the faith], let them first make profession that they are willing to communicate [share full communion] with the twice-married, and grant pardon to those who have lapsed ..."
The writings of the Cathars were mostly destroyed because of the doctrine's threat perceived by the Papacy; thus, the historical record of the Cathars is derived primarily from their opponents. Cathar ideology continues to be debated, with commentators regularly accusing opposing perspectives of speculation, distortion and bias. Only a few texts of the Cathars remain, as preserved by their opponents (such as the ) which give a glimpse into the ideologies of their faith. One large text has survived, The Book of Two Principles (), which elaborates the principles of dualistic theology from the point of view of some Albanenses Cathars.
It is now generally agreed by most scholars that identifiable historical Catharism did not emerge until at least 1143, when the first confirmed report of a group espousing similar beliefs is reported being active at Cologne by the cleric Eberwin of Steinfeld. A landmark in the "institutional history" of the Cathars was the Council, held in 1167 at Saint-Félix-Lauragais, attended by many local figures and also by the Bogomil papa Nicetas, the Cathar bishop of (northern) France and a leader of the Cathars of Lombardy.
The Cathars were a largely local, Western European/Latin Christian phenomenon, springing up in the Rhineland cities (particularly Cologne) in the mid-12th century, northern France around the same time, and particularly the Languedoc—and the northern Italian cities in the mid-late 12th century. In the Languedoc and northern Italy, the Cathars attained their greatest popularity, surviving in the Languedoc, in much reduced form, up to around 1325 and in the Italian cities until the Inquisitions of the 14th century finally extirpated them.
Beliefs
Cosmology
Cathar cosmology identified two twin, opposing deities. The first was a good God, portrayed in the New Testament and creator of the spirit, while the second was an evil God, depicted in the Old Testament and creator of matter and the physical world. The latter, often called ("King of the World"), was identified as the God of Judaism, and was also either conflated with Satan or considered Satan's father, creator or seducer. They addressed the problem of evil by stating that the good God's power to do good was limited by the evil God's works and vice versa.
However, those beliefs were far from unanimous. Some Cathar communities believed in a mitigated dualism similar to their Bogomil predecessors, stating that the evil god, Satan, had previously been the true God's servant before rebelling against him. Others, likely a majority over time given the influence reflected on the Book of the Two Principles, believed in an absolute dualism, where the two gods were twin entities of the same power and importance.
All visible matter, including the human body, was created or crafted by this ; matter was therefore tainted with sin. Under this view, humans were actually angels seduced by Satan before a war in heaven against the army of Michael, after which they would have been forced to spend an eternity trapped in the evil God's material realm. The Cathars taught that to regain angelic status one had to renounce the material self completely. Until one was prepared to do so, they would be stuck in a cycle of reincarnation, condemned to live on the corrupt Earth.
Zoé Oldenbourg compared the Cathars to "Western Buddhists" because she considered that their view of the doctrine of "resurrection" taught by Christ was similar to the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth.
Christology
Cathars venerated Jesus Christ and followed what they considered to be his true teachings, labelling themselves as "Good Christians". However, they denied his physical incarnation. Authors believe that their conception of Jesus resembled docetism, believing him the human form of an angel, whose physical body was only an appearance. This illusory form would have possibly been given by the Virgin Mary, another angel in human form, or possibly a human born of a woman with no involvement of a man.
They firmly rejected the Resurrection of Jesus, seeing it as representing reincarnation, and the Christian symbol of the cross, considering it to be not more than a material instrument of torture and evil. They also saw John the Baptist, identified also with Elijah, as an evil being sent to hinder Jesus's teaching through the false sacrament of baptism.
Most Cathars did not accept the normative Trinitarian understanding of Jesus, instead resembling nontrinitarian modalistic monarchianism (Sabellianism) in the West and adoptionism in the East, which might or might not be combined with the mentioned docetism. Bernard of Clairvaux's biographer and other sources accuse some Cathars of Arianism, and some scholars see Cathar Christology as having traces of earlier Arian roots.
Some communities might have believed in the existence of a spirit realm created by the good God, the "Land of the Living", whose history and geography would have served as the basis for the evil god's corrupt creation. Under this view, the history of Jesus would have happened roughly as told, only in the spirit realm. The physical Jesus from the material world would have been evil, a false messiah and a lustful lover of the material Mary Magdalene. However, the true Jesus would have influenced the physical world in a way similar to the Harrowing of Hell, only by inhabiting the body of Paul. 13th century chronicler Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay recorded those views.
Other beliefs
Some Cathars told a version of the Enochian narrative, according to which Eve's daughters copulated with Satan's demons and bore giants. The Deluge would have been provoked by Satan, who disapproved of the demons revealing he was not the real god, or alternatively, an attempt by the Invisible Father to destroy the giants. The Holy Spirit was sometimes counted as one single entity, but to others it was considered the collective groups of unfallen angels who had not followed Satan in his rebellion.
Despite the usual Cathar stance on sex and reproduction, some Cathar communities made exceptions. In one version, the Invisible Father had two spiritual wives, Collam and Hoolibam (identified with Oholah and Oholibah), and would himself have provoked the war in heaven by seducing the wife of Satan, or perhaps the reverse. Cathars adhering to this story would believe that having families and sons would not impede them from reaching God's kingdom.
Some communities also believed in a Day of Judgement that would come when the number of the just equalled that of angels who fell, when the believers would ascend to the spirit realm, while the sinners would be thrown to everlasting fire along with Satan.
The Cathars ate a pescatarian diet. They did not eat cheese, eggs, meat, or milk because these are all by-products of sexual intercourse. The Cathars believed that animals were carriers of reincarnated souls, and forbade the killing of all animal life, apart from fish, which they believed were produced by spontaneous generation.
Texts
The alleged sacred texts of the Cathars, besides the New Testament, included the Bogomil text The Gospel of the Secret Supper (also called John's Interrogation), a modified version of Ascension of Isaiah, and the Cathar original work The Book of the Two Principles (possibly penned by Italian Cathar John Lugio of Bergamo). They regarded the Old Testament as written by Satan, except for a few books which they accepted, and considered the Book of Revelation not a prophecy about the future, but an allegorical chronicle of what had transpired in Satan's rebellion. Their reinterpretation of those texts contained numerous elements characteristic of Gnostic literature.
Organization
Sacraments
Cathars, in general, formed an anti-sacerdotal party in opposition to the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, protesting against what they perceived to be the moral, spiritual and political corruption of the Church. In contrast, the Cathars had but one central rite, the Consolamentum, or Consolation. This involved a brief spiritual ceremony to remove all sin from the believer and to induct him into the next higher level as a Perfect.
Many believers would receive the Consolamentum as death drew near, performing the ritual of liberation at a moment when the heavy obligations of purity required of Perfecti would be temporally short. Some of those who received the sacrament of the consolamentum upon their death-beds may thereafter have shunned further food or drink and, more often and in addition, expose themselves to extreme cold, in order to speed death. This has been termed the . It was claimed by some of the church writers that when a Cathar, after receiving the Consolamentum, began to show signs of recovery he or she would be smothered in order to ensure his or her entry into paradise. Other than at such moments of , little evidence exists to suggest this was a common Cathar practice.
The Cathars also refused the sacrament of the eucharist, saying that it could not possibly be the body of Christ. They also refused to partake in the practice of Baptism by water. The following two quotes are taken from the Inquisitor Bernard Gui's experiences with the Cathar practices and beliefs:
Social relationships
Killing was abhorrent to the Cathars. Consequently, abstention from all animal food (sometimes exempting fish) was enjoined of the Perfecti. The Perfecti avoided eating anything considered to be a by-product of sexual reproduction. War and capital punishment were also condemned—an abnormality in Medieval Europe. In a world where few could read, their rejection of oath-taking marked them as rebels against social order.
To the Cathars, reproduction was a moral evil to be avoided, as it continued the chain of reincarnation and suffering in the material world. Such was the situation that a charge of heresy leveled against a suspected Cathar was usually dismissed if the accused could show he was legally married.
When Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, a key leader of the anti-Cathar persecutions, excoriated the Languedoc Knights for not pursuing the heretics more diligently, he received the reply, "We cannot. We have been reared in their midst. We have relatives among them and we see them living lives of perfection."
Hierarchy
It has been alleged that the Cathar Church of the Languedoc had a relatively flat structure, distinguishing between the baptised (a term they did not use; instead, ) and ordinary unbaptised believers (). By about 1140, liturgy and a system of doctrine had been established. They created a number of bishoprics, first at Albi around 1165 and after the 1167 Council at Saint-Félix-Lauragais sites at Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Agen, so that four bishoprics were in existence by 1200. In about 1225, during a lull in the Albigensian Crusade, the bishopric of Razès was added. Bishops were supported by their two assistants: a (typically the successor) and a , who were further assisted by deacons. The were the spiritual elite, highly respected by many of the local people, leading a life of austerity and charity. In the apostolic fashion, they ministered to the people and travelled in pairs.
Role of women and sex
Catharism has been seen as giving women the greatest opportunities for independent action, since women were found as being believers as well as Perfecti, who were able to administer the sacrament of the consolamentum.
Cathars believed that a person would be repeatedly reincarnated until they committed to self-denial of the material world. A man could be reincarnated as a woman and vice versa. The spirit was of utmost importance to the Cathars and was described as being immaterial and sexless. Because of this belief, the Cathars saw women as equally capable of being spiritual leaders.
Women accused of being heretics in early medieval Christianity included those labeled Gnostics, Cathars, and, later, the Beguines, as well as several other groups that were sometimes "tortured and executed". Cathars, like the Gnostics who preceded them, assigned more importance to the role of Mary Magdalene in the spread of early Christianity than the church previously did. Her vital role as a teacher contributed to the Cathar belief that women could serve as spiritual leaders. Women were found to be included in the Perfecti in significant numbers, with numerous receiving the after being widowed. Having reverence for the Gospel of John, the Cathars saw Mary Magdalene as perhaps even more important than Saint Peter, the founder of the church.
Catharism attracted numerous women with the promise of a leadership role that the Catholic Church did not allow. Catharism let women become a Perfect. These female Perfects were required to adhere to a strict and ascetic lifestyle, but were still able to have their own houses. Although many women found something attractive in Catharism, not all found its teachings convincing. A notable example is Hildegard of Bingen, who in 1163 gave a rousing exhortation against the Cathars in Cologne. During this discourse, Hildegard announced God's eternal damnation on all who accepted Cathar beliefs.
While women Perfects rarely traveled to preach the faith, they still played a vital role in the spreading of Catharism by establishing group homes for women. Though it was extremely uncommon, there were isolated cases of female Cathars leaving their homes to spread the faith. In Cathar communal homes (ostals), women were educated in the faith, and these women would go on to bear children who would then also become believers. Through this pattern, the faith grew exponentially through the efforts of women as each generation passed.
Despite women having a role in the growth of the faith, Catharism was not completely equal; for example, the belief that one's last incarnation had to be experienced as a man to break the cycle. This belief was inspired by later French Cathars, who taught that women must be reborn as men in order to achieve salvation. Another example was the belief that the sexual allure of women impeded a man's ability to reject the material world. Toward the end of the Cathar movement, Catharism became less equal and started the practice of excluding women Perfects. However, this trend remained limited; for example, later on, Italian Perfects still included women.
Suppression
In 1147, Pope Eugene III sent a legate to the Cathar district in order to arrest the progress of the Cathars. The few isolated successes of Bernard of Clairvaux could not obscure the poor results of this mission, which clearly showed the power of the sect in the Languedoc at that period. The missions of Cardinal Peter of Saint Chrysogonus to Toulouse and the Toulousain in 1178, and of Henry of Marcy, cardinal-bishop of Albano, in 1180–81, obtained merely momentary successes. Henry's armed expedition, which took the stronghold at Lavaur, did not extinguish the movement.
Decisions of Catholic Church councils—in particular, those of the Council of Tours (1163) and of the Third Council of the Lateran (1179)—had scarcely more effect upon the Cathars. When Pope Innocent III came to power in 1198, he was resolved to deal with them.
At first Innocent tried peaceful conversion, and sent a number of legates into the Cathar regions. They had to contend not only with the Cathars, the nobles who protected them, and the people who respected them, but also with many of the bishops of the region, who resented the considerable authority the Pope had conferred upon his legates. In 1204, Innocent III suspended a number of bishops in Occitania; in 1205 he appointed a new and vigorous bishop of Toulouse, the former troubadour Foulques. In 1206 Diego of Osma and his canon, the future Saint Dominic, began a programme of conversion in Languedoc; as part of this, Catholic–Cathar public debates were held at Verfeil, Servian, Pamiers, Montréal and elsewhere.
Dominic met and debated with the Cathars in 1203 during his mission to the Languedoc. He concluded that only preachers who displayed real sanctity, humility and asceticism could win over convinced Cathar believers. The institutional Church as a general rule did not possess these spiritual warrants. His conviction led eventually to the establishment of the Dominican Order in 1216. The order was to live up to the terms of his famous rebuke, "Zeal must be met by zeal, humility by humility, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching falsehood by preaching truth." However, even Dominic managed only a few converts among the Cathars.
Albigensian Crusade
In January 1208 the papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau, a Cistercian monk, theologian and canon lawyer, was sent to meet the ruler of the area, Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse. Known for excommunicating noblemen who protected the Cathars, Castelnau excommunicated Raymond for abetting heresy, following an allegedly fierce argument during which Raymond supposedly threatened Castelnau with violence. Shortly thereafter, Castelnau was murdered as he returned to Rome, allegedly by a knight in the service of Count Raymond. His body was returned and laid to rest in the Abbey of Saint-Gilles.
As soon as he heard of the murder, the Pope ordered the legates to preach a crusade against the Cathars, and wrote a letter to Philip Augustus, King of France, appealing for his intervention—or an intervention led by his son, Louis. This was not the first appeal, but some see the murder of the legate as a turning point in papal policy. The chronicler of the crusade which followed, Peter of Vaux de Cernay, portrays the sequence of events in such a way that, having failed in his effort to peaceably demonstrate the errors of Catharism, the Pope then called a formal crusade, appointing a series of leaders to head the assault.
The French King refused to lead the crusade himself, and could not spare his son to do so either—despite his victory against John, King of England, there were still pressing issues with Flanders and the empire and the threat of an Angevin revival. Philip did sanction the participation of some of his barons, notably Simon de Montfort and Bouchard de Marly. There followed twenty years of war against the Cathars and their allies in the Languedoc: the Albigensian Crusade.
This war pitted the nobles of France against those of the Languedoc. The widespread northern enthusiasm for the Crusade was partially inspired by a papal decree permitting the confiscation of lands owned by Cathars and their supporters. This angered not only the lords of the south but also the French King, who was at least nominally the suzerain of the lords whose lands were now open to seizure. Philip Augustus wrote to Pope Innocent in strong terms to point this out—but the Pope did not change his policy. As the Languedoc was supposedly teeming with Cathars and Cathar sympathisers, this made the region a target for northern French noblemen looking to acquire new fiefs. The barons of the north headed south to do battle.
Their first target was the lands of the Trencavel, powerful lords of Carcassonne, Béziers, Albi and the Razes. Little was done to form a regional coalition, and the crusading army was able to take Carcassonne, the Trencavel capital, incarcerating Raymond Roger Trencavel in his own citadel where he died within three months. Champions of the Occitan cause claimed that he was murdered. Simon de Montfort was granted the Trencavel lands by the Pope and did homage for them to the King of France, thus incurring the enmity of Peter II of Aragon who had held aloof from the conflict, even acting as a mediator at the time of the siege of Carcassonne. The remainder of the first of the two Cathar wars now focused on Simon's attempt to hold on to his gains through the winters. Then, he was faced, with only a small force of confederates operating from the main winter camp at Fanjeaux, with the desertion of local lords who had sworn fealty to him out of necessity—and attempts to enlarge his newfound domains during the summer, when his forces were greatly augmented by reinforcements from France, Germany and elsewhere.
Summer campaigns saw him not only retake what he had lost in the winter, but also seeking to widen his sphere of operation—and we see him in action in the Aveyron at St. Antonin and on the banks of the Rhône at Beaucaire. Simon's greatest triumph was the victory against superior numbers at the Battle of Muret—a battle which saw not only the defeat of Raymond of Toulouse and his Occitan allies—but also the death of Peter of Aragon—and the effective end of the ambitions of the house of Aragon/Barcelona in the Languedoc.
Massacre
The crusader army came under the command, both spiritually and militarily, of the papal legate Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux. In the first significant engagement of the war, the town of Béziers was besieged on 22 July 1209. The Catholic inhabitants of the city were granted the freedom to leave unharmed, but many refused and opted to stay and fight alongside the Cathars.
The Cathars spent much of 1209 fending off the crusaders. The Béziers army attempted a sortie but was quickly defeated, then pursued by the crusaders back through the gates and into the city. Arnaud-Amaury, the Cistercian abbot-commander, is supposed to have been asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics. His reply, recalled by Caesarius of Heisterbach, a fellow Cistercian, thirty years later was —"Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own". The doors of the church of St Mary Magdalene were broken down and the refugees dragged out and slaughtered. Reportedly, at least 7,000 men, women and children were killed there by Catholic forces. Elsewhere in the town, many more thousands were mutilated and killed. Prisoners were blinded, dragged behind horses, and used for target practice. What remained of the city was razed by fire. Arnaud-Amaury wrote to Pope Innocent III, "Today your Holiness, twenty thousand heretics were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex." "The permanent population of Béziers at that time was then probably no more than 5,000, but local refugees seeking shelter within the city walls could conceivably have increased the number to 20,000."
After the success of his siege of Carcassonne, which followed the massacre at Béziers in 1209, Simon de Montfort was designated as leader of the Crusader army. Prominent opponents of the Crusaders were Raymond Roger Trencavel, viscount of Carcassonne, and his feudal overlord Peter II of Aragon, who held fiefdoms and had a number of vassals in the region. Peter died fighting against the crusade on 12 September 1213 at the Battle of Muret. Simon de Montfort was killed on 25 June 1218 after maintaining a siege of Toulouse for nine months.
Treaty and persecution
The official war ended in the Treaty of Paris (1229), by which the king of France dispossessed the House of Toulouse of the greater part of its fiefs, and the house of the Trencavels of the whole of their fiefs. The independence of the princes of the Languedoc was at an end. In spite of the wholesale massacre of Cathars during the war, Catharism was not yet extinguished, and Catholic forces would continue to pursue Cathars.
In 1215, the bishops of the Catholic Church met at the Fourth Council of the Lateran under Pope Innocent III; part of the agenda was combating the Cathar heresy.
The Inquisition was established in 1233 to uproot the remaining Cathars. Operating in the south at Toulouse, Albi, Carcassonne and other towns during the whole of the 13th century, and a great part of the 14th, it succeeded in crushing Catharism as a popular movement, driving its remaining adherents underground. Cathars who refused to recant or relapsed were hanged, or burnt at the stake.
On Friday 13 May 1239, in Champagne, 183 men and women convicted of Catharism were burned at the stake on the orders of the Dominican inquisitor and former Cathar Perfect . Mount Guimar, in northeastern France, had already been denounced as a place of heresy in a letter of the Bishop of Liège to Pope Lucius II in 1144.
From May 1243 to March 1244, the Cathar fortress of Montségur was besieged by the troops of the seneschal of Carcassonne and the archbishop of Narbonne. On 16 March 1244, a large and symbolically important massacre took place, wherein over 200 Cathar Perfects were burnt in an enormous pyre at the ("field of the burned") near the foot of the castle. Moreover, the Church, at the 1235 Council of Narbonne, decreed lesser chastisements against laymen suspected of sympathy with Cathars.
A popular though as yet unsubstantiated belief holds that a small party of Cathar Perfects escaped from the fortress prior to the massacre at . It is widely held in the Cathar region to this day that the escapees took with them "the Cathar treasure". What this treasure consisted of has been a matter of considerable speculation: claims range from sacred Gnostic texts to the Cathars' accumulated wealth, which might have included the Holy Grail (see below).
Hunted by the Inquisition and deserted by the nobles of their districts, the Cathars became more and more scattered fugitives, meeting surreptitiously in forests and mountain wilds. Later insurrections broke out under the leadership of Roger-Bernard II, Count of Foix, Aimery III of Narbonne, and Bernard Délicieux, a Franciscan friar later prosecuted for his adherence to another heretical movement, that of the Spiritual Franciscans at the beginning of the 14th century. By this time, the Inquisition had grown very powerful. Consequently, many presumed to be Cathars were summoned to appear before it. Precise indications of this are found in the registers of the Inquisitors Bernard of Caux, Jean de St Pierre, Geoffroy d'Ablis, and others. The perfects, it was said, only rarely recanted, and hundreds were burnt. Repentant lay believers were punished, but their lives were spared as long as they did not relapse. Having recanted, they were obliged to sew yellow crosses onto their outdoor clothing and to live apart from other Catholics, at least for a time.
Annihilation
After several decades of harassment and re-proselytising, and, perhaps even more important, the systematic destruction of their religious texts, the sect was exhausted and could find no more adepts. The leader of a Cathar revival in the Pyrenean foothills, Peire Autier, was captured and executed in April 1310 in Toulouse. After 1330, the records of the Inquisition contain very few proceedings against Cathars. The last known Cathar perfect in the Languedoc, Guillaume Bélibaste, was executed in the autumn of 1321.
From the mid-12th century onwards, Italian Catharism came under increasing pressure from the Pope and the Inquisition, "spelling the beginning of the end". Other movements, such as the Waldensians and the pantheistic Brethren of the Free Spirit, which suffered persecution in the same area, survived in remote areas and in small numbers through the 14th and 15th centuries. The Waldensian movement continues today; Waldensian ideas influenced other proto-Protestant sects, such as the Hussites, Lollards, and the Moravian Church.
Later history
After the suppression of Catharism, the descendants of Cathars were discriminated against and at times required to live outside towns and their defences. They retained their Cathar identity, despite their reintegration into Catholicism. As such, any use of the term "Cathar" to refer to people after the suppression of Catharism in the 14th century is a cultural or ancestral reference and has no religious implication. Nevertheless, interest in the Cathars and their history, legacy and beliefs continues.
The term , French meaning "Cathar Country", is used to highlight the Cathar heritage and history of the region in which Catharism was traditionally strongest. The area is centred around fortresses such as Montségur and Carcassonne; also, the French département of the Aude uses the title in tourist brochures. The areas have ruins from the wars against the Cathars that are still visible today.
Some criticise the promotion of the identity of as an exaggeration for tourism purposes. Many of the promoted Cathar castles were not built by Cathars but by local lords, and many of them were later rebuilt and extended for strategic purposes. Good examples are the castles of Queribus and Peyrepertuse, which are both perched on the side of precipitous drops on the last folds of the Corbières Massif. They were for several hundred years frontier fortresses belonging to the French crown, and most of what is still there dates from a post-Cathar era. Many consider the County of Foix to be the actual historical centre of Catharism.
Interrogation of heretics
In an effort to find the few remaining heretics in and around the village of Montaillou, Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers, future Pope Benedict XII, had those suspected of heresy interrogated in the presence of scribes who recorded their conversations. The late 13th- to early-14th-century document, the Fournier Register, discovered in the Vatican archives in the 1960s and edited by Jean Duvernoy, is the basis for Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's work Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error.
Historical and current scholarship
The publication of the early scholarly book Crusade Against the Grail, by the young German Otto Rahn in the 1930s, rekindled interest in the connection between the Cathars and the Holy Grail, especially in Germany. Rahn was convinced that the 13th-century work Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach was a veiled account of the Cathars. The philosopher and Nazi government official Alfred Rosenberg speaks favourably of the Cathars in The Myth of the Twentieth Century.
Academic books in English first appeared at the beginning of the 21st century: for example, Malcolm Lambert's The Cathars and Malcolm Barber's The Cathars.
Starting in the 1990s and continuing to the present day, historians like R. I. Moore have challenged the extent to which Catharism, as an institutionalized religion, actually existed. Building on the work of French historians such as Monique Zerner and Uwe Brunn, Moore's The War on Heresy argues that Catharism was "contrived from the resources of [the] well-stocked imaginations" of churchmen, "with occasional reinforcement from miscellaneous and independent manifestations of local anticlericalism or apostolic enthusiasm". In short, Moore claims that the men and women persecuted as Cathars were not the followers of a secret religion imported from the East; instead, they were part of a broader spiritual revival taking place in the later twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Moore's work is indicative of a larger historiographical trend towards examining how heresy was constructed by the church.
In 2016, Cathars in Question. edited by Antonio Sennis, presents a range of conflicting views by academics of medieval heresy, including Feuchter, Stoyanov, Sackville, Taylor, D'Avray, Biller, Moore, Bruschi, Pegg, Hamilton, Arnold and Théry-Astruc, who had met at University College London and the Warburg Institute in London in April 2013. Sennis describes the debate as about "an issue which is highly controversial and hotly debated among scholars: the existence of a medieval phenomenon which we can legitimately call 'Catharism'."
Dr. Andrew Roach in The English Historical Review commented that "Reconciliation still seems some distance away" among the "distinguished, if sometimes cantankerous, scholars" who contributed to the volume. He said:
Professor Rebecca Rist describes the academic controversy as the "heresy debate" – "some of it very heated" – about whether Catharism was a "real heresy with Balkans origins, or rather a construct of western medieval culture, whose authorities wanted to persecute religious dissidents." Rist adds that some historians say the group was an invention of the medieval Church, so there never was a Cathar heresy; while she agrees that the medieval Church exaggerated its threat, she says there is evidence of the heresy's existence.
Professor Claire Taylor has called for a "post-revisionism" in the debate, saying that legacy historians assumed the heresy was a form of dualism and therefore a form of Bogomilism, whereas "revisionists" have focused on social origins to explain the dissent.
Lucy Sackville has argued that while the revisionists rightly point to the Cathars' opaque origins and their branding as 'Manichaeans', this does not mean we should disregard all evidence that their heresy had an organised theology.
In art and music
The principal legacy of the Cathar movement is in the poems and songs of the Cathar troubadors, though this artistic legacy is only a smaller part of the wider Occitan linguistic and artistic heritage. The Occitan song Lo Boièr is particularly associated to Catharism.
Recent artistic projects concentrating on the Cathar element in Provençal and troubador art include commercial recording projects by Thomas Binkley, electric hurdy-gurdy artist Valentin Clastrier , La Nef, and Jordi Savall.
In popular culture, Catharism has been linked with the Knights Templar, an active sect of monks founded during the First Crusade (1095–1099). This link has caused fringe theories about the Cathars and the possibility of their possession of the Holy Grail, such as in the pseudohistorical The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.
See also
Antonin Gadal
Crusades
Edmund Hamer Broadbent—The Pilgrim Church
Comparison of Catharism and Protestantism
References
Notes
Sources
. Deals with Catharism in the context of the Inquisition's evolution and analyses Inquisitorial practice as the construction of the "confessing subject".
. A discussion of the command "Kill them all, God will know his own." recorded by a contemporary Cistercian Chronicler.
Biget, Jean-Louis (2007), Hérésie et inquisition dans le midi de la France, Paris: Picard (Les médiévistes français), 2007.
Biget, Jean-Louis (2020), Eglise, dissidences et société dans l'Occitanie médiévale, with a foreword by Julien Théry, Lyon, Avignon : CIHAM Editions, 2020 (collection Mondes médiévaux), 2020.
Brunn, Uwe (2006), Des contestataires aux "cathares" : Discours de réforme et propagande antihérétique dans les pays du Rhin et de la Meuse avant l'Inquisition, Paris, Institut d'études augustiniennes
. An history of the Albigensian war told by a contemporary.
Jean Duvernoy, Jean: transcriptions of inquisitorial manuscripts, many hitherto unpublished
.
.
.
Mathieu, Albert, "Ce lieu est terrible, le Mont-Aimé en Champagne" Vendredi 13 mai 1239 Réf : Bibliothèque Nationale de France
</ref>
.
.
. A collection of primary sources, some on Catharism.
External links
, including the Lyon Ritual.
: Official website of the Cathar Temple
: History, origins, theology and extirpation.
: details, histories, photographs, plans and maps of 30 Cathar castles.
.
.
.
: Cathar history & theology
Ascetics
Christian mysticism
Gnosticism
History of Catholicism in France
Nontrinitarianism
Persecution of Christian heretics | en |
doc-en-11712 | Syria's economic situation has been turbulent and has deteriorated considerably since the beginning of the Syrian war, which erupted in March 2011.
History
Post independence
Since Syria became independent in 1946, the economy has undergone widespread structural change. Although the presence of the Allied forces during World War II stimulated commerce by providing markets for agriculture, textiles, and other locally manufactured goods, Syria lacked both the infrastructure and the resources to promote economic prosperity. Agriculture controlled the country's economy and determined the pace of industrial expansion as large landowners channeled profits from agricultural exports into agroindustrial and related urban enterprises. Syria's predominantly rural population, working under land tenure and sharecropping arrangements, derived few benefits from the agriculturally induced economic growth of the 1950s. However, Syria's union with Egypt (1958–61) and the rise of the Baath Party as the major political force in the country in the 1960s, transformed Syria's economic orientation and development strategy.
1960s-1970s: State-led development
By the mid-1960s, government-sponsored land reform and nationalization of major industries and foreign investments had confirmed the new socialist direction of Syria's economic policy. As the state assumed greater control over economic decision-making by adopting centralized planning and strictly regulating commercial transactions, Syria experienced a substantial loss of skilled workers, administrators, and their capital. Despite the political upheavals, which undermined the confidence of landowners, merchants, and industrialists, the state successfully implemented large-scale development projects to expand industry, agriculture, and infrastructure.
During the 1970s, Syria achieved high rates of economic growth. The dramatic rise of world oil prices from 1973 to 1974 led to increased production from domestic refineries. Moreover, higher prices for agricultural and oil exports, as well as the state's limited economic liberalization policy, encouraged growth. Also, Syria's economic boom was furthered by increased remittances from Syrians working in the oil-rich Arab states and higher levels of Arab and other foreign aid. By the end of the decade, the Syrian economy had shifted from its traditional agrarian base to an economy dominated by the service, industrial, and commercial sectors. Massive expenditures for development of irrigation, electricity, water, road building projects, and expansion of health services and education to rural areas contributed to prosperity. However, the economy remained dependent on foreign aid and grants to finance the growing deficits both in the budget and in trade. Syria, as a front-line state in the Arab-Israeli conflict, was also vulnerable to the vagaries of Middle East politics, relying on Arab aid transfers and Soviet assistance to support mounting defense expenditures.
1980s: Crisis and austerity
By the mid-1980s, the country's economic climate had shifted from prosperity to austerity. Syria's economic boom collapsed as a result of the rapid fall of world oil prices, lower export revenues, drought affecting agricultural production, and falling worker remittances. Also, Arab aid levels decreased because of economic retrenchment in the oil-producing states and Syrian support for Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. Real per capita GDP fell 22% between 1982 and 1989. To restore the economy, the government sharply reduced spending, cut back imports, encouraged more private sector and foreign investment, and launched an anticorruption campaign against smugglers and black-market money changers. However, massive defense outlays continued to divert resources from productive investments.
By the late 1980s, spot shortages of basic commodities occurred frequently, and industry operated far below capacity because of routine power outages. Foreign exchange reserves plummeted, the trade deficit widened, and real gross domestic product growth fell as economic difficulties compounded. Although the government instituted limited reforms to respond to the burgeoning crisis, Syria's pressing economic problems required a radically restructured economic policy to improve future economic performance.
1990s-2000s: Liberalization and privatization
In 1990, the Assad government instituted a series of economic reforms, although the economy remained highly regulated. The Syrian economy experienced strong growth throughout the 1990s, and into the 2000s. Syria's per capita GDP was US$4,058 in 2010. There is no authoritative GDP data available after 2012, due to Syria's civil war.
Following his assumption of power in 2000, Bashar al-Assad sought to frame his leadership around modernizing and opening the economy. He emphasized, in particular, "the need to modernise the regulatory environment and the industrial base, activate and encourage the private sector, remove bureaucratic obstacles to investment, increase job opportunities, qualify cadres, improve education and expand information technology." While the government's neoliberal reforms indeed contributed to ramping up trade and invigorating the private sector, these were accompanied by rising inequality, declining public services, and increasingly overt forms of corruption, which ultimately helped fuel protests in 2011. In one example of this trend, the Syrian Agricultural Workers Union complained in February 2011 that state mismanagement and the lifting of input subsidies was exacerbating the impact of drought on Syria's agricultural sector.
Before the civil war, the two main pillars of the Syrian economy were agriculture and oil, which together accounted for about one-half of GDP. Agriculture, for instance, accounted for about 26% of GDP and employed 25% of the total labor force. However, poor climatic conditions and severe drought badly affected the agricultural sector, reducing its share in the economy to about 17% of 2008 GDP, down from 20.4% in 2007, according to preliminary data from the Central Bureau of Statistics. On the other hand, higher crude oil prices countered declining oil production and led to higher budgetary and export receipts.
2011-present: Syria's civil war
Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War, the Syrian economy has been hit by massive economic sanctions restricting trade with the Arab League, Australia, Canada, the European Union, (as well as the European countries of Albania, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, and Switzerland) Georgia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. Sanctions against Syria were further extended by the US Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act that came into force in June 2020.
The sanctions, destruction and dislocation associated with the Civil War have devastated Syria's economy. By the end of 2013, the UN estimated total economic damage from the Syrian Civil War at $143 billion. The total economic loss from the Syrian Civil War will reach $237 billion by the end of 2015, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, with the Syrian opposition's capture of Nasib border crossing costing the government a further $500–$700 million a year on top of this. In 2018, the World Bank estimated that about one-third of Syria's housing stock and one half of its health and education facilities have been destroyed by the conflict. According to the World Bank, a cumulative total of $226 billion in GDP was lost due to the conflict from 2011 to 2016.
The Syrian economy suffered from conflict-related hyperinflation. The Syrian annual inflation rate is one of the highest in the world. The national currency, the Syrian pound, tumbled in mid-2020 against the US dollar. The pound, which traded at 47 pounds to the dollar before the 2011 uprising, plunged to over 3000 to the dollar. Prices of basic goods have skyrocketed and some staples have disappeared from the market as merchants and the public struggled to keep up with the rising cost of living.
Basic information
During the 1960s, along socialist lines, the government nationalized most major enterprises and adopted economic policies designed to address regional and class disparities. Economic reform has been incremental and gradual. In 2001, private banking in Syria has been legalized. In 2004, four private banks began operations. In August 2004, a committee was formed to supervise the establishment of a stock market. Beyond the financial sector, the Syrian Government has enacted major changes to rental and tax laws, and is reportedly considering similar changes to the commercial code and to other laws, which impact property rights.
(Ohachq)
Syria produced heavy-grade oil from fields inside in the northeast since the late 1960s. In the early 1980s, light-grade, low-sulphur oil was discovered near Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria. This discovery relieved Syria of the need to import light oil to mix with domestic heavy crude in refineries. As the war erupted in 2011, Syria's oil production had dropped to 353,000 bpd and then plunged to 24,000 bpd by 2018. Syria's oil reserves have been gradually depleted and reached an estimated 2.5 billion barrels of oil reserves in 2018.
Ad hoc economic liberalization continues to add wealth inequality, impoverishing the average population while enriching a few people in Syria's private sector. In 1990, the government established an official parallel exchange rate to provide incentives for remittances and exports through official channels. This action improved the supply of basic commodities and contained inflation by removing risk premiums on smuggled commodities.
Foreign aid to Syria in 1997 totaled an estimated US$199 million. The World Bank reported that in July 2004, it had committed a total of US$661 million for 20 operations in Syria. One investment project remained active at that time.
External trade and investment
Despite the mitigation of the severe drought that plagued the region in the late 1990s and the recovery of energy export revenues, Syria's economy faces serious challenges. With almost 60% of its population under the age of 20, unemployment higher than the current 9% is a real possibility unless sustained and strong economic growth takes off.
Commerce has always been important to the Syrian economy, which benefited from the country's strategic location along major east–west trade routes. Syrian cities boast both traditional industries such as weaving and dried-fruit packing and modern heavy industry. Given the policies adopted from the 1960s through the late 1980s, Syria refused to join the "global economy". In late 2001, however, Syria submitted a request to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to begin the accession process. Syria had been an original contracting party of the former General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade but withdrew in 1951 because of Israel's joining. Major elements of current Syrian trade rules would have to change in order to be consistent with the WTO. In March 2007, Syria signed an Association Agreement with the European Union that would encourage both sides to negotiate a free trade agreement before 2010.
The bulk of Syrian imports have been raw materials essential for industry, agriculture, equipment, and machinery. Major exports include crude oil, refined products, raw cotton, clothing, fruits, and cereal grains.
Over time, the government has increased the number of transactions to which the more favorable neighboring country exchange rate applies. The government also introduced a quasi-rate for non-commercial transactions in 2001 broadly in line with prevailing black market rates.
Given the poor development of its own capital markets and Syria's lack of access to international money and capital markets, monetary policy remains captive to the need to cover the fiscal deficit. Although in 2003 Syria lowered interest rates for the first time in 22 years and again in 2004, rates remain fixed by law.
Debt
Under Syrian President Bashar Assad, national debt in relation to GDP went from 152.09% in 2000 down to 30.02% in 2010. Before the civil war, Syria made progress in easing its heavy foreign debt burden through bilateral rescheduling deals with virtually all of its key creditors in Europe. In December 2004, Syria and Poland reached an agreement by which Syria would pay $27 million out of the total $261.7 million debt. In January 2005, Russia and Syria signed a deal that wrote off nearly 75% of Syria's debt to Russia, approximately $13 billion. The agreement left Syria with less than €3 billion (just over $3.6 billion) owed to Moscow. Half of it would be repaid over the next 10 years, while the rest would be paid into Russian accounts in Syrian banks and could be used for Russian investment projects in Syria and for buying Syrian products. This agreement was part of a weapons deal between Russia and Syria. And later that year Syria reached an agreement with Slovakia, and the Czech Republic to settle debt estimated at $1.6 billion. Again Syria was forgiven the bulk of its debt, in exchange for a one time payment of $150 million.
Sectors of the economy
Agriculture
Agriculture is a high priority in Syria's economic development plans, as the government seeks to achieve food self-sufficiency, increase export earnings, and halt rural out-migration. Thanks to sustained capital investment, infrastructure development, subsidies of inputs, and price supports, before the civil war Syria went from a net importer of many agricultural products to an exporter of cotton, fruits, vegetables, and other foodstuffs. One of the prime reasons for this turnaround was the government's investment in huge irrigation systems in northern and northeastern Syria. The agriculture sector, as of 2009, employed about 17% of the labor force and generates about 21% of the gross domestic product, of which livestock accounted for 16% and fruit and grains for more than 40%.
In 2015, Syria's main exports included spice seeds ($83.2 million), apples and pears ($53.2 million).
Most land is privately owned, a crucial factor behind the sector's success. Of Syria's , about 28% of it is cultivated, and 21% of that total is irrigated. Most irrigated land is designated "strategic", meaning that it encounters significant state intervention in terms of pricing, subsidies, and marketing controls. "Strategic" products such as wheat, barley, and sugar beets, must be sold to state marketing boards at fixed prices, often above world prices in order to support farmers, but at a significant cost to the state budget. The most widely grown arable crop is wheat, but the most important cash crop is cotton; cotton was the largest single export before the development of the oil sector. Nevertheless, the total area planted with cotton has declined because of an increasing problem of water shortage coupled with old and inefficient irrigation techniques. The output of grains like wheat is often underutilized because of poor storage facilities.
Water and energy are among the most pervasive issues facing the agriculture sector. Another difficulty suffered by the agricultural sector is the government's decision to liberalize prices of fertilizers, which increased between 100% and 400%. Drought was an alarming problem in 2008; however, the drought situation slightly improved in 2009. Wheat and barley production about doubled in 2009 compared to 2008. In spite of that, the livelihoods of up to 1 million agricultural workers have been threatened. In response, the UN launched an emergency appeal for $20.2 million. Wheat has been one of the crops most affected, and for the first time in 2 decades Syria has moved from being a net exporter of wheat to a net importer. During the civil war which began in 2011, the Syrian government was forced to put out a tender for 100,000 metric tonnes of wheat, one of the few trade products not subject to economic sanctions.
Less than 2.7% of Syria's land area is forested, and only a portion of that is commercially useful. Limited forestry activity is centered in the higher elevations of the mountains just inland from the coast, where rainfall is more abundant.
Energy and mineral resources
Mining
Phosphates are the major minerals exploited in Syria. According to estimates Syria has around 1,700 million tons of phosphate reserves. Production dropped sharply in the early 1990s when world demand and prices fell, but output has since increased to more than 2.4 million tons. Syria produced about 1.9% of the world's phosphate rock output and was the world's ninth ranked producer of phosphate rock in 2009. Other major minerals produced in Syria include cement, gypsum, industrial sand (silica), marble, natural crude asphalt, nitrogen fertilizer, phosphate fertilizer, salt, steel, and volcanic tuff, which generally are not produced for export.
Oil and natural gas
Syria is a relatively small oil producer, accounting for just 0.5% of global production in 2010. Although Syria is not a major oil exporter by Middle Eastern standards, oil is a major pillar of the economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, oil sales for 2010 were projected to generate $3.2 billion for the Syrian government and account for 25.1% of the state's revenue.
According to the 2009 Syria Report of the Oxford Business Group, the oil sector accounted for 23% of government revenues, 20% of exports and 22% of GDP in 2008. Syria exported roughly 150,000 bpd in 2008, and oil accounted for a majority of the country's export income.
Electrical generation
In 2001 Syria reportedly produced 23.3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity and consumed 21.6 billion kWh. As of January 2002, Syria's total installed electric generating capacity was 7.6 gigawatts (GW), with fuel oil and natural gas serving as the primary energy sources and 1.5 GW generated by hydroelectric power. A network totaling 45 GW linking the electric power grids of Syria, Egypt, and Jordan was completed in March 2001. Syria's electric supply capacity is an important national priority, and the government hopes to add 3,000 megawatts of power generating capacity by 2010 at a probable cost of US$2 billion, but progress has been slowed by a lack of investment capital. Power plants in Syria are undergoing intensive maintenance, and four new generating plants have been built. The power distribution network has serious problems, with transmission losses estimated as high as 25 percent of total generated capacity as a result of poor quality wires and transformer stations. A project for the expansion and upgrading of the power transmission network is scheduled for completion in 2005.
As of May 2009 it was reported that the Islamic Development Bank and the Syrian government signed an agreement stating that the bank would provide a €100 million loan for the expansion of Deir Ali power station in Syria.
Nuclear energy
Syria abandoned its plans to build a VVER-440 reactor after the Chernobyl accident. The plans for a nuclear program were revived at the beginning of the 2000s when Syria negotiated with Russia to build a nuclear facility that would include a nuclear power plant and a seawater atomic desalination plant.
Industry and manufacturing
The industrial sector, which includes mining, manufacturing, construction, and petroleum, accounted for 27.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2010 and employed about 16 percent of the labor force. The main industrial products are petroleum, textiles, food processing, beverages, tobacco, phosphate rock mining, cement, oil seeds crushing, and car assembly. Syria's manufacturing sector was largely state dominated until the 1990s, when economic reforms allowed greater local and foreign private-sector participation. Private participation remains constrained, however, by the lack of investment funds, input/output pricing limits, cumbersome customs and foreign exchange regulations, and poor marketing.
Because land prices are not controlled by the state, real estate is one of the few domestic avenues for investment with realistic and safe returns. Activity in the construction sector tends to mirror changes in the economy. Investment Law No. 10 of 1991, which opened the country to foreign investment in some areas, marked the beginning of a strong revival, with growth in real terms increasing over 2001 and 2002.
Services
Services accounted for 60.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2017 and employed 67% of the labor force, including government, in 2008. In May 2009, it was reported that Damascus office prices were skyrocketing.
Banking and finance
The Central Bank of Syria began operations in 1959. It controls all foreign exchange and trade transactions and gives priority to lending to the public sector. The Central Bank has been subject to US sanctions since May 2004, which has accused the Bank of money laundering. These US sanctions may have increased the role of Lebanese and European banks because a ban on transactions between U.S. financial institutions and the Central Bank of Syria created an increase in demand for intermediary sources for US$ transfers. The United States, European Union, Arab league and Turkey all also imposed sanctions on the Central Bank because of the Civil War.
The six specialized state-owned banks – the Central Bank of Syria, Commercial Bank of Syria, Agricultural Co-Operative Bank, Industrial Bank, Popular Credit Bank, and Real Estate Bank – are major financial operators. They each extend funds to, and take deposits from, a particular sector. The Industrial Bank also is directed more toward the public sector, although it is under-capitalized. As a result, the private sector often is forced to bank abroad, a process that is more expensive and therefore a poor solution to industrial financing needs. Many business people travel abroad to deposit or borrow funds. It is estimated that Syrians have deposited US$6 billion in Lebanese banks.
In the 2000s, Syria started reforms in the financial sector, including the introduction of private banks and the opening of the Damascus Securities Exchange in March 2009. In 2001, Syria legalized private banks and the sector, while still nascent, has been growing. Foreign banks were given licenses in December 2002, under Law 28 March 2001 which allows the establishment of private and joint-venture banks. Foreigners are allowed up to 49% ownership of a bank, but may not hold a controlling stake. As of January 2010, 13 private banks had opened, including two Islamic banks.
Syria took gradual steps to loosen controls over foreign exchange. In 2003, the government canceled a law that criminalized private sector use of foreign currencies, and in 2005 it allowed licensed private banks to sell specific amounts of foreign currency to Syrian citizens under certain circumstances and to the private sector to finance imports. In October 2009, Syria further loosened its restrictions on currency transfers by allowing Syrians travelling abroad to withdraw the equivalent of up to US$10,000 from their Syrian pound accounts. In practice, the decision allows local banks to open accounts of a maximum of US$10,000 that their clients can use for their international payment cards. The holders of these accounts will be able to withdraw up to US$10,000 per month while travelling abroad.
To attract investment and to ease access to credit, the government allowed investors in 2007 to receive loans and other credit instruments from foreign banks, and to repay the loans and any accrued interest through local banks using project proceeds. In February 2008, the government permitted investors to receive loans in foreign currencies from local private banks to finance capital investments. Syria's exchange rate is fixed, and the government maintains two official rates—one rate on which the budget and the value of imports, customs, and other official transactions are based, and a second set by the Central Bank on a daily basis that covers all other financial transactions. The government passed a law in 2006 which permits the operation of private money exchange companies. However, there is still a small black market for foreign currency.
Since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, there has been a capital flight to nearby countries. Syria has been subject to sanctions by United States, Canada, European Union, Arab League and Turkey because of the civil war. The currency of Syria is the Syrian pound (SYP). The pound's official exchange rate has deteriorated significantly, falling from 47 SYP for US$1 before the civil war to 1256 as in June 2020. On another hand, while its exchange rate for money transfer is 1250 SYP for US$1, its non-official exchange rate (black market) plunged to around 4000 SYP for US$1 in March 2021.
Tourism
Tourism in Syria has greatly reduced as a result of the Syrian Civil War and its associated refugee crisis. Tourism has been further impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19 that started in March 2020. The international economic sanctions imposed on Syria and the sharp drop in the value of the Syrian pound also adversely impact tourism in Syria.
Labour
Syria has a population of approximately 21 million people, and Syrian government figures place the population growth rate at 2.37%, with 65% of the population under the age of 35 and more than 40% under the age of 15. Each year more than 200,000 new job seekers enter the Syrian job market, but the economy has not been able to absorb them. In 2017, the Syrian labor force was estimated to total about 3.767 million people. An estimated 67 percent worked in the services sector including government, 17 percent in agriculture, and 16 percent in industry in 2008. Government and public sector employees constitute about 30% of the total labor force and are paid very low salaries and wages.
According to Syrian Government statistics, the unemployment rate in 2009 was 12.6%; however, more accurate independent sources place it closer to 20%. About 70 percent of Syria's workforce earns less than US$100 per month. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many more Syrians are seeking work over the border in Lebanon than official numbers indicate. In 2002 the Unemployment Commission (UC) was established, tasked with creating several hundred thousand jobs over a five-year period. As of June 2009 it was reported that some 700,000 households in Syria – about 3.5 million people – have no income. Government officials acknowledge that the economy is not growing at a pace sufficient to create enough new jobs annually to match population growth. The UN Development Program announced in 2005 that 30% of the Syrian population lives in poverty and 11.4% live below the subsistence level.
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour is responsible.
Opportunity Cost of Conflict
A report by Strategic Foresight Group, an India-based think tank, calculated the opportunity cost of conflict for the Middle East for 1991–2010 at US$12 trillion in 2006 dollars. Syria's share in this was US$152 billion, more than four times the projected 2010 GDP of US$36 billion.
The Syrian Center for Policy Research stated in March 2015 that, by then, nearly three million Syrians had lost their jobs because of the civil war, causing the loss of the primary source of income of more than 12 million people; unemployment levels "surged" from 14.9 percent in 2011 to 57.7 percent at the end of 2014. As a result, 4 in 5 Syrians were by then living in poverty, with 30 percent of the population living in "abject poverty" and frequently unable to meet basic household food needs. An estimate from 2014 estimated the population below the poverty threshold in Syria to be 82.5%.
See also
List of companies of Syria
Ministry of Economy and Trade
References
Notes
Works cited
Syria country study. Library of Congress Federal Research Division (April 2005).
External links
US Department of State
Economy of Syria textual and chart data from the world bank and CIA factbook, hosted by the Lebanese Economy Forum
Economy of the Arab League | en |
doc-en-11119 | The Millennium Stadium (), known since 2016 as the Principality Stadium () for sponsorship reasons, is the national stadium of Wales. Located in Cardiff, it is the home of the Wales national rugby union team and has also held Wales national football team games. Initially built to host the 1999 Rugby World Cup, it has gone on to host many other large-scale events, such as the Tsunami Relief Cardiff concert, the Super Special Stage of Wales Rally Great Britain, the Speedway Grand Prix of Great Britain and various concerts. It also hosted FA Cup, League Cup and Football League play-off finals while Wembley Stadium was being redeveloped between 2001 and 2006, as well as football matches during the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The stadium is owned by Millennium Stadium plc, a subsidiary company of the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU). The architects were Bligh Lobb Sports Architecture. The structural engineers were WS Atkins and the building contractor was Laing. The total construction cost of the stadium was £121 million, of which the Millennium Commission funded £46 million.
The Millennium Stadium opened in June 1999 and its first major event was an international rugby union match on 26 June 1999, when Wales beat South Africa in a test match by 29–19 before a crowd of 29,000. With a total seating capacity of 73,931, it is the largest stadium in Wales and the fourth largest (and second largest outside London) in the United Kingdom by total capacity. In addition, it is the third-largest stadium in the Six Nations Championship behind the Stade de France and Twickenham. It is also the second-largest stadium in the world with a fully retractable roof and was the second stadium in Europe to have this feature. Listed as a category four stadium by UEFA, the stadium was chosen as the venue for the 2017 UEFA Champions League Final, which took place on 3 June 2017. In 2015, the Welsh Rugby Union announced a 10-year sponsorship deal with the Principality Building Society that saw the stadium renamed as the "Principality Stadium" from early 2016.
History
Background
Until 1969, Cardiff RFC and Wales both played their home matches on the same pitch at Cardiff Arms Park, but all this changed in the 1969–70 season. As a result of an agreement between Cardiff Athletic Club and the WRU, the National Stadium project established that a new stadium for international matches and events was required, with Cardiff RFC moving to a new, purpose-built stadium on the original cricket ground at the site of the former Cardiff Arms Park stadium. By 7 April 1984 the National Stadium was officially opened. However, in 1994, a committee was set up to consider redeveloping the National Stadium, and by 1995 the WRU had been chosen to host the 1999 Rugby World Cup.
In 1995, the National Stadium, which was designed in 1962, only had a capacity of 53,000; other nations' stadia, such as Twickenham (England) with a capacity of 75,000, and Murrayfield Stadium (Scotland) with a capacity of 67,000, had overtaken it. France was also about to build the Stade de France, which would have a capacity of more than 80,000 for the 1998 FIFA World Cup. The original capacity of the National Stadium was 65,000, but this had been reduced to 53,000, due to the Taylor Report. 11,000 of 53,000 capacity was on the East Terrace and the conversion to an all-seater stadium would have reduced the stadium capacity still further to just 47,500.
In addition to the problems of capacity, the National Stadium was also very well hidden by the neighbouring buildings to the south in Park Street, Wood Street and to the east in Westgate Street, and also by Cardiff Rugby Ground in the north. It was only fully visible from across the River Taff in the west. Access to the ground was also very restricted with the main entrance being a narrow opening in Westgate Street to the east which was shared by both vehicles and spectators alike.
The options for the new stadium included adding a third tier to the existing National Stadium, or moving to a new site. This last option was discounted because it would have required a vast car parking facility, and that would have put severe short-term pressures on the local transport infrastructure, creating traffic jams and pollution. The committee eventually chose a new stadium on the same site but with considerable increase in its capacity. It would also involve moving the alignment of the stadium from west–east to north–south. This was the option supported by the Millennium Commission. It would become the fourth redevelopment of the Cardiff Arms Park site. It was also decided that the new stadium should have a sliding roof to accommodate a multi-use venue, with a grass pitch for rugby and football. The only other sliding roofs in Europe at the time were at two Dutch stadia – the Amsterdam Arena, completed in 1996 with a capacity of 50,000; and Gelredome in Arnhem, a 30,000-capacity ground built from 1996 to 1998.
To remain on the Arms Park site, additional space had to be found to allow safe access and to provide room for the increased capacity and improved facilities. This was achieved by the purchase of adjacent buildings to the south and east and by the construction of a new £6 million River Walk by the River Taff on the western side of the stadium.
By 1999, the Millennium Stadium had replaced the National Stadium, Cardiff Arms Park, as the national stadium of Wales for rugby union and association football international matches. Cardiff RFC continued as before to play at Cardiff Arms Park rugby ground, which had replaced the cricket ground in 1969.
Construction
The stadium was designed by a team led by Rod Sheard at Lobb Sport Architecture, who later merged with HOK Sport to become Populous. The building contractor was Laing and the structural engineers were WS Atkins. Mike Otlet of WS Atkins designed the stadium's retractable roof. Cimolai S.p.A. from Italy fabricated and erected the 72 steel plane frames for the stands and all the 4,500 components of the roof.
Construction involved the demolition of a number of buildings, primarily the existing National Stadium (Cardiff Arms Park), Wales Empire Pool (swimming pool) in Wood Street, Cardiff Empire Telephone Exchange building (owned by BT) in Park Street, the newly built Territorial Auxiliary & Volunteer Reserve building in Park Street, and the Social Security offices in Westgate Street.
The stadium was built by Laing in 1999 on the site of the National Stadium, with the head of construction being Steve Ager. It was built for the 1999 Rugby World Cup, for which Wales was the main host, with seven of the 41 matches, including the final, being played at the stadium.
The total construction cost of the stadium was £121 million, which was funded by private investment and £46 million of public funds from the Millennium Commission, the sale of debentures to supporters (which offered guaranteed tickets in exchange for an interest-free loan) and loans. The development left the WRU heavily in debt.
The Millennium Stadium was named as such in recognition of the Millennium Commission's contribution to the building.
The stadium was first used for a major event on 26 June 1999, when Wales played South Africa in a rugby union test match before a crowd of 29,000. Wales won 29–19: the first time they had ever beaten the Springboks.
2016 renaming
On 8 September 2015 it was announced that the Millennium Stadium would be renamed Principality Stadium as the result of a 10-year naming rights deal with the Principality Building Society. Some fans expressed opposition on social media.
On 22 January 2016, the Millennium Stadium was officially renamed as the Principality Stadium. The new name, written bilingually ("Stadiwm Principality Stadium") and covering of the upper stadium, was lit up at a special evening ceremony, to be followed by a festival to encourage grassroots rugby. The change of name also meant a change of logo for the Millennium Stadium. There were three designs shortlisted, and a panel, which included the former Wales international captain Ryan Jones and staff and members of the WRU and Principality Building Society, chose the final design. A spokesperson for the WRU said: "The new stadium logo takes its inspiration from the venue's iconic architecture; four spires, curved frontage and fully retractable roof."
Features
The all-seater stadium has the capacity for 74,500 supporters and features a retractable roof, only the second stadium of its type in Europe, and the largest football stadium in the world with this feature, by capacity. Additional seating is sometimes added for special events such as a rugby Test against the New Zealand All Blacks, or for the FA Cup Final. The current record attendance is set at just over 78,000, recorded at the Anthony Joshua v Carlos Takam fight, on 28 October 2017, in which Joshua successfully retained his WBA, IBF and IBO titles.
The natural grass turf was made up of a modular system installed by GreenTech ITM. It features built in irrigation and drainage. The pitch itself was laid on top of some 7,412 pallets that could be moved so the stadium could be used for concerts, exhibitions and other events.
In May 2014, after much trouble with disease and stability, the surface was removed and replaced with a more resilient interwoven sand based Desso pitch.
The four ends of the ground are called the North Stand, the West Stand, the South Stand and the BT Stand (east). The South Stand was previously known as the Hyder Stand, until Hyder was sold. The stadium has three tiers of seating with the exception of the North Stand, which has two tiers. The lower tier holds approximately 23,500 spectators, the middle tier holding 18,000 and the upper tier holding 33,000 spectators.
The stadium was slightly restricted in size due to its proximity to Cardiff Rugby Club's home in the adjacent smaller stadium within Cardiff Arms Park. The WRU were unable to secure enough funding to include the North Stand in the new stadium and the Millennium Commission would not allow any of its funds to be used in any way for the construction of a new stadium for Cardiff RFC. The WRU held talks with Cardiff RFC to see if it would be possible for the club to either move or secure funding for the Cardiff Arms Park to be re-developed, but these were unsuccessful. The stadium thus had to be completed with a break in its bowl structure in the North Stand, known colloquially as the Cardiff fault or Glanmor's Gap, after Glanmor Griffiths, then chairman of the WRU and now a former president.
The superstructure of the stadium is based around four masts. The stadium was built from 56,000 tonnes of concrete and steel, and has 124 hospitality suites and 7 hospitality lounges, 22 bars, 7 restaurants, 17 first aid points, 12 escalators and 7 lifts. The stadium has 7 gates for access to the site; Gate 1 is from the River Walk via Castle Street (to the north), Gates 2 and 3 are via Westgate Street (to the east), Gate 4 is for Security only also via Westgate Street, Gate 5 is via Park Street (to the south) and Gates 6 and 7 are via the Millennium Plaza (also to the south).
Any future renovation to the stadium will involve replacing the old North Stand of the former National Stadium with a new one similar to the three existing stands of the new Millennium Stadium. This will make the stadium bowl-shaped and will increase its capacity to around 80,000. It will resolve the existing problems of deteriorating concrete quality on the old structure in the north stand. However the WRU has been more resistant to the proposal in recent years, stating that the concrete has not been deteriorating in recent years meaning the cost of replacing Glanmor's Gap would not justify the limited increase in capacity it would provide.
In each of the stadium's bars, so-called "joy machines" can pour 12 pints in less than 20 seconds. During a Wales versus France match, 63,000 fans drank 77,184 pints of beer, almost double the 44,000 pints drunk by a similar number of fans at a game at Twickenham. The stadium has a resident hawk named "Dad", who is employed to drive seagulls and pigeons out of the stadium.
In 2005 the stadium installed an "Arena Partition Drape System" – a black curtain made up of 12 drapes measuring – to vary the audience from a capacity of over 73,000 down to between 12,000 and 46,000, depending on the four different positions that it can be hung. The curtains can be stored in the roof of the stadium when not in use. The £1 million cost of the curtain was funded by the stadium, the Millennium Commission, its caterers Letherby and Christopher (Compass Group) and by the then Wales Tourist Board. The curtain was supplied by Blackout.
In May 2015, the chairman of the WRU, Gareth Davies, announced that the stadium would be fitted with new seats, replacing the original seats from 1999 at a cost of £4 million to £5 million, which would be completed by 2018. In addition a new £3.1 million Desso hybrid pitch will be installed.
In February 2019, the stadium increased its disabled capacity from 168 to 214 at a cost of around £100,000. As a result, the overall capacity of the stadium was reduced from 74,500 to 73,931.
Statue of Sir Tasker Watkins
A statue of Sir Tasker Watkins, the former WRU president between 1993 and 2004, was commissioned to stand outside Gate 3 of the stadium. The bronze statue, tall, was sculpted by Llantwit Major based sculptor Roger Andrews. The Welsh Government contributed £50,000, as did Cardiff Council. It was officially unveiled on 15 November 2009 by his daughter, Lady Mair Griffith-Williams.
Usage
As well as international rugby union and association football, the Millennium Stadium has hosted a variety of sports, including, rugby league (including the Challenge Cup Final on three occasions between 2003 and 2005, the opening ceremony of the 2013 Rugby League World Cup and Welsh Rugby League internationals), speedway, boxing, the Wales Rally Great Britain stage of the World Rally Championship, Monster Jam and indoor cricket. The indoor cricket match between The Brits and a Rest of the World team for the Pertemps Power Cricket Cup, which took place on 4 and 5 October 2002.
Rugby union
The stadium is the home of the Welsh rugby union team, who play all of their home fixtures at the venue. These games include those during the Six Nations, as well as the Autumn Internationals against nations from the Southern Hemisphere. Apart from the national team, the stadium has also hosted Heineken Cup finals on five occasions. In total, the site, including the National Stadium, has hosted the final of the Heineken Cup on seven occasions.
The stadium has also been used for Celtic League games, and the semi-finals of the Anglo-Welsh Cup in 2006 and 2007. Since 2013, the Millennium Stadium has hosted Judgement Day, a double-header between the four Welsh Pro12 teams. The 2015 edition had 52,762 spectators, the highest in the history of the league.
The stadium hosted the first match in the 2005 British & Irish Lions tour to New Zealand when they drew 25–25 against Argentina in a warm-up test match.
Welsh Varsity rugby matches
On 30 March 2011, the stadium hosted the Welsh Varsity rugby match for the first time in the history of the match between the senior teams of Cardiff University and Swansea University. The stadium is used alternating years with Liberty Stadium in Swansea. The Welsh Varsity event celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2016.
Rugby World Cup
The Welsh Rugby Union hosted the 1999 Rugby World Cup with the Final being played at the stadium. The stadium also hosted 3 pool matches and 1 quarter-final match (New Zealand 18–20 France) of the 2007 Rugby World Cup.
On 15 October 2011, the stadium was open to Welsh Rugby Union fans free of charge, providing that they wear red so that they could watch a live screening of the 2011 Rugby World Cup semi-final between Wales and France that was played at Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand. The match was screened on the stadium's existing large screens, on all of their television screens and on a screen that was brought in for the occasion. The same was done for the Bronze Final between Wales and Australia which saw Wales defeated and take fourth place.
The stadium hosted six pool matches, including two featuring Wales, and two quarter-final matches during the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
Rugby league
The stadium first hosted rugby league football during the 2000 World Cup: a double header featuring Cook Islands versus Lebanon and Wales versus New Zealand that attracted a crowd of 17,612. It was again used as Wales' home ground during the 2002 New Zealand rugby league tour of Great Britain and France when they again hosted the Kiwis this time attracting 8,746 spectators.
The Stadium has hosted three Challenge Cup Finals, which are usually played at Wembley, from 2003 to 2005. In 2003 the Bradford Bulls defeated the Leeds Rhinos 22–20 in front of 71,212 fans. St. Helens defeated Wigan 36–16 in 2004 in front of 73,734 fans, while Hull F.C. defeated Leeds 25–24 in 2005 in front of 74,213 fans, the largest rugby league crowd at the stadium.
Also, in 2007 the stadium hosted the inaugural Millennium Magic weekend. This was a two-day event in May when an entire round of Super League matches were played, three games on the Saturday and three games on the Sunday. The event was deemed a success by the sport's governing body, the RFL, and second Millennium Magic event took place in May 2008, although the 2009 and 2010 events were held at Murrayfield Stadium and were renamed Magic Weekend. In 2011, Magic Weekend moved back to Cardiff with the opening round of Super League being played.
On 26 October 2013, the Millennium Stadium hosted the opening ceremony and the first two fixtures of the 2013 Rugby League World Cup: a double-header featuring Wales against Italy and England against title favourites and eventual tournament champions Australia. This double header produced an overall attendance of 45,052, which is an international rugby league record at the stadium.
Association football
From 2000 to 2009, the stadium was the almost-permanent home of Welsh football. The national team played the vast majority of home matches at the Millennium Stadium, with a handful of friendly matches once or twice a year at the Racecourse Ground, Wrexham or Liberty Stadium, Swansea. The first Welsh football game at the stadium was played against Finland in 2000, and drew a then-record home crowd for Welsh football of over 66,000. This has since been beaten on several occasions. However, since 2010, the majority of home games have been played at the smaller Cardiff City Stadium, the home of Cardiff City. Wales have only played at the stadium twice since 2009; in 2011 against England and in 2018 against Spain.
While the Millennium Stadium was under construction, the original Wembley Stadium had hosted the Welsh rugby team during the building of the new ground. The favour was returned from 2001 while the new Wembley Stadium was being built, with the Millennium hosting:
FA Cup Final
League Cup Final
Football League Trophy Final
Football League play-off Finals
FA Community Shield
The stadium became notorious for an apparent "away team hoodoo"; the first 11 major cup finals were all won by the teams occupying the home dressing room. Stoke City beat Brentford 2–0 in 2002 to end the "hoodoo", after Paul Darby carried out a feng shui blessing.
Liverpool were the first team to win the FA Cup at the Millennium Stadium in 2001 after beating Arsenal 2–1. They were also the first team to win the League Cup at the Stadium, defeating Birmingham City in a penalty shoot-out earlier that year. In 2003, Liverpool won the League Cup for the seventh time in their history thanks to a 2–0 win over Manchester United in the final at the stadium. Liverpool also won the last FA Cup Final at the Millennium Stadium in 2006, beating West Ham United 3–1 in a penalty shoot-out that followed a 3–3 draw after extra time in what was billed as 'the best cup final of the modern era'.
The Football League Third Division play-offs in 2003 saw AFC Bournemouth beat Lincoln City 5–2. In this game, Bournemouth set a new record for the most goals scored by one team in a single match at the stadium. This record has since been matched but not beaten. The last domestic cup match played was when Doncaster Rovers beat Bristol Rovers 3–2 after extra time in the Football League Trophy Final on 1 April 2007.
In 2001, the Football Association of Wales (FAW) confirmed that they had bid to host the 2003 UEFA Champions League Final. The stadium had recently been rated as a five-star stadium by UEFA, making it one of the favourites to host the match, but the final was eventually awarded to Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United.
It was suggested that the stadium would have been one of the venues of a proposed UEFA Euro 2016 championship hosted jointly by Wales and Scotland. However, the bid did not reach the formal UEFA selection stage, having been abandoned by the Welsh and Scottish Football Associations for financial reasons. In April 2014, the FAW did submit a formal bid to host three group matches and either a round of 16 match or a quarter-final at Euro 2020, which UEFA planned to host at 13 venues across Europe. When the host venues were voted on in September 2014, the Millennium Stadium lost out by a single vote behind Glasgow's Hampden Park, a decision that FAW chief executive Jonathan Ford put down to UEFA politics. On 30 June 2015, the Millennium Stadium was chosen as the venue for the 2017 UEFA Champions League Final. UEFA rules meant it could not be branded as the Principality Stadium during the event, resulting in all titles and logos – as well as those of other non-UEFA sponsors – being covered or removed for the duration. The game was played on 3 June 2017 between Italian club Juventus and Spanish club Real Madrid, in a repeat of the 1998 final; Real Madrid won the match 4–1.
When London was selected as the host city for the 2012 Summer Olympics, the Millennium Stadium was named as one of the six venues for the football competition. It had the distinction of hosting the opening event of the Games – a 1–0 win for the Great Britain women's team against New Zealand – as well as four other group games and a quarter-final in the women's tournament, and three group games, a quarter-final and the bronze medal match in the men's.
Boxing
There have been five nights of boxing at the stadium.
On 8 July 2006 when Matt Skelton beat Danny Williams for the Commonwealth heavyweight title. On 7 April 2007, Joe Calzaghe beat Peter Manfredo to retain his WBO super middleweight belt. On 3 November 2007, Calzaghe beat Mikkel Kessler to retain his WBO super middleweight belt and win the WBA and WBC super middleweight titles.
On 28 October 2017 Anthony Joshua successfully retained his WBA (Super), IBF and IBO heavyweight titles against mandatory challenger Carlos Takam with a 10th round stoppage.
On 31 March 2018, it hosted the World heavyweight unification fight between Anthony Joshua, holder of the WBA and IBF belts, and Joseph Parker, holder of the WBO belt. Joshua beat Parker on points.
Motorsports
In 2001, it staged its first ever motorsport event, hosting the Speedway Grand Prix of Great Britain, and has done so every year since, attracting a record crowd of 44,150 in 2010. The temporary motorcycle speedway track is in length and with sections of the stadiums lower seating bowl covered, the capacity of the stadium for the Grand Prix is set at 62,500.
In September 2005 the stadium was host to the first ever indoor stage of the World Rally Championship during the Wales Rally Great Britain. The lower tier of the stadium was removed to create a figure-of-eight course. In addition to this, the stadium has also hosted Supercross events. In October 2007, the stadium first hosted the UK leg of the Monster Jam trucks Europe tour, and returned in June 2008, again in 2009, 2010, 2016, 2018 and 2019.
Film
The stadium has been used on numerous occasions as a venue for shooting film and television productions. Scenes from the 2001 Hindi film Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... were filmed there.
Between 2004 and 2011, the stadium was used several times as a filming location for episodes of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. The 2005 episode "Dalek" was shot primarily on location at the stadium, using its underground areas to represent a bunker in Utah, US, in the year 2012. The location shooting for the episode took place during October and November 2004. The underground areas of the stadium were used again in August 2005 to film Mission Control scenes for the Doctor Who Christmas special, "The Christmas Invasion", and again the following year to film scenes in the underground corridors of Torchwood in "The Runaway Bride" episode, broadcast on Christmas Day 2006. Shots of the Stormcage Facility in which River Song is incarcerated in series 5 and 6 of Doctor Who are also in the stadium, filmed between October 2010 and January 2011.
The stadium has also been used as a location for the filming of Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures. The 2010 story, "Death of the Doctor", included corridor scenes for the UNIT headquarters that were filmed underground at the Millennium Stadium.
The Wembley Stadium scene in the film 28 Weeks Later was actually filmed at the Millennium Stadium. Although the outside is footage of Wembley, the inside is all filmed in Cardiff. The visual effects team on the film edited the footage to make it look more like Wembley.
Sébastien Foucan jumped over the gap of the opening of the stadium roof in the parkour documentary "Jump Britain".
Eventing
The inaugural Express Eventing International Cup took place at the stadium on 30 November 2008. The three-event competition made up of dressage, cross-country and show jumping all took place over the one day. The event was won by Oliver Townend.
Concerts
The stadium has also been used for a variety of musical events, including the Manic Street Preachers concert held on Millennium Eve, and, on the following day, a recording of the BBC's Songs of Praise, which attracted an attendance of 60,000. Tina Turner performed a sold-out concert at the stadium during her highly successful Twenty Four Seven Tour in 2000. Welsh rockers Stereophonics have played two sold-out shows at the stadium: In July 2001 as part of their two-day "A Day at the Races" festival which would later be released to DVD and in 2003, shortly after the departure of the late Stuart Cable.
American rock band Bon Jovi played the venue during the One Wild Night Tour in 2001. At the end of January 2005, the stadium hosted a tsunami relief concert in aid of the victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, with Eric Clapton headlining the event. The stadium has also been host to Madonna on two occasions, the first in July 2006 when she opened the UK leg of her Confessions Tour, and most recently in August 2008 when she kicked off her Sticky & Sweet Tour at the stadium. Other performers who have played at the stadium include Robbie Williams as part of his Weddings, Barmitzvahs & Stadiums Tour, U2 as part of their Vertigo Tour, Red Hot Chili Peppers as part of their By the Way tour, The Rolling Stones as part of their A Bigger Bang Tour, R.E.M. as part of their Monster tour and again for their Around the Sun tour.
Paul McCartney also played at the stadium as part of his Up and Coming Tour, and The Police performed there as part of their Reunion Tour. In late 2005, Oasis played at the stadium during their Don't Believe the Truth Tour and again on their Dig Out Your Soul Tour in 2009. In 2008, the stadium hosted Neil Diamond and Bruce Springsteen with the E Street Band as part of their Magic Tour, On 22 August 2009, U2 again played at the stadium, as part of their European leg of their U2 360° Tour, playing to a record-breaking concert attendance of 73,354.
Conferences
The stadium offers conferencing facilities via the foodservice organisation Compass Group. The facilities consist of six individually designed lounges and 124 pitch-facing executive box suites.
In addition to business events, the facilities are also available for dinners, banquets, balls, parties and weddings receptions.
Temporary hospital
On 28 March 2020 it was announced that the stadium was to be converted at a cost of £8 million into a temporary field hospital to accommodate up to 2000 patients of the coronavirus pandemic, at the same time as the Excel Centre, London, NEC, Birmingham, and the Manchester Central Convention Complex. By the weekend of 11–12 April 2020, it had a capacity of 330 beds.
See also
Sport in Cardiff
Millennium Stadium Charitable Trust
List of stadiums by capacity
List of covered stadiums by capacity
List of stadia in Wales by capacity
List of European stadia by capacity
List of association football stadiums by capacity
List of tallest buildings in Cardiff
Notes
References
External links
Official website
Landmarks in Cardiff
Sports venues completed in 1999
Venues of the 2012 Summer Olympics
Olympic football venues
FA Cup Final venues
Football venues in Wales
Retractable-roof stadiums
Retractable-roof stadiums in Europe
Rally GB
Rugby league stadiums in Wales
Rugby League World Cup stadiums
Rugby union stadiums in Wales
Rugby World Cup stadiums
Sports venues in Cardiff
Buildings and structures celebrating the third millennium
Speedway venues in Wales
Boxing venues in the United Kingdom
Wales
Stadiums in Cardiff
Wales national rugby union team
Wales national football team
Tourist attractions in Cardiff
Music venues in Cardiff
Music venues completed in 1999
Redevelopment projects in Cardiff
1999 establishments in Wales
World Rugby Sevens Series venues
Castle, Cardiff | en |
doc-en-1178 | Manuel de Trujillo y Torres (November 1762 – July15, 1822) was a Spanish American publicist and diplomat. He is best known for being received as the first ambassador of Colombia by U.S. President James Monroe on June19, 1822. This act represented the first U.S. recognition of a former Spanish colony's independence.
Born in Spain, he lived as a young adult in the colony of New Granada (present-day Colombia). After being implicated in a conspiracy against the monarchy he fled in 1794, arriving in the United States in 1796. From Philadelphia he spent the rest of his life advocating for independence of the Spanish colonies in the Americas. Working closely with newspaper editor William Duane he produced English- and Spanish-language articles, pamphlets and books.
During the Spanish American wars of independence he was a central figure in directing the work of revolutionary agents in North America, who frequently visited his home. In 1819 Torres was appointed a diplomat for Venezuela, which that year united with New Granada to form Gran Colombia. As chargé d'affaires he negotiated significant weapons purchases but failed to obtain public loans. Having laid the groundwork for the diplomatic recognition of Colombia, he died less than a month after achieving this goal. Though largely unknown today, he is remembered as an early proponent of Pan-Americanism.
Early life
Manuel Torres was born in the Spanish region of Córdoba in early November 1762. His mother's family was from the city of Córdoba while his father's side was probably from nearby Baena. He was descended from the minor nobility on both sides of his family, a class with social stature but not necessarily wealth.
In the spring of 1776 the young Torres sailed to Cuba with his maternal uncle Antonio Caballero y Góngora, who was consecrated there as bishop of Mérida in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (modern Mexico). Torres would later attribute his republican ideals to his uncle, a man of the Enlightenment who was an extensive collector of books, art, and coins. After Caballero y Góngora was promoted to archbishop of Santa Fé de Bogotá the family arrived in New Granada (modern Colombia) on June 29, 1778.
At age 17 Torres began working for the secretariat of the Viceroyalty and for the royal treasury. In the following seven years he learned finance and was able to observe the political and social conflicts in New Grenada, including the Revolt of the Comuneros. This was also the time of the American Revolution, which Spain joined against Great Britain. Caballero y Góngora became viceroy in 1782 and ruled as a liberal modernizer.
Torres went to France in early 1785 to study at the , where he spent about a year and half learning military science and mathematics. As lieutenant of engineers () he probably aided Colonel Domingo Esquiaqui's survey and helped reorganize the colonial garrisons. On presentation by the archbishop-viceroy, Torres was gifted land near Santa Marta by CharlesIV and established a successful plantation, which he named San Carlos. Torres married and at San Carlos had a daughter.
He became involved with political liberals of Bogotá's class (i.e., native New Granadians of European descent), joining a secret club led by Antonio Nariño where radical ideas were discussed freely. When in 1794 Nariño and other club members were implicated in a conspiracy against the Crown, Torres fled New Granada without his family. He first went to Curaçao, and in 1796 to Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States.
Arrival in Philadelphia
Spanish Americans heading north tended to go to Philadelphia, Baltimore or (French-controlled) New Orleans, centers of commercial relations with the colonies. Philadelphia in particular was a symbol of republican ideals, which may have attracted Torres. Its trade with the Spanish colonies was significant and the American Philosophical Society was the first learned society in the U.S. to nominate Spanish American members. At St.Mary's Church he joined a cosmopolitan community of Roman Catholics, including many from Spanish and French America.
Quick to make American contacts, Torres became close friends with William Duane, who became editor of the Philadelphia newspaper Aurora in 1798. The editor continually published Torres' views on Spanish American independence in the paper, whose contents would be copied by others. Torres translated Spanish pamphlets for Duane, and sometimes translated Duane's editorials to Spanish. In Spanish America the purpose of this literature was to praise the United States as an example of independent representative government to be emulated; in the United States it was to increase support for the independence movements.
Initially Torres was quite wealthy and received remittances from his wife, which helped him make important social connections. However, he had his money invested in risky merchant ventures; on one occasion he lost $40,000, on another $70,000—thus he was forced to live more modestly in later years.
Three years after Torres' arrival, a "Spaniard in Philadelphia" wrote the pamphlet (released in English as Observations on the Commerce of Spain with her Colonies, in Time of War). The author, probably Torres, criticizes Spanish colonialism. In particular, Spain monopolized trade with the colonies to their detriment: during wartime the mother country could not supply the colonies with essential goods, and in peacetime the prices were too high. The author's solution is to implement a system of free trade in the Americas. The pamphlet was reprinted in London by William Tatham.
Torres' residence increased the attraction of Philadelphia for Spanish American revolutionaries. Torres probably met Francisco de Miranda (also exiled after a failed conspiracy) in 1805, shortly before Miranda's failed expedition to the Captaincy General of Venezuela, and he met with Simón Bolívar in 1806. The Spanish minister to the United States, Carlos Martínez de Irujo, reported Torres' activity to his superiors.
Coordinating revolutionaries
During the instability caused by Napoleon Bonaparte's conquest of Spain—the Peninsular War—the people of the colonies followed the model of Peninsular Spanish provinces by organizing juntas to govern in the absence of central rule. Advocates of independence, who called themselves Patriots, argued that sovereignty reverted to the people when there was no monarch. They clashed with the Royalists, who supported the authority of the Crown. Starting in 1810 the Patriot juntas successively declared independence, and Torres was their natural point of contact in the United States.
Brokered weapons shipments
Although President James Madison's administration officially recognized no governments on either side, Patriot agents were permitted to seek weapons in the U.S., and American ports became bases for privateering. Torres acted as an intermediary between the newly arrived agents and influential Americans, such as introducing (Simón's brother) to wealthy banker Stephen Girard. Juan Vicente successfully purchased weapons for Venezuela, but was lost at sea on his return journey in 1811.
Together with Telésforo de Orea from Venezuela, and Diego de Saavedra and Juan Pedro de Aguirre from Buenos Aires, Torres brokered a plan to purchase 20,000 muskets and bayonets from the U.S. government. Girard agreed to finance the plan on the joint credit of Buenos Aires and Venezuela, but Secretary of State James Monroe blocked it by refusing to reply. Saavedra and Aguirre managed to ship only 1,000 muskets to Buenos Aires, but by the end of 1811 Torres had helped Orea supply Venezuela with about 24,000 weapons. New purchasers continued to arrive, and the supplies were an important contribution while the revolutionaries were suffering many defeats.
The new Spanish minister, Luís de Onís, covertly attempted to disrupt the weapons shipments. He became aware of the plan to purchase from the U.S. arsenal due to being informed by a postman. Onís reported on these subversive activities and his agents harassed suspected revolutionaries like Torres. Francisco Sarmiento and Miguel Cabral de Noroña, two associates of Onís, attempted to assassinate Torres in 1814—apparently on the minister's orders. Due to his aid for the revolution, Torres' estate in Royalist-controlled New Granada was confiscated after his wife and daughter died.
Public writing
Running out of money during this period, Torres sustained himself in part by teaching. With Louis Hargous he wrote an adaptation for both English- and Spanish-teaching of Nicolas Gouïn Dufief's Nature Displayed in Her Mode of Teaching Language to Man. The lengthy book's title page styles Torres and Hargous as "professors of general grammar"; in the introduction they argue the importance to Americans of studying Spanish literature. Influential revised editions by Mariano Velázquez de la Cadena were published in New York (1825) and London (1826).
Soon after Nature Displayed followed the 1812 pamphlet ("A Republican's Manual for the Use of a Free People"), which Torres probably wrote. Structured as a dialog, the anonymous pamphlet offers a defense of the U.S. system of government based on the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and argues it should be a model for Spanish America. The contents suggest the author is "a conservative partisan of Jeffersonian democracy".
Besides Duane's Aurora, Torres sent news and opinion to Baptis Irvine's Baltimore Whig and New York Columbian, Jonathan Elliot's City of Washington Gazette, and Hezekiah Niles' Baltimore Weekly Register. He acquainted himself with notables such as Congressman Henry Clay, lawyer Henry Marie Brackenridge, Baltimore Postmaster John Stuart Skinner, Judge Theodorick Bland and Patent Office head William Thornton. Especially the support of Clay, who became a champion of Spanish American independence in Congress, permitted him to lobby many influential officials.
Economic proposals
Torres' lobbying included domestic affairs; in February1815, near the end of War of 1812 that had preoccupied the American public, he wrote two letters to President Madison describing a proposal for fiscal and financial reform. This included an equal and direct tax on all property, which Torres considered more just; ultimately he calculated a $1million budget surplus under his scheme and suggested gradual elimination of the national debt. In his December5 message to Congress, Madison did propose two ideas that Torres had favored: the establishment of a second Bank of the United States and utilizing it to create a uniform national currency.
The same year, Torres authored An Exposition of the Commerce of Spanish America; with some Observations upon its Importance to the United States. This work, published in 1816, was the first inter-American handbook. Torres plays on Anglo-American rivalry by arguing for the importance of establishing American over British commercial interests in this critical region, just as revolutionary agents in Britain suggested the opposite. Applying political economy, he observes that a country with a negative balance of trade—like the United States—needs a source of gold and silver specie—like South America—to stabilize its currency and economy. The political commentary is interwoven with practical advice to merchants, followed by conversion tables between currencies and units of measure.
He momentarily returned to economics in April1818. Through Clay, Torres suggested to Congress that he had discovered a new way to make revenue collection and spending more efficient, which he would reveal in detail if he was promised a share of the government's savings. The preliminary proposal was referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means, which declined to examine it for being too complex.
Philadelphia junta
By 1816, Spanish American propagandists had solidified American public opinion in favor of the Patriots. However, the propaganda victories did not translate into practical success: the Royalists reconquered New Granada and Venezuela by May 1816. Pedro José Gual, who had come to the United States to represent those governments, instead worked with Torres on a plan to liberate New Spain. They were joined by a number of other agents to form a "junta" of their own, which included Orea, Mariano Montilla, José Rafael Revenga, Juan Germán Roscio from Venezuela, Miguel Santamaría from Mexico, as well as from Buenos Aires.
This Philadelphia junta surrounding Torres conspired in mid-1816 to invade a New Spanish port using ships commanded by French privateer Louis Aury. This plan failed because Aury's fleet was reduced to seven ships, making it unable to capture any major port. But the plotters were able to organize a force under the recently arrived General Francisco Xavier Mina (despite the obstructions of José Alvarez de Toledo, an acquaintance of Torres who was actually spying for Onís). The operation was funded by a group of merchants from Baltimore, where Torres traveled to oversee it. The exiled priest Servando Teresa de Mier had traveled to the U.S. with Mina, and became a good friend of Torres. He brought to Mexico with him two copies of Torres' Exposition and one of the . The expedition sailed September 1816, but in just over a year Mina was captured and shot.
Another of the agents to join the junta was Lino de Clemente, who in 1816 came to the United States as Venezuelan chargé d'affaires (a diplomat of the lowest rank). Torres became his secretary in Philadelphia. Clemente was one of the men who signed Gregor MacGregor's commission to seize Amelia Island off the coast of Florida, what became a political scandal known as the Amelia Island affair. All who had been involved became intolerable to Monroe.
The Philadelphia junta effectively disbanded because of the event, which Simón Bolívar disavowed. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams refused any further communication with Clemente. Although Torres participated, he had discreetly avoided public involvement. (Privately he derided "Don Quixote" Aguirre and Pazos.) In October1818, Bolívar thus instructed Clemente to return home and to transfer his duties as chargé d'affaires to Torres.
Diplomat for Colombia
Torres' appointment coincided with a turn in the wars of independence. Where before the situation had been dire, the Patriot forces under Bolívar began a campaign to liberate New Granada and achieved a famous victory at the Battle of Boyacá. When Torres received his diplomatic credentials he was authorized "to do in the United States everything possible to put an immediate end to the conflict in which the patriots of Venezuela are now engaged for their independence and liberty." Venezuela and New Granada united on December17, 1819, to form the Republic of Colombia (a union called Gran Colombia by historians).
Francisco Antonio Zea was first appointed Colombia's envoy to the United States but never went there; Torres was authorized to take over his duties on May15, 1820, and thus formally empowered to negotiate for the republic. He would try to secure its independence by three methods: by purchasing weapons and other military supplies, by obtaining a loan, and by obtaining diplomatic recognition of its government.
Weapons purchases
With the help of Samuel Douglas Forsyth, an American citizen sent from Venezuela by Bolívar, Torres was instructed to procure thirty thousand muskets on credit. This sum was not realistically available from private sources, in part due to the Panic of 1819. Torres did make substantial deals, especially with Philadelphia merchant Jacob Idler, who represented a network of business associates.
In one such contract, signed April4, 1819, Idler promised a total of $63,071.50 of supplies, including 4,023 muskets and 50 quintals of gunpowder. After delivery Colombia was obliged to make payment in gold, silver or the tobacco produce of the Barinas province. More agreements on this model followed as merchants gained confidence with the news of successive Patriot victories. From December1819 to April1820 negotiated contracts worth $108,842.80 () and in the summer, Torres made a deal for the Colombian navy.
Although Torres repeatedly wrote to his superiors about the great importance of maintaining Colombia's credit among American merchants, the government failed to make payment as agreed. In spite of this Torres was able to negotiate continued shipments, even with merchants who had unpaid claims. After independence, such claims became a significant problem of U.S. relations with South America; Idler's estate would litigate them up to the end of the century. Nevertheless, Torres obtained from Idler 11,571 muskets, and other supplies such as shoes and uniforms. They arrived in Venezuela in 1820–1821 aboard the Wilmot and Endymion.
In February 1820, Torres came to Washington to purchase twenty thousand muskets from the U.S. government—a source that could fill what he could not obtain from private merchants. Monroe delayed by responding that the Constitution prevented him from selling weapons without the consent of Congress, but his cabinet considered a missive from Torres. This missive argued for the sale by emphasizing the common interests of the American republics against the European monarchies. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun and Secretary of the Navy Smith Thompson were supportive, and Torres had estimated the House of Representatives was in his favor. However, Secretary of State Adams emphatically spoke against what he considered a violation of American neutrality, causing the cabinet to unanimously decline the request in a meeting on March29.
The next day Adams explained his feelings to Monroe:
Despite this skepticism, Adams trusted Torres to inform him on Spanish American affairs, perhaps because Torres was also strongly supportive of the United States. Torres made six repeat visits to Adams through February19, 1821, without success.
Attempted borrowing
Recognizing the financial difficulty the Colombian government was in, Torres attempted to borrow money in the United States on its behalf. Aided by a letter of introduction from Henry Clay, in the fall of 1819 he proposed a $500,000 loan () to Langdon Cheves, president of the Second Bank of the United States. It would be repaid with Colombian bullion, which the Bank was severely short of, within 18 months. When the Bank stated it had no authority to lend to foreign governments, Torres restated his proposal as a of bullion. He also contacted Adams, who said the government had no objection and left it to the Bank directors' judgment, and gained Cheves' support. Despite continued negotiation this loan was never finalized—let alone Bolívar's bolder proposal for the Bank to take on the entirety of Venezuela's national debt in exchange for the Santa Ana de Mariquita silver mine in New Granada. Colombia had poor credit, and Torres believed the distressed Bank was actually unable to make the loan.
To improve Colombia's financial reputation Torres circulated several public memorials, and he continued to seek loans from other sources. Idler introduced him to Philip Contteau, the American agent of the Dutch merchant firm Mees, Boer and Moens. On April8, 1820, Torres and Contteau negotiated a loan of $4million ($) at eight percent interest. Colombia would maintain a state monopoly on Barinas tobacco, and would give sole control of the tobacco to Mees, Boer and Moens until the proceeds had repaid the loan. These terms were sent to Colombia and Holland for approval.
Torres was instructed to borrow as much as $20million ($), an impossible request. He did hope to build on his success by borrowing an additional $1million ($) with participation from the U.S. government. He made the request to Adams during the winter of 1820–1821, and obtained support from Monroe and Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford. However, like the weapons purchase, this proposal failed due to Adams' commitment to neutrality.
The loan in its original form was approved by the Colombian government, but before the Dutch lenders could agree to it Barinas was recaptured by the Royalists. Without the source of tobacco on which repayment depended, the bankers rejected the loan.
Thus, Torres was ultimately unable to borrow any money for Colombia. Historian Charles Bowman assessed Torres as a talented negotiator with an "exceptional knowledge of high finance", who failed due to circumstances beyond his control.
Influence in pamphleteering
In June 1821, Mier returned to Philadelphia after escaping imprisonment in Havana, and moved into Torres' house. (Another Spanish American agent, Vicente Rocafuerte, was already living there.) Connected through Freemasonry, Torres became a father figure to Mier, signing his letters He gradually drew Mier away from constitutional monarchism and toward the republican model of the United States. In doing so Torres tried to provide a political-philosophical basis for Mier's radicalism. The pair encouraged Colombia to send a diplomat to Mexico, hoping to counter the rising monarchism there. When Mier published his as well as a new edition of Bartolomé de Las Casas' , Torres paid the costs.
Torres, Mier and Rocafuerte worked together to publish numerous articles over the next few months. The nature of their cooperation is disputed. Historian José de Onís mentions that "some Spanish American critics assert that Torres' works are generally regarded as having been written by Mier and Vicente Rocafuerte. This would be hard to verify." But Charles Bowman gives the opposite interpretation: "It is likely that several of the works generally attributed to either Mier or Rocafuerte were actually from Torres' pen."
In particular, Bowman believes a pamphlet bearing Mier's name, , was actually Torres' work. Discussing political organization after the revolution, the author suggests a "Spanish America Divided in Two Grand Departments, North and South, or Septentrional and Meridional." Bowman bases this attribution on a moderation uncommon for Mier, and the use of statistics Mier would not have known. Torres' motive for publishing it under Mier's name would have been to avoid controversy and thus protect his influence with Adams.
During this period Torres also became friends with Richard W. Meade, a Philadelphia merchant who had in 1820 returned from imprisonment in Spain. He had a claim against the Spanish government that the Adams–Onís Treaty required him to collect from the U.S. government instead. Meade was a pewholder of St. Mary's Church, like Torres. Through the diplomat, Mier and Meade began working together in a controversy surrounding the parish priest, William Hogan, who had been excommunicated. Torres did not get publicly involved in the battle of pamphlets; Mier left Philadelphia for Mexico in September 1821, traveling with a Colombian passport Torres had issued him.
Diplomatic recognition
On the same day the U.S. Senate voted to ratify the Adams–Onís Treaty, February19, 1821, Torres met with Adams. The next day he formally requested the recognition of Colombia "as a free and independent nation, a sister republic". He expected that first the United States would take possession of the new territory, while in the meantime Colombia gained increasing military control over its own, and that recognition would soon follow.
Torres suffered a three-month illness in late 1821 but on November30 wrote to Adams reporting the latest developments in Colombia. He glorified its achievement of near-total military victory, the extent of its population and territory, and its potential for commerce:
The purpose of these boasts was to underscore the importance of the U.S. being the first to recognize its independence, to which Torres added warnings about the unstable politics of Mexico and Peru. The letter received significant publicity because of its extensive information and ambitious statement of Colombia's importance.
President Monroe noted the success of Colombia and the other former colonies in his December3 message to Congress, a signal that recognition was imminent. Torres wrote letters to Adams on December30 and January2 reporting Colombia's new constitution, a sign the republic was stable. He hoped to go to Washington to state the case for recognition in person, but was prevented by illness and poverty. The House of Representatives asked the administration on January30 to report on the state of South America. Colombia's de facto independence as a republic, and the conclusion of Adams' treaty with Spain, encouraged the hesitant administration that the time was ripe for recognition. During this same period, the Colombian government was starting to see the prospect of recognition as hopeless.
Torres' health declined intermittently over the winter; his weakening disposition was attributed to asthma and severe overwork. "If I could move to a good climate where there were no books, paper, or pen and where I could speak of politics in a word, ... with my little garden and a horse to carry me about, perhaps I could convalesce", he wrote to Mier. But in March, Monroe reported to the House that the Spanish American governments had "a claim to recognition by other powers which ought not to be resisted." The formerly reluctant Adams dismissed a protest by Spanish minister Joaquín de Anduaga by calling the recognition "the mere acknowledgment of existing facts". By May4, the House and Senate had sent Monroe resolutions in support of recognition and an appropriation to put this into effect; this news was greatly celebrated in Colombia. Pedro José Gual, now the Colombian secretary of state and foreign relations, wrote to Bolívar that Torres deserved sole credit for the achievement.
The question remained when to send ministers and whom to recognize first. At this time, Torres was the only authorized agent in the United States for any of the Patriot governments. It was Adams' suggestion that Torres should be received as chargé d'affaires immediately, with the United States reciprocating after other diplomats arrived; Monroe agreed to thus formalize his existing relationship with Torres. The chargé was invited on May23 but delayed by his poor health. Nevertheless, he insisted on traveling to Washington.
At 1p.m. on June19, Torres was received at the White House by Adams and Monroe. The weakened Torres told them of the importance of recognition to Colombia, and wept when the President said how satisfied he was for Torres to be received as its first representative. Indeed, he was the first representative from any Spanish American government. On leaving the short meeting, Torres gave Adams a print of the Colombian constitution.
Before Torres departed Washington, Adams visited him on June21; he promised Adams to work for equal tariffs on American and European goods in Colombia, and predicted would be sent to the U.S. as permanent diplomat. Adams published a satisfied announcement in the National Intelligencer.
Death
In rapidly declining health, Torres returned to Hamiltonville, now in West Philadelphia, where that spring he had purchased a new home. Duane was with him when he died there at 2p.m. on July15, 1822, at age59.
On July17, the funeral procession began from Meade's house, which was joined by Commodore Daniels of the Colombian navy and prominent citizens. The procession went to St.Mary's, where the requiem mass was held by Father Hogan and Torres was buried with military honors. Ships in the harbor held their flags at half-mast. This highly unusual display of honor was not only because Torres was well-liked, but also because he was the first foreign diplomat to die in the United States. An obituary named him "the Franklin of South America".
Duane and Meade were the executors of his estate. Not yet aware of his death, the Colombian government appointed him consul-general and (as he had predicted) sent Salazar as envoy to succeed him.
Legacy
Sources for Torres' life include his voluminous correspondence, his published writing, newspaper articles, and Adams and Duane's memoirs. His long exile from Colombia has tended to obscure him in diplomatic history compared to his contemporaries; indeed his grave site was forgotten until rediscovered by historian Charles Lyon Chandler in 1924.
R. Dana Skinner called him "the first panamericanist" that year. During the U.S. Sesquicentennial Exposition in 1926, a plaque was placed at St. Mary's that honors him as "the first Latin American diplomatic representative in the United States of America." It was a gift "from the government of Colombia and Philadelphian descendants of his friends", including Duane's great-great-grandson. The ceremony was attended by Colombian minister Enrique Olaya, who held him up as a model for cooperation of the peoples of the New World.
Responding to an accusation by Spanish writer J. E. Casariego that Torres was a traitor to his native Spain, Nicolás García Samudio in 1941 called him a patriot, even the originator of the Monroe Doctrine—though that specific claim has been met skeptically. A 1946 article suggested Torres had not been given a large enough place in Colombian diplomatic histories, and likewise praised him as a "precursor of pan-Americanism".
In the United States, Torres is given modest attention in general diplomatic histories, but his importance is promoted by historians of Spanish American agents. In the judgment of José de Onís, Torres was "the most successful of all the Spanish American agents". Charles H. Bowman Jr. wrote a master's thesis and a series of articles about Torres in the 1960s and 1970s. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of U.S.–Latin American relations in 1972, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States held a session in Philadelphia because it was the home of Manuel Torres.
However, Emily García documented that in 2016 Torres was obscure even to the archivists of St. Mary's, where the plaque still hangs. That he is mostly unknown today, despite being celebrated in his time and with the plaque, is for her illustrative that "Latinos inhabit a paradoxical position in the larger U.S. national imaginary." Her book chapter analyzes him as the embodiment of a culture bridge that existed between Philadelphia and Spanish America: while he helped spread U.S. ideals to the south, he also brought Spanish influences to the north. This dual nature is characteristic of Torres' life and thinking.
Works
English translation 1800.
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
1762 births
1822 deaths
Ambassadors of Colombia to the United States
Colombian writers
Writers from Philadelphia
People of the Colombian War of Independence
American people of Spanish descent
Spanish emigrants to Colombia
Colombian Roman Catholics
Catholics from Pennsylvania | en |
doc-en-12655 | Robert Heron Bork (March 1, 1927December 19, 2012) was an American judge, government official, and legal scholar who served as the Solicitor General of the United States from 1973 to 1977. A professor at Yale Law School by occupation, he later served as a judge on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1982 to 1988. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the U.S. Senate rejected his nomination after a highly publicized confirmation hearing.
Bork was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received both his undergraduate and legal education at the University of Chicago. After working at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, he served as a professor at Yale Law School. He became a prominent advocate of originalism, calling for judges to adhere to the Framers' original understanding of the United States Constitution. He also became an influential antitrust scholar, arguing that consumers often benefited from corporate mergers and that antitrust law should focus on consumer welfare rather than on ensuring competition. Bork wrote several notable books, including a scholarly work titled The Antitrust Paradox and a work of cultural criticism titled Slouching Towards Gomorrah.
From 1973 to 1977, he served as Solicitor General under President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford, successfully arguing several cases before the Supreme Court. During the October 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, Bork became acting U.S. Attorney General after his superiors in the U.S. Justice Department chose to resign rather than fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating the Watergate scandal. Following an order from the President, Bork fired Cox, his first assignment as Acting Attorney General. Bork served as Acting Attorney General until January 4, 1974, and was succeeded by Ohio U.S. Senator William B. Saxbe.
In 1982, President Reagan appointed Bork to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In 1987, Reagan nominated Bork to the Supreme Court after Justice Lewis Powell announced his retirement. His nomination precipitated unprecedented media attention and efforts by interest groups to mobilize opposition to his confirmation, primarily due to his criticisms of the Warren and Burger courts' interpretations of the Constitution, especially of the First Amendment and the constitutional right to privacy, and his role in the Saturday Night Massacre. His nomination was ultimately defeated in the Senate, 58-42. The Supreme Court vacancy was eventually filled by another Reagan nominee, Anthony Kennedy. Bork subsequently resigned from his judgeship on the D.C. Circuit in 1988 and served as a professor at various institutions, including the George Mason University School of Law. He also advised presidential candidate Mitt Romney and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hudson Institute prior to his death in 2012.
Early life and education
Bork was born on March 1, 1927, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father, Harry Philip Bork Jr. (1897–1974), was a steel company purchasing agent, and his mother, Elisabeth (née Kunkle; 1898–2004), was a schoolteacher. He was an only child. His father was of German and Irish ancestry, while his mother was of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) descent.
Bork attended the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut, then attended the University of Chicago. He was a brother of the international social fraternity Phi Gamma Delta, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1948. He then attended the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He graduated in 1953 with a Juris Doctor and membership in Order of the Coif and Phi Beta Kappa. While in law school, Bork took a two-year leave of absence to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War.
Career
After law school, Bork spent another year in military service, then entered private practice in 1954 as an associate at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. In 1962, Bork left private practice and joined the faculty of Yale Law School as a professor. He taught at Yale until 1981, with a two-year break from 1973 to 1975, during which he served as U.S. Solicitor General. Among his students during this time were Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Anita Hill, Robert Reich, Jerry Brown, Linda Greenhouse, John R. Bolton, Samuel Issacharoff, and Cynthia Estlund.
At Yale he was best known for writing The Antitrust Paradox, a book in which he argued that consumers often benefited from corporate mergers, and that many then-current readings of the antitrust laws were economically irrational and hurt consumers. He posited that the primary focus of antitrust laws should be on consumer welfare rather than ensuring competition, as fostering competition of companies within an industry has a natural built-in tendency to allow, and even help, many poorly run companies with methodologies and practices that are both inefficient and expensive to continue in business simply for the sake of competition, to the detriment of both consumers and society. Bork's writings on antitrust law, with those of Richard Posner and other law and economics and Chicago School thinkers, have been influential in causing a shift in the Supreme Court's approach to antitrust laws since the 1970s.
Solicitor General
Bork served as Solicitor General in the U.S. Department of Justice from March 1973 until 1977. As Solicitor General, he argued several high-profile cases before the Supreme Court in the 1970s, including 1974's Milliken v. Bradley, where his brief in support of the State of Michigan was influential among the justices. Chief Justice Warren Burger called Bork the most effective counsel to appear before the court during his tenure. Bork hired many young attorneys as assistants who went on to have successful careers, including judges Danny Boggs and Frank H. Easterbrook as well as Robert Reich, later Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.
"Saturday Night Massacre"
On October 20, 1973, Solicitor General Bork was instrumental in the "Saturday Night Massacre" when President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox following Cox's request for tapes of his Oval Office conversations. Nixon initially ordered U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson resigned rather than carry out the order. Richardson's top deputy, Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, also considered the order "fundamentally wrong" and resigned, making Bork Acting Attorney General. When Nixon reiterated his order, Bork complied and fired Cox. Bork claimed he carried out the order under pressure from Nixon's attorneys and intended to resign immediately afterward, but was persuaded by Richardson and Ruckelshaus to stay on for the good of the Justice Department. Bork remained Acting Attorney General until the appointment of William B. Saxbe on January 4, 1974. In his posthumously published memoirs, Bork claimed that after he carried out the order, Nixon promised him the next seat on the Supreme Court, though Bork did not take the offer seriously as he believed that Watergate had left Nixon too politically compromised to appoint another justice. Nixon would never get the chance to carry out his promise to Bork, as the next Supreme Court vacancy came after Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford assumed the presidency, with Ford instead nominating John Paul Stevens following the 1975 retirement of William O. Douglas. Ford planned to nominate Bork to replace William Colby as CIA Director, but his advisors convinced him to turn to first Edward Bennett Williams and then George H. W. Bush instead due to Bork's unpopularity and lack of experience in intelligence.
United States Circuit Judge
Bork was a circuit judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1982 to 1988. He was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on December 7, 1981, was confirmed via voice vote by the Senate on February 8, 1982, and received his commission on February 9, 1982.
One of Bork's opinions while on the D.C. Circuit was Dronenburg v. Zech, 741 F.2d 1388, decided in 1984. This case involved James L. Dronenburg, a sailor who had been administratively discharged from the United States Navy for engaging in homosexual conduct. Dronenburg argued that his discharge violated his right to privacy. This argument was rejected in an opinion written by Bork and joined by Antonin Scalia, in which Bork critiqued the line of Supreme Court cases upholding a right to privacy.
In rejecting Dronenburg's suggestion for a rehearing en banc, the D.C. Circuit issued four separate opinions, including one by Bork (again joined by Scalia), who wrote that "no principle had been articulated [by the Supreme Court] that enabled us to determine whether appellant's case fell within or without that principle."
In 1986, President Reagan considered nominating Bork to the Supreme Court after Chief Justice Warren Burger retired. Reagan ultimately chose then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist to be the next Chief Justice and Bork's D.C. Circuit colleague, Judge Scalia, for Rehnquist's Associate Justice seat. Some journalists and correspondents believed that if Reagan nominated Bork in 1986, Bork would have likely made the Supreme Court as the Senate was led by the Republicans. However, the Republicans' majority was very narrow (53-47) which implies that maybe Bork still would have been defeated in 1986, especially when the six Republicans who voted against Bork's 1987 nomination were not first elected in November 1986.
U.S. Supreme Court nomination
President Reagan nominated Bork for associate justice of the Supreme Court on July 1, 1987, to replace retiring Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. A hotly contested United States Senate debate over Bork's nomination ensued. Opposition was partly fueled by civil rights and women's rights groups, concerned about Bork's opposition to the authority claimed by the federal government to impose standards of voting fairness upon states (at his confirmation hearings for the position of solicitor general, he supported the rights of Southern states to impose a poll tax), and his stated desire to roll back civil rights decisions of the Warren and Burger courts. Bork is one of only four Supreme Court nominees (along with William Rehnquist, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh) to have been opposed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Bork was also criticized for being an "advocate of disproportionate powers for the executive branch of Government, almost executive supremacy", most notably, according to critics, for his role in the Saturday Night Massacre.
Before Justice Powell's expected retirement on June 27, 1987, some Senate Democrats had asked liberal leaders to "form a 'solid phalanx' of opposition" if President Reagan nominated an "ideological extremist" to replace him, assuming it would tilt the court rightward. Democrats also warned Reagan there would be a fight if Bork were nominated. Nevertheless, Reagan nominated Bork for Powell's seat on July 1, 1987.
Following Bork's nomination, Senator Ted Kennedy took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of him, declaring:
Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is--and is often the only--protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy. President Reagan is still our president. But he should not be able to reach out from the muck of Irangate, reach into the muck of Watergate and impose his reactionary vision of the Constitution on the Supreme Court and the next generation of Americans. No justice would be better than this injustice.
Bork responded, "There was not a line in that speech that was accurate." In an obituary of Kennedy, The Economist remarked that Bork may well have been correct, "but it worked". Bork also contended in his book, The Tempting of America, that the brief prepared for then-Senator Joe Biden, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, "so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility." Opponents of Bork's nomination found the arguments against him justified, claiming that Bork believed the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional, and he supported poll taxes, literacy tests for voting, mandated school prayer, and sterilization as a requirement for a job, while opposing free speech rights for non-political speech and privacy rights for gay conduct. However, in 1988, an analysis published in The Western Political Quarterly of amicus curiae briefs filed by U.S. Solicitors General during the Warren and Burger Courts found that during Bork's tenure in the position during the Nixon and Ford Administrations (1973-1977), Bork took liberal positions in the aggregate as often as Thurgood Marshall did during the Johnson Administration (1965-1967) and more often than Wade H. McCree did during the Carter Administration (1977-1981), in part because Bork filed briefs in favor of the litigants in civil rights cases 75 percent of the time.
Television advertisements produced by People For the American Way and narrated by Gregory Peck attacked Bork as an extremist. Kennedy's speech successfully fueled widespread public skepticism of Bork's nomination. The rapid response to Kennedy's "Robert Bork's America" speech stunned the Reagan White House, and the accusations went unanswered for two-and-a-half months.
During debate over his nomination, Bork's video rental history was leaked to the press. His video rental history was unremarkable, and included such harmless titles as A Day at the Races, Ruthless People, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Writer Michael Dolan, who obtained a copy of the hand-written list of rentals wrote about it for the Washington City Paper. Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Bork himself had stated that Americans had only such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation. The incident led to the enactment of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act.
To pro-choice rights legal groups, Bork's originalist views and his belief that the Constitution did not contain a general "right to privacy" were viewed as a clear signal that, should he become a justice of the Supreme Court, he would vote to reverse the Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. Accordingly, a large number of groups mobilized to press for Bork's rejection, and the resulting 1987 Senate confirmation hearings became an intensely partisan battle.
On October 23, 1987, the Senate denied Bork's confirmation, with 42 Senators voting in favor and 58 voting against. Two Democratic senators, David Boren (D-OK) and Ernest Hollings (D-SC), voted in his favor, while six Republican senators--John Chafee (R-RI), Bob Packwood (R-OR), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Robert Stafford (R-VT), John Warner (R-VA), and Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (R-CT)--voted against Bork. His defeat in the Senate was the worst of any Supreme Court nominee since George Washington Woodward was defeated 20–29 in 1845, and the third-worst on record.
The seat Bork was nominated to eventually went to Judge Anthony Kennedy, who was unanimously approved by the Senate, 97–0. Bork, unhappy with his treatment in the nomination process, resigned his appellate court judgeship in 1988.
"Bork" as a verb
According to columnist William Safire, the first published use of "bork" as a verb was possibly in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of August 20, 1987, two months prior to the final vote: "Let's just hope something enduring results for the justice-to-be, like a new verb: Borked." Perhaps the best-known use of the verb "to bork" occurred in July 1991 at a conference of the National Organization for Women in New York City. Feminist Florynce Kennedy addressed the conference on the importance of defeating the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying, "We're going to bork him. We're going to kill him politically. This little creep, where did he come from?" Thomas was subsequently confirmed after the most divisive confirmation hearing in Supreme Court history to that point.
In March 2002, the Oxford English Dictionary added an entry for the verb "bork" as U.S. political slang, with this definition: "To defame or vilify (a person) systematically, esp. in the mass media, usually to prevent his or her appointment to public office; to obstruct or thwart (a person) in this way."
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh used the term during his own contentious Senate confirmation hearing testimony when he stated that "The behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at my hearing a few weeks ago was an embarrassment. But at least it was just a good old-fashioned attempt at borking."
Later work
Following his failure to be confirmed, Bork resigned his seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and was for several years both a professor at George Mason University School of Law and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a Washington, D.C., based think tank. Bork also consulted for Netscape in the Microsoft litigation. Bork was a fellow at the Hudson Institute. He later served as a visiting professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and was a professor at Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Florida. In 2011, Bork worked as a legal adviser for the presidential campaign of Republican Mitt Romney.
Advocacy of originalism
Bork is known by American conservatives for his theory that the best way to reconcile the role of the judiciary in the U.S. government against what he terms the "Madisonian" or "counter-majoritarian" dilemma of the judiciary making law without popular approval is for constitutional adjudication to be guided by the framers' original understanding of the United States Constitution. Reiterating that it is a court's task to adjudicate and not to "legislate from the bench," he advocated that judges exercise restraint in deciding cases, emphasizing that the role of the courts is to frame "neutral principles" (a term borrowed from Herbert Wechsler) and not simply ad hoc pronouncements or subjective value judgments. Bork once said, "The truth is that the judge who looks outside the Constitution always looks inside himself and nowhere else."
Bork built on the influential critiques of the Warren Court authored by Alexander Bickel, who criticized the Supreme Court under Earl Warren, alleging shoddy and inconsistent reasoning, undue activism, and misuse of historical materials. Bork's critique was harder-edged than Bickel's, however, and he has written, "We are increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives but by an unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committee of lawyers applying no will but their own." Bork's writings influenced the opinions of judges such as Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court, and sparked a vigorous debate within legal academia about how to interpret the Constitution.
Some conservatives criticized Bork's approach. Conservative scholar Harry Jaffa criticized Bork (along with Rehnquist and Scalia) for failing to adhere to natural law principles, and therefore believing that the Constitution says nothing about abortion or gay rights (Jaffa believed that the Constitution prohibited these things.) Robert P. George explained Jaffa's critique this way: "He attacks Rehnquist and Scalia and Bork for their embrace of legal positivism that is inconsistent with the doctrine of natural rights that is embedded in the Constitution they are supposed to be interpreting." Jaffa attacked Bork as insufficiently conservative. Bork, in turn, described adherents of natural law constitutionalism as fanatical.
Works and views
Bork wrote several books, including the two best-sellers The Tempting of America, about his judicial philosophy and his nomination battle, and Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, in which he argued that the rise of the New Left in the 1960s in the U.S. undermined the moral standards necessary for civil society, and spawned a generation of intellectuals who oppose Western civilization. During the period these books were written, as well as most of his adult life, Bork was an agnostic, a fact used pejoratively behind the scenes by Southern Democrats when speaking to their evangelical constituents during his Supreme Court nomination process. Bork's 1971 Indiana Law Journal article "Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems" has been identified as one of the most cited legal articles of all time.
In The Tempting of America, p. 82, Bork explained his support for the Supreme Court's desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education:
Bork opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying that the provisions within the Act which prohibited racial discrimination by public accommodations were based on a principle of "unsurpassed ugliness". Bork opposed the 1965 Supreme Court ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down a Connecticut Comstock Act of 1873 that prohibited the use of contraceptives for married couples. Bork said the decision was "utterly specious," "unprincipled" and "intellectually empty." Bork held that the Constitution only protected speech that was "explicitly political", and that there were no free speech protections for "scientific, literary or that variety of expression we call obscene or pornographic."
In 1998 he reviewed High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, conservative pundit Ann Coulter's book on impeaching Clinton, pointing out that "'High crimes and misdemeanors' are not limited to actions that are crimes under federal law."
In 1999, Bork wrote an essay about Thomas More and attacked jury nullification as a "pernicious practice". Bork once quoted More in summarizing his judicial philosophy. In 2003, he published Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges, an American Enterprise Institute book that includes Bork's philosophical objections to the phenomenon of incorporating international ethical and legal guidelines into the fabric of domestic law. In particular, he focuses on problems he sees as inherent in the federal judiciary of three nations, Israel, Canada, and the United States—countries where he believes courts have exceeded their discretionary powers, and have discarded precedent and common law, and in their place substituted their own liberal judgment.
Bork also advocated modifying the Constitution to allow Congressional supermajorities to override Supreme Court decisions, similar to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms' notwithstanding clause. Though Bork had many liberal critics, some of his arguments have earned criticism from conservatives as well. Although an opponent of gun control, Bork denounced what he called the "NRA view" of the Second Amendment, something he described as the "belief that the constitution guarantees a right to Teflon-coated bullets." Instead, he argued that the Second Amendment merely guarantees a right to participate in a government militia.
Bork converted to Catholicism in 2003.
In October 2005, Bork publicly criticized the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, saying her nomination was "a disaster on every level."
On June 6, 2007, Bork filed suit in federal court in New York City against the Yale Club over an incident that had occurred a year earlier. Bork alleged that, while trying to reach the dais to speak at an event, he fell, because of the Yale Club's failure to provide any steps or handrail between the floor and the dais. (After his fall, he successfully climbed to the dais and delivered his speech.) According to the complaint, Bork's injuries required surgery, immobilized him for months, forced him to use a cane, and left him with a limp. In May 2008, Bork and the Yale Club reached a confidential, out-of-court settlement.
On June 7, 2007, Bork with several others authored an amicus brief on behalf of Scooter Libby arguing that there was a substantial constitutional question regarding the appointment of the prosecutor in the case, reviving the debate that had previously resulted in the Morrison v. Olson decision.
On December 15, 2007, Bork endorsed Mitt Romney for president. He repeated this endorsement on August 2, 2011, during Romney's second campaign for the White House.
A 2008 issue of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy collected essays in tribute to Bork. Authors included Frank H. Easterbrook, George Priest, and Douglas Ginsburg.
Personal life
Bork was married to Claire Davidson from 1952 until her death from cancer in 1980. They had a daughter, Ellen, and two sons, Robert and Charles. In 1982, he married Mary Ellen Pohl, a Catholic religious sister turned activist.
Bork died of complications from heart disease at the Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Virginia, on December 19, 2012. Following his death, Scalia referred to Bork as "one of the most influential legal scholars of the past 50 years" and "a good man and a loyal citizen". Mike Lee, senator from Utah, called Bork "one of America's greatest jurists and a brilliant legal mind". He is interred at Fairfax Memorial Park.
Selected writings
— (1978). The Antitrust Paradox. New York: Free Press. ; 2nd edition (1993).
— (1990). The Tempting of America. New York: Free Press. .
— (1996). Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. New York: ReganBooks. .
— (2003). Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute Press. .
— (ed.) (2005). A Country I Do Not Recognize: The Legal Assault on American Values. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. .
— (2008) A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments. Wilmington, DL: ISI Books.
— (2013) Saving Justice: Watergate, the Saturday Night Massacre, and Other Adventures of a Solicitor General. New York: Encounter Books.
See also
Aaron Director
Originalism
Ronald Reagan Supreme Court candidates
Swiftboating
Unsuccessful nominations to the Supreme Court of the United States
References
Bibliography
External links
The Legacy of Robert H. Bork, Retro Report
A Conversation with Judge Robert H. Bork – Event Video, Federalist Society, 2007-06-26
Congressional Record: Floor Vote on Bork Nomination
Think Tank Biography: Robert Bork
Bork, Robert H. (1996) Our Judicial Oligarchy . 1996 First Things November.
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Conservatism in the United States | en |
doc-en-9592 | The 2014 Cleveland Browns season was the franchise's 66th season as a professional sports franchise and its 62nd as a member of the National Football League. It was the first under new head coach Mike Pettine and general manager Ray Farmer. The Browns improved upon their 4–12 record from 2013, finishing 7–9. The team started the season 6–3 with sole possession of the AFC North lead, but lost six of their last seven games to finish 7–9 and fail to make the playoffs for the 12th consecutive year, the longest postseason drought in franchise history. This also marked the Browns' seventh consecutive season with a losing record.
Offseason
Personnel changes
Coaching staff changes
On December 29, 2013, the Browns fired head coach Rob Chudzinski. In his only season as coach, Chudzinski posted a record of 4–12, including a 7-game losing streak to end the season, although he ended the Browns' 11-game losing streak to the division rival Baltimore Ravens. Offensive coordinator Norv Turner left the team to take the same position with the Minnesota Vikings, and defensive coordinator Ray Horton took the same position with the Tennessee Titans.
On January 23, 2014, the Browns hired former Buffalo Bills' defensive coordinator Mike Pettine as head coach. Pettine served as defensive coordinator of the Bills in , defensive coordinator of the New York Jets from 2009 to 2012, and a defensive assistant with the Baltimore Ravens from 2002 to 2008. This will be Pettine's first opportunity as an NFL head coach.
On January 27, the Browns hired former Bills' linebackers coach Jim O'Neil as defensive coordinator. O'Neil has served as a defensive assistant under Pettine with both the Jets and the Bills.
Also, on January 27, the Browns filled out their defensive coaching staff by adding three assistant coaches who worked under Pettine in Buffalo: Chuck Driesbach as linebackers coach, Brian Fleury as assistant linebackers coach and Jeff Hafley as secondary coach. The Browns also hired former Tampa Bay Buccaneers' tight ends coach Brian Angelichio to the same position and retained assistant secondary coach Bobby Babich, special teams coach Chris Tabor, and assistant special teams coach Shawn Mennenga from Chudzinski's coaching staff.
On February 3, the Browns hired former Washington Redskins' offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan to take the same position with the team. Shanahan, the son of Super Bowl champion head coach Mike Shanahan, served as the Houston Texans' offensive coordinator from 2008 to 2009, and the Redskins' offensive coordinator from 2010 to 2013.
Front office changes
On February 11, the Browns fired general manager Mike Lombardi and promoted assistant general manager Ray Farmer to take his place as GM. In addition, CEO Joe Banner resigned from his role with the team.
Also on February 11, the Browns hired Bill Kuharich as assistant general manager to Farmer. Kuharich worked with Farmer in the Kansas City Chiefs player personnel department, and has also worked in the New Orleans Saints player personnel department.
Roster changes
Free agents
Releases
Signings
Draft
Notes
The Browns traded their original first-round selection (No. 4 overall) to the Buffalo Bills in exchange for the Bills' first round selection (No. 9 overall) and their 2015 first and fourth round selections.
The Browns then traded the No. 9 overall selection, along with their fifth round selection (No. 145 overall) to the Minnesota Vikings in exchange for the No. 8 overall selection.
The Browns acquired an additional first-round selection (No. 26 overall) in a trade that sent running back Trent Richardson to the Indianapolis Colts.
The Browns traded the No. 26 selection, along with a third round selection (No. 83 overall), to the Philadelphia Eagles in exchange for the No. 22 overall selection.
The Browns acquired an additional third-round selection (No. 83 overall) in a trade that sent the team's 2013 fourth-round selection to the Pittsburgh Steelers. This selection was later traded to the Eagles (see above).
The Browns acquired an additional fourth-round selection (No. 127 overall) in a trade that sent the team's 2013 fifth-round selection to the Indianapolis Colts.
The Browns did not have selections from rounds 5–7 as a result of the following trades:
Trading the No. 145 selection to the Minnesota Vikings (see above).
Trading the No. 106 and No. 180 selections to the San Francisco 49ers in exchange for the No. 94 selection.
Trading traded the No. 218 selection to the Baltimore Ravens in exchange for their sixth-round selection in the 2015 NFL Draft.
Undrafted free agent signings
Gordon suspension
On May 9, it was announced that wide receiver Josh Gordon could face a possible season-long suspension due to a fourth failed drug test. On July 4, 2014 Josh Gordon was arrested for DWI in Raleigh, NC. On August 27, the suspension was upheld after Gordon's appeal. On September 12, after the NFL and the NFLPA approved a new drug testing program, Gordon's suspension was retroactively reduced to 10 games. On November 17, his reinstatement was officially announced and he returned Week 12 at the Georgia Dome, against the Atlanta Falcons, on November 23.
Preseason
Schedule
Regular season
Schedule
The Browns had no games west of the Mississippi River in 2014, by virtue of their conference rotation with NFC South and AFC South division opponents, and common position Bills and Raiders – the Raiders being based in the Pacific Time Zone but scheduled to play the Browns at FirstEnergy Stadium. Their only game outside of the Eastern Time Zone was in Nashville, Tennessee against the Tennessee Titans in Week 5. Their November 6 game in Week 10 was their only scheduled national television appearance on the NFL Network, against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Note: Intra-division opponents are in bold text.
Game summaries
Week 1: at Pittsburgh Steelers
The Steelers dominated the first half, and the Browns trailed 27–3 at halftime. However, the Browns scored 24 straight points in the second half to tie the game at 27–27. The comeback attempt fell short as Steelers K Shaun Suisham kicked a 41-yard game-winning field goal as time expired. With the loss, the Browns lost their tenth straight season opener, setting an NFL record. It was also their eleventh consecutive road loss to the Steelers.
Week 2: vs. New Orleans Saints
This was the Browns' first home opener win since 2004, and also marked Johnny Manziel's NFL debut. Rookie Terrence West, who had more than 2,500 all-purpose yards at Division I (FCS) Towson University, ran for 68 yards and one touchdown. Billy Cundiff hit the game-winning field goal as time expired.
Week 3: vs. Baltimore Ravens
For the Browns, this would mark the third straight regular season game that they played in: that would be decided by 3 or fewer points, and that would have a game-winning field goal in the final ten seconds of the fourth quarter. In a tightly contested match, the Browns led 21–17 heading into the fourth. A series of errors (including a missed 50 yard field goal try and a blocked field goal attempt) prevented them from scoring, while the Ravens scored 6 unanswered. Throughout the first three periods, the Browns were 5/7 on third down conversions; they were 0/4 on third down conversions and gained only one first down in the decisive fourth quarter. Ravens K Justin Tucker kicked the game-winning field goal as time expired. With the loss, the Browns suffered their first home loss of the season as their record fell to 1–2 entering the bye week. The Browns also fell to 1–12 against the Ravens with Joe Flacco as the QB under center. Victories by the Bengals and the Steelers would leave the Browns in sole possession of last place in the AFC North.
The Browns were the only team in the NFL not to have a turnover in the first three games of the season.
Week 5: at Tennessee Titans
This marked the Browns’ solitary game outside the Eastern time zone during the season. The Browns ended a 7-game away losing streak and improved to 2–2 with the win. For the fourth time this season, the Browns participated in a game that was decided by 3 or fewer points. It was also the fourth time in as many games that the winning score was produced with less than 2 minutes to go in the 4th quarter. The game was aggressive, with 14 penalties for 142 yards, and the ejection of the Titans' linebacker Derrick Morgan. The Titans dominated in the early minutes, scoring the first 14 points of the contest and leaping out to a 28–3 lead. Despite trailing by as many as 25 points in the second quarter, the Browns scored the final 26 points of the game while the Titans failed to score any points in the second half. Travis Benjamin caught the game-winning TD pass from Brian Hoyer with 69 seconds left in the game.
The Browns' 25-point rally represented the largest comeback in franchise history and the largest comeback by a road team in NFL history. For his outstanding play on punt and kick coverage, Browns DL Tank Carder was recognized as the AFC Special Teams Player of the Week.
Week 6: vs. Pittsburgh Steelers
This was the second and final regular season meeting between the two teams. The Browns snapped a four-game losing streak to the Steelers with a 31–10 blowout victory. They also won their first divisional game of the season, ending a five-game losing streak to division foes. The Steelers led 3–0 after the first quarter. However, the Browns scored 21 straight points in the second quarter, building a 21–3 halftime lead. Adding a field goal in the third quarter and a touchdown in the fourth, the Browns created an insurmountable 31–3 lead. The Steelers’ late touchdown in the fourth quarter produced the final score. Steelers’ QB Ben Roethlisberger suffered only his second career loss in 20 career games against the Browns. For Cleveland, the 21-point margin of victory was the most lopsided win over Pittsburgh since they routed them 51–0 in a Week 1 matchup during the 1989 season. The Browns moved into third place in the AFC North with a 3–2 record while the Steelers fell into fourth place with a 3–3 record.
Week 7: at Jacksonville Jaguars
The Browns entered this game with a 3–2 record, coming off a blowout victory over the Steelers and were looking to win their third consecutive game. Meanwhile, the Jaguars entered with a 0–6 record, and a 9-game losing streak, coming off a tough loss to the Tennessee Titans. Despite being heavy favorites to win this matchup, the Browns were routed 24–6. The Browns led 6–0 late in the first half and had the opportunity to kick a field goal and go up 9–0. Instead, Browns HC Mike Pettine opted to go for it on 4th & 1. The conversion attempt failed, and within seconds, the Jaguars scored a touchdown to close out the half, leading 7–6. Following a lost fumble by Brian Hoyer, the Jaguars added a field goal to make it 10–6. In the fourth, the Browns finally imploded. KR Jordan Poyer attempted to catch the punt at the Browns’ 2-yard line; the ball went off his facemask, and the Jaguars recovered, scoring a touchdown on their next drive to make it 17–6. On the Browns’ next drive, Hoyer threw an interception and the Jags converted another touchdown a few seconds later, making the final score 24–6.
After committing only 2 turnovers in their first 5 games, the Browns committed 3 turnovers against the Jaguars. 17 of the Jaguars’ 24 points came off turnovers. The defense picked off Blake Bortles three times, but they were able to score only 3 points off of those turnovers. Hoyer struggled mightily throughout the game, going 16/41 for 215 yards, 0 touchdowns, an interception, and a lost fumble. It was the Browns’ lowest scoring output of the season and the fewest points that they had scored with Hoyer as their starting quarterback. It was the first time that the Browns had failed to score a touchdown in a game since Week 2 against the Ravens (in the 2013 season). It was also the first time that the Browns failed to score any points in the second half (it last occurred in Week 2 of the 2013 season when the Browns were outscored by the Ravens 14–0 in the second half). The Jaguars won their first game of the season to improve to 1–6; The Browns’ record dropped to 3–3 as they fell to 4th place in the AFC North.
Week 8: vs. Oakland Raiders
After suffering a disappointing loss to the previously winless Jaguars the week before, the Browns faced yet another winless opponent in the Oakland Raiders. Both teams struggled for much of the game, kicking a combined five field goals as the Browns held a 9–6-second half lead. At the end of the third quarter the Browns finally got the break they needed when S Joe Haden recovered a Darren McFadden fumble deep in Cleveland territory and returned it 34 yards. Four plays later, QB Brian Hoyer found WR Andrew Hawkins for a four-yard touchdown pass and a 16–6 lead. The Raiders would never recover and the Browns, despite giving up the Raiders’ lone touchdown pass from Derek Carr to Andre Holmes with 7 seconds left, won the game 23–13.
Week 9: vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Rookie WR Mike Evans, a teammate of Johnny Manziel at Texas A&M and the recipient of more than 200 catches in 2 years, was the favorite target for QB Mike Glennon, scoring both of Tampa Bay's TD's in the game. Patrick Murray added a field goal but missed three others. Cleveland blocked Murray's first FG attempt, tipped a punt that gained only 12 yards, got 2 interceptions and a fumble recovery, and kept the Bucs out of the end zone in the fourth quarter. QB Brian Hoyer passed for 300 yards and two touchdowns, with the game-winner to rookie wide receiver Taylor Gabriel.
Week 10: at Cincinnati Bengals
This was the 82nd meeting between the teams in the "Battle of Ohio." The Browns’ defense suffocated the Bengals, forcing four turnovers while limiting the Bengals’ offense to 3 points and surrendering only one red zone drive. Bengals QB Andy Dalton struggled severely, going 10/33 for 86 yards while throwing 3 interceptions, and being sacked twice on consecutive plays by DT Desmond Bryant. His final passer rating was 2.0, the lowest in Bengals team history. Cleveland found its sea legs using the "running back by committee" approach, with all three of its starting rushers (Ben Tate, Terrence West, and Isiah Crowell) scoring TD's in compiling 170 yds on the ground. The Bengals lost their first regular season home game since Week 14 of the 2012 season (against the Cowboys). The 21-point loss represented the Bengals’ most lopsided defeat since the Ravens routed them by 31 points in Week 13 of the 2008 season. For the Browns, their 21-point victory marked their largest road margin since the 1993 season (when the Browns beat the L.A. Rams by 28 points), won multiple road games in a season for the first time since 2010, snapped a 5-game road losing streak to the Bengals and a 17-game road losing streak to division foes (both of which began in 2008). The Browns’ 6–3 record is the franchise's best 9-game start since returning to the league in 1999, and their best start since the 1994 season when the Browns opened the season with a 7–2 record.
With the convincing win, the Browns improved to 6–3. This marked the Browns' best 9-game start to a season since 1994, when they started 7–2. After the Steelers lost the following Sunday, the Browns held sole possession of first place in the AFC North, the first (and, as of 2021, only) time the Browns solely led a division since 1995.
Week 11: vs. Houston Texans
This marked the first of four games against potential playoff-bound teams in the Texans, Atlanta Falcons, Buffalo Bills, and Indianapolis Colts. The Browns saw their three-game winning streak end as the Texans’ defense and run game dominated the Browns in a 23–7 blowout loss. Texans DE J. J. Watt, who played tight end in high school, scored the 5th offensive TD of his career. The Browns’ lone score came in the 2nd quarter. A touchdown from Brian Hoyer to Browns’ receiver Andrew Hawkins tied the game at 7 in the second quarter. However, the Texans scored the final 16 points of the contest. Hoyer struggled as he was 20/50 passing for 330 yards, throwing only one touchdown while throwing a 4th quarter interception. It was only the second time this season that the Browns got shut out in the second half of a game, an event that also occurred in their 24–6 loss to the Jaguars. With the loss, the Browns fell out of 1st place in the AFC North and into a tie for 3rd place behind the Bengals and Steelers, who both won that week.
Defensive linemen John Hughes and Phil Taylor were lost for the season on IR, and Jordan Cameron missed his 3rd straight game due to a concussion. On November 18, the Browns released RB Ben Tate.
This game started a stretch that lasted until the end of the 2017 season where the Browns would win only five of their next 55 games.
Week 12: at Atlanta Falcons
This was WR Josh Gordon's first action, back from his 10-game suspension. He led all receivers with 120 total yards. Down 24–23 with 44 seconds left, Hoyer, who had 3 interceptions and 0 touchdowns, drove the ball 61 yards including the key pass to Gordon inside the 35-yard line, setting up Billy Cundiff's 2nd game-winning field goal of the season with 5 seconds left for a 26-24 victory.
With the win, the Browns improved to 7–4. The Browns won consecutive road games for the first time since 2008 and Hoyer became the first Browns quarterback since Brian Sipe in 1980 to record consecutive 300+ yd games. S Tashaun Gipson left the game in the fourth quarter after colliding with CB Joe Haden and suffering a serious knee injury on the play. Gipson would miss the rest of the regular season.
Week 13: at Buffalo Bills
The Bills’ defense dominated the Browns in a 26–10 defeat. The first half was low scoring; K Billy Cundiff made a 22-yard field goal for a 3-0 lead. Several special teams errors occurred in the second quarter that prevented either team from scoring. Cundiff missed a field goal and the Bills’ K Dan Carpenter's 53-yard field goal try was blocked by S Joe Haden. The Bills dominated the second half, scoring 20 unanswered points to seize control. The Bills scored a touchdown early in the third to go up 7-3. On the Browns’ next drive, RB Terrance West fumbled, and the Bills recovered for a touchdown, adding a field goal in the 4th quarter to make it 17–3. Hoyer threw an INT on the next drive, and the Bills kicked another field goal, building a 20–3 lead. At that moment, Hoyer was benched for Johnny Manziel for the remainder of the game. Manziel led an 80-yard touchdown drive on his first series, running for a touchdown to cut the deficit to 20–10. On Manziel's second drive, the Browns failed to gain a first down, turning the ball over on downs. The Bills kicked 2 more field goals to make it 26–10, producing the final margin.
With the loss, the Browns fell to 7–5.
On December 3, head coach Mike Pettine announced that Hoyer would start the Browns' next game against the Indianapolis Colts.
Week 14: vs. Indianapolis Colts
The Colts rallied from a 14-point deficit in the second half to knock off the Browns, 25-24. The defense got off to a fast start right away and dominated for 59 minutes, forcing 4 turnovers in the contest. QB Andrew Luck fumbled on the Colts’ 1 yard line, and the ball was recovered in the endzone to make it 7-0. With a chance to go up 10-0, Browns K Billy Cundiff missed a 40 yd. field goal that would later prove to be very costly. Following the miss, Luck rushed for a TD to tie the game at 7-7. On the next drive, Hoyer led the Browns downfield; Rookie RB Isaiah Crowell ran in for a touchdown to lead 14-7 at halftime. In the second half, the Colts’ turnover problems continued, committing a fumble on their first drive that the Browns couldn't convert into points. Later in the quarter, Luck threw a "pick-six" to Browns rookie DB Justin Gilbert (his 1st INT of the year), and the Browns went up 21-7. The next two Colts’ drives resulted in points (a field goal and a T. Y. Hilton touchdown), cutting the deficit to 21-16 heading into the 4th quarter. Adding another FG in the 4th to make it 21-19, and with a chance to take the lead, Luck threw another interception (he was sacked 3 times). However, the Browns failed to get a first down and were forced to settle for 3, making it 24-19 Browns and leaving the door open for the Colts to take the lead. With less than 4 minutes to go, Luck led a 90-yard game-winning touchdown drive. The Browns had a chance to end the game with a stop on 4th and inches at the 3-yard line, but RB Dan Herron avoided the tackle and picked up 2 yards for a Colts first down. Luck would throw the game-winning TD pass to Hilton on the next play, making it 25-24 Colts with 36 seconds left. After a failed two-point conversion, and with the Browns having one more chance to win the game, Hoyer threw his 2nd INT with less than 10 seconds remaining, and the Colts ran out the clock.
The Browns’ offense was barely noticeable throughout the contest. TE Jordan Cameron returned to duty after 5 weeks, leading all Browns receivers with only 41 yds. 17 of the team's 24 points came off of Colts turnovers, the defense converting two into TD's. Punt and kick coverage teams kept returning fan-favorite KR Joshua Cribbs in check, and traded RB Trent Richardson was held to 30 yds. on 7 carries. MLB D'Qwell Jackson had 9 tackles for Indy, but no sacks. In the second half, the Browns’ offense failed to convert a single 3rd down (0/6). For the fourth consecutive game, Hoyer was dismal, passing 14/31 for 140 yards, 0 TD's, and 2 INT's (the third straight game that Hoyer had 0 TD's and multiple INT's). It was the second game in a row that the Browns failed to win after holding a halftime lead. It was only the second time that the Browns lost when holding a 4th quarter lead at any point (the other loss coming to the Ravens in Week 3).
With the loss, the Browns fell to 7–6 on the season; wins by the Steelers and Ravens would leave the Browns in 4th place in the AFC North. It was the first time this season that the Browns lost back-to-back games.
On December 9, it was announced that Johnny Manziel would start over the struggling Brian Hoyer. Starting G Ryan Seymour moved to center, replacing Nick McDonald as the team's 4th center to start a game. He was finish the season at that position. K Billy Cundiff was released from the team on December 13, replaced by Garrett Hartley.
Week 15: vs. Cincinnati Bengals
This was the second regular season meeting between the two teams. The Browns, having won the first meeting in Cincinnati, were looking to sweep the season series for the first time since 2002. However, the Bengals throttled the Browns in a 30–0 defeat, dominating from start to finish. The Bengals pounced on the Browns early, scoring a touchdown on their opening drive. They went up 20–0 in the first half and never looked back. Manziel was awful in his first start for the Browns, going 10/18 for 80 yards, 0 touchdowns, and 2 interceptions. The Browns’ 38 offensive plays were the lowest in the NFL this season.
The Browns were shut out in a game for the first time since 2009 season and remains the most recent time they have been shut out. The 30-point margin of defeat was the Browns’ largest margin of defeat since 2011. The Browns extended their losing streak in December games, having lost 10 consecutive games, dating back to 2012.
With the loss, the fell to 7–7. They finished 4–4 at home. The Browns were mathematically eliminated from AFC North title contention. The Browns have now gone 22 consecutive seasons without a division title, the longest active streak in the league.
Week 16: at Carolina Panthers
One day before this game, the San Diego Chargers defeated the San Francisco 49ers. The Chargers' victory mathematically eliminated the Browns from postseason contention.
The Browns entered this game playing for pride and looking to sweep the NFC South. In a low scoring first half, the Panthers jumped out to a 10-3 lead. QB Johnny Manziel got off to another slow start, going 3 for 8 with only 32 passing yards. The Browns gained only 2 first downs with Manziel in the first half (with one first down coming via penalty). With less than two minutes remaining in the first half, Manziel injured his hamstring, and was ruled out for the rest of the game. In the third quarter, the Browns added a field goal from newly signed K Garrett Hartley, cutting the deficit to 10-6. In the fourth quarter, Hoyer threw an 81-yard TD pass to TE Jordan Cameron, and the Browns led 13-10. However, the Panthers would score the go-ahead touchdown on their next drive and go up 17-13. With the Browns facing a 4th and 11 at midfield, HC Mike Pettine elected to punt. The Browns' defense couldn't force a punt or turnover, and the Panthers ran out the clock.
With the loss, the Browns fell to 7-8 and guaranteed a finish in fourth place in the AFC North.
On December 26, due to injuries to both Hoyer and Manziel, Connor Shaw was announced to be the starting quarterback for the Browns’ Week 17 matchup against the Ravens. On December 27, WR Josh Gordon was suspended for the season finale for a violation of team rules.
Week 17: at Baltimore Ravens
In the season finale against the Ravens, undrafted rookie QB Connor Shaw started the game as the team's 3rd starting QB for the season. Defensive and kicking units kept the game close, as both offenses were disrupted for the entire first half; K's Justin Tucker and Garrett Hartley scored field goals for a 3-3 tie. In the third quarter, the Browns got key plays from Shaw and rookie RB Terrence West, as he scored on a 2-yard run to take the lead 10-3.
Because of the amount of plays on the field for the defense, however, they ran out of gas in the fourth, and QB Joe Flacco led Baltimore to 17 straight unanswered points, including a pair of passing TD's to Kamar Aiken and Torrey Smith, for the Ravens’ 20-10 win.
With the loss, the Browns finished the season 7–9. This marked the team's seventh consecutive season with a losing record and 14th in their 16 seasons since returning to the NFL in 1999. The Browns finished 3–5 in away games.
Standings and Postseason
On December 23, Pro Bowl selections were announced for the season: S Tashaun Gipson, CB Joe Haden, and OT Joe Thomas were named starters for the Pro Bowl. This marked Thomas' eighth straight Pro Bowl selection, making him the first offensive lineman in NFL history to be nominated in each of his first eight seasons. On January 19, S Donte Whitner was added to the Pro Bowl roster, his third career selection.
On January 3, 2015, Thomas was named to the Associated Press’ 2014 NFL All-Pro team for the fifth time. On January 12, the Pro Football Writers' Assn. named Thomas to the All-NFL team while G Joel Bitonio joined Thomas on the All-AFC team. Bitonio was one of only two rookies on the squad.
The Browns' 25-point comeback win over the Tennessee Titans was selected as a finalist for the GMC "Never Say Never" moment of 2014.
On January 28, Haden was named a Global Ambassador for the Special Olympics. He became the first American professional football player to ever hold the title.
Division
Conference
Staff
Final roster
References
External links
Cleveland
Cleveland Browns seasons
Cleveland | en |
doc-en-12531 | The American Arena League (AAL) is a minor professional indoor football league that began playing in 2018. The league was initiated by a merger between Arena Pro Football (APF) and the Can-Am Indoor Football League (Can-Am), although the AAL only claimed the APF history after the former Can-Am founder left the league. Teams from both leagues, new teams, and later teams from Supreme Indoor Football and National Arena League constituted the new league for its inaugural season.
History
Arena Pro Football and the Can-Am Indoor Football League
Arena Pro Football (APF) was originally announced as the National Arena Football League in 2016 following the dissolution of American Indoor Football (AIF). The league announced their first three teams as the Birmingham Outlawz, Myrtle Beach Sharks, and Savannah Coastal Outlaws. The league changed its name to Arena Pro Football (APF) in September 2016 after the Birmingham Outlawz accidentally posted the NAFL logo of the proposed North American Football League as their league logo. They added expansion teams in the Cape Fear Wildcats and Richmond Roughriders. The league also added the Florida Tarpons and River City Raiders from the recently defunct AIF. The Central Florida Jaguars and Palm Beach Phantoms were also listed as members until both moved to the Jaguars' self-created league, Elite Indoor Football Conference. The Cape Fear Wildcats were later postponed to a presumed 2018 season. The Birmingham Outlawz later changed their name back to Alabama Outlawz after they failed to secure an arena in Birmingham. The Myrtle Beach Sharks announced they had joined the outdoor Gridiron Developmental Football League on March 7 and had left the APF.
The Can-Am Indoor Football League (Can-Am) was also formed from the remnants of the AIF when Tim Viens, the owner of the announced 2017 AIF expansion team Vermont Bucks, started his own league. With Viens serving as league president, the league added the Buffalo Blitz and Ontario-Niagara Spartans (both run by owners of established semi-professional teams, the Buffalo Gladiators and Steel City Patriots, respectively), as well as the Connecticut Chiefs (travel-only), Glens Falls Gladiators (travel-only), Niagara Falls Thunder (also operated by the Blitz ownership), New Hampshire Brigade, Rochester Kings, as well as Viens' Vermont Bucks. During the Can-Am's first few months, it added and removed the Baltimore Lightning, Cleveland Saints, an unnamed team in Erie, Pennsylvania, Lockport Lightning, and Reading Raptors as league members without playing a game.
Prior to its first season, the APF formed several agreements with other upstart leagues. The first affiliation was with United States Indoor Football, a summer league that was to play all its games in Savannah, Georgia, and operated by the Coastal Outlaws (the organization that also runs the Savannah Coastal Outlaws). On November 3, 2016, the league announced inter-league play with the Central Florida Jaguars' Elite Indoor Football Conference. However, all references to the EIFC were removed in January 2017 even after the Jaguars and Phantoms had attended the December 2016 league meetings as APF affiliates. None of these inter-league games were ever played and the EIFC played one weekend outdoors before ceasing operations.
On November 14, 2016, both the APF and Can-Am announced an alliance with each other where the playoff champions of each league meet for an inter-league championship game. During the two league's first seasons, the Can-Am's founder Tim Viens announced on April 14, 2017, that for the 2018 season the APF and Can-Am leagues would officially merge and create the American Arena League, which the APF would later confirm. The championship between the two leagues was never played or referenced by either league again.
The APF played its first game on March 10, 2017, between the Alabama Outlawz and Florida Tarpons, which Florida won, 42–18. After playing three away games, all losses, the Alabama Outlawz canceled their first home game. On April 26, they then announced that they had canceled the rest of their season, which had originally been scheduled as all home games. The Myrtle Beach Sharks appeared to have rejoined the APF mid-season; however, it was for away games only and the team called the Sharks were wearing the defunct Myrtle Beach Freedom uniforms. After playing all five home games to open the season, the River City Raiders declined to travel to play the Richmond Roughriders for their scheduled May 20 game. The Roughriders were able to secure an opponent in the Atlanta Furious, a team that primarily played in the Southern Steam's Elite Indoor Football (although many of those league's games were played outdoors). The only other away games the Raiders had originally been scheduled for was one of the canceled Alabama home games and against the Myrtle Beach Sharks. By the end of the season, the only remaining teams operating were the Richmond Roughriders and Florida Tarpons. The Roughriders defeated the Tarpons, 74–61, in the championship game on June 10, 2017, after the Roughriders finished the season undefeated.
The Can-Am also had significant inconsistencies in team members and scheduling. By the end of the season, there were only five teams remaining: the Buffalo Blitz, Glens Falls Gladiators (as a travel-only team, had a short winless season and were disqualified from playoff participation), Rochester Kings, Vermont Bucks, and the Tim Viens-owned Boston Blaze, a travel-only team that only played the second half of the season. The Rochester Kings finished their season undefeated with the Vermont Bucks and Boston Blaze each losing one game (Vermont lost to Boston, and Boston to Rochester). The Kings announced they were to host the Buffalo Blitz in the Western Division championship on June 3. The Bucks were to host the Boston Blaze in the Eastern Division championship. However, the Bucks later announced they were facing the semi-professional Central Penn Chargers, a team that primarily played in the Mid-Atlantic Indoor Football League, in their postseason game. The Kings defeated the Blitz 64–12 and the Bucks defeated the Chargers 46–6. The Bucks defeated the Kings in Rochester for the league championship on June 12 by a score of 61–41.
American Arena League
First season
In June 2017, the now-merged league announced its inaugural members over its social media page. From the Can-Am, the league added the Boston Blaze, Buffalo Blitz, Connecticut Chiefs, Glens Falls Gladiators, Rochester Kings, Vermont Bucks, and the Central Penn Chargers (the team that played in Can-Am playoff game against the Bucks). From the APF, the league added the Florida Tarpons, Richmond Roughriders, and the announced expansion team Hampton Roads Riptides. The Roughriders had previously stated that they were looking to join to the Indoor Football League (IFL) or the National Arena League (NAL) and that they had not committed to joining the AAL yet. The AAL then deleted all references of the Roughriders from their social media posts within two days and the Roughriders later announced they had joined the National Arena League (NAL). By early July, the only teams that had not been deleted from their social media posts were the Bucks, Gladiators, Kings, and Tarpons. On July 13, the league added the Georgia Doom of Macon, Georgia. The Doom organization had played a few games as a travel team fill-in for the Dayton Wolfpack of the NAL the previous season. The league also added the Triangle Torch and Upstate Dragons after they previously played in Supreme Indoor Football (SIF), with the SIF's Cape Fear Heroes (the ownership group that operates the SIF) joining the AAL shortly thereafter. By September 13, the Roughriders returned to the AAL when the NAL had increased its criteria for new teams. On September 20, the High Country Grizzlies, formerly of the NAL, also joined the AAL.
By fall 2017, the teams began releasing their inaugural schedules and expansion teams, the Atlanta Havoc (owned by league president Viens) and the Carolina Energy, were added to the league. The AAL also added three affiliated teams that would fill in for home games of the league members and count for league games: the Austin Wild (formerly the Cap City Bulls of Austin, Texas, which had played as a traveling team in the SIF during 2017), the New England Cavalry (operated by the outdoor semi-professional organization out of Concord, New Hampshire), and the Savannah Coastal Outlaws (originally announced as an AAL member from the APF merger). In December 2017, another previously announced NAL expansion team, the Jersey Flight of Trenton, New Jersey, was added to the league. In January 2018, Tim Viens sold his first team, the Vermont Bucks, to solely operate the Atlanta Havoc. The new Bucks' owners then folded the team a month later and another new team, called the Peach State Cats (originally announced in the semi-professional Elite Indoor Football), was added but were only scheduled for away games. The Glens Falls Gladiators ceased operations just prior to the season, while the Coastal Outlaws would also never play an AAL game with many of their games replaced with the Carolina Cowboyz, also originally of Elite Indoor Football, to bring the league to twelve members and three affiliates to start the 2018 season.
Partway through the first AAL season, co-founder Tim Viens resigned from his positions within the league on April 14, 2018, and would also no longer be involved with his team, the Atlanta Havoc. The league then moved their website and retroactively claimed to have been founded as Arena Pro Football and changed its name when the Can-Am teams joined. The league continued to have scheduling issues and canceled games, leading to the Florida Tarpons, East Carolina Torch (formerly the Triangle Torch until they were forced to relocate), and Upstate Dragons choosing to end their seasons early. The last Can-Am team, the Rochester Kings, also appeared to have ceased playing league games altogether during the season. The Georgia Doom defeated both the league-leading teams, the Atlanta Havoc and Richmond Roughriders, but then chose not to participate in the playoffs. The Havoc went on to win the championship over the top-seeded Roughriders 58–50.
Shortly after the 2018 season ended, the Atlanta Havoc announced their relocation to Florence, South Carolina, as the Carolina Havoc and that they would host the All-Star Game at their new arena. The AAL then announced the game would be broadcast on ESPN3 with Mick Moninghoff as play-by-play commentator on August 25. The game was held and the Stripes defeated the Stars by a score of 34–29, but the game was broadcast on Facebook instead and all references to their ESPN3 announcement were taken down on game day.
2018–2020
On August 15, 2018, Richmond Roughriders' owner Gregg Fornario announced his intentions of creating a new league called Northern Arena Football (NAF). His Roughriders team, despite the possibility of losing its home arena in Richmond for 2019, was not initially planning on leaving the AAL with the NAF only having teams north of the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. The AAL affiliate team, the New England Cavalry, were the first team added to the NAF. However, by August 28, Fornario had rebranded the new league as Professional Arena Football (PAF) with multiple divisions, Northern Arena Football and Southern Arena Football, and the Roughriders were announced as part of Professional Arena Football on August 30, leaving the AAL.
By September 2018, the AAL confirmed five teams were returning for a 2019 season: the Cape Fear Heroes, Carolina Energy, Georgia Doom, High Country Grizzlies, and Peach State Cats (with the Cats relocating to Athens, Georgia, and no longer a travel-only team). The Florida Tarpons left the league and formed a new Florida-based league while rebranding as the Lakeland Tarpons. The defending champion Carolina Havoc later announced they would remain in the league. The Roughriders returned to AAL, now as the Wheeling-based West Virginia Roughriders, after Fornario's plans for the PAF fell through. On December 12, 2018, the league announced its 2019 alignment split into a four-team Northern Division and an eight-team Southern Division. The league also announced the return of the Jersey Flight, as well as the additions of the Carolina Cowboyz (now full-time members with a home arena in Pendleton, South Carolina), the traveling team Carolina Predators, the New England Bobcats (formerly of Elite Indoor Football), and the Burgh Defenders (Pittsburgh). The AAL then split the Southern Division into a Southern and Mid-Atlantic Division prior to the scheduled release. In January 2019, the league then added a Midwest Division composed of three teams that had been in the developmental Midwest Professional Indoor Football (MPIF): the Chicago Aztecs, Indianapolis Enforcers, and West Michigan Ironmen. Less than a month prior to the start of the 2019 season, the High Country Grizzlies ceased operations and the Chicago Aztecs withdrew for the season reducing the league to 13 teams. The Georgia Doom and New England Bobcats later folded during the season. There were many other canceled or rescheduled home games either due to arena issues or the away team not traveling.
On April 27, 2019, league co-founder and president Jack Bowman died after an illness and the league championship was then named the Jack Bowman Trophy. The Carolina Energy traveled to face the West Virginia Roughriders for the newly renamed championship on June 29, and the Roughriders won 55–29. After the season, Fornario again stated he was removing the Roughriders from the AAL. The Roughriders, as well as the Jersey Flight, were accepted to join the National Arena League (NAL) for the 2020 season. The league also lost the Burgh Defenders (removed from league), Carolina Havoc (loss of lease), and Peach State Cats (left league).
2020–2021: COVID-19 pandemic
The AAL announced several new teams for the 2020 season including the Louisville Xtreme, Music City Fire, Pennsylvania Copperheads, Pennsylvania Union, South Florida Thunder (as a travel-only team), and the Tampa Bay Tornadoes. The league also merged with the semiprofessional Mid-Atlantic Indoor Football League, adding the Central Penn Chargers, Jersey Bearcats, Maryland Eagles, Reading Raptors, and Western Maryland Warriors. However, before the season could start, most venues were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the season was subsequently cancelled. During the following offseason, the league lost the Louisville Xtreme and Tampa Bay Tornadoes to the NAL without the teams playing a game in the AAL.
By December 2020, the league had not confirmed any new teams and repeatedly stated it would not announce any 2021 season plans or teams until there were further developments in regards to teams being able to actually play due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. However, several teams have announced they would be joining the league in 2021. In September 2020, a new team called the West Texas Buccaneers in El Paso, Texas, announced itself as a league member of a Texas-based division, along with several other potential cities for the 2021 season. New Texas teams called the San Antonio Gunslingers and Allen Tiger-Cats then announced they were joining the AAL. The Topeka Thundercats then announced they would join the AAL in a new Midwest-based division. In December, the league announced that some of the teams that had announced themselves had already been evaluated and were not members of the AAL.
The league then updated its website in December 2020 with a list of 17 teams in three divisions for the 2021 season, including Allen, San Antonio, and El Paso. It also re-added the Austin Wild and Tampa Bay Tornadoes, as well as new teams in the Chicago Power, North Texas Bulls, Mississippi Raiders, and St. Louis Bandits. Previously listed 2020 teams, the Carolina Cowboyz, Central Penn Chargers, Maryland Eagles, South Florida Thunder, and Western Maryland Warriors were no longer listed as members. The Music City Fire remained listed as a member, but were not scheduled to play any games. Allen was removed in January 2021 and replaced with a team called the Texas Takeover based in Fort Worth, which was also removed in February. The season started with two games on March 13, 2021. Reading left the league March 27 without playing a game. St. Louis withdrew from the season in May after two league games played citing COVID-19 concerns. Tampa Bay did not play its final three scheduled games.
The league announced it would not have a championship game and would instead name three division champions. The East Division champion Charlotte Thunder and West Division champion North Texas Bulls then scheduled their own league championship game regardless of the league's approval; the Midwest Division champion West Michigan Ironmen were not involved.
In June 2021, it was reported that league president and commissioner Tony Zefiretto had sold the league to the ownership of the Jersey Bearcats and Indianapolis Enforcers. The new ownership reportedly approved of the game between the Thunder and Bulls, which was won by the North Texas Bulls 60–43 on June 26.
2021–present: New ownership
After the 2021 season concluded, four members of the East Division (Carolina Predators, Tampa Bay Tornadoes, Pennsylvania Union and Mississippi Raiders) announced that they would leave the AAL to form new league called Arena Indoor Football Alliance. The Charlotte Thunder left to form their own league, the North Texas Bulls left to join the new Texas-based Arena Football Association, and the San Antonio Gunslingers were announced as an expansion team in the NAL.
In December 2021, the new ownership led by AJ Roque and Jermaine Sanders, the owners of the Jersey Bearcats, launched the new website for league following the completion of the sale from Tony Zefiretto. They then hired Kevin O'Hanlon as commissioner. They announced they would be launching an AAL development league in 2022 called "American Arena League 2". However, on February 1, 2022, the league announced neither the AAL or AAL2 would play until at least 2023.
Teams
2021 members
Teams that participated or were listed as members in the 2021 season. Italics represent travel-only teams.''
Former AAL members
Atlanta Havoc – AAL in 2018; after one season where the team won the inaugural AAL championship playing out of Buford, Georgia, the Havoc relocated to Florence, South Carolina. After the season ended, the Florence Center unanimously voted to not renew the Havoc's lease for 2020 citing very low attendance and later the team folded.
Austin Wild – Supreme Indoor Football (SIF) travel team in 2017 as the Cap City Bulls; affiliate AAL member during the inaugural 2018 season as a travel-only team with announced intentions to become a full member in 2019. Withdrew from the league after the 2018 season. The Wild were listed as 2021 AAL members.
Burgh Defenders – Played part of the 2019 season; canceled some away games and other teams chose not to travel to their venue deeming it unsuitable.
Cape Fear Heroes – SIF team in 2017 and made the AAL playoffs in both the 2018 and 2019 seasons; withdrew from the league before the 2020 season due to the owner having health issues.
Carolina Cowboyz – Joined as an affiliated travelling team in 2018, full member in 2019 based in Pendleton, South Carolina, at T. Ed Garrison Arena; not listed as a member prior to 2021 season.
Carolina Energy – Played in the 2018 and 2019 AAL seasons; sold and rebranded to Charlotte Thunder before the 2020 season.
Carolina Havoc – Played the 2019 season at the Florence Center in South Carolina after relocating from Atlanta; the arena did not offer the team a renewal and the team ceased operations.
Carolina Predators – Played the 2019 and 2021 seasons as travelling team based in both North Carolina and South Carolina. Joined the newly formed American Indoor Football Alliance (AIFA) for 2022.
Charlotte Thunder – Played the 2021 season and then formed their own league, called Arena Professional Football League, for the 2022 season.
East Carolina Torch – SIF team in 2017 as the Triangle Torch in Raleigh, North Carolina; moved to Kenansville, North Carolina, prior to 2018 AAL season; after a 2–3 start to the 2018 season and continued arena issues, the Torch canceled their last three games; removed from the league website in November 2018.
Florida Tarpons – APF team in 2017; played half their 2018 season in the AAL before they decided to stop traveling to away games and eventually canceled the remainder of the season. Started their own Florida-based league for the 2019 season, the A-League.
Georgia Doom – Joined the AAL after playing as a traveling team in the National Arena League in 2017; ceased operations during the 2019 AAL season.
High Country Grizzlies – Joined from the National Arena League (NAL) for the 2018 AAL season; ceased operations in February 2019 prior to the start of the 2019 season.
Indianapolis Enforcers – Joined for the 2019 season from the semi-professional Midwest Professional Indoor Football (MPIF); withdrew from the 2021 season citing the COVID-19 pandemic and ceased operations before the 2022 season.
Jersey Flight – Joined the AAL for the 2018 season after the original ownership failed to meet the financial obligations to join the National Arena League (NAL); was re-accepted to the NAL with the team under new ownership for the 2020 season.
Mississippi Raiders – Joined the AAL for the 2021 season; left to join the newly formed AIFA for 2022.
New England Bobcats – Joined the AAL for the 2019 season after winning the Elite Indoor Football's 2018 championship; folded after four games into the 2019 season and a 2–2 record.
New England Cavalry – Affiliate AAL member during the inaugural 2018 season as a travel-only team with announced intentions to become a full member in 2019. Withdrew from the league after the 2018 season. Announced as the first team to join the new league called Professional Arena Football (PAF). The PAF failed to launch and the Cavalry created the New England Arena League.
North Texas Bulls – Joined as an expansion team for the 2021 season and won the impromptu league championship game; left the next season for the new Texas-based league, the Arena Football Association (AFA), led by former CIF teams, the Amarillo Venom and West Texas Warbirds.
Peach State Cats – Originally announced as an Elite Indoor Football (EIF) team for the 2018 season, but joined the AAL as a travel-only team for the 2018 season when the Vermont Bucks folded just prior to the start of the AAL season; played in Athens, Georgia, for the 2019 season. Left the AAL to found their own league, called United Arena League, for 2020.
Pennsylvania Union – Joined the AAL prior to the eventually cancelled 2020 season; announced it was leaving the league after the 2021 season citing the level of competition in the league. Joined the newly formed AIFA for 2022.
Richmond Roughriders – Arena Pro Football (APF) team in 2017; AAL in 2018; after one season in the AAL, in which the Roughriders advanced to the championship game, they left the league when the owner started his own league, Professional Arena Football. The new league failed to materialize and the Roughriders returned to the AAL for the 2019 season as the West Virginia Roughriders.
Rochester Kings – Can-Am team in 2017 and only Can-Am team to play an AAL game after the merger to form the league in 2018; after a couple of home games, all remaining games with the Kings were removed from the schedule; removed from league website in November 2018.
San Antonio Gunslingers – Joined as an expansion team for the 2021 season; left for the NAL for the 2022 season.
St. Louis Bandits – Joined as an expansion team in the 2021 season but withdrew after two games citing the COVID-19 pandemic; listed as a member of the newly formed AIFA for 2022 as the St. Charles Bandits.
Tampa Bay Tornadoes – Initially joined for the 2020 season that was then cancelled. Left for the National Arena League for the 2021 season, but rejoined the AAL instead and then did not finish the season. Joined the newly formed AIFA for 2022 as the Tampa Bay Cyclones.
Upstate Dragons – SIF travel team in 2017; played in Anderson, South Carolina, for the 2018 AAL season; after a 1–5 start to the season, the Dragons canceled all remaining games; removed from league website in November 2018.
West Michigan Ironmen – Joined for the 2019 season from the semi-professional Midwest Professional Indoor Football (MPIF); left for the Charlotte Thunder's new league, the Arena Professional Football League, in 2022.
West Virginia Roughriders – Won the 2019 championship and then the owner announced they were leaving the league for the second season in a row. Joined the National Arena League for the 2020 season.
Former listed AAL members
Allen Tiger-Cats — Announced as a 2021 expansion team in a new West Division; removed from league website in January 2021.
Boston Blaze — Can-Am team in 2017; announced as one of the inaugural 2018 AAL teams. A paper franchise created to fill schedule dates by the owner of the Vermont Bucks, the Blaze, despite being listed among the teams included in the merger, had already ceased operations between the 2017 regular season and the playoffs.
Buffalo Blitz — Can-Am team in 2017; announced as one of the inaugural 2018 AAL teams. Ceased operations before August 2017.
Central Penn Chargers — Members of the semi-pro Mid-Atlantic Indoor Football League (MAIFL); played in the Can-Am playoffs with the intention to join the AAL in 2018. Dropped from the league before August 2017. Rejoined the AAL when the merged into the league for 2020, which was then cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not listed as member prior to the 2021 season.
Chicago Aztecs – Announced as one of the members joining from the semi-professional Midwest Professional Indoor Football (MPIF) for the 2019 season, but withdrew before playing.
Connecticut Chiefs — Can-Am team that played one game in the 2017 season before folding midseason; for reasons unknown, the team was included in the initial list of teams.
Glens Falls Gladiators — Can-Am travel team in 2017; announced as one of the inaugural 2018 AAL teams. However, two weeks before the season started, it was announced that they would not play in 2018 and planned to return to the AAL in 2019.
Hampton Roads Riptides — Announced as an APF expansion team in 2017; announced as one of the inaugural 2018 AAL teams. Dropped from the league before August 2017.
Louisville Xtreme – Announced for the 2020 season that was then cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic; left to join the National Arena League for the 2021 season, but joined the Indoor Football League instead.
Maryland Eagles – Joined the AAL from the MAIFL when it merged into the league for 2020, which was then cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not listed as member prior to the 2021 season.
Pennsylvania Copperheads — Announced as an expansion team for 2020; suspended operations in February 2020 after the owner had a heart attack.
Reading Raptors — Members of the semi-pro Mid-Atlantic Indoor Football League (MAIFL) that joined the AAL for the 2020 season via the announced league merger; 2020 season was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Left the AAL for Elite Indoor Football (EIF) in March 2021 before playing any league games claiming issues with the AAL.
Savannah Coastal Outlaws — APF team in 2017; announced as one of the inaugural 2018 AAL teams but were removed from the AAL website in September 2017; re-added as an AAL affiliated travel team in November 2017 but do not appear to have ever played in the league despite being credited with a loss. Appears to have been replaced by the Carolina Cowboyz, formerly of Elite Indoor Football, on the schedule.
South Florida Thunder — Joined the AAL as a travel-only team based in West Palm Beach, Florida, not listed as member prior to the 2021 season.
Texas Takeover — Briefly listed as a member following the removal of the Allen Tiger-Cats, but also removed one month later.
Vermont Bucks — Can-Am team and league champions in 2017; announced as one of the inaugural 2018 AAL teams but have since folded due to financial difficulties. Original owner Tim Viens sold the team after the 2017 season local ownership after Viens started another AAL team called the Atlanta Havoc. A new ownership group obtained the brand and re-launched the team in the semi-professional New England Arena League in 2019.
Western Maryland Warriors — Joined the AAL from the MAIFL when it merged into the league for 2020, which was then cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not listed as member prior to the 2021 season.
Champions
References
External links
American Arena League's official website
Sports leagues established in 2017
2017 establishments in the United States
Indoor American football leagues in the United States
Professional sports leagues in the United States | en |
doc-en-2820 | On June 1, 2017, United States President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would cease all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation, contending that the agreement would "undermine" the U.S. economy, and put the U.S. "at a permanent disadvantage."
In accordance with Article 28 of the Paris Agreement, a country cannot give notice of withdrawal from the agreement within the first three years of its start date in the relevant country, which was on November 4, 2016, in the case of the United States. The White House later clarified that the U.S. will abide by the four-year exit process. On November 4, 2019, the administration gave a formal notice of intention to withdraw, which takes 12 months to take effect. Until the withdrawal took effect, the United States was obligated to maintain its commitments under the Agreement, such as the requirement to continue reporting its emissions to the United Nations. The withdrawal took effect on November 4, 2020, one day after the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. was backed by many Republicans but was strongly opposed by Democrats. Trump's decision to withdraw was strongly criticized in the U.S. and abroad by environmentalists, some religious organizations, business leaders, and scientists. A majority of Americans opposed withdrawal.
Following Trump's announcement, the governors of several U.S. states formed the U.S. Climate Alliance to continue to advance the objectives of the Paris Agreement at the state level despite the federal withdrawal. As of July 1, 2019, 24 states, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico have joined the alliance, and similar commitments have also been expressed by other state governors, mayors, and businesses.
Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement will impact other countries by reducing its financial aid to the Green Climate fund. The termination of the $3 billion U.S. funding will ultimately impact climate change research and decrease society's chance of reaching the Paris Agreement goals, as well as omit U.S. contributions to the future IPCC reports. Trump's decision will also affect the carbon emission space as well as the carbon price. The U.S.'s withdrawal will also mean that the spot to take over the global climate regime will be obtainable for China and the EU.
Following the 2020 presidential election, President-elect Joe Biden vowed to rejoin the Paris Agreement on his first day in office. Once inaugurated, Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the agreement on January 20, 2021. The country formally rejoined on February 19, 2021. The period from November4, 2020 to the date of rejoining represents 107days.
Background
The Paris Agreement was an addition to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), initially agreed to by all 195 countries present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in December of that year, including the United States then under the presidency of Barack Obama. Due to the status of the United States and China as the greatest emitters of carbon dioxide, Obama's support and his cooperation with China were seen as major factors leading to the convention's early success.
The main aim of the Agreement is to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels", predominantly by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Agreement differs from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the last widely adopted amendment to the UNFCCC, in that no annexes are established to lessen responsibility of developing nations. Rather, emissions targets for each nation were separately negotiated and are to be voluntarily enforced, leading United States officials to regard the Paris Agreement as an executive agreement rather than a legally binding treaty. This removed the requirement for the United States Congress to ratify the agreement. In April 2016, the United States became a signatory to the Paris Agreement, and accepted it by executive order in September 2016. President Obama committed the United States to contributing US$3 billion to the Green Climate Fund. The Fund has set itself a goal of raising $100 billion a year by 2020.
Article 28 of the agreement enables parties to withdraw from the agreement after sending a withdrawal notification to the depositary, but notice can be given no earlier than three years after the agreement goes into force for the country. Withdrawal is effective one year after the depositary is notified. Alternatively, the Agreement stipulates that withdrawal from the UNFCCC, under which the Paris Agreement was adopted, would also withdraw the state from the Paris Agreement. The conditions for withdrawal from the UNFCCC are the same as for the Paris Agreement.
On November 8, 2016, four days after the Paris Agreement entered into force in the United States, Donald Trump of the Republican Party was elected President of the United States. Many conservative Republicans dispute the level of human involvement in climate change. Trump rejects the scientific consensus on climate change and tweeted in 2012 that he believed the concept of global warming was created by China in order to impair American competitiveness. During Trump's 2016 election campaign, Trump promised to revitalize the coal industry, which he claimed has been hampered by environmental regulations. It has been argued that this contributed to the support he enjoyed from crucial swing states. His opposition to climate change mitigation was unchanged in the first months of his presidency, in which he issued an executive order to reverse Obama's Clean Power Plan and other environmental regulations.
In April 2017, a group of 20 members of the European Parliament from the right-wing Alternative for Germany, UK Independence Party, and other parties sent a letter to Trump on urging him to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. On May 25, 2017, 22 Republican Senators, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, sent a two-page letter to Trump urging him to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement. The letter was drafted by Senator John Barrasso, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and Senator Jim Inhofe, known for his longtime climate change denial. Most of signatories to the letter were elected from states reliant on the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas); the group of 22 senators had collectively received more than $10 million in campaign contributions from fossil-fuels companies in the previous three election cycles. Earlier the same week, a group of 40 Democratic Senators sent Trump a letter urging him to keep America in the Paris Agreement, writing that "a withdrawal would hurt America's credibility and influence on the world stage."
Both support for the move and opposition to it were reported among Trump's cabinet and advisers: Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, economic advisor Gary Cohn, and advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly wanted the United States to remain committed to the agreement, while White House Advisor Steve Bannon, White House Counsel Don McGahn, and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wanted the United States to abandon it.
During the G7 summit in late May 2017, Trump was the only G7 member not to reconfirm commitment to the Paris Agreement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of the other leaders present, was publicly unimpressed with Trump's refusal to cooperate on climate change mitigation, which was seen to damage Germany–United States relations. The communique issued at the conclusion of the summit stated that the United States "is not in a position to join the consensus" of the other G7 countries on policies regarding climate change and the Paris Agreement.
Announcement
In a televised announcement from the White House Rose Garden on June 1, 2017, Trump said, "In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect the United States and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate accord," adding "The bottom line is that the Paris accord is very unfair at the highest level to the United States." He claimed that the agreement, if implemented, would cost the United States $3 trillion in lost GDP and 6.5 million jobs. He added that it would "undermine our economy, hamstring our workers," and "effectively decapitate our coal industry". He said he was open to renegotiating the arrangement or negotiating a new one, but European and UN leaders said the pact "cannot be renegotiated at the request of a single party". Trump also criticized the Green Climate Fund, calling it a scheme to redistribute wealth from rich to poor countries.
The White House said that Trump will end the implementation of carbon reduction targets set by former President Barack Obama and that the withdrawal will be done in accordance with the years-long exit process spelled out in the accord. On September 16, 2017, a European official said the Trump administration had appeared to soften its stance on withdrawing the agreement. The White House told the press that it had not changed its position on the agreement.
Examinations of Trump's speech by The Washington Post and The New York Times pointed to numerous fallacies, including, but not limited to, claims that the U.S., under the Paris Agreement, was forbidden to build coal power plants; that a difference of 0.2 degrees Celsius is insignificant in climatology; that U.S. contributions to the Green Climate Fund were paid out of the U.S. defense budget; projections that the U.S. is on course to become the "cleanest" nation on earth; and Trump's reiterated claim of personal support for environmental causes.
Process
In accordance with Article 28 of the Paris Agreement, the United States could only file its notice of intent to withdraw no earlier than November 4, 2019, three years after the Agreement had come into effect, which would be effective one year later. Until the withdrawal takes effect, the United States may be obligated to maintain its commitments under the Agreement, including the requirement to continue reporting its emissions to the United Nations. According to a memo obtained by HuffPost believed to be written by US State Department legal office, any "attempts to withdraw from the Paris Agreement outside of the above-described withdrawal provisions would be inconsistent with international law and would not be accepted internationally."
On August 4, 2017, the Trump administration formally outlined its intention of the withdrawal in an official notice delivered to the United Nations as depositary. In a separate statement, the State Department said it will continue participating in international climate change negotiations, including talks aimed at implementing the climate deal.
The United States filed its intent to withdraw at the earliest possible date, on November 4, 2019. After the one-year period, on November 4, 2020, the U.S. formally withdrew from the Agreement, on the day following the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Effects
The Obama administration was responsible for funding $3 billion U.S. dollars to the Green Climate Fund, that will no longer be available to be used towards climate change research. Therefore, a decrease in funds by the US will lessen the chances of being able to reach the Paris Agreement goals. In addition, the U.S. was responsible for more than 50% of the papers references for climate change in 2015, so a cut in funding will impact U.S's contribution to any further IPCC reports. Trump's termination of its funding to the Green Climate Fund can also have an impact on underdeveloped countries that are in need of that aid for their climate change projects.
However, President Trump's decision to withdraw does not necessarily mean that it will affect US emissions since there is no direct link, but instead would mean that the U.S. will no longer be regulated by the Paris Agreement once officially withdrawn. On the other hand, if the U.S. is not regulated this can influence a change to the carbon emission space. For example, "[u]nder the NDC target, the withdrawal of the U.S. will lead to increasing its own emission space by 14%, 28%, and 54% in the 20, 13, and 00 scenarios, respectively." This would mean that U.S. will obtain more room to emit carbon while other countries will have to cut down on their emissions in order to be able to reach their goal of only 2 °C. Trump's withdrawal will also increase the carbon price for other countries while reducing its own carbon price.
When the withdrawal takes effect, the U.S. will be the only UNFCCC member states who is not a signatory to the Paris Agreement. At the time of the original withdrawal announcement, Syria and Nicaragua were also not participants; however, both Syria and Nicaragua have since ratified the agreement, leaving the U.S. the only UNFCCC member state intending to not be a party to the Agreement.
Luke Kemp of the Australian National University's Fenner School of Environment and Society wrote in a commentary for Nature that "withdrawal is unlikely to change US emissions" since "the greenhouse gas emissions of the US are divorced from international legal obligations." However, he added that it could hamper climate change mitigation efforts if the U.S. stops contributing to the Green Climate Fund. Kemp said the effect of a U.S. withdrawal could be either good or bad for the Paris agreement, since "a rogue US can cause more damage inside rather than outside of the agreement." Finally, "A withdrawal could also make the US into a climate pariah and provide a unique opportunity for China and the EU to take control of the climate regime and significantly boost their international reputations and soft power." On the other hand there is belief that China is not capable of taking control of the climate regime and instead should, "help rebuild global shared leadership by replacing the Sino–U.S. G2 partnership with a Climate 5 (C5) partnership that comprises China, the EU, India, Brazil, and South Africa."
Potential economic impact
The German car industry expressed concerns about its ability to remain competitive in light of the United States decision to withdraw. The president of the German auto industry lobby group VDA, Matthias Wissmann said, "The regrettable announcement by the USA makes it inevitable that Europe must facilitate a cost efficient and economically feasible climate policy to remain internationally competitive."
Many of the larger auto and aviation companies had already invested billions into reducing emissions and were unlikely to change course. General Motors, the largest automobile manufacturer in the United States, immediately pointed out: "Our position on climate change has not changed ... we publicly advocate for climate action," and reiterated its support for various climate pledges. Analyst Rebecca Lindland also pointed out that manufacturers of automobiles were under no specific restrictions under the Accord and that nothing had changed. Even if Trump loosened other restrictions on the car industry that allowed for the production of less environmental cars, such cars still needed to conform to standards before they could be exported to other continents or even certain states. Jason Bordoff, energy-policy expert at Columbia University, agreed that withdrawing would make no difference to the economy, arguing that it would be determined by market conditions like the price of oil and gas. At the same time, airlines have been spending billions on seeking more fuel efficient ways to fly anyway –fuel is an airline's second-biggest expense after labor and so using less fuel (which means less emissions) is in their financial interest. Kabir Nanda and Varad Pande, senior consultant and partner at Dahlberg, respectively, argued that despite the US withdrawal the American private sector was still committed to renewable energy and technology. Also noted was the fact that solar energy had become cheaper than coal in an increasing number of countries.
Reactions
Petitions
Petitions were launched across states in order to persuade state governors to join the Paris Agreement or have Trump reverse the planned withdrawal, which included a "ParisMyState" and a MoveOn petition that has received over 535,000 signatures.
Scientists and environmentalists
Piers Forster, the director of the University of Leeds' Priestley International Centre for Climate, called the decision to withdraw "a sad day for evidence-based policy" and expressed hope that individual Americans, businesses and states would nevertheless choose to decarbonize. Climate scientist Dave Reay of the University of Edinburgh said that "The United States will come to rue this day." The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), in a statement by its president Antonio Busalacchi Jr., said that the decision to withdraw "does not mean that climate change will go away" and warned that "the heightened potential for increased greenhouse gas emissions poses a substantial threat to our communities, businesses, and military." The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation called the decision to withdraw "very discouraging" and said that it would diminish confidence in international climate change efforts; the technology think tank called for federal efforts on "the smart grid, energy storage, carbon capture and sequestration, and advanced nuclear and solar power" and warned that "Without a smart, aggressive clean-energy innovation strategy, the world will not avert the worst effects of climate change."
Canadian academic and environmental activist David Suzuki stated, "Trump just passed on the best deal the planet has ever seen". Navroz Dubash of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi expressed bafflement at Trump's move, citing the declining costs of renewable energy sources and the increasing difficulty of obtaining investment for fossil-fuel projects. Environmental scientist and risk assessor Dana Nuccitelli stated that it "now seems inevitable that the history books will view Trump as America's worst-ever president". Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute also described Trump's speech as "confused nonsense". Stephen Hawking criticized Trump, saying that he "will cause avoidable environmental damage to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children."
Multiple environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council, condemned Trump's decision. American environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben, the founder of the climate change action group 350.org, called the move "a stupid and reckless decision—our nation's dumbest act since launching the war in Iraq." McKibben wrote that Trump's decision to withdraw amounted "to a thorough repudiation of two of the civilizing forces on our planet: diplomacy and science." He called upon U.S. states and cities to "double down" on commitments to renewable energy.
Domestic political response
Republicans
Republicans gave mixed reviews of Trump's decision to withdraw. Vice president Mike Pence stated that Trump administration "demonstrated real leadership" by pulling the United States out of the international accords which he called "a transfer of wealth from the most powerful economy in the world to other countries around the planet". He also stated that he doesn't understand why Democrats and liberals in the United States and the left around the world care about climate change. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt praised the decision as a victory for America's middle class, workers, businesses and coal miners. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton described Trump's decision as "courageous" and said that it lifted a burden from the American taxpayer. However, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine was critical of the decision, stating that she was disappointed. Former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a video address describing Trump's decision as a retrograde step.
Democrats
Former President Bill Clinton wrote: "Walking away from Paris treaty is a mistake. Climate change is real. We owe our children more. Protecting our future also creates more jobs." Former President Barack Obama said of Trump's decision: "Even as this Administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future, I'm confident that our states, cities, and businesses will step up and do even more to lead the way, and help protect for future generations the one planet we've got." Former vice-president Joe Biden said he believes the move imperils American security.
In his withdrawal speech, President Trump stated: "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris." The incumbent Mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, immediately acknowledged on Twitter with a reminder that 80% of his city's voters favored Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, and wrote: "As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy and future." Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer condemned the withdrawal.
U.S. states
Responding the following week to the withdrawal, the governors of California, New York, and Washington founded the United States Climate Alliance, pledging to uphold the Paris Agreement within their borders. By the evening of June 1, 2017, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia declared their intention to join with United States Climate Alliance members in reaching Paris Agreement goals. Governors of other states also expressed interest in upholding the Agreement. As of November 2020 the alliance included 24 states plus Puerto Rico and American Samoa.
International response
African Union – A joint statement with the European Union reaffirmed the commitment of the 55 African nations to the Paris Agreement.
– President Mauricio Macri was "deeply disappointed" by the withdrawal, and ratified the Argentine support to the treaty.
– Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that the decision was "disappointing" and that "we would prefer the United States to remain part of the agreement". The opposition Australian Labor Party expressed similar sentiments.
– President Alexander Van der Bellen said that US President Donald Trump's decision to leave the Paris accord only challenges Europe to double its efforts in order to do everything possible to protect the planet and save it for future generations.
– The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed concern regarding the announced withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change.
– Prime Minister Charles Michel called the decision "a brutal act".
– The foreign ministry stated they are disappointed in Trump's decision.
– The federal ministries for foreign affairs and for the environment issued a joint statement describing their "profound concern and disappointment".
– President Evo Morales called the US one of the world's "main polluters" and at The United Nations Ocean Conference said Trump's decision is akin to "denying science, turning your backs on multilateralism and attempting to deny a future to upcoming generations", making the US the main threat to mother Earth and life itself.
– Minister Neno Dimov issued Bulgaria will honour the commitments under the Paris Agreement.
– A Cambodian official said US President Donald Trump's decision to leave the Paris Climate Agreement is "unethical" and "irresponsible".
– Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was "deeply disappointed" and that "Canada is unwavering in our commitment to fight climate change and support clean economic growth". Canada will "continue to work with the U.S. at the state level" and will reach out to the U.S. federal government to "discuss this matter of critical importance for all humankind".
– The minister pointed out the deep disappointment about the withdrawal in a joint statement.
– Premier Li Keqiang reaffirmed his country's commitment to the Agreement.
– President Juan Manuel Santos lamented the exit of the United States from the COP21 stating that "the survival of the world and humanity is at stake". Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development Luis Gilberto Murillo expressed that Colombia was "saddened" by Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, stating that "Trump's decision increased Colombia's vulnerability to climate change and will make it more difficult to advance toward an international goal to avoid an increase in global temperatures".
– Prime Minister Henry Puna said the US has isolated itself in the Pacific region in its actions on climate change.
– The Government said the withdraw could cause a setback on climate issues, because of President Trump's lack of understanding of U.S. responsibilities as one of the globe's leading sources of emissions.
– The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Energy stated that achieving the Paris Agreement goals would become a bigger challenge.
– The Prime Minister said "This wrong decision by President Trump will weaken the Paris Agreement, but it will not destroy it. It is a shame that the US is isolating itself in a matter so important to the whole planet."
– Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen described it as "a sad day for the world".
– The Minister for Foreign Affairs and CARICOM Affairs urged the United States of America to reconsider its decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, saying it is a major concern to small states.
– Prime Minister Jüri Ratas reaffirmed his nation's commitment to the Agreement.
– Diplomat Gebru Jember Endalew said it would be a "betrayal" for the US to abandon the agreement.
– The European Commission has stated that it "deeply regrets" the decision.
– President Frank Bainimarama described the "loss of America's leadership" as "unfortunate".
– Prime Minister Juha Sipilä urged Trump to show global leadership, stating that "we need the USA on the team". Minister of Environment Kimmo Tiilikainen stated that the USA had never been "so small" and that the world does not need the kind of leadership that Donald Trump represents.
– In a telephone conversation with Trump, President Emmanuel Macron described the agreement as non-negotiable. In a televised speech, Macron reiterated his invitation to American climate change and renewable energy scientists to relocate their work to France, concluding his assessment with the phrase: "Make our planet great again." Prior to the withdrawal, former President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a tariff on all US exports to Europe if Trump went through with the promised withdrawal. National Front leader Marine Le Pen appreciated Trump's commitment to his campaign pledge, but described his decision as "extremely regrettable."
– Angela Merkel heavily criticized Trump's decision.
– Former President John Dramani Mahama has lashed out at Donald Trump over his decision.
– The minister pointed out the deep disappointment about the withdrawal in a joint statement.
– Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that he was "in a state of shock" after hearing Trump's decision, and that it opposes the view of Hungary's right wing.
– The government 'condemned' the move.
– Sinn Féin's environment spokesman Brian Stanley described the move as "deeply disappointing". Former President Mary Robinson called it "truly shocking".
– Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated India's support for the climate accord, and pledged to go 'above and beyond' its aims.
– Spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Armanatha Nasir, said that "America's decision is not in line with international commitments. Indonesia believes that climate change requires cooperation and contribution of all parties, both developed and developing countries."
– First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri criticized Washington for pulling out of the Paris agreement, stressing that the US is the main culprit behind producing greenhouse gases. "Trump has forgotten that the gases produced in the past few decades have endangered the life of not only the Americans but also all humankind," he added.
– Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz criticized Trump for rejecting "a rare occurrence in which the world united".
– Paolo Gentiloni expressed "regret" and sorrow for America's action.
– The Government and the Opposition expressed disappointment with the decision.
– In a statement, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said that Trump's choice was "regrettable" and that "Japan believes the leadership of the developed countries to be of great importance (on climate issues), and the steady implementation of the Paris Agreement is critical in this regard." The Minister of the Environment stated that he was "greatly disappointed, both as Minister and as an individual", and that withdrawal from the Paris Agreement was an act that "turned its back on the wisdom of the human race". The Deputy Prime Minister said "The U.S. created the League of Nations, but this country did not join the League. The U.S. is just that kind of country."
– The Minister of Foreign Affairs pledged to carry forward the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030. The Astana Expo 2017's theme was "Future Energy".
– Anote Tong, the former president and one of the prominent Pacific voices during the Paris agreement negotiations, said Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement is a selfish move that ignores the plight of low-lying island nations.
– The Environmental Protection and Regional Development Ministry issued a statement confirming Latvia's commitment to the Paris Agreement and describing the negative impact Trump's decision may have on investment in clean energy among developing nations.
– The Minister of Foreign Affairs regrets Trump's decision and decided to ratify the Paris Agreement.
– Wants to increase contributions to climate change body.
– The Ministry is confident that the Paris Agreement on Climate Change will not fail despite the United States having announced its withdrawal from the treaty.
– Environment Minister Thoriq Ibrahim, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), defended the agreement as "designed for maximum flexibility and universal participation", adding that Trump's proposed renegotiation was "not practical" and that it could represent "a setback from which we would never recover".
– President Hilda Heine described the move as "highly concerning for those of us that live on the frontline of climate change".
– President Peter Christian emphasized that nations must work together to achieve the goals set out by the Paris agreement.
– President Enrique Peña Nieto responded with a reiteration of Mexico's unconditional support for the Paris agreement.
– Prince Albert calls President Trump's retreat from Paris Agreement a 'Historic Mistake'.
– COP22's president and former Moroccan Minister of Foreign Affairs Salaheddine Mezouar has expressed his "deep disappointment" but noted that collective efforts to fight climate change will continue.
– Environment and Tourism Minister Pohamba Shifeta says Namibia is saddened by the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, describing the move as a major blow to the efforts to tackle global warming.
– Nepali Youth and Mountain Community Dwellers appealed to US President Donald Trump to take back his decision.
– Prime Minister Bill English released a statement confirming that he will register his 'disappointment' with Rex Tillerson during an upcoming visit by the US Secretary of State.
– Foreign minister Bert Koenders released the statement "It represents a cardinal mistake that is damaging to citizens around the world, including those of the United States."
– The Government has expressed disappointment over the decision of the United States.
– The foreign ministry has condemned President Donald Trump for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, describing the decision as "the height of egotism" and an example of the "moral vacuum" in the US leadership.
– The government condemned Trump's decision.
– Climate Change & Development Authority managing director, Ruel Yamuna, said "Climate change is real and already affecting the livelihood of communities in Papua New Guinea" and "The Paris Agreement is stronger than Donald Trump".
– In a statement, the climate body said the Philippines is "deeply troubled" by the withdrawal of the US from the agreement and urged Trump to reconsider his decision.
– Deputy Energy Minister Grzegorz Tobiszowski praised Trump's decision, while signing an agreement for a new coal power station in Jaworzno.
– President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that "climate change is a problem and denying, for political reasons, that that problem exists won't make it go away"; he also reiterated that Europe should remain a champion of the fight against climate change, "a just and real" cause. During a visit to an elementary school, Prime Minister António Costa commented "it is a shame that President Trump did not attend this school and does not know what these children already know... that we only have one planet and that our first duty is to preserve it for future generations".
– The Foreign Affairs Minister ratified the Paris Agreement the same day.
– In advance of Trump's expected withdrawal announcement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Russia's support for the Paris agreement. After the withdrawal, when questioned by media sources about his views of the decision Putin stated "don't worry, be happy". He noted that since the non-binding agreement is not set to take effect until 2021, he believes there is plenty of time to create a working solution to global warming.
– The government reaffirmed the commitment to Paris climate agreement.
– The government regretted the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Agreement.
– The South African government stated that it "expresses its profound regret over the decision of the United States of America to withdraw from the Paris Agreement."
– The Foreign Ministry for South Korea described Trump's move as 'regrettable'.
– Lutana, South Sudan's climate change director said 'He should know that his pulling out won't stop people from continuing to work on it.'
– The minister pointed out the deep disappointment about the withdrawal in a joint statement.
– Rajoy assures EU of Spain's commitment to fighting climate change after Trump pulls USA out of Paris deal.
– Foreign Minister Margot Wallström described it as "a decision to leave humanity's last chance of securing our children's future on this planet".
– President Doris Leuthard said the decision was "regrettable".
– The Presidential Office efforts to continue the Paris agreement despite Trump's climate decision.
– The Vice President said Tanzania will continue supporting the agreement.
– Mehmet Emin Birpınar, Turkey's chief climate negotiator, expressed hope that other countries will not follow Trump, and affirmed Turkey's commitment despite the agreement's "unfairness".
– Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga said that the US had "abandoned" them.
– Nicholas Ssenyonjo said "the US is the biggest contributor to pollution globally. Pulling out of the Paris agreement means that they do not care about the effects of their pollution to third world countries like Uganda."
– Marashi, the chairperson of the Emirates Environmental Group (EEG), said that Trump's decision is "unfortunate".
– A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres described Trump's decision as "a major disappointment".
– Prime Minister Theresa May expressed her disappointment during a telephone call with Trump, and reaffirmed the United Kingdom's commitment to the agreement. She said on live TV, "I have spoken to Donald Trump and told him that the UK believes in the Paris agreement"
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon saw it as an "appalling abdication of leadership" that May's signature was lacking from a joint declaration by the leaders of Germany, France and Italy.
– The Minister for Housing, Land Planning & Environment pointed out the deep disappointment about the withdrawal in a joint statement.
– Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, described the withdrawal as a "huge slap in the face" to the world.
– The Zambian minister for Water Development, Sanitation and Environmental Protection, Lloyd Kaziya, described the withdrawal as "a serious tragedy" to developing countries.
– Zhakata said Zimbabwe remained committed to the treaty, but the US withdrawal will make it more difficult for the country.
Business and industry
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and Peabody Energy, the largest listed coal producer in the United States, applauded the decision, claiming the result will be lower energy prices and greater reliability of supply.
On the day of Trump's predicted withdrawal, 25 companies placed a full-page open letter to President Trump in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, encouraging the administration to keep the U.S. in the Paris Agreement. The companies were:
Adobe
Apple
Blue Cross Blue Shield
Danfoss
Dignity Health
Facebook
Gap
Google
The Hartford
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Ingersoll Rand
Intel
Johnson Controls
Levi Strauss & Co.
Mars
Microsoft
Morgan Stanley
National Grid
PG&E
Royal DSM
Salesforce.com
Schneider Electric
Tiffany & Co.
Unilever
VF
Following Trump's announcement, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and General Motors reaffirmed their support for the Paris Agreement and for measures to tackle climate change.
Michael Bloomberg pledged $15 million to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretariat, explaining: "Americans will honor and fulfill the Paris Agreement by leading from the bottom up—and there isn't anything Washington can do to stop us". Shortly following Trump's announcement, thirty city mayors, three state governors, more than eighty university presidents and the leaders of more than a hundred businesses joined Bloomberg in opening negotiations with the United Nations to submit a plan for limiting American climate-change emissions in accord with the Paris Agreement guidelines.
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein described Trump's decision as "a setback for the environment and for the U.S.'s leadership position in the world". General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt stated that "climate change is real".
Multiple tech company executives—including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt—condemned the decision. Microsoft's Satya Nadella said Microsoft believes that "climate change is an urgent issue that demands global action." Google's Sundar Pichai tweeted "Disappointed with today's decision. Google will keep working hard for a cleaner, more prosperous future for all". Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said "Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement is bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and it puts our children's future at risk."
Resignations from presidential advisory boards in protest
Two business leaders resigned from Trump advisory boards in protest to his decision to withdraw. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, Inc. and SpaceX, resigned from the two presidential advisory councils on which he had sat. Musk stated: "Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world." Robert Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, also resigned, saying "As a matter of principle, I've resigned from the President's Council over the Paris Agreement withdrawal."
U.S. public opinion
The Paris Agreement is broadly popular among Americans. A national poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs conducted in June 2016 found that 71 percent of American adults favored U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement. Similar, a November 2016 poll conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 69 percent of U.S. registered voters favored U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement, while just 13 percent were opposed. Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the accord was seen as an attempt to appeal to his base, even at the risk of alienating Democrats and independent voters. This strategy diverged from the typical approach taken by most U.S. presidents, who historically have sought to appeal to the center. A New York Times analysis described the move as "a daring and risky strategy" taken by "the first president in the history of polling to govern without the support of a majority of the public from the start of his tenure," adding: "In effect, Mr. Trump is doubling down on presiding as a minority president, betting that when the time comes, his fervent supporters will matter more, especially clustered in key Midwest states."
A Washington Post/ABC News public opinion survey of American adults, conducted from June 2–4, 2017, found that 59 percent opposed Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, and just 28 percent supported it. Asked about the effect of withdrawal on the U.S. economy, 42 percent said it would hurt the economy; 32 percent believed it would help the economy; and 20 percent believed that it would make no difference. The poll showed a sharp division among partisan lines: 67 percent of Republicans supported Trump's decision, but just 22 percent of independents and 8 percent of Democrats supported it.
Media
Domestic
USA Today, in an editorial, stated that "There was no greatness in the decision he rendered Thursday, just the heightened prospect of a climate-stricken globe left behind for future generations." The New York Times called it "disgraceful" and stated that Trump "knows nothing or cares little about the science underlying the stark warnings of environmental disruption."
For their edition of June 2, 2017, the New York Daily News revived their famous 1975 "Ford to City: Drop Dead" cover with a photo of Trump and the words "Trump to World: Drop Dead".
The Tampa Bay Times criticized the move, writing that it would especially endanger coastal states such as Florida, which are already suffering from rising sea levels, which damage property and infrastructure and harm the drinking water supply. The Detroit Free Press stated that "President Donald Trump has betrayed the future of our children, our grandchildren, and our planet".
Bloomberg stated that "Under Trump, the U.S. has already become an irresponsible role model." The San Diego Union-Tribune stated that "President Trump is ushering in the Chinese Century" and called it the worst decision of Trump's life.
A piece by commentator Erick Erickson published by Fox News described the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement as the correct move, for the reason that "climate change is [not] an issue worth caring much about". Douglas E. Schoen, also writing for Fox, contrarily said that a withdrawal from the Paris Agreement "only hastens America's retreat from global political and economic leadership".
Foreign
Foreign coverage of Trump's announcement was overwhelmingly unfavorable. A lead in the British newspaper The Guardian said that the decision would be unlikely to stunt the growth of renewable energy, and suggested that "a much more likely casualty of Trump's choice is the US economy he claims to be protecting". The British newspaper The Independent noted the "tension between myth and reality" in Trump's withdrawal speech. The German tabloid Berliner Kurier ran a headline "Erde an Trump: Fuck You!" ("Earth to Trump: Fuck You!").
China's Xinhua state news agency called the withdrawal a "global setback."
The Toronto Star said that
In the long catalogue of destructive things that Donald Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world, pulling out of the most important global attempt to slow the impact of climate change must go down as the worst.
Protests
Protesters gathered at the White House gates on the day of the announcement. Bill Nye, a science communicator and television personality known for making scientific concepts more accessible to the general public, was one of the protesters in attendance. The John A. Wilson Building in D.C. was lit in green in protest of the decision, as were One World Trade Center and the Kosciuszko Bridge in New York City; the city halls of New York, Boston and Montreal; the Hôtel de Ville in Paris; and the Monumento a la Revolución and the Angel of Independence in Mexico City. Protests also occurred in New York City, Miami, San Diego, and Syracuse.
Rejoining
Joe Biden became the president-elect following the November 2020 election, defeating Trump. As part of his transition plan, Biden announced that one of his first actions on his first day in office would be to return the United States to the Paris Agreement via an executive order. He also stated plans to further the United States' commitment towards mitigating climate change in line with the Paris Agreement.
Under terms of the Agreement, the United States would only need to wait a month after submitting their intent to rejoin before formally rejoining, though they would lose some of the privileges from the short time the country was out of the Agreement; they would not have been able to participate in any key meetings while they were not a member, for example.
President Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the Paris Agreement on January 20, 2021, his first day in office; the US rejoined on February 19, 2021.
See also
Canada and the Kyoto Protocol
Environmental policy of the Donald Trump administration
Neo-nationalism
Politics of global warming
United States Climate Alliance
United States withdrawal from the United Nations
United States withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
Trumpism
Right-wing antiscience
References
External links
ParisMyState petition (a petition for one's state to join the United States Climate Alliance)
White House video about Paris accord edited by the French foreign ministry - Aljazeera.com (News site with edited version)
Trump's Doctrine and Climate Change: New Challenges for Global Governance (Journal Article)
Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
2017 in American politics
2017 in international relations
2017 in the environment
Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
Withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change | en |
doc-en-3660 | Stafford () is a market town and the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies about north of Wolverhampton, south of Stoke-on-Trent and north-west of Birmingham. The town population in 2011 was 68,472 and that of the wider borough of Stafford was 122,000, making it the third largest in the county after Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme.
History
Stafford means "ford" by a staithe (landing place). The original settlement was on a dry sand and gravel peninsula that offered a strategic crossing point in the marshy valley of the River Sow, a tributary of the River Trent. There is still a large area of marshland north-west of the town, which is subject to flooding and did so in 1947, 2000, 2007 and 2019.
Stafford is thought to have been founded about AD 700 by a Mercian prince called Bertelin, who, legend has it, founded a hermitage on a peninsula named Betheney. Until recently it was thought that the remains of a wooden preaching cross from the time had been found under the remains of St Bertelin's Chapel, next to the later collegiate Church of St Mary in the town centre. Recent reappraisal of the evidence shows this to be a misinterpretation – it was a tree-trunk coffin placed centrally in the first, timber chapel around the time that Æthelflæd founded the burh in 913. It may have been placed there as a commemoration or veneration of St Bertelin.
Already a centre for delivering grain tribute in the Early Middle Ages, Stafford was commandeered in July 913 by Æthelflæd, Lady of Mercia, to construct a burh there. This fortification provided an industrial area for centralised production of Roman-style pottery (Stafford Ware), which was supplied to a chain of West Midlands burhs.
Æthelflæd and her younger brother, King Edward the Elder of Wessex, were trying to complete their father King Alfred the Great's programme of moulding England into a single kingdom. Æthelflæd, a formidable military leader and tactician, sought to protect and extend the northern and western frontiers of her overlordship of Mercia against the Danish Vikings by fortifying burhs, including Tamworth and Stafford in 913, and Runcorn on the River Mersey in 915, while King Edward the Elder concentrated on the east, wresting East Anglia and Essex from the Danes. Anglo-Saxon women could play powerful roles in society; Æthelflæd's death in 918 effectively ended Mercia's relative independence. Edward the Elder of Wessex took over her fortress at Tamworth and accepted submission from all who were living in Mercia, Danish or English. In late 918 Aelfwynn, Æthelflæd's daughter, was deprived of her authority over Mercia and taken to Wessex. The project of unifying England took another step forward.
Stafford was one of Æthelflæd's military campaign bases. Extensive archaeological investigations and recent re-examination and interpretation show her new burh producing, alongside Stafford Ware, food for her army (butchery, grain processing, baking), coinage and weaponry, but apparently no other crafts and making few imports.
The county of Staffordshire was formed at about this time. Stafford lay within the Pirehill hundred.
In 1069, a rebellion by Eadric the Wild against the Norman conquest culminated in the Battle of Stafford. Two years later another rebellion, led by Edwin, Earl of Mercia, ended in Edwin's assassination and distribution of his lands among the followers of William the Conqueror. Robert de Tonei was granted the manor of Bradley and one third of the king's rents in Stafford. The Norman Conquest there was especially brutal, and resulted not only in the imposition of a castle, but in destruction and suppression for about a century of every other activity except intermittent minting of coins.
Stafford Castle, built by the Normans on a nearby hilltop to the west about 1090, was first made of wood and later rebuilt in stone. It has been rebuilt twice since; the ruins of the 19th-century Gothic revival castle on the earthworks incorporate much of the original stonework.
Redevelopment began in the late 12th century. While the church, the main north–south street (Greengate) and routes through the late Saxon industrial quarter to the east remained, the town plan changed in other ways. A motte was built on the western side of the peninsula, overlooking a ford and facing the site of the main castle of Stafford on the hill at Castle Church, west of the town. Tenements were laid out over the peninsula and trade and crafts flourished until the early 14th century, when a period of upset may have been associated with the Black Death. This was followed in the mid-16th century by another revival.
In 1206 King John granted a Royal Charter creating the borough of Stafford. It became a medieval market town mainly dealing in cloth and wool. Though a shire town, Stafford required waves of external investment from Æthelflæd's time to that of Queen Elizabeth I.
King Richard II was paraded through the town's streets as a prisoner in 1399, by troops loyal to Henry Bolingbroke (the future Henry IV).
When James I visited Stafford, he was said to be so impressed by the Shire Hall and other buildings that he called it "Little London".
Charles I visited Stafford shortly after the outbreak of the English Civil War, staying for three days at the Ancient High House. The town was later captured by the Parliamentarians after a small-scale battle at nearby Hopton. Stafford still later fell to the Parliamentarians, as did Stafford Castle after a six-week siege. However, its famous son Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler, was a staunch Royalist.
In 1658 Stafford elected John Bradshaw, who had been judge at the trial of King Charles I, to represent the town in Parliament. During the reign of Charles II, William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford became implicated in the Popish Plot, in which Titus Oates whipped up anti-Catholic feeling with claims of a plot to have the king killed. Lord Stafford was among those accused; he was unfortunate to be the first to be tried and was beheaded in 1680. The charge was false and on 4 June 1685, the bill of attainder against him was reversed.
The town was represented in Parliament from 1780 by the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. During that period, the town's mechanised shoe industry was founded, the best-known factory owner being William Horton. The industry gradually died, the last factory being redeveloped in 2008.
In 1837 the Grand Junction Railway built a line from Birmingham to Warrington to pass through the town and link at Warrington, via another line, with the Liverpool–Manchester railway. Birmingham provided the first connection to London. Other lines followed. Stafford became a major junction, which helped to attract other industries. The Friars' Walk drill hall was completed in 1913, just in time for the First World War.
On 31 March 2006 the Queen visited the town for the 800th anniversary civic celebrations.
In 2013 Stafford celebrated its 1,100th anniversary year with a number of history-based exhibitions, while local historian Nick Thomas and writer Roger Butters were set to produce the two-volume A Compleat [sic] History of Stafford.
Governance
Staffordshire County Council and Stafford Borough Council are both based in the town. The office of Mayor of Stafford Borough has existed since the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. The Mayor in 2019–2020 is Gareth Jones. The borough council was based at the Borough Hall before moving to the new civic offices in Riverside in 1978.
Stafford has its own parliamentary constituency, represented since 2019 by Theo Clarke, a Conservative.
Landmarks
The Elizabethan Ancient High House in the town centre is the largest timber-framed town house in England. It is now a museum with temporary exhibitions.
Stafford Castle was built by the Normans on the nearby hilltop to the west in about 1090, replacing the post-Conquest fort in the town. It was first made of wood, and later rebuilt of stone. It has been rebuilt twice since, and the ruins of the 19th-century Gothic revival castle crowning the earthworks incorporate much of the original stonework. The castle has a visitor centre with audio-visual displays and hands-on items. There is also a recreated medieval herb garden. Shakespeare productions take place in the castle grounds each summer. The castle forms a landmark for drivers, as it is visible from the M6 motorway.
The oldest building now in Stafford is St Chad's Church, dating back to the 12th century. The main part of the church is richly decorated. Carvings in its archways and on its pillars may have been made by a group of stonemasons from the Middle East who came to England during the Crusades. Much of the stonework was covered up in the 17th and 18th centuries and the church took on a neo-classical style. In the early 19th-century restoration, work was carried out on the church and the Norman decoration rediscovered. The church hosts "Timewalk", a computer-generated display that relates the journey of history and mystery within the walls of the church.
St Mary's, the collegiate church formerly linked to St Bertelin's chapel, was rebuilt in the early 13th century on a cruciform plan, with an aisled nave and chancel typical of the period. It has an impressive octagonal tower, once topped by a tall steeple, which can be picked out in Gough's plan shown above. The church was effectively two churches in one, divided by a screen, with the parish using the nave and the collegiate canons the chancel. St Mary's was restored in 1842 by Giles Gilbert Scott.
The Shire Hall was built in 1798 as a court house and office of the Mayor and Clerk of Stafford. The Shire Hall used to be the town's court house, and is a Grade II listed building. In recent times, the building was used as an art gallery and library, before a new facility was built within the new council buildings.
Green Hall on Lichfield Road is a Grade II listed manor house (now apartments), originally built about 1810 as Forebridge Hall, known after 1880 as Green Hall. It was previously used as a girls' school and as council offices.
The Shugborough Hall country estate is out of town. It once belonged to the Earls of Lichfield and is now owned by the National Trust, but maintained by its leaseholder, Staffordshire County Council. The 19th-century Sandon Hall is north-east of Stafford. It is set in of parkland, as the seat of the Earl of Harrowby. Weston Hall stands east of Stafford, in the Trent valley with a large park and was once part of the Chartley estate. It is thought that the main part of the hall was built about 1550 as a small dower house, but the architectural evidence suggests it is Jacobean. Weston Hall was extended in 1660 into a three-gabled structure with high-pitched roofs.
Culture
Stafford Gatehouse Theatre is the town's main entertainment and cultural venue. Its Met Studio is a dedicated to stand-up comedy and alternative live music. There is an art gallery in the Shire Hall. Staffordshire County Showground, just outside the town, holds many national and local events. The annual Shakespeare Festival at Stafford Castle has attracted many notable people, including Frank Sidebottom and Ann Widdecombe.
Victoria Park, opened in 1908, is a 13-acre (53 ha) Edwardian riverside park with a play park, bowling green, bird cages and greenhouses. It has a children's play area, a sand-and-water-jet area replacing an open-air paddling pool, and a bmx/skateboard area. Stafford also has a 9-hole golf course near the town centre.
Recent developments on Riverside allowed for an expansion of the town, notably with a new Odeon cinema to replace the ageing one at the end of the high street. Stafford Film Theatre is based at the Gatehouse Theatre and shows independent and alternative films. There is a tenpin bowling alley at Greyfriars Place. The new Stafford Leisure Centre opened in 2008 on Lammascote Road.
Night life consists of smaller bar and club venues such as Casa, the Grapes, the Picture House, neighbouring night clubs Couture and Poptastic, and rock gigs at the live music venue Redrum. Most of these are in walking distance of each other. There is a big student patronage, with coaches bringing them from Stoke-on-Trent, Cannock, and Wolverhampton.
A new shopping centre was completed in 2017, housing major stores and a number of restaurants.
Media
Newspapers
Stafford is covered by the Express and Star and Staffordshire Newsletter, neither of which have offices in the town.
Television
Stafford is covered by BBC West Midlands and ITV Central, both broadcasting from Birmingham to the wider West Midlands region. Stafford is mainly served by the Sutton Coldfield transmitting station, just north of Birmingham, but some residents get a better picture from The Wrekin transmitting station, near Telford.
Radio
In terms of BBC Local Radio, Stafford is covered by BBC Radio Stoke on 104.1 FM, with a transmitter based on top of the County Education building. In commercial radio, Stafford is covered by Signal 1, broadcasting on 96.10 FM from a transmitter at Pye Green BT Tower, near Hednesford. Both these stations are based in Stoke-on-Trent and cover Staffordshire and Cheshire.
Stafford can get marginal signals from the West Midlands regionals, like Heart and Smooth Radio, and is at the very north of Free Radio's Black Country and Shropshire coverage area.
There are two community radio stations serving Stafford, Stafford FM and Windmill Broadcasting. Stafford FM broadcasts on FM and online from studios in the town centre. Windmill Broadcasting is an online community radio station broadcast from the Broad Eye Windmill. It is the only radio station in the UK based in a windmill.
BFBS Gurkha Radio broadcasts locally on 1278 kHz medium wave from Beacon Barracks.
Climate
Like most of the British Isles, Stafford has a maritime climate with cool summers and mild winters. The nearest Met Office weather station is at Penkridge, about 5 miles to the south.
Economy
Stafford has a history of shoemaking as far back as 1476, when it was a cottage industry, but a manufacturing process was introduced in the 1700s. William Horton founded a business in 1767 that became the largest shoe company in Stafford, selling worldwide. He had several government contracts through the town's Member of Parliament (MP), the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The shoe industry gradually died out in the late 20th century, with Lotus Shoes the last manufacturer. Its factory in Sandon Road was demolished in 2001 and replaced by housing.
A locomotive firm, W. G. Bagnall, was set up in 1875 to manufacture steam engines for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway and the Great Western Railway. Between 1875 and 1962, the Castle Engine Works in Castle Town produced 1,660 locomotives, including steam, diesel and electric. It was taken over in 1962 by English Electric, which also bought the Stafford-based engine manufacturer W. H. Dorman & Co. This had merged with Bagnall's by then.
Since 1903, a major industrial activity has been heavy electrical engineering, particularly power station transformers. The works have been successively owned by Siemens, English Electric, GEC and GEC Alsthom. Alstom T&D was sold in 2004 to Areva. At the end of 2009, Areva T&D was split between former owners Alstom and Schneider Electric. Each transformer weighs several hundred tons and a road train is used for transport. In the 1968 Hixon rail crash, one such road train was struck by an express train on a level crossing.
Perkins Engines has a factory for diesel engines in Littleworth. Adhesives manufacturer Bostik has a large factory in the town. Stafford is also a dormitory town for commuting to Stoke-on-Trent and Birmingham.
Private service industries based in Stafford include TopCashback. The public sector provides much local employment, with Staffordshire County Council, Stafford Borough Council and Staffordshire Police all headquartered in the town. Stafford Prison, County Hospital and Beacon Barracks are other sources of public-sector employment.
The town was home to the computer science and IT campus of Staffordshire University, along with Beaconside campus, which housed the Faculty of Computing Engineering and Technology and part of the Business School. These have all been transferred to Stoke-on-Trent. The only block of Stafford University left in use is the School of Health in Blackheath Lane, which teaches medical nursing. The main Stoke campus lies about to the north.
The Guildhall Shopping Centre in the centre of town offers over 40 retail outlets, several empty at present. The three superstores around the main town centre were joined by two others in 2018.
Transport
Railways
Stafford railway station was once a major railway hub, but the suspension of passenger services on the Stafford to Uttoxeter line in 1939 and Beeching's closure of the Stafford to Shrewsbury Line in 1964 eliminated the station's east-west traffic. The years up to 2008 saw cross-country trains (operated by Virgin CrossCountry) stopping at Stafford less frequently. Since Arriva CrossCountry took over the franchise and adopted a new timetable in 2008, this has reversed and services between Manchester Piccadilly and Birmingham New Street almost always stop at Stafford, giving a service typically every 30 mins on weekdays. Beyond Birmingham, the services continue alternately to Bristol Temple Meads and Bournemouth.
Avanti West Coast services to London Euston and Liverpool Lime Street operate hourly in each direction seven days a week. In December 2008, London Midland introduced a service stopping at Stafford on the Crewe to London Euston route and a Birmingham New Street–Liverpool Lime Street service that departs from Stafford normally every 30 mins on weekdays. These are now operated by West Midlands Trains. At least one train a day in each direction between Birmingham New Street and Crewe is operated by Transport for Wales, usually the first and last of the day.
Roads
Junctions 13 (Stafford South & Central) and 14 (Stafford North) of the M6 motorway provide access to the town, so that Birmingham and Manchester are easily reached. The A34 runs through the town centre and links with Stone and Stoke-on-Trent to the north and to the West Midlands conurbation to the south including Birmingham, Walsall and Wolverhampton. The A518 road connects Stafford with Telford to the south-west and Uttoxeter to the north-east. This is the main route to the theme park at Alton Towers. The A449 runs south from the town centre to the nearby town of Penkridge and to Wolverhampton. Finally, the A513 runs east from Stafford to the local towns of Rugeley and Lichfield.
Most bus services in Stafford are run by D&G Bus as services to Lichfield, Cannock and Rugeley, while Arriva Midlands runs one to Telford. National Express West Midlands had a service between Wolverhampton and Stafford until April 2020, when it was cut short and later withdrawn. An infrequent link between Wolverhampton and Stafford is provided by Select Bus. Services to Stone and Stoke-on-Trent are handled by First Potteries (service 101).
Stafford has five taxi firms and several independent operators from ranks at the station, Bridge St, Broad St and Salter St.
Canal
The Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal runs close to the Baswich and Wildwood areas and was once linked to the River Sow by the River Sow Navigation.
Public services
Local government
Staffordshire County Council headquarters are in central Stafford. Most staff in the town work in the Staffordshire Place development, which opened in 2011. The shift of administrative staff to Staffordshire Place meant conversion of most offices into private homes, but the County Council still meets at County Buildings in Martin St.
For much of the 20th century the local municipal council was based at the Borough Hall in Eastgate Street. Following local government reorganisation in 1974, a modern Civic Centre was built for the enlarged Stafford Borough Council in Riverside and completed in 1978.
The town's main library, once in the Shire Hall, it has moved to the ground floor of 1 Staffordshire Place, with smaller libraries in Rising Brook, Baswich and Holmcroft. The William Salt Library in the town centre has a large collection of printed books, pamphlets, manuscripts, drawings, watercolours and transcripts built up by William Salt.
Hospitals, police and fire
The town's main County Hospital provides a range of non-specialist medical and surgical services. Its Accident and Emergency unit is the only such facility in the town. The hospital made the national news in March 2009 with the release of a Healthcare Commission report detailing major shortcomings.
St George's Hospital, part of the South Staffordshire and Shropshire Health Care Trust, is a combination of two historical hospitals — the Kingsmead (previously an elderly care facility) and St George's psychiatric hospital. It provides mental health services, including a psychiatric intensive care unit, secure units, an eating disorder unit, an EMI unit for the elderly and mentally frail, drug and alcohol addiction services and open wards. There is an outpatient facility, where the town's AA also meets. Rowley Hall Hospital in Rowley Park is a private one run by Ramsay Healthcare, but offers some NHS treatment.
The town receives primary health care from the South Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
Policing is provided by Staffordshire Police, headquartered in Weston Road. Its former headquarters in Cannock Road is giving way to a housing estate. There is a town-centre police station in Eastgate St.
Statutory emergency fire and rescue service is provided by the Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service, which has stations in Beaconside and Rising Brook.
Justice
Stafford Crown Court and Stafford County Court share a building in the town centre. There was a magistrates' court in nearby South Walls, but it closed in 2016. The Shire Hall, Stafford, completed in 1798, used to be a court house, but is now an art gallery.
Stafford Prison is a Category C men's prison, operated by HM Prison Service. It holds a number of vulnerable prisoners, mainly sex offenders. It was built on its current site in 1794 and has been in almost continuous use, except between 1916 and 1940.
MoD Stafford
MoD Stafford is located on Beaconside. Originally RAF Stafford, the base was a non-flying Royal Air Force station. It was redesignated MoD Stafford in March 2006, an event marked by a fly-past and a flag-lowering ceremony. For many years the site employed civilians and military personnel, but it was handed over by the Royal Air Force under the current policy of defence strategy and streamlining. A small Tactical Supply Wing (TSW) still operates from the base, which now houses a Gurkha signals regiment and an RAF Regiment contingent alongside Tactical Supply Wing.
Education
Primary schools
Anson CE (A) Primary School
Barnfields Primary School
Berkswich CE Primary School
Blessed Mother Teresa RC Primary School (Formerly Bower Norris)
Brooklands Preparatory School (Independent)
Burton Manor Primary School
Castlechurch Primary School
Cooper Perry Primary School
Flash Ley Community Primary School
John Wheeldon Primary School
Leasowes Primary School (founded 2006)
Oakridge Primary School (plus nursery)
Parkside Primary School
Rowley Park Primary Academy (Formerly The Grove)
Silkmore Primary School
Stafford Preparatory School
St Anne's RC Primary School
St Austin's RC Primary School
St Bede's Preparatory School (Independent)
St John's CE Primary School
St Leonard's Primary School
St Patrick's Catholic Primary School
St Paul's Primary School
Doxey Primary School
Tillington Manor Primary School (formerly Holmcroft Primary School)
Secondary schools
Blessed William Howard Catholic School
King Edward VI High School (Highfields)
Stafford Grammar School. Selective, independent school, Founded 1982.
Stafford Manor High School (formerly Rising Brook High School and Stafford Sports College)
Sir Graham Balfour School
Walton High School
Weston Road Academy
Tertiary education
The Chetwynd Centre provides higher education in the town. It normally teaches specialised A-levels, some vocational qualifications and subjects taught by teachers with no school base. The centre has joined with all the town's secondary schools except the grammar school, to provide better resources for students.
Stafford College is a large college of further education. It also provides some higher education courses on behalf of Staffordshire University, focusing on computing and engineering.
South Staffordshire College has a base in the village of Rodbaston on the edge of Stafford. It is largely an agricultural college.
Staffordshire University has a large campus in the east of the town and focuses heavily on computing, engineering and media technologies (film, music and computer games). It also runs teacher-training courses. The university has two halls of residence opposite the campus, the smaller Yarlet with 51 rooms and the larger Stafford Court with 554 Rooms. Stafford Court is divided into 13 "houses" named after local villages.
Sport
Stafford is home to three association football clubs; Stafford Rangers F.C., Brocton F.C. and Stafford Town F.C., none of which play at a fully professional level.
The town has two rugby union clubs, though again they do not play at a high level.
There is a local hockey club with eight adult teams.
Stafford Post Office Rifle and Pistol Club is a Home Office approved rifle club founded in 1956. It has a 25-yard indoor range attached to the Stafford Post Office Social Club. In addition to short-range indoor shooting facilities, the club has a number of outdoor ranges, including Kingsbury, Sennybridge and Thorpe, for larger-calibre long-range shooting.
Stafford Cricket and Hockey Club, an ECB Clubmark Accredited Club founded in 1864, is almost certainly the town's oldest sports club. It appears to have played originally at the Lammascotes, before being offered a field at the Hough (Lichfield Road/GEC site) in 1899, which belonged to the grammar school. In 1984 the club made a move to Riverway in 1984, as the Hough came under the ownership of GEC. It currently owns at Riverway and hosts numerous sports: two cricket pitches in summer and football, mini-football, rugby and hockey facilities in winter. In 1999 it won a £200,000 lottery grant towards a new pavilion completed in 2000, with six changing rooms and a function room. The cricket section welcomes players of all abilities. Four senior sides play on Saturdays. The first and second elevens play in the North Staffordshire and South Cheshire League. The third and fourth elevens play in the Stone and District Cricket League. There is also a senior team that plays in the Lichfield Sunday League. The five junior sides are for under 9s, under 11s, under 13s, under 15s and under 17s.
In December 2018, a parkrun (free weekly timed 5k run/walk) was launched in Stafford on the Isabel Trail, a public foot/cycle path that follows part of the former course of the Stafford–Uttoxeter railway. The run/walk takes place on Saturday mornings at nine, starting at the southern end of the Isabel Trail by Sainsbury's supermarket.
The Stafford knot
The Stafford knot, sometimes Staffordshire knot, is a distinctive three-looped tie that is the traditional symbol of the county and county town, used on buildings, logos and coats of arms. It also gives its name to a pub.
Notable people
Notable people from Stafford include the 17th-century author of The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton, whose cottage at nearby Shallowford is now an angling museum, and the 18th-century playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was once the local MP. The 1853 Lord Mayor of London Thomas Sidney was also born in the town.
In the early 1900s, the village of Great Haywood near Stafford became home to the wife of the famous The Lord of the Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien and his wife, Edith, in her cottage in the village during the winter of 1916. Surrounding areas were said to have inspired some of his early works.
The Scottish poet, playwright and freelancer Carol Ann Duffy, though born in Glasgow, grew up in Stafford and attended Stafford Girls' High School. She was awarded an OBE in 1995, and a CBE in 2002. Many of her poems describe experiences and places in Stafford. She was the Poet laureate from 2009 to 2019, and now lives in Manchester.
Baron Stafford is a title created several times in the Peerage of England. A full schedule of over 30 of the eponymous title holders is listed at Baron Stafford. Here just three are included.
Early times
In birth order:
Ralph de Stafford, 2nd Baron Stafford, 1st Earl of Stafford (1301–1372), a notable soldier in the Hundred Years' War
Henry Stafford, 1st Baron Stafford (1501–1563) In 1531 Staffordshire elected him recorder for the borough. He was later appointed JP for Staffordshire and Shropshire and Lord-Lieutenant of Staffordshire.
Richard Barnfield (1574 in Norbury – 1620) poet, had an obscure but close relationship with William Shakespeare that interests scholars.
Thomas Maxfield (real name Macclesfield) (c. 1590–1616), Roman Catholic priest and a Catholic martyr, beatified in 1929, was born in Stafford gaol.
18th and 19th cc.
In birth order:
Sir Robert Pigot, 2nd Baronet (1720–1796 in Stafford), a British Army officer during the American Revolutionary War
Lieutenant General Sir William Congreve, 1st Baronet (1742 in Stafford – 1814), a British military officer who improved artillery strength through gunpowder experiments
James Oatley, Sr. (c. 1769 in Stafford – 1839), an Australian watch and clock maker and one-time convict. Oatley, aged 44, was sentenced to penal transportation for life for stealing shirts and bedding. He had an earlier conviction for stealing a ton of cheese.
James Trubshaw (1777 in Colwich – 1853) English builder, architect and civil engineer
John Prescott Knight RA (1803 in Stafford – 1881) English portrait painter, Secretary of the Royal Academy from 1848 until 1873
George Smith (1805–1874), known as Throttler Smith, was an English hangman at Stafford gaol from 1840 until 1872.
Charles Pye VC (1820 in Stafford – 1876) sergeant-major, recipient of the Victoria Cross
William Palmer (1824 in Rugeley – 1856 in Stafford Prison) an English doctor found guilty in 1855 of the murder by poisoning of his friend John Cook and executed by George Smith in public by hanging
Benjamin Broomhall (1829 in Bradley – 1911) author and advocate of foreign missions, administrator of China Inland Mission
Francis Webb (1836 in Tixall – 1906) British engineer responsible for the design and manufacture of locomotives for the London and North Western Railway (LNWR)
Edward Ilsley (1838 in Stafford – 1926) prelate in the Roman Catholic Church, first Archbishop of Birmingham (1888–1921)
Whitaker Wright (1846 in Stafford – 1904) company promoter and swindler, who committed suicide at the Royal Courts of Justice in London immediately after his conviction for fraud.
Ernest Shears (1849 – 1917 in Stafford), an Anglican clergyman in South Africa, retired to Stafford.
William Gordon Bagnall (1852–1907) British mechanical engineer, founded the locomotive manufacturing company of W.G. Bagnall in 1875 which operated until taken over in 1962 by English Electric
Captain Egerton Bagot Byrd Levett-Scrivener (1857 in Milford Hall – 1954) Royal Navy Flag Lieutenant and aide to Vice Admiral George Willes in the Far East
Alice Hawkins (1863 in Stafford – 1946) a leading English suffragette among the boot and shoe machinists of Leicester
20th c.
In birth order:
G. Godfrey Phillips CBE (1900-1965) was the Town Clerk from 1932 to 1934. He then became secretary and later Commissioner General of the Shanghai Municipal Council.
Moira Forsyth (1905–1991) stained-glass artist
Falkner Allison (1907–1993) Anglican bishop successively of Chelmsford and the Winchester.
Michael John Wise CBE, MC (1918–2015) academic, professor of geography at the University of London
Thomas Worrall Kent (1922–2011) Canadian economist, journalist, editor, public servant, and industrialist; born in Stafford
Sarah Buck OBE (born 1953) structural and civil engineer and business woman in engineering and construction, attended Stafford Girls High School.
Francis Melfort William Fitzherbert, 15th Baron Stafford (born 1954), landowner and peer, Chancellor of Staffordshire University
Alun Kyte (born 1964) double murderer, suspected of many other murders of prostitutes
Mike Dilger (born 1966) ecologist, ornithologist and TV presenter
Sir Jonathan Ive, KBE (born 1967), iPhone designer, went to school at Stafford Walton High School and now resides in San Francisco, California.
Hannah Maybank (born in Stafford 1974) artist best known for the ripped and distressed surfaces of her three-dimensional paintings in acrylic
Music, acting and writing
Rodney Milnes OBE (1936–2015) music critic, translator and broadcaster, with an interest in opera
Dave Follows (1941–2003), British cartoonist, lived in Stafford best known for his comic strip Creature Feature
Patrick Fyffe (1942–2002) creator of Dame Hilda Bracket
Pete Haycock (1951 in Stafford – 2013) musician, film score composer and founding member of the Climax Blues Band
Storm Constantine (1956–2021) British science fiction and fantasy author primarily known for her Wraeththu series
Mark Curry (born in Stafford 1961) actor and television and radio presenter
Neil Morrissey (born in Stafford 1962) actor, star of Men Behaving Badly
Climax Blues Band formed in 1968, a popular Stafford blues band which later achieved international record success
Dominic Mafham (born 1968), actor born in Stafford
Medicine Head 1970s hit duo, hailed from nearby Tixall.
Dave Gorman (born 1971) comedian, author and television presenter
Duncan Botwood (born 1972 in Stafford) video game designer and voice actor
Fran Healy (born in Stafford 1973) singer in Travis moved to Scotland when very young.
Kieron Gillen, (born 1975) British computer games and music journalist and comic book author. He went to Blessed William Howard Catholic High School.
Tom Vaughan (born in Stafford 1985) television actor, played the part of Spike in Channel 4 series Hollyoaks in 2007.
Bizarre Inc, rave act formed in 1989
Altern-8, rave act formed in Stafford in 1990
Chicken Lips, dance music band, production team formed in 1999, successor to Bizarre Inc
Sport
Charles Baker (1867–1924) played in the Football League for Stoke F.C. and Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C.
Walter Twigg (1883 in Weeping Cross – 1963) field hockey player and cricketer
Harry Hutsby (1886 in Stafford – 1971) joined Stoke F.C. in 1908 from local side Stafford Wednesday
Bill Aston (1900 in Hopton – 1974) racing driver, participated in three World Championship Grands Prix
Joe Hulme (1904–1991) English footballer and cricketer, played 333 times for Arsenal F.C. and 225 times for Middlesex as an aggressive middle-order batsman and medium-fast bowler.
Walter Robins (1906–1968) cricketer and footballer. He was one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year in 1930.
Brian Little (born 1953) former Aston Villa player and manager lives in the town.
Nigel Callaghan (born 1962) professional footballer with Aston Villa, Derby County and Watford, lives and DJs in the town.
David Fell (born 1964), cricketer
Phil Robinson (born 1967) Recruitment Manager at Manchester City, former footballer, with 567 pro appearances mainly for Notts County, Huddersfield Town, Stoke City, Hereford United and Stafford Rangers.
Chris Birchall (born 1984), footballer, scored 21 goals in 322 appearances in a 16-year professional career, and scored four goals in 43 international matches,
Christopher Paget (born 1987), right-handed batsman and right-arm offbreak bowler, plays for Derbyshire.
Joe Leach (born 1990) cricketer, is a right-handed batsman who bowls right-arm fast-medium for Worcestershire, as a first-team regular in 2015 and county captain in 2016.
Steve Leach (born 1993), cricketer
Nick Yelloly (born 1990 in Stafford) auto racing driver
Emma Wilkins (born 1991) sprint freestyle swimmer, born in Stafford
Morgan Gibbs-White (born 2000 in Stafford) English footballer, midfielder for Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C., went to Sir Graham Balfour.
Politics
Richard Stanford (1382–1402) politician, MP for Stafford in May 1382, 1386, September 1388, 1391, 1399 and 1402
Matthew Cradock (1584–1636) wool merchant, elected MP for Stafford in 1621, re-elected in 1624, 1625 and 1628. He sat until 1629, when King Charles dispensed with Parliament for eleven years.
John Swinfen (1613–1694 in Weeford) politician, elected MP for Stafford in 1660 in the Convention Parliament
Sir Walter Essex (1857–1941) businessman and Liberal Party politician, MP for Stafford from 1910 to 1918
Sir Charles Shaw, 1st Baronet (1859 in Wolverhampton – 1942) Liberal Party politician, MP for Stafford from 1892 to 1910
William Ormsby-Gore, 4th Baron Harlech KG GCMG PC (1885–1964) Conservative politician and banker, MP for Stafford from 1918 until he entered the House of Lords on succeeding to his father's peerage in 1938.
Peter Thorneycroft, Baron Thorneycroft CH PC (1909–1994) Conservative Party politician, MP for Stafford from 1938 to 1945 and Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1957 and 1958
Stephen Swingler (1915–1969) Labour Party politician, MP for Stafford from 1945 to 1950, and for Newcastle under Lyme from 1951 to 1969
Sir Hugh Fraser MBE PC (1918–1984) Conservative politician, first husband of Lady Antonia Fraser and MP for Stafford from 1945 until 1984
Sir William Nigel Paul Cash (born 1940), known as Bill Cash, Conservative politician and MP for Stafford from 1984 to 1997
David Kidney (born 1955) Labour Party politician, MP for Stafford from 1997 to 2010
Patrick McLoughlin PC MP (born 1957 in Stafford) Conservative Party politician; the son and grandson of coal miners
Jeremy Lefroy (born 1959) Conservative Party politician, MP for Stafford from 2010 to 2019
Areas
Baswich
An estate towards Rugeley and Cannock from Stafford town centre
Beaconside
Burton Manor
Castle House Gardens
Castle House Drive
Castlefields
An estate built on the wetlands off Newport Road in the early 1990s. Roads are named after then famous athletes (Gunnell Close, Christie Drive etc.)
Castletown
Estate of terraced cottages built in the 1830s and 1840s for an influx of railway workers. Its former church, St Thomas's, was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by a new one in Doxey. The offices of Staffordshire Newsletter now occupy the site.
The Crossings
An estate built on the site of Stychfields in the grounds of the Alstom factory. It also includes a retail park.
Coppenhall
Coton Fields
Doxey
Forebridge
Highfields
A council estate between Wolverhampton Road and Newport Road. The first houses were built about 1955 and many others ("Highfields No. 2 estate" in 1963–1964. West Way is its longest street. Many streets added in the 1960s are named after poets and playwrights (Shakespeare Road, Masefield Drive, Coleridge Drive, Keats Avenue, Tennyson Road, Binyon Court, etc.) Much of the original estate was built on Preston's Farm land. Two tower blocks stood in Milton Grove: Brooke Court, mainly used as student housing, was demolished in 1998 for a housing development. Binyon Court was renovated and renamed the Keep.
Holmcroft
Hyde Lea
King Edward Court
Kingston Hill
Littleworth
Manor Estate
Meadowcroft Park
Moss Pit
Moss Pit is in southern Stafford, approximately one mile from Junction 13 of the M6 motorway; areas include the Pippins, the Chestnuts and Scholar's Gate.
Parkside
A housing estate in the north of the town built in the 1970s. It has two entrances from the A513 Beaconside Road and access to three parks, a green and Stafford Common. It has a primary school (Parkside Primary School) and Sir Graham Balfour School, rebuilt in 2001. Some school grounds were sold off for the adjacent Oaks housing estate. There is a precinct of shops and a bus terminus.
Queensville
Rising Brook
Rickerscote
Rickerscote had a lane running from the Silkmore estate towards the area of the bridge to Argos. The area is known to many as the village and has a shop. Its large area of grassland know as the Green.
Other local areas are the Conker Tree, Boulton's Farm, Devil's Triangle and the Metal Bridge.
Rowley Park
Silkmore
Silkmore, between Rickerscote and Meadowcroft, by the Rising Brook. It has a primary school and a selection of shops. It has seen a development programme to upgrade the exteriors of the housing.
An area of Silkmore near the old Southend Club was subject to flooding. It has been replaced with new homes. Other parts such as Pioneer, the Garage and Finney's Farm have been replaced by homes or the Co-op.
St. George's
A development close to St George's Hospital along St George's Parkway, with various modern buildings, including a modern interpretation of a Georgian crescent. Work has begun on restoring the hospital building, disused since 1995, as luxury flats.
Tillington, Staffordshire
Trinity Fields
The Oaks
An estate off the A34 near Sir Graham Balfour School in the extreme north of Stafford.
Walton on the Hill
To the south of Stafford bordering Milford. Walton High School is specialist science school.
Weeping Cross
An estate on the east side of Stafford, off Radford Bank, towards Rugeley and Cannock. It contains the Leasowes Primary and St Anne's Catholic Primary schools.
Western Downs
This borders Highfields and the M6 motorway. A green area with two football pitches and a basketball court known as Bottom Pitches can be found, along with Rainbow Park in Clarendon Drive and Dome Park in Torridge Drive.
Wildwood
A large estate with a ring road that joins the A34 road. It was built around the 1970s and housed many of the Stafford police force at its HQ was on the opposite side of the A34.
Nature reserves
These nature reserves are in Stafford:
Astonfields Balancing Lakes, a local nature reserve, are two lakes constructed in recent decades for flood protection, a mile north of the town centre
Doxey Marshes, managed by the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, is a wet grassland habitat two miles northwest of the town centre
Kingsmead Marsh, a local nature reserve, is a remnant of marshland near the town centre
Radford Meadows, managed by the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, is a floodplain two miles south of the town centre
Nearby places
Brewood
Cannock
Cannock Chase
Creswell
Eccleshall
Great Haywood
Heath Hayes and Wimblebury
Hednesford
Hixon
Lichfield
Little Haywood
Newport, Shropshire
Penkridge
Rugeley
Shugborough Hall
Stoke-on-Trent
Stone
Trentham Gardens
Uttoxeter
Wolverhampton
Twin towns
Stafford is twinned with:
See also
Stafford rail crash
HMP Stafford
Etymological list of counties of the United Kingdom
Stafford (UK Parliament constituency)
Listed buildings in Stafford (Central Area)
Listed buildings in Stafford (Outer Area)
Stafford power station
References
Notes
Bibliography
11th century and earlier: Staffordshire Newsletter 1994 Guide is good.
External links
Stafford Gatehouse Theatre
Stafford Borough Council site with short history of the town
Towns in Staffordshire
County towns in England
Railway towns in England
Unparished areas in Staffordshire
Borough of Stafford | en |
doc-en-7902 | A jaw abnormality is a disorder in the formation, shape and/or size of the jaw. In general abnormalities arise within the jaw when there is a disturbance or fault in the fusion of the mandibular processes. The mandible in particular has the most differential typical growth anomalies than any other bone in the human skeleton. This is due to variants in the complex symmetrical growth pattern which formulates the mandible.
The mandible in particular plays a significant role in appearance as it is the only moving part of the facial skeleton. This has a large impact upon an individuals’ ability speak, masticate and also influence their overall aesthetic and expressive features of the face. In turn the maxilla faces the same issues if any abnormalities in size or position were to occur. The obvious functional disabilities that arise from jaw abnormalities are very much physically seen as previously stated, but when considering these individuals it must be kept in mind that these conditions may well affect them psychologically; making them feel as though they are handicapped. It is also of the utmost importance when correcting these mandibular anomalies that the teeth result in a good occlusion with the opposing dentition of the maxilla. If this is not done satisfactorily occlusal instability may be created leading to a plethora of other issues. In order to correct mandibular anomalies it is common for a complex treatment plan which would involve surgical intervention and orthodontic input.
Signs and symptoms
Individuals with jaw abnormalities have both functional and aesthetic impairment.
Misalignment of teeth creates difficulties in head and neck functions related to chewing, swallowing, breathing, speech articulation and lip closure/posture.
Affected individuals may also experience TMJ pain and dysfunction, which negatively affect the quality of life.
A proportion of affected individuals also have psychological problems.
Diagnosis
Diagnosis of a jaw deformity is a structured process, linking the undertaking of a history, physical examination of the patient, and appraisal of diagnostic studies. This process may involve more than a single discipline of Dentistry – in addition to orthodontic and surgical needs, some patients may also require periodontal, endodontic, complex restorative, and prosthetic considerations.
It involves the chief presenting complaint of the patient, which allows the clinician to understand the patient's perception of the problem – what they think the problem is and what they would like corrected. The patient may find eating difficult or may have problems with speech or the appearance of the teeth or face. However, patients may be hesitant to discuss dissatisfaction with their appearance because they may feel that it is more acceptable to present a functional problem to the clinician. For this reason it is important to reassure patients that their aesthetic problems and the effects of these are perfectly valid concerns. In children, psychological development can be affected due to teasing if they have abnormal appearance of teeth or face. Correction of the abnormality can be extremely beneficial to the patient. The benefits can manifest themselves in many ways including improved peer relationships and social confidence. Motivation on the patient's part is necessary if they are going to undergo lengthy orthodontic treatment and major surgery. In addition, they need to be well informed so that they may give valid consent. In terms of history, the family history and perhaps obstetric history may be relevant, especially when features of a syndrome are present.
A medical and dental history is obtained for completeness. The medical history includes questions on the general health of the patient, to assess contraindications to treatment of jaw abnormality. Special emphasis is placed on diseases and medication which cause altered metabolism, that may affect growth and tissue reactions. Allergies are checked (specifically nickel allergies), so that treatment appliances with nickel-containing materials like stainless steel can be replaced with other materials to avoid the risk of allergic reactions. Questions on family history are also relevant, as malocclusions, growth and development may be expressions of genetic patterns. The dental history investigates if the patient has had any previous dental trauma, or past dental experiences, which can serve as a gauge to patient compliance with treatment.
Examination
The assessment of facial form includes the evaluation of facial soft tissue and dentition. As the human skeleton is not visibly perceptible, bone deformity is inferred and evaluated by facial appearance and dentition. To obtain a 3D assessment of the patient, the skeletal pattern must be measured in different planes: anterior-posterior, vertical, and transverse. This allows for an accurate assessment of the size, position, orientation, shape, and symmetry of the jaws.
The anterior-posterior skeletal pattern measures the relationship of the lower jaw to the upper jaw. This is judged with the patient seated upright, head in a neutral horizontal position, and teeth in gentle occlusion. It can be classified into the following classes:
Class I: The ideal relationship whereby the upper jaw lies 2-4mm in front of the lower jaw
Class II: Upper jaw lies more than 4mm in front of the lower jaw
Class III: Upper jaw lies less than 2mm in front of the lower jaw, or in more severe cases, the lower jaw may be in front of the upper jaw.
The vertical dimension can be measured by facial thirds, with ideal facial aesthetics showing equality between each vertical third. The face is divided into thirds – hairline to glabella; glabella to subnasale; and subnasale to the lowest part of the chin. Two other clinical indicators can be assessed when analysing vertical dimensions, namely the Frankfort Mandibular Planes Angle (FMPA) and the Lower Facial Height (LFH) – both of which are each recorded as either average, increased, or decreased.
FMPA: This is estimated by the point of intersection between the lower border of the mandible and the Frankfort Horizontal plane.
LFH: The face is divided into thirds, and the proportion of the lower third of the face is compared to the rest.
The transverse relationship is a measure of jaw or facial asymmetry. It checks for the alignment of the soft tissue nasion, the middle part of the upper lip at the vermillion border, and the chin point. If present, it is necessary to distinguish between a false and true asymmetry. A false asymmetry arises due to occlusal interferences, which results in a lateral displacement of the mandible, producing a cross-bite in the anterior/buccal region. Elimination of the displacement will return the mandible to a centric position. On the other hand, a true asymmetry indicates unequal facial growth on the left or right side of the jaws. Elimination of any occlusal cross-bites is not only difficult, but unlikely to improve the facial asymmetry. The assessment of the transverse components of the facial width is best described by the "rule of fifths", which sagittally divides the face into five equal parts:
Each transverse fifth should be an eye distance in width.
The middle fifth is marked by the inner canthus of both eyes.
The medial three-fifths of the face is marked from the outer canthus of the eye frames
The outer two-fifths of the face is measured from the lateral canthus to lateral helix of the ear, which represents the width of the ears.
Tests
It is insufficient to derive at a diagnosis of jaw deformity solely based on the clinical examination. Hence, additional information is gathered from diagnostic tests, which may include dental model analyses and radiographic imaging studies.
Dental Model Analyses - Study models for analysis can be made by taking dental impressions, or by 3D intra-oral scanning. They allow for the appraisal of shape and size of jaws and teeth. This can be valuable for the long-term evaluation of development and for the follow up of treatment results. Depending on the type of jaw abnormality, a face bow record for transfer on to the articulator, can sometimes be appropriate for the patient.
Radiographs - Radiographic investigations should be based on individual needs and used in conjunction to the clinical examination. As with all other dental radiographs, the benefit gained for the patient with the radiograph must be weighed against the radiation dosage of taking it. In the assessment of jaw abnormalities, the most common radiographs taken used to be the dental panoramic tomography and lateral cephalometry. With the advancement in technology, the use of 3D imaging e.g. Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) has gained popularity for the use of radiographic examinations of facial bones for purpose of planning complex orthognathic surgery, especially involving significant facial asymmetry. A 3D facial construction model can be utilised in more complex malocclusion to help plan management.
Classification
Size
Micrognathia
Mandibular micrognathia is the condition when lower jaw is smaller than normal. Failure of the ramus to develop will give rise to micrognathia. Micrognathia can be classified as either congenital or acquired. Clinical appearance of some patients with congenital type of mandibular micrognathia can have a severe retrusion of the chin but by actual measurements, the mandible maybe be found to be within the normal limits of variation. This maybe because a posterior placing of the condylar head with regard to the skull or to a steep mandibular angle resulting in an evident jaw retrusion. The acquired type of micrognathia occurs after birth and usually is an effect of a disturbance to temporomandibular joint. Growth of mandible depends on the normally developing condyles and the muscle function For example, trauma or infection that affect mastoid, middle ear or the joint will result in ankylosis of temporomandibular joint leading to mandibular micrognathia.
Macronagthia
Macronagthia is a condition of abnormally large jaws. The jaw size is usually proportion to the increase in skeleton size. It is usually due to excessive growth of the mandible and can have features including reverse maxillary to mandibular relationship, reverse overjet or absence of overbite. It can also be clinically presented when the glenoid fossa and condylar head is more anteriorly placed, causing mandibular prognathism. Macronagthism can be associated with other medical conditions :-
1. Paget's disease where there is overgrowth of the maxilla, cranium and mandible
2. Acromegaly, an endocrine disease, can present with enlargement of bones with growth potential such as the mandible, thickened soft tissues and facial features and spade-like hands
Macrogenia or Microgenia
Macrogenia and microgenia occur when there is a normal skeletal relationship but the chin, skeletal and soft tissue components, failed to develop in proportion to the skeletal base, resulting in marked protrusive (macrogenia) or retrusive (microgenia) facial profile. Microgenia can be presented when there is inadequate bone depth at the apex of lower anteriors or the base of mandible and vice versa.
Position
Transverse
A transverse jaw position is known as Laterognathia. This term describes a lateral bite in the lower jaw and is often associated with a unilateral crossbite at an early age This can lead to bone development of an asymmetrical mandibular ramus resulting in asymmetry in the whole of the lower face. Treatment of laterognathism is either possible with orthodontic tooth movement or a surgical relocation of the lower jaw.
Vertical
One of the ways in which a jaw can develop abnormally is in the vertical dimension. Abnormal growth can occur in the maxilla and the mandible. The jaw is usually loosely used to refer to the mandible (considered the lower jaw). However, the maxilla is also a jaw and should thus be referred to in this respect as well.
The vertical jaw abnormalities relating to the mandible are in relation to excessive vertical growth and excessive horizontal growth, measured by the maxillary-mandibular plane angle (MMPA). The vertical jaw abnormalities relating to the maxilla are in relation to excessive downward displacement (EDD) and insufficient downward displacement (IDD). These terms used to previously be known as vertical maxillary excess and deficiency. This nomenclature changed because excess and deficiency typically refer to size. Whereas when assessing this clinically, one would measure the distance between the central incisors and the upper lip, which, in fact, denotes position rather than size. Therefore, in order to ‘harmonize with geometry’, EDD and IDD are now used widely.
Vertical and Horizontal Mandibular Excess:
Simply put, excessive vertical growth is the term used for when the mandible is considered ‘too far down. Whereas in excessive horizontal growth the opposite applies, where the mandible is growing in a more horizontal pattern, in relation to the maxilla. The primary cause of the above two abnormalities in adolescents is due to accelerated and slow mandibular growth. Resulting in either a longer lower face height appearance (vertical growth) or a shorter one (horizontal growth). The length between the columella (base of the nose) and menton (base of the chin) is the variable measurement. This is in relation to the length between the glabella (between eyebrows) and the columella. In a normal case, these lengths would be equal or without a major discrepancy. However, in excess vertical and horizontal growth, the proportions vary and do not equal.
The development of the mandible is such that it ossifies in two primary ways; endochondrally and intramembranously. Almost the entire mandible is formed via intramembranous ossification, with just the condyle ossifying endochondrally. This allows the condyle to resist forces exerted on it. One way in which a vertical jaw abnormality can occur is if the condylar growth process is damaged, and thus the intramembranous growth continues along the posterior condylar margin, becoming predominant, thus resulting in a high angle type.
Assessing a patient for vertical and horizontal excess
The Maxillary Mandibular Plane Angle (MMPA) is important in assessing a patient for vertical jaw abnormality. The important landmarks are the Frankfurt plane and the Mandibular plane. The Frankfurt plane is a line charted from the upper border of external auditory meatus to the lower border of the orbit. It is similar to the ala-tragus line however should not be confused with it. Whereas the Mandibular angle is a line measured along the natural lower border of the patient's mandible. The intersection of the Frankfurt and Mandibular plane is what determines the pattern of vertical growth. If the intersection occurs behind the occiput i.e. decreased angle, then the patient is considered to have horizontal growth. On the other hand, if the intersection occurs in front of the occiput, then the patient is considered to have vertical growth. The normal range is considered to be between 25 and 30 degrees in a typical Caucasian person. Those with excess vertical jaw growth are most often seen having an anterior open bite, as the mandible is growing away from the maxilla. Whereas those with excessive horizontal growth are seen as having an overbite.
Excessive Downward Displacement and Insufficient Downward Displacement
Here on, we will use interchangeably the terms vertical maxillary excess and deficiency with excessive and insufficient downward displacement. In order to understand its manifestations, we need to account for key landmarks such as:
· Columella (CM)– The tissue that links the nasal tip to the nasal base, separating the nares. The inferior margin of the nasal septum
· Subnasale (SN) – the junction of the upper lip and the columella
· Stomion Superios (Sts) – the lower most point on the vermillion of the upper lip
· Stomion (Sto) – The point of contact, when lips are competent, in the midline, between the top and bottom lip
· Stomion Inferious (Sti) – the upper most point on the vermillion of the lower lip
· Soft tissue mention (Me) – The most inferior point on the soft tissue outline of the chin
The measurements of the upper lip and lower lip for each patient are ascertained by using the aforementioned landmarks. The length of the upper lip is measured from Sn to Sts. In a typical male and female this measures to 24mm and 21mm respectively (REF). The length of the lower lip is measured from Sti to Me. In a typical male and female this measures to 50mm and 46.5mm respectively.
When considering EDD and IDD, the class of the skeletal base is a good adjunct. In other words, EDD and IDD can either appear camouflaged or apparent given the skeletal base and the soft tissue profile accompanying it. For example, the drape of the upper lip can mask the maxillary deficiency to such an extent that it presents as a normal soft tissue profile (REF). Para-nasal hollowing is a key indicator of underlying maxillary deficiency. It is most common in class III patients, but can also present in some class II cases, with bilateral maxillary retrusion.
Assessing a patient for vertical and horizontal excess:
Arguably the main observation to carry out in a patient to assess maxillary excess or deficiency is the upper incisor/gum show when at rest and smiling. In other words, the relationship between the upper lip and upper central incisors when at rest and smiling. Ensure the patient's head posture is correct and the lips are at rest to establish the resting lip line. Similarly, to assess the incisor/gum show on smiling, the patient needs to fully smile to allow the upper lip to rise to its maximum height. The average showing of the incisors when the lips are at rest is 1/3 of its clinical crown height. With maxillary excess, more than 1/3 of the incisors would show. When the patient smiles, maxillary excess would manifest as the entire clinical crown and a portion of the gums showing as well. This is regarded as a ‘gummy smile.’
As alluded to previously, the paranasal region is important to consider when assessing a patient for IDD or EDD. Observing the patient from the side view allows a clearer perspective. A lack of bony support for the soft tissues in this region will subsequently produce the depression, known as paranasal hollowing. This indicates a low level antero-posterior maxillary deficiency. Maxillary deficiency usually manifests as an increased naso-labial angle, although this is not a credible indication due to factors such as a short upper lip and/or proclined incisors.
Another method to predict if a patient has maxillary deficiency is by the ‘scleral show and eyelid shape.’ The lower eyelid normally rests at the inferior border of the iris, without any sclera showing. If there is any sclera showing, then this is a good sign of infraorbital rim deficiency and maxillary antero-posterior deficiency, two manifestations that are usually seen in Class III patients.
Orientation
When a jaw is abnormally oriented, malrotations occur. These malrotations are classified according to the axis on which the abnormal rotation occurs. When a jaw is malrotated around the transverse facial axis, it is said to have abnormal pitch. When malrotated around the anteroposterior axis, the jaw has an abnormal roll, a condition also known as cant. Finally, when a jaw is malrotated around the vertical axis, it has abnormal yaw. It can occur in maxilla and/or mandible and could result due to abnormal growth of the jaws in itself or as compensatory growth.
Shape
Shape refers to figure, the geometric characteristic of an object that is not size, position, or orientation 5. A jaw with abnormal shape is said be distorted.
Completeness
Completeness means the wholeness of the jaw. When failure of tissues to fuse together that are forming early in pregnancy, defect can happen and jaw is incomplete. For example, cleft lip and palate when one of the jaw's embryological processes failed to fuse together or the agenesis of the condylar process of the mandible, which may be seen in hemifacial microsomia. Clinically, cleft palate presents as opening in the palate that can affect the front palate only or extending from the front to the back palate. Cleft lip is presented clinically with opening of the upper lip which can be a small slit on the upper lip or large opening connected to the nose. The cleft can be unilateral on the upper lip or bilaterally. Cleft lip can happen together with cleft palate.
Palatal clefts are one of the most common congenital abnormalities which occur in 1:2500 live births. Embryologically, palate formation takes place in two stages, with the primary palate formed after 6th week followed by secondary palate formation between sixth and eighth weeks. The palate will fuse with the medial nasal process to form the roof of the mouth in order to complete the developmental process. However, if this process is incomplete that is when developmental defect occur. Initially, it is just a common oro-nasal cavity within the embryo with nothing to separate the nose and mouth cavity. This space is occupied with tongue. The primary palate formed when medial nasal prominences fused together to form the intermaxillary segment to demarcate the oral from the nasal components. The formation of secondary palate starts with the growing of tissues vertically and mesially forming the right and left lateral palatal shelves. On the week 8, the tongue will be withdrawn downwards and the right and left lateral palatal shelves will be rapidly elevated, flipped into a horizontal orientation and fuse together from the front to the back two. The right and left lateral palatal shelves contact or fuse with each other at the midline to form the secondary palate two.
A lot of growth factors are actively involved in the signalling to the tissues during craniofacial development. These growth factors function to control the cells proliferation, survival and apoptosis. Some of the growth factors that can be implicated in the facial development resulting in craniofacial defect are BMP, FGF, Shh, Wnt and endothelins. One of the environmental factors that has been identified in mice study to have link to cleft lip is teratogen which can interfere the molecular signalling between the growth factors. However, the exact mechanism is still not clear. Another environmental factors that has been actively involved in studies to prevent cleft lip and palate occurrences is the intake of folic acid during pregnancy. 0.4 mg folic acid intake per day has been shown to reduce one third risk of cleft lip (with or without cleft palate) in babies. However, it seems had no apparent effect on the risk of cleft palate alone. There are also studies in mice and dogs reported the protective effect of folic acid supplementation to prevent cleft lip palate occurrence.
Treatment
Jaw abnormalities are commonly treated with combined surgical (orthognathic surgery) and orthodontic treatment. The procedure is carried out by oral and maxillofacial surgeons and orthodontists in close collaboration.
In most cases, the orthodontist will first align the teeth with braces or other appliances, which may worsen the occlusion until after the surgery. This is carried out to show the full degree of abnormality, and to create sufficient space for full correction in the bones.
Orthognathic surgery, also known as corrective jaw surgery, is performed to normalise dentofacial deformity and reposition part/all of the upper and/or lower jaws to improve occlusion stability and facial proportions. It is the 'mainstay treatment for patients who are too old for growth modification and for dentofacial conditions that are too severe for either surgical or orthodontic camouflage.'
The surgery usually involves gaining access to the bone from inside the mouth, revealing and moving the bone into a correct functional position, and fixing it in position with metal plates and screws. These plates are most often left in the bone, but at times require removal due to infection, which would require another operation. Most orthognathic surgeries are performed inside the mouth without any external scarring.
Mandibular surgery
There are numerous surgical techniques available to correct the position of the mandible. The most popular of these techniques is the sagittal split osteotomy which "enables the body of mandible to be moved forwards or backwards by sliding the split ramus and angle". This provides a lot of bone overlap for healing. Damage to the inferior alveolar bundle is avoided by sectioning the buccal and retromolar cortex of the mandible and the cancellous bone is carefully split. After the mandible has been repositioned, screws or mini-plates can be used to fix the mandible directly. This is instead of fixing it indirectly with intermaxillary fixation (IMF).
Genioplasty
Reduction or augmentation of the chin may be carried out either on its own or as part of a mandibular or maxillary orthognathic operation.
Maxillary surgery
The Le Fort classification (which is used for fracture description) generally describes the surgical techniques which are used for maxillary surgery.
References
External links
Jaw disorders | en |
doc-en-1618 | The Assassin's Creed media franchise, which primarily consists of a series of open-world action-adventure stealth video games published by Ubisoft, features an extensive cast of characters in its historical fiction and science fiction-based narratives. The series also encompasses a wide variety of media outside of video games, including novels, comic books, board games, animated films, a live-action film, and an upcoming television series for Netflix. The series features original characters intertwined with real-world historical events and figures, and is centered on a fictional millennia-old struggle for peace between the Assassin Brotherhood, inspired by the real-life Order of Assassins, who fight for peace and free will and embody the concept of chaos; and the Templar Order, inspired by the real-life Knights Templar, who desire peace through order and control, and embody the concept of order.
This article describes major historical and fictional characters of the series that appear in the video games and live-action film adaptation. Most video games in the Assassin's Creed series tend to feature standalone or self-contained stories told within a fictionalized version of real-world historical civilizations, with at least one lead character from that setting and time period; the vast majority of these characters are members of the Assassins or a related organization at one point in their lifetime. A convention established by the first game involves the player experiencing the lives of these characters as part of a simulation played by another in-game protagonist from the modern day era, using a technological device known as the Animus that is developed by Abstergo Industries, a corporate front of the Templar Order in the modern era.
The first five main series games feature modern-day protagonist Desmond Miles, a direct descendant of their respective lead characters who are members of familial lines that had sworn an allegiance to the Assassins. By exploring his ancestors' memories, Desmond searches for powerful artifacts called "Pieces of Eden", which are connected to the Isu (also known as the First Civilization or "Those Who Came Before"), a precursor race that created humanity to serve them; the Isu went extinct following a catastrophic event tens of thousands of years ago, but not before leaving behind clues to guide the human race to their technology, which could be used to prevent the same disaster from happenning in the future. Following the events of Assassin's Creed III, Abstergo develops a more advanced version of the Animus technology called the Helix, which is capable of exploring the genetic memories of any historical individual using their DNA samples without relying on the Animus user being a direct descendant of these individuals. From Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag to Assassin's Creed Syndicate, the player assumes control of unnamed research analysts working for the entertainment branch of Abstergo or the Assassin Brotherhood; the analysts are intended to be the embodiment of the player in the Assassin's Creed universe. From Assassin's Creed Origins to Assassin's Creed Valhalla, the modern-day protagonist is Layla Hassan, an ambitious former Abstergo employee who has developed a portable version of Animus technology, and who is eventually recruited to the Brotherhood.
Modern-day characters
Desmond Miles saga
Desmond Miles
Desmond Miles (voiced by Nolan North) (13 March 1987–21 December 2012) is the protagonist of the modern-day sections of the first five main games in the series. Born into the Assassin Brotherhood, he is a direct descendant of several prominent Assassins throughout history, including Aquilus, Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad, Ezio Auditore da Firenze, Edward Kenway, and Ratonhnaké:ton / Connor. Desmond was trained as an Assassin by his father, William, from a young age, but did not believe in the existence of the Assassins or the Templars and eventually ran away from home at the age of 16. He becomes a bartender in New York City, only to be abducted by Abstergo in 2012 because of his heritage. Desmond is forced to relive the memories of Altaïr to help Abstergo locate undiscovered Pieces of Eden, but eventually escapes with the Assassins' help. He then begins reliving Ezio and Connor's memories, to gain their skills through the "bleeding effect"—a side effect of the Animus where the user's memories blend in with their ancestor's—and to find more Pices of Eden. Initially, this is to keep them out of the Templars' hands, but after Desmond is warned by the Isu of the disaster that wiped them out, which is set to occur again at the end of 2012, he begins searching for the Isu's Grand Temple, which contains the technology to prevent it. Desmond eventually succeeds in his mission, but is killed by the Isu's technology while saving the planet. After his death, Abstergo uses DNA samples recovered from his body to continue their Animus projects. In Assassin's Creed Valhalla, it is revealed that Desmond did not truly die in 2012, but rather his consciousness was transported into "The Grey", a digital afterlife created by the Isu, where he became a being of pure light called The Reader, forgetting his original identity, and was tasked with analyzing various branching timelines to find ways of preventing future disasters.
Lucy Stillman
Lucy Stillman (voiced by Kristen Bell) (1988–10 October 2012) is a member of the modern-day Assassin Brotherhood and a genetic memory researcher for Abstergo Industries' Animus Project. During her infiltration of Abstergo, she reports on the company's recent activities to the Assassins. However, Lucy's lengthy separation from the Assassins and her distrust for William Miles leads her to defect to the Templar cause prior to 2011. When Desmond Miles is brought into Abstergo for testing, Warren instructs Lucy to earn Desmond's trust so that the Templars can find the Piece of Eden located within his memories and use it for their Eye-Abstergo satellite. As Desmond's condition begins to worsen, Warren and Lucy resort to more drastic measures, and formulate Project Siren. Lucy is ordered to take Desmond somewhere he would feel safe, and the two Templars orchestrate Desmond and her escape from Abstergo. Lucy carries out her orders and relocates Desmond to a hideout to join his fellow Assassins Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane. After a month and another relocation to the ruined Villa Auditore in Monteriggioni, the Assassin team discovers the location of an Apple of Eden, which is inside the Colosseum Vault. When Desmond's hand makes contact with the Apple, his body is possessed by the Isu Juno. With her knowledge of Lucy's true allegiance, Juno forces Desmond to stab and kill Lucy with his Hidden Blade. Desmond would later learn of Lucy's betrayal while involuntarily reliving the memories of Clay Kaczmarek, Subject 16 of the Animus Project.
Warren Vidic
Dr. Warren Vidic (voiced by Philip Proctor) (d. 14 December 2012) is the head of the Abstergo's Animus project and a member of the Inner Sanctum of the Templar Order. In Assassin's Creed: Bloodstone, he is introduced to Abstergo Industries by William King Harvey, a CIA director and double agent for the Templar Order. He inherits the Bluebird project by Colonel Boris Pash, which is the precursor of the Animus project. As the head of research for Abstergo, Vidic is put in charge of the genetic memory research and the Animus project. As the one responsible for finding new subjects for the Animus, Warren has them explore their genetic memories, which he would then analyze to gain information on both the Assassins and the Pieces of Eden. As a high-ranking employee of Abstergo Industries, Warren is one of the few members of the Inner Sanctum, a group of Templars with full awareness of the Orders' plans for their New World. He plays an important role in those plans, being tasked with finding a Piece of Eden to power Eye-Abstergo, a satellite which uses the Piece of Eden's power to control humanity. In Assassin's Creed III, after capturing William Miles, Vidic is killed by Desmond when the latter storms Abstergo's Rome facility to rescue his father. In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, an e-mail sent by Abstergo Entertainment COO Olivier Garneau reveals that Warren had volunteered as Subject 2 for his Animus Project, where he relived the life of an ancestor in 18th-century Hungary and of one of Joan of Arc's executioners in 1431.
Shaun Hastings
Shaun Hastings (voiced by Danny Wallace) (b. 1985) is a cynical, condescending, and pessimistic member of the modern-day Assassin Brotherhood, specializing in research and information handling. He is introduced as a member of Lucy Stillman's team that helps Desmond in his mission to find Pices of Eden and save the world. Through conversations in Assassin's Creed II, Desmond learns that Shaun was interested in conspiracies from an early age, and developed a love of history. Although he was unaware of the existence of modern-day Templars and Assassins, Shaun realized that there was some sort of power struggle going on. Shaun attempted to tell others about his findings, not realizing that the Templars would try to silence him. Rebecca Crane "rescued" Shaun and recruited him into the Brotherhood. This is mentioned as being unconventional, as most Assassins are born into the Order, not recruited. In 2013, following Desmond's death, Shaun infiltrates Abstergo by working as a coffee vendor at their Entertainment subsidiary in Montreal to find out what happened to Desmond's body. A year later, Shaun (under the alias "Deacon") and Bishop enlist the help of a Helix player to locate the remains of a Sage during the French Revolution. In 2015, with the help of the same player, Shaun and Rebecca infiltrate Abstergo's London headquarters and locate the Shroud of Eden hidden in a vault underneath the city, but lose it to the Templars after a struggle. In 2020, Shaun and Rebecca are assigned to work with Layla Hassan in investigating the strange strengthening of Earth's magnetic field.
Rebecca Crane
Rebecca Crane (voiced by Eliza Schneider) (b. 1984) is a member of the modern-day Assassin Brotherhood and the creator of the Animus 2.0, which she affectionately refers to as "Baby". She is introduced in Assassin's Creed II as a member of Lucy Stillman's team and works with Desmond towards finding Pieces of Eden and saving the world. She provides technical support for the other members of the Brotherhood alongside her fellow Assassin, Shaun. After Desmond's death, Rebecca works with Shaun to infiltrate Abstergo Entertainment as a courier. In 2015, Rebecca and Shaun head to London with fellow Assassin Galina Voronina to locate and extract the Shroud of Eden. Their efforts fail, and Rebecca is wounded when she takes a shot meant for Shaun. The trio manages to escape after Galina dispatches most of the Abstergo agents surrounding them. In 2020, Rebecca and Shaun are assigned to work with Layla Hassan in investigating the strange strengthening of Earth's magnetic field.
William Miles
William Miles (voiced by John de Lancie) (b. 1948) is Desmond's estranged father and de facto leader of the modern-day Assassin Brotherhood, having risen to the position following the death of the Mentor in 2000. He raised Desmond in the ways of the Assassins, teaching him about the order and what they fight for. William's first appearance is in the ending scene Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, where he can be heard telling his fellow Assassins to put Desmond in the Animus to save his mind after the latter has fallen into a coma. In Assassin's Creed: Revelations, he can be heard talking with Rebecca and Shaun during Desmond's time in the Animus Black Room, explaining Desmond's importance to the Assassins due to his ability to wield the Apple of Eden properly. He questions Rebecca and Shaun if Desmond and Lucy were close, and feels sad about Lucy's death. He is the first person to greet Desmond after recovering from his coma. In Assassin's Creed III, William and his team arrive at the Isu Grand Temple and search for power cells to activate it while Desmond is in the Animus, exploring his ancestors' memories to find the key to the Temple's Inner Chambers. He is captured by Abstergo agents in Egypt while attempting to retrieve a power cell and is taken to their facility in Rome. Desmond infiltrates the facility and rescues William, reconciling with him in the process. Following Desmond's death, a grief-stricken William retires from the position of Mentor of the Brotherhood and goes into hiding, but eventually reclaims the title in 2015. In Assassin's Creed Origins, William travels to Egypt to recruit Layla Hassan to the Assassins.
Clay Kaczmarek (Subject 16)
Clay Kaczmarek (voiced by Cam Clarke in Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and by Graham Cuthbertson in Assassin's Creed: Revelations) (1982–8 August 2012), also known as Subject 16 of the Animus Project, is a member of the modern-day Assassin Brotherhood and a descendant of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Born into a family of engineers, Clay faces psychological problems due to developmental disorders and his father's neglectful attitude, and runs into the Assassins while looking for acceptance. As a member of the Brotherhood, Clay's most important mission is to infiltrate Abstergo Industries as a subject of the Animus Project to obtain more information on the Animus. Labeled Subject 16, Clay is forced to relive the memories of his ancestors via his genetic memory. When Clay finds out that his teammate, Lucy Stillman—who infiltrated Abstergo years before and was tasked with getting Clay out of Abstergo safely—had abandoned their cause to join their enemies, the Templars, Clay spends days and hours of sessions inside the Animus. Since it leaves his mind incapable of separating his own personality from those of his ancestors', Clay becomes mentally unstable to the point that he commits suicide. After his alleged suicide, Clay continues to exist as an AI recreation of his personality within the Animus, and is able to manipulate much of the Animus' programming from within to help Desmond. In Assassin's Creed: Revelations, when the Animus begins to delete excess data after Desmond achieves full synchronization with Altaïr and Ezio, Clay sacrifices himself to help Desmond escape the Animus, though not before passing on his genetic memories to him.
Daniel Cross
Daniel Cross (voiced by Danny Blanco-Hall) (9 March 1974–14 December 2012) is a member of the Templar Order and a sleeper agent tasked with infiltrating the Assassin Brotherhood to assassinate its Mentor. He is the grandson of Innokenti Orelov and the great-grandson of Nikolai Orelov, a prominent member of the Russian Assassin Brotherhood. Cross is responsible for the Great Purge of 2000, in which most of the modern Assassin Brotherhood was killed. He is introduced as the modern-day protagonist of the comic book series Assassin's Creed: The Fall, and makes his first on-screen appearance in Assassin's Creed III, where he is assigned the task of hunting down Desmond Miles. Cross is ultimately killed by Desmond when the latter storms Abstergo's Rome facility to rescue his father.
Research analyst / Helix player saga
Erudito
Erudito is a hacking collective that works against Abstergo Industries, being aware of its true nature. The collective's primary goal is to expose the truths censored by Abstergo in its products, in order to make the general public aware of the Assassin-Templar conflict. This can be seen in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation, where they contact the unnamed player character during their playthrough of Abstergo's newest video game, Liberation, and help them uncensor it. Because of their similar goals, Erudito would at times work with the Assassins against the Templars.
Abstergo research analyst
The Abstergo research analyst, nicknamed "Noob", is the modern-day protagonist of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. They are never seen or referred to by name, being controlled from a first-person perspective, because they are meant to be embodiment of the player in the Assassin's Creed universe. In 2013, the analyst is hired by Abstergo Entertainment, a subsidiary of Abstergo Industries that produces multimedia goods to be sold to the general public, and is assigned to work on the Sample 17 Project, consisting of various products based on the genetic memories of the late Desmond Miles' ancestors. The analyst relives the memories of Edward Kenway to collect footage for an upcoming interactive film, but during their work, they are contacted by John Standish, who persuades them to investigate Abstergo and recover sensitive information on the company, which is then delivered to Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane to help the Assassins. Although the analyst soon becomes suspicious of John's motives, they are blackmailed into pushing forward, eventually hacking a terminal which would allow Juno to come back to life by possessing someone. However, Juno is not strong enough yet to possess the analyst, so John tries to weaken them with poison, but is killed by Abstergo's security forces before he could do so. The analyst is then allowed to return to work, as evidence found on John's computer implicated him as the sole person responsible for the hacks. However, they would eventually resign by November 2014.
Helix research analyst
The Helix research analyst, nicknamed "Numbskull", is the modern-day protagonist of Assassin's Creed Rogue. Similarly to the analyst from Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, they are never seen or referred to by name, and are controlled from a first-person perspective. In 2014, the analyst is hired by Abstergo Entertainment to use their Helix software to relive the memories of Shay Patrick Cormac, but inadvertently trips a hidden memory file that infects the Animus servers. After cleaning them, the analyst is thanked for their services, and invited to join the Templar Order, or be killed to keep the order's existence secret; their decision is not revealed.
Helix player / The Initiate
The Helix player, referred to as "The Initiate" after their induction into the Assassin Brotherhood, is the modern-day protagonist of Assassin's Creed Unity and Assassin's Creed Syndicate. They are an individual contacted by the Assassins through their agent, Bishop, to help them on at least two separate occasions: once in 2014, when they located the body of François-Thomas Germain, an 18th-century Sage, by reliving the memories of Arno Dorian through the Helix software they own; and again in 2015, when they relived Jacob and Evie Frye's memories to find the Shroud of Eden in London.
Melanie Lemay
Melanie Lemay (voiced by Cristina Rosato) is the research analyst's supervisor at Abstergo Entertainment in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and a member of the Templar Order. In 2013, she is assigned to oversee the Sample 17 Project alongside Olivier Garneau. Sometime between Garneau's disappearance and the events of Assassin's Creed Rogue in 2014, she is promoted to CCO.
Olivier Garneau
Oliviear Garneau (voiced by Vincent Hoss-Desmarais) (d. 30 May 2014) is the CCO of Abstergo Entertainment and a member of the Templar Order. In 2013, he is ordered by Laetitia England, the Head of the Operations Division of Abstergo Industries, to use the Sample 17 Project to locate the Observatory for the Templars. While en route to a shareholders meeting in Chicago, he goes missing and is never heard from again. In Assassin's Creed Origins, it is revealed that he was killed by a fixer, likely hired by the Assassin Brotherhood. This is a reference to the video game Watch Dogs, set in Chicago, where a side mission involves the protagonist, Aiden Pearce, taking down Garneau.
John Standish
John Standish (voiced by Oliver Milburn) (16 August 1975–26 November 2013) is the head of the IT department at Abstergo Entertainment's Montreal facility and a member of the Instruments of the First Will, a cult of followers of Juno who seek to bring her back to life. He is also a Sage, the reincarnation of Juno's husband Aita. During his work at Abstergo, he uses other employees, to whom he grants access to restricted areas of the company, to retrieve sensitive information and deliver it to the Assassins, while covering his involvement. In 2013, during the events of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, he does the same with the newly-hired research analyst, but also secretly plots to have them possessed by Juno. However, when the time it comes time to put his plan into action, he discovers Juno is not strong enough to return yet. John then tries to poison the analyst to make them weak enough for Juno to enter their body, but is shot and killed by Abstergo's security forces.
Juhani Otso Berg
Juhani Otso Berg (voiced by Andreas Apergis) (b. 17 June 1985) is a high-ranking agent of the Operations Division of Abstergo Industries and a member of the Inner Sanctum of the Templar Order. After appearing as a faceless playable character in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's and Assassin's Creed: Revelations' multiplayer modes, he makes his on-scren debut in Assassin's Creed Rogue. A former member of the Finnish Special Forces-turned-mercenary, Berg is approached by Warren Vidic in 2010 to join Abstergo, who in return provides cystic fibrosis treatment for his daughter. By 2012, Berg rises to the rank of Master Templar, joins the Inner Sanctum, and becomes the leader of Abstergo's elite commando unit, Sigma Team. Berg is the one who captures William in Cairo during the events of Assassin's Creed III. He also oversees the genetic research of Shay's memories in Assassin's Creed Rogue alongside Templar colleagues Violet de Costa and Melanie Lemay before aiding the Abstergo search for the Shroud of Eden in 2015 during Assassin's Creed Syndicate. During his work for Abstergo he crosses paths with and fights Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane, as well as Russian Master Assassin Galina Voronina. In 2018, during the events of Assassin's Creed Odyssey's The Fate of Atlantis DLC, Berg leads Sigma Team to Greece to kill Layla Hassan and retrieve the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, but they are defeated and Berg himself is crippled by Layla with the Staff. He is then taken prisoner by the Assassins, but eventually returns to Abstergo, where he is able to regain use of his legs through experimentation with a Staff of Eden.
Violet da Costa
Violet de Costa (voiced by Lucinda Davis) (14 June 1988–August 2018) is a member of the Templar Order and Sigma Team's historical research specialist. She oversees the genetic research of Shay Cormac's memories during Assassin's Creed Rogue, guiding the Helix researcher and inviting them to join the Templar Order at the game's conclusion. She later participates in the search for the Shroud of Eden in 2015, accompanying Berg and Isabelle Ardant, and fighting off Shaun, Rebecca, and Galina who are also pursuing the Shroud. Distracted by Berg and the rest of Sigma Team, the Assassins are unable to stop Violet escaping with the Shroud. Violet is revealed to be a member of the Instruments of the First Will, a human cult devoted to returning humanity to obedience under the Isu, namely Juno. She is killed in 2018 by Berg for her betrayal during the fall of the Instruments of the First Will.
Bishop
Bishop (voiced by Kate Todd) is a member of the modern-day Assassin Brotherhood who is responsible for directing Assassin activity across the globe, often to sabotage the Templars. When the Brotherhood requires sets of genetic memories explored to acquire data, she contacts various individuals around the world to do so, as seen in Assassin's Creed Unity and Assassin's Creed Syndicate.
Isabelle Ardant
Isabelle Ardant (voiced by Claudia Besso) (4 October 1969–25 October 2015) is the Head of Historical Research at Abstergo Industries and a member of the Inner Sanctum of the Templar Order. In 2015, during the events of Assassin's Creed Syndicate, she leads the Templars' search for the Shroud of Eden in London, which culminates with a fight against Assassins Shaun Hastings, Rebecca Crane and Galina Voronina, who are also attempting to retrieve the Shroud. During the struggle, Ardant is stabbed and killed by Shaun.
Álvaro Gramática
Álvaro Gramática (voiced by Marcel Jeannin) (4 April 1965–August 2018) is the Director of Research of the Future Technology division of Abstergo Industries and a member of the Inner Sanctum of the Templar Order. As one of Abstergo's leading scientists, he is in charge of Phoenix Project, which is Abstergo's attempt to construct a living Isu, and has extensive knowledge of the Pieces of Eden. He is killed in 2018 during the fall of the Instruments of the First Will.
Galina Voronina
Galina Voronina (voiced by Patricia Summersett) (b. 30 July 1983) is a member of the Russian Brotherhood of Assassins. She appears as one of the main characters of the Assassin's Creed comic book series, and makes her on-screen debut in Assassin's Creed Syndicate.
Layla Hassan saga
Layla Hassan
Layla Hassan (voiced by Chantel Riley) (1984–16 August 2020) is the modern-day protagonist of Assassin's Creed Origins, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Hailing from Egypt, Layla found work at Abstergo through Sofia Rikkin and created her own portable version of the Animus technology. However, she leaves the company in 2017, after Abstergo attempts to silence her for using the Animus to relive Bayek of Siwa's memories and learn about the origins of the Assassin Brotherhood. She is then recruited into the Brotherhood by William Miles, and begins searching for Pieces of Eden that would benefit the Assassins. In 2018, she finds the lost Isu city of Atlantis, where she receives the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus from Kassandra. However, while training with the Staff under the supervision of the Isu Aletheia, she loses control and accidentally kills her friend and fellow Assassin Victoria Bibeau. This incident deeply affects Layla, and, filled with guilt and remorse, she becomes depressed and starts self-destructive behavior. It also strains her relationship with the other Assassins, and by 2020, she is reassigned to an Assassin cell with Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane. While investigating the strange strengthening of Earth's magnetic field, Layla relives the memories of Eivor Varinsdottir to find an Isu temple in Norway, which contains the technology to save the planet from destruction. Armed with the Staff, which protects her from the radiation inside the temple, Layla enters "The Grey", a digital afterlife created by the Isu, where she works with "The Reader" to restore the Earth's magnetic field to its proper strength. However, having dropped the Staff when she entered the Grey, Layla's physical body dies, and she chooses to stay with the Reader and help him explore various branching timelines to find ways of preventing future disasters.
Historical characters
Characters of Assassin's Creed
Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad
Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad (voiced by Philip Shahbaz in Assassin's Creed, and by Cas Anvar in Assassin's Creed Revelations) (11 January 1165–12 August 1257) is a Syrian-born member of the Levantine Brotherhood of Assassins who serves as Mentor from 1191 until his death in 1257. During his tenure as Mentor and its brief interregnum, Altaïr makes several discoveries and inventions that greatly helps the Order's progression. Under his leadership the Levantine Assassins' spread their influence across the Old World, setting up many guilds in cities like Constantinople. With the Apple of Eden in hand, Altaïr changes the way members of his Order live their lives, writing the details in his fabled Codex for later generations of the Order to read. Throughout his travels, Altaïr strengthens his Order, stops various Templar plots over the years, and stops Genghis Khan's march. In 1257, Altaïr dies sitting quietly in his chair in his secret library in Masyaf, and is found centuries later, in 1512, by Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Altaïr is an ancestor to Desmond Miles through the maternal line.
Abbas Sofian
Abbas Sofian (voiced by Nolan North in Assassin's Creed and by Yerman Gur in Assassin's Creed: Revelations) (1166–1247) is a Syrian Assassin during the Middle Ages, and the Mentor of the Levantine Assassins from 1227 until his death. His leadership over the Levantine Brotherhood shows a period of corruption and disregard for the Order's Creed, resulting in the decline of their castle in Masyaf and its villagers fearing and secretly loathing the Assassins. Raised as an Assassin from birth alongside Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, the two became best friends during their childhood. However, after Altaïr reveals to Abbas that his father, Ahmad Sofian, had killed himself instead of leaving the Order as Abbas had believed, he labels Altaïr a liar, and develops a lifelong hatred for him. After Altaïr kills their former Mentor, Rashid ad-Din Sinan (Al Mualim), Abbas stands against Altaïr, who wants to become the Order's new leader. He eventually repents and keeps a low profile during Altaïr's time as Mentor. When Altaïr and his family leave for Mongolia to deal with the threat presented by Genghis Khan, Abbas stages a secret coup d'état against the Order; kills Altaïr's younger son, Sef Ibn-La'Ahad; and frames Altaïr's best friend and right-hand man, Malik Al-Sayf, who is thrown into prison. With Sef and Malik out of the way, Abbas holds the most power over the Order, and he implements a council into the Brotherhood with himself as its head. Eventually, he disbands the council, usurping the title of Mentor, and becomes the sole leader of the Levantine Assassins. Under Abbas' leadership, the Order declines and becomes corrupt. Additionally, Abbas spends most of his time hiding in Masyaf's fortress, fearing for his life. After Altaïr returns from his exile, the Assassins join him again, and Abbas is killed by one of Altaïr's newest weapons.
Abu'l Nuqoud
Abu'l Nuqoud (voiced by Fred Tatasciore) is Damascus' Saracen merchant king. He invites many Damascan citizens to a grand party, where attendants receive goblets to get wine from a wine fountain he set up in the partying area.
Malik Al-Sayf
Malik Al-Sayf (1165–1228) is a member of the Assassin Brotherhood in Syria during the High Middle Ages. Trained from an early age in the ways of the Brotherhood, he attains a high rank by 1191. Raised to be an Assassin, Malik learns the fighting arts that strikes fear into the hearts of their enemies. He is an excellent swordsman, a devoted acolyte to the Creed, and a caring adult figure to his brother, Kadar. He is a rival of Altaïr, whom he often berates for disobeying the tenets of the Assassin's Creed.
In 1191, Altaïr, Malik, and Kadar go to Solomon's Temple to retrieve a relic. His jealousy turns into hatred when Altaïr ignores the tenets of the Creed, endangers his companions' lives during the events of Solomon's Temple, and subsequently botches a mission, which results in Kadar's death, and the injury and subsequent amputation of Malik's arm. Malik retrieves the Templar treasure that Altaïr failed to find and delivers it to Al Mualim. No longer able to operate as an Assassin, Malik is made the bureau leader of the Jerusalem Assassins. At first he is bitter towards Altaïr, but over time forgives him and acknowledges his own fault in his brother's death. When Altaïr returns to confront Al Mualim, Malik supports him, distracting the indoctrinated Assassins while Altaïr faces Al Mualim. After Al Mualim's death, Malik rushes to Altaïr's side as the piece of Eden is activated. Altaïr makes Malik his close second-in-command after becoming the Mentor. Malik is appointed as a temporary leader in Altaïr's absence, and sometime after this, Abbas Sofian imprisons him in Masyaf's dungeons for almost two years with false charges of murder, and has him beheaded when Altaïr returns from his quest across the Middle East.
In 1217 Sef ibn La'Ahad and Malik leave Masyaf to fight against Genghis Khan. He is not seen again for the rest of the series, but he is written off in Assassin's Creed II. Altaïr mentions his death at the hands of Abbas in Assassin's Creed: Revelations.
Malik is voiced by Haaz Sleiman.
Kadar Al-Sayf
Kadar Al-Sayf is the brother of Malik Al-Sayf.
Maria Thorpe (voiced by Eleanor Noble) (1160–1228) is an English noblewoman who becomes a Templar steward, and later the wife of Altaïr. As a child, Maria rejected the gender norms of her time, ultimately being disowned by her parents after annulling her arranged marriage. Seeking to fight in the Third Crusade, she disguises herself as a man and attempts to join the Templar order. The Templar master, Robert De Sablé, sees through her ruse, but is impressed by her determination and hires her as his steward. Robert deduces that Altaïr would come for him, so he has Maria serve as a decoy to buy him time. Although she expected Altaïr to kill her, he spares her instead, and warns her not to follow him. After Robert is assassinated, Maria becomes obsessed with revenge. She tracks Altaïr to Acre, but he bests her again and takes her prisoner. She escapes in an attempt to join the Templar's new leader, Armand Bouchart, but because of her failure to kill Altaïr, and her "miraculous" escape from him, he perceives her to be either incompetent or a traitor to the Order. He places a bounty on both her and Altaïr, forcing them to work together. They fall in love after Armand's defeat. Maria renounces the Templars and becomes Altaïr's wife, giving birth to two sons, Darim and Sef. Maria joins Altaïr and Darim in a mission to Mongolia to halt the advance of Genghis Khan. While they are away, Abbas murders Sef. Maria and Altaïr confront Abbas, and Maria is killed in the ensuing fight. Her last words to her husband are "Strength, Altaïr..."
Garnier de Naplouse
Garnier de Naplouse (voiced by Hubert Fielden) is a French nobleman and the tenth Grand Master of the Knights Hospitalier in Acre. He experiments on and tortures innocent people and lunatics he picks up off the streets of Acre, claiming they are his children and that he is helping them. He transformed Acre Fortress into a hospital and is killed by Altaïr inside it.
Ibn Jubayr
Ibn Jubayr (voiced by Fred Tatasciore) is a chief scholar of the Saracens in Damascus and leader of "The Illuminated". He plans to have all texts in Damascus burned, claiming that these texts lead people astray. He is killed by Altaïr during one of his public purges.
Al Mualim
Rashid ad-Din Sinan, commonly known as Al Mualim (Arabic: "The Teacher") (voiced by Peter Renaday) or The Old Man of the Mountain, is based on his real-life counterpart, the Iraqi-born Hashshashin leader in the Syrian town of Masyaf. He appears in Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade. He is the Assassin Mentor who secretly leads a double life as a Templar; he is a wizened old man whom Altaïr sees as a father figure. After Altaïr breaks all three tenets of the Assassin's Creed in one mission, Al Mualim reduces Altaïr to the rank of an initiate, and gives him a list of nine men to kill in order for Altaïr to redeem himself and bring an end to the Crusade. Altaïr kills "rival" members of the Templar Order so that Al Mualim can keep the Piece of Eden for himself. Altaïr assassinates the ninth target, Robert de Sablé, but with his dying breath, he tells Altaïr about Al Mualim's true plans. Altaïr returns to Masyaf to find that the citizens are being controlled by the Apple, wielded by Al Mualim. Al Mualim himself has broken all three tenets of the Creed, leading to a fight between himself and Altaïr, and after a lengthy battle Al Mualim is killed by Altaïr, who takes possession of The Apple.
Al Mualim returns in Assassin's Creed: Revelations in one of Altaïr's memories. In the memory, Altaïr burns Al Mualim's body on a pyre, ensuring that he can never return. It is a move that unnerves many of the other Assassins, but Altaïr is forgiven and accepted as the new master.
Richard the Lionheart
Richard I of England (voiced by Marcel Jeannin) (1157–1199), commonly known as Richard the Lionheart, is the King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199. He is the second monarch of the House of Plantagenet, the commander of the Crusader army during the Third Crusade, and is considered a great military leader and warrior. Upon his death, he is succeeded as King of England by his younger brother, John. Under Richard, the Crusaders eventually reach Arsuf, where they engage Saladin's army and are approached by Altaïr. Altaïr claims that Robert intends to betray the king, but Robert insists that Altaïr's story is a ruse to keep Richard from interfering in the Assassin's mission. Unsure on whom to believe, Richard leaves the decision in the hands of God, declaring that Robert and his Templars are to fight Altaïr in a trial by combat. Altaïr wins, and Richard accepts the Assassin's version of events.
Robert de Sablé
Robert de Sablé (voiced by Jean-Philippe Dandenaud) appears in Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade. He is a French lieutenant under Richard the Lionheart, and Grand Master of the Knights Templar during the Third Crusade. Born into a powerful family, Robert is immersed into nobility from birth, though events during his life are difficult to pin down; at some point he becomes lord and ruler of Briollay, France. Subsequently, he joins the Knights Templar and reigns as their Grand Master from 1191 to 1193. During the Third Crusade, Robert and the Knights Templar lay siege to the city of Acre and conquer it; throughout August 1191, they recapture many fortresses and cities along the Palestinian coast, which have been lost previously. Robert follows a goal similar to the Assassins (to end the war in the Holy Land). Al Mualim has no objections against him ending the Crusade, but is against the way Robert attempts to do so—the Assassins would have people find peace themselves, but the Templars would force their "peace" onto others and attempt to control them.
Sibrand
Sibrand (voiced by Arthur Holden) is a German Crusader and the first Grand Master of the Teutonic Order in Acre, who intends to have all ships submitted to him be used in a blockade against King Richard, but is killed on his personal ship by Altaïr.
William of Montferrat
William V, Marquess of Montferrat (voiced by Harry Standjofski), also known as Guglielmo V del Monferrato in Italy, is an Italian Crusader and Richard the Lionheart's regent in Acre. He plans to kill Richard and give Acre to his son Conrad of Montferrat, and makes his plans inside Acre's Citadel.
Characters of Assassin's Creed: Lineage, II and II: Discovery
Ezio Auditore da Firenze
Ezio Auditore da Firenze (voiced by Roger Craig Smith) (1459–1524) is an Italian nobleman from Florence during the Renaissance and unknown to most historians and philosophers, the Mentor of the Italian Brotherhood of Assassins, a title that he holds from 1503 to 1513. He dies in 1524 while sitting on a bench in a market. Moments before his death a mysterious man sits with him and tells him to stay strong. The man's identity remains unknown. He is an ancestor to William and Desmond Miles, and Clay Kaczmarek. Ezio appears in Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, and Assassin's Creed: Revelations. He is the main character of the short Assassin's Creed: Embers.
Federico Auditore
Federico Auditore (voiced by Elias Toufexis) was a noble born in 1456. He is the older brother of the Auditore family. In 1475 he enters the Medici bank as a clerk, but in 1476 is removed from the bank's payroll (on 17 September 1475 a bag of gold florins went missing). He fights with Ezio against Vieri de Pazzi, visits a doctor to treat his wound, and races to the top of Santa Trinita. His father Giovanni and his brother Petruccio are captured and hanged at the Palazzo della Signoria in 1476 by Uberto Alberti and Rodrigo Borgia.
Federico Auditore is an original character. He is played by Jesse Rath in Assassin's Creed: Lineage (2009).
Vieri de' Pazzi
Vieri de' Pazzi (1459–14 April 1478) is a nobleman and the youngest member of the Pazzi family. He spends his father's money frivolously on weaponry, exotic animals and clothes. Fiercely competitive, he hosts running races, boating and horseback riding, but all of them are rigged; when he loses, he invites the winner's entire family for a victory poisoned dinner. He is trained by his father, Francesco, and in 1474 works with him to take over Florence. On 14 April 1478 he is killed by Ezio.
Cristina Vespucci
Cristina Vespucci (voiced by Amber Goldfarb) (1459–1498) is a well-known Florentine beauty, and a favorite of painters; most notably Sandro Botticelli, who uses her as a model for several of his paintings. She is introduced in Assassin's Creed II, though most of her story is told during the "Repressed Memory Sequences" from Brotherhood. She is the cousin of the Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. She is Ezio's first love interest. When he has to leave for Monteriggioni, he asks Cristina to come with him, but she refuses, as she does not want to leave her family behind. Ezio accepts her decision and gives her a pendant to remember him. In 1478, Cristina marries Manfredo Soderini, more because of her father's will than her own. The day before their wedding, Ezio returns to Florence and visits Cristina, unaware of the direction her life has taken. Cristina tells Ezio she did not expect him to return and reveals her engagement. Even though he is heartbroken, Ezio appeals to Manfredo's conscience, and tells him to stop gambling and be a good husband. After Lorenzo de' Medici's death in 1494, Girolamo Savonarola takes control of Florence and starts the Falò delle vanità (Bonfire of the Vanities). Because of their rich fineries, the home of Cristina and Manfredo are attacked by Savonarola's fanatics. Ezio comes to her aid, but she is mortally wounded. Cristina shows him the pendant he gave her twenty-two years ago, and says she wished for another chance with him before dying in his arms.
Cristina Vespucci is based on real life historical figure Simonetta Vespucci.
Giovanni Auditore
Giovanni Auditore (3 May 1436 – 29 December 1476) is Ezio's father, and a banker, advisor, and nobleman who is a pivotal figure in Florentine banking. Giovanni oversees the Medici bank branches across Italy, and when Lorenzo was busy, he ran the bank. He extends his reach into the bank's international operations, and notices the problems with the Lyon bank, which Francesco Sassetti saves. In 1471 he secures the negotiations between the Pope and the Medici bank. The character is based on Giovanni Villani.
Claudia Auditore
Claudia Auditore (voiced by Angela Galuppo) (b. 1461) is a Flortentine Italian noblewoman during the Renaissance, and a member of the Assassin Order. She is Ezio's sister. In 1476, Claudia becomes the financial accountant of the town of Monteriggioni, which is under the leadership of her uncle, Mario Auditore. The town flourishes with Claudia's organization and the money made from Monteriggioni's shops and organizations. In January 1500, Monteriggioni is besieged and largely destroyed by the Borgia army commanded by Cesare Borgia, which leave the Auditores homeless. Going against Ezio's desire for them to return to their hometown of Florence, Claudia and Maria follow Ezio to Rome, where the former becomes the madame of the Rosa in Fiore, the city's most popular brothel. After proving herself to be a worthy fighter to her brother, Ezio inducts Claudia into the Order of Assassins. The following year, Claudia is captured by Borgia die-hards, and is subsequently saved by Ezio and Niccolò Machiavelli. During this time, she steps down as the madame, and stays in Florence with her friend Paola to recover until 1507. Claudia is given temporary control of the Italian Assassins in 1510 when her brother leaves on a journey to the Middle East to find Altaïr's library, which is said to be in Masyaf. She holds the position until her brother returnes in late 1512, after which Ezio resigns from the Order and assigns a successor.
Maria Auditore
Maria Auditore (1432–1504) is a writer and noble. She was born into the Mozzi, a powerful banking family. She is one of the most famous historical sources of the time period due to her multi-volume diary, which has been translated by several notable scholars and is on display in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. With funding from her parents, she opened up a bakery in the courtyard of her family palazzo, which she transformed into an artistic gathering place. In 1448, she meets Giovanni Auditore, and marries him in 1450.
Petruccio Auditore
Petruccio Auditore (1463 – 29 December 1476) is a student and noble, youngest of the Auditore family. In 1475 he is pulled from school due to illness and confined to a bed. He was executed along with father,Giovanni Auditore and brother in Piazzo in Florence.
Annetta
Annetta (1457–1511) is the Auditore family's live-in servant.
Lorenzo de' Medici
Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance. Known as il Magnifico (the Magnificent) by contemporary Florentines, he was a diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists, and poets. His life coincided with the high point of the early Italian Renaissance; his death marked the end of the Golden Age of Florence. The fragile peace he helped maintain between the various Italian states collapsed with his death. Lorenzo de' Medici is buried next to his brother Giuliano in the Medici Chapel in Florence.
In the game, Lorenzo is secretly an ally of the Assassins, particularly the House of Auditore. Lorenzo works closely with Giovanni against the corrupt Borgia. After Giovanni's death, Lorenzo is saved by Ezio during the Pazzi conspiracy, which starts a long-term relationship between them, with Ezio carrying out several assassination contracts in cities for him.
Mario Auditore
Mario Auditore (19 March 1434 – 2 January 1500) is a condottiero and nobleman who stays at Villa Auditore in Monteriggioni and patrols the Tuscan countryside. In 1440 he starts his military career when he fights in the Battle of Anghiari: on an expedition to Monterchi with his father, he alerts Micheletto Attendolo to the surprise advance of Milanese troops. The attack is foiled and the Florentines win the battle. He then defends Monteriggioni's interests by derailing Florentine attempts to seize Tuscan territory.
After Giovanni's death, he brings his children to the Villa and teaches Ezio about the conflict between Assassins and Templars.
Paola
Paola (1438–after 1512) is the madame of La Rosa Colta. In 1446 she was orphaned when her parents were killed at sea, so she began her life of prostitution on the streets until 1454. In 1458 she is arrested for murdering a city guard, and Giovanni represented her in court, winning the case on a self-defence plea. She is released from prison and starts her own brothel to protect other unfortunate women of the street.
Uberto Alberti
A friend to the Auditore family, he is a self taught lawyer who arrests Giovanni, Federico, and Petruccio Auditore, and sentences them and Ezio to death. After the arrest, Ezio is sent by his father to find documents to give to Uberto to prove his innocence, but he betrays them. He is assassinated by Ezio Auditore at Santa Croce, Florence, in 1476. After his assassination, Ezio escapes with Maria and Claudia to Villa Auditore in Monteriggioni, which is owned by his uncle Mario.
Uberto is played by Michel Perron in Assassin's Creed: Lineage (2009). His death is considered one of the most satisfying deaths in videogames.
Caterina Sforza
Caterina Sforza (1463–1509) was the Countess of Forlì and Imola, and the daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan. She was engaged to Pope Sixtus IV's nephew, Girolamo Riario, at only 10 years of age, and consummated the marriage at 14.
As the countess of Forlì, she becomes a strong ally of the Assassin Order, meeting Ezio after her husband Girolamo traps her on a small island in Romagna. Eight years later, Caterina has the Orsi brothers kill her husband after finding out that he was working for the Templars and being a poor husband. Caterina offers to keep the Apple of Eden safe in Forlì, but she, Ezio, and Niccolò find the city taken by the Orsi brothers, who were hired by the Templars. Retaking the city, Ezio saves Caterina's children from the Orsi and kills them, though the Apple is taken from him by a mysterious monk. Caterina travels to the Italian Assassins' headquarters in Monteriggioni, requesting help against Cesare Borgia's army. Monteriggioni is besieged by Cesare the next day, causing the town to be destroyed and Caterina to be captured. The next year, Caterina is transported to the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome to be jailed. Ezio infiltrates the Castel to kill Cesare and Rodrigo Borgia, and frees Caterina with a key taken from Lucrezia Borgia after learning the two are absent. A few weeks later, Caterina returns to Florence to await the restoration of her lands.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (voiced by Carlos Ferro) (1452–1519), better known as Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian Renaissance polymath.
His lifelong friendship with Ezio begins when Maria has Ezio help Leonardo move some paintings from his new workshop. Leonardo comments that his current work lacks purpose, but Maria is confident that he will go on to do great things. After Ezio's father and brothers are murdered by Rodrigo Borgia's men, Ezio brings two objects from his father's study to Leonardo: a broken hidden blade and a page from the Codex written by Altaïr. Leonardo repairs the blade and deciphers the codex, fascinated by the technological secrets it alludes to. As Ezio continues his Assassin training, Leonardo makes several upgrades to Ezio's weapons and armor, including a poison blade, a gun, and a poison dart launcher. Some time after Ezio foils the Pazzi conspiracy, Leonardo receives a commission from a Venetian noble, prompting him to set up a new workshop in Venice. As Ezio had his own business in the city, he accompanies him. Leonardo develops an interest in flight, and invents an experimental flying machine, which Ezio uses on one of his missions. After seeing the Apple of Eden, Leonardo marvels at the futuristic visions it shows him. He then develops an interest in Pythagoras's findings, and is able to create a map leading to a temple built by his followers. Leonardo is blackmailed by Cesare into designing Templar war machines, but secretly continues to support Ezio until he is kidnapped by a third party, the Cult of Hermes, who want him to lead them to the Temple of Pythagoras. He is rescued by Ezio and explores the temple, fascinated by the numeric codes found within. Although Leonardo does not appear in Assassin's Creed: Revelations, the novelization describes him dying peacefully at his home in Amboise, with his friends (including Ezio, who is retired from the Assassins) at his side. In Assassin's Creed III, the Darvenport Homestead's residential carpenter obtain some of Leonardo's blueprints and, at Connor's request, builds a prototype replica of the original flying machine.
Alvise da Vilandino
Alvise da Vilandino (1441–1550s) is a Venetian baggage handler who enlists in the navy. In 1500 he is tasked with defending the fortress of Modon from the Turks. After a heavy night of drinking, he wakes to Turkish cannon fire bombarding the town. Panicking while running across the deck, he trips, hits his head, and drowns. He is accused of negligence by the ship's captain and erased from the logs of the navy.
Antonio de Magianis
Antonio de Magianis (born 1443) is the leader of the Gilda dei Ladri di Venezia. He was born at the very bottom of Venetian society, son of a cobbler, while his mother was a live-in maid for the Bellini family. He teaches himself to read and write between the apprenticeship sessions with his father, then applies to the University of Padua. He is denied due to his low social rank, and is denied by other schools in Italy. In 1469 he robs a noble Venetian estate owned by the rector of the University of Padua. He is incarcerated, but mysteriously escapes from prison.
Rosa
Rosa (born 1460) is a thief. As a child of an unknown Venetian nobleman and a prostitute, she grew up on her own in the streets of Venice. In 1475 she attempts to pickpocket the leader of the Venetian Thieves Guild, Antonio, and is caught, but he takes her on as a pupil.
Teodora Contanto
Teodora Contanto (b. 1450 – after 1516) is the madame of La Rosa della Virtù. Her parents owned a jewellery store, and she was apprenticed to her mother as a shop girl. On 26 November 1467 she engaged in adultery with a married man, and his wife alerted the Venetian courts, so her parents sent her to a nunnery to live the rest of her life in prayer and silence. In 1467 she entered Santa Maria degli Angeli, determined to do penance for her crime, but in 1473 she deserted the Church and abandoned her family name. That same year she opens La Rosa della Virtù, frequented by Pietro Bembo.
Alexander VI
Pope Alexander VI (voiced by Manuel Tadros) appears in Assassin's Creed: Lineage, Assassin's Creed II, and Assassin's Creed: Renaissance. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia (Italianized name) (January 1, 1431 – August 18, 1503), born Roderic Llançol, later Roderic de Borja i Borja, was the leader of the Knights Templar during the Renaissance in Italy. He appears as a minor character in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, which takes place in 1503, the last year of his papacy. He is killed by Cesare, who is poisoned by Rodrigo only seconds before.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (voiced by Shawn Baichoo) (1469–1527) or simply Niccolò Machiavelli, is a supporting character in Assassin's Creed II and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. He is an Italian philosopher, writer, and member of the Assassin Order. With the Assassin Order, Niccolò primarily works with Ezio, and helps him with driving the Orsi brothers from Forlì and removing the monk Girolamo Savonarola from power in Florence to obtain the Apple of Eden from him. Two years later, Machiavelli becomes the leader of the Italian Assassins. Once again joined by Ezio, they fight against the corrupt Borgia family.
Girolamo Savonarola
Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) was a Dominican friar and the leader of Florence from 1494 to 1498.
In 1488, Girolamo manages to obtain an Apple of Eden. Recognizing its powers, he uses it to instigate the Bonfire of the Vanities in Florence; hoping to cleanse the city of everything he regarded as evil, such as art and wealth.
Orsi Brothers
Checco (1458–7 July 1488) and Ludovico Orsi (1455–7 July 1488) start a successful money lending business, as they kill anyone who does not pay them back. Caterina hires them to murder Girolamo Riario. Rodrigo Borgia offers to pay them for the recapture of the Piece of Eden and Caterina's head, and they also kidnap her children.
Characters of Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Revelations
Angelina Ceresa
Angelina Ceresa (died 2 January 1500) is an acquaintance of Claudia Auditore, who lived in Monteriggioni. On 1 January 1500 she and Ezio help prepare Claudia's birthday party in the Villa Auditore. The following day, Cesare's forces besiege Monteriggioni, She is killed and her head stuck upon the pike of a Borgia soldier's halberd.
Margherita dei Campi
Margherita dei Campi is a countess of Rome. She tends to Ezio's injuries after Niccolò takes him to Margherita's house in the northern Campagna District.
Jacopo de Grassi
Jacopo de Grassi is a high ranking Borgia guard in Rome and captain of one of the five Borgia towers that rule over the Centro District. In January 1500 he is killed by Ezio by throwing him into a scaffolding.
Followers of Romulus
The Followers of Romulus (Latin: Secta Luporum) are a pagan cult operating in several abandoned locations underneath Rome. They worship Romulus and believe he is part wolf and part man. The leaders of the cult are hired by the Borgia to influence the Followers into doing their bidding, which often ended in "sermons" and evocations of their god. They are mainly used to cause fear amongst civilians before being instructed to focus on the Assassins.
Fabio Orsini
Fabio Orsini (1476 – 29 December 1504) is a condottiero from the Orsini family. In 1494 he enters Montepulciano to help the Sienese. In 1498 he partners with Bartolomeo d'Alviano against the Savelli family, and seems to help his new in-laws when he marries Jeronima Borgia, Lucrezia's cousin, but in 1499, while Cesare was in Romagna, he frees a friend imprisoned in the Tor di Nona, and his father Paolo was killed by Cesare. He attacks Micheletto's army and loses, becoming an outlaw raiding the countryside and put on a list of bandits published by the Pope. He dies from a head wound after the battle of Garigliano in 1504.
Il Carnefice
Il Carnefice (1473 – January 1500) is an executioner allied to the Borgia. He considers himself as a twisted artist.
Juan Borgia The Elder
Juan Borgia The Elder (1446 – 1503) is one of Cesare's three generals who rule over Rome during the reign of Pope Alexander VI. He is the first Cardinal-nephew appointed by Alexander, and a member of the Roman Rite of the Templar Order. Often referred to as "the Banker", he handles Cesare's military funds and helps the Borgia's campaigns to subdue Italy for the Templars. He is killed by Ezio on his conclusion that in order for the Borgia empire to be brought down, the Assassin Order would cut off Cesare's funds, requiring "the Banker" to be located and killed. He is killed at a public party.
Malfatto
Malfatto (died 1502) is a masked doctor who preys on people living in Rome's poor district. In 1502 he is seen lurking outside the Rosa in Fiore.
Ercole Massimo
Ercole Massimo (1474–1506) is a Roman nobleman and member of the Massimo family, one of Rome's wealthiest and most ancient families. He is also the leader of the Cult of Hermes until his death. He appears in the Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: The Da Vinci Disappearance DLC, where after losing all five of the paintings, Ercole returns to the catacombs under Rome to interrogate Leonardo. Ezio kills him after Ercole suggests a civil solution and attempts to convince Ezio to join him.
Octavian de Valois
Octavian de Valois (1448 – August 1503) is a French general and Baron of Valois. In 1498 he is sent to the front of the ranks in Louis XII's Italian campaign after his cousin is crowned. In 1500 he marches into Rome with his men and is attacked by Bartolomeo d'Alviano.
Gaspar de la Croix
Gaspar de la Croix (1466 – August 1503) is a master weapons engineer and an expert marksman. Cesare makes use of his skill with a firearm to take down targets.
Lanz
Lanz (1480 – August 1503) is a Roman thief connected to a variety of domestic disturbances. He runs with the Cento Occhi gang.
Cesare Borgia
Cesare Borgia (voiced by Andreas Apergis) appears in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Cesare Borgia (c. 1475–1507) is the son of Rodrigo Borgia. After leading the army to many victories throughout Italy, Cesare becomes sadistic and develops a lust for conquest, planning to unify all of Italy and conquer all of Spain. Near the end of his life, he is imprisoned before escaping and raising an army for a last stand, before being thrown off a wall by Ezio to his death.
Lucrezia Borgia
Lucrezia Borgia (voiced by Liane Balaban) (April 18, 1480 – June 24, 1519) appears in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. She is the daughter of Rodrigo Borgia and the sister of Cesare Borgia. She is first seen in a portrait in Assassin's Creed II as a little girl with brown hair. She appears in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood as a woman, her hair now blonde. Lucrezia is shown to have incestuous affairs with both her father and her brother, the latter of whom tells her that she will be his queen. She secures political advantages for her family by marrying powerful nobles and then having them disgraced or killed soon thereafter. She grows tired of Cesare's womanizing ways and plans to leave the Vatican, but she still warns him of the poisoned apple he receives from Rodrigo. In turn, Cesare beats her until she reveals the Piece of Eden's location. Disillusioned by his actions, she helps Ezio find the Piece of Eden and left the Vatican behind. Her in-game portrait reveals that she and her husband flee Rome and relocate to Ferrara, where she encounters Ezio again in 1506 while he is looking for the first da Vinci painting, Annunciation.
Egidio Troche
Egidio Troche (born 1436) is a Roman Senator during the Renaissance in Italy. His younger brother Francesco is a close confidant of Cesare, whom he dislikes. Egidio is rescued by Ezio from the debt with The Banker in return for some main Assassin targets within Rome.
Michelotto Corella
Michelotto Corella (1470–1506) is a Valencian condottiero, executioner, and a member of the Roman Rite of the Templar Order, as well as Cesare's personal bodyguard and assassin. In 1503, Ezio nearly assassinates him at the Colosseum in Rome during a play to rescue Pietro Rossi (Lucrezia's lover) and to gain information on Cesare's plans on attacking Romagna, though Ezio spares him. He was ultimately killed by Cesare in 1506.
La Volpe
Gilberto, known mainly as La Volpe (English: The Fox), is the leader of the Florentine and Roman thieves' guilds, and a member of the Italian Brotherhood of Assassins. Very little information is known about him. In 1478, La Volpe assists Ezio in locating an important Templar meeting, which results in Ezio preventing the Pazzi Conspiracy. Ten years later, La Volpe is in Venice, where the Assassins reclaim an Apple of Eden from Rodrigo. After the fall of Monteriggioni, La Volpe moves to Rome, where he fights the Borgia influence in the city. However, he refused to work with the Assassins because of his suspicions towards Niccolò. After Ezio helps save some of his thieves and provides evidence of the real traitor, La Volpe agrees to assist the Assassins again.
Sofia Sartor
Sofia Sartor (voiced by Anna Tuveri) (1476 – unknown) is a Venetian-Ottoman bookshop owner and a literary enthusiast. Although she was born in Constantinople, she was forced to leave for Venice when the Ottoman-Venetian war began in 1499. Sofia returned to her birthplace in 1507 to run a bookstore at the old Polo trading post. In 1511, she meets Ezio and marries him, bearing children.
Tarik Barleti
Tarik Barleti (voiced by JB Blanc) (1470–1511) is the captain of the Janissaries, the personal guard of the Ottoman Empire. Ezio believes Tarik to be a Templar because of his behavior and his sale of weapons to Manuel Palaiologos, a known Templar. Ezio acts on his theory and strikes Tarik down. In his final moments, Tarik reveals that he planned to attack Manuel's Byzantine Templars in Cappadocia. He makes a final request to Ezio to stop the Templars, which Ezio honors. Tarik is one of the few assassination targets that is unaffiliated with the Templars or Assassins.
Vali cel Tradat
Vali cel Tradat (died 1511) is a Timoc noble, former Assassin and member of the Templar Order. Vali leaves the Assassins after they form a truce with the Ottomans, who had humiliated his people, conquered Podunavia, and murdered his secret idol Vlad Țepeș. Feeling betrayed, he joins the Templars for vengeance against the Assassins and Ottomans.
Yusuf Tazim
Yusuf Tazim (voiced by Chris Parson) is a character in Assassin's Creed: Revelations. He is an easygoing Master Assassin, and leader of the Ottoman Assassin Brotherhood, rising to the post sometime before 1511 AD, when he meets Ezio. He introduces Ezio to Constantinople and the Ottoman hookblade. Yusuf often talks with humor, poking fun at Ezio or at Italians in general. He is an expert at crafting bombs and at combat. When Ezio returns from Cappadocia, he finds Sofia's shop in ruins and Yusuf murdered by Ahmet, a note knifed to his back. The message on the note is never revealed. Tazim is voiced by Chris Parson in Revelations, and is portrayed by Matias Varela in the 2016 Assassin's Creed film.
Manuel Palaiologos
Manuel Palaiologos (voiced by Vlasta Vrána) (1454–1512) is the heir to the lost Byzantine Empire throne and nephew to Constantine XI. Manuel is a major Templar Leader and appears in Assassin's Creed: Revelations. He conspires to take back Constantinople with the help of Ahmet, heir to Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire. He is assassinated by Ezio in the Byzantine-controlled city of Cappadocia.
Piri Reis
Piri Reis (c. 1467 – c. 1554), born Ahmed Muhiddin Piri, was a famed admiral and cartographer. He is a member of the Assassin Order and serves the Assassins as a technician and intelligence gatherer, primarily providing them with materials and methods for crafting bombs. He is a trusted friend of the Turkish Assassin leader Yusuf Tazim, and also befriends Ezio.
Ahmet
Şehzade Ahmet (voiced by Tamer Hassan) appears in Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Ahmet (1465–1512) was the eldest living son of Bayezid II and brother to Selim I. He sets up the unsuccessful ambush and capture of Prince Suleiman by Byzantine Templars, intending to have him rescued to make Ahmet appear to be a brave hero. His plans fail, but while Ezio is away in Cappadocia, Ahmet takes Sofia hostage and demands that Ezio exchange the Masyaf key for her. After the exchange, Ahmet flees the city and Ezio follows him with Sofia. After Ezio catches up with him, Ahmet's brother Selim arrives. Selim proclaims his authority as the new Sultan and kills his own brother by strangling him and then tossing him off a cliff.
Suleiman
Suleiman I (1494–1566) was the tenth Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1520 until his death. He was the son of Selim I. Suleiman becomes embroiled in the struggle between the Templars and Assassins during 1511. After a failed kidnap attempt by Byzantine Templars working for Manuel, Suleiman befriends Ezio, who encourages Suleiman's progressive attitude for peace in the Ottoman Empire.
Niccolò and Maffeo Polo
Niccolò and Maffeo Polo were the famous traveling merchants and explorers who were father and uncle to Marco Polo respectively. They have a minor appearance in the first game, but are seen chiefly in Assassin's Creed: Revelations when Ezio searches for their Constantinople trading post and relives the memories (1257) of La'Ahad embedded in the Masyaf keys.
Characters of Assassin's Creed: Embers
Flavia Auditore
Flavia Auditore (voiced by Angela Galuppo) is a character in the short-film Assassin's Creed: Embers. She is Ezio's daughter, and the next ancestor to Desmond Miles through that bloodline. She is with her mother in Florence when Ezio dies of a heart attack.
Marcello Auditore
Marcello Auditore (October 1514 – unknown) is Ezio and Sofia's son.
Characters of Assassin's Creed III
Haytham Kenway
Haytham E. Kenway (1725–1781) is a British Templar and the first Grand Master of the Templar Order's Colonial Rite, reigning from 1754 until his death. He is Edward Kenway's son, Ratonhnhaké꞉ton's father, and an ancestor to Desmond Miles, all of whom are members of the Assassin Order. He is the playable character in the first three sequences of Assassin's Creed III, and an antagonist in the second half of the story. He is also a supporting character in Assassin's Creed Rogue.
Haytham is sent to the American colonies by Grand Master Reginald Birch in 1754 to establish his own Templar group to rival the colonial Assassins and to search for clues about artifacts related to the First Civilization. He does not find them, but he recruits a small, dedicated band of Templars. He attempts to forge a relationship with the Kanien'kehá:ka in the frontier and with Kaniehtí:io, his brief lover. They raise their son, Connor.
He is assassinated by his son in 1781 while trying to save his Templar friend Charles Lee. He is voiced by actor Adrian Hough.
Ratonhnhaké:ton
Ratonhnhaké꞉ton (alias: Connor; 1756 – unknown) is an Anglo-Kanienʼkehá꞉ka Assassin who struggles to protect the Haudenosaunee as he fights alongside the Patriots during the American Revolutionary War. He initially develops a strong working relationship with George Washington, though this falls apart after learning that Washington was responsible for an attack on his village which resulted in his mother's death. He is an ancestor of Desmond Miles through the paternal line. He appears as the protagonist in the second half of Assassin's Creed III, and as a minor character in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation. He is voiced by Noah Watts.
Io꞉nhiòte
Io꞉nhiòte is Ratonhnhaké꞉ton's daughter. She is the youngest of his three children, and possesses the rare ability of Eagle Vision.
William Miles
William Miles (voiced by and modelled on John de Lancie) (b. 1948) is Desmond's father and de facto leader of the entire Assassin Order during the games' events, having risen to the position following the death of the Mentor in 2000. He raises Desmond in the ways of the Assassins, teaching him about the order and what they fight for. William's first appearance is in Revelations, where he talks with Rebecca and Shaun when Desmond is in the Animus Black room, explaining Desmond's importance to the Assassins on his ability to wield the Apple properly. He questions Rebecca and Shaun if Desmond and Lucy are close, and he feels sad about Lucy's death. He is the first person to greet Desmond after recovering from his coma. In Assassin's Creed III, William and his team arrive at the Grand Temple. He is captured by Abstergo agents in Egypt while attempting to retrieve a power cell needed to activate the Vault within the Grand Temple and is taken to their facility in Italy. Desmond infiltrates the facility, rescues William, and retrieves the power cell.
Achilles Davenport
Achilles Davenport: (voiced by Roger Aaron Brown) (1710–1781) is a Master Assassin and a Mentor for a span of time during the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War. He appears in Assassin's Creed III and Assassin's Creed: Rogue. Achilles, born in the Caribbean, is the last recruit of Mayan Grand Master Ah Tabai in the mid-1730s. He is the Mentor of the Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins from 1746 until 1763. Achilles's tenure as leader of the Colonial Assassins strengthens the Brotherhood until 1763, when the Brotherhood collapses and disbands as a result of his mismanagement that very nearly destroyed the world. In Rogue, Haytham Kenway shoots Achilles in the leg as punishment for endangering innocents after his former student Shay Cormac convinces the latter to spare his life. Living in exile in his manor, Achilles abandons the Assassin ideology until he meets Ratonhnhaké꞉ton, whom he trains at the boy's behest. Achilles spends his final years guiding Ratonhnhaké꞉ton. In 1781 Achilles dies quietly in his sleep. When Ratonhnhaké꞉ton discovers his body, he also finds a note addressed to him in Achilles' handwriting: Achilles apologizes for never being able to say goodbye to Connor properly, and thanks him, expressing pride and gratitude in Connor for the community he has raised at the Homestead.
Kanenʼtó꞉kon
Kanenʼtó꞉kon (voiced by Akwiratékha Martin) (1756–1778) is a member of the Kanien'kehá:ka nation of the Mohawk Valley (where the Kanien'kehá:ka were also members of the Iroquois Confederacy) and a close childhood friend of Ratonhnhaké꞉ton. Although he initially advocates for the Kanien'kehá:ka to remain neutral in the American Revolutionary War, he and several other of his village's warriors believe that they can protect their people by siding with the British. He is manipulated by Charles Lee into believing that Ratonhnhaké꞉ton had joined George Washington in a campaign against the Mohawk people, prompting him to attack his former friend when he tries to intervene in a Mohawk ambush on colonial soldiers. Pinned to the ground and vulnerable to a lethal blow, Ratonhnhaké꞉ton is forced to stab Kanenʼtó꞉kon in the neck with his Hidden Blade, killing him.
Kaniehtí꞉io
Kaniehtí꞉io, or shortened to Ziio (informally) (voiced by Kaniehtiio Horn) (1731–1760), is a Kanien'keha:ka (Mohawk) clan woman, warrior, mother to Ratonhnhaké꞉ton, and an ancestor to Desmond Miles. Unlike her fellow villagers, who prefer to stay neutral to protect their sacred sanctuary, she fights settlers encroaching on her people's lands. She becomes allies with Haytham, who seeks access to the sanctuary. The two share a brief relationship, which results in Ratonhnhaké꞉ton's birth. When he is four, she dies in an attack on the village ordered by George Washington; Ratonhnhaké꞉ton grows up believing Haytham's subordinate Charles Lee is responsible, which sets him on the path to join the Assassins.
Oiá꞉ner
Oiá꞉ner is the Clan Mother of the Kanien'kehá:ka village of Kanatahséton. She and the other Kanien'kehá:ka in the village serve as protectors of the sacred ground on which both their village and the Grand Temple stood. Oiá꞉ner is also the keeper of the tribe's "Crystal Ball" (Piece of Eden). In 1769, Oiá꞉ner shows their Crystal Ball to Ratonhnhaké꞉ton when he returns from a hunt and allows him to interact with it. The Crystal Ball forces him into the Nexus, where he communicates with Juno and learns of his destiny with the Assassins. Many years later, she meets an adult Ratonhnhaké꞉ton and tells him of the whereabouts of Kanenʼtó꞉kon and other Kanien'kehá:ka men, who are attempting to attack the Continental soldiers. Sometime after Kanenʼtó꞉kon's death, Oiá꞉ner speaks with Ratonhnaké:ton, and reveals that she plans to move their people west to avoid the American Revolutionary War, like many of the other nations. After his unpleasant reaction, she tells him that she would do what was best for her people, and Ratonhnaké:ton leaves the village. On his return some years later, he finds the village deserted except for an old vagabond, who tells him that his people have already gone.
Reginald Birch
Reginald Birch (voiced by Gideon Emery) (1705–1757) is the Grand Master of the British Rite of the Templar Order and a successful English businessman. Reginald meets Haytham, the son of Birch's employer—Edward Kenway—at a young age. He recruites Haytham into the Templars after Edward dies, personally involving himself with the boy's training. In 1754, after Haytham retrieves the key to the undisclosed Grand Temple, Reginald secures passage to Boston for Haytham to find the First Civilization storehouse and establish a permanent Templar presence in British America. When Haytham discovers Reginald's involvement in the kidnapping of his half-sister, Jennifer Scott, and the murder of his father, he storms Reginald's chateau with Jim Logan and Jennifer. Afterwards, Birch is killed by Jennifer with a sword that Haytham had embedded into Birch's bedroom door.
Samuel Smythe
Samuel Smythe captains the Providence during Haytham's journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
Robert Faulkner
Robert Faulkner (voiced by Kevin McNally) (b. 1715) is an elderly sailor and Ratonhnhaké꞉ton's first mate aboard the Aquila. Although he is the fourth generation in his family to become a sailor, he is the first to be recruited into the Assassin Order. He starts off in the Royal Navy, but after finding that his career is stalling (partly due to his inability to purchase commissions), he goes to work for the United Company of Merchants.
In 1753, Faulkner disappears from the historical record, presumed dead—because he joined the Assassins as first mate of the flagship, the Aquila.
Faulkner is sought after as a mariner. He has a reputation for having a disciplined crew, avoiding trouble, and predicting the weather accurately.
Faulkner serves on the Aquila until it is nearly destroyed in 1768, always deferring when asked to become the captain—he never gives his reasons why.
Silas Thatcher
Silas Thatcher (1720–1754) is a high-ranking officer of the colonial militia and a prolific slave trader. He is responsible for the ransacking of Benjamin Church's house, and his subsequent interrogation alongside a man called "Cutter". However, shortly after he leaves, Haytham and Charles free their associate. Later, while posted at Southgate Fort in Boston, Silas receives deliveries of prisoners from Mohawk people, including Kaniehtí:io. In 1754, a convoy full of Mohawk tribespeople is commandeered by Haytham and his men as a means to enter the fortification. Shortly after discovering the ruse, Silas orders his men to fire on the Templars, but is cornered by Haytham and executed by Church as payback.
Kahionhaténion
Kahionhaténion is a Kanien'kehá:ka, born and raised in the village of Kanatahséton, as a warrior and a hunter during the American Revolutionary War. He is Teiowí:sonte's brother. Kahionhaténion defends Kanatahséton from an attack by Washington's troops; after the attack, Kahionhaténion and Teiowí:sonte recover Ratonhnhaké꞉ton from the village with the powers granted to them by the Red Willow. When Teiowí:sonte is captured by the Bluecoats while trying to free enslaved people from the frontier, Kahionhaténion asks Ratonhnhaké꞉ton to help him find and save his brother. He and his brother are killed in battle when Bluecoats follow Ratonhnhaké꞉ton's tracks back to the cave that the clan were hiding in.
Teiowí:sonte
Teiowí:sonte (voiced by Andreas Apergis) is a Kanien'kehá:ka warrior during the American Revolutionary War. He is the brother of Kahionhaténion. Teiowí:sonte is born and raised in the village of Kanatahséton as a warrior and a hunter.
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin (voiced by Jim Ward) (17 January 1706 – 17 April 1790) was a Freemason, a noted polymath, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Benjamin wandered around Boston near his store, and was surprised to find Haytham Kenway offer a lending hand, as those living in Boston usually refused to be of any help, and correctly assumed that Kenway was new to Boston. Franklin then charged Kenway with the task of finding stolen pages of his Almanac. Haytham interacted with Franklin, where he proposed his idea of having an older woman as a lover would benefit lives, much to Haytham's amusement. In The Tyranny of King Washington, after gaining control over the area, King Washington put Franklin in charge of running Boston. While under Washington's control, Franklin was still hesitant of the King's decisions, claiming one such order to behead random civilians to be "rather harsh." After being freed from Washington's control by Ratonhnhaké꞉ton, Franklin sought to help the rebellion take down King Washington.
Charles Lee
Charles Lee (voiced by Neil Napier) (1732–1782) appears in Assassin's Creed III. He is a British-born soldier, and later, a general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War who allies himself with the Templar Order and its Grand Master, Haytham. It is implied that Lee sets fire to Ratonhnhaké꞉ton's village, killing his mother in the process where the then young Ratonhnhaké꞉ton' vowed to kill him. Many years later, during a meeting with George Washington, they meet again but fail to recognize him until he gets falsely arrested for counterfeiting along with a Templar called Thomas Hickey. Sarcastically congratulating him for tracking him down, he frames him for a Templar plot to kill George Washington, which is foiled when Washington is saved by Ratonhnhaké꞉ton'. He resides in Fort George for his "own protection" some years later, and is ordered to leave for Boston by Haytham shortly before the latter's death. Succeeding him as the next Grand Master, he vows to make his tormentor suffer, only to be chased by him into a half constructed ferry that is set alight, and is saved at the last minute when part of the ship collapses on the Assassin, wounding him in the hip. Using the opportunity to ask him why he continues to "fight after all his allies have abandoned him", he is told "because no one else will" before being shot in the side by him. He is tracked down by his pursuer to a tavern in Monmouth County, where they both share a bottle of whiskey before being fatally stabbed in the chest by the Assassin. The medallion (the key meant for Desmond) is taken from his body and, shortly afterwards, is buried in the grave of Connor Davenport, Achilles' son and the namesake of Ratonhnhaké꞉ton.
George Washington
George Washington (voiced by Robin Atkin Downes in Assassin's Creed III and by Tod Fennell in Assassin's Creed Rogue) (1732–1799) was the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783, and served as the first President of the United States from 30 April 1789 to 4 March 1797.
During the war, he orders the burning of the neutral village of Kanatahséton. Ratonhnhaké꞉ton subsequently protects Washington from the Templar Charles Lee, who is angered that he had been passed over for the position. Although the Continental Army suffered many losses under Washington's command, Ratonhnhaké꞉ton and his apprentices' help win the army small victories. George falls out with Connor when the latter discovers he is responsible for the attack on his village, Kanatahséton, and signs for a second burning after Charles manipulates Ratonhnhaké꞉ton's people into siding with the Loyalists. However, the Assassins continue to aid Washington when necessary, such as during the investigation of the conspiracy at West Point. After the Continental Army emerges victorious against the British Army in 1781, Washington obtains an Apple of Eden. It gives him a nightmarish vision of what would happen if he were crowned king of the United States with its power in his possession, and he passes the Apple to Ratonhnhaké꞉ton for it to be disposed of.
John Pitcairn
John Pitcairn (voiced by Robert Lawrenson) (1722–1775) is a Scottish-born member of the Royal Marine Corps and the Templar Order. He is rescued by Haytham and Charles while he is being harassed by General Braddock. He is assassinated by Ratonhnhaké꞉ton during a battle between the Patriots and "Redcoats".
Marquis de Lafayette
Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette (voiced by Vince Corazza) (1757–1834) often known as Lafayette, is a French aristocrat and military officer born in south central France. During the American Revolutionary War, Lafayette serves as a Major-General in the Continental Army under George Washington. Blocked by British spies who learned of his support for the Patriots, Lafayette disguises himself as a woman to board a ship to America in 1777. He recounts this to Ratonhnhaké꞉ton' while camping in Valley Forge that winter. On June 28, 1778, Lafayette leads a battalion in the battle of Monmouth, when he is given strange orders by Charles Lee to advance into enemy lines without sufficient numbers. Ratonhnhaké꞉ton' deduces Lee is trying to make Washington appear incompetent. In 1781, Lafayette visits the Davenport Homestead to help Ratonhnhaké꞉ton' gather a fleet to breach Fort George in New York. After Ratonhnhaké꞉ton' gains the French Navy's support, Lafayette meets with him and Stephane Chapheau underground and shows them a tunnel into the military district, so Ratonhnhaké꞉ton' can assassinate Charles in the midst of the bombardment. After the war, Lafayette returns to France and takes part in the French Revolution, bringing democracy and radical national reform to France. He goes into exile because he advocates for a constitutional monarchy instead of the empire that had emerged from the chaos in France.
Samuel Adams
Samuel Adams (voiced by Mark Lindsay Chapman) (1722–1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, a Sons of Liberty Patriot and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
During the American Revolutionary War, Samuel meets and becomes a trusted associate of Ratonhnhaké꞉ton's, after Achilles tells him to find Samuel on his first trip to Boston.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 – 4 July 1826) was one of the American Founding Fathers of the United States, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States.
When Ratonhnhaké꞉ton crashes the Aquila into another ship off the shore of New York City, George travels to the docks to investigate the disturbance. Thomas seizes this opportunity to infiltrate Washington's fortress. He is later quickly overwhelmed and requires Ratonhnhaké꞉ton's assistance in order to retreat. Shaun claims Thomas advocated the castration of homosexuals; but he was liberalizing the law in Virginia, which previously punished anyone convicted of sodomy with death.
Edward Braddock
Edward Braddock (1695–1755), nicknamed the Bulldog by his soldiers, is a member of the Templar Order and a general in the British Army. He appears in Haytham's story in Assassin's Creed III, and participates in the plot to kill Edward Kenway and act as a friend and a mentor in the Dutch Campaign. During the French and Indian War, Braddock is the commander-in-chief for the thirteen colonies of British America. He had several soldiers under his command, including John Pitcairn and Charles Lee, whom he rarely saw due to their allegiance to the Templar cause. Over the course of the war, Braddock turns away from the Templar ideals and impedes the Order's goals in the colonies, much to the chagrin of the other members. Braddock is confronted by Haytham when the latter attempts to recruit John Pitcairn for the expedition to find a First Civilization storehouse. Braddock is killed by Haytham to gain Kaniehtí꞉io's trust. Haytham takes the Templar ring from Braddock's finger, which is later given to Charles upon the latter's initiation into the Templar Order.
William Johnson
Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet (voiced by Julian Casey) (1715–1774) is an Anglo-Irish official of the British Empire and a member of the Templar Order.
As a member of the Templars, William manages the land and property acquired by the Order's Colonial Rite. During a meeting with several clan leaders, he is assassinated by Ratonhnhaké꞉ton.
Nicholas Biddle
Nicholas Biddle (1750–1778) is one of the first five captains of the Continental Navy who later joins the Royal Navy. Due to his secret role as a Templar official and intervention in the Assassin ships' trades and factory prices, he is assassinated by Ratonhnhaké꞉ton in a battle with the HMS Yarmouth offshore Martha's Vineyard and sinks with his ship, the USS Randolph.
Israel Putnam
Israel Putnam (1718–1790), popularly known as "Old Put", was an American army general officer who fought with distinction at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).
Ratonhnhaké꞉ton helps him in the Bunker Hill battle by fighting John Pitcairn and fending off the naval ship attacks near Boston Harbour.
François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse
Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse (1722–1788) was a French Naval career officer who rose to the rank of admiral. He is best known for his command of the French fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781 in the last year of the American Revolutionary War.
He is assisted by Ratonhnhaké꞉ton and the Aquila at first in the battle who, with the Vengeur du Peuple and Saint-Esprit, brave British forces under Thomas Graves until reinforcements arrive.
Thomas Hickey
Thomas Hickey (died 1776) was an Irish-born soldier in the British Army, serving in the French and Indian War, but later joined the Continental Army. He went to Colonial America in 1752 and was stationed in Boston.
He is assigned as an assistant to William Johnson, and joins the Order himself before being executed for "treachery". He and Haytham are recruits in the Order, looking for the precursor site at Ziio's village.
Miko
"Miko" (died 1754) is the alias of the leader of the British Brotherhood of Assassins alongside Edward Kenway, and the holder of the Grand Temple Key. He is assassinated by Haytham for the key at the Royal Opera House.
Characters of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation
Aveline de Grandpré
Aveline de Grandpré is a Louisiana Creole Assassin who lives in New Orleans during the French and Indian War and the Spanish occupation in Louisiana in the middle of the 18th century. She is also involved in the Seven Years' War and the American Revolutionary War. She is recruited by the Assassins in 1759 to defend abused slaves, fight for freedom, and eliminate targets in New Orleans.
Antonio de Ulloa
Antonio de Ulloa (1716–1795) is a Spanish general, explorer, author, astronomer, colonial administrator, and the first Spanish governor of Louisiana. As a Templar, he is pursued by the Aveline during the Louisiana Rebellion, but is spared by Grandpré under the promise to go into exile.
Agaté
Agaté is a former slave who appears in Assassin's Creed III: Liberation as the leader of the local Brotherhood of Assassins cell in colonial French Louisiana, and primarily operates from his hideout in the Louisiana Bayou. Enslaved from a young age, Agaté comes into contact with revolutionary disruptor François Mackandal, who teaches him the ways of the Assassins. After his Mentor's death in 1758, Agaté travels to Louisiana, a marked man, and hides in the bayou. He subsequently recruits Aveline and Gérald Blanc, whom he trains to be his agents in New Orleans. Although Agaté cares for his students, he is secretive in his dealings with them. Due to Aveline's natural impulsiveness and disinclination to follow orders, Agaté clashes with her frequently and begins to doubt her loyalty to the cause. Over the years, their mutual distrust of each another cause them to grow apart. When Aveline returns to Agaté in 1777 to reveal the identity of the true leader of Louisiana's Templar Order, he attacks her, believing her to have betrayed the Assassins. She wins, causing Agaté, who is overwhelmed with humiliation, to leap to his death from the top of his treehouse.
Baptiste
Baptiste is a former Assassin and voodoo leader who poses as the deceased François Mackandal and operates in the Bayou surrounding New Orleans. Secretly working for the "Company Man" with Rafael Joaquín de Ferrer, Baptiste aspires to become a formal member of the Templar Order. He is also a personal enemy of Agaté. Sometime in 1765, "Mackandal" amasses a small following, though he sends a letter to one of his acolytes stating that he is "in want of nothing but more men to join his ranks" of his cult for a "sacred ceremony" on the Eve of Saint John. The letter is intercepted by the Aveline, shortly after she assassinates the troops at one of his bases, a wrecked ship in the marshlands, with the smuggler Élise Lafleur providing her with the information and transport to get there. Aveline and Élise locate Baptiste after she clears the man's second base, and spies on his conversation with de Ferrer, learning of his plans to poison the nobles of New Orleans. Aveline faces Baptiste in a showdown and is victorious.
He is portrayed by Michael K. Williams in the Assassin's Creed film.
Gérald Blanc
Gérald Blanc was an accountant living in New Orleans who is Aveline's confidante. At some point in his life, he is recruited into the Brotherhood of Assassins by Agaté.
Madeleine de L'Isle
Madeleine de L'Isle is the wife of Philippe Olivier de Grandpré, Aveline's stepmother who aids her efforts to discreetly liberate the slaves of New Orleans.
Characters of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag
Edward James Kenway
Edward Kenway is a Welsh-born privateer-turned-pirate. He is Haytham's father, Ratonhnhaké꞉ton grandfather, and an ancestor of Desmond Miles. He is active in the Caribbean from 1715 to 1722 during the Golden Age of Piracy, and is known for commanding the brig named Jackdaw. Edward formally joins the Brotherhood of Assassins when he retires to London in 1722. He is voiced by actor Matt Ryan.
Adéwalé
Adéwalé is an Assassin of African descent who appears in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry, and Assassin's Creed Rogue. Born a slave on a sugar plantation in Trinidad, he meets Edward Kenway while they are both in captivity. After helping each other escape, he aids Edward in stealing a Spanish brig. He serves as Edward's quartermaster aboard the stolen ship, renamed the Jackdaw, for several years before leaving to join the Assassins. In Freedom Cry he aids the Maroon cause on Saint-Domingue (present day Haiti), where he meets the future mother of his child. In Rogue he is killed by Shay Patrick Cormac. He is portrayed by Tristan D. Lalla.
Duncan Walpole
Duncan Walpole is a member of the British Brotherhood of Assassins during the early 18th century. Duncan later defects and attempts to join the Templars of the West Indies, but is encountered and killed by Edward Kenway, who appropriates Walpole's costume and equipment, and learns about his dealings with Laureano de Torres y Ayala. Walpole is portrayed by Callum Turner in the 2016 Assassin's Creed film.
Julien du Casse
Julien du Casse is a French arms dealer and an experienced privateer and mercenary, and is designed to be the nephew of the real-life French privateer Jean-Baptiste Du Casse. He is a member of the Templar Order in the West Indies, and also serves as Laureano's hitman. He has a discreet hideout on Great Inagua where he carries out his affairs, which later comes into the possession of Edward Kenway after he is killed.
Charles Vane
Charles Vane was a British pirate captain.
In Black Flag, Vane is depicted as Edward's friend, and one of the founders of the pirate republic of Nassau. Edward is also marooned on the deserted island of Isla Providencia along with Vane, though the latter is driven mad with desperation and turns on his former friend before being disarmed and abandoned. He is voiced by Ralph Ineson.
Anne Bonny
Anne Bonny was a notorious female Irish pirate who operated in the West Indies. She, along with "Calico" Jack Rackham and Mary Read, raised a small crew to execute a series of swift robberies. However, the entire crew was later arrested by the British authorities a few months later and taken to Kingston for trial, though both her and Read were able to stay their execution by relying on the defense of pleading the belly.
In Black Flag she initially appears a young barmaid at the Old Avery tavern in Nassau. Anne successfully escapes prison with the help of Edward and the Assassin leader Ah Tabai. She becomes an associate of Edward's and joins his crew as quartermaster aboard the Jackdaw, replacing Adéwalé. When Edward leaves for England in October 1722, Anne decides to stay in the West Indies.
Bartholomew Roberts
Bartholomew Roberts (1682–1722), born John Roberts, was a Welsh pirate who raided ships in the Caribbean and on the West African coast between 1719 and 1722.
In Black Flag he is depicted as a Sage, a reincarnation of the Isu Aita, who has a nihilistic worldview. He works with Edward to locate the fabled Observatory, an Isu facility designed for surveillance, but betrays him and turns him over to British authorities. He is killed by Kenway off the coast of Principé.
Benjamin Hornigold
Benjamin Hornigold (1680s–1719) was an English pirate from 1715 to 1718. In Black Flag, he serves as a mentor to Edward and as one of the founders of the Pirate Republic at Nassau. After Nassau is annexed by British forces, he joins the Templar Order.
Mary Read
Mary Read (c. 1685–1721) was a notable English female pirate known for posing as a man throughout her life in order to accomplish her goals. In Black Flag she is depicted as a member of the Assassin Order, trained by Ah Tabai. In order to further her exploits in the male-dominated world of piracy, she adopts the persona of James Kidd, an illegitimate son of William Kidd, a Scottish sailor who is tried by the British parliament and executed for piracy after returning from a voyage to the Indian Ocean. As James Kidd, she is recognized as one of the founders of the pirate-dominated Republic of Nassau. She later perishes in prison, her health severely deteriorated after giving birth to a child.
Blackbeard
Edward Thatch (1680–1718), better known by his alias Blackbeard, was a pirate captain who sailed the West Indies and the American colonies during the early 18th century, on a ship named the Queen Anne's Revenge. He is the namesake of a Black Flag multiplayer-focused DLC titled Blackbeard's Wrath, and is voiced by Mark Bonnar.
Jack Rackham
John "Jack" Rackham (1682–1720), more commonly known as Calico Jack, was a Jamaican-born British pirate who operated in the West Indies during the early 18th century. In Black Flag Rackham serves as quartermaster under Charles Vane, and later rallies enough support from the crew to depose him as captain in November 1718 and setting him and Edward adrift in a damaged sloop. Rackham returns to Nassau to accept the King's Pardon, and returns to life as a pirate in August 1720. Together with Anne Bonny and Mary Read, they plunder and pillage the region for a few months before being arrested by the British authorities. Rackham is later tried and executed for piracy in Port Royal on 18 November 1720.
Laureano de Torres y Ayala
Laureano José de Torres Ayala a Duadros Castellanos, marqués de Casa Torres (1645–1722), often known as simply Laureano de Torres y Ayala, was the Spanish Governor of Florida from 1693 to 1699, Governor of Cuba on two occasions between 1707 and 1716. He appears in Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag as the Grand Master of the Templar Order in the Caribbean, and serves as the game's primary antagonistic figure.
Stede Bonnet
Stede Bonnet (c. 1688–1718) was an early-18th-century Barbadian pirate of English descent who sailed the Eastern Seaboard of the Thirteen Colonies with his crew, and known for his brief association with Blackbeard. In Black Flag, Bonnet appears as one of Edward's recurring associates.
Woodes Rogers
Woodes Rogers (voiced by Shaun Dingwall) (c. 1679–1732) was an English privateer, and the first Royal Governor of the Bahamas. In Black Flag he is depicted as a member of the Templar Order in the West Indies.
Lawrence Prince
Lawrence Prince (1630s–1715s) was a Dutch buccaneer, privateer, and an officer under Captain Sir Henry Morgan. He and John Morris led one of the columns against Panama in 1671. He is assassinated by Edward Kenway in his search for Bartholomew.
Characters of Assassin's Creed Rogue
Shay Patrick Cormac
Shay Patrick Cormac is the protagonist of Assassin's Creed Rogue, an Irish-American Assassin who defects to the Templar Order at the onset of Seven Years' War. He is responsible for facilitating the extermination of the Colonial Brotherhood in the following years and the murder of Arno Dorian's father at the Palace of Versailles. He is voiced by Canadian actor Steven Piovesan.
Liam O' Brien
Liam O'Brien (1726–1760) is a member of the Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins operating in the British Colonies during the Seven Years' War. As a childhood friend of Shay, Liam is responsible for bringing Shay into the Brotherhood. In spite of Liam being a few years his elder, Shay forms a brotherly bond with him, even though Liam is wiser and more experienced. Liam is killed by Shay for a Precursor artifact when he joined the Templars.
Hope Jensen
Hope Jensen (1732–1759) is a member of the Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins operating in North America during the Seven Years' War. Mentored by Achilles, she controls much of New York City's organized crime, providing her with an effective information network. She is killed by Shay.
Kesegowaase
Kesegowaase (1730–1757) is a Maliseet member of the Colonial Brotherhood of Assassins. At a young age, he serves the French Army as a mercenary along with other members of his tribe. After meeting Achilles, he joins the Colonial Brotherhood. Through Kesegowaase, the Assassins gain allies within nearly every French-aligned tribe. After the outbreak of the French and Indian War, Achilles tasks Kesegowaase and Liam with eliminating George Monro, but as they fail to kill him in the Siege of Fort William Henry, he rallies his men and attacks Albany, New York. Liam kills George Monro, while Kesegowaase fights Shay and is killed.
Le Chasseur
Le Chasseur (died 1756) is a French spy operating in New York and the North Atlantic during the Seven Years' War. He is also an ally of the Colonial Assassins, supplying them with intelligence he learned from his contacts. By 1756, he serves as the commander of Fort La Croix near Albany. He is tasked with delivering poisonous gases to the Assassin-allied gangs of New York City, where they would be used against colonial authorities. However, when the fort is attacked, he is killed by Shay.
James Cook
James Cook (1728–1779) was a captain in the British Royal Navy and master of . In the fictionalized version of the Seven Years' War depicted in Rogue, he provides assistance to Shay Cormac and Haytham Kenway during their campaigns against the French, and is oblivious to the existence of the Assassins and the Templars. He assists Shay in locating Chevalier de la Vérendrye, and is later promised sponsorship to fund his voyages to discover new lands by Haytham, ostensibly on behalf of the British government.
Lawrence Washington
Lawrence Washington (1718–1752) was a sailor of the Royal Navy and the older half-brother of George Washington. In Rogue, he is depicted as a high-ranking member of the Templar Order who helps establish the organization's presence at the Thirteen Colonies, and recovers an important artifact from a First Civilization Temple, the removal of which is supposedly responsible for setting off the 1751 Port-au-Prince earthquake. Just before his murder during a garden party by Shay Cormac, he asks his Templar associates to keep his brother out of the Templar cause.
Chevalier de la Vérendrye
Louis-Joseph Gaultier de La Vérendrye (1717–1761), or simply Chevalier de la Vérendrye, was a French-Canadian explorer and trader. In Rogue he is presented as a member of the Assassin Brotherhood, who constantly behaves in a cantankerous and hostile manner towards Shay. Years later, he acts as a decoy to prevent the Templars from stopping Achilles and Liam from reaching a temple located in the Arctic region. Although he and his fleet ambush the Templars in a snowstorm, he is killed by Shay, who throws him overboard his ship.
George Monro
George Monro (1700–1757) was a Lieutenant-Colonel of the British Army. In Rogue, he is presented as high-ranking member of the Templar Order who authorizes Shay's rescue from sea, and seeks his help in purging Assassin-allied gangs who terrorize New York. Shay repays the favor by assisting Monro in various activities, like reinforcing his troops in the aftermath of the Siege of Fort William Henry. Monro is killed by the Assassins, and his death motivates Shay to formally join the Templar Order.
Christopher Gist
Christopher Gist (1706–1759) was a British explorer, surveyor, and frontiersman. In Rogue, he is a member of the Templar Order who is rescued by Shay by George Monro's request, and later serves as Shay's first mate on his flagship The Morrigan.
James Wardrop
James Wardrop (c. 1705 – 1754) is a merchant, politician, and a member of the British Rite of the Templar Order in the years leading up to the Seven Years' War. Operating along the Thirteen Colonies, Wardrop is the custodian of the Precursor manuscript who translates it. He is found negotiating with fellow Templar William Johnson at the Albany Congress, and is killed by Shay for the script after the Assassins infiltrate Fort Frederick.
Samuel Smith
Samuel Smith (?–1754) was a member of the British Rite of the Templar Order, operating in and around Great Britain's Thirteen Colonies in the 18th century. He is the treasurer of the Templars in the colonies, and is tasked by Lawrence Washington to safeguard the mysterious artifact known as the Precursor box. After Shay assassinates Lawrence, Smith leaves for Europe, where he intends to activate the box with the help of the continent's various scientists, but they are unable to. Two years later on his return trip to America, he is killed by Shay for the box at Terra Nova where he had made an encampment with Wardrop.
Jack Weeks
Jack Weeks (1723-?) is an African-American member of the British and Colonial Rites of the Templar Order. Lawrence entrusts the Precursor artifacts to him, Smith, and Wardrop. They inform him that they are fully occupied with making the artifacts work. He escapes when Shay kills Lawrence, but later joins forces with him to raid and destroy factories, various gangs, and forts.
Characters of Assassin's Creed Unity
Arno Victor Dorian
Arno Victor Dorian is a French-Austrian Assassin who is the main protagonist of Assassin's Creed Unity, and the childhood friend of Élise de La Serre. He initially joins the Brotherhood of Assassins out of a self-centered desire to seek closure for the death of Elise's father and the man who raised him after he is orphaned as a child. Arno is fully customizable, and his weapons, clothing, and abilities can be changed. He is portrayed by Dan Jeannotte through performance capture. Arno makes a cameo appearance in the 2016 Assassin's Creed film, where he is revealed to be an ancestor of Callum Lynch.
Élise de La Serre
Élise de La Serre is a Templar during the French Revolution, and Arno's companion and lover. Élise meets Arno the day his father was killed. Her father, Grand Master de La Serre, takes Arno in and raises him as his ward, allowing Arno and Élise to grow up together. After her father's death she partially blames Arno, as he did not delivered the anonymous warning of the assassination, and they part on bitter terms. After Arno becomes an Assassin he finds out that the Templar who ordered Élise's father's murder also wants her dead. Arno protects Élise when they reunite. He helps her find François-Thomas Germain, the Templar Sage who wants to rebuild the Templar Order. During the final confrontation between Arno, Élise, and Germain, she is killed, devastating Arno.
François de la Serre
François de la Serre (1733–1789) is the Grand Master of the Parisian Rite of the Templar Order during the late 18th century. He is Élise's biological father, and Arno's adoptive father. He is a supporter of the absolutist monarchy of the Ancien Régime, and expels his lieutenant, François-Thomas Germain, from the Order for his radical ideas of unseating the aristocracy from power and giving it to the rising middle class. Germain considers de la Serre to be a complacent Grand Master who has forgotten the Templars' true goals, and has him killed in 1789 as part of a coup within the Order.
Pierre Bellec
Pierre Bellec (voiced by Anthony Lemke) (c. 1740–1791) is a French-Canadian Master Assassin and a former colonial soldier who is a veteran of the Seven Years' War, and was active during the French Revolution. At some point before the French Revolution, Bellec took a seat on the Assassin Council of the French Brotherhood. Arno Victor Dorian is his student.
Victor and Hugo
Victor and his brother Hugo are two blacksmiths living in Versailles during the late 18th century. The names of Victor and Hugo are a reference to the French poet and novelist Victor Hugo. Hugo mentions to Arno that he and Victor were imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread.
Le Roi des Thunes
Le Roi des Thunes, or The King of Beggars, is the self-claimed king of the Cour des Miracles district. He forces the beggars of the district to pay him tributes, which are taken from rich people would pity them when they feign sickness. He tries to join the Templars under the command of de la Serre, but the latter rejects him, causing le Roi to make a vow to kill him. He is approached by Charles Gabriel Sivert, and joins the radical faction of the Templar order led by Germain. He murders de la Serre during the 1789 coup, and is assassinated by Arno two years later.
Aloys la Touche
Aloys la Touche is the right-hand man and enforcer of Le Roi des Thunes, tasked with collecting the tributes from the beggars and punishing the ones who cannot pay. He is also a Templar under Germain's command, and after Le Roi des Thunes is assassinated by Arno, la Touche is tasked by Templar Maximilien de Robespierre to lead his Reign of Terror in Versailles. He is assassinated by Arno during an execution mass in 1793.
Marie Lévesque
Marie Lévesque is a wealthy noble and one of Paris' main grain merchants. She is a Templar that supports Germain, and aids him in the coup against de la Serre. After Germain takes over, she is ordered to starve the people to make the revolution more violent and brutal. Her plans are discovered by Arno Dorian, who assassinates her during a lavish party in 1792.
Frédéric Rouille
Frédéric Rouille is a captain of the Paris military and a Templar supporter of Germain. He is a leading figure in the Tenth of August and September Massacres, where he is assassinated by Arno.
Olivier
Olivier is de la Serre's butler, and expresses sincere disdain for Arno.
Jean Lessard
Jean Lessard (died 1794) is a Sans-culottes leader in Paris who is rejected by Marie Tussaud. During the revolution, Lessard tries to carry out his revenge against Tussaud, and sends his men to slay her. Tussaud escapes and sends Arno to eliminate Lessard.
Denis Molinier
Denis Molinier is a French alchemist and member of the French Templars, tasked with finding Nicolas Flamel's laboratory. Arno plots to find the lab before him, and steals one of his mechanisms, which open Flamel's lab. It is unknown what happened to him afterwards.
Marquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (voiced by Alex Ivanovici) (2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814), commonly known as the Marquis de Sade, was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and author famous for his libertine sexuality.
He becomes the new Roi des Thunes after his predecessor is assassinated by Arno in 1791. He was held prisoner in the Bastille for several years, but is transferred to another prison shortly before angry Parisians storm the stronghold. Three years later, as Arno and Élise hunt Louis-Michel le Peletier, the pair enlist de Sade's knowledge of Parisian politics to find le Peletier's whereabouts.
François-Thomas Germain
François-Thomas Germain (voiced by Julian Casey) (1726–1794) is a French silversmith, Sage, and Grand Master of the Parisian Rite of the Templar Order during the French Revolution. After experiencing visions of the First Civilization and reading the Codex Pater Intellectus, he takes it upon himself to reform the Order, which he believed had grown corrupt after aligning itself with the aristocracy for centuries. Inspired by Grand Master Jacques de Molay, Germain seeks to carry out the "Great Work" and create a capitalist society in which the Templars could more easily control the populace. De la Serre regards his ideas as being too radical, and exiles him from the Order. Germain turns de la Serre's advisors to his cause, forming a radical faction within the Templar Order. In 1789, he has de la Serre assassinated in the Palace of Versailles, taking most of the Order under his control. As the French Revolution breaks out, Germain and his followers exploit discontent with the monarchy and creates as much chaos as possible to crush the aristocracy and clergy, and instill fear in the populace of rising against the establishment again. The Templars hoard food and frame the royal family, eventually leading to the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793. Under the Templar Maximilien de Robespierre, the Reign of Terror brings the revolution to a violent and chaotic climax. Along the way, Élise opposes Germain. She and Arno eliminate Germain's followers and track him down to the Temple in 1794. After Germain kills Élise with a Sword of Eden, he is killed by Arno. In his final moments, Germain triggers a vision, telling arno that his goals of reforming society and the Templar Order have already succeeded, even if he would not live to see the changes
Honore Gabriel Riqueti
Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau (voiced by Harry Standjofski) (1749–1791), better known as simply Mirabeau, is a French statesman, author, Mentor of the Assassin Council of the French Brotherhood, and a leader of the French Revolution during its early stages. He criticizes France's arbitrary justice system and favors a constitutional monarchy built on the model of Great Britain, being a voice of moderation in the National Constituent Assembly. As Mentor of the Council and Brotherhood, Mirabeau seeks to establish peace with the Parisian Rite of the Templar Order and de la Serre, and inducts Arno Dorian into the Brotherhood. After a coup within the Templar Order, he is forced to give up on the truce until Élise offers to work with the Assassins in 1791. Unlike most of the council, he is eager to accept this offer. When he discovers that Mirabeau is a traitor to the Brotherhood, the Assassin Pierre Bellec poisons him. After his death, it is discovered that Mirabeau was serving King Louis XVI as an advisor in exchange for having his debts paid off. Public opinion turns against him, leading to his remains being moved away from the Panthéon. History views him as a complex man who is not easily understood. Pierre's decision to murder Mirabeau has also led subsequent Assassins to debate whether or not his attempts to reconcile with the Templars conflicted with the ideals of the Brotherhood.
Louis XVI
Louis XVI (born Louis Auguste de France, also known as Louis Capet) (1754–1793) was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, after which he was subsequently King of the French from 1791 to 1792, before his deposition and execution during the French Revolution.
Maximilien Robespierre
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (voiced by Bruce Dunmore) (1758–1794), often known as simply Maximilien Robespierre or Robespierre, is a French lawyer, politician and member of the Templar Order. He is notable for starting the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution and abolishing slavery in France.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Napoléon Bonaparte (voiced by Brent Skagford) (1769–1821) was a French military and political leader of Corsican descent who ruled first as the First Consul of France from 1799 to 1804, then as emperor from 1804 to 1815. He rose to power amidst the chaos and political turmoil of the French Revolution.
He is an acquaintance to Arno.
Characters of Assassin's Creed Syndicate
Jacob and Evie Frye
Jacob Frye (born 1847) and Evie Frye (b. 1847) are British Assassins who were active in Victorian London. Born at a time when the Assassin presence in London is virtually nonexistent, they fight to restore the Assassins to prominence in the city, crippling the Templar presence in the process. Jacob is voiced by Paul Amos, and Evie and is voiced by Victoria Atkin.
Galina Voronina
Galina Voronina is a Russian Master Assassin. Like Desmond, she acquires most of her abilities by reliving her ancestors' memories in the Animus and taking advantage of the Bleeding effect. She is forced into the Animus by her mother, and eventually contacts the Assassin Gavin Banks for help. She is able to escape, but her sister dies and her mother commits suicide. After her prolonged exposure to the Animus, her mental health is compromised; Rebecca admits to seeing Galina believing she was conversing with her dead sister. A skilled assassin, Galina engages and defeats an Abstergo Sigma Team during Assassin's Creed Syndicate. She is about to kill Juhani, but is forced to cover Shaun and Rebecca's escape after the latter is shot.
Lydia Frye
Lydia Frye is a British Assassin operating in London during World War I, and is Jacob's granddaughter. She crosses paths with Winston Churchill and assassinates Templar agents attempting to prolong the war, one of whom was a Sage. She appears within the Helix missions in Assassin's Creed Syndicate.
Henry Green
Henry Green is the Indian-born leader of the British Assassins during the late 1860s. Born Jayadeep Mir, the son of Arbaaz Mir, he crosses paths with Evie and Jacob during their liberation of London in 1868, helping them in their final fight against Crawford Starrick and eventually marrys Evie. As a child in India, he was trained by the twins' father, Ethan Frye.
Crawford Starrick
Crawford Starrick (1827–1868) is the owner of Starrick Industries, and the Grand Master of the British Rite of the Templar Order by 1868. He appears in Assassin's Creed Syndicate. As an arrogant individual, he shows great disdain to those who tormented him and sees himself as a ruler among servants. Using his charm, he bends people to his will. After all the members of his inner circle are killed by Jacob and Evie, Crawford goes to the location of the Shroud of Eden, where he is killed by the twins.
Lucy Thorne
Lucy Thorne (1837–1868) is a Templar and Grand Master Starrick's second-in-command. She is also the Order's expert on Pieces of Eden, and is tasked with finding the legendary Shroud of Eden. After fellow Templar Pearl Attaway is killed by Jacob, Lucy chases the twins for revenge, only to be assassinated by Evie.
Maxwell Roth
Maxwell Roth (18??–1868) is the mastermind behind London's criminal underworld and one of Crawford's lieutenants. Although he is not a Templar, he trains several of Crawford's small-time gang leaders in return for a massive amount of money. After some of Crawford's lieutenants are killed, Maxwell proposes a partnership with Jacob's gang, betraying Crawford and helping Jacob's gangsters free the city. The partnership ends shortly after due to Maxwell's psychopathic behavior. When he intentionally burns down the Alhambra Music Hall, Jacob stabs him with his blade. In his final moments, Maxwell tells Jacob that he carried out the atrocities because he wanted and chose to do so.
Pearl Attaway
Pearl Attaway is the owner of Attaway transport and, like her cousin, Grand Master Crawford Starrick, is a member of the British Templars. Pearl is business rivals with Malcolm Millner, another Templar. Crawford initially chooses Malcolm as the man controlling the bus transport, due to tensions with Pearl, but after she cooperates with Jacob, who does not know that she was a Templar, Crawford gives control to her and they both orchestrate Malcolm's elimination. Jacob discovers Pearl's true colors and kills her in her train station.
Rupert Ferris
Rupert Ferris is the owner of Ferris Ironworks, a large steel-mill in the city of Croydon near London, effectively controlling the small city with his wealth. He is also one of Crawford's lieutenants. He is killed by Jacob Frye in his factory.
Philip Twopenny
Philip Twopenny is the governor of the Bank of England and a secret member of the Templar Order. He orchestrates various robberies within the bank to fund the Templars, and in one of the raids, he is assassinated by Jacob with the help of inspector Abberline.
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin, born on 12 February 1809, was best known for his contributions and studies regarding the natural laws of evolution.
At some point, he meets Jacob and Evie.
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was an English writer and social critic. He meets Jacob and Evie, and asks for their help in solving crimes.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher, economist, communist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He asks Jacob and Evie to expand his unionistic ideas to the people of London.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish writer and physician, famous for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes. In 1868, as a young boy, his love for detective stories lead him to team up with the penny dreadful writer Henry Raymond, and Jacob and Evie to solve murders.
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell (1847–1922) was a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who was credited with inventing the first practical telephone. He was on friendly terms with Henry Green, who nicknamed him "Aleck".
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria (1819–1901), born Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, was the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837, and Empress of India from 1876, until her death.
Duleep Singh
Duleep Singh (1838–1893), also known as Dalip Singh or the Black Prince of Perthshire, was the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire and the youngest son of Ranjit Singh, ruling from 1843 to 1846. He is an associate of, and great-uncle to the Assassin Henry Green.
Jack the Ripper
Jack, formerly known as Jack the Lad during his youth and widely feared as Jack the Ripper, was a member of the British Brotherhood of Assassins, active in the Whitechapel district of London up until 1888. Jack becomes infamous in 1888 following a series of gruesome murders of young women, who are fellow Assassins trying to stop his madness; these murders, in conjunction with Jack's control over London's criminal enterprise, threaten the existence of the Assassins in London. He is killed by Evie.
David Brewster
David Brewster is a scientist working on a Piece of Eden at the behest of the Templar Order. He is assassinated by Evie, and his experiments on the Piece of Eden grow unstable, resulting in an explosion that buries his underground laboratory.
John Elliotson
John Elliotson is a physician working in Lambeth Asylum and an associate of Crawford Starrick. Elliotson creates "Starrick's Soothing Syrup", a highly-addictive tonic made from opium and hallucinogens used to keep the working classes under control. He is assassinated by Jacob Frye, but his death floods the borough of Lambeth with counterfeit medicinal and sub-standard medical care.
James Brudenell
James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan is a member of the House of Lords who opposes Benjamin Disraeli and the Corrupt Practices Act as he tries to keep political power in the hands of the nobility.
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. She is first encountered by Evie as the latter looks for help to treat Clara O'Dea.
Characters of Assassin's Creed Chronicles
Shao Jun
Shao Jun is a member of the Chinese Brotherhood of Assassins and an ancestor of Lin, an Abstergo Foundation test subject. She is a former concubine of the Zhengde Emperor, and is rescued by the Assassins after the emperor's death. As a result, she devotes her life to the Creed. Shao Jun appears in Assassin's Creed: Embers and Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China. She is voiced by Angela Galuppo in Assassin's Creed: Embers, by Annabelle Galea in Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China, and is portrayed by Michelle H. Lin in the 2016 Assassin's Creed film.
Arbaaz Mir
Arbaaz Mir (early 1800s – unknown) is a member of the Indian Brotherhood of Assassins during the 19th century, active during the time of the war between the Sikh Empire and the East India Company. Arbaaz is Jayadeep's father. He appears in Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India, and is voiced by Johnny Neal.
Nikolai Andreievich Orelov
Nikolai Andreievich Orelov (late 1800s–1928) is a member of the Russian Brotherhood of Assassins during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nikolai is notably involved in events such as the Borki train disaster and the Tunguska explosion, and spearheads the hunt for the Imperial Sceptre of the Russian royal family with aid from Nikola Tesla. He leaves the Brotherhood out of fear for his and his family's safety and is hunted down by Assassins working for the FBI after he kills one of them in a fit of paranoid madness after they attempt to convince him to return to the Brotherhood with his son, Innokenti. Orelov appears in Assassin's Creed Chronicles: Russia.
Characters of Assassin's Creed Origins
Bayek
Bayek of Siwa (portrayed by Abubakar Salim) is a Medjay and Assassin operating in the Ptolemaic Kingdom around 49 BCE, who appears in Assassin's Creed Origins. Bayek possesses a symbiotic relationship with the eagle, Senu, which allows him to see the world through its eyes—a more literal predecessor to the Eagle Vision of later Assassins. He is also regarded as the founder of the organized Assassin Order.
Aya
Aya of Alexandria, later known as Amunet, is a co-founder of the Hidden Ones–the precursors to the Assassin Brotherhood–and the Bayek's wife during the Hellenistic period of the Ptolemaic dynasty. On 12 August 30 BCE, Amunet infiltrates Cleopatra VII's palace, where she kills the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt with an asp. By the Renaissance, Amunet is respected as a great Assassin by the Assassin Brotherhood, and a statue of her is placed in the Assassin Sanctuary of Monteriggioni. Around this time, a shrine in her honor is created at the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, Italy, which is believed to be her actual burial site until her mummy is found in the same cave as Bayek's. It has since been confirmed that the sarcophagus in Venice does not contain Amunet's remains. Amunet is also the direct descendant of Kassandra, the canonical protagonist of Assassin's Creed Odyssey and her son Elpidios.
Cleopatra
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (69 BCE–12 August 30 BCE), commonly known as Cleopatra, is the last Egyptian pharaoh and a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty. She initially shares power with her father, and later, her brothers, whom she marries. With the help of the Templars, she becomes the sole ruler of Egypt, and an ally of Julius Caesar. After Caesar's death, she allies herself with Mark Antony, with whom she has a relationship with. In 30 BCE, Antony commits suicide at the Battle of Actium, and Cleopatra is by Amunet with an asp.
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (13 July 100 BCE – 15 March 44 BCE), commonly known as Julius Caesar was a prominent general in the Roman army and a notable politician. He is killed for his Templar affiliations.
Ptolemy XIII
Ptolemy XIII Theos Philopator (62 BCE–47 BCE) was a pharaoh of Egypt and member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, ruling alongside his older sister and wife Cleopatra VII from 51 BCE until his death.
Marcus Junius Brutus
Marcus Junius Brutus (early June 85 BCE– late October 42 BCE), more commonly known simply as Brutus, is a politician of the late Roman Republic, and a member of the Roman Republic and the Order of Assassins. Brutus is one of the masterminds behind the assassination conspiracy against Julius Caesar in 44 BCE. He is also the first known human to discover the Colosseum Vault.
Cassius
Gaius Cassius Longinus (c. 85 BCE – 3 October 42 BCE), commonly known as Cassius, is an Assassin, a Roman senator, and Brutus's brother-in-law. On 15 March 44 BCE, Cassius was part of the group Senators who stabbed Julius Caesar.
Characters of Assassin's Creed Odyssey
Alexios and Kassandra
Alexios and Kassandra are siblings, one of whom is chosen by the player to be the protagonist (referred to as the Eagle Bearer) of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. They are Spartan Greek mercenaries who are descended from King Leonidas of Sparta, and fight for both the Delian and Peloponnesian Leagues during the Peloponnesian War. The sibling not chosen appears as a secondary character in the game known as Deimos. The Eagle Bearer eventually inherits the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus from Pythagoras, a powerful Isu artifact sought by Layla Hassan.
Barnabas
Barnabas is a Greek naval captain active during the Peloponnesian War. After he is rescued from the thug leader known as the Cyclops in Kephallonia by the Eagle Bearer, he offers the command of his ship, The Adrestia, and his crew. In his youth, Barnabas was a soldier before turning to commercial shipping for a livelihood. In this capacity, he developed a network of contacts throughout Greece, including local leaders and mercenaries, who becomes a primary source of information for the Eagle Bearer.
Herodotos
Herodotos (c. 484 BCE – c. 425 BCE), also spelled Herodotus, was one of the earliest Greek historians who hails from the island of Samos, off the coast of Anatolia. In Odyssey, Herodotos becomes a companion of the Eagle Bearer, and documents their ordeals during the Peloponnesian War. The record is lost to humanity until it is rediscovered by Layla Hassan.
King Leonidas of Sparta
Leonidas I (c. 540 BCE – 480 BCE) was a warrior king of the Greek city-state of Sparta, best known for his involvement in the Battle of Thermopylae against the Persian Empire in 480 BCE. In Odyssey, Leonidas is a direct descendant of the Isu, and wielded an Isu spear, which was later passed down to his daughter and eventually the grandchild known as the Eagle Bearer.
Myrrine
Myrrine, also known as the Phoenix while in exile, is the wife of Nikolaos, the mother of Alexios and Kassandra, and the daughter of King Leonidas of Sparta. She gives her eldest child the broken Spear of Leonidas, an Isu artifact and the family heirloom which she had inherited after Leonidas' death.
Nikolaos
Nikolaos of Sparta, also known as the Wolf of Sparta, is a Spartan general and Myrrine's husband. Because of Myrinne's heritage, Nikolaos has high hopes for her children due to their grandfather's fame and valor. However, an Oracle prophesies the potential destruction of Sparta at the hands of Myrrine's youngest, infant child. After the apparent death of an Elder as a result of the elder child's actions, Nikolaos reluctantly stood by a death sentence ordered by the other Spartan leaders and personally attempts to carry it out, only for the child to survive the fall from Mount Taygetos, and, in exile, grow up to become a legendary mercenary.
Cult of Kosmos
The Cult of Kosmos, a secretive cabal operating throughout Ancient Greece and the surrounding regions, are the overarching antagonists of Odyssey. The Cult operates in branches comprising several Adepts, with each brand led by an individual dubbed as a Sage, who are often prominent members within various levels of society in the Classical Greek world. Like their Egyptian counterparts, the Order of the Ancients, and the modern day Templar Order, the Cult of Kosmos are not polytheistic, and have a deistic belief system. They manipulate the Greek world to maintain their power and wealth. Some members of the Cult idolize and worship the people within the Bloodline and truly believe that they are actual demigods, such as Deimos. The members of the Cult grow chaotic and greedy, and use the Chaos to earn massive amounts of profit and political power.
Darius
Artabanus, better known by his alias Darius, is a member of the Persian elite within the Achaemenid Empire, whose philosophy and combat tactics eventually form the basis of the Hidden Ones and its successor, the Brotherhood of Assassins. He is based on the historical figure Artabanus of Persia. In the 5th century BCE, the Order of the Ancients, an antecedent organization to the Templars, supports the reigns and regional conquests of the Achaemenid kings Darius I and his son Xerxes I. Using a newly created weapon known as the Hidden Blade, which becomes the Assassins' iconic signature weapon, Darius personally assassinates King Xerxes I and flees Persia with his surviving child afterwards. While the character is originally referenced and mentioned in Assassin's Creed II, Darius makes his first series appearance in the Assassin's Creed Odyssey's DLC pack, Legacy of the First Blade, where he encounters the Eagle Bearer. They work together to thwart the Order of the Ancients' activities in the Greek world, and Darius later becomes the father-in-law of the Eagle Bearer. By the ending of Legacy of the First Blade, Darius relocates to Egypt with his grandson Elpidios and raises him alone as the boy's guardian and mentor.
Characters of Assassin's Creed Valhalla
Eivor Varinsdottir
Eivor Varinsdottir (voiced by Cecilie Stenspil as a female and by Magnus Bruun as a male) is a Scandinavian Viking raider living in Norway around 873 AD. Alongside her adoptive brother, Sigurd Styrbjornsson, Eivor leads a group of Vikings to settle in England where they come into conflict with the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Over the course of their journey, they meet the Hidden Ones and join the fight against the Order of the Ancients. Within her body resides the reincarnated consciousness of the Isu ruler Odin.
Sigurd Styrbjornsson
Sigurd Styrbjornsson (voiced by Gudmundur Thorvaldsson) is a Scandinavian Viking raider, the adoptive brother of Eivor.
Other characters in the Assassin's Creed series
Characters of Assassin's Creed (film)
After the sequel to Assassin's Creed was canceled, its narrative was continued in Assassin's Creed Origins and the Layla Hassan saga as a whole, with the inclusion of Marion Cotillard as Dr. Sofia Rikkin, an original character from the film, the film itself having continued Arno and Baptiste's storylines from Assassin's Creed Unity and Assassin's Creed III: Liberation respectively.
Callum Lynch
Callum Lynch (portrayed by Michael Fassbender) (b. 1979) is a descendant of Aguilar de Nerha, a Spanish Assassin. After being rescued from his own execution by Abstergo, he is placed in the Animus to relive the memories of Aguilar and find the Apple of Eden. After reconciling with his father, who murdered his mother to keep her out of Templar hands, he joins the Assassin Order, retrieves the Apple, and kills Alan Rikkin.
Aguilar de Nerha
Aguilar de Nerha (portrayed by Michael Fassbender) is a Spanish Assassin and ancestor to Callum Lynch. During the Spanish Inquisition, he attempts to protect the son of Sultan Muhammad XII of Granada, an ally of the Assassins who possessed an Apple of Eden. He manages to escape with the Apple and passes it on to Christopher Columbus for protection.
Sofia Rikkin
Sofia Rikkin (portrayed by Marion Cotillard) is a scientist and the head of the Abstergo Foundation Rehabilitation Center in Madrid. She is also Alan's daughter, and the two have a difficult relationship. In October 2016, Sofia comes into contact with Callum. During their time together the pair form a connection, but when Callum's escape from the Foundation leads to him killing Alan, she dedicates herself to chasing down her father's killer.
Alan Rikkin
Alan Rikkin (portrayed by Jeremy Irons) (c. 1951–14 December 2016) is the CEO of Abstergo Industries and a member of the Inner Sanctum of the Templar Order. He originally had a minor role in the first Assassin's Creed game, where he sent several e-mails to Warren Vidic, one of which detailed several Pieces of Eden that the Templars believed to be nothing more than mythical tales, including the Holy Grail. In the film, he is depicted as the head of Abstergo's subsidiary organization, the Abstergo Foundation, and seeks to find the Apple of Eden through Aguilar de Nerha's memories. He eventually recovers the Apple from Christopher Columbus's tomb and attempts to perform a ritual to remove human free will, but is assassinated by Cal Lynch, who steals the Apple.
Maria
Maria (portrayed by Ariane Labed) is a member of the Spanish Brotherhood of Assassins during the 15th century, as well as a close ally of Master Assassin Aguilar de Nerha. In 1492, she and her fellow Assassins seek to prevent Prince Ahmed of Granada from being captured by the Templars, fearing that his father, Sultan Muhammad XII of Granada, would relinquish the Apple of Eden in his possession in exchange for his son's safety.
Alicia Vikander was originally considered for the role of Maria, but scheduling conflicts with Jason Bourne eventually caused the actress to drop out, with Ariane Labed being cast instead.
Tomás de Torquemada
Tomás de Torquemada (portrayed by Javier Gutiérrez) is a Spanish Dominican friar, the first Inquisitor General of Spain, and confessor to Isabella I of Castile. He is depicted as a high-ranking member of the Spanish Rite of the Templar Order. Under the influence of Rodrigo Borgia, Grand Master of the Italian Templars and Papal candidate, Torquemada opposes the Spanish Assassin Brotherhood, and persecutes them as part of the Spanish Inquisition.
Isu (major characters)
Minerva
Minerva (voiced by Margaret Easley), also known as Merva or Mera, is the first member of the Isu, otherwise known as the "First Civilization", introduced in the series. She is a member of the Capitoline Triad—a renowned scientific group–along with Juno and Jupiter. In Assassin's Creed II, Minerva appears to Ezio via a pre-recorded hologram inside the Vatican Vault in 1499. Knowing that Desmond will eventually relive Ezio's memories, Minerva uses the latter as a conduit to pass on her message. She explains that her kind are not gods, but a more advanced civilization whose technology was mistaken for magic. They engineered humans as slaves, but they rebelled. Minerva describes how war with humanity, combined with a devastating cataclysmic event, led to the downfall of their civilization and the extinction of their race. She correctly predicted that a second cataclysmic event would eventually occur, and she hid away the tools humanity would need to survive in several vaults around the world, devising a system by which they could communicate across time before they eventually died. She instructs Desmond to find the vaults, then disappears, leaving a confused Ezio in her wake.
In Assassin's Creed III, she projects herself through the past one last time and finds Desmond in the Vault. She warns him about Juno's power-hungry ambitions, hoping that he will decide not to save the world and keep Juno imprisoned. Juno turns the tables and forces Minerva to reveal Desmond's destiny and how his legacy will be manipulated if he allows the cataclysm to happen. During her own natural lifetime Minerva—known to adherents of Norse mythology as Gunlodr–met with the Isu leader Odin and played an unwitting part in his plot to survive the Great Catastrophe.
Juno
Juno (voiced by Nadia Verrucci), alternately known as Uni, is a member of the Capitoline Triad introduced in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Although she reiterates Minerva's warning to Desmond, she is far more hostile and contemptuous of humanity. After Desmond recovers an Apple of Eden hidden by Ezio in the Roman Colosseum, Juno takes control of Desmond, forces him to kill Lucy, and instructs him to find "the one who would accompany you through the gate". In Assassins Creed III, after Desmond kills Warren and Daniel, she takes the place of the modern-day main antagonist. It is revealed that Juno sought to conquer the rejuvenating world. When she tried to use Minerva's technology for her own ends, she was found and imprisoned in the Vault, with the other two members of the Triad hoping that she would fade away in time for the devices there to be activated safely. However, she endured, and she confronts Desmond and Minerva when the time comes to use the device. Juno spurs Minerva into showing the inevitable future if Desmond does not activate the device: humanity will start out well, and then sink back into their old ways and repeat the cycle all over again. Desmond decides to use the device, preventing the apocalypse, even though this would release Juno and cost him his life. Juno is released, and thanks Desmond's body before leaving her prison. She reappears later in Assassin's Creed Syndicate, where she ascends to leadership of the Instruments of the First Will, a sect of Isu worshippers who are loyal to her search for a way to restore her physical form. Juno was killed by Charlotte de la Cruz after gaining a physical form. During her own natural lifetime Juno–known to adherents of Norse mythology as Hyrrokin–met with Odin and willingly aided him in his plot to survive the Great Catastrophe in exchange for assistance in restoring to life her lost love, Aita.
Jupiter
Jupiter (voiced by Peter Renaday), also known as Tinia, is a member of the Capitoline Triad. He appears to Desmond in Assassin's Creed: Revelations during the Nexus of Time. He elaborates more on the creation of the vaults, and shows the location of the central vault that contains all their accumulated knowledge. Although the humans tend to use his Roman name, Minerva refers to him by his Etruscan name, Tinia. During his own natural lifetime Jupiter–known to adherents of Norse mythology as Suttungr–led a faction of Isu that Norse mythology would come to know as the Jötunheimr, or "giants". At one point the Jotunheimr waged war with an opposing faction of Isu known as the Aesir, led by Odin. Despite this, Jupiter welcomed his Aesir counterpart during the latter's visit to his realm and hosted a feast in his honor.
Aita
Aita was Juno's husband who volunteered to be a test subject for one of the Capitoline Triad's attempts to preserve the First Civilization. The experiment that he took part in is left vague, but Juno suggests that it preserved his body at the cost of his mind. Juno euthanized him when his mind "became brittle". He appears in Black Flag as Bartholomew and John; Bartholomew is killed by Edward, while John commits suicide by forcing Abstergo security to shoot him; the latter's body is then taken by Abstergo to use in the Phoenix Project. Aita is subsequently reborn as the Sage in the form of Jacques de Molay and François-Thomas Germain in Assassin's Creed Unity, and an unnamed German spymaster working in London during the events of Assassin's Creed Syndicate. As Germain, he attempts to purge the Templar Order of complacency and restore its original purpose. As the German spymaster, his objectives are unknown, but as he is assassinated by Lydia Frye relatively quickly, it is noted that he was a particularly ineffective Sage. As the Sage, Aita is closely tied to the Instruments of the First Will, a cult worshipping Juno that believes humanity should be subservient to the Precursor race. Aita is the Etruscan name for Hades and Pluto.
Aletheia
Aletheia–known to adherents of Norse mythology as Angrboda–is an apparent sympathizer to the humans. She criticizes her fellow Isu for their treatment of their "useful apes", and reveals her disdain for their artifacts made to control the human populace. Trying to convince other Isu to join her cause, she praises the humans' achievements, among which includes the development of democracy and diplomacy. She implores the others to stop cowering before renouncing her position, not wanting to "be part of [their] exploitation" anymore. Before her death, she digitizes her consciousness into the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, wielded by the Isu known as Hermes, so that she can commune with Layla Hassan in the present. It is eventually revealed that Aletheia's actions are all part of a plot for her to reunite with her lover Loki, and to obtain vengeance against Odin for the imprisonment of their child Fenrir.
Odin
Odin, sometimes known as Havi, is an Isu ruler and leader of the Aesir, a nation of the Isu, in the years leading up to the Great Catastrophe. Introduced in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Odin is determined to avoid his own fated death during the Great Catastrophe, known to the Aesir as Ragnarök. Selfish and deceitful, but loyal, Odin's obsession with avoiding his fated death causes him to imprison Loki's son Fenrir, and betray his brother, Tyr. With Juno's assistance, Odin succeeds in finding a way for him and a few trusted warriros to survive Ragnarok by reincarnation. Odin is ultimately reincarnated in Eivor Varinsdottir, a Norse Viking raider who becomes embroiled in the Assassin–Templar conflict central to the series.
Tyr
Tyr is an Isu member of the Aesir nation and close friend to Odin. Chief lawgiver of the Aesir, Tyr works tirelessly to keep the peace between Odin and Loki, the latter having betrayed the Aesir by fathering the child Fenrir with Aletheia. Tyr is betrayed by Odin during Fenrir's imprisonment, and loses an arm in the process, but he is among Odin's counted few to be reincarnated after Ragnarök. He is eventually reincarnated in Sigurd Styrbjornsson, the adopted brother of Eivor Varinsdottir.
Basim
Loki is an Isu member of the Aesir nation and Aletheia's lover. As Fenrir's father, he seeks vengeance against Odin for his son's imprisonment. After betraying Odin, Loki is forbidden from joining his fellow Aesir in reincarnating after Ragnarök, but he formulates a plan with Aletheia that will allow them both to survive the coming catastrophe. Loki reincarnates in the body of Basim Ibn Ishaq, a member of the Hidden Ones who retains all of Loki's memories. Basim seeks out his fellow reincarnated, locating Sigurd Styrbjornsson (who he initially believes to be Odin's reincarnation) in Constantinople before meeting Eivor Varinsdottir. Together, the three travel to England where Basim works to restore Sigurd's Isu memories before discovering the truth about Eivor and attacking them. Imprisoned by Eivor and Sigurd in an Isu simulation, Basim is freed by Layla Hassan in 2020 in return for assistance in repairing the global shield that protects the Earth.
References
Bibliography
Assassin's Creed characters
Assassins Creed | en |
doc-en-8435 | The Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar was an American fifty-cent piece struck in 1925 at the Philadelphia Mint. Its main purpose was to raise money on behalf of the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association for the Stone Mountain Memorial near Atlanta, Georgia. Designed by sculptor Gutzon Borglum, the coin features a depiction of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on the obverse and the caption: "Memorial to the Valor of the Soldier of the South" on the reverse. The piece was also originally intended to be in memory of the recently deceased president, Warren G. Harding, but no mention of him appears on the coin.
In the early 20th century, proposals were made to carve a large sculpture in memory of General Lee on Stone Mountain, a huge rock outcropping. The owners of Stone Mountain agreed to transfer title on condition the work was completed within 12 years. Borglum, who was, like others involved, a Ku Klux Klan member, was engaged to design the memorial, and proposed expanding it to include a colossal monument depicting Confederate warriors, with Lee, Jackson, and Confederate President Jefferson Davis leading them.
The work proved expensive, and the Association advocated the issuance of a commemorative half dollar as a fundraiser for the memorial. Congress approved it, though to appease Northerners, the coin was also made in honor of Harding, under whose administration work had commenced. Borglum designed the coin, which was repeatedly rejected by the Commission of Fine Arts. All reference to Harding was removed from the design by order of President Calvin Coolidge.
The Association sponsored extensive sales efforts for the coin throughout the South, though these were hurt by the firing of Borglum in 1925, which alienated many of his supporters, including the United Daughters of the Confederacy. A 1928 audit of the fundraising showed excessive expenses and misuse of money, and construction halted the same year; a scaled-down sculpture was eventually completed in 1970. Because of the large quantities issued—over a million remain extant—the Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar remains inexpensive compared with other U.S. commemoratives.
Background
The first European-descended settlers inhabited the land around Stone Mountain, Georgia, today in the east Atlanta suburbs, around 1790. They called the large outcropping, about long and high, "Rock Mountain". Rev. Adrel Sherwood of Macon, Georgia, first named it Stone Mountain in 1825. The town of New Gibraltar was founded nearby in 1839; its name would be changed to Stone Mountain by the Georgia Legislature in 1947. From about the time of the American Civil War, the mountain was used as a quarry; this would not entirely cease until the 1970s.
John Gutzon de la mothe Borglum (usually called Gutzon Borglum) was born in Idaho Territory in 1867, to one of several wives of a Dane who had converted to Mormonism. As a boy, Borglum lived in various places in the Far West. Turning to art as a career, he attended the San Francisco Art Academy, the Académie Julian, and the École des Beaux-Arts. Greatly influenced by Rodin, whom he met, Borglum switched from painting to sculpture in 1901. His Mares of Diomedes won a gold medal at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, and became the first work of sculpture to be purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Inception
In 1914, editor John Temple Graves wrote in the Atlanta Georgian, suggesting the establishment of a memorial to Confederate General Robert E. Lee on Stone Mountain, "from this godlike eminence let our Confederate hero calmly look history and the future in the face!" Others who called for the establishment of a Confederate memorial there included William H. Terrell, an Atlanta attorney who believed that while the North had spent millions of dollars on monuments to the Union, the South had not sufficiently honored Confederate heroes. Also active in the early days of the Stone Mountain proposal was Helen Plane (1829–1925), who had been a belle from Atlanta before the war, and whose husband had given his life at the Battle of Antietam in 1862. She devoted the remainder of her life to preserving the memory of the Southern cause.
The release of the film The Birth of a Nation in 1915 sparked increased interest in the Confederate cause in the South. Plane, who was lifetime honorary president of the Georgia organization of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), asked Borglum to carve the image of General Lee on the mountain. The Stone Mountain project was initially a UDC endeavor. Officials originally contemplated a monument of perhaps by . Putting that on Stone Mountain, Borglum supposedly stated, would be like putting a postage stamp on a barn. He proposed a much larger sculpture, high and long, and drew up plans in his Stamford, Connecticut, studio. He envisioned a huge depiction of the Confederate army, including artillery and infantry, as well as 65 Confederate generals, five to be nominated by the governor of each Southern state. In 1917, the Stone Mountain Confederate Monumental Association (the Association) was founded to publicize and raise funds for a colossal sculpture at Stone Mountain. Samuel H. Venable and his family, owners of the land, agreed to deed it over for a monument, on condition that if the project was not completed in 12 years, title would revert to them. A formal dedication took place in May 1916; the preliminary work was interrupted by the US entry into World War I in 1917.
Another organization which took an interest in the Stone Mountain work was the recently revived Ku Klux Klan, of which both Venable and Borglum were members. The Klan, through much of the 20th century, held regular encampments on or near Stone Mountain. Plane, in a 1915 letter to Borglum, stated that the original Klan had saved the South from "Negro domination" in the Reconstruction era, and suggested that the design include a small group of Klansmen in robes, seen in the distance, approaching.
Beginning in 1920, the project slowly came under the control of Atlanta businessmen, brought in to aid with the massive fundraising, and the UDC became marginalized. The work on the sculpture resumed on June 18, 1923, when Borglum began carving Lee's figure into the mountainside; he planned for General Stonewall Jackson and Confederate President Jefferson Davis to be close by Lee. Borglum's plans were for a huge sculpture depicting the Confederates, a memorial hall hewn from the granite at the base of the mountain in which artworks and artifacts could be displayed (as well as rolls of honor listing the contributors) and a giant amphitheater nearby. He estimated the total cost at $3.5 million. Instead, the scope of the project was scaled back, though different sources give varying cost estimates and dimensions. Borglum signed a contract to complete the group of Lee, Jackson, and Davis within three years for a cost of $250,000.
The work was expensive and by November 1923, the Association decided to advocate for a commemorative coin which it could buy from the government at face value and sell at a premium as a fundraiser. Two men each sought credit for coming up with the idea for a coin. Daniel W. Webb, executive secretary of the Association, said he had thought of it after finding an Alabama Centennial half dollar at home; journalist Harry Stillwell Edwards made a similar claim and apparently collected a reward from the Association.
On November 16, 1923, Edwards wrote to Bascom Slemp, secretary to President Calvin Coolidge (the previous president, Warren G. Harding, had recently died). Edwards arranged a meeting between the President and himself, association president Hollins N. Randolph (an Atlanta lawyer and direct descendant of early president Thomas Jefferson), and Borglum. President Coolidge agreed to support authorizing legislation for a Stone Mountain coin.
Borglum later stated that the Association asked him to write to people in Washington because of his contacts in the Republican Coolidge administration. He wrote to the powerful Republican Massachusetts senator, Henry Cabot Lodge, urging him to support legislation for a Stone Mountain commemorative coin; the appeal apparently worked, as late in 1923 the committee chairmen having jurisdiction over coinage, Reed Smoot in the Senate and Louis Thomas McFadden in the House of Representatives, introduced legislation for a Stone Mountain Memorial half dollar. McFadden later wrote that he sponsored the legislation because of his friendship with Borglum. With the threat of sectional opposition if the coin only honored the South, the bill's sponsors included language making the new half dollar also in memory of the recently deceased Harding (an Ohioan), during whose presidency the renewed work had begun. The bill passed by unanimous consent in the House on March 6, 1924, and in the Senate five days later; Coolidge signed it on March 17. The bill authorizing the coin read:
Preparation and design
Borglum was busy between the passage of the bill and the end of May 1924, first working on the Children's Founders Roll medal, and then the half dollar. The Children's Founders Roll was open to white children up to the age of 18 who contributed one dollar to the building of the monument. Borglum must still have been fine-tuning the monument's design; Jackson's posture on the medal differs from that on the coin. Unlike the issued coin, Borglum's models showed the front part of Davis's horse, although the Confederate president is unseen, and marching soldiers appear in the background. Borglum met with Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon who questioned first why "In God We Trust" appeared directly over Lee's head; Borglum responded that it was to pay tribute to the Confederates' faith. Mellon then asked what the thirteen stars on the obverse represented; Borglum replied that those on the north side of the Mason–Dixon line could consider them to represent the thirteen original colonies (those south of it, the implication was, could consider them to be a tribute to the Southern states). Mellon laughed and gave preliminary approval. On July 2, Mellon showed the designs to President Coolidge; they were then sent to the Commission of Fine Arts for its members' opinions.
According to numismatists William D. Hyder and R.W. Colbert, "Borglum, to put it mildly, was a temperamental artist who managed to offend most everyone with whom he worked". They note that "Borglum's past insolence had not left him in the good graces of the art community" and his designs met a hostile reception at the commission. Sculptor member James Earle Fraser, designer of the Buffalo nickel, rejected Borglum's initial design on July 22, eight days after they were received. The inscription on the reverse included a tribute to Harding; Fraser deemed it inartistic. Borglum submitted a second set on August 14, this was again rejected; the commission criticized the design, which seemed to be only a segment of a larger one, rather than specifically designed to fit a half dollar. Borglum wanted to ignore what he deemed "damn fool suggestions", but the Association threatened to fire him if he did not complete the coin. Borglum was concerned the reverse was still too crowded, and proposed leaving off the eagle, but space was saved when Coolidge did not like the reference to Harding, and it was omitted. With the eagle still in place on the reverse, Fraser finally approved the designs on October 10, 1924. In all, Borglum made nine plaster models for the design.
Even though all necessary approvals had been received, the Philadelphia Mint refused to proceed with preparations because of the lack of the mention of Harding, which it believed was congressionally mandated. Borglum wired Coolidge on October 31, notifying him of the problem; the President confirmed his approval of the design the following day. Despite the support of the federal government for the coin, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of Union Civil War veterans, tried to prevent the issuance of a coin they believed honored treason by lobbying in late 1924 and early 1925. Work on the sculpture slowed (the head of Jackson was then being carved) because of the sculptor being distracted by designing the coin, flaws in the rock on Stone Mountain, and the fact that the Association had ceased fundraising efforts in anticipation of a campaign to sell the coin. Revenues from the medal were not sufficient to meet expenses.
The obverse of the half dollar depicts Confederate generals Lee and Jackson, the latter with head bare, mounted on horseback. Although both Lee and Jackson were respected in the North, Davis would not have been acceptable on a federal coin, and he was omitted, although he appears on the Children's Founders Roll medal which Borglum adapted for the obverse of the half dollar. There are thirteen stars in the upper field of the obverse; they represent the thirteen states which either joined the Confederacy or had Confederate factions. Borglum's initials, "GB", are found on the extreme right of the piece, near the horses' tails. The reverse depicts an eagle with wings stretched, representative of liberty, perched upon a mountaintop. There are 35 stars in the field, supposedly to represent the number of states at the start of the Civil War, although there were in fact 34 in 1861, and there were 35 states only from 1863 to 1864, between the admissions of West Virginia and Nevada.
Art historian Cornelius Vermeule, writing in 1971, noted that the half dollar represents an unusual circumstance in American art, where a designer uses a coin as a bozzetto or small-scale model of a work to be completed. Vermeule considered the children's medal a better work of art, due to the inclusion of Davis. He believed that Borglum's original design, before its rejection by the Commission of Fine Arts, was superior, as it included a sense of motion through the depiction of marching soldiers in the background, balanced by the inclusion of the head of Davis's horse, though the Confederate president himself is unseen. According to Vermeule, the original design "would have made a magnificent coin, an unusual compression of monumentality and power into a limited and unorthodox historical space".
Production and conflict
The Medallic Art Company of New York converted Borglum's models to coinage dies. The first 1,000 Stone Mountain Memorial half dollars were struck on a medal press at the Philadelphia Mint on January 21, 1925, the 101st anniversary of General Jackson's birth; Borglum and officials of the Association were present. The first piece struck was mounted on a plate made of gold mined in Georgia for presentation to President Coolidge. The second was mounted on a silver plaque, and presented to Secretary Mellon. The remainder of the first thousand were placed in numbered envelopes; some were presented to officials or those involved in the Stone Mountain project. Between January and March 1925, that mint struck 2,310,000 of the authorized mintage of 5,000,000, plus 4,709 pieces reserved for inspection by the 1926 Assay Commission. Except for the first thousand, for which Randolph paid in gold, the pieces were sent to the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, which advanced the funds to purchase them from the government.
Although the Association unveiled the completed head of Lee on January 19, 1924 (the general's birthday), within months, its relations with Borglum had become strained. Technical problems over the medal and the work on the mountain caused tensions, and political differences between Borglum, a Republican, and Randolph, an active Democrat, led to poor relations between the two. Borglum, Venable, and Randolph backed different KKK members for national leadership. Both Borglum and the Association accused each other of graft; the sculptor proposed that he form a syndicate to purchase the half dollars from the Mint and sell them with the profits to be applied directly to construction costs. Randolph ridiculed the suggestion, stating that it would allow Borglum to carve "whatever he pleased on the mountain". Borglum accused Randolph of using donations for his own benefit, and spending freely on an expense account. These dissensions became public, and in February 1925, the Association fired Borglum. Randolph stated, as one reason for dismissing the sculptor, that Borglum had taken seven months to design the coin, when, he said, any competent artist could have done it in three weeks. He accused Borglum of delaying so that the Association would be embarrassed. According to Freeman, "despite all the points of conflict between Borglum and the committee, it was actually the commemorative coin that ended his career at Stone Mountain."
Upon being dismissed, Borglum wrecked his models for the monument; the Association sought to have him jailed for destruction of property. Borglum was addressing the ladies of the Atlanta chapter of the UDC when his assistant, Jesse Tucker, burst in and hurried him out the door with a minimum of explanation, only moments before a sheriff's deputy arrived to serve the warrant. He left the state, but was arrested in Greensboro, North Carolina, though quickly allowed bail, and the Association abandoned extradition proceedings. Freed, the sculptor soon took up a project in South Dakota, Mount Rushmore. The publicity surrounding these events hurt the Association's fundraising, as did allegations that the Association had misused hundreds of thousands of dollars put aside for the project.
Marketing and distribution
The Association hired Augustus H. Lukeman as replacement sculptor; all of Borglum's work was eventually blasted away. Despite the dispute with Borglum, the Association proceeded to market the half dollars; it hired New York publicist Harvey Hill to run the campaign. The Association hoped for the opportunity to present the first coin to President Coolidge in person as a means of overcoming the bad publicity; White House officials warily declined, writing that "no good purpose would be served by a formal presentation". The half dollars were officially released on July 3, 1925 (though some were displayed as early as May); they were sold at a price of one dollar. They were sent to 3,000 banks by the Federal Reserve, with the proceeds from sales credited to the Association. White Southerners applauded the piece as symbolizing sectional reconciliation, the federal government paying homage to the South's Confederate heritage.
The coins were to be distributed through banks, and the Federal Reserve System cooperated by moving coins as needed, though at the Association's expense. The Association set up local affiliates, with organizations throughout the South, as well as Oklahoma and the District of Columbia. Each state's governor served as nominal head of the organization within his jurisdiction; on July 20, 1925, at a meeting of the Conference of Southern Governors called for the purpose, they (or their representatives) resolved that the Association allocate sales quotas among the states on the "basis of white population and bank deposits". The pieces were to be sold at the price of one dollar, and local organizations were to generate promotions for selling them. The overall drive to sell half dollars was dubbed the "Harvest Campaign" and began with the governors' meeting in July 1925. Georgia Governor Clifford Walker told his colleagues that the "South would be eternally disgraced if it failed to accept the challenge" of meeting the sales goal of 2,500,000 coins; nevertheless, the governors devoted little time to the campaign.
Although volunteer enthusiasm was essential to the Association's plans in the Harvest Campaign, it did not rely on it at the higher levels; the state chairs were compensated, both by salary and commission. J.W. Gibbes, clerk of the South Carolina House of Representatives, was hired as that state's executive director; he undertook to sell 100,000 coins and received just under $3,500 in salary and commissions, all paid in 1926. Local volunteers organized Chamber of Commerce luncheons to sell coins throughout the South; chapters of the UDC purchased pieces to present to surviving Civil War veterans. The quota for Florida was 175,000 coins, with each town and city apportioned its share. Often, Kiwanis or Rotary groups underwrote local quotas. Mrs. N. Burton Bass of Atlanta was reported to be the leading seller, once disposing of 233 coins in an afternoon. A series of dance balls honored the UDC members who sold large numbers of pieces. Nevertheless, Hyder and Colbert suggested that there was "a general lack of more ladies such as Mrs. Bass"; many municipalities had trouble finding local chairs. Outside the South, sales were promoted by three professional publicists hired by the Association. To keep public interest high, the Association released Lukeman's conceptions for Stone Mountain, which were on a smaller scale than Borglum's. Lukeman conceived a scaled-down concept, of the three Confederate leaders on horseback. Despite the campaign, sales were slower than expected. In late 1925, the Association offered Northern banks a commission of seven cents a coin; it is uncertain if any took up the offer. The continuing opposition of the GAR to the coins dampened sales in the North, and there was considerable criticism of the coin issue in newspapers.
One means of fundraising that Harvest Campaign administrators decided on was to counterstamp some of the coins for sale at premium prices. The letters and numbers are believed to have been punched by the Association, as they are almost entirely uniform. Some were given a state abbreviation and a number, and were sent to be auctioned in various towns. Gibbes reported that the counterstamped pieces sent to South Carolina sold for an average of $23, ranging from $10 to $110, and recommended that the auctions be preceded with the account of the sale of one in Bradenton, Florida, for $1,300. Which town got which number was the luck of the draw. Others were marked with "U.D.C." and a state abbreviation, together with a number which probably represents a membership or chapter number. These were intended for presentation to members deserving of special honor, such as an outgoing president. They did not sell well, as the Association had alienated many UDC members over the firing of Borglum. The Association also announced a program for sale to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, although whether any coins were sold under this program is unclear, as none have been identified. Pieces marked "G.L." and "S.L." were puzzled over by collectors for many years; A. Steve Deitert in the January 2011 edition of The Numismatist identified the markings as "Gold Lavalier" and "Silver Lavalier". These coins were given to county winners and runners-up in a selling competition for young women.
The Association sold coins through other means. They asked companies to purchase them: the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad [B&O], the Southern Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, the Coca-Cola Company, and a number of banks, purchased thousands of pieces, many of which were given away as promotions. Those outside the South could obtain coins by orders passed through local banks. A bank in St. Louis gave away the half dollars to those who opened an account with at least $5; the B&O used them in making change.
The Association called an end to the Harvest Campaign as of March 31, 1926, most likely because the sales did not justify the continued salary expenses. Coins remaining at banks were to be sent to the Federal Reserve, and any credit balances remitted to the Association. Thereafter, coins were available either through the Association or the Federal Reserve at an increased price of $2. With a price increase and the end to the campaign, sales plummeted. Total sales from the Harvest Campaign were about 430,000 pieces. One exception to the drop in sales was a drive in New York under the sponsorship of Mayor Jimmy Walker, which succeeded in selling 250,000 coins in 1926, though at the original price of one dollar. Bernard Baruch, then a prominent investor and later a counselor of presidents, was honorary chairman of the organizing committee, and personally subscribed for some of the pieces.
Aftermath
The Atlanta chapter of the UDC in 1927 published a brochure accusing the Association of wrongfully firing Borglum and wasting between a quarter and a half million dollars. An audit of the Association's books was performed in 1928; the examiners found its records in good order, excepting those regarding the Harvest Campaign, which were inadequate. The audit found that for every three dollars of revenue brought in from the half dollars, two were paid out in expenses, a ratio Hyder and Colbert called "incredible". Of the total sum raised by the Association, only 27 cents of each dollar went to the carving. Venable stated that the Stone Mountain monument had "developed into the most colossal failure in history".
The Association was discredited by the results of the audit; the Georgia Senate voted to accuse it of gross mismanagement of funds. Randolph resigned when Venable made it clear he would not negotiate an extension of the twelve-year deadline unless he did. The Atlanta lawyer had begun a political career; the scandal finished it. With funds drying up, the Association stopped work on Stone Mountain on May 31, 1928, and when negotiations failed, the Venable family successfully sued to regain the property. Borglum was now a folk hero in Atlanta; he was called upon to return to Stone Mountain in the early 1930s, but busy with Mount Rushmore, he did not. At the time of Borglum's death in 1941, no work was being done on Stone Mountain. The State of Georgia voted funds to purchase Stone Mountain in 1958 and five years later selected Walker Kirkland Hancock as architect. The sculpture, which depicts Lee, Jackson and Davis, and bears only a resemblance to Borglum's original design, was dedicated in 1970. At by , it is the largest relief sculpture in the world.
In 1930, Secretary Mellon reported that although no Stone Mountain Memorial half dollars were held by the Mint, it was his understanding that large quantities of the piece were in the possession of banks. Eventually, arrangements were made to return a million half dollars to the Mint for melting. In spite of this, the State of Georgia still had Stone Mountain half dollars for sale at its exhibit at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition. Many more were dumped into circulation in the 1930s. A quantity of half dollars once owned by Baruch were sold for $3.25 each through a Georgia bank in the 1950s to finance a building in honor of Baruch's mother, a Southerner, in Richmond, Virginia. A total of 1,314,709 Stone Mountain Memorial half dollars were distributed, after deducting those pieces melted.
Due to the large quantities extant, Stone Mountain Memorial half dollars remain inexpensive in comparison with other commemoratives. The 2014 edition of A Guide Book of United States Coins lists the piece at $65 in Almost Uncirculated condition (AU-50) with pieces in near-pristine MS-66 at $335.
See also
Early United States commemorative coins
Half dollar (United States coin)
Notes and references
Notes
References and bibliography
Books
Other sources
1925 establishments in the United States
Eagles on coins
Currencies introduced in 1925
Early United States commemorative coins
Fifty-cent coins
Horses in art
Sculptures by Gutzon Borglum
United States silver coins
Stone Mountain | en |
doc-en-7176 | This is a history of nuclear power.
Origins
In 1932, physicist Ernest Rutherford discovered that when lithium atoms were "split" by protons from a proton accelerator, immense amounts of energy were released in accordance with the principle of mass–energy equivalence. However, he and other nuclear physics pioneers Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein believed harnessing the power of the atom for practical purposes anytime in the near future was unlikely. The same year, Rutherford's doctoral student James Chadwick discovered the neutron. Experiments bombarding materials with neutrons led Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie to discover induced radioactivity in 1934, which allowed the creation of radium-like elements. Further work by Enrico Fermi in the 1930s focused on using slow neutrons to increase the effectiveness of induced radioactivity. Experiments bombarding uranium with neutrons led Fermi to believe he had created a new transuranic element, which was dubbed hesperium.
In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, along with Austrian physicist Lise Meitner and Meitner's nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, conducted experiments with the products of neutron-bombarded uranium, as a means of further investigating Fermi's claims. They determined that the relatively tiny neutron split the nucleus of the massive uranium atoms into two roughly equal pieces, contradicting Fermi. This was an extremely surprising result; all other forms of nuclear decay involved only small changes to the mass of the nucleus, whereas this process—dubbed "fission" as a reference to biology—involved a complete rupture of the nucleus. Numerous scientists, including Leó Szilárd, who was one of the first, recognized that if fission reactions released additional neutrons, a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction could result. Once this was experimentally confirmed and announced by Frédéric Joliot-Curie in 1939, scientists in many countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Soviet Union) petitioned their governments for support of nuclear fission research, just on the cusp of World War II, for the development of a nuclear weapon.
First nuclear reactor
In the United States, where Fermi and Szilárd had both emigrated, the discovery of the nuclear chain reaction led to the creation of the first man-made reactor, the research reactor known as Chicago Pile-1, which achieved criticality on December 2, 1942. The reactor's development was part of the Manhattan Project, the Allied effort to create atomic bombs during World War II. It led to the building of larger single-purpose production reactors, such as the X-10 Pile, for the production of weapons-grade plutonium for use in the first nuclear weapons. The United States tested the first nuclear weapon in July 1945, the Trinity test, with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki taking place one month later.
In August 1945, the first widely distributed account of nuclear energy, the pocketbook The Atomic Age, was released. It discussed the peaceful future uses of nuclear energy and depicted a future where fossil fuels would go unused. Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg, who later chaired the United States Atomic Energy Commission, is quoted as saying "there will be nuclear powered earth-to-moon shuttles, nuclear powered artificial hearts, plutonium heated swimming pools for SCUBA divers, and much more".
In the same month, with the end of the war, Seaborg and others would file hundreds of initially classified patents, most notably Eugene Wigner and Alvin Weinberg's Patent #2,736,696, on a conceptual light water reactor (LWR) that would later become the United States' primary reactor for naval propulsion and later take up the greatest share of the commercial fission-electric landscape.
The United Kingdom, Canada, and the USSR proceeded to research and develop nuclear energy over the course of the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Electricity was generated for the first time by a nuclear reactor on December 20, 1951, at the EBR-I experimental station near Arco, Idaho, which initially produced about 100 kW.
In 1953, American President Dwight Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" speech at the United Nations, emphasizing the need to develop "peaceful" uses of nuclear power quickly. This was followed by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 which allowed rapid declassification of U.S. reactor technology and encouraged development by the private sector.
Early years
The first organization to develop nuclear power was the U.S. Navy, with the S1W reactor for the purpose of propelling submarines and aircraft carriers. The first nuclear-powered submarine, , was put to sea in January 1954. The S1W reactor was a Pressurized Water Reactor. This design was chosen because it was simpler, more compact, and easier to operate compared to alternative designs, thus more suitable to be used in submarines. This decision would result in the PWR being the reactor of choice also for power generation, thus having a lasting impact on the civilian electricity market in the years to come.
The United States Navy Nuclear Propulsion design and operation community, under Rickover's style
On June 27, 1954, the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant in the USSR became the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid, producing around 5 megawatts of electric power.
The world's first commercial nuclear power station, Calder Hall at Windscale, England was connected to the national power grid on 27 August 1956. In common with a number of other generation I reactors, the plant had the dual purpose of producing electricity and plutonium-239, the latter for the nascent nuclear weapons program in Britain. It had an initial capacity of 50 MW per reactor (200 MW total), it was the first of a fleet of dual-purpose MAGNOX reactors.
The U.S. Army Nuclear Power Program formally commenced in 1954. Under its management, the 2 megawatt SM-1, at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, was the first in the United States to supply electricity in an industrial capacity to the commercial grid (VEPCO), in April 1957.
The first commercial nuclear station to become operational in the United States was the 60 MW Shippingport Reactor (Pennsylvania), in December 1957.
Originating from a cancelled nuclear-powered aircraft carrier contract, the plant used a PWR reactor design. Its early adoption, technological lock-in, and familiarity among retired naval personnel, established the PWR as the predominant civilian reactor design, that it still retains today in the United States.
In 1957 EURATOM was launched alongside the European Economic Community (the latter is now the European Union). The same year also saw the launch of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The first major accident at a nuclear reactor occurred at the 3 MW SL-1, a U.S. Army experimental nuclear power reactor at the National Reactor Testing Station, Idaho National Laboratory. It was derived from the Borax Boiling water reactor (BWR) design and it first achieved operational criticality and connection to the grid in 1958.
For reasons unknown, in 1961 a technician removed a control rod about 22 inches farther than the prescribed 4 inches. This resulted in a steam explosion which killed the three crew members and caused a meltdown. The event was eventually rated at 4 on the seven-level INES scale.
Another serious accident happened in 1968, when one of the two liquid-metal-cooled reactors on board the underwent a fuel element failure, with the emission of gaseous fission products into the surrounding air. This resulted in 9 crew fatalities and 83 injuries.
Development and early opposition to nuclear power
The total global installed nuclear capacity initially rose relatively quickly, rising from less than 1 gigawatt (GW) in 1960 to 100 GW in the late 1970s, and 300 GW in the late 1980s. Since the late 1980s worldwide capacity has risen much more slowly, reaching 366 GW in 2005. Between around 1970 and 1990, more than 50 GW of capacity was under construction (peaking at over 150 GW in the late 1970s and early 1980s)—in 2005, around 25 GW of new capacity was planned. More than two-thirds of all nuclear plants ordered after January 1970 were eventually cancelled. A total of 63 nuclear units were canceled in the United States between 1975 and 1980.
In 1972 Alvin Weinberg, co-inventor of the light water reactor design (the most common nuclear reactors today) was fired from his job at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by the Nixon administration, "at least in part" over his raising of concerns about the safety and wisdom of ever larger scaling-up of his design, especially above a power rating of ~500 MWe, as in a loss of coolant accident scenario, the decay heat generated from such large compact solid-fuel cores was thought to be beyond the capabilities of passive/natural convection cooling to prevent a rapid fuel rod melt-down and resulting in then, potential far reaching fission product pluming. While considering the LWR, well suited at sea for the submarine and naval fleet, Weinberg did not show complete support for its use by utilities on land at the power output that they were interested in for supply scale reasons, and would request for a greater share of AEC research funding to evolve his team's demonstrated, Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment, a design with greater inherent safety in this scenario and with that an envisioned greater economic growth potential in the market of large-scale civilian electricity generation.
Similar to the earlier BORAX reactor safety experiments, conducted by Argonne National Laboratory, in 1976 Idaho National Laboratory began a test program focused on LWR reactors under various accident scenarios, with the aim of understanding the event progression and mitigating steps necessary to respond to a failure of one or more of the disparate systems, with much of the redundant back-up safety equipment and nuclear regulations drawing from these series of destructive testing investigations.
During the 1970s and 1980s rising economic costs (related to extended construction times largely due to regulatory changes and pressure-group litigation) and falling fossil fuel prices made nuclear power plants then under construction less attractive. In the 1980s in the U.S. and 1990s in Europe, the flat electric grid growth and electricity liberalization also made the addition of large new baseload energy generators economically unattractive.
The 1973 oil crisis had a significant effect on countries, such as France and Japan, which had relied more heavily on oil for electric generation (39% and 73% respectively) to invest in nuclear power.
The French plan, known as the Messmer plan, was for the complete independence from oil, with an envisaged construction of 80 reactors by 1985 and 170 by 2000.
France would construct 25 fission-electric stations, installing 56 mostly PWR design reactors over the next 15 years, though foregoing the 100 reactors initially charted in 1973, for the 1990s.
In 2019, 71% of French electricity was generated by 58 reactors, the highest percentage by any nation in the world.
Some local opposition to nuclear power emerged in the U.S. in the early 1960s, beginning with the proposed Bodega Bay station in California, in 1958, which produced conflict with local citizens and by 1964 the concept was ultimately abandoned. In the late 1960s some members of the scientific community began to express pointed concerns. These anti-nuclear concerns related to nuclear accidents, nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism and radioactive waste disposal. In the early 1970s, there were large protests about a proposed nuclear power plant in Wyhl, Germany. The project was cancelled in 1975 the anti-nuclear success at Wyhl inspired opposition to nuclear power in other parts of Europe and North America. By the mid-1970s anti-nuclear activism gained a wider appeal and influence, and nuclear power began to become an issue of major public protest. In some countries, the nuclear power conflict "reached an intensity unprecedented in the history of technology controversies". In May 1979, an estimated 70,000 people, including then governor of California Jerry Brown, attended a march against nuclear power in Washington, D.C. Anti-nuclear power groups emerged in every country that had a nuclear power programme.
Globally during the 1980s one new nuclear reactor started up every 17 days on average.
Regulations, pricing and accidents
In the early 1970s, the increased public hostility to nuclear power in the United States lead the United States Atomic Energy Commission and later the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to lengthen the license procurement process, tighten engineering regulations and increase the requirements for safety equipment. Together with relatively minor percentage increases in the total quantity of steel, piping, cabling and concrete per unit of installed nameplate capacity, the more notable changes to the regulatory open public hearing-response cycle for the granting of construction licenses, had the effect of what was once an initial 16 months for project initiation to the pouring of first concrete in 1967, escalating to 32 months in 1972 and finally 54 months in 1980, which ultimately, quadrupled the price of power reactors.
Utility proposals in the U.S for nuclear generating stations, peaked at 52 in 1974, fell to 12 in 1976 and have never recovered, in large part due to the pressure-group litigation strategy, of launching lawsuits against each proposed U.S construction proposal, keeping private utilities tied up in court for years, one of which having reached the supreme court in 1978 (see Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. With permission to build a nuclear station in the U.S. eventually taking longer than in any other industrial country, the spectre facing utilities of having to pay interest on large construction loans while the anti-nuclear movement used the legal system to produce delays, increasingly made the viability of financing construction, less certain. By the close of the 1970s it became clear that nuclear power would not grow nearly as dramatically as once believed.
Over 120 reactor proposals in the United States were ultimately cancelled and the construction of new reactors ground to a halt. A cover story in the February 11, 1985, issue of Forbes magazine commented on the overall failure of the U.S. nuclear power program, saying it "ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history".
According to some commentators, the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island played a major part in the reduction in the number of new plant constructions in many other countries. According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Three Mile Island accident was the most serious accident in "U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history, even though it led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community." The regulatory uncertainty and delays eventually resulted in an escalation of construction related debt that led to the bankruptcy of Seabrook's major utility owner, Public Service Company of New Hampshire. At the time, the fourth largest bankruptcy in United States corporate history.
Among American engineers, the cost increases from implementing the regulatory changes that resulted from the TMI accident were, when eventually finalized, only a few percent of total construction costs for new reactors, primarily relating to the prevention of safety systems from being turned off. With the most significant engineering result of the TMI accident, the recognition that better operator training was needed and that the existing emergency core cooling system of PWRs worked better in a real-world emergency than members of the anti-nuclear movement had routinely claimed.
The already slowing rate of new construction along with the shutdown in the 1980s of two existing demonstration nuclear power stations in the Tennessee Valley, United States, when they couldn't economically meet the NRC's new tightened standards, shifted electricity generation to coal-fired power plants. In 1977, following the first oil shock, U.S. President Jimmy Carter made a speech calling the energy crisis the "moral equivalent of war" and prominently supporting nuclear power. However, nuclear power could not compete with cheap oil and gas, particularly after public opposition and regulatory hurdles made new nuclear prohibitively expensive.
In 1982, amongst a backdrop of ongoing protests directed at the construction of the first commercial scale breeder reactor in France, a later member of the Swiss Green Party fired five RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades at the still under construction containment building of the Superphenix reactor. Two grenades hit and caused minor damage to the reinforced concrete outer shell. It was the first time protests reached such heights. After examination of the superficial damage, the prototype fast breeder reactor started and operated for over a decade.
Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster occurred on Saturday 26 April 1986, at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR. It is considered as the worst nuclear disaster in history both in terms of cost and casualties. The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the environment, ultimately involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion Soviet rubles—roughly US$68 billion in 2019, adjusted for inflation.
According to some commentators, the Chernobyl disaster played a major part in the reduction in the number of new plant constructions in many other countries.
Unlike the Three Mile Island accident the much more serious Chernobyl accident did not increase regulations or engineering changes affecting Western reactors; because the RBMK design, which lacks safety features such as "robust" containment buildings, was only used in the Soviet Union. Over 10 RBMK reactors are still in use today. However, changes were made in both the RBMK reactors themselves (use of a safer enrichment of uranium) and in the control system (preventing safety systems being disabled), amongst other things, to reduce the possibility of a similar accident.
Russia now largely relies upon, builds and exports a variant of the PWR, the VVER, with over 20 in use today.
An international organization to promote safety awareness and the professional development of operators in nuclear facilities, the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), was created as a direct outcome of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. The organization was created with the intent to share and grow the adoption of nuclear safety culture, technology and community, where before there was an atmosphere of cold war secrecy.
Numerous countries, including Austria (1978), Sweden (1980) and Italy (1987) (influenced by Chernobyl) have voted in referendums to oppose or phase out nuclear power.
Nuclear renaissance
In the early 2000s, the nuclear industry was expecting a nuclear renaissance, an increase in the construction of new reactors, due to concerns about carbon dioxide emissions. However, in 2009, Petteri Tiippana, the director of nuclear power plant division in the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, told the BBC that it was difficult to deliver a Generation III reactor project on schedule because builders were not used to working to the exacting standards required on nuclear construction sites, since so few new reactors had been built in recent years.
The Olkiluoto 3 was the first EPR, a modernized PWR design, to start construction. Problems with workmanship and supervision have created costly delays. The reactor is estimated to cost three times the initial estimate and will be delivered over 10 years behind schedule.
In 2018 the MIT Energy Initiative study on the future of nuclear energy concluded that, together with the strong suggestion that government should financially support development and demonstration of new Generation IV nuclear technologies, for a worldwide renaissance to commence, a global standardization of regulations needs to take place, with a move towards serial manufacturing of standardized units akin to the other complex engineering field of aircraft and aviation. At present it is common for each country to demand bespoke changes to the design to satisfy varying national regulatory bodies, often to the benefit of domestic engineering supply firms. The report goes on to note that the most cost-effective projects have been built with multiple (up to six) reactors per site using a standardized design, with the same component suppliers and construction crews working on each unit, in a continuous work flow.
Fukushima Daiichi disaster
Following the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded, and a subsequent tsunami off the coast of Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant suffered three core meltdowns due to failure of the emergency cooling system for lack of electricity supply. This resulted in the most serious nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident prompted a re-examination of nuclear safety and nuclear energy policy in many countries and raised questions among some commentators over the future of the renaissance.
Germany approved plans to close all its reactors by 2022. Italian nuclear energy plans ended when Italy banned the generation, but not consumption, of nuclear electricity in a June 2011 referendum.
China, Switzerland, Israel, Malaysia, Thailand, United Kingdom, and the Philippines reviewed their nuclear power programs.
In 2011 the International Energy Agency halved its prior estimate of new generating capacity to be built by 2035.
Nuclear power generation had the biggest ever fall year-on-year in 2012, with nuclear power plants globally producing 2,346 TWh of electricity, a drop of 7% from 2011.
This was caused primarily by the majority of Japanese reactors remaining offline that year and the permanent closure of eight reactors in Germany.
Post-Fukushima
The Associated Press and Reuters reported in 2011 the suggestion that the safety and survival of the younger Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant, the closest reactor facility to the epicenter and on the coast, demonstrate that it is possible for nuclear facilities to withstand the greatest natural disasters. The Onagawa plant was also said to show that nuclear power can retain public trust, with the surviving residents of the town of Onagawa taking refuge in the gymnasium of the nuclear facility following the destruction of their town.
In February 2012, the U.S. NRC approved the construction of 2 reactors at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, the first approval in 30 years.
In August 2015, following 4 years of near zero fission-electricity generation, Japan began restarting its nuclear reactors, after safety upgrades were completed, beginning with Sendai Nuclear Power Plant.
By 2015, the IAEA's outlook for nuclear energy had become more promising.
"Nuclear power is a critical element in limiting greenhouse gas emissions," the agency noted, and "the prospects for nuclear energy remain positive in the medium to long term despite a negative impact in some countries in the aftermath of the [Fukushima-Daiichi] accident...it is still the second-largest source worldwide of low-carbon electricity.
And the 72 reactors under construction at the start of last year were the most in 25 years."
, the global trend was for new nuclear power stations coming online to be balanced by the number of old plants being retired. Eight new grid connections were completed by China in 2015.
In 2016, the BN-800 sodium cooled fast reactor in Russia, began commercial electricity generation, while plans for a BN-1200 were initially conceived the future of the fast reactor program in Russia awaits the results from MBIR, an under construction multi-loop Generation research facility for testing the chemically more inert lead, lead-bismuth and gas coolants, it will similarly run on recycled MOX (mixed uranium and plutonium oxide) fuel. An on-site pyrochemical processing, closed fuel-cycle facility, is planned, to recycle the spent fuel/"waste" and reduce the necessity for a growth in uranium mining and exploration. In 2017 the manufacture program for the reactor commenced with the facility open to collaboration under the "International Project on Innovative Nuclear Reactors and Fuel Cycle", it has a construction schedule, that includes an operational start in 2020. As planned, it will be the world's most-powerful research reactor.
In 2015, the Japanese government committed to the aim of restarting its fleet of 40 reactors by 2030 after safety upgrades, and to finish the construction of the Generation III Ōma Nuclear Power Plant.
This would mean that approximately 20% of electricity would come from nuclear power by 2030. As of 2018, some reactors have restarted commercial operation following inspections and upgrades with new regulations. While South Korea has a large nuclear power industry, the new government in 2017, influenced by a vocal anti-nuclear movement, committed to halting nuclear development after the completion of the facilities presently under construction.
The bankruptcy of Westinghouse in March 2017 due to US$9 billion of losses from the halting of construction at Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station, in the U.S. is considered an advantage for eastern companies, for the future export and design of nuclear fuel and reactors.
In 2016, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected for its "base case" that world nuclear power generation would increase from 2,344 terawatt hours (TWh) in 2012 to 4,500 TWh in 2040. Most of the predicted increase was expected to be in Asia. As of 2018, there are over 150 nuclear reactors planned including 50 under construction. In January 2019, China had 45 reactors in operation, 13 under construction, and plans to build 43 more, which would make it the world's largest generator of nuclear electricity.
Current prospects
Zero-emission nuclear power is an important part of the climate change mitigation effort. Under IEA Sustainable Development Scenario by 2030 nuclear power and CCUS would have generated 3900 TWh globally while wind and solar 8100 TWh with the ambition to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. In order to achieve this goal on average 15 GWe of nuclear power should have been added annually on average. As of 2019 over 60 GW in new nuclear power plants was in construction, mostly in China, Russia, Korea, India and UAE. Many countries in the world are considering Small Modular Reactors with one in Russia connected to the grid in 2020.
Countries with at least one nuclear power plant in planning phase include Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.
The future of nuclear power varies greatly between countries, depending on government policies. Some countries, most notably, Germany, have adopted policies of nuclear power phase-out. At the same time, some Asian countries, such as China and India, have committed to rapid expansion of nuclear power. In other countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, nuclear power is planned to be part of the energy mix together with renewable energy.
Nuclear energy may be one solution to providing clean power while also reversing the impact fossil fuels have had on our climate. These plants would capture carbon dioxide and create a clean energy source with zero emissions, making a carbon-negative process. Scientists propose that 1.8 million lives have already been saved by replacing fossil fuel sources with nuclear power.
the cost of extending plant lifetimes is competitive with other electricity generation technologies, including new solar and wind projects. In the United States, licenses of almost half of the operating nuclear reactors have been extended to 60 years.
The U.S. NRC and the U.S. Department of Energy have initiated research into light water reactor sustainability which is hoped will lead to allowing extensions of reactor licenses beyond 60 years, provided that safety can be maintained, to increase energy security and preserve low-carbon generation sources. Research into nuclear reactors that can last 100 years, known as Centurion Reactors, is being conducted.
As of 2020, a number of US nuclear power plants were cleared by Nuclear Regulatory Commission for operations up to 80 years.
References
Nuclear power | en |
doc-en-6611 | The Udyoga Parva (), or the Book of Effort, is the fifth of eighteen books of the Indian Epic Mahabharata. Udyoga Parva traditionally has 10 sub-books and 199 chapters. The critical edition of Sabha Parva has 12 sub-books and 197 chapters.
Udyoga Parva describes the period immediately after the exile of Pandavas had ended. The Pandavas return, demand their half of the kingdom. The Kauravas refuse. The book includes the effort for peace that fails, followed by the effort to prepare for the great war—the Kurukshetra War.
Viduraniti, a theory of leadership, is embedded in Udyoga Parva (Chapters 33–40). The Sanatsujatiya, a text commented upon by Adi Shankara, is contained within the Udyoga Parva (Chapters 41–46).
Structure and chapters
This Parva (book) traditionally has 10 sub-parvas (sub-books or little books) and 199 adhyayas (sections, chapters). The following are the sub-parvas:
1. Sainyodyoga Parva (Chapters: 1–19)
The 13th year of exile is over. Kings assemble in king Virata's court to mark the marriage of his daughter to Arjuna's son Abhimanyu. Krishna gives a speech to gathered kings that Pandavas must now return to their kingdom, Kauravas must return the kingdom they got from Pandavas for 13 years after a game of dice. Krishna speculates that Kauravas may refuse the return, may use military against Yudhishthira personally visits and makes the demand, or may be willing to a peaceful transfer. The intentions of the other side are unknown, suggests Krishna, so they should send a capable ambassador to understand the intentions of Kauravas and arrange a peaceful transfer.
Satyaki reminds the gathered kings that the Kauravas got the kingdom by trick and evil, that evil people do not change. The proposed peaceful diplomacy is ridiculous, claims Satyaki, because peace can never be negotiated from a position of weakness. Only the strong who have the power and means to destroy their opponent, get a fair and just deal during peace negotiations. Satyaki recommends Pandavas should establish a visibly strong army, and slay all opponents. Drupada suggests despatching envoys to other virtuous and good kingdoms to build military alliance for Pandavas. Krishna approves. Envoys spread out. Kings and Krishna return to their homes. In parallel, Duryodhana on learning Pandavas intentions started building their alliances for war, to weaken Pandavas to a point that they do not even ask back their kingdom. Both Pandavas and Kauravas meet Krishna in Dwaraka, for their military preparations, but with morally opposite stands. Krishna ask Arjuna to choose either his army or he himself alone, resolved not to fight on the field. Arjuna chooses Krishna on his side. Duryodhana, in contrast, gets the Krishna's army to serve him. Krishna decides and promises to drive Arjuna's chariot if war becomes necessary. Duryodhana then went to the son of Rohini of great strength, and approaching him, explained him his reasons. Valrama refused to take part in battle as his affection for both sides. Both sides gather a massive alliance of armies, with Pandavas seven units of troops and with Kaurava eleven units group's army being larger. Salya on being serviced and asked by Duryodhana as a boon, joins Kauravas side, then meets Yudhishthira. On learning Salya being tricked, Yudhishthira asked him a favor that he will be chosen as Karna charioteer during the war for sure in future, and compared his riding skills to Krishna. For their good, and protection of Arjuna, he must despirit Karna, by recounting the praises of Arjuna, so that victory can be achieved. Shalya promised him that he will speak to him in war in such contradictory words that will bereft him of pride and valour, and will be easily slain by antagonist. Yudhishthira convinces Salya that Kauravas are in error. Salya agrees to explain Yudhishthira position to Duryodhana. Salya leaves Pandavas camp to meet the Kaurava brothers.
2. Sanjaya-yana Parva (Chapters: 20–32)
Drupada's envoy reaches Kaurava brothers. He announces that Pandava brothers do not want war, they see war as something that ruins the world, all they want is an amicable settlement. He also informs the Dhritarashtra and Kuru family, that Yudhishthira seeks peace not out of weakness; they have seven Akshauhinis (large battalions). Drupada's envoy asks that Kaurava brothers give virtue and peace a chance, they give back that which should be returned. Bhishma responds that peace makes sense, but Karna on hearing Pandavas praises by that envoy in the court of Kaurava brothers, argues that Pandavas had become prideful of their might, so war is preferable. Dhritarashtra dismisses Drupada's envoy, promising to send Sanjaya to the Pandavas with a full response.
Dhritarashtra summons Sanjaya, asks him to meet the Pandava brothers, but does not propose anything concrete about peaceful transfer of kingdom. Sanjaya meets Yudhishthira, urges peace, says war will cause losses to both sides, notes that if Pandavas kill Kauravas, it will make them miserable in victory. Yudhishthira says Pandavas do not want war, they want peace and prosperity. Pandavas had left their kingdom, Indraprastha during the exile, and Dhritarashtra must return the kingdom to him to make peace. Yudhishthira suggests to Sanjaya, in Chapter 31 of the parva, that he would accept a smaller kingdom if that would prevent war, further peace. Pandavas are ready for peace, and for war, claims Yudhishthira. Sanjaya returns to Dhritarashtra, urges him to take the path of peace, and in a brutally directly manner calls Dhritarashtra's approach towards Pandavas as sinful, suicidal and wrong.
3. Prajagara Parva (Chapters: 33–40)
Dhritarashtra summons Vidura for counsel, confesses Sanjaya's message have disordered his senses and caused him sleeplessness. Dhritarashtra asks for moral guidance and wisdom to lead his kingdom. Sage Vidura presents a discourse that is referred to as Viduraniti. It describes the character and habits of wise men, how they combine virtuous life with prosperity. These adhyayas also describe the duties and actions of kings that enables a prosperous kingdom. After listening to Vidura, Dhritarashtra leans for peace and an accommodation of Pandava brothers; however, he says Duryodhana wants the opposite. Dhritarashtra claims his exertion may be in vain, destiny will do what it wants to.
4. Sanatsujata Parva (Chapters: 41–46)
Dhritarashtra continues in his suffering of anxiety and depression. He seeks more counsel from sage Vidura. The sage says he was born in Sudra class and has already counseled the king, perhaps the king should get second opinion from Sanat-Sujata who was born in Brahmin class. Vidura brings in sage Sanat-Sujata. Dhritarashtra asks him questions about eternal being, life after death and immortality. The response of Sanat-Sujata is another treatise called Sanatsujatiya (sometimes spelled Sanatsugatiya or Sanatsugâtîya). Scholars suggest Sanatsujatiya may have been a later insertion and addition into the original Epic. Adi Shankara commented on Sanatsujatiya, parts of the commentary too have been corrupted later by unknown individuals.
Sanatsujatiya is a treatise on spirituality, inward contemplation, and marga (paths) to liberation and freedom. Sage Sanat-Sujata insists that rituals and Vedic ceremonies are not the path to emancipation, ignorance is living death, it is true knowledge of universal self that emancipates; he suggests that gods are ordinary creatures who have realized that self knowledge. This view of human beings as creatures of unlimited potential, mirrors those found in the Upanishads. Craving for wealth, desire for fame and longing for power suggests Sanatsugātiýa, is a cause for misery. Knowledge, virtue and faith in fruits of action are a cause of contentment. Dhritarashtra reminds Sanatsujata that Vedas declare sacrificial ceremonies remove sins and emancipate, why should men not engage in these practices. Sanat-Sujata replies that there are different paths, all with one goal. There is great inconsistency in interpretation of these paths. Ceremonies put undue importance to external forms, often ignore the inner self. Dhritarashtra asks if one can achieve emancipation in after life by renouncing everything but without virtue and right action. Sanatsujata replies that it is the inner state that matters, not outward manifestations. The hymns of Veda do not rescue people from sin they commit. Vice and knowledge can never dwell together. Sanatsujata then outlines twelve virtues one must live by and twelve vices to avoid, followed by three requirements for free, liberated life. In Chapter 44, Sanatsujata suggests knowledge is the only path to emancipation. In Chapter 45, Sanatsujata suggests virtuous attributes and actions are the path to gain that knowledge. After the counsel from Sanatsujata, Dhritarashtra retires for the night.
5. Yanasandhi Parva (Chapters: 47–73)
The Kaurava brothers assemble in the court to hear Sanjaya who has returned from Pandava brothers (see Sanjaya-yana Parva above). Sanjaya gives them message of Pandavas that either surrender to King Yuddhishthira, his kingdom or have war for Kuru destruction. Bhishma recommends peace and returning kingdom. Drona supports Bhishma. Karna objects. Bhishma ridicules Karna. Dhritarashtra inquires about Yudhisthria's military preparation. Sanjaya frankly criticizes Dhritarashtra for his vicious conduct towards Pandavas. Duryodhana getting provoked by Pandavas praises, reminds everyone of the warriors on their side, his own courage and readiness for war. Dhritarashtra asks about kingdoms who have allied to Pandavas. Sanjaya provides the details. Duryodhana interjects and provides a list of kingdoms who have allied with Kauravas and are ready for war. Dhritarashtra asks his son to accept peace and give back the kingdom to the Pandavas. Duryodhana mocks and refuses. Karna joins Duryodhana, mocks Pandavas and boasts his own warrior powers. Bhishma criticizes Karna again. Karna gets upset, promises to not fight till Bhishma is alive, and walks out of the court. Dhritarashtra again asks Duryodhana to choose peace. Duryodhana insists on war.
6. Bhagavat-yana Parva (Chapters: 74–150)
The Pandava brothers gather their counsels and Krishna. Yudhishthira opens the meeting with desire for peace. Krishna offers to be an envoy of peace to the Kauravas, with the counsel that Pandavas should prepare everything for war. Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, Sahadeva and Satyaki take turns and express their views to Krishna, who comments to each. Krishna leaves for the court of the Kaurava brothers, and meets Rishis on the way. Dhritarashtra, learning of Krishna's arrival, makes great preparations to honour his welcome. Bhishma and Vidura applaud his act. Duryodhana himself makes preparations to please Krishna. Krishna arriving at Hastinapura first meets with Pritha, then Vidura and next day meets with Duryodhana in his chamber then set out for Kuru assembly hall disregarding all arrangement. Praising Pandavas kind acts and prowess and criticizing the Kurus' cowardess and inferiority he proposes peace between both parties. Dhritarashtra agrees with his proposal but Duryodhana casting his eyes on Radha's son laughingly ignores it. The great Rishis including Narada, Kanwa, and Rama tell him various stories for the change of his opinion but he from folly disregards their words and criticizes Krishna for his harsh words. All rebuke Duryodhana for his foolishness and advise to bind and give Duryodhana with his followers to the sons of Kunti. Duryodhana in anger walks out of court. Gandhari was called in the court. Vindictive Duryodhana was once more caused to re-enter the court. Gandhari called him wicked son of impure soul for his act. Duryodhana once more went out in anger. He made council with his followers to seize Krishna. Satyaki learns about it and informs Krishna. Krishna laughs at Duryodhana plan and uses his power of Divine illusion to show all of them his prowess and sets out of the court. The parva describes the symbolic story of Garuda to emphasize peace is better. Kanwa concurs with Krishna on peace. Sage Narada appears, who tells the story of Gavala, Yayati and Madhavi to explain to Duryodhana that his obstinate craving for war is wrong. Dhritarashtra rebukes Duryodhana for his act.
Krishna leaves the city of Kauravas, with Karna in a chariot. He tells Karna who Karna's real mother is, how he is a brother of the Pandavas, asks he should join his brothers and they will cheerfully accept him and will choose him the next king. Karna already knowing this, refuses, saying obtaining him, Duryodhana provoked hostilities with Pandavas, and he cannot betray him since he was first to hold his hand for friendship and gave him kingdom, nor from affection he can leave Radha and Adiratha who cared him from childhood, for Kunti who abandoned him without thinking about his future and it will be englorious for him and his mother. He asked Krishna to conceal this for the present. Karna repents for his cruel acts in the past for pleasing Duryodhana. He said he knows he will die in the great war being on unrighteos side, but cannot leave his friend in distress, so will challenge Arjuna and will earn great merit or glory. Karna then hugs Krishna and returns to the city. Vidura meets with Partha. Kunti, Karna's real mother meets him during his prayers near Bhagiratha river, and they talk. She explains what happened when Karna was born, urges him to reconsider his position about the war. Surya confirms Kunti words. But though addressed by his mother and by also his father Surya himself, Karna heart did not yet waver, for he was firmly devoted to truth, he replies that she abandoned him as soon as he was born, involving risk to life itself, deprived him of Kshatriya rites, and addresses him today, desirous to do good to herself. He cannot change side now and frustrate that cherished hopes of Suyodhana, since it is too late for him. This is his chance to fight the Arjuna, earn fame and respect of the world. He promises that except Arjuna, her other sons, shall not be slain by him, even though he have the chance and the number of her sons will never be less than five, with five, either him or Arjuna, just like she pretended to have five sons before war. Kunti trembles with sorrow. Krishna reaches Pandavas camp and updates them of his effort at peace as an envoy, how he failed.
7. Sainya-niryana Parva (Chapters: 151–159)
War preparations accelerate. Yudhishthira seeks nominations for the commander in chief of allied forces behind Pandava brothers. Many names come forward, Krishna selects Dhristadyumna. The Pandava army marches for war to Kurukshetra. Duryodhana with Karna, Shakuni and Dussasana prepare for war. Bhishma is appointed by Duryodhana as commander in chief of armies behind Kaurava brothers. Venerable Bhishma said that Pandavas are dear to him, so he will not fight them openly and will, therefore, slay everyday at least 10,000 warriors. Both sides select chiefs for each of their Akshauhinis (battalions)—Pandavas have seven battalions, Kauravas have 11. Halayudha came there to meet Pandavas and his brother Krishna and expresses his views that he cannot pick side to fight, as both Bhima and Duryodhana are his disciples, and leaves for journey to the sacred waters. Rukmi (once fierce rival of Janarddana) came there into Pandavas camp and boasteth about his ability that he can slay all enemy commander. Arjuna smilingly boasteth that he does not have any ally in any of his fights and he single-handedly defeated everyone, so no need of his assistance. Rukmi then goes to Duryodhana and said same words, but that King, proud of his bravery, rejected him in the same way. So he also withdrew from the battle. Dhritarashtra meets Sanjaya, expresses his anxiety, wonders if the war is one of choice or destiny.
8. Ulukabhigamana Parva (Chapters: 160–164)
Duryodhana sends Uluka to Pandavas camped in Kurukshetra for war, with insulting messages to Yudhishthira, Bhima, Nakula, Sahadeva, Virata, Drupada, Dhananjaya, Sikhandin, Dhristadyumna and Vasudeva, as part of psychological warfare. The parva recites the fable of the cat and the mouse. Bhima gets angry at Uluka speech and addresses him harshly but was pacified by Arjuna. Uluka gives all the messages he was provided. Each person who listens to the message, replies. Yuddhishthira tells Uluka to return with the message he was given by all. Uluka returns to Kauravas camp, and delivers the messages from Pandava camp to him. Duryodhana and Karna arrays their troops to face the army of Pandavas. Yudhishthira moves his army. Dhristadyumna, the commander in chief of allied Pandava forces, studies the strengths of the enemy, appoints particular warriors in Pandavas side to focus on particular warriors on Kauravas side.
9. Rathatiratha-sankhyana Parva (Chapters: 165–172)
Infighting erupts within the Kaurava side. Duryodhana asks for Bhishma views on both side warriors counted as rathas, and atirathas. Bhishma lists all 100 Kaurava brothers, and Sakuni as Rathas. Jayadratha equal to two rathas. Kritavarman, Salya, as Atirathas. Aswathaman, Drona, as Maharathas, and mocks Karna as only being an ardharatha. Drona supports his words. Karna gets angry with Bhishma and criticizes him for making dissension among Kurus by indicating warrior ranks, according only to his own caprice. He vows he will not fight until he is laid down. The parva then describes rathas and atirathas on Pandava side, ready for war. King, sons of Madri, Shikhandin as Rathas. Bhimasena equal to eight Rathas. Dhrishtadyumna as Atiratha. Arjuna as Maharatha. Bhishma said, he himself and their preceptor Drona are only warrior who can advance against Dhananjaya, no third car- warrior.
10. Amvopakkyana Parva (Chapters: 173–199)
This parva recites the story of Bhishma past exploits and a maiden named Amba, and how his emotional attachment means he can fight everyone but Sikhandin—a battalion commander in Pandavas side. Duryodhana then asks his commanders the time it will take each of them to annihilate the allied armies behind Pandavas. Bhishma said he can finish the slaughter in a month. Drona said smilingly that he is old, his energy and activity have both become weak, but like Bhishma, a month. Kripa estimates two months. Aswatthaman claims that he can annihilate the Pandava army in ten nights. Karna, however, acquainted with weapons of high efficacy, said he can achieve that feat in five days. Bhishma ridicules and mocks Karna. Yudhishthira, learning the news from spies, also asks the same question to Arjuna, the time he will take to annihilate the armies behind Kauravas. Arjuna said, with Vasudeva as his ally, he can, on his divine car, annihilate all mortals on earth, in the twinkling of the eye, using the terrible and mighty weapon he obtained from Mahadeva, if he provides and discharges it with enough energy. No one knows this on the opposite side, but he is restricted to not using it for his own selfish reasons on human beings. The Pandava army marches to the battle front. The Kaurava army also marches to the battle front. Both armies face each other for war.
English translations
Udyoga Parva was composed in Sanskrit. Several translations of the book in English are available. Two translations from 19th century, now in public domain, are those by Kisari Mohan Ganguli and Manmatha Nath Dutt. The translations vary with each translator's interpretations.
Clay Sanskrit Library has published a 15 volume set of the Mahabharata which includes a translation of Udyoga Parva by Kathleen Garbutt. This translation is modern and uses an old manuscript of the Epic. The translation does not remove verses and chapters now widely believed to be spurious and smuggled into the Epic in 1st or 2nd millennium AD.
According to the Parvasangraha chapter of Adi Parva of one version of the Mahabharata, Vyasa had composed 186 sections in Udyoga Parva, with 6,698 slokas.
J. A. B. van Buitenen completed an annotated edition of Udyoga Parva, based on critically edited and least corrupted version of Mahabharata known in 1975. Debroy, in 2011, notes that updated critical edition of Udyoga Parva, with spurious and corrupted text removed, has 10 sub-books, 197 adhyayas (chapters) and 6,001 shlokas (verses). Debroy's translation of a critical edition of Udyoga Parva has been published in Volume 4 of his series.
Salient features
Udyoga Parva has several embedded treatises, such as a theory of leadership (Viduraniti), a theory of dūta (diplomats, envoys) and a theory of just war.
Viduraniti
In Chapters 33 through 40 of Udyoga Parva, also called Prajagara sub-parva, sage Vidura outlines things wise people and leaders should do, and things they should not. These are known as Viduraniti. Some examples of his recommendations for leaders:
He should wish for the prosperity of all, and should never set heart on inflicting misery on any group.
He should pay attention to those who have fallen in distress and adversity. He should not ignore persistent sufferings of those that depend on him, even if the suffering is small.
He should show compassion to all creatures, do what is good for all creatures rather than a select few.
He should never impede the development and growth of agriculture and economic activity by anyone.
He should be always be prepared to protect those that depend on him for their safety and security.
He should be fair and accessible to his people. By means of virtue should he attain success, by means of virtue should he sustain it.
He should consider the welfare of his people as his personal responsibility.
He should encourage learning and transmission of knowledge.
He should encourage profit and virtue. Prosperity depends on good deeds. Good deeds depend on prosperity.
He should avoid friendship with the sinful.
He should never misuse wealth, use harsh speech nor inflict extreme or cruel punishments.
He should only appoint those as ministers (senior positions in his staff) whom he has examined well for their history of virtue, dispositions, activity and whether they give others their due.
Viduraniti also includes few hundred verses with suggestions for personal development and characteristics of a wise person. For example, in Chapter 33, Vidura suggests a wise person refrains from anger, exultation, pride, shame, stupefaction and vanity. He has reverence and faith, he is unhampered in his endeavors by either adversity or prosperity. He believes virtue and profit can go together, exerts and acts to the best of his ability, disregards nothing. He understands quickly, listens carefully, acts with purpose. He does not grieve for what is lost, and does not lose his sense during crisis. He is constantly learning, he seeks enlightenment from everything he experiences. He acts after deciding, and decides after thinking. He neither behaves with arrogance, nor with excessive humility. He never speaks ill of others, nor praises himself. He does not exult in honours to himself, nor grieves at insults; he is not agitated by what others do to him just like a calm lake near river Ganges.
Theory of envoys
J. A. B. van Buitenen, and others, have referred to parts of Udyoga Parva, along with Book 12 of Mahabharata and non-Epic works such as Arthashastra, as a treatise on diplomats and envoys (called dūta, Sanskrit: दूत) involved in negotiations between parties. Broadly, the Parva recognizes four types of envoys—Samdisțārtha are envoys who convey a message but do not have any discretion to negotiate; Parimițārtha are envoys who are granted a circumscribed purpose with some flexibility on wording; Nisrșțārtha are envoys with an overall goal and significant discretion to adapt the details of negotiations to the circumstances; finally, Dūtapranidhi, a full ambassador who has full confidence of the party he represents, understands the interests and Dharma (law, morals, duties) of both parties, and can decide the goal as well as style of negotiations (Krishna acts as such an ambassador in Bhagavat-yana sub-parva of Udyoga Parva).
Udyoga Parva outlines the four methods of negotiations recommended for envoys who are dūtapranidhi: conciliation for the cause of peace and Dharma (sāman), praise your side while dividing the opposition by describing consequences of success and consequences of failure to reach a deal (bheda), bargain with gifts and concessions (dāna), bargain with threats of punishment (daņda). Beyond describing the types of diplomats, Udyoga Parva also lists how the envoy and messengers for negotiations should be selected, the safety and rights of envoys that must be respected by the receiving party regardless of how unpleasant or pleasant the message is. Envoys must be honest, truthful and direct without fear, that they serve not only the cause of king who sends them, but the cause of dharma (law), peace and truth.
Quotations and teachings
Sainyodyoga Parva, Chapter 3:
Sanjayayana Parva, Chapter 25:
Sanjayayana Parva, Chapter 27:
Sanjayayana Parva, Chapter 29:
Prajagara Parva, Chapter 33:
Prajagara Parva, Chapter 33:
Prajagara Parva, Chapter 34:
Prajagara Parva, Chapter 34:
Prajagara Parva, Chapter 34:
Sanat-Sujata Parva, Chapter 42:
Sanat-Sujata Parva, Chapter 43:
Sanat-Sujata Parva, Chapter 44:
See also
Previous book of Mahabharata: Virata Parva
Next book of Mahabharata: Bhishma Parva
References
External links
Kisari Mohan Ganguli, Udyoga Parva The Mahabharata, Translation in English (1886)
Manmatha Nath Dutt, Udyoga Parva The Mahabharata, Translation in English (1896)
J. A. B. van Buitenen,
Udyoga Parva in Sanskrit by Vyasadeva and commentary by Nilakantha (Editor: Kinjawadekar, 1929)
Tamil Mahabharatham
H. Fauche, Le Mahabharata, Translation in French (Paris, 1868)
Parvas in Mahabharata | en |
doc-en-15244 | The Crimean Khanate ( or ), officially the Great Horde and Desht-i Kipchak () and in old European historiography and geography known as Little Tartary (), was a Crimean Tatar state existing from 1441 to 1783, the longest-lived of the Turkic khanates that succeeded the empire of the Golden Horde. Established by Hacı I Giray in 1441, it was regarded as the direct heir to the Golden Horde and to Desht-i-Kipchak.
In 1783, violating the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (which had guaranteed non-interference of both Russia and the Ottoman Empire in the affairs of the Crimean Khanate), the Russian Empire annexed the khanate. Among the European powers, only France came out with an open protest against this act, due to the longstanding Franco-Ottoman alliance.
Naming and geography
Crimean khans, considering their state as the heir and legal successor of the Golden Horde and Desht-i Kipchak, called themselves khans of "the Great Horde, the Great State and the Throne of the Crimea". The full title of the Crimean khans, used in official documents and correspondence with foreign rulers, varying slightly from document to document during the three centuries of the khanate's existence, was as follows: "By the Grace and help of the blessed and highest Lord, the great padishah of the Great Horde, and the Great State, and the Throne of the Crimea, and all the Nogai, and the mountain Circassians, and the tats and tavgachs, and The Kipchak steppe and all the Tatars" ().
According to Oleksa Hayvoronsky, the inhabitants of the Crimean Khanate in Crimean Tatar usually referred to their state as "Qırım yurtu, Crimean Yurt", which can be translated into English as "the country of Crimea" or "Crimean country".
English-speaking writers during the 18th and early 19th centuries often called the territory of the Crimean Khanate and of the Lesser Nogai Horde Little Tartary (or subdivided it as Crim Tartary (also Krim Tartary) and Kuban Tartary). The name "Little Tartary" distinguished the area from (Great) Tartary – those areas of central and northern Asia inhabited by Turkic peoples or Tatars.
The London-based cartographer Herman Moll in a map of c. 1729 shows "Little Tartary" as including the Crimean peninsula and the steppe between Dnieper and Mius River as far north as the Dnieper bend and the upper Tor River (a tributary of the Donets).
The Khanate included the Crimean peninsula and the adjacent steppes, mostly corresponding to parts of South Ukraine between the Dnieper and the Donets rivers (i.e. including most of present-day Zaporizhzhia Oblast, left-Dnepr parts of Kherson Oblast, besides minor parts of southeastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and western Donetsk Oblast). The territory controlled by the Crimean Khanate shifted throughout its existence due to the constant incursions by the Cossacks, who had lived along the Don since the disintegration of the Golden Horde in the 15th century.
History
Pre-history
The first known Turkic peoples appeared in Crimea in the 6th century, during the conquest of the Crimea by The Turkic Kaganate. In the 11th century, Cumans (Kipchaks) appeared in Crimea, who later became the ruling and state-forming people of the Golden Horde and the Crimean Khanate. In the middle of the 13th century, the northern steppe lands of the Crimea, inhabited mainly by Turkic peoples — Cumans, became the possession of Ulus Juchi, known as the Golden Horde or Ulu Ulus. In this era, the role of Turkic peoples increased. Since this time, the local Kipchaks took the name of Tatars (tatarlar).
In the Horde period, the khans of the Golden Horde were the Supreme rulers of the Crimea, but their governors — Emirs — exercised direct control. The first formally recognized ruler in the Crimea is considered Aran-Timur, the nephew of Batu Khan of the Golden Horde, who received this area from Mengu-Timur, and the first center of the Crimea was the ancient city Qırım (Solhat). This name then gradually spread to the entire Peninsula. The second center of Crimea was the valley adjacent to Qırq Yer and Bağçasaray.
The multi-ethnic population of Crimea then consisted mainly of those who lived in the steppe and foothills of the Peninsula Kipchaks (Cumans), Crimean Greeks, Crimean Goths, Alans, and Armenians, who lived mainly in cities and mountain villages. The Crimean nobility was mostly of both Kipchak and Horden origin.
Horde rule for the peoples who inhabited the Crimean Peninsula was, in general, painful. The rulers of the Golden Horde repeatedly organized punitive campaigns in the Crimea, when the local population refused to pay tribute. An example being a well-known campaign of the Nogai Khan in 1299, which resulted in a number of Crimean cities suffering. As in other regions of the Horde, separatist tendencies soon began to manifest themselves in Crimea.
In 1303, in Crimea, the most famous written monument of the Kypchak or Cuman language was created (named in Kypchak "tatar tili") — "Codex Cumanicus", which is the oldest memorial of the Crimean Tatar language and of great importance for the history of Kypchak and Oghuz dialects — as directly related to the Kipchaks of the Black Sea steppes and Crimea.
There are legends that in the 14th century, the Crimea was repeatedly ravaged by the army Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Grand Duke of Lithuania Olgerd broke the Tatar army in 1363 near the mouth of the Dnieper, and then invaded the Crimea, devastated Chersonesos and seized valuable church objects there. There is a similar legend about his successor Vitovt, who in 1397 went on a Crimean campaign to Caffa and again destroyed Chersonesos. Vitovt is also known in Crimean history for giving refuge in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to a significant number of Tatars and Karaites, whose descendants now live in Lithuania and Belarus. In 1399 Vitovt, who came to the aid of the Horde Khan Tokhtamysh, was defeated on the banks of the Vorskla River by Tokhtamysh's rival Timur-Kutluk, on whose behalf the Horde was ruled by the Emir Edigei, and made peace.
During the reign of Canike Hanım, Tokhtamysh's daughter, in Qırq-Or, she supported Hacı I Giray in the struggle against the descendants of Tokhtamysh, Kichi-Muhammada and Sayid Ahmad, who as well as Hacı Giray claimed full power in the Crimea and probably saw him as her heir to the Crimean throne. In the sources of the 16th—18th centuries, the opinion according to which the separation of the Crimean Tatar state was raised to Tokhtamysh, and Canike was the most important figure in this process, completely prevailed.
Establishment
The Crimean Khanate originated in the early 15th century when certain clans of the Golden Horde Empire ceased their nomadic life in the Desht-i Kipchak (Kypchak Steppes of today's Ukraine and southern Russia) and decided to make Crimea their yurt (homeland). At that time, the Golden Horde of the Mongol empire had governed the Crimean peninsula as an ulus since 1239, with its capital at Qirim (Staryi Krym). The local separatists invited a Genghisid contender for the Golden Horde throne, Hacı Giray, to become their khan. Hacı Giray accepted their invitation and traveled from exile in Lithuania. He warred for independence against the Horde from 1420 to 1441, in the end achieving success. But Hacı Giray then had to fight off internal rivals before he could ascend the throne of the khanate in 1449, after which he moved its capital to Qırq Yer (today part of Bahçeseray). The khanate included the Crimean Peninsula (except the south and southwest coast and ports, controlled by the Republic of Genoa & Trebizond Empire) as well as the adjacent steppe.
Ottoman protectorate
The sons of Hacı I Giray contended against each other to succeed him. The Ottomans intervened and installed one of the sons, Meñli I Giray, on the throne. Menli I Giray, took the imperial title "Sovereign of Two Continents and Khan of Khans of Two Seas."
In 1475 the Ottoman forces, under the command of Gedik Ahmet Pasha, conquered the Greek Principality of Theodoro and the Genoese colonies at Cembalo, Soldaia, and Caffa (modern Feodosiya). Thenceforth the khanate was a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman sultan enjoyed veto power over the selection of new Crimean khans. The Empire annexed the Crimean coast but recognized the legitimacy of the khanate rule of the steppes, as the khans were descendants of Genghis Khan.
In 1475, the Ottomans imprisoned Meñli I Giray for three years for resisting the invasion. After returning from captivity in Constantinople, he accepted the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, Ottoman sultans treated the khans more as allies than subjects. The khans continued to have a foreign policy independent from the Ottomans in the steppes of Little Tartary. The khans continued to mint coins and use their names in Friday prayers, two important signs of sovereignty. They did not pay tribute to the Ottoman Empire; instead the Ottomans paid them in return for their services of providing skilled outriders and frontline cavalry in their campaigns. Later on, Crimea lost power in this relationship as the result of a crisis in 1523, during the reign of Meñli's successor, Mehmed I Giray. He died that year and beginning with his successor, from 1524 on, Crimean khans were appointed by the Sultan.
The alliance of the Crimean Tatars and the Ottomans was comparable to the Polish–Lithuanian union in its importance and durability. The Crimean cavalry became indispensable for the Ottomans' campaigns against Poland, Hungary, and Persia.
Victory over the Golden Horde
In 1502, Meñli I Giray defeated the last khan of the Great Horde, which put an end to the Horde's claims on Crimea. The Khanate initially chose as its capital Salaçıq near the Qırq Yer fortress. Later, the capital was moved a short distance to Bahçeseray, founded in 1532 by Sahib I Giray. Both Salaçıq and the Qırq Yer fortress today are part of the expanded city of Bahçeseray.
Slave trade
The slave trade was the backbone of the economy of the Crimean Khanate. However, a modern historian is of the opinion that the role of the slave trade in the economy of the Crimean Khanate is greatly exaggerated by modern historians, and the raiding economy is nothing but a historical myth.
The Crimeans frequently mounted raids into the Danubian principalities, Poland–Lithuania, and Muscovy to enslave people whom they could capture; for each captive, the khan received a fixed share (savğa) of 10% or 20%. These campaigns by Crimean forces were either ("sojourns"), officially declared military operations led by the khans themselves, or çapuls ("despoiling"), raids undertaken by groups of noblemen, sometimes illegally because they contravened treaties concluded by the khans with neighbouring rulers.
For a long time, until the early 18th century, the khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East, exporting about 2 million slaves from Russia and Poland–Lithuania over the period 1500–1700. Caffa, an Ottoman city on Crimean peninsula (and thus not part of the Khanate), was one of the best known and significant trading ports and slave markets. In 1769, a last major Tatar raid resulted in the capture of 20,000 Russian and Ruthenian slaves.
Author and historian Brian Glyn Williams writes:
Early modern sources are full of descriptions of sufferings of Christian slaves captured by the Crimean Tatars in the course of their raids:
Alliances and conflicts with Poland and Zaporozhian Cossacks
The Crimeans had a complex relationship with Zaporozhian Cossacks who lived to the north of the khanate in modern Ukraine. The Cossacks provided a measure of protection against Tatar raids for Poland–Lithuania and received subsidies for their service. They also raided Crimean and Ottoman possessions in the region. At times Crimean Khanate made alliances with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Zaporizhian Sich. The assistance of İslâm III Giray during the Khmelnytsky Uprising in 1648 contributed greatly to the initial momentum of military successes for the Cossacks. The relationship with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was also exclusive, as it was the home dynasty of the Girays, who sought sanctuary in Lithuania in the 15th century before establishing themselves on the Crimean peninsula.
Struggle with Muscovy
In the middle of the 16th century, the Crimean Khanate asserted a claim to be the successor to the Golden Horde, which entailed asserting the right of rule over the Tatar khanates of the Caspian-Volga region, particularly the Kazan Khanate and Astrakhan Khanate. This claim pitted it against Muscovy for dominance in the region. A successful campaign by Devlet I Giray upon the Russian capital in 1571 culminated in the burning of Moscow, and he thereby gained the sobriquet, That Alğan (seizer of the throne). The following year, however, the Crimean Khanate lost access to the Volga once and for all due to its catastrophic defeat in the Battle of Molodi.
Don Cossacks reached lower Don, Donets and Azov by the 1580s and thus became the north-eastern neighbours of the khanate. They attracted peasants, serfs and gentry fleeing internal conflicts, over-population and intensifying exploitation. Just as Zaporozhians protected the southern borders of the Commonwealth, Don Cossacks protected Muscovy and themselves attacked the khanate and Ottoman fortresses.
Relationship with Circassians
Under the influence of the Crimean Tatars and of the Ottoman Empire, large numbers of Circassians converted to Islam from Christianity. Circassian mercenaries and recruits played an important role in the khan's armies, khans often married Circassian women and it was a custom for young Crimean princes to spend time in Circassia training in the art of warfare. Several conflicts occurred between Circassians and Crimean Tatars in the 18th century, with the former defeating an army of Khan Kaplan Giray and Ottoman auxiliaries in the battle of Kanzhal.
Decline
The Turkish traveler writer Evliya Çelebi mentions the impact of Cossack raids from Azak upon the territories of the Crimean Khanate. These raids ruined trade routes and severely depopulated many important regions. By the time Evliya Çelebi had arrived almost all the towns he visited were affected by the Cossack raids. In fact, the only place Evliya Çelebi considered safe from the Cossacks was the Ottoman fortress at Arabat.
The decline of the Crimean Khanate was a consequence of the weakening of the Ottoman Empire and a change in Eastern Europe's balance of power favouring its neighbours. Crimean Tatars often returned from Ottoman campaigns without booty, and Ottoman subsidies were less likely for unsuccessful campaigns. Without sufficient guns, the Tatar cavalry suffered a significant loss against European and Russian armies with modern equipment. By the late 17th century, Russia became too strong a power for Crimea to pillage and the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699) outlawed further raids. The era of great slave raids in Russia and Ukraine was over, although brigands and Nogay raiders continued their attacks and Russian hatred of the Khanate did not decrease. These politico-economic losses led in turn to erosion of the khan's support among noble clans, and internal conflicts for power ensued. The Nogays, who provided a significant portion of the Crimean military forces, also took back their support from the khans towards the end of the empire.
In the first half of the 17th century, Kalmyks formed the Kalmyk Khanate in the Lower Volga and under Ayuka Khan conducted many military expeditions against the Crimean Khanate and Nogays. By becoming an important ally and later part of the Russian Empire and taking an oath to protect its southeastern borders, the Kalmyk Khanate took an active part in all Russian war campaigns in the 17th and 18th centuries, providing up to 40,000 fully equipped horsemen.
The united Russian and Ukrainian forces attacked the Khanate during the Chigirin Campaigns and the Crimean Campaigns. It was during the Russo-Turkish War, 1735-1739 that the Russians, under the command of Field-Marshal Münnich, finally managed to penetrate the Crimean Peninsula itself, burning and destroying everything on their way.
More warfare ensued during the reign of Catherine II. The Russo-Turkish War, 1768-1774 resulted in the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, which made the Crimean Khanate independent from the Ottoman Empire and aligned it with the Russian Empire.
The rule of the last Crimean khan Şahin Giray was marked with increasing Russian influence and outbursts of violence from the khan administration towards internal opposition. On 8 April 1783, in violation of the treaty (some parts of which had been already violated by Crimeans and Ottomans), Catherine II intervened in the civil war, de facto annexing the whole peninsula as the Taurida Governorate. In 1787, Şahin Giray took refuge in the Ottoman Empire and was eventually executed, on Rhodes, by the Ottoman authorities for betrayal. The royal Giray family survives to this day.
Through the 1792 Treaty of Jassy (Iaşi), the Russian frontier was extended to the Dniester River and the takeover of Yedisan was complete. The 1812 Treaty of Bucharest transferred Bessarabia to Russian control.
Government
All Khans were from the Giray clan, which traced its right to rule to its descent from Genghis Khan. According to the tradition of the steppes, the ruler was legitimate only if he was of Genghisid royal descent (i.e. "ak süyek"). Although the Giray dynasty was the symbol of government, the khan actually governed with the participation of Qaraçı Beys, the leaders of the noble clans such as Şirin, Barın, Arğın, Qıpçaq, and in the later period, Mansuroğlu and Sicavut. After the collapse of the Astrakhan Khanate in 1556, an important element of the Crimean Khanate were the Nogays, most of whom transferred their allegiance from Astrakhan to Crimea. Circassians (Atteghei) and Cossacks also occasionally played roles in Crimean politics, alternating their allegiance between the khan and the beys.
The Nogay pastoral nomads north of the Black Sea were nominally subject to the Crimean Khan. They were divided into the following groups: Budjak (from the Danube to the Dniester), Yedisan (from the Dniester to the Bug), Jamboyluk (Bug to Crimea), Yedickul (north of Crimea) and Kuban.
Internal affairs
Internally, the khanate territory was divided among the beys, and beneath the beys were mirzas from noble families. The relationship of peasants or herdsmen to their mirzas was not feudal. They were free and the Islamic law protected them from losing their rights. Apportioned by village, the land was worked in common and taxes were assigned to the whole village. The tax was one tenth of an agricultural product, one twentieth of a herd animal, and a variable amount of unpaid labor. During the reforms by the last khan Şahin Giray, the internal structure was changed following the Turkish pattern: the nobles' landholdings were proclaimed the domain of the khan and reorganized into qadılıqs (provinces governed by representatives of the khan).
Crimean law
Crimean law was based on Tatar law, Islamic law, and, in limited matters, Ottoman law. The leader of the Muslim establishment was the mufti, who was selected from among the local Muslim clergy. His major duty was neither judicial nor theological, but financial. The mufti's administration controlled all of the vakif lands and their enormous revenues. Another Muslim official, appointed not by the clergy but the Ottoman sultan, was the kadıasker, the overseer of the khanate's judicial districts, each under jurisdiction of a kadi. In theory, kadis answered to the kadiaskers, but in practice they answered to the clan leaders and the khan. The kadis determined the day to day legal behavior of Muslims in the khanate.
Non-Muslim minorities
Substantial non-Muslim minorities - Greeks, Armenians, Crimean Goths, Adyghe (Circassians), Venetians, Genoese, Crimean Karaites and Qırımçaq Jews - lived principally in the cities, mostly in separate districts or suburbs. Under the millet system, they had their own religious and judicial institutions. They were subject to extra taxes in exchange for exemption from military service, living like Crimean Tatars and speaking dialects of Crimean Tatar. Mikhail Kizilov writes: "According to Marcin Broniewski (1578), the Tatars seldom cultivated the soil themselves, with most of their land tilled by the Polish, Ruthenian, Russian, and Walachian (Moldavian) slaves."
The Jewish population was concentrated in Çufut Kale ('Jewish Fortress'), a separate town near Bahçeseray that was the Khan's original capital. As with other minorities, they spoke a Turkic language. Crimean law granted them special financial and political rights as a reward, according to local folklore, for historic services rendered to an uluhane (first wife of a Khan). The capitation tax on Jews in Crimea was levied by the office of the uluhane in Bahçeseray. Much like the Christian population of Crimea, the Jews were actively involved in the slave trade. Both Christians and Jews also often redeemed Christian and Jewish captives of Tatar raids in Eastern Europe.
Economy
The nomadic part of the Crimean Tatars and all the Nogays were cattle breeders. Crimea had important trading ports where the goods arrived via the Silk Road were exported to the Ottoman Empire and Europe. Crimean Khanate had many large, beautiful, and lively cities such as the capital Bahçeseray, Gözleve (Yevpatoria), Karasu Bazaar (Karasu-market) and Aqmescit (White-mosque) having numerous hans (caravansarais and merchant quarters), tanners, and mills. Many monuments constructed under the Crimean Khanate were destroyed or left in ruins after the Russian invasion. Mosques, in particular were demolished or remade into Orthodox churches. The settled Crimean Tatars were engaged in trade, agriculture, and artisanry. Crimea was a center of wine, tobacco, and fruit cultivation. Bahçeseray kilims (oriental rugs) were exported to Poland, and knives made by Crimean Tatar artisans were deemed the best by the Caucasian tribes. Crimea was also renowned for manufacture of silk and honey.
The slave trade (15th-17th century) in captured Ukrainians and Russians was one of the major sources of income of Crimean Tartar and Nogay nobility. In this process, known as harvesting the steppe, raiding parties would go out and capture, and then enslave the local Christian peasants living in the countryside. In spite of the dangers, Polish and Russian serfs were attracted to the freedom offered by the empty steppes of Ukraine. The slave raids entered Russian and Cossack folklore and many dumy were written elegising the victims' fates. This contributed to a hatred for the Khanate that transcended political or military concerns. But in fact, there were always small raids committed by both Tatars and Cossacks, in both directions.
The last recorded major Crimean raid, before those in the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) took place during the reign of Peter I (1682–1725).
Crimean art and architecture
Selim II Giray fountain
The Selim II Giray fountain, built in 1747, is considered one of the masterpieces of Crimean Khanate's hydraulic engineering designs and is still marveled in modern times. It consists of small ceramic pipes, boxed in an underground stone tunnel, stretching back to the spring source more than away. It was one of the finest sources of water in Bakhchisaray.
Bakhchisaray Fountain
One of the notable constructors of Crimean art and architecture was Qırım Giray, who in 1764 commissioned the fountain master Omer the Persian to construct the Bakhchisaray Fountain. The Bakhchisaray Fountain or Fountain of Tears is a real case of life imitating art. The fountain is known as the embodiment of love of one of the last Crimean Khans, Khan Qırım Giray for his young wife, and his grief after her early death. The Khan was said to have fallen in love with a Polish girl in his harem. Despite his battle-hardened harshness, he was grievous and wept when she died, astonishing all those who knew him. He commissioned a marble fountain to be made, so that the rock would weep, like him, forever.
Regions and administration
Main regions outside of Qirim yurt (the peninsula)
Kaztsiv ulus (located in Kuban)
Yedychkul Horde
Djambayluk Horde
Yedisan Horde
Budzhak Horde
Prohnoinsk Palanka (possibly leased to the Zaporizhian Host) (located on the Kinburn peninsula)
Silistra Province, Ottoman Empire for sometime governed by Bakhchisaray
The peninsula itself was divided by the khan's family and several beys. The estates controlled by beys were called beylik. Beys in the khanate were as important as the Polish Magnats. Directly to the khan belonged Cufut-Qale, Bakhchisaray, and Staryi Krym (Eski Qirim). The khan also possessed all the salt lakes and the villages around them, as well as the woods around the rivers Alma, Kacha, and Salgir. Part of his own estate included the wastelands with their newly created settlements.
Part of the main khan's estates were the lands of the Kalha-sultan (Qalğa) who was next in the line of succession of the khan's family. He usually administered the eastern portion of the peninsula. Kalha also was Chief Commander of the Crimean Army in the absence of the Khan. The next hereditary administrative position, called Nureddin, was also assigned to the khan's family. He administrated the western region of the peninsula. There also was a specifically assigned position for the khan's mother or sister — Ana-beim — which was similar to the Ottomans' Valide Sultan. The senior wife of the Khan carried a rank of Ulu-beim and was next in importance to the Nureddin.
By the end of the khanate regional offices of the kaimakans, who administered smaller regions of the Crimean Khanate, were created.
Or Qapı (Perekop) had special status. The fortress was controlled either directly by the khan's family or by the family of Shirin.
Ottoman Empire territories
Kefe Eyalet, a seat of Ottomans in Crimea until 1774
Silistra Eyalet, the western coast of Black Sea, later Danube Vilayet
See also
List of Turkic dynasties and countries
List of Turkic states and empires
Vassal and tributary states of the Ottoman Empire
Little Tartary
New Russia
List of Crimean khans
List of Crimean Tatars
List of Ukrainian rulers
Russo-Crimean Wars
Cossacks
Kipchaks
Nogai Horde
Lipka Tatars
Eurasians
Nomadic people
Tatar invasions
Russo–Crimean War (1571)
Ottoman wars in Europe
Ottoman-Habsburg wars
List of the Muslim Empires
List of Sunni Muslim dynasties
Mongol invasions
Mongol Empire
Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword
Notes
References
External links
The Bağçasaray Palace of the Crimean Khans
Tatar.Net
Annexation of the Crimean Khanate
Further reading
Дворец крымских ханов в Бахчисарае
Дубровин Н. Ф. Присоединение Крыма к России. В 4-х тт. — СПб.: Тип. Императорской Академии наук, 1885—1889.
Гайворонский О. Созвездие Гераев. Краткие биографии крымских ханов. — Симферополь: Доля, 2003. —
Базилевич В. М. Из истории московско-крымских отношений в первой половине XVII века. — Киев: Тип. 2-й артели, 1914. — 23 с.
Бантыш-Каменский Н. Н. Реестр делам крымского двора с 1474 по 1779 год. — Симферополь: Тип. Таврическ. губернск. правления, 1893.
Смирнов В. Д. Крымское ханство под верховенством Оттоманской Порты в XVIII в. до присоединения его к России — Одесса: Тип. А. Шульце, 1889.
Смирнов В. Д. Крымское ханство в XVIII веке. — М.: Ломоносовъ, 2014. —
Смирнов В. Д. Сборник некоторых важных известий и официальных документов касательно Турции, России и Крыма — СПб., 1881.
Шваб М. М. Русско-крымские отношения середины XVI — первых лет XVII веков в отечественной историографии 1940-х — 2000-х гг. — Сургут, 2011.
History of Crimea
Ottoman period in Ukraine
Historical Turkic states
History of the Ottoman Empire in Europe
Islam in Ukraine
Tatar states
Tsardom of Russia
1440s establishments in the Ottoman Empire
1780s disestablishments in the Ottoman Empire
1440s establishments in Europe
1783 disestablishments in Europe
States and territories established in 1441
States and territories disestablished in 1783
Vassal states of the Ottoman Empire | en |
doc-en-10478 |
Accidents and incidents involving the Ilyushin Il-18
Data from:Aviation Safety Network Il-18
1958
7 May A Soviet Air Force Il-18A (CCCP-Л5821, c/n 188000104) crashed near Sheremetyevo Airport after an engine failed while on a test flight, killing all 10 on board in the first loss of an Il-18. The aircraft was operating for Aviatsionnaya Krasnoznamyonnaya Diviziya Osobogo Naznacheniya (AKDON, Red Banner Special Task Aviation Division).
1959
2 September Aeroflot Flight 249, an Il-18B (CCCP-75676, c/n 189000905), from Vnukovo Airport was written off after suffering structural damage in a cumulonimbus cloud while flying over Voronezh Region; all 65 passengers and crew survived.
1960
27 April An Aeroflot/Ural Il-18A, CCCP-75648 (c/n 188000402), crashed on landing at Koltsovo Airport while on a training flight due to crew error, killing one of five crew on board.
17 August Aeroflot Flight 36, an Il-18B (CCCP-75705, c/n 189001702), crashed near Tarasovich, Kiev Oblast due to loss of control following an in-flight fire, killing all 34 passengers and crew on board.
26 December An Aeroflot/Ulyanovsk Flight School Il-18A (CCCP-75651, c/n 188000405) lost control and crashed near Vostochny Airport en route from Kuybyshev Airport while on a training flight due to tail icing, killing all 17 passengers and crew on board.
1961
28 March ČSA Flight 511, an Il-18V (OK-OAD, c/n 180002102), crashed near Gräfenberg, Bavaria in West Germany. All 52 passengers and crew on board were killed.
22 June An Aeroflot/Moscow Il-18B, CCCP-75672 (c/n 189000901), en route from Vnukovo Airport to Adler/Sochi Airport, suffered a generator failure on no.3 engine and subsequent fire, force-landing in a field near Bogoroditsk, Tula Oblast with no casualties among the 97 occupants. (1961 Bogoroditsk Il-18 incident)
12 July ČSA Flight 511, an Il-18V (OK-PAF, c/n 181002904), crashed near Casablanca, Morocco, killing all 72 on board; the cause was not determined, but weather may have been a factor.
28 July An Il-18V (CCCP-75766, c/n 181003405) of MAP Plant No. 30 crashed at Tretyakovo Airport during a pre-delivery test flight for Aeroflot due to engine failure; the aircraft was on a test flight with the number two engine shut down when the number one engine failed, causing the aircraft to bank left; the left wing hit the ground and the aircraft crashed with no casualties.
13 August An Aeroflot/Ulyanovsk Flight School Il-18B, CCCP-75653 (c/n 188000502) overshot the runway in poor visibility at Riga Central Airport, Latvia, with no casualties.
17 December Aeroflot Flight 245, an Il-18B (CCCP-75654, c/n 188000503), went into a dive and crashed near Chebotovka, Rostov Oblast after the flight engineer accidentally deployed the flaps, killing all 59 passengers and crew on board.
31 December An Aeroflot/Armenia Il-18V (CCCP-75757, c/n 181003202) crashed near Mineralnye Vody Airport while attempting a go-around during a charter flight, killing 32 of 119 on board. The aircraft was one of two sent to pick up people who had been stranded at Tbilisi due to bad weather.
1962
24 February A TAROM Il-18V (YR-IMB, c/n 181003702) belly landed near Paphos, Cyprus, after all 4 engines failed, perhaps due to fuel filter icing, (see List of airline flights that required gliding).
23 November Malev Hungarian Airlines Flight 355, an Il-18V (HA-MOD, c/n 180002002) stalled for reasons unknown and crashed near Le Bourget Airport, killing all 21 passengers and crew on board.
29 November An Aeroflot/Moscow Ilyushin Il-18V, CCCP-75843 (c/n 182005303), was reported to have crashed on this date, with no further information available.
1963
26 February An Aeroflot/Polar Il-18V (CCCP-75732, c/n 181002601) force-landed on the ice of the Shelikhov Gulf near Bukhta Yemlinskaya due to double engine failure, killing all 10 passengers and crew on board; three initially survived the crash, but later died of hypothermia in the subzero temperatures.
5 March Aeroflot Flight 191, an Il-18V (CCCP-75765, c/n 181003404), crashed short of the runway at Ashgabat Airport due to poor visibility caused by a dust storm, killing 12 of 54 on board.
4 April Aeroflot Flight 25, an Il-18V (CCCP-75866, c/n 183005901), crashed near Urakhcha, Tatarstan after the propeller pitch control mechanism on an engine malfunctioned, killing all 67 passengers and crew on board.
10 November An Aeroflot/Uzbekistan Il-18B, CCCP-75686 (c/n 189001201), crashed on landing at Kuibyshev Airport en route from Tashkent due to pilot error; no casualties.
1964
2 July An Aeroflot/Moscow Il-18B (CCCP-75661, c/n 188000605) was written off at Krasnodar Airport.
3 August An Aeroflot/Far East Il-18V (CCCP-75824, c/n 182004903) was written off after landing short and the undercarriage collapsing at Magadan Airport.
2 September Aeroflot Flight 721, an Il-18V (CCCP-75531, c/n 183006904), struck a hillside near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport after the crew descended too soon, killing 87 of 93 on board.
19 October A Soviet Air Force Il-18V (CCCP-75568, c/n 183005704) struck Mount Avala while on approach to Batajnica Air Base, killing all 33 passengers and crew on board.
1965
4 January Aeroflot Flight 20/101, an Il-18B (CCCP-75685, c/n 189001105), crashed short of the runway at Alma-Ata Airport in poor visibility, killing 64 of 103 on board.
23 December An Aeroflot/Moscow Il-18B (CCCP-75688, c/n 189001203) suffered severe structural damage near Magadan, whilst en route, after a dive from .
1966
27 March A Cubana Il-18B (CU-T831, c/n 182005202) from Santiago-Antonio Maceo Airport to José Martí International Airport was hijacked by the flight engineer, demanding to be flown to Florida. Two people were killed during the incident.
7 July A Cubana Il-18 flying from Antonio Maceo Airport to José Martí International Airport, was hijacked by 9 hijackers, including the pilot, and flown to Jamaica.
10 July A Cubana Ilyushin Il-18V (CU-T830, c/n 182004905) made a forced landing at Cienfuegos due to multiple engine failure, killing two of 93 on board.
27 August Aeroflot Flight 3772, an Il-18V (CCCP-75552, c/n 184007404) flying from Talaghy Airport to Shosseynaya Airport, overran the runway after an aborted take-off with the rudder gust-lock engaged; all 121 passengers and crew on board survived.
22 November Aeroflot Flight X-19, an Il-18B (CCCP-75665, c/n 188000704), left the runway and crashed on takeoff from Alma-Ata Airport, killing three of 68 on board.
24 November TABSO Flight 101 crashed near Bratislava; killing all 82 passengers and crew on board; the cause was not determined, but crew error was blamed. The crash remains Slovakia's worst air disaster.
1967
4 January A Hâng Không Viêtnam Ilyushin Il-18D (c/n 186008804) from Nanking Airport was reported to have crashed.
6 April An Aeroflot/235 Aviation Det. Il-18V (CCCP-75563, c/n 184007802) was being ferried from Domodedovo Airport to Vnukovo Airport when it crashed on climbout, killing all eight crew on board.
9 July An Air Guinee Il-18V (3X-GAB, c/n 181003703) on a flight to Praha-Ruzyne International Airport in Czechoslovakia, diverted to Casablanca-Anfa Airport, Morocco due to bad weather, but hit a building on landing and was damaged beyond repair, with no casualties among the 102 occupants.
5 September ČSA Flight 523, an Il-18D (OK-WAI, c/n 187009705), crashed shortly after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland, Canada. Thirty-seven of the 69 passengers and crew aboard were killed; the cause was never determined.
16 November Aeroflot Flight 2230, an Il-18V (CCCP-75538, c/n 184007002), lost control at and crashed on climbout from Koltsovo Airport after an engine fire, killing all 8 crew and 99 passengers.
1968
9 January An Aeroflot/Northern Il-18V (CCCP-75519, c/n 183006702) was damaged beyond repair when it landed short of the runway at Karaganda Airport.
24 February An Aeroflot/Ural Il-18V (CCCP-75560, c/n 184007704) overran the runway at Donetsk Airport and was damaged beyond repair.
29 February Aeroflot Flight 15, an Il-18D (CCCP-74252, c/n 187010601), broke apart at 10,000 feet and crashed near Parchum, Irkutsk due to a possible fuel leak and fire, killing 83 of 84 on board.
22 April An Aeroflot Il-18V (CCCP-75526, c/n 183006804) struck power lines and crashed near Domodedovo Airport while on a training flight, killing all five crew on board.
3 September A Bulair Il-18E (LZ-BEG, c/n 186009101) crashed near Bourgas Airport after the crew deviated from flight rules to attempt a visual approach in bad weather, killing 47 of 89 on board.
20 October An Aeroflot/West Siberia Il-18D (CCCP-75436, c/n 186009505) on a scheduled flight from Novosibirsk-Tolmachevo Airport to Yakutsk Airport, diverted to Krasnoyarsk Airport, due to weather. The aircraft landed hard short of the runway causing the fuselage to break and a fire to erupt. No casualties were reported but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.
1969
20 March A United Arab Airlines Il-18 crashed while attempting to land at Aswan International Airport. One hundred of the 105 passengers and crew on board were killed.
26 August Aeroflot Flight 1770, an Il-18B (CCCP-75708, c/n 189001705) landed on its belly at Vnukovo Airport after the crew forgot to lower the landing gear, killing 16 of 102 on board.
10 September Aeroflot Flight 93, an Il-18V (CCCP-75791, c/n 181004005) on a flight from Krasnoyarsk Airport to Yakutsk Airport, was written off at Yakutsk after striking an ambulance crossing the runway.
11 November An Aeroflot/Ural Il-18B (CCCP-75669, c/n 188000803) was written off after flying in heavy turbulence. The fuselage was used to rebuild Il-18 CCCP-74297 (c/n 184007203) after it was damaged in a fire at ARZ-402.
1970
6 February Aeroflot Flight U-45, an Il-18V (CCCP-75798), struck a mountain en route to Samarkand from Tashkent, killing 92 of 106 on board.
5 June An Aeroflot/Uzbekistan Il-18V (CCCP-75533, c/n 180002502) crashed on take-off at Samarkand Airport with a locked rudder.
23 August Aeroflot Flight 17, an Il-18V (CCCP-75823), was written off after a hard landing at Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport.
16 October An Aeroflot/Armenia Il-18V (CCCP-75578, c/n 185008102) overran the runway on landing at Simferopol Airport, Ukraine following engine failure; no casualties.
31 December Aeroflot Flight 3012, an Il-18V (CCCP-75773), crashed on climb-out from Pulkovo Airport after the crew forgot to select the flaps before takeoff, killing six of 86 on board.
1971
18 January A Balkan Bulgarian Airlines Il-18D (LZ-BED, c/n 186009002) crashed on approach to Kloten Airport after the pilot attempted to correct the glide path, killing 45 of 47 on board.
21 January An Aeroflot/Kazakhstan Il-18B (CCCP-75727, c/n 180002303) entered a dive from while flying over the Rostov-on-Don region, possibly due to autopilot failure; after descending to , the crew regained control and made an emergency landing at Rostov-on-Don Airport. The aircraft was written off due to severe structural damage it suffered during the dive.
22 August A United Arab Airlines Il-18 flying from Cairo International Airport to Amman-Marka International Airport was hijacked by a lone hijacker who demanded to be taken to Israel.
28 August Malév Flight 731, an Il-18 (HA-MOC, c/n 181002903), crashed into the sea near Copenhagen while executing an instrument approach. The main cause of the accident was a microburst, a particularly dangerous and unpredictable meteorological phenomenon. Twenty-three passengers and the crew of 9 died, two passengers survived. The captain of the aircraft was Dezső Szentgyörgyi, a World War II flying ace of the Royal Hungarian Air Force, who was due to retire less than 3 weeks after the date of the accident.
21 December A Balkan Bulgarian Airlines Il-18V (LZ-BES, c/n 185008104) crashed shortly after take-off from Sofia-Vrazhdebna Airport, Bulgaria, en route to Algiers-Dar el Beida Airport, Algeria. Twenty-eight of the 73 occupants were killed.
23 December A Malév Il-18D (HA-MOI, c/n 187010002) on a scheduled flight from Nicosia Airport, Cyprus, to Damascus International Airport, Syria, made contact with a hill whilst on approach to Damascus. Control of the aircraft was retained and a safe landing was made.
1972
26 August An Aeroflot/Northern Il-18B (CCCP-75663, c/n 188000702) was damaged beyond repair after it crashed on landing in fog at Talaghy Airport.
31 August Aeroflot Flight 558, an Il-18V (CCCP-74298), crashed near Smelovskiy, Chelyabinsk Oblast after a loss of control following a fire in the baggage compartment, killing all 102 passengers and crew on board.
1 October Aeroflot Flight 1036 (an Il-18V, CCCP-75507), crashed in the Black Sea shortly after takeoff from Adler/Sochi Airport, killing all 109 passengers and crew on board.
1973
29 January EgyptAir Flight 741 crashed in the Kyrenia mountain range, Cyprus while on approach to Nicosia International Airport, killing all 37 passengers and crew on board.
24 February Aeroflot Flight 630, an Il-18V (CCCP-75712, c/n 189001803) on a domestic scheduled passenger service from Dushanbe Airport to Leninabad Airport, Tajikistan, entered a spin after a high-speed stall during hard maneuvering, breaking up at , killing all 79 occupants.
3 March Balkan Bulgarian Airlines Flight 307 (an Il-18, LZ-BEM) lost control and crashed near Skhodnya, Moscow while on approach to Sheremetyevo International Airport, killing all 25 passengers and crew on board; tail icing was suspected.
11 May Aeroflot Flight 6551 (an Il-18B, CCCP-75687) crashed 53 mi S of Semipalatinsk due to an in-flight breakup following an unexplained descent, killing all 63 passengers and crew on board.
1974
27 April An Aeroflot/Leningrad Il-18V (CCCP-75559) crashed shortly after takeoff from Pulkovo Airport due to loss of control following an uncontained engine failure, killing all 109 passengers and crew on board.
9 May An Aeroflot/Ural Il-18V (CCCP-75425, c/n 181003403) on a domestic scheduled passenger flight to Ivano-Frankivsk International Airport, Ukraine en route from Sverdlovsk was damaged beyond repair after landing on a short runway, overrunning into a ravine.
24 June Aeroflot Flight 5139, an Il-18E (CCCP-75405, c/n 186009005), suffered a bird strike on the number one engine during takeoff from Tashkent-Yuzhny Airport, Uzbekistan. The aircraft was unable to climb and crashed killing one passenger out of 114 occupants.
11 August An Air Mali Il-18V (TZ-ABE, c/n 181003304) on an unscheduled Hajj passenger flight from Bamako Airport, Mali to Niamey Airport, Niger, was damaged beyond repair in a forced landing after a navigational error. The aircraft ran out of fuel and force-landed near Linoghin, Burkina Faso, killing 47 of the 60 occupants.
9 December A Tarom (but operating for EgyptAir) Il-18D YR-IMK (c/n 186009104) from Jeddah International Airport to Cairo International Airport on a training flight, crashed into the Red Sea killing the 9 crew members.
1975
15 January Malév Flight 801 (an Il-18V, HA-MOH) was being ferried from East Berlin to Budapest when it crashed on approach to Ferihegy Airport due to weather, poor visibility, poor CRM and possible spatial disorientation, killing the nine crew.
12 February An Aeroflot/Moscow Il-18V (CCCP-75801, c/n 182004301) was damaged beyond repair after undershooting the runway at Krasnoyarsk Airport.
1976
30 January An Aeroflot/Kyrgyzstan Il-18V (CCCP-75558, c/n 184007505) on a training flight, crashed near Frunze Airport, after the number three engine failed to restart after un-feathering, during a go-around with the right side engines shut down. All 6 crew-members were killed.
6 March Aeroflot Flight 909 (an Il-18E, CCCP-75408, c/n 186009201) crashed near Verkhnyaya Khava, Russia due to loss of control following an electrical failure, killing all 111 passengers and crew in the worst-ever accident involving the Il-18.
28 July ČSA Flight 001 crashed during a flight from Ruzyně Airport; during the approach, the crew accidentally set both inboard engines to reverse thrust, and this caused engine three to fail. The crew inadvertently shut down engine four (which was on the same wing as engine 3). This caused the aircraft to veer to the right during the emergency landing at Ivanka Airport in Bratislava, crashing into the Zlaté Piesky lake, killing 70 passengers and 6 out of 9 crew members. Five crew members were saved right after the crash but two died later in hospital due to kerosene poisoning.
28 October A CSA Il-18 with 105 occupants on a domestic flight from Ruzyne International Airport to Ivanka Airport was hijacked and flown to Munich in West Germany where the hijacker surrendered.
30 October An Aeroflot/Uzbekistan Il-18V (CCCP-75575, c/n 185008004) overshot the runway at Tashkent Airport in bad weather; all 97 on board survived.
December A Balkan Bulgarian Airlines Il-18V (LZ-BEL, c/n 182004601) burned out in a fire at an overhaul plant at Tashkent Airport, Uzbekistan.
1977
2 January A CSA Il-18V (OK-NAA, c/n 189001604) was struck during takeoff by a CSA Tupolev Tu-134 which was landing at Ruzyne International Airport. None of the 6 occupants of the Il-18 were killed and the aircraft was repaired and returned to service. After it was withdrawn from use in 1981, the Il-18 was transferred to the Prague Aviation Museum.
15 February Aeroflot Flight 5003, an Il-18V (CCCP-75520), stalled and crashed near Mineralnye Vody when the crew performed a missed approach, killing all 77 of the 98 people aboard.
February A CAAC Airlines Il-18B (B-204, c/n 189001602) was written off at Shenyang Airport.
21 April A Tarom Il-18V (YR-IMI) crashed during a touch-and-go landing at Bucharest Otopeni International Airport.
23 November Malév Hungarian Airlines Flight 203, an Il-18V (HA-MOF, c/n 183006301) on a scheduled flight from Yesilköy Airport to Bucharest Otopeni International Airport, was written off after colliding with two trucks after landing at Bucharest in rain. The truck drivers were in the wrong place.
1978
6 May An Aeroflot Il-18 flying from Ashgabat to Mineralyne Vody was hijacked by a man demanding to be flown to Iran. Armed with a homemade pistol and a training grenade, the hijacker shot the co-pilot and was then shot and killed by security guards. The aircraft was able to return safely to Ashgabat.
10 May A CSA Il-18 flying from Ruzyne International Airport to Brno Turany Airport in Czechoslovakia was hijacked and flown to Frankfurt in Germany, where the hijackers surrendered.
3 September An Air Guinee Il-18D (3X-GAX, c/n 187009803) from Moscow to Conakry Airport, Guinea, crashed into marshland near Conakry, killing 15 out of a total of 17 occupants.
1979
26 March An Interflug Il-18D (DM-STL, c/n 186009402) aborted take-off at Luanda-Quatro de Fevereiro Airport after the number two engine failed, overrunning the runway, striking the ILS localiser and bursting into flames, killing all 10 occupants.
10 May An Aeroflot/Ural Il-18D (CCCP-75414, c/n 186009303) crashed after an aborted take-off at Adler/Sochi Airport.
1980
30 January Two men attempted to hijack an Interflug Il-18 flying from Erfurt Airport to East Berlin but were overpowered by crew and passengers.
1981
26 March A Hàng Không Việtnam Il-18D (VN-B190?, c/n 188010703) was reported to have crashed at Hoa Binh, Vietnam.
1982
25 July CAAC Flight 2505, an Il-18 (B-220, c/n 187009605) flying a scheduled passenger service from Xi'an Xiguan Airport to Shanghai-Hongqiao Airport, China was hijacked by five men armed with knives and a bomb demanding to be flown to Taiwan, although they later agreed to be flown to Hong Kong as the aircraft did not have enough fuel to reach Taiwan. During the ordeal, the co-pilot and navigator were wounded and were allowed to move to the rear of the aircraft to use the medical kit, but while there, they organized two groups of passengers who overpowered the hijackers and five additional people were injured in the process. The bomb was thrown and went off, blowing a hole in the fuselage, but no depressurization occurred. The aircraft landed at Shanghai with two engines flamed out.
25 August A LOT Polish Airlines Il-18E (SP-LSI, c/n 186008905) operating a flight from Budapest Ferihegy Airport to Okecie Airport, was diverted to Munich-Riem Airport in Germany by two male hijackers.
24 December CAAC Flight 2311, an Il-18B (B-202, c/n 189001401), burned out on the runway at Guangzhou-Baiyun Airport after a passenger's cigarette started a fire, killing 24 of 69 on board.
1984
16 June A Balkan Bulgarian Airlines Il-18V (LZ-BEP, c/n 185008105), was damaged beyond repair after a failed landing at Sana'a International Airport.
1985
19 January A Cubana Il-18D (CU-T899, c/n 188011102) lost control and crashed near San José de las Lajas after the cargo shifted, killing all 38 passengers and crew on board.
1988
18 January China Southwest Airlines Flight 4146 (an Il-18D, B-222) crashed while on approach to Chongqing Airport due to loss of control caused by an engine fire, killing all 108 passengers and crew on board.
1990
23 August A Soviet Navy Il-20 (c/n 173011403) failed to take off from Kacha Air Base, Ukraine; the crew aborted takeoff but the aircraft could not be stopped in time and veered off the runway and broke apart. All crew escaped unhurt; the crew had forgotten to unlock the rudder before takeoff.
1991
13 August A Tarom Il-18V (YR-IMH, c/n 185008301) crashed near Uricani, Romania after the crew descended too soon, killing all nine passengers and crew on board.
1992
15 November An Aerocaribbean Il-18D (CU-T1270, c/n 187010301) struck Pico Isabel de Torres near San Felipe de Puerto Plata, while on approach to Gregorio Luperón International Airport, Dominican Republic, for an intermediate stop, killing all 34 passengers and crew on board.
1995
January A Kazakhstan Government Ilyushin Il-22M (UN-75915, c/n 2964111701) was written off after a ground collision with an Antonov An-12 at Almaty Airport.
1997
17 December Ramaer Cargo Flight 202, an Il-18GrM (RA-75554, c/n 185008404) from Johannesburg International Airport, to Bujumbura International Airport, Burundi, was written off after an aborted take-off due to an incorrect center of gravity.
1998
23 November An Air Cess Ilyushin Il-18Gr (3D-SBZ, c/n 188010903) was strafed on the ground by fighters from the Zimbabwe Air Force at Kalemie Airport, Democratic Republic of Congo.
2000
25 October Russian Air Force Il-18D RA-74295 struck Mount Mtirala, in the Meskheti Range, while on approach to Chorokh Airport due to crew and ATC errors, killing all 84 passengers and crew on board.
2001
19 November An IRS Aero Il-18V (RA-75840) crashed near Kalyazin after the elevator control system malfunctioned, killing all 27 passengers and crew on board.
2002
15 September A Phoenix Aviation Il-18V (EX-904, c/n 182004904) overran the runway on landing at Nzagi Airport, Angola; no casualties.
15 September An IRS Aero Il-18V (RA-75423, c/n 182005601) overran the runway on landing at Bykovo Airport, suffering substantial damage; the aircraft was repaired and returned to service.
1 October Two Indian Navy Il-38s (IN-302 and IN-304) collided in mid-air near Gabolim Airport following a flyover in practice for the 25th anniversary celebration of the Goa naval air squadron, killing all 12 on board both aircraft; the crash of IN-302 also killed three people on the ground.
2004
27 January A Renan Il-18D (ER-ICJ, c/n 186009102), overshot the runway on takeoff from Luena Airport, Angola; all 18 on board survived.
4 February Expo Aviation Flight 3002, an Il-18D (EX-005, c/n 188011105) leased from Phoenix Air, struck the water while on approach to Bandaranaike International Airport. Climb power was applied and the crew reported they were performing a go-around, but at a height of the pilot decided to continue the approach. Fearing that the landing gear was damaged, the pilot belly-landed the aircraft next to the runway. All seven crew survived; the co-pilot had programmed the altimeter incorrectly.
6 March Aerocaribbean Flight 4317, an Il-18D (CU-T1532, c/n 188010904), was written off after the number four engine caught fire during the takeoff roll at Frank Pais Airport, Cuba; all on board were able to evacuate the aircraft.
2005
28 March Aerocaribbean Flight 4311, an Il-18D (CU-T1539, c/n 2964017102) overran the runway after failing to take off from Simon Bolivar Airport, Venezuela; all 97 on board survived.
2016
19 December Russian Air Force Il-18V RF-91821 crash-landed in Yakutia, Siberia, during severe weather conditions, seriously injuring 16. The crew deviated from the approach pattern and began descending until the wings hit the top of a snow-covered hill in the tundra.
2018
17 September Russian Air Force Il-20M RF-93610 with 14 people on board was shot down near Latakia, Syria. Later reports showed that Syria accidentally shot down the aircraft.
Notes
References
Ilyushin Il-18
Accidents and incidents involving airliners | en |
doc-en-8643 | The Story of an African Farm (published in 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Iron) was South African author Olive Schreiner's first published novel. It was an immediate success and has become recognised as one of the first feminist novels.
Background
Schreiner was one of South Africa's earliest literary figures. Her novel The Story of an African Farm was written during the era of first-wave feminism and has been recognized for its revolutionary feminist politics, though some scholars have criticized the novel as racist and exclusionist. The themes of love, marriage, motherhood, empire, and race feature in the novel through the main female character Lyndall's engagements with these issues. Some scholars have argued in favour of the transnational and transracial value of Lyndall's views and their applicability beyond the context of historical South Africa. She describes the differences in how men and women experience love:
A man's love is a fire of olive wood. It leaps higher every moment; it roars, it blazes, it shoots out red flames; it threatens to wrap you round and devour you - you who stand by like an icicle in the flow of its fierce warmth ... The next day, when you go to warm your hands a little, you find a few ashes! 'Tis a long love and cool against a short love and hot; men, at all events, have nothing to complain of. A woman's 'cool', 'long' love cannot be properly reciprocated by the 'short' and 'hot' love of a man - they are, in fact, as oppositional as fire and ice.
Lyndall's refusal to marry the father of her child is attributed by some scholars to her refusal to participate in societal conventions, so that she will not lose the "freedom she had won for herself through her determined resistance" to those forces. Marriage is seen as an institution to put a woman's neck beneath a man's foot - there is no alternative, in Lyndall's view. The novel addresses the contemporary discourses of race, gender and empire and shows an "acute awareness of the intellectual and cultural mood" of Victorian-era modernity.
The novel variously describes motherhood as "the mightiest and noblest of human work" and a "terrible thing". Heidi Barends says "Lyndall's ambivalence about motherhood stems, in part, from the fact that while she deems motherhood to be mighty and noble, motherhood is not meant for her as in individual". According to Louise Green, the restrictions and expectations socially incumbent to motherhood prevail over her wishes for self-sufficiency, gender equality and social, intellectual equality. Lyndall says her pregnancy costs her "the right to meet on equal terms". She describes the moral responsibility of motherhood, calling it a "terrible thing" to bring a child into the world, as her own mother "knew she had nothing to support" Lyndall yet still "created her to feed like a dog from stranger hands".
Plot introduction
The novel details the lives of three characters, first as children and then as adults – Waldo, Em and Lyndall – who live on a farm in the Karoo region of South Africa. The story is set in the middle- to late-19th century – the First Boer War is alluded to, but not mentioned by name. The book is semi-autobiographical: in particular, the two principal protagonists (Waldo and Lyndall) display strong similarities to Schreiner's life and philosophy.
The book was first published in 1883 in London, under the pseudonym Ralph Iron. It quickly became a best-seller, despite causing some controversy over its frank portrayal of freethought, feminism, premarital sex and pregnancy out of wedlock, and transvestitism.
Structure
As there is only minimal narrative in the novel (and what there is only serves to support the book's many themes), it is a difficult book to summarise. In addition, much of the story is revealed as a series of vignettes – often devoid of context, or (deliberately) out of sequence. The author also frequently interjects into the narrative to address the reader directly. In general, the book may roughly be divided into three sections:
The first section introduces us to the characters as children living on a farm in the Karoo, and reveals their innermost thoughts and feelings.
The second section is entitled "Times and Seasons" and largely summarises what has gone before, and alludes to incidents still to come. It deals primarily with Waldo's journey from Christian fanaticism to despairing atheism. This section is almost completely devoid of chronological context, although much of the philosophy presented is echoed in both the first and the third sections of the book. The second section makes almost exclusive use of the first person plural pronoun ("we", "us" etc.). The use of the plural underscores the fact that Schreiner saw Waldo as something of an alter ego.
The third section covers the lives of the three main characters as adults. Again, the focus is on Waldo and Lyndall, both of whom leave the farm and travel to different parts of South Africa, Waldo to the Natal area, and Grahamstown, and Lyndall to Bloemfontein and then to the Transvaal.
Plot summary
Childhood
The first section of the book deals with the lives of protagonists as children and teenagers. It reveals some of the events that proved formative in the life of the children.
Waldo is initially presented as a deeply devout Christian, a philosophy he appears to have inherited from his widower father Otto, the kindly German farm-keeper. As the narrative progresses, Waldo becomes increasingly disillusioned with his faith, a crisis brought on by a series of traumatic events, as well as his growing interest in wider philosophical works.
Lyndall has no such qualms. Apparently a freethinker, she seems uninterested in religion as a whole. Instead, her focus is more on the status of women in the late 19th century. A seeker after knowledge and autonomy, she is frustrated by the limited choices offered to her as a woman. Lyndall is a sceptic by nature, a strong-willed and independent child who does not hesitate to disobey even her adult supervisors whenever she deems them unworthy of respect.
Em, the stepdaughter of Tant (Aunt) Sannie and cousin to Lyndall is presented as a cheerful, friendly but somewhat ignorant child. Em serves as a character foil to Waldo and Lyndall; she is content to believe whatever she is told by the adults in her life. Em often becomes the scapegoat for Lyndall's rebellion.
The English South African Bonaparte Blenkins is an inveterate liar and confidence trickster. He arrives at the farm spinning a tale of woe, presenting himself as a successful businessman who has fallen on hard times. Tant Sannie reluctantly agrees to allow Bonaparte to remain on the farm, under the care of Otto. Bonaparte welcomes the opportunity – he is, after all, only interested in winning the heart of Tant Sannie, and thereby her farm.
Bonaparte's cruelty towards the children borders on sadism. He is especially hard on Waldo whom he seems to despise. Bonaparte's actions towards Waldo provide a number of the events that lead to his crisis of faith. On the other hand, Bonaparte appears to be unsure of Lyndall, and even somewhat cowed. When Lyndall directly confronts Bonaparte regarding one of his many lies, he punishes Em in Lyndall's place. Bonaparte continues in his attempts to woo Tant Sannie, until her younger, richer niece Trana comes to visit. Tant Sannie eventually catches Bonaparte attempting to court Trana and ejects him from the farm.
Otto, the German farm-keeper and Waldo's father, is a deeply religious person. He is unceasing in his efforts to convert the native farm workers, much to their amusement. Otto is gregarious, compassionate and friendly, unwilling to think ill of anyone. He even defends Bonaparte on more than one occasion. Bonaparte repays him by contriving to have Tant Sannie terminate Otto's employment as the farm-keeper. Bonaparte succeeds, but Otto succumbs to a heart attack and dies before leaving the farm.
Times and Seasons
Although technically the first chapter of Part II of the book, "Times and Seasons", differs in style and narrative from those that surround it. This section deals with Waldo – his name appears just once in the chapter – in the first sentence.
"Times and Seasons" follows the journey of faith from infancy through adulthood. Although ostensibly revolving around Waldo, the frequent use of plural pronouns may indicate that the author is including herself in Waldo's journey, making this section the most personal of the book.
The first year, infancy, is marked by an innominate thirst for something to worship and a wonder at the beauty of nature. This is followed by the beginnings of a coalescence of dogma – Angels – but the wonder at the beauty of nature remains and indeed appears to increase.
The next section is marked by a specific age – seven years old. The Bible has become the primary focus, and it is read avidly. New concepts are found in its pages. These are brought to the attention of adults, who appear uninterested. At the same time, the beginnings of doubt begin to creep in. Questions are answered in a diffident manner, and the answers reluctantly accepted.
Two years pass, and in that time the natural world recedes, to be replaced by a bittersweet relationship with God and the Bible. The concept of Hell looms ever larger; doubt in the form of the Devil assails the child. He asks difficult questions – and the superficial answers of the supposedly wise adults no longer suffice. And yet at the same time, a sense of ineffable peace, the feeling of sins forgiven is felt. But this feeling does not endure – before long, the Devil again appears with snide questions and the threat of Hell and Damnation looms again. And so the cycle continues – alternating doubt and serenity.
There is no indication of how much time has passed, but the next section finds the child apparently at ease with a Universalist concept of God. There is no threat of wrath, no Hell, no Damnation. The "Mighty Heart" loves all its children, regardless. The old, questioning Devil has been silenced.
The dream cannot continue – reality rudely awakens the dreamer. He sees the World as it really is, unjust, evil – no evidence of a supernal, all-consuming love. As a consequence, the one-time believer becomes the Atheist. An allusion is made here to the grave of a loved one – whether this refers to Otto or Lyndall (or both) is not clear. The Realist now goes through life uncaring, finding some measure of peace in manual labour and the Sciences. The wonder and beauty of Nature again reasserts itself, greatly increased. The rationalist becomes enamoured with the natural world, taking delight in its many mysteries and revelations. In a sense, the old worship of musty religion is replaced by a new and vital worship of nature in all its intricacy. With this worship comes the realisation that all is interconnected, and the section ends with Waldo beginning to live again, at ease with his new world and his place in it.
Adulthood
The third section of the book (technically the second chapter of Part II) opens with Waldo on the farm, making a wood-carving. Contextual clues place the time somewhere after the end of Chapter 1 ("Times and Seasons"), when Waldo has entered his rational-universalist phase and appears to be content. Em (who is said to be sixteen years old) visits Waldo with tea and cakes, and announces that the new farm-keeper has arrived, an English immigrant (the book later reveals) by the name of Gregory Rose. Sometime after she leaves, a stranger on horseback appears and converses with Waldo. After inquiring about the nature and meaning of Waldo's carving, the stranger relates the Hunter's Allegory.
The Hunter's Allegory is somewhat similar to "Times and Seasons" in theme, tracing the journey from blind superstition to the painful search for Truth, this time using the literary device of Allegory. Once done with his tale, the stranger leaves after handing Waldo an unnamed book of Philosophy.
This is followed by a recounting of a letter which the new Farm-Keeper, Gregory Rose writes to his sister. From the contents of the letter, Rose is revealed as something of an arrogant misogynist, believing himself destined for higher things than farming, but denied his calling by circumstances beyond himself. Gregory also reveals that he has fallen in love with Em, and intends to marry her.
Upon taking the letter to the farm, Gregory proposes and Em, after some misgivings, accepts. Em also reveals that Lyndall will be returning from Finishing School in six months time, and is eager to introduce Gregory to her cousin.
The following chapter picks up with Lyndall having returned from boarding-school. Em shares her news, but is surprised to discover that Lyndall seems unmoved, even pitying. A little later, Lyndall accompanies Waldo as he performs his chores about the farm. It is here that Schreiner inserts something of a Feminist Manifesto – she discourses at length upon her experiences at school, and rails at the limited status that Society expects of her as a Woman. Waldo is her foil – he asks trenchant questions of her which lead to still further expositions. With some irony, Lyndall ends her diatribe with the observation that Waldo is the only person with whom she can converse – others simply bore her.
With Tant Sannie engaged to yet another husband, a Boer-wedding is planned. Gregory takes some time off to write another letter, in which he apparently denigrates Lyndall and her independent ways. From the tone of the letter, however, it is clear that Gregory somehow finds Lyndall fascinating.
At the Wedding, Gregory contrives excuses to be near Lyndall, she acknowledges him, but appears diffident. It is evident that Gregory is now deeply infatuated with Lyndall. For her part, when Lyndall finds herself in need of company, she seeks out Waldo and again converses with him beneath the stars. However, when Gregory offers to take her back to the farm, she unexpectedly accepts his invitation. Waldo drives Em home, where, we are told, she sits in the dark.
Some time passes, and Waldo has decided to leave the farm to find work. Em says her goodbyes, and then seeks out Gregory. She finds him at his usual occupation: with Lyndall, pretending to read a newspaper. Lyndall hardly acknowledges him. Once Lyndall leaves, Em tells Gregory that she wants to end their engagement. Gregory half-heartedly attempts to change her mind, but quickly agrees. He leaves Em, whistling to himself.
It is Lyndall's turn to bid farewell to Waldo. She tells him that she will never forget him, and muses upon what they may have become when they are reunited. Waldo leaves the farm; Lyndall watches him go until he is out of sight.
The next vignette finds Gregory Rose wandering the farm. It is clear that he is trying to find Lyndall, but is taking great pains to appear nonchalant. Having located Lyndall, he attempts to strike up a conversation, akin to the discourses that Lyndall and Waldo would share. Lyndall answers him, but it is clear that she is subtly mocking Gregory. After enduring no small amount of verbal abuse, Gregory confesses that he loves Lyndall, and would like nothing more than to serve only her, expecting nothing in return. Lyndall agrees to marry him, if he promises to remember his vow – he is to serve her completely, with no expectations of anything in return. From Gregory, Lyndall wants only his name – nothing else. The once-proud Gregory Rose has been shattered against the force of Lyndall's will.
The following chapter reveals some of Lyndall's motivations. A stranger has come to the farm – Lyndall suggests that he be put up in Otto's old cabin for the night. The man is, in fact, Lyndall's lover, who has come in answer to a letter that she sent to him stating that she intends to marry Gregory Rose. She refuses the offer of marriage from her lover because, she explains, she does not consider him to be a fool, as she does Gregory. She fears losing herself if she were to marry the stronger man, whereas a marriage to Gregory Rose would leave her autonomy intact. It is here that the author hints that some other matter may be pressing—it is explicit in later parts of the story: Lyndall is pregnant.
Lyndall then offers her paramour an alternative – she will leave the farm in his company, that very night, on the condition that he releases her whenever she asks. They plan to go to the Transvaal.
Lyndall returns to her room to gather her belongings. On the way there, she stops at Otto's grave to bid him farewell. It is here that she reveals that she is tired and lonely – aching for something to love. After much weeping, she returns to her room and prepares to leave the farm forever.
Time passes: Gregory is performing chores about the farm. He is a broken man – meekly accepting whatever menial work Em assigns to him. While cleaning out the loft, he comes across a chest of women's clothing. He surreptitiously tries on one of the dresses and a kapje (hooded bonnet). He appears to reach some sort of decision. Gregory descends from the loft, finds Em and tells her that he can no longer live on the farm – everything reminds him of Lyndall. He states that will search for her, whatever it may take. Gregory is under no illusions. He is fully aware that Lyndall would more than likely throw him aside should he find her. He wants only to see her again; to stand where she once stood. Gregory leaves the farm.
Seven months later, Em is startled when Waldo returns without warning one windy night, some eighteen months after he had left. While Em prepares a meal for Waldo, he begins to write a letter to Lyndall. He tells of his experiences and changes that he has undergone in his travels. Waldo continues to write throughout the night, until Em awakes and stops him. Em explains that Waldo cannot write any longer: Lyndall is dead.
Some time later, Gregory returns to the farm, alone. He relates his tale to Em.
At first, the search was without difficulty, from Bloemfontein and North to the Transvaal, from farm to farm he traced the path left by Lyndall and her lover. Eventually, however, the trail runs cold – it has not occurred to Gregory that Lyndall and her stranger may have parted ways. Unwilling to give up, Gregory travels from hotel to hotel, always without success. Nearing the end of his options, he finds himself at yet another unnamed hotel. He overhears a conversation between the landlady and a Mozambiquian nurse. The Nurse must leave – her husband wants her back home. The landlady frets that "the lady" is still unwell. While watching the half-closed door of the patient, Gregory catches a glimpse of Doss – Waldo's dog which he bequeathed to Lyndall. Asking the landlady for more information, Gregory is told that a young, delicate lady arrived at the hotel six months earlier. A few days after her arrival, she gave birth, but the infant died less than two hours later. The Mother, herself extremely weak, sat near the grave in the cold rain for hours. When she retired to her bed, the hotel doctor declared that she would never again rise from it.
Gregory hatches a plan. Fetching his belongings, he changes into a dress and a kapje. He shaves himself. Later that day, he returns to the hotel, hoping that the landlady will not recognise him. She does not. Gregory tells her that he is a nurse looking for work. The landlady leads him into the room where he finds Lyndall and Doss. Lyndall agrees that Gregory will be her new nurse. She is very weak.
While Gregory watches over Lyndall, she grows weaker by the day. Although she makes a few half-hearted attempts to eat, or read or leave her bedroom, she never quite manages to shake off the pain that plagues her.
Eventually, Gregory and Lyndall agree to return to the farm. Gregory makes the arrangements, although he knows that Lyndall will not survive the journey. His fears are realised: a few days into the journey, Lyndall wakes one night to find that the fog has lifted from her mind. She sees clearly for the first time. She knows what is about to happen to her. There, under the stars with her eyes fixed on her reflection in a hand-mirror, Lyndall dies.
The news devastates Waldo. Throughout the following night, he searches desperately for some philosophy, some tenet of some religion that will assure him that he and Lyndall will one day be reunited. He can find none – none but the cold, unsatisfying realisation that both he and Lyndall will one day be absorbed into the great universal whole from which they sprang. With this he must be content.
The final vignette takes place at some unspecified point after Gregory's return. Tant Sannie is visiting the farm with her new husband and baby. She relates that she almost caught hold of Bonaparte while attending Church, but the shyster slipped from her fingers. Gregory sits outside, absorbed in his own pain. In a leather bag hung around his neck, he carries the only letter that Lyndall ever wrote to him, just four words: "You must marry Em." After Tant Sannie leaves, Em visits Waldo – he is in his old cabin, building a table for Em. She tells him that she and Gregory are to be married. She leaves Waldo to his work.
Waldo packs away his tools for the day, and goes outside to sit in the sunshine. He carries one of Lyndall's old dancing-slippers in his breast pocket. He appears to be content, once again aware of the wide plains that surround him, and the warmth of the sun on his hands. Em finds him there, hat drawn low, apparently asleep. She leaves a glass of milk for him, thinking that he will be glad to find it when he awakes. But Waldo will not wake again.
Characters
There are four main white female characters: Em, Lyndall, Tant'Sannie and Trana. Em is English, Tant'Sannie is Dutch and speaks Afrikaans, but Lyndall's national identity is unknown, though she is described as white including the description of her looking in the mirror at the moment of her death "The white face in the pillow looked into the white face in the glass. They had looked at each other so often before...Now tonight it had come to this. The dying eyes on the pillow looked into the dying eyes in the glass, they knew that their hour had come." Some have interpreted "whiteness" here as a symbol of the colonial patriarchal power that intensifies as she ages until she dies, her feminist aspirations crushed.
Non-white characters are less prominent in the novel and do not have much dialogue. They are not described in positive terms. One handmaid is malicious and vindictive, while others are said to be "half naked" and "stare stupidly".
Waldo
Waldo is the son of the German farm-keeper, Otto Farber (see below). He is presented (initially) as intensely earnest, curious and deeply spiritual.
Lyndall
Lyndall is the orphaned niece of Tant Sannie (see below). Her late father was English, while Tant Sannie is Dutch. Lyndall is used to a life of hardship – made all the more difficult by her stubborn and rebellious personality. She is a precocious child, wise beyond her years, but still internally conflicted. Waldo is her best friend and confidante. She grows up to be a feminist after her studies. She dies, bedridden, some six months after giving birth , burying her child, and unbeknown to her, in the care of a disguised Gregory.
Em
Em is Lyndall's cousin – the stepdaughter of Tant Sannie, her English father having also died early in her childhood. Unlike her Step-Mother, Em is fluent in English as well as Dutch.
Otto
Otto Farber is the German farm-keeper. He is presented as a kind, unselfish and caring person.
Tant Sannie
Tant Sannie, often called "the Boer-woman," is the owner of the farm (having inherited the land from one of her late husbands). Tant is an Afrikaans honorific, literally meaning "aunt".
Bonaparte Blenkins
Bonaparte Blenkins is introduced in the first section of the book. He is something of a caricature – an inveterate liar, sadistic, a con-man and a hypocrite. He makes use of his affected piety to have Otto ejected from the farm, while he attempts to woo Tant Sannie into marriage (and thereby gain control of the farm). He ultimately fails in his endeavour, his true nature exposed, and is driven from the farm by a furious Tant Sannie. He is never heard from again, except for a brief encounter near the end of the book.
Gregory Rose
Gregory Rose, an Englishman, is hired to take over the duties of farm-keeper after the death of Otto.
Servants
Several African servants work for the farmers, including a "Hottentot maid" and several "Kaffers".
Adaptation
The novel was made into a film in 2004, directed by David Lister.
References
External links
19th-century South African literature
Feminist novels
1883 novels
Works published under a pseudonym
Novels set in South Africa
Karoo
South African novels adapted into films
South African novels | en |
doc-en-8794 | The Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt () is a Roman Catholic Marian movement founded in Germany in 1914 by Father Joseph Kentenich, who saw the movement as a means of spiritual renewal for the Catholic Church. The movement is named after the small locality of Schönstatt (which means "beautiful place") which is part of the town of Vallendar near Koblenz, in Germany.
As a movement of renewal within the Catholic Church, Schoenstatt works to revitalize the Church and society in the spirit of the Gospel. Its members seek to connect faith with daily life, especially through a deep love for Mary, the Mother of God, who helps, educates and guides them in becoming better followers of Christ. As an international movement, it has expanded to every continent and has members from all vocations and walks in life. It is a spiritual family whose many branches and communities join to form a single Schoenstatt Family.
History
The Schoenstatt Movement was founded in 1914, when Father Joseph Kentenich, the spiritual director in a Pallottine school in Vallendar, Germany, and a young group of seminarians sealed the "Covenant of Love" with the Virgin Mary in a small chapel, now known as the Original Schoenstatt Shrine. Father Kentenich was inspired in part by the success of Bartolo Longo in establishing the Marian shrine to Our Lady of the Rosary of Pompeii, and felt called to establish a new shrine in Schoenstatt, to "create a spirituality which would be adaptable to conditions of rapid changes in the modern world".
Throughout its early years, Schoenstatt began to grow as a retreat center for different groups. During World War I, many of the young seminarians, such as Joseph Engling, were put to the test when they were called to serve at the battlefronts. There, “the lives and testimonies of the young Schoenstatt members attracted more people from different states of life.”
During the 1930s, with the rise of Adolf Hitler, Fr. Kentenich and other Schoenstatters, such as Fr. Franz Reinisch, criticized Nazism, and as a consequence the Schoenstatt Movement was registered as a threat to the Nazi-Regime. In 1941, Fr. Kentenich was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he began to expand Schoenstatt among the prisoners. He would remain there until 1945 when the concentration camp was liberated.Between 1947 and 1948, Fr. Kentenich visited South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and the United States to help communities in these countries to build up Schoenstatt. During this time, Fr. Kentenich met thousands of people, many of whom would play important roles in the development of the Movement, such as the Chilean Mario Hiriart and the Brazilian deacon Don Joao de Pozzobon. In 1950, Pozzobon began the Pilgrim Mother Apostolate. He travelled thousands of miles on foot to evangelize in schools, prisons, hospitals, and homes.
In May 1949, Fr. Kentenich wrote a letter to the Church authorities in Germany, well known in Schoenstatt as "Epistola Perlonga". In this letter, Fr. Kentenich highlights the dangers that the Church faces due to some models of theological thinking which “separates the life of God from His creation and our Spirit of humanity.” The letter was considered offensive by German and Vatican Church authorities, and resulted in Fr. Kentenich's exile to Milwaukee (USA) for 14 years.
According to the Schoenstatt Movement, “the Second Vatican Council opened a new vision of the Church which better understood the Work of Fr. Kentenich. In 1965, he was called to return to his native land and was fully rehabilitated by Pope Paul VI.” During the following three years, he was able to continue his work with Schoenstatt. He died on September 15, 1968.After the death of Father Kentenich, the Schoenstatt Movement “remained profoundly attached to the person of the Founder, working on the growth of creative loyalty to his mission and his charism, adapting itself to new cultural environments and historical challenges.”
Schoenstatt has continued to grow through the Movement's various apostolates, such as the Pilgrim Mother Apostolate, which has reached millions of people in many countries, social and educational actions around the world, the development of Federations, Leagues, and other groups for families, youth, and pilgrims, and the expansion of Schoenstatt shrines (207 at the present).
Mother Thrice Admirable
The picture of Mother Thrice Admirable (Mater ter Admirabilis in Latin) was donated by a teacher in 1915 to the Pallotine seminarians under the spiritual direction of Father Kentenich. It was painted in 1898 by Luigi Crosio under the title Refugium Peccatorum Madonna (Refuge of Sinners). It has since been called the Mother Thrice Admirable Madonna, a key symbol of the Schoenstatt movement.
Communities of the Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt
Secular Institutes
These are organized on the international level. According to the official website, "The members of a Secular Institute oblige themselves to a permanent apostolate and to an established form of community," and they "belong to the form of Consecrated Life in the Church and are of 'Pontifical right'."There are six secular institutes in the Schoenstatt Movement:
Secular Institute of the Sisters of Mary
Secular Institute of the Brothers of Mary
Secular Institute of Schoenstatt Diocesan Priests
Secular Institute of Schoenstatt Fathers
Secular Institute of Ladies of Schoenstatt
Secular Institute of Families
Apostolic Federations
These are organized on the national level. According to the official website, "Members of the Federation oblige themselves to a permanent apostolic service and foster an established form of community. In the spirit of the evangelical counsels, they strive for perfection in keeping with their state in life."The following are the Apostolic Federations of the Schoenstatt Movement:
Men's Federation
Family Federation
Women's Federation
Mother's Federation
Priest's Federation
Apostolic Leagues
These are organized on the diocesan level. According to the official website, "Belonging to the League are people who, aspiring to sanctity, allow themselves to be educated by Schoenstatt and in this way make efforts to carry out an apostolic activity service in their lives". Pilgrims are also associated to the Schoenstatt Apostolic Leagues. While they do not incorporate themselves to a specific branch of the movement, they maintain regular contact with the shrine and the Apostolic Movement.
The Apostolic League includes the following groups or branches:
Girl's Youth
Professional Women's League
Mother's League
Priest's League
Men's League
Boy's Youth
Family League
People and pilgrims
Organs of Coordination
At the International Level
General Presidium - According to the official website, "The General Presidium represents the entire Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt. In its relationship to the Holy See, the General Presidium is dependent on the Pontifical Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, to which it periodically informs about the life and activities of the Apostolic Movement of Schoenstatt". As of January 2021, Father Juan Pablo Catoggio (Argentina) is the president of the General Presidium of the Schoenstatt Movement.
International Coordination of the Schoenstatt Movement - In addition to maintaining the Movement's official website and social media platforms, it collaborates in the unity of the Movement at the international level. Father Heinrich Walter (Germany) and Sister M. Cacilda Becker (Brazil) are the international coordinators of the Schoenstatt Movement.
At the National Level
National Presidium - It represents the Apostolic Movement before the Bishops' Conference of that country.
National Central Committee
Diocesan Councils
Schoenstatt Around the World
The Schoenstatt Movement is expanded in more than 110 countries. Some of those are:Argentina (20 shrines), Australia (3 shrines), Austria (1 shrine), Belgium, Bolivia (1 shrine), Brazil (23 shrines), Burundi (2 shrines), Canada, Chad, Chile (25 shrines), Colombia (2 shrines), Congo, Costa Rica (1 shrine), Croatia (2 shrines), Cuba, Czech Republic (1 shrine), Dominican Republic (2 shrines), Ecuador (4 shrines), El Salvador, France (1 shrine), Germany (56 shrines), Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary (1 shrine), India (6 shrines), Italy (2), Lithuania, Luxemburg, Mexico (4 shrines), Nicaragua, Nigeria (1 shrine), Panama, Paraguay (3 shrines), Peru (2 shrines), Philippines (1 shrine), Poland (6 shrines), Portugal (4 shrines), Puerto Rico (4 shrines), Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa (5 shrines), Spain (3 shrines), Switzerland (7 shrines), Tanzania (1 shrine), United Kingdom (2 shrines), Uruguay (1 shrine), USA (10 shrines), Venezuela, Vietnam.
207 Schoenstatt Shrines have been built worldwide, providing a center for the Schoenstatt community in that region. According to the official website, "The Schoenstatt Shrine is one of the great places of pilgrimage of the Catholic Church with about 15 million people who regularly draw from its stream of graces". Schoenstatt also makes itself present through the Pilgrim Mother Campaign, which spans more than 110 countries in the world, with around 30 million members.
Spirituality
The central issues in the Schoenstatt Movement are the ideas based on that which Father Joseph Kentenich founded the movement in 1914, including Christian personality development, orientation toward ideals, and community."[Schoenstatt] wishes to be understood as a universal vision, comprising time and eternity, this world and the next, the economic, social, ethical, political and religious needs of all people, including the dispossessed, the millions of masses. …It wants to help redeem the world not only from its earthly sufferings, but also from sin and from its alienation from God. It tries to do this under the guidance and in the school of Our Lady by applying the original principles of Christianity in a new way to restore the disturbed relationship between the individual person and society, the person and business, the person and technology, and the person and social advancement." - Joseph Kentenich
Marian Devotion
Since the founding in 1914, love for Mary has been at the heart of the Schoenstatt Movement and its spirituality. According to the official website, "Schoenstatt is deeply and devotedly Marian and has repeatedly experienced how the love of Mary opens new avenues to a vibrant relationship with Christ, to the Holy Spirit, and to God the Father, as well as a renewal of love of neighbor and self. [...] In the Schoenstatt Shrine, the Blessed Mother acts as mother and educator of all those who entrust themselves to her. She helps form the new person in the new community."“An authentic Marian spirituality leads to a deep love for the Church.” - St. Pope John Paul II to the Schoenstatt Family (September 20, 1985)
Shrine
It is Schoenstatt's conviction that the shrine is a place of grace and pilgrimage, "a certain place where God shows His presence and action in a special way, through Mary." Since the first Covenant of Love sealed by Father Kentenich and the founding members of Schoenstatt in 1914, millions of people have repeatedly observed that the shrine is a place of grace.
According to the official website, "Schoenstatt was founded in an act of invitation: The earthly partners offered their striving for sanctity, and the heavenly partner, Mary, was asked to come and actively dwell in the shrine as Mother and Educator. This is precisely what is known as the covenant of love upon which Schoenstatt was founded."
What is now known as the Original Schoenstatt Shrine used to be a chapel devoted to St. Michael, near the Pallotine school where Father Kentenich served as spiritual director, in Vallendar, Germany. Since then, more than 200 "daughter shrines" - that is, exact replicas of the Original Shrine - have been built around the world. These shrines serve as the center of the Schoenstatt Movement in the community. From here, pilgrims and members of the Schoenstatt Movement receive the three graces of the shrine:
The grace of a home - It's the "awareness of knowing that Mary totally accepts you and gives you a home in her heart and in her shrine."
The grace of inner transformation - It is a "fruit of Mary’s intercession as mother and educator in the shrine, since she encourages us to become disciples of Christ, to interiorly transform and educate ourselves from within."
The grace of apostolic fruitfulness - When a person feels "completely at home and knows they are totally accepted and deeply transformed [that is, they have received the first two graces of the Schoenstatt Shrine] they are able to be more fully effective as an instrument of God."
Covenant of Love
The Movement describes the Covenant of Love as "an act of consecration (as individual or community) to Mary as the Mother Thrice Admirable of Schoenstatt", and it is a recognized form of Marian consecration in the Catholic Church. For people who have sealed the Covenant of Love, this act of consecration brings about a deeper relationship with Mary, the Mother of God.
Schoenstatt's founding act in 1914 is the moment when Father Kentenich and the founding generation offered their striving for sanctity and asked Mary to come to dwell in their chapel, the Schoenstatt Shrine. It is from this original act that Schoenstatt's life, identity, and fruitfulness flow.
According to the official website, "Father Kentenich characterized Marian consecrations as a total and mutual exchange of hearts, goods, and interests. Through this exchange, one grows in love, in one’s overall spiritual life, and in the ability to fulfill one’s mission. In the Catholic experience, Mary has proven to be an outstanding consecration partner, leading persons, nations, communities, and generations to a deeper fervor of love and commitment to Christ and the Triune God."
Capital of Grace
The Catholic Church’s teaching on merits and "our possibility to cooperate in Christ’s work of salvation encourages us to actively strive for sanctity and make ourselves available for the building up of Christ’s Kingdom." In the Schoenstatt Movement, a unique way of expressing this is: contributions to the capital of grace. The Movement describes these contributions as stemming from the Covenant of Love with Mary, where members "consciously bring her our prayers, sacrifices, and striving for sanctity. We so-to-say turn over the merits of these good works to the MTA [Mother Thrice Admirable] for her mission in the service of Christ."
Everyday Sanctity
In Schoenstatt, the Christian vocation's call to holiness is understood as everyday (or workday) sanctity, meaning the integration of one's faith with every aspect of ordinary life.
The Schoenstatt Movement describes everyday sanctity as "doing one’s ordinary duties in an extraordinary way (ordinaria extraordinarie) or as fulfilling the duties of one’s state in life as perfectly as possible out of a total love for God." Father Kentenich developed its most comprehensive definition in 1932:“Everyday sanctity is the God-pleasing harmony between wholehearted attachment to God, work, and fellow human beings in every circumstance of life.”"Everyday sanctity is therefore being attentive about not neglecting God because of the world, nor one’s family because of apostolate, nor one’s neighbor because of work, nor one’s duties in life because of God. [...] Everyday sanctity also seeks to integrate work, prayer, and suffering." In this context, Schoenstatt understands "work as a person’s share in the creative activity of God, prayer as a dialogue of love with God, and suffering as a crucial part of the Christian vocation."
Practical Faith in Divine Providence
In Schoenstatt, Practical Faith in Divine Providence is "a faith in God and His loving care that has been made part of practical everyday life", and it has the form of "a message of trust in God’s care, of a constant dialogue with the God of life and history, and of actively seeking God’s will."
In this practice of faith, one seeks God's message in every circumstance. Moreover, one seeks to live the covenant with God in an ongoing dialog of prayer and actions. In Schoenstatt, discerning God's voice involves "being attentive to the events around us, both on the large scale (Church and world) and on the small scale (personal and family life). One way of doing this is Schoenstatt’s method of meditation."Fr Kentenich expressed it very well when he said that it was important to keep “an ear to the heart of God and a hand on the pulse of the times”. These are the two pillars of an authentic spiritual life. - Pope Francis addressing the Schoenstatt Fathers (September 3, 2015)
Schoenstatt life
There are five aspects of the Schoenstatt Movement's life:
Church
As a movement of renewal within the Catholic Church, "it sees its main task as being to be close to the local and universal Church, in order to make the Church fruitful with its charism and at the same time allow itself to be fertilized by it". The Schoenstatt Movement works with parishes, dioceses, other communities, laity, couples and public officials.
Education/Pedagogy
One of Father Kentenich's major focuses in his work was pedagogy. He gave countless lectures to thousands of people, and retreats to families, priests, and other members of the Schoenstatt Movement. What is known today as Kentenich pedagogy "has been successfully applied in innumerable institutions, universities, life groups and religious communities, schools, homes, Children's Homes, families and companies", extending the Schoenstatt spirituality to broad areas of society.
Marriage and Family
Family life is essential to the Schoenstatt Movement's spirituality and pedagogy. Around the world, in the Family Institutes, Federations, and Leagues, the Movement holds various retreats, seminars, and meetings on topics related to marriage, education, and family, all of which are meant to cultivate family relationships. In the field of formation, the Schoenstatt Movement's aims are "to strengthen the development towards a mature personality, someone who lives their relationships with responsibility with the world around them. In short, it is about discovering, cultivating, and forming marriage as a vocation of life.""Whatever you achieve for the benefit of the family will show its effectiveness beyond the family, and will work in many men and women and within society. The future of the world and of the Church depends on the family." - Pope John Paul II to the Schoenstatt Movement
Society
The Schoenstatt Movement is active in the areas concerning social commitment, such as "the development of local communities, prison and hospital ministry, business and work, helping abandoned children and children from low-income families, commitment to the sick, commitment to the elderly, commitment to immigrants." There are countless social projects organized by members of the Schoenstatt Movement (such as the Schoenstatt Fathers, Sisters of Mary, families, and volunteers) that are present worldwide and that seek to transmit "a social spirit, which consists of virtues such as respect, dignity, radiating love, peace, and joy, believing in the good of each person, in their mission, their dignity and their value as a child of God."
Youth
The Schoenstatt Movement "accompanies and guides young people to positively face the challenges they encounter in their everyday lives. [...] It offers them support, guidance, social networks, creative fields of action, a lived spirituality and a world of attachments. The youth use their physical, intellectual, and spiritual strengths in planning projects to promote improvements in their environment and in making them a reality". The Schoenstatt Youth organizes retreats and camps all over the world, celebrates religious festivals, pilgrimages, university, school and family missions, and commits itself in solidarity works.
Apostolic actions
The movement is involved in several apostolic actions, including missionary work, charity, education, and other projects. The most widespread activity is the Pilgrim Mother Campaign, now spanning more than 110 countries in the world, with around 30 million members.
Schoenstatt 100-year Jubilee
On 18 October 2014 the Apostolic Schoenstatt Movement celebrated 100 years of its founding. According to the official website of the 2014 Jubilee, "this jubilee is a thanksgiving for a richly blessed history. It marks the outpouring of the Schoenstatt Movement into a new era, guided by the grace of its beginnings, and can be summarized by the expression: covenant of love."
Around 12,000 pilgrims from 100 countries gathered in Schoenstatt, Germany for week-long celebrations and festivities. From there, members went on a pilgrimage to Rome, where they had a General Audience with Pope Francis on 25 October 2014. These celebrations and General Audience with the pope were streamed live to hundreds of thousands of people around the world who celebrated and gathered in their local Schoenstatt shrines.
Youth festival
In 2005, about four thousand young people from around the world – Germany, Poland, England, Italy, Uruguay, Argentine, Chile, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Africa, United States, etc. – gathered for almost a week in the Original Shrine in Schoenstatt, Vallendar, for the Schoenstatt Youth Festival prior to the World Youth Day in Cologne.
Schoenstatt Summer
After the success of the youth festival the prior year, it became obvious that there should be something to bring together each year the youth of the world, around the original shrine. During 2006, volunteers from Germany, Mexico, the United States, Poland, Puerto Rico, Chile, Argentina, Portugal, and Kenya, worked together to create a month-long program for young pilgrims from all over the world. This was the first of many Schoenstatt Summers. The Night of the Shrine was the conclusion of this month-long program. At midnight on 27 August, over 400 people gathered for Mass around the original shrine. Together with them, the youth of the world in more than 90 shrines, spread around five continents, celebrated this Mass at the same moment. Each shrine celebrated in their own way, according to the traditions of their country, this World Youth Mass.
Schoenstatt in the Vatican
Archbishop Ignazio Sanna, President of the Pontifical Academy of Theology. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Institute of Diocesan Priests.
Fr. Alexandre Awi Mello, Secretary of the Dicastery of Laity, Family and Life and Advisor to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America -CAL-. He is a member of the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Fathers.
Members Proposed for Canonization
Servant of God Fr. Joseph Kentenich (1885–1968), German
Founder of the Schoenstatt Movement.
Blessed Karl Leisner (1915–1945), German priest and martyr
He died of tuberculosis after being freed from the Dachau concentration camp. He has been declared a martyr and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 23 June 1996.
Blessed Gerhard Hirschfelder (1907-1942), German priest and martyr
He was a vocal critic of Nazism, and therefore imprisoned by the Nazi-Regime in the Dachau concentration camp, where he encountered the Schoenstatt Movement. He died due to starvation and pneumonia in 1942.
Blessed Alois Andritzki (1914 - 1943) priest and martyr
He was a German diocesan priest. He was sent to the Dachau concentration camp for being critical of the Nazi regime. There he participated in the first group of Schoenstatt priests. When he fell ill, he was killed by lethal injection. He was beatified on 13 June 2011 by Benedict XVI.
Venerable Emilie Engel (1983-1955), German, Schoenstatt Sister of Mary
She was one of the first Schoenstatt Sisters of Mary, Institute founded in 1926. She suffered a traumatic childhood, and through her encounter with Schoenstatt and Father Kentenich, "her anxiety was transformed into peace and passion for a mission." She died in 1955 as a result of complications from a severe illness and disability that spanned decades.
Venerable Mario Hiriart (1931–1964), Chilean
He was a part of the Institute of the Brothers of Mary and dedicated his life to spiritual formation and to the growth of the Schoenstatt Movement. He died of terminal cancer at the age of 32.
Servant of God John Pozzobon (1904-1985), Brazilian deaconHe was the founder of the Pilgrim Mother Apostolate (also known as the Pilgrim Mother Campaign or Rosary Campaign). In 1950 he was entrusted with a replica of the Mater Ter Admirabilis picture, so that he could evangelize and pray the rosary with families. With this image of the Pilgrim Mother of Schoenstatt (weighing 25 lbs, or 11 kg), Don Joao Pozzobon visited schools, prisons, hospitals, and homes, travelling more than 87,000 miles (140,000 km) in his almost 40 years of apostolate. Copies of Pozzobon's pilgrim image were made, in a smaller size, and have now been used throughout the world to evangelize millions of people through what is now known as the Pilgrim Mother Apostolate.
Servant of God Joseph Engling (1898–1918), German
He was a young seminarian in the early Schoenstatt Movement and was sent to the battlefield during World War I. In Cambrai, France, he sacrificed himself for other soldiers to bring them food and was killed by a detonating grenade. In Schoenstatt, Joseph Engling is seen as being an example of "heroic sanctity".
Servant of God Franz Reinisch (1903–1942), German priest and martyr
For refusing to take the oath of allegiance to Hitler, Fr. Franz Reinisch, a Schoenstatt priest, was executed by beheading by the Nazi regime.
Servant of God Gertrud von Bullion (1981-1930), German
She visited Schoenstatt in 1919 and in December 1920 sealed her consecration. This act is considered the foundation of the Women's Federation and the beginning of the women's communities in Schoenstatt. In 1921 she became ill with tuberculosis, which led to her death in 1930. In 1929 she had offered her life for the fruitfulness of the Movement.
Servant of God Fr. Hernán Alessandri Morandé (1935-2007), Chilean priest
In 1983, he founded the María Ayuda Charitable Corporation, which took care of abandoned children in the streets. The María Ayuda Corporation currently has "20 social programs throughout the country, where around 1700 children and adolescents who have suffered violations of their rights are sheltered."
Bishops of the Schoenstatt Movement
Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, Archbishop of Santiago from 1998 to 2010. He has been a cardinal since 2001, was a member of Pope Francis' Council of Cardinal Advisers from its creation in 2013 until 2018, and was president of CELAM, Latin American Bishops Council, from 2003 to 2007. He was president of the Fifth General Conference of the Latin American Bishops Council in Aparecida, Brazil, from 13 to 31 May 2007. He is a member of the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Fathers.
Archbishop Ignazio Sanna, President of the Pontifical Academy of Theology. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Institute of Diocesan Priests.
Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, Archbishop of Freiburg im Breisgau from 2003 to 2013, Chairman of the German Episcopal Conference from 2008 to 2014. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Institute of Diocesan Priests.
Bishop Michael Gerber, Bishop of Fulda, Germany. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Institute of Diocesan Priests.
Bishop Rafael Bernaski, Bishop of Blumenau, Brazil. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Federation of Priests.
Bishop Francisco Pistilli Scorzara, Bishop of Encarnación, Paraguay. He is a member of the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Fathers.
Bishop Reinaldo Nann, Bishop of Caravelí, Peru. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Institute of Diocesan Priests.
Bishop Nicolas Nadji Bab, Bishop of Lai, Chad. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Federation of Priests.
Bishop Giovani Edgar Arana, Bishop of El Alto, Bolivia. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Federation of Priests.
Bishop Ramón Benito Ángeles Fernández, Auxiliary Bishop of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He is a member of the Schoenstatt Institute of Diocesan Priests.
Bishop Claudio Giménez, former Bishop of Caacupé, Paraguay, former president of the Conference of Bishops of Paraguay. He is a member of the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Fathers.
Bishop Manuel Camilo Vial Risopatrón, Bishop of Temuco, Chile, from 2001 to 2013. He is a member of the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Fathers.
Bishop Jorge González, Auxiliary Bishop of La Plata, Argentina. He is member of the Schoenstatt Federation of Priests.
Schoenstatt Shrines by country
The Schoenstatt Shrine is the center of a Schoenstatt community in a certain region (there are 207 around the world). Additionally, Schoenstatt's Pilgrim Mother Apostolate has reached millions of people around the world. Some countries where the Schoenstatt Movement is present:
See also
Pilgrim Mother Campaign
Schoenstatt Shrine
References
External links
Schoenstatt Movement around the World
Schoenstatt Life (Spanish)
1914 establishments in Germany
Catholic lay organisations
Secular institutes
International associations of the faithful
Catholic organizations established in the 20th century
it:Istituto dei Padri di Schönstatt | en |
doc-en-4622 | Lost Judgment is an action-adventure video game developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and published by Sega. It was released globally on September 24, 2021. A sequel to the 2018 game Judgment (a spin-off of the Yakuza series), the game focuses on private detective Takayuki Yagami as he investigates a criminal accused of both sexual harassment and murder. Alongside several of his friends, Yagami manages to see the links between the suspect Akihiro Ehara and his links with a series of murders committed against bullies in Kamurocho and Isezaki Ijincho. The game builds on the action sequences from the first game while revising its stealth elements. Yagami uses two returning fighting styles plus the new aikido-based Snake.
Lost Judgment is the directional debut of Kazuki Hosokawa who aims to make it superior to its predecessor from which he worked as producer while attempting to also create an appealing narrative. Major Japanese voice actors include the returning Takuya Kimura (Yagami) and the newcomers Hiroshi Tamaki (Soma) and Koji Yamamoto (Kuwana) whose characters rival Yagami as the writers wanted their stories to explore the subject of bullying and whether or not Yagami has the power to stop it.
Like its predecessor, the game received positive reviews from critics. The plot was generally praised for handling multiple controversial subjects in a serious manner though the pacing and style was the subject of mixed responses. Nevertheless, Yagami and the cast were well received. The gameplay was also, primarily the new improved fighting styles, but the stealth and parkour moves were often noted to be poorly developed. Downloadable content in the form of new sidequests and a sidestory focused on Yagami's partner Masaharu Kaito is also being developed.
Gameplay
In Lost Judgment, the player controls Takayuki Yagami as he explores the Japanese cities of Kamurocho and Isezaki Ijincho (recreations of the real-life Kabukichō and Isezakichō districts, respectively). Yagami can switch between three fighting styles in battle. In addition to the crowd-control Crane style and the one-on-one Tiger style from Judgment, Yagami uses the newly added Snake style for counterattacking and disarming enemies.
As in the previous game, Lost Judgment also features stealth segments, platforming segments, and "tailing" missions where Yagami chases suspects around the city. The trailing sections of the game have been changed in order to give the players more activity in the segment. New to Lost Judgment is the "Detective Dog", a Shiba Inu named Ranpo whom Yagami can take on walks to find hidden items or track suspects via their scent. The game also features a "School Stories" system, where Seiryo High School's Mystery Research Club president Kyoko Amasawa requests Yagami investigate and assist other clubs and students in order to solve a greater mystery. Yagami can fulfill these requests by taking on side missions and playing various minigames. Some of these side missions include coaching the school's dance team through a rhythm minigame; building and controlling a robot in competitions for the robotics club; defeating a biker gang in a series of motorcycle races; and helping a troubled teenager overcome his violent tendencies through boxing training.
Similar to previous games, the player has access to emulations of classic Sega games. The in-game Club Sega arcades feature multiple playable arcade cabinets, including Space Harrier, Fantasy Zone, Super Hang-On, Fighting Vipers, Sonic the Fighters, Motor Raid, and Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown. Yagami can also play several Master System games in his office, including Alex Kidd in Miracle World; Fantasy Zone; Secret Command; Quartet; Enduro Racer; Penguin Land; Maze Hunter 3-D; Woody Pop; and Snail Maze.
Yagami's partner, Masaharu Kaito, is also set to appear as a playable character via forthcoming downloadable content. Sega has stated that Kaito's story camaign will last roughly 10 hours, though no gameplay details have yet been provided.
Synopsis
Setting and characters
The game is set in December 2021, three years after the events of Judgment. Three days after police officer Akihiro Ehara is accused of sexual harassment, a dead body is found in Yokohama's Isezaki Ijincho district, and his defense lawyer Saori Shirosaki calls on private detective Takayuki Yagami to help investigate Ehara's involvement. The main theme of the story involves whether or not Yagami will "defend the law or enact justice" the more he is involved in the case. Yagami's investigations take place across Kamurocho and Ijincho. The staff aimed to balance the game's dramatic and comic stories.
New characters include Kazuki Soma (Hiroshi Tamaki/Matthew Yang King), the head of the "RK" (Red Knife) Hangure syndicate that has attempted to seize power in Kamurocho in the wake of the Tojo Clan and Omi Alliance disbanding, as depicted in Yakuza: Like a Dragon; Akihiro Ehara (Ken Mitsuishi/Artt Butler), a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Officer accused of criminal activity; and Jin Kuwana (Koji Yamamoto/Todd Haberkorn), a mysterious handyman with ties to the incident.
Plot
Private detective Takayuki Yagami and his partner Masaharu Kaito are invited by their friends Fumiya Sugiura and Makoto Tsukumo to assist their fledgling detective business located in the Ijincho district of Yokohama to solve a bullying case. Chairman Yuzo Okuda of the prestigious Seiryo High School, explains he wants to hire the detectives to covertly investigate the school to determine if any bullying has been taking place among the students, especially since the school had gotten involved in a bullying scandal in 2017 when a student, Toshiro Ehara, committed suicide and a student teacher, Hiro Mikoshiba, had gone missing two months prior. Yagami covertly discourages Koda's bullies from targeting her by convincing the rest of her class to stand up to them. Yagami receives a call from his friend Saori Shirosaki at the Genda Law Office. Shirosaki explains that one of her clients, Akihiro Ehara, Toshiro's father, was arrested and convicted for sexual battery, but during his court testimony he revealed he knew about the death of Mikoshiba, who he holds responsible for Toshiro's suicide. However, the discovery of Mikoshiba's body and identification of his corpse only occurred after Ehara's statement, leading Shirosaki to believe Ehara was involved in Mikoshiba's death and deliberately got himself caught for sexual battery to provide himself an alibi for his murder.
As Yagami investigates, he discovers that Ehara's case is connected to an attempted suicide in 2008 which led to the victim, Mitsuru Kusumoto, being trapped in a coma. Yagami learns from Seiryo teacher Yoko Sawa that Mikoshiba was in fact bullying Toshiro, but she was coerced by the school to stay silent. It is later revealed that Sawa's former homeroom teacher, who is now known by the alias Jin Kuwana, obtained a secret recording of his students bullying Mitsuru. Feeling guilty over enabling Mitsuru's bullying, Kuwana used the tape as leverage to blackmail his students into assisting him on his crusade to rid Japan of bullies by murdering those responsible for causing suicides. Yagami gains enough evidence to force Ehara's admission to his entire scheme, as he not only wanted to get revenge for Toshiro, but also to expose the flaws in Japan's legal system. However, despite these successes, Yagami is unable to save Sawa from being murdered by the RK, a Hangure gang led by Kazuki Soma, who are hunting Kuwana.
Yagami discovers that the police have pinned Sawa's death on Kuwana, and RK have invaded Ijincho in full force to find Kuwana. Further investigation leads to Yagami discovering that the National Police Agency's Public Security Division, led by Hidemi Bando, has secretly hired RK to capture Kuwana, as they have learned that Mitsuru's mother, Vice Health Minister Reiko Kusumoto, murdered one of Mitsuru's bullies, Shinya Kawai, with Kuwana's assistance. With evidence of Kusumoto's crime, Public Security can blackmail her into giving them access to Japan's national pension fund of ￥160 trillion which they hope to use to jumpstart Japan's stagnant economy despite it being effectively a gamble. To avoid being used as a puppet by Public Security, Kusumoto considers turning herself in to the police, but Mitsuru finally awakens from his coma, giving Public Security all the leverage they need to force her to betray Kuwana.
Intending to force a confrontation, Kuwana calls Yagami, Kusumoto, and Bando, offering to give up the location of Kawai's body. Yagami and his friends follow Soma and RK to an abandoned warehouse in Ijincho, where they battle for possession of Kawai's body. Working together with Kuwana, Yagami and his friends defeat Soma and his men. Kuwana decides to destroy Kawai's corpse to erase any possible link to Kusumoto, as he just wants her and Mitsuru to be happy. Yagami challenges Kuwana, stating if Kusumoto doesn't reveal the truth, then Sawa's death would never see justice. Both men battle with Yagami being the victor, but Yagami lets Kuwana escape. Kusumoto turns herself in to the authorities. Soma is taken into custody and Bando is formally charged for sanctioning Soma's illegal activities.
Development
Lost Judgment is the directional debut of Kazuki Hosokawa who aims to make it superior to its predecessor from which he worked as producer while attempting to also create an appealing narrative. He claims "About a year ago when we were in the initial phase of development there was no lockdown in Japan, and the situation wasn’t as severe, but once we entered the final stages of production, things were getting serious and it became harder to communicate. There was a loss of speed and we wished we were able to discuss things faster. If we were in person, we would have been able to do that, so it was definitely a cause for stress." As a result, Hosokawa claims that he wanted the staff to be comfortable in the making of it. They aim to properly balance the different types of gameplay: fight, puzzles trailing, and disguises. One thing that did change is with how he talks with the development staff: Many still see Ito as a programmer due to his previous role, and so he has to actively ask them to also ask him about planning and design elements and not just programming issues. Hosokawa says that one thing he found interesting is how directors who come from a specific team tend to not hold back against their former team. Hosokawa is a designer, and when he became a director he went tough on the design team. Likewise, Ito gave no quarter to the programming team upon becoming director. Hosokawa aimed both Judgment to be seen as unique when compared. The programmers in charge redid several elements them. As a result, the characters feel more realistic, with the tailing targets now breaking out into jogs, turning back when they hear sounds, and he hopes that players notice this.
Ito also says that by becoming the director, he found out that each section of the team kept trying to reduce work for the other sectionsto says that they spent a lot of time and effort on the tailing sequences at the start of the first chapter. The tailing sequences in the previous game were divisive, and they received a lot of feedback from players outside of Japan who said they wanted to hurry up and get to the fights. As such, they put effort into showing how tense and fun the tailing is, test playing it several times. Tthey spent an entire year working on it.
The game was designed in this way to allow players to immerse themselves in the drama while ensuring a certain degree of freedom. They have balanced the game in a way that that all players can enjoy the thrilling experience stress-free. The game uses original Dragon engine, but the texture of the screen is more realistic than that of the Yakuza series, with a touch of film-like feel. Sega thinks this effect is more apparent in the suspenseful scenes. They developed this technique by working on the Yakuza series for so long, and Lost Judgment has benefited from that. For a better resolution, Nagoshi recommended playing the new generation consoles. A new fighting style known as Snake was added. It was based on Aikido with Nagoshi commenting it served as a merciful style.
Although Judgment was a spin-off to the action series Yakuza which became RPG with Yakuza: Like a Dragon, executive director Toshihiro Nagoshi and producer Kazuki Hosokawa claimed that Judgment would stay true to the action system originally developed for Yakuza. The open world from Yokohama features a high school which was based on real life. Nagoshi claims Lost Judgment was made thanks to the positive responses towards Judgment and thus aimed to improve the system based on the feedback. The games is set to be released on September 24, 2021, worldwide. On May 27, it was announced by Sega that the 1996 arcade game Sonic the Fighters would be playable in the game's arcades, in celebration of 2021 being the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise's 30th Anniversary. Despite Judgment and Yakuza taking place in the same universe, there will be no crossovers as a result of the two being different IPs despite similarities.
On July 6, Lost Judgments intro cinematic was revealed, featuring the game's theme song "Rasen", by jon-YAKITORY feat. Ado. jon-YAKITORY produced the theme after multiple talks with Nagoshi. Ado enjoyed working alongside jon-YAKITORY and looked forward to how it will be executed in the game.
Scenario
Although Judgment was originally titled Judge Eyes in Japan and Asia, Sega liked the naming for the Western version, resulting into "Judgment" being part of the sequel's title even in Eastern territories. The plot was written to be realistic, something the staff found challenging while providing themes seen as sensitive to the audience like bullying as well as what should people call justice, with the latter being explored through Yagami's characterization. The youth drama is meant to balance the dark storytelling based on how Yagami interacts with teenagers. As the previous game's story was well-received, by the audience, Sega once again attempted a new story that would appeal to the audience. While Hosokawa cannot give an exact timeframe, he does say that work on the story began even before the development team was put together. Writer Furuta first came up with the outline of the story, and then he worked with Nagoshi to add the finer details. It was only after it was done to some degree that the planning team and director joined the project, and started considering how to turn the story into a game.
The cast features multiple returning and new characters. According to Yagami's Japanese actor Takuya Kimura, the story is "deep and suspenseful" but also features lighter scenes like the School Stories. Hosokawa claimed that the school interactions reveal a "unique side" of Yagami's character. Hiroshi Tamaki focused on realism when recording, comparing the entire game with a film. His first work in video game, the actor found it as an "out-of-body" experience. He described Soma as looking like "aloof" and "clearly perceptive" but hides a true persona he wanted the fans to look forward in the game. Ken Mitsuishi recalls Judgment was popular within the acting world so he felt engaged when being offered the role of Akihiro Ehara. He did not find troubles understanding his character especially thanks to the motion capture. As a result, of the two crimes that Ehara claiming he committed, Mitsuishi said that his character was given a mysterious air. Koji Yamamoto who plays the new Jin Kuwana said he was fascinated by the work, especially since it was his debut in a video game. He was surprised by Kuwana and the narrative due to how Kuwana's role changes. Akira Nakao reprises his role of Ryuzo Genda who often mentors Yagami. The actor noted that he became highly popular thanks to Judgment especially within the young demographic.
Hosokawa said the team read books from authors like Keigo Higashino and Hideo Yokoyama when preparing to write the game with the former's novel The Devotion of Suspect X being a major influence. The narrative focuses primarily on bullying as they consider it as a "Distorted justice" which clashes with Yagami's morals. Strichart commented that Yagami is not a hero so he is not able to solve all these cases on his which contrast the fantasy style Persona 5 which often deals with the protagonists saving victims using their powers. During Lost Judgment Yagami meets Kuwana who instead tries to solve every attempt of bullying regardless of methods. In contrast to Judgment, the sequel does not end on satisfactory note for Yagami as Kuwana manages to escape from the protagonist. Nevertheless, Yagami demonstrates a major influence on the bullies he meets in the game's beginning to the point they become heroic figures during the climax.
Localization
The English recording studio was made in PCB Productions owned by Keith Arem with major aid by Vicky Lee. The translation was done by Jyun Takagi, shored up with support from Shun Fukuda and Mino Iwasaki. Josh Malone, who worked on Yakuza: Like a Dragon and Shinada in the Yakuza remasters, stepped up in a big way to help handle voice over. He was supported by Shervin Zadeh, Shaun Gannon, and Stephanie Spoleti, who was also a Like a Dragon vet.
Localization producer Scott Strichart said that Lost Judgment might be one of the most challenging works he has done due to the multiple requirements, including the dual audio and English subtitles, the multiple subtitles and the game being released for four consoles. Nevertheless, he believes he has already produced similar content ever since Yakuza 0. Multiple words have to work in multiple situations, which Stritchart considered localization challenge. There is also the "chatter posts" in the buzz researcher that use variables for the keywords players are searching. Strichart considered this one of the most challenging parts of the making of the game's localization. Having felt nostalgia from the years he localized the heavily school themed game Persona 4, Strichart claims that the narrative involves multiple dark elements involving students involving bullying or suicide. Although Judgment is not a popular game, Strichart finds challenging releasing the game at the same time as the director's cut of Death Stranding, a game by the famous Hideo Kojima.
For the English version, many of the cast members from the first installment returned, but Strichart said some were replaced for logistical reasons. Greg Chun noted that the predecessor helped to properly develop Yagami to the point he seemed like another person when quitting his lawyer occupation as he took a liking to being a humble detective; this was mostly seen through the scene where Yagami tells Kaito that they should search for a lady's cat as part of their job in a pleased manner, something the localization team enjoyed recording. As a result, he claimed that for the sequel "the game kind of teed me up to really be in that Yagami mindset where, yeah, I love being a detective, but some cases are real bummer and super boring." However, in regards to the narrative, he claimed that he had to keep "living the character" due to new elements being provided. He believed that Lost Judgment explores more of Yagami's anger, something the first game did not focus on.
Aside from Chun reprising his role as Yagami, returning cast members include Crispin Freeman as Masaharu Kaito, Brain McNamara as Ryuzo Genda, Mark Whitten as Fumiya Sugiura, River Vitae as Makoto Tsukumo, Joe Zieja as Issei Hoshino, Steve Blum as Toru Higashi, and Cherami Leigh as Mafuyu Fujii. New English cast members include Artt Butler as Akihiro Ehara, Brent Mukai as Daimu Akutsu, Todd Haberkorn as Jin Kuwana, Erica Lindbeck as Yoko Sawa, Kayli Mills as Mami Koda, Xanthe Huynh as Kyoko Amasawa, Edward Bosco as Kisuke Watanabe, and Aleks Le as Shinya Kawai. Returning actors such as Matthew Yang King, Jamieson Price, Yuri Lowenthal, SungWon Cho, and Keith Silverstein voice new characters entirely, being Kazuki Soma, Yuzo Okuda, Sadao Takano, Tesso, and the Owner of Bar Siren respectively. Aimee Castle does not return to voice Saori Shirosaki in the sequel, and is replaced by Stephanie Sheh.
Promotion and release
Following the release of the game, Sega staff felt that if there should be a sequel to Judgment, Yagami and his partner Masaharu Kaito would retain their lead roles and would still be set in Kamurocho. Rumors of a sequel were reported by publications in March 2021, hinting at the return of both Takayuki Yagami and Kaito. In April of the same year, the official website announced a major tease related to Judgment on May 7, titled "Judgment Day". The official Twitter account of the game also revealed new footage of Yagami, hinting at the sequel. On May 6, 2021, a day before "Judgment Day", an entry for Lost Judgment was leaked by PlayStation Network in Japan, which stated the Digital Deluxe edition would be released September 21. The game was officially announced on May 7, 2021, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One. The team listened to fan feedback in regards to what elements from the gameplay needed to be improved. A demo was released to the PlayStation Store on September 10.
Three downloadable content packs were developed for the game. The first is the "Detective Essentials Pack", which was released at launch. The pack adds twelve additional side missions, three new girlfriends for Yagami to date, and an additional superboss battle for the game's "Gauntlet" challenge mode. The pack also grants the player several bonus items, including three alternate color skins for the Detective Dog, an additional drone frame, six new extract recipes, a hoverboard with three additional skateboarding challenges, and four additional Master System games (Sagaia; Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa; Alien Syndrome; and Global Defense). The second DLC is the "School Stories Expansion Pack", which was released on October 12. It includes additional items for the School Stories minigames, three additional sparring partners for the boxing minigame, and a fourth fighting style for Yagami-based around boxing. The third DLC titled "The Kaito Files" is set to be released in the Spring of 2022, and will include a new story campaign featuring Masaharu Kaito as a playable character. All three pieces of content are available individually or as part of a season pass. In August, they were still working on the DLC after working on the game; for as creation phase of the main game was concluded.
Reception
Lost Judgment received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Upon its release week, the PlayStation 4 version of the game topped Famitsus list of best-selling games with 111,852 copies while the PlayStation 5 game sold 33,151 units. In the United Kingdom' sales, the game reached the fourth place with most of its sold copies being from the PlayStation 5 version.
Critics commented on the narrative and Yagami's role in Lost Judgment. He was praised by Destructoid for giving new parts of his personality that are developed in the narrative. The various amount of sidequest were praised for balancing the game's narrative in delivering both light and dark stories. Both CGMagazine and GameSpot felt that the sequel had Yagami struggle with the themes of whether or not the lead is able to deal justice by himself. Additionally, the subplot of Yagami working in a school attracted positive response by the same publication due to how fun it becomes. Computer Games Magazine stated that the two antagonists Kuwana and Soma pose as interesting characters, they do it at the expense of returning members from the first game who do little in comparison, with Collider liking the gray area of morality Yagami walks when interacting with Kuwana. Although he does not team up with Kaito many times in the sequel, GameSpot felt that Yagami became a more likable character in the sequel and is able to deliver emotional scenes properly. Both Game Informer GamesRadar agreed but felt that the adult themes addressed in the game might bother the sensitive audience as it further can be seen about society commentary than previous games. However, GameInformer felt that the sexual harassment substory from the game to be worst one despite being generally a moving story. IGN criticized how Lost Judgment establishes the plot's complete idea in early chapters, making it look disappointing in retrospect as there are not major or interesting plot twists in the second half of the game. Shack News enjoyed the improved visuals but felt the main plot was a "mess" due to how difficult is to understand it with the Ehara's case taking several chapters of focus which makes the pacing to be poorly handled. Although he does not team up with Kaito many times in the sequel, GameSpot felt that Yagami became a more likable character in the sequel and is able to deliver emotional scenes properly. The reviewer further praised the handling of the narrative as properly focuses on several conflicting themes like the issues the law has, bullying and sexual harassment.
In regards to the gameplay, IGN enjoyed the usage of action style as Yakuza: Like A Dragon replaced the series' famous beat em up style with turn-based role playing game and that Yagami is more enjoyable to play than in previous games. While praising Yagami's fighting styles and its aikido-based new style, GameSpot felt there were not major additions to the sequels and that the new stealth mechanics are too linear. Destructoid highly enjoyed Yagami's improved moves as they cinematic techniques or weapons are visually more appealing and how simple is for the players to use. The loading times were also noted to have been reduced, especially on the PlayStation 5 version. The heavy amount of sidequests and arcade games like Sonic The Fighters gave the reviewer to recommend the game not only to Yakuza gamers but also Shenmue gamers. While found as still enjoyable, GamesRadar commented that the game lack more innovation when compared to Judgment despite being more improved than the Yakuza games' fighting styles. Computer Games Magazine commented that Kamurocho was less entertaining than Isezaki Ijincho as this new setting holds potential for more missions. In regards to the gameplay, Computer Games Magazine also found the fighting system enjoyable, most notably the new Snake style which became his favorite. Nevertheless, IGN still felt the sidequest were too tedious due to how difficult is to unlock them and their variety on narratives. Shack News criticized the stealth quests for being too simple while some sidequest were noted to drag the experience. Eurogamer outlined in their review "RGG Studio's broadest, most packed open world is matched by mediocre additions and an ill-fitting story." GameInformer felt that the sidequest were a good a balance to the dark narrative, but felt the parkour and stealth were poorly implemented.
GameSpot and Collider praised the presentation in terms of graphics, character renders and two districts Yagami can visit. The latter also praised both Japanese and English voice actors for giving good deliveries though the lypsinced are more appropriate in Japanese unless a cutscene is played. Shack News also noted the voice actors, most notably Yagami's Takuya Kimura and Greg Chun, to give appealing works most notably when playing a serious scene. Besides enjoying Yagami's actors, Metro also felt that Kaito and Soma's actors deliver strong performance regardless of language.
RPG Site listed it as one of the best 2021 video games. The game was also nominated for the category "Xbox Game of the Year".
Notes
References
External links
Official website
Official Japanese website
2021 video games
Action-adventure games
Criminal law video games
Detective video games
Fiction about murder
Open-world video games
Organized crime video games
PlayStation 4 games
PlayStation 4 Pro enhanced games
PlayStation 5 games
Sega beat 'em ups
Sega video games
Single-player video games
Video game sequels
Video games set in 2021
Video games set in Japan
Video games set in Tokyo
Video games set in Yokohama
Video games developed in Japan
Works about sexual harassment
Xbox One games
Xbox One X enhanced games
Xbox Series X and Series S games
Yakuza (series) | en |
doc-en-4287 | The following is a list of notable deaths in September 2018.
Entries for each day are listed alphabetically by surname. A typical entry lists information in the following sequence:
Name, age, country of citizenship at birth, subsequent country of citizenship (if applicable), reason for notability, cause of death (if known), and reference.
September 2018
1
Kenneth Bowen, 86, Welsh operatic tenor singer.
Chen Xian, 98, Chinese politician, Director of the National Bureau of Statistics (1974–1981).
Carl Duering, 95, German-born British actor (Operation Daybreak, A Clockwork Orange, Possession).
Irving Petlin, 83, American artist, liver cancer.
Freddie Plaskett, 91, British major general and business executive.
Tarun Sagar, 51, Indian Jain monk, sallekhana.
Margit Sandemo, 94, Norwegian-Swedish author (The Legend of the Ice People).
Jean Seitlinger, 93, French politician, lawyer and writer, Deputy (1956–1962, 1973–1997) and MEP (1979–1984).
Mykola Shytyuk, 64, Ukrainian historian, stabbed.
Randy Weston, 92, American jazz pianist and composer.
Ehsan Yarshater, 98, Iranian scholar, director of the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University.
2
Elsa Bloise, 92, Argentine stage actress.
Clarence Brandley, 66, American janitor wrongly convicted of murder, pneumonia.
Ian Lariba, 23, Filipino Olympic table tennis player (2016), acute myeloid leukemia.
Cornel Piper, 81, Canadian football player (Winnipeg Blue Bombers), cancer and dementia.
Kawther Ramzi, 87, Egyptian actress, circulatory collapse.
Conway Savage, 58, Australian rock keyboardist (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds), brain tumour.
Frank Lee Sprague, 60, American guitarist and composer.
Giovanni Battista Urbani, 94, Italian politician, Mayor of Savona (1957–1958), Senator (1972–1987).
Claire Wineland, 21, American cystic fibrosis assistance advocate, stroke.
Fred Zamberletti, 86, American athletic trainer (Minnesota Vikings), spinal osteomyelitis.
3
Rama Chowdhury, 81, Bangladeshi author, complications from diabetes.
Lydia Clarke, 95, American actress (The Atomic City) and photographer, complications from pneumonia.
Klaus Gerwien, 77, German footballer (Eintracht Braunschweig).
Ian Hampshire, 70, Australian football player (Geelong, Footscray) and manager (Footscray).
Jalaluddin Haqqani, 78–79, Afghan militant, founder of the Haqqani network.
Warren Jones, 74, American judge, Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court (2007–2017), stroke.
Ju Kyu-chang, 89, North Korean politician, director of nuclear and missile development, pancytopenia.
Paul Koech, 49, Kenyan long distance runner, half marathon world champion (1998).
Jacqueline Pearce, 74, British actress (Blake's 7, Dark Season, Doctor Who), lung cancer.
Gordon Phillips, 72, English football player (Hayes, Brentford) and manager (Staines Town), cancer.
Katyna Ranieri, 93, Italian singer and actress (Captain Phantom).
Thomas Rickman, 78, American screenwriter (Coal Miner's Daughter, Hooper, Truman), cancer.
4
Joseph Marie Régis Belzile, 87, Canadian-born Chadian Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Moundou (1974–1985).
Marijan Beneš, 67, Bosnian Olympic boxer (1976), European amateur (1973) and pro super welterweight champion (1979–1981), complications from Alzheimer's disease.
István Bethlen, 72, Hungarian aristocrat and economist, MP (1990–1994).
Sydney Anicetus Charles, 92, Trinidadian-born Grenadian Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Saint George's in Grenada (1974–2002).
Sheldon S. Cohen, 91, American attorney, Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1965–1969), heart failure.
Ralph Wolfe Cowan, 86, American portrait artist.
Bill Daily, 91, American actor (I Dream of Jeannie, The Bob Newhart Show) and game show panelist (Match Game).
Don Gardner, 87, American rhythm and blues singer ("I Need Your Lovin'").
Jason Hairston, 47, American football player (San Francisco 49ers, Denver Broncos) and hunting gear salesman, suicide.
Vladeta Jerotić, 94, Serbian neuropsychiatrist and author.
Ian Johnston, 71, Australian Olympic coxswain (1960), cancer.
Christopher Lawford, 63, American actor (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Thirteen Days, All My Children), memoirist and political activist, heart attack.
Lee Wang-pyo, 64, South Korean professional wrestler and martial artist, gallbladder cancer.
Ab McDonald, 82, Canadian ice hockey player (Chicago Blackhawks, Montreal Canadiens, St. Louis Blues), cancer.
Bertrand Osborne, 83, Montserrat politician, Chief Minister (1996–1997).
A. George Pradel, 80, American politician, Mayor of Naperville, Illinois (1995–2015), cancer.
John W. Rogerson, 83, British Anglican priest and biblical scholar.
Elisa Serna, 75, Spanish protest singer-songwriter, heart attack.
5
Roger Aguilar Salazar, 79, Mexican politician, Deputy-elect (since 2018), cerebral hemorrhage.
Imrich Andrejčák, 77, Slovak general, last Defence Minister of Czechoslovakia (1992), first Defence Minister of Slovakia (1993–1994).
Rachael Bland, 40, Welsh journalist and presenter (BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC North West Tonight), breast cancer.
Jim Borst, 86, Dutch Roman Catholic missionary (Saint Joseph's Missionary Society of Mill Hill), heart failure.
Minor J. Coon, 97, American biochemist.
Robert Coulter, 88, Northern Irish politician, MLA for Antrim North (1998–2011).
François Flohic, 98, French admiral (Free French Naval Forces).
Salawat Gallyamov, 58, Russian linguist.
Dennis Green, 87, Australian sprint canoeist, Olympic bronze medalist (1956), cancer.
Erik Hauri, 52, American geochemist, cancer.
Arthur Lawrence Hellyer Jr., 95, American radio and television broadcaster.
Mike Hogewood, 63, American sportscaster (Raycom Sports, FSN South) and professional wrestling commentator (Ring of Honor), heart attack.
Shubhangi Joshi, 72, Indian actress (Kahe Diya Pardes), stroke.
Dick Lane, 91, American baseball player (Chicago White Sox).
Diane Leather, 85, British Olympic middle-distance runner (1960).
Makdah Murah, 62, Syrian actress.
Madeleine Yayodele Nelson, 69, American musician.
Freddie Oversteegen, 92, Dutch resistance member.
Lise Payette, 87, Canadian journalist, writer and politician, MNA (1976–1981).
Alan Peart, 96, New Zealand World War II fighter ace (Royal New Zealand Air Force).
Gilles Pelletier, 93, Canadian actor (Jesus of Montreal, The Barbarian Invasions, R.C.M.P.).
Vince Phason, 65, American football player (Edmonton Eskimos, Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Montreal Concordes), complications from traffic collision.
Beatriz Segall, 92, Brazilian actress (Vale Tudo), pneumonia.
Bhagwatikumar Sharma, 84, Indian Gujarati writer and journalist.
John Stacpoole, 98, New Zealand architect and architectural historian.
Rudolph Edward Torrini, 95, American sculptor, complications from Alzheimer's disease.
Priscila Uppal, 43, Canadian poet, synovial sarcoma.
6
Peter Benson, 75, English actor (Heartbeat, Blackadder, Albion Market).
Michel Bonnevie, 96, French basketball player (national team), Olympic silver medalist (1948).
Richard DeVos, 92, American businessman (Amway) and sports team owner (Orlando Magic), complications from infection.
Philippe Eidel, 61, French music producer, writer and film composer.
Ken Eyre, 76, British rugby league player (Hunslet, Leeds, Keighley).
Liz Fraser, 88, British actress (I'm All Right Jack, Carry On Regardless, Dad's Army), complications from surgery.
Will Jordan, 91, American comedian and actor (I Wanna Hold Your Hand), complications of a stroke.
Johnny Kingdom, 79, English wildlife filmmaker (Johnny's New Kingdom), digger rollover.
Gilbert Lazard, 98, French linguist and Iranologist.
Oleg Lobov, 80, Russian politician.
Sylvia Meehan, 89, Irish women's rights activist.
Wilson Moreira, 81, Brazilian sambista, singer and songwriter.
Thad Mumford, 67, American television producer and writer (The Electric Company, M*A*S*H, The Cosby Show), Emmy winner (1973).
Alan Oakman, 88, English cricketer (Sussex, national team).
Burt Reynolds, 82, American actor (Smokey and the Bandit, Boogie Nights, Deliverance), Emmy winner (1991), heart attack.
Claudio Scimone, 83, Italian conductor (I Solisti Veneti).
7
Gaston-Armand Amaudruz, 97, Swiss neo-fascist political philosopher and Holocaust denier.
Jacques Amyot, 93, Canadian long-distance swimmer, cancer.
Steve Andreas, 82, American psychotherapist and author, complications from Parkinson's disease.
Jonas Algirdas Antanaitis, 97, Lithuanian politician, MP (1977–1995).
Julio Blanck, 64, Argentine journalist, cancer.
Samuel Bodman, 79, American politician, Secretary of Energy (2005–2009), complications from primary progressive aphasia.
Joris Borghouts, 79, Dutch Egyptologist.
Chang Baohua, 87, Chinese xiangsheng actor.
Joel M. Charon, 78, American sociologist.
Janis Claxton, 53, Australian choreographer, lung cancer.
Vincent Cyril Richard Arthur Charles Crabbe, 94, Ghanaian judge, Justice of the Supreme Court.
Drago Grdenić, 99, Croatian chemist and crystallographer.
Marcelite J. Harris, 75, American air force general, first black woman general in the U.S. Air Force.
Kurt Helmudt, 74, Danish rower, Olympic champion (1964).
Anna Karabessini, 95, Greek folk singer and songwriter.
Alexander Margulis, 97, Yugoslavian-born American professor.
Mac Miller, 26, American rapper, musician ("Donald Trump", "Frick Park Market", "Self Care") and record producer, accidental drug overdose.
Ingemar Mundebo, 87, Swedish politician, MP (1965–1980), Governor of Uppsala County (1980–1986), Economy minister (1978–1979).
Hans Oleak, 88, German astrophysicist.
Szarlota Pawel, 71, Polish comic book artist.
Beverly Polcyn, 90, American actress (Not Another Teen Movie, Hook, Date Movie).
Donald Robinson, 95, Australian Anglican prelate, Archbishop of Sydney (1982–1992).
Micheline Rozan, 89, French producer, co-founder of the International Centre for Theatre Research.
Mohsen Vaziri-Moghaddam, 94, Iranian abstract painter.
Paweł Waloszek, 80, Polish motorcycle speedway rider.
Sheila White, 69, British actress (Oliver!, I, Claudius) and singer, heart failure.
Yang Side, 96, Chinese PLA general.
8
Tito Capobianco, 87, Argentine-born American stage director (Pittsburgh Opera), lung cancer.
Gennadi Gagulia, 70, Abkhazian politician, Prime Minister (1995–1997, 2002–2003, since 2018), traffic collision.
Giancarlo Galdiolo, 69, Italian footballer (Fiorentina, Sampdoria), frontotemporal dementia.
Reidar Goa, 76, Norwegian footballer (Viking, national team).
Christopher Harper-Bill, 71, British medieval historian.
Lorraine H. Morton, 99, American politician, Mayor of Evanston, Illinois (1993–2009).
Abu Hassan Omar, 77, Malaysian politician, MP (1978–1997), Menteri Besar of Selangor (1997–2000), heart attack.
Ramin Hossein-Panahi, 23, Iranian convicted Kurdish insurgent, execution by hanging.
Erich Riedl, 85, German politician, member of Bundestag (1969–1998).
Chelsi Smith, 45, American beauty pageant winner (Miss USA 1995, Miss Universe 1995), liver cancer.
John Tovey, 85, British restaurateur.
Michael Varley, 78, British Olympic boxer (1964).
Richard Vincent, Baron Vincent of Coleshill, 87, British military officer and life peer.
Yang Zhenya, 90, Chinese diplomat, ambassador to Japan (1988–1993).
9
Simon Adut Yuang, South Sudanese Episcopal prelate, Bishop of Yirol (since 2015), plane crash.
Frank Andersson, 62, Swedish wrestler (NJPW, WCW) and reality show contestant (Let's Dance 2011), Olympic bronze medalist (1984), bacterial lung infection.
Frank Davis, 82, American politician, member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives (1978–2004).
Silvio Grassetti, 82, Italian Grand Prix motorcycle road racer.
Adrian C. Louis, 72, American Lovelock Paiute author and screenwriter (Skins).
Mr. Catra, 49, Brazilian singer, stomach cancer.
Krystian Popiela, 20, Polish footballer (Cagliari), traffic collision.
Beat Richner, 71, Swiss pediatrician and cellist.
Bill Smith, 80, English cricketer (Wiltshire, Surrey).
Paul Stuffel, 91, American baseball player (Philadelphia Phillies).
Wallace Tripp, 78, American illustrator (Amelia Bedelia) and author, Parkinson's disease.
Javier Usabiaga Arroyo, 79, Mexican politician, Minister of Agriculture (2000–2005) and Deputy (2009–2012).
10
Kurt Benirschke, 94, German-born American geneticist and pathologist.
Chris Buttars, 76, American politician, member of the Utah State Senate (2001–2011).
Adam Clymer, 81, American journalist (The New York Times), pancreatic cancer.
Warrington Colescott, 97, American artist.
Peter Donat, 90, Canadian-born American actor (The Godfather: Part II, The X-Files, The China Syndrome), complications from diabetes.
István Géczi, 74, Hungarian footballer (Ferencváros, national team), Olympic silver medalist (1972).
Johannes Geldenhuys, 83, South African military commander, Chief of the Defence Force (1985–1990).
Hu Fo, 86, Taiwanese political scientist and activist, member of Academia Sinica, fall.
Albin F. Irzyk, 101, American military officer.
Robert Harold Porter, 85, Canadian politician, MP (1984–1993).
Bianca Reinert, 52, Brazilian ornithologist, cancer.
Paul Virilio, 86, French philosopher and urbanist, heart attack.
Roy Wagner, 79, American anthropologist.
Co Westerik, 94, Dutch painter and photographer.
11
Richard Newbold Adams, 94, American anthropologist.
Peter J. Barnes Jr., 89, American politician, member of the New Jersey General Assembly (1996–2007).
Edwin Davies, 72, English football club owner (Bolton Wanderers) and management accountant.
Fenella Fielding, 90, English actress (Follow a Star, Carry On Regardless, Carry On Screaming!), stroke.
Thomas Aquinas Higgins, 86, American judge.
Jim Houston, 80, American football player (Cleveland Browns), complications from dementia and ALS.
Kalle Könkkölä, 68, Finnish politician and human rights activist, MP (1983–1987), pneumonia.
Cheikhna Ould Mohamed Laghdaf, Mauritanian diplomat and politician, Foreign Minister (1962–1963, 1978–1979).
Siegfried Linkwitz, 82, American audio engineer (Linkwitz-Riley filter), prostate cancer.
M. Sam Mannan, 64, Bangladeshi chemical engineer.
Kulsoom Nawaz, 68, Pakistani politician, member of the National Assembly (2017–2018), complications from lymphoma.
Don Newman, 60, American basketball coach (San Antonio Spurs, Washington Wizards) and football player (Saskatchewan Roughriders), cancer.
Don Panoz, 83, American executive (Panoz, NanoLumens, Mylan), pancreatic cancer.
Roger W. H. Sargent, 91, British chemical engineer.
Tchan Fou-li, 102, Hong Kong photographer.
Charlene Todman, 87, Australian athlete.
12
Shlomo Aronson, 81, Israeli landscape architect.
Pasquale Buba, 72, American film editor (Heat, Day of the Dead, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood), cancer.
Ronald Carter, 71, British linguist.
Don Corbett, 75, American college basketball coach (Lincoln, North Carolina A&T), cancer.
Barry Cunningham, 78, Australian politician, MP for McMillan (1980–1990, 1993–1996).
Hossein Erfani, 76, Iranian voice actor, lung cancer.
Robert Gillam, 72, American investor, stroke.
Robert A. Johnson, 97, American Jungian analyst and author.
Henry Kalis, 81, American politician, member of the Minnesota House of Representatives (1975–2003).
Erich Kleinschuster, 88, Austrian trombonist and bandleader.
Hans Kloss, 80, German artist and graphic designer.
Gerald LaValle, 86, American politician, member of the Pennsylvania Senate (1990–2008).
Geoff Manning, 92, Australian historian.
Wayne M. Meyers, 94, American microbiologist, chemist and humanitarian.
Walter Mischel, 88, Austrian-born American psychologist, pancreatic cancer.
Billy O'Dell, 85, American baseball player (Baltimore Orioles, San Francisco Giants, Atlanta Braves), complications from Parkinson's disease.
Mark W. Olson, 75, American banker.
Ralph Prouton, 92, English cricketer and footballer.
Jorunn Ringstad, 75, Norwegian politician, MP (1993–2005).
Carl Sargent, 65, British parapsychologist and roleplaying game designer (Fighting Fantasy).
Frank Serafine, 65, American sound designer and editor (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Tron, The Hunt for Red October), traffic collision.
Shen Chun-shan, 86, Taiwanese physicist and academic, President of National Tsing Hua University (1994–1997), ruptured intestine.
Bettina Shaw-Lawrence, 97, British painter.
Benedict Ganesh Singh, 90, Guyanese Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Georgetown (1972–2003).
Rachid Taha, 59, Algerian singer (Carte de Séjour), heart attack.
Albert Ullin, 88, German-born Australian children's bookseller.
Jack N. Young, 91, American actor and stuntman (Death Valley Days, Wagon Train, How the West Was Won).
13
Roman Baskin, 63, Estonian actor and director, cancer.
Diana Baumrind, 91, American psychologist, traffic collision.
Valentin Chaikin, 93, Russian speed skater.
Emmanuel Dabbaghian, 84, Syrian Armenian Catholic hierarch, Archbishop of Baghdad (2007–2017).
Roxana Darín, 87, Argentinian actress.
Sir William Kerr Fraser, 89, British civil servant, Chancellor of the University of Glasgow (1996–2006), Permanent Secretary to the Scottish Office (1978–1988).
Lin Hujia, 101, Chinese politician, Mayor of Beijing (1978–1981) and Tianjin (1978), Minister of Agriculture (1981–1983).
Marin Mazzie, 57, American actress and singer (Ragtime, Kiss Me, Kate, Passion), ovarian cancer.
Ivo Petrić, 87, Slovenian oboist (Slavko Osterc Ensemble) and composer.
K. N. T. Sastry, 73, Indian film director and critic.
Kyle Stone, 54, American pornographic film actor and comedian, cardiovascular disease.
John B. Thomas, 93, American electrical engineer.
Martha Vaughan, 92, American biochemist and physiologist.
Albrecht Wellmer, 85, German philosopher.
John Wilcock, 91, British journalist (The Village Voice), stroke.
14
Alan Abel, 94, American prankster and writer, cancer and heart failure.
Max Bennett, 90, American jazz bassist (L.A. Express) and session musician (The Wrecking Crew).
Beverly Bentley, 88, American actress (Scent of Mystery, C.H.U.D., The Golden Boys).
Bernardo Bello, 84, Chilean footballer (Colo-Colo).
Eusebio Cardoso, 68, Paraguayan Olympic marathon runner (1976).
Phil Clark, 86, American baseball player (St. Louis Cardinals).
Ruth Dowman, 88, New Zealand sprinter and long jumper, British Empire Games bronze medalist (1950).
Majid Gholamnejad, 35, Iranian footballer (Saipa, PAS Hamedan, national team), heart attack.
Anneke Grönloh, 76, Dutch singer.
Branko Grünbaum, 88, Yugoslavian-born American mathematician.
Dinesh Chandra Joarder, 90, Indian politician, MP (1971–1980), MLA (1987–1996).
Saeed Kangarani, 63, Iranian actor (My Uncle Napoleon, Dar Emtedade Shab, Marriage, Iranian Style), heart attack.
Zienia Merton, 72, Burmese-born British actress (The Chairman, Doctor Who, Space: 1999), cancer.
Carlos Rubira Infante, 96, Ecuadorian pasillo and pasacalle singer-songwriter.
Chai-Anan Samudavanija, 74, Thai political scientist.
Rudolf Schieffer, 71, German historian.
15
Scotty Bloch, 93, American actress (Kate & Allie, The Lunch Date).
Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, 92, British aristocrat and courtier.
Helen Clare, 101, British singer
Peggy Clarke, 80, British chess player.
John M. Dwyer, 83, American set decorator (Star Trek, Coal Miner's Daughter, Jaws), complications from Parkinson's disease.
Masashi Fujiwara, 72, Japanese politician, member of the House of Councillors (since 2001), liver cancer.
Jo Gilbert, 63, British film producer (Closing the Ring), brain tumour.
James Haar, 89, American musicologist.
Dorothy M. Kellogg, 98, American politician, Member of the South Dakota House of Representatives (1981–1984) and Senate (1987–1992).
Warwick Estevam Kerr, 96, Brazilian agricultural engineer, geneticist and entomologist.
Kirin Kiki, 75, Japanese actress (Shoplifters, The Triple Cross, Half a Confession), breast cancer.
Silvio Liotta, 82, Italian politician, Deputy (1994–2006).
David Lowenthal, 95, American geographer and historian.
Mike Margulis, 68, American Olympic soccer player (1972).
Lionello Puppi, 86, Italian art historian and politician, Senator (1985–1987).
Charles Rappleye, 62, American writer, cancer.
Clay Riddell, 81, Canadian geologist and oil executive (Paramount Resources), co-owner of the Calgary Flames.
David Rubadiri, 88, Malawian poet and diplomat.
José Manuel de la Sota, 68, Argentinian politician, Senator (1995–1999), Governor of Córdoba (1999–2007, 2011–2015), traffic collision.
Dudley Sutton, 85, British actor (Lovejoy, The Devils, The Pink Panther Strikes Again), cancer.
Victor Veselago, 89, Russian physicist.
Jean Briggs Watters, 92, British cryptanalyst and Women's Royal Naval Service personnel.
Virginia Whitehill, 90, American women's rights activist.
Fritz Wintersteller, 90, Austrian mountaineer.
16
Iris Acker, 88, American actress (Flight of the Navigator, Whoops Apocalypse, Cocoon: The Return), pancreatic cancer.
Perry Miller Adato, 97, American documentary film director and producer.
Maartin Allcock, 61, English multi-instrumentalist (Fairport Convention, Jethro Tull, Robert Plant) and record producer, liver cancer.
Kevin Beattie, 64, English footballer (Ipswich Town, Middlesbrough, national team), heart attack.
Tommy Best, 97, Welsh footballer (Hereford United, Cardiff City, Chester).
Assid Corban, 93, New Zealand politician, Mayor of Waitakere City (1989–1992), cancer.
Albuíno Cunha de Azeredo, 73, Brazilian engineer and politician, Governor of Espírito Santo (1991–1995).
John F. Kelly, 69, American politician, member of the Michigan Senate (1979–1994), heart attack.
Jim Kettle, 93, Australian footballer (Fitzroy).
Jone Kubuabola, 72, Fijian politician, Minister for Finance (2000–2006).
Big Jay McNeely, 91, American R&B saxophonist, prostate cancer.
Min Naiben, 83, Chinese physicist, member of the Academy of Sciences.
John Molony, 91, Australian historian.
Frank Parker, 79, American actor (Days of Our Lives), complications from dementia and Parkinson's disease.
James B. Thayer, 96, American army brigadier general.
Butch Wade, 73, American basketball player (Indiana State Sycamores).
Wang Guofa, 72, Chinese politician, Vice Governor of Jilin Province, Chairman of the Jilin CPPCC.
Michael Young, 59, Australian footballer (Carlton, Melbourne), cancer.
17
Celia Barquín Arozamena, 22, Spanish golfer, stabbed.
Enzo Calzaghe, 69, Italian-born Welsh boxing trainer.
*Captain Raju, 68, Indian military officer and actor (Nalla Naal, Rowdy Alludu, Cotton Mary), complications from a stroke.
*Maninder Singh Dhir, 66, Indian politician, complications from a stroke.
Stephen Jeffreys, 68, British playwright and screenwriter (The Libertine, Diana), brain tumour.
Dean Lindo, 86, Belizean politician, member of the House of Representatives (1974–1979, 1984–1989).
Anna Rajam Malhotra, 91, Indian civil servant (Indian Administrative Service).
Annette Michelson, 95, American film and art critic, dementia.
Daniel N. Robinson, 81, American philosopher, heart failure.
18
Steve Adlard, 67, English football player and coach (Marquette Warriors), cancer.
James Allan, 86, British diplomat, High Commissioner to Mauritius (1981–1985) and Ambassador to Mozambique (1986–1989).
Ernie Bateman, 89, English footballer (Watford).
Gian Luigi Boiardi, 67, Italian politician, Deputy (2001–2005), heart attack.
Carlo Dell'Aringa, 77, Italian politician, Deputy (2013–2018), heart attack.
David DiChiera, 83, American composer and founding general director of Michigan Opera Theatre, pancreatic cancer.
Lady Judith Kazantzis, 78, British poet.
Piotr Lachert, 80, Polish composer and pianist.
Carmencita Lara, 91, Peruvian singer.
Marceline Loridan-Ivens, 90, French writer, film director and Holocaust survivor.
Titti Maartmann, 97, Norwegian luger.
Lawrence Martin-Bittman, 87, Czech-born American artist, author and intelligence officer.
Jean Piat, 93, French actor (Clara de Montargis, Rider on the Rain, The Accursed Kings) and writer.
Richard M. Pollack, 83, American mathematician.
Livingstone Puckerin, 49, Barbadian cricketer.
Robert Venturi, 93, American architect, Pritzker Prize winner (1991), complications from Alzheimer's disease.
Norifumi Yamamoto, 41, Japanese mixed martial artist (Shooto, Hero's, UFC), stomach cancer.
19
Dave Barrett, 63, American news radio correspondent (CBS, ABC, Fox), three-time Edward R. Murrow Award winner, heart attack.
Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, 92, British lawyer.
Geta Brătescu, 92, Romanian visual artist.
Buren Bayaer, 58, Chinese singer and journalist, heart attack.
Jon Burge, 70, American police officer (Chicago Police Department), suspected mass torturer and convicted perjurer.
Bunny Carr, 91, Irish television presenter (Quicksilver).
Geoff Clayton, 80, English cricketer (Lancashire, Somerset).
John Hopkins, 81, British academic lawyer.
Vishnu Khare, 78, Indian poet and writer, stroke.
Kondapalli Koteswaramma, 100, Indian communist revolutionary and writer, stroke.
Győző Kulcsár, 77, Hungarian fencer, Olympic champion (1964, 1968, 1972).
Marilyn Lloyd, 89, American politician, U.S. Representative from Tennessee's 3rd congressional district (1975–1995), complications from pneumonia.
David Wong Louie, 63, American writer, throat cancer.
Arthur Mitchell, 84, American dancer and choreographer, founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, heart failure.
Wojciech Myrda, 39, Polish basketball player (Avtodor Saratov).
Keith Nord, 61, American football player (Minnesota Vikings), cancer.
Denis Norden, 96, English comedy writer (Take It from Here), television presenter (It'll Be Alright on the Night) and radio personality (My Music).
Gamil Ratib, 91, Egyptian-French actor (Lawrence of Arabia).
Pavel Řezníček, 76, Czech poet, writer and translator.
Jesús Rodríguez Magro, 58, Spanish racing cyclist, heart attack.
Joseph E. Schwartzberg, 90, American geographer.
20
Edmundo Abaya, 89, Filipino Roman Catholic prelate, Archbishop of Nueva Segovia (1999–2005).
İbrahim Ayhan, 50, Turkish politician, MP (since 2011), heart attack.
Fadhil Jalil al-Barwari, 52, Iraqi military officer, commander of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces, heart attack.
Maria Bitner-Glindzicz, 55, British geneticist, traffic collision.
John Cunliffe, 85, English children's book author (Postman Pat, Rosie and Jim), heart failure.
Ulrich Everling, 93, German jurist, Judge at the European Court of Justice (1980–1988).
Inge Feltrinelli, 87, German-born Italian publisher and photographer.
George N. Hatsopoulos, 91, Greek-born American mechanical engineer.
Huang Qingyun, 98, Hong Kong-Chinese children's author.
Jacob Israelachvili, 74, Israeli-born American professor, cancer.
Joseph Hoo Kim, 76, Jamaican record producer, liver cancer.
K-Run's Park Me In First, 13, American beagle show dog, winner of the 2008 Westminster Best in Show, cancer.
Lou Karras, 91, American football player (Washington Redskins).
Mohammed Karim Lamrani, 99, Moroccan politician and holding investor, Prime Minister (1971–1972, 1983–1986, 1992–1994).
Laurie Mitchell, 90, American actress (Queen of Outer Space).
Ranganayaki Rajagopalan, 86, Indian veena player, complications from Parkinson's disease.
Nils Rydström, 97, Swedish Olympic fencer (1948, 1952).
Mohamed Sahnoun, 87, Algerian diplomat, Ambassador to the United States (1984–1989).
Ludovikus Simanullang, 63, Indonesian Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Sibolga (since 2007), sepsis.
Reinhard Tritscher, 72, Austrian Olympic alpine skier (1972), climbing accident.
Conrado Walter, 95, German-born Brazilian Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Jacarezinho (1991–2000).
Wang Mengshu, 79, Chinese railway engineer, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
William Ward, 74, American astronomer, brain tumor.
Henry Wessel Jr., 76, American photographer, lung cancer.
Riccardo Zinna, 60, Italian actor (Nirvana, This Is Not Paradise, Benvenuti al Sud) and composer, pancreatic cancer.
21
David Bamigboye, 77, Nigerian military officer and politician, Governor of Kwara (1967–1975).
Eigil Friis-Christensen, 73, Danish geophysicist.
Katherine Hoover, 80, American composer and flutist.
Adolf Knoll, 80, Austrian footballer (Wiener Sport-Club, FK Austria Wien, national team).
José Roberto López Londoño, 82, Colombian Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Armenia (1987–2003) and Jericó (2003–2013).
David Laro, 76, American judge.
Vitaliy Masol, 89, Ukrainian politician, Prime Minister (1994–1995).
Herbert Meier, 90, Swiss writer and translator.
Howard Michaels, 62, American businessman, cancer.
Zinaida Mirkina, 92, Russian poet and translator.
Kevin Phillips, 89, Australian footballer (Collingwood).
Bernard Szczepański, 72, Polish Olympic wrestler (1972).
Lee Stange, 81, American baseball player (Minnesota Twins, Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox).
Trần Đại Quang, 61, Vietnamese politician, President (since 2016), Minister of Public Security (2011–2016), virus.
Xu Delong, 66, Chinese materials scientist, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
22
Barry Cohen, 79, American attorney, leukemia.
Avi Duan, 62, Israeli politician, member of the Knesset (2012–2013).
Adel Hekal, 84, Egyptian footballer (Al-Ahly, national team).
Chas Hodges, 74, British musician (Chas & Dave), organ failure.
Johannes Kapp, 89, German Roman Catholic prelate, Auxiliary Bishop of Fulda (1976–2004).
Mike Labinjo, 38, Canadian football player (Calgary Stampeders, Miami Dolphins, Philadelphia Eagles).
Bob Lienhard, 70, American basketball player (Cantù), cancer.
Imtikumzuk Longkumer, 51, Indian politician, heart attack.
Al Matthews, 75, American actor (Aliens, The Fifth Element, The American Way).
Edna Molewa, 61, South African politician, Minister of Environmental Affairs (since 2010) and Social Development (2009–2010), Premier of North West (2004–2009).
Dolly Niemiec, 87, American baseball player (AAGPBL).
Hayden Poulter, 57, New Zealand serial killer, suicide.
Ottokar Runze, 93, German filmmaker (Five Suspects, In the Name of the People, A Lost Life).
Mario Valiante, 93, Italian politician, MP (1958–1983).
Sir Eric Yarrow, 98, British businessman.
23
Olav Angell, 86, Norwegian poet and jazz musician.
Baek Sang-seung, 82, South Korean politician, Mayor of Gyeongju (since 2002), lymphoma.
Eric Berntson, 77, Canadian politician, MLA (1975–1990).
Ciriaco Calalang, 67, Filipino politician, member of the House of Representatives (since 2018), stroke.
Jane Fortune, 76, American author, journalist and historian, cancer.
Sir Charles Kao, 84, Hong Kong electrical engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (2009), complications from Alzheimer's disease.
Helmut Köglberger, 72, Austrian footballer (LASK, Austria/WAC, national team).
Gary Kurtz, 78, American film producer (American Graffiti, Star Wars, The Dark Crystal), cancer.
Kalpana Lajmi, 64, Indian filmmaker (Rudaali), kidney and liver failure.
Liu Jie, 103, Chinese politician, Governor of Henan (1979–1981).
Mark Livolsi, 56, American film editor (The Devil Wears Prada, Saving Mr. Banks, We Bought a Zoo).
John Anthony Nevin, 85, American psychologist, pancreatic cancer.
Shantaram Potdukhe, 86, Indian politician, MP (1980–1996).
Kidari Sarveswara Rao, Indian politician, shot.
Gennady Ulanov, 88, Russian politician.
Harry Walden, 77, English footballer (Luton Town, Northampton Town).
Derek Wheatley, 92, English barrister and novelist.
David Wolkowsky, 99, American property developer.
24
Roy Booth, 91, English cricketer (Yorkshire, Worcestershire).
Norm Breyfogle, 58, American comic book artist (Batman, Prime), complications from a stroke.
Jim Brogan, 74, Scottish footballer (Celtic, national team), dementia.
Ronald Bye, 80, Norwegian politician, Minister of Transport and Communications (1978–1981).
José María Hurtado Ruiz-Tagle, 73, Chilean politician, Deputy (1990–1998).
Peter Maurice King, 78, Australian politician, MP (1981).
Arnold Krammer, 77, American historian.
Marion Marshall, 89, American actress (I Was a Male War Bride, The Stooge, Sailor Beware).
Ivar Martinsen, 97, Norwegian Olympic speed skater (1948, 1952).
Tommy McDonald, 84, American football player (Philadelphia Eagles).
Terry Moore, 82, Canadian broadcaster and author, cancer.
Michael O'Gorman, 53, American coxswain. (death announced on this date)
Merv Smith, 85, New Zealand radio personality (1ZB) and actor (The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies).
Lars Wohlin, 85, Swedish politician, Governor of the National Bank (1979–1982), MEP (2004–2009).
25
Helena Almeida, 84, Portuguese photographer and painter.
Galal Amin, 83, Egyptian economist.
Evelyn Anthony, 92, British author.
Charles Berger, 79, American communication theorist, cancer.
Andrew Colin, 82, British computer scientist.
Marie Colton, 95, American politician, member of the North Carolina House of Representatives (1978–1994).
Baba Hari Dass, 95, Indian yoga master, silent monk, and commentator.
Friedhelm Döhl, 82, German composer.
Karyn Dwyer, 43, Canadian actress (Superstar, Better Than Chocolate, The Right Way), suicide.
Ismail Fahd Ismail, 78, Kuwaiti novelist and literary critic.
Ivan Kapitanets, 90, Russian military officer, Admiral of the Fleet.
Danny Lewicki, 87, Canadian ice hockey player (Toronto Maple Leafs).
Jack McKinney, 83, American basketball coach (Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Lakers, Saint Joseph's Hawks).
Sam Morshead, 63, Irish jockey and horse racing administrator (Perth Racecourse), cancer.
Wenceslao Padilla, 68, Filipino Roman Catholic prelate, Apostolic Prefect of Ulaanbaatar (since 1992).
Yadollah Samadi, 66, Iranian film director, heart failure.
Ronnie Shelton, 57, American convicted serial rapist.
Jasdev Singh, 87, Indian sports commentator.
Jerry Thorpe, 92, American director and producer (Kung Fu).
Vladimir Voronkov, 74, Russian cross-country skier, Olympic champion (1972).
26
Joe Carolan, 81, Irish footballer (Manchester United, Brighton & Hove Albion, national team).
Ivan Deyanov, 80, Bulgarian footballer (Dimitrovgrad, Lokomotiv Sofia, national team).
Eric Griffiths, 65, British academic and literary critic.
Ignaz Kirchner, 72, Austrian actor (Burgtheater).
Tito Madi, 89, Brazilian singer and composer.
George F. Perpich, 85, American dentist and politician, Member of the Minnesota State Senate (1971–1980), complications from Parkinson's disease.
Charles Poliquin, 57, Canadian strength coach, heart attack.
Roger Robinson, 78, American actor (Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Kojak, Rubicon), Tony winner (2009).
Manuel Rodríguez, 79, Chilean footballer (Unión Española, national team), complications from Parkinson's disease.
Antonio Santucci, 89, Italian Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Trivento (1985–2005).
Andrew O. Skaar, 96, American politician, Member of the Minnesota House of Representatives (1963–1974).
José Antonio Tébez, 69, Argentinian footballer (San Martín de Mendoza, Independiente Santa Fe, Independiente Medellín).
Aamer Wasim, 58, Pakistani cricket player and coach.
27
Cy A Adler, 91, American author, organiser and conservationist.
Marty Balin, 76, American Hall of Fame rock singer and musician (Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship).
Carles Canut, 74, Spanish actor (The Knight of the Dragon) and theater manager.
Tara Fares, 22, Iraqi model and blogger, shot.
Ray Fogarty, 61, American politician, member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives (1983–1992).
Frank Ford, 83, Australian theatre promoter (Adelaide Fringe Festival).
Frank Herbert, 87, American politician, member of the New Jersey Senate (1977–1981).
Blagoje Istatov, 71, Macedonian football player (Partizan Belgrade, Utrecht) and manager (Skopje).
Brian A. Joyce, 56, American politician, member of the Massachusetts Senate (1998–2017).
James Lawton, 75, British sports journalist and biographer.
Anita Madden, 85, American racehorse owner, political activist and socialite.
Kavita Mahajan, 51, Indian writer, pneumonia.
James G. March, 90, American sociologist.
Ernest Maxin, 95, British television producer and choreographer (Morecambe and Wise).
Namkhai Norbu, 79, Tibetan-born Italian Buddhist monk and Dzogchen teacher.
Michael Payton, 48, American Hall of Fame football player (Marshall Thundering Herd), cancer.
Manoharsinhji Pradyumansinhji, 82, Indian cricketer (Saurashtra) and politician, MLA (1967–1971, 1980–1985, 1990–1995).
Virginia Ramos, 65, Mexican-born American chef.
Joaquim Roriz, 82, Brazilian politician, Governor of the Federal District (1988–1990, 1991–1994, 1999–2006).
Yvonne Suhor, 56, American actress (The Young Riders), pancreatic cancer.
Philip Trenary, 64, American airline executive (Pinnacle Airlines), shot.
Art Williams, 78, American basketball player (Boston Celtics), stroke.
28
Peter Adams, 82, Canadian politician, MPP (1987–1990), MP (1993–2006), cancer and kidney failure.
Tamaz Chiladze, 87, Georgian writer and poet (The Pond, The Brueghel Moon).
Barnabas Sibusiso Dlamini, 76, Swazi politician, Prime Minister (1996–2003, 2008–2018).
Edredon Bleu, 26, British racehorse, winner of the King George VI Chase (2003), euthanised.
Predrag Ejdus, 71, Serbian actor.
Peter Gelling, 58, Australian musician and author.
Ito Giani, 77, Italian Olympic sprinter (1964).
Rachel Hirschfeld, 72, American animal welfare lawyer.
Wes Hopkins, 57, American football player (Philadelphia Eagles).
Bob Jane, 88, Australian race car driver and entrepreneur (Bob Jane T-Marts), prostate cancer.
Joe Masteroff, 98, American playwright (Cabaret, She Loves Me), Tony winner (1967).
David Schippers, 88, American lawyer, Chief Investigative Counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee (1998), pancreatic cancer.
Sidney Shachnow, 83, Lithuanian-born American Army general and Holocaust survivor.
Rajendra Shah, 68, Indian cricketer.
Shi Shengjie, 65, Chinese xiangsheng comedian.
Juris Silovs, 68, Latvian athlete, Olympic silver (1972) and bronze medalist (1976).
Celso José Pinto da Silva, 84, Brazilian Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Vitória da Conquista (1981–2001), Archbishop of Teresina (2001–2008).
Greg Terrion, 58, Canadian ice hockey player (Toronto Maple Leafs, Los Angeles Kings).
Margo Woode, 90, American actress (Somewhere in the Night).
Zang Tianshuo, 54, Chinese rock musician, liver cancer.
29
Luigi Agnolin, 75, Italian Hall of Fame football referee.
Macià Alavedra, 84, Spanish politician, Deputy (1977–1979, 1982–1986).
Alves Barbosa, 86, Portuguese racing cyclist.
Tulsidas Borkar, 83, Indian harmonium player, chest infection.
Thomas E. Brennan, 89, American jurist, Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court (1969–1970).
Pascale Casanova, 59, French literary critic.
Alain Ducellier, 84, French historian.
Lewis Elton, 95, German-born British physicist and researcher.
Eugene John Gerber, 87, American Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Dodge City (1976–1982) and Wichita (1982–2001), heart attack.
Hu Chuanzhi, 88, Chinese engineer and politician, CEO of the China State Shipbuilding Corporation.
Rolf Knierim, 90, German biblical scholar, traffic collision.
Frank Maine, 81, Canadian politician, MP (1974–1979).
Angela Maria, 89, Brazilian singer.
Billy Neville, 83, Irish footballer (West Ham).
Henry Ong, 68, Malaysian-born American playwright, cancer.
Stefania Podgórska, 97, Polish Holocaust heroine and award winner (Righteous Among the Nations).
Peter Robeson, 88, British equestrian, Olympic bronze medalist (1956, 1964).
Otis Rush, 84, American Hall of Fame blues guitarist and singer ("All Your Love", "I Can't Quit You Baby", "Double Trouble"), complications from a stroke.
Richard A. Searfoss, 62, American astronaut.
Stepan Topal, 80, Moldovan politician, Governor of Gagauzia (1990–1995), MP (1990–1994).
Mille-Marie Treschow, 64, Norwegian estate owner.
Dirceu Vegini, 66, Brazilian Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop of Foz do Iguaçu (2010–2018).
Claudie Weill, 72–73, French historian.
Earle F. Zeigler, 99, American-Canadian academic.
30
Maurice Barrette, 62, Canadian ice hockey player.
Michael J. Bennane, 73, American politician, member of the Michigan House of Representatives (1977–1996).
Geoffrey Hayes, 76, English television presenter (Rainbow) and actor (Z-Cars), pneumonia.
David Henderson, 91, British economist.
Wilhelm Keim, 83, German chemist.
Walter Laqueur, 97, German-born American historian and journalist.
Kim Larsen, 72, Danish rock singer, songwriter and guitarist (Gasolin'), prostate cancer.
Carlos Ángel López, 66, Argentine footballer (Sarmiento, Millonarios, national team).
John J. McDermott, 86, American philosopher.
Robert M. O'Neil, 83, American educator, President of the University of Wisconsin System (1980–1985) and the University of Virginia (1985–1990).
Sonia Orbuch, 93, Polish Jewish resistance fighter and Holocaust educator.
René Pétillon, 72, French satirical and political cartoonist.
William Proffit, 82, American orthodontist.
Sophon Ratanakorn, 87, Thai jurist, President of the Supreme Court of Thailand (1990–1991).
Czesław Strumiłło, 88, Polish chemical engineer.
References
2018-09
09 | en |
doc-en-11870 | Saint Mary's College of California is a private Catholic college in Moraga, California. Established in 1863, it is affiliated with the Catholic Church and administered by the De La Salle Brothers. The college offers undergraduate and graduate programs with a total student count at under 4,000 .
History
St. Mary's College began in 1863 as a diocesan college for boys established by the Most Rev. Joseph Alemany, a member of the Dominicans and the first archbishop of San Francisco. One of its first donors was Mary Ellen Pleasant, a famed Black Catholic philanthropist who gave the school roughly $10,000 in today's money to help get the school off the ground.
Unhappy with the archdiocese's operation of the college, Archbishop Alemany applied for assistance from Rome and in 1868 St. Mary's College was handed over to the De La Salle Christian Brothers.
In 1889, the college moved east across San Francisco Bay to Oakland, California. The location on the corner of 30th and Broadway became affectionately known as "The Brickpile" and Saint Mary's College would call Oakland home until 1928, when it moved further eastward to Moraga after a fire severely damaged the Brickpile. The Oakland site is California Historical Landmark #676 and has been marked by a commemorative plaque. The former San Francisco site is now the site of the St. Mary's Park neighborhood. The college and high school sections separated not long after the move to Moraga and the high school is currently located in Albany.
During its first years in Moraga, the college nearly went bankrupt, but eventually managed to gain financial security when it was bought by Archbishop John Joseph Mitty, for whom a residence hall is now named. During World War II the college was used by the United States Navy for the training of pilots. Former President Gerald Ford was briefly stationed at the school and served as a naval instructor. The navy erected many buildings, including the world's largest indoor pool, but only one, Assumption Hall, remains on the campus as the school had little use for most of the buildings after the war. Saint Mary's continued to be a male-only school until 1970, when it became coeducational. Since then, more women have come to the college and by 2011, 62% of the students were women.
In the 1970s, the college was well known by secondary schools throughout the San Francisco Bay Area for producing the Saint Mary's Math Contest. The popular contest was discontinued in 1978 but later became the chief inspiration for the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival which continues to this day.
Roughly two dozen Christian Brothers still live and work at the school, and the school presidents had always been Brothers until 2013. Recognizing the dwindling number of Christian Brothers, in 2003 the college's bylaws were changed to allow the election of a non-Christian Brother to the presidency if no qualified Brother exists or steps forward. James A. Donahue, a committed and engaged Roman Catholic, became the first non-Christian Brother to serve as president in the 150-year history of Saint Mary's on July 1, 2013.
Academics
There are four schools at Saint Mary's: the School of Liberal Arts, the School of Science, the School of Economics and Business Administration, and the Kalmanovitz School of Education. Saint Mary's College is a liberal arts institution, and the majority of undergraduate students are in the School of Liberal Arts. However, the most popular major is Business Administration. This is followed by Psychology, Communication, Kinesiology, and Accounting. The average class size is 19, with a student faculty ratio of 13:1. 91% of classes are taught by full-time faculty, of which 95% hold the highest degree in their fields. There are 40 academic majors, with an option to create your own major. Most Saint Mary's faculty are required to teach six courses per year (three per semester).
The School of Science has in the past few years grown as a result of a new science building, Brousseau Hall, which has made the college more appealing to students wishing to major in the life sciences.
Saint Mary's is unique in its creation of Liberal Education for Arts Professionals, or LEAP program. LEAP is designed to offer professional dancers a track to a Bachelor of Arts degree through an individualized and comprehensive liberal arts curriculum. In order to meet the needs of a broad community of arts professionals, classes are offered in a hybrid-format (partially in-person, partially online) in San Francisco and New York, and in 2020 a new fully-online version of the program became available in select locations.
The school also has graduate programs in fine arts, kinesiology, education, leadership and business.
Collegiate seminar
In addition to these general education courses, students must take four Collegiate Seminar or Great Books courses. Although based on the academic programs at St. John's College, the Saint Mary's College program consists of only four courses required for all students regardless of major. The first course is offered in the spring of their first year, in the fall of their sophomore year, and then students have the choice of when they want to take the last two courses during their junior and senior years. There is also a seminar course created for transfer students so that they can be just as prepared as their peers in the following seminar courses.
Integral Program
The Integral Liberal Arts Program is a "college-within-a-college", distinct from a major, at Saint Mary's College that incorporates the Seminar method for all of its classes. It was modeled on St. John's College. The Integral Program is a complete four-year Great Books course of study, covering all mathematics, science, religious and language requirements. Instead of taking four classes in addition to the general education, Integral students' entire curriculum, including subjects not traditionally related to the "classics," is in the Seminar style. For example, math is taught through reading and discussing Euclid and Galileo, rather than actually completing numerical problem sets. Although the Seminar portion of the program is twice as long (eight semesters vs. four), moves more quickly and covers more material than the Collegiate Seminar program, it is not an honors program. The program does not have any tests or lectures, however students are expected to complete a substantial amount of reading per night in preparation for classroom discussions. Although seminal works such as the Bible and the writings of some theologians are organic to the Western Canon, the program itself is non-religious. Classics from cultures other than western are in the Program roughly where they were chronologically introduced into western discourse.
While the Integral Program is housed in the School of Liberal Arts and Integral students receive a Bachelor of Arts degree, Integral Liberal Arts students graduate separately from the Liberal Arts majors. Many students go on to graduate school for pre-med or pre-law studies.
January Term
January Term is an academic session in which during the month of January students are required to take one class and encouraged to take one outside their major. Jan Term classes are more intensive than a normal fall or spring class. Instead of meeting two or three times a week, they meet four times a week for two and a half hours. Students must take four Jan Term classes to graduate. This differs from many colleges at which January Term or "Intersession" is optional. Each year, a committee meets to determine the year's January Term theme, and the process includes a vote of the final three selections by the community. Classes during January Term range from Shakespeare to Star Trek, and students have the option to travel abroad for their January class. There are also optional quarter credit classes for January Term and during the semesters, such as digital photography or weight training.
Rankings
Athletics
Saint Mary's has 17 Division I teams, competing in the West Coast Conference. The nickname of Saint Mary's sports teams is the Gaels, which had been given to the school's football team in 1926 by Pat Frayne, a writer for the San Francisco Call- Bulletin. The school's previous nickname was the Saints although the Baseball team still kept the nickname the Phoenix up until the 1940s.
The men's basketball team is recognized nationally as one of the top mid-major programs in the country; in 2010, it made it to the NCAA Sweet Sixteen.
The Gaels are also known for their strong pursuit of Australian talent, such as NBA players Patty Mills and Matthew Dellavedova. Chants such as "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi" are common among students, and an Australian flag now hangs from the back wall of Saint Mary's basketball arena, McKeon Pavilion during games. This has also given the college a big following in Australia, with most basketball games shown on ESPN Australia/New Zealand. Recently, point guard Matthew Dellavedova was named WCC Player of the Year in 2012 and became the first male athlete at Saint Mary's to earn first-team Capital One Academic All-America honors. In 2013, he broke school records becoming the all-time leader in scoring, assists, and three-pointers.
In 2011, the men's soccer team won the West Coast Conference title, beating the University of San Diego, 1–0, giving Saint Mary's an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament and their first-ever WCC title. In the first round Saint Mary's defeated No. 25 CSU Bakersfield 1–0 to send them to the next round. The second round was played against UC Irvine. The Gaels defeated the No. 7 Anteaters, 2–1, in double overtime. The game-winning goal was headed in by Justin Howard in the 103rd minute, sending Saint Mary's into the "Sweet Sixteen". The third round of the NCAA Tournament saw the Gaels against Brown University, beating the Bears in overtime 3–2, at Stevenson Field. The win over the Bears sent the Gaels into the "Elite Eight," making it only the second team in school history to make it to the Elite Eight along with the 1959 men's basketball team. Saint Mary's lost to the University of North Carolina in the Quarter Finals, 2–0. The participation of the men's soccer team in the 2011 NCAA Tournament was the most successful postseason run in Saint Mary's history.
In 2012, the Gaels' golf team took the program's first-ever WCC title, and junior Ben Geyer became just the fourth Saint Mary's player to take home medalist honors in the tournament's 41-year history. Head coach Scott Hardy earned his seventh WCC Coach of the Year honor after leading the team to the 2013 title – the first back-to-back championship in program history. He earned his eight WCC Coach of the Year honors in 2015.
In 2001, the women's basketball and soccer teams competed in their respective NCAA tournaments, with both teams advancing to the second round. The women's volleyball team advanced to the "Sweet Sixteen" in 2004. Women's tennis, softball and volleyball won the WCC Conference championships and went on to play in NCAA postseason tournaments. The 2010 and 2013 women's tennis teams won WCC championships and the program has advanced to 4-straight NCAA tournaments, the most consecutive invitations to NCAA tournament play of any Saint Mary's athletic program.
Another successful sports program at Saint Mary's is rugby, which, though not well known in the United States generally, is the oldest athletic club at Saint Mary's. The men's rugby team enjoyed a rise in the past few years and won the school's first national championship on May 10, 2014, beating Life University 21-6 to win the USA Rugby D1A title at Stanford University. The team frequently is ranked among the top teams in the country, competing with large high-profile schools such as California, Ohio State, and the military academies. In 2008, it reached the Final Four of the USA Rugby Division One National Championship tournament, losing to California 41–31 in the semi-finals, and was also ranked at #2 in the nation for Division 1 Collegiate Rugby at the season's end. In 2011, it competed in the National 7s and in 2012, after beating No.1 ranked California 20 –18 in Moraga, the team finished the regular season undefeated in the Pacific Coast Conference and ranked No. 2 in the country. It defeated Utah 25–15 in the D1-A quarterfinals before falling to Arkansas State in the semifinals. In 2015, the Saint Mary's Men's Rugby team clinched the national D1-A title for the second year in a row when it beat Life University 30-24 at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
Saint Mary's College was once known for its American football team led by Edward "Slip" Madigan, which dominated west coast football, indeed beating USC and California during the thirties, and with several wins against eastern powerhouses during the 20s, 30s, and 40s including winning the 1939 Cotton Bowl by narrowly defeating favored Texas Tech 20 to 13. The Gaels were known for their flashy style that reflected the personality of their flamboyant coach. Madigan traveled to New York for the Fordham game with 150 fans on a train that was labelled "the world's longest bar." To stir up publicity for the game, he threw a party the night before and invited not only sportswriters, but such celebrities as Babe Ruth and New York mayor Jimmy Walker. They dropped the sport in 2004.
Currently, 60% of the students who attend Saint Mary's are involved with organized athletics. There are 13 club sports teams that they have the opportunity to participate in as well as Intramural teams and NCAA. Student-athletes from Saint Mary's graduate at the second-highest success rate among all California Division 1 Institutions, according to data released by NCAA.
Museum of Art
The Museum of Art, originally named the Hearst Art Gallery, is the only accredited art museum in Contra Costa County. The museum houses the largest collection of William Keith paintings.
The Hearst Art Gallery, built with the aid of a grant from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, opened in 1977 to replace a smaller William Keith Gallery started by Brother Fidelis Cornelius. Brother Cornelius was an art professor and Keith biographer who had built the Keith Collection and established the original William Keith Gallery at Saint Mary's in 1934.
Student life
As a Lasallian school, community service plays a big role on campus. The Catholic Institute for Lasallian Social Action coordinates most service work on campus, and each year students perform many hours of community service. On the first Saturday of every other month, they have the opportunity to participate in "Saturday of Service" where Saint Mary's students branch out all across the Bay Area and serve their community.
Because Saint Mary's is located in the Bay Area, students have many options of off-campus activities. Student organizations such as the Campus Activities Board and the Residence Hall Association send students to various sporting events, concerts, and activities around the Bay Area.
The campus has a chapel in which Mass is held daily on weekdays and twice on Sundays. The main student Mass is on Sundays at 8 p.m. There are several priests who work on campus, many of whom also teach classes and there is also a chaplain who regularly officiates mass. It is not a requirement to be Catholic in order to attend Saint Mary's, and students do not have to take courses in Catholicism (two general Religious Studies classes are required, an introductory course of the Bible and Its Interpretation and an elective of the student's choosing). However around 50% of Saint Mary's undergraduate students are Catholic. Many students are also involved in community service. Nearly 10 percent of every graduating class goes on to join a major service organization: the Peace Corps, the Lasallian Volunteers, Teach for America, or the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.
The college has a weekly newspaper called The Collegian and a radio station, KSMC 89.5. The campus also has access to the Saint Mary's Magazine and the weekly SMC Bulletin.
Campus
All first-year students at Saint Mary's live on campus. 55% of the total student population lives on campus. There are six first year residence halls (Augustine, Justin, Mitty, De La Salle, Aquinas and Assumption Halls). All first year residence halls (with the exception of Aquinas) are set up "community style," in which two or three students usually share a room and the entire floor shares a central bathroom. Floors are usually separated by sex in first year halls (because of the shared bathrooms). The only exceptions are Aquinas hall which has students live in suites with their own bathroom, and the first floor of Assumption, which is coeducational with separate bathrooms for each sex. Currently, first years living on campus are guaranteed a spot on campus for their second year. Sophomores live in Becket Hall, More Hall, North and South Claeys Halls, and Ageno A, B, and C Halls. All of these halls are "suite" style living and each suite comes with three or four bedrooms, accommodates six students, and has its own bathroom and shower. Floors on suite buildings are co-ed.
Juniors and seniors enter into a housing lottery to determine if they can live on campus. Many upperclassmen live in "townhouse" buildings: Ageno East and West, Guerreri East and West, Freitas, Thille, Syufy and Sabatte Halls. All townhouses come with two or three bedrooms (accommodating five to six students), a bathroom and shower, kitchen and living room. Upperclassmen also live off-campus in Moraga, Orinda, Lafayette, and Walnut Creek. Upperclassmen resident advisers, as well as a few other upperclassmen, live in the traditionally freshman and sophomore halls. All residence hall rooms are fully furnished and come with two phones with free long distance, free Internet, and free TV cable outlet. Others often choose to live at home if they are within half an hour of campus. In addition to several student resident advisers, each residence hall also has at least one resident director, who is a Brother or a faculty or staff member and lives in the residence hall.
There are four Living Learning Communities on campus. The Honors/Science living learning community is available only for first years and is located in Assumption Hall. Live-in tutors specializing in the sciences and the humanities – along with live-in faculty – help to create this intellectually stimulating and supportive community. The International Community is located in Claeys Hall North, where both international and domestic students can learn skills important in both cross-cultural communication and living globally. The Lasallian Community is a community of sophomores living in Becket Hall. They participate in a class, service and community time together and are focused on learning the life and principles of Saint John Baptist De La Salle. The Santiago Community is a community of juniors and Seniors living in Ageno West who are focused on a Faith, Service, and Community aspect, and learning about Br. James Santiago Miller who died when his work to educate the poor came in opposition to the military powers.
The majority of classes are held in Galileo, Dante and Garaventa halls, which each have three floors. Most of the professors' offices are also in these halls. A science building, known as Brousseau Hall was built in 2000. Sichel Hall is a smaller, media-oriented classroom building used by the Communication Department, and Syufy Performing Arts Hall houses large and small practice rooms for arts students. The newest building on campus is Filippi Academic Hall, which houses the School of Education. The library, St. Albert Hall, is located near the freshmen dorms.
The cafeteria is called Oliver Hall and its neighbor, Dryden Hall has recently been retrofitted into overflow seating for Oliver Hall and is also used for other events around campus. The Cassin Student Union is a student lounge, adjacent to Dryden. Attached to Cassin is Café Louis, a coffee shop, which is operated by Sodexo, the same company that runs the dining hall. Other spaces often used by students are the Delphine Intercultural Center, the Women's Resource Center and the bookstore.
Athletics facilities include McKeon Pavilion (basketball and volleyball), Saint Mary's Stadium (soccer and rugby), Madigan Gym, Louis Guisto Field (baseball), Cottrell Field (softball) as well as additional soccer, rugby and intramural fields. The college also operates Timothy Korth Tennis Complex and frequently hosts conference, area and regional tennis tournaments. In March 2015, the College opened the new Joseph L. Alioto Recreation Center.
Two other important buildings are the Soda Activity Center and the Lefevre Theatre, where various events are held. There is also St. Albert Hall Library and the Saint Mary's Museum of Art. All buildings on campus except Assumption Hall are named after an important person in the Catholic religion or a person important to the school.
There is a cross at the top of a hill on campus and a large concrete "SMC" on top of one of the surrounding hills, which gets painted frequently by student groups around campus.
Semester schedules
Saint Mary's has a "4–1–4" system, similar to Middlebury College: fall semester, January Term, and spring semester. Students are given three weeks off for Christmas following fall semester, one week off following Jan-Term, and one week in the middle of spring semester for Easter. Fall semester usually begins the Monday before Labor Day and runs through the second week of December. Graduation is usually the third or fourth week of May.
Classes meet for an hour and five minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or for an hour and thirty-five minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, beginning in the fall semester of 2006, classes midday on Monday and Friday were changed to an hour and a half, freeing up time during the middle of the day on Wednesday for what the college calls "community time," during which events can be scheduled by various campus groups. No classes are held during community time.
Notable alumni
Some of Saint Mary's notable alumni include:
Rose Aguilar, journalist
Mahershala Ali, (1996), former Gaels men's basketball player, actor, two-time Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actor for his roles in Moonlight and Green Book
Joseph Alioto (1937), (dec.) former mayor of San Francisco
Maria Elena Durazo, a politician serving in the California State Senate
Brother Alfred Brousseau (1928), (dec.) mathematician, wrote on the Fibonacci numbers. The recently built science building is named after him.
Corbin Burnes, Major League Baseball (MLB) pitcher for the Milwaukee Brewers
Tom Candiotti (1980), MLB knuckleball pitcher for five teams
Adam Caporn, former Gaels men's basketball player, former Australian National Team member, and current men's basketball assistant coach (left after sophomore year to play professionally in Australia)
Pete Constant M.A., Councilman for the First District, City of San Jose, California
Mark Curtis (Doctorate of Education, 2012), news anchor, reporter, author and political analyst at WLNE-TV ABC 6 Providence, Rhode Island. Formerly of KTVU-TV2 Oakland.
Bob Delaney M.A., former NBA referee
Matthew Dellavedova (2013), 2016 NBA Champion and point guard for the Melbourne United of the NBL and for the Australian National Team
Brian Doyle-Murray, American comedian, screenwriter, actor and voice actor
Don Ferrarese, professional baseball player, 1955 to 1962
Jim Garrett, NFL coach and scout
Tony Gonsolin, MLB pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers
LaDonna Harris M.A., Chief Probation Officer, Alameda County, California
Robert Hass (1963), Poet Laureate of the United States, 1995–97
Von Hayes (1981), MLB All-Star outfielder and minor league manager
John F. Henning (1938) Executive Secretary-Treasurer of the California Labor Federation and U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand
Ken Hofmann (1945), former owner, Oakland Athletics; developer
Harry Hooper (1907), (dec.) Hall of Fame MLB player
Bill Howerton, professional baseball player in MLB
J. J. Jelincic, CalPERS Board Member (elected), former President of the California State Employees Association
John Henry Johnson (1953), Pro Football Hall of Fame
Frank Kudelka, (1948), former NBA player
Richard E. Ladner (1965), known for Ladner's theorem, Fellow of the IEEE and Association for Computing Machinery
Bob Ladouceur (1989), head football coach, De La Salle High School in Concord, California, holder of longest high school winning streak (151 games)
Mickey McConnell (2011), WCC Player of the Year, Mid Major All-American, professional basketball player, 31st round pick in 2011 MLB draft
Tony Martin (1935), entertainer; member, Hollywood Walk of Fame
John McLiam, Canadian-American actor
Tom Meschery (1961), professional basketball player; teacher and poet
George P. Miller (1912), (dec.) Member of Congress from California, 1945–1973
Patty Mills, 2014 NBA Champion and point guard for the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA and for the Australian National Team
Pete Morelli, NFL referee and president of St. Mary's High School in Stockton, California
Troy L. Nunley B.A., United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California
Kaya Oakes (1997), writer, poet, and professor
Don Perata (1967), President Pro Tempore and Senator, California State Senate, 1998–2008 (President Pro Tempore 2004–2008)
Tami Reller M.B.A., Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Microsoft Windows
Greg Reyes (1984), former Chairman & CEO, Brocade Communication; ownership group, San Jose Sharks
Jason Shellen (1996), Internet entrepreneur and founding Google Reader project manager; sits on Saint Mary's College Board of Regents
Diamon Simpson (2009), basketball player in the Israel Basketball Premier League
Melanie Stansbury (2002), scientist and New Mexico state representative
Tracee Talavera (1990), gymnastics national champion, Olympic medalist, and USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame member
Mark Teahen (2002) MLB third baseman
Louella Tomlinson (2011) Australian professional basketball player
Patrick Wisdom, MLB infielder for the Chicago Cubs
Carl Wu (1974), Bloomberg Distinguished Professorship at the Johns Hopkins University
See also
List of World War II military service football teams
Association for Core Texts and Courses, headquartered at Saint Mary's
Lasallian educational institutions
References
External links
SMC Athletics website
Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland
California Historical Landmarks
Lasallian colleges and universities
Universities and colleges in Contra Costa County, California
Educational institutions established in 1863
1863 establishments in California
Schools accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges
Catholic universities and colleges in California
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities
Liberal arts colleges in California | en |
doc-en-6166 | Pekarangan () is a type of tropical home garden developed in Indonesia, mainly in Java. Pekarangans typically contain plants, while some possess animals (including farmed fish, ruminants, poultry, and wild animals) and structures such as pens and bird cages. The gardens yield food for subsistence and income, and plants for ornamental use. Along with their subsistence and commercial uses, they are used for social interactions and yield sharing and provide materials for cultural ceremonies and religious practices. Some pekarangans are made, maintained, and spatially arranged according to local values. Home gardens of this kind may have existed for several thousand years, but their first mention is found in a Javanese chronicle that was written in 860 AD. In 2010, around of Indonesian land were used for gardens of this sort.
The sustainability and social roles of pekarangans have been threatened by mass urbanization and land fragmentation, which are the factors of decreasing land dwelling area on average. The decrease is consequently followed by loss of plant diversity within the gardens. Additionally, some owners deliberately reduce the plant diversity to optimize yields for commercial purposes. Problems such as pest outbreaks and a rise in household debts have appeared due to the degraded sustainability of the gardens.
Throughout the history of Java, pekarangans have been of little interest to the governments that have ruled the island due to their minimal susceptibility to yield extraction. In the 2010s, they have gained the attention of the Indonesian government implemented through P2KP (Percepatan Penganekaragaman Konsumsi Pangan), a program focused on urban and peri-urban areas that aims to optimize production with a sustainable approach.
Definition
In Indonesian, pekarangan can be translated as "land that surrounds a house", "a house's yard", or "plotted land for house construction". However, the term is widely used in scientific literature, specifically in agroforestry and environmental topics, to mean "home gardens". The word pekarangan may be derived from karang, which means "perennial crops".
Scholars offer various definitions of the term "pekarangan". According to Sajogyo, it is a plot adjacent to a house, used part-time. Totok Mardikanto and Sri Sutami define it as a plot surrounding a house; most of its kind are fenced, and usually planted with dense plants with various annual and perennial plants for daily and commercial use. Euis Novitasari considers "pekarangan" to be a form of land use: a system of small-scale additional food production by members and a family, that is also an ecosystem with a densely layered canopy. Further, she describes it as having a clear boundary and containing elements such as the owner's house, a kitchen, a pen, and fences. Simatupang and Suryana argue that it is hard to define "pekarangan" clearly, since its role can vary from a form of farmland to a homestead plot.
Elements
Plants
A pekarangan generally consists of annual and perennial plants combined; they can be harvested daily or seasonally. Some perennials such as melinjo (Gnetum gnemon) produce leaves consistently. Some other perennials such as coconut, jackfruit, banana, and salak produce fruit all year round. Other perennials' fruiting periods are limited: for example, the semarang guava (Syzygium aqueum) fruits from April to June, mangoes fruit during July and August, and durians (Durio zibethinus) from June to September. Perennials are more common than annuals in pekarangans in regions where rice fields use more than 40 percent of the region's area; elsewhere the situation is reversed, and annuals are more common, though if labor is in short supply, perennials are again favored. Trees are one of the most common components of home gardens, contributing to the image of Indonesian countryside with houses less visible than the "dense, forest mimics" of pekarangans.
In Sundanese pekarangans, ornamental plants, and crops such as cloves, oranges, and mangoes are frequently planted in the front patch, as these are valuable plants that homeowners want to keep an eye on. Starchy crops, medicinal plants, and cash crops are more frequent in the front and back plots, and less in the side plots. Coffee might be used as a hedge in the side and back yards; ornamental plants might have a similar function in front yards. Vegetables are habitually grown in front and side areas to be exposed to light, as tall trees are rare in those areas. Trees with large canopies might be planted in front yards, providing shade for children. Coconuts, fruit trees, and tall trees whose woods are used for construction are planted in back gardens to avoid damage to the house when any of them falls due to a storm. Most plants propagate without intentional human intervention—this natural process is called janteun ku anjeun in Sundanese—due to seed scattering by birds, mammals, or humans after they eat. Because of this, no clear spatial arrangement is found in Sundanese back gardens.
Plants in Javanese and Sundanese pekarangans, among them annual plants cultivated in the dry season (e.g. eggplants), are habitually grown near water sources such as fish ponds, open sewage ditches, and wells. Plants that need high levels of nutrients, such as banana, mango, jackfruit, and other fruit plants, are planted close to garbage dumps. Meanwhile, crops frequently harvested for cooking, such as chili peppers, langua, lemongrass, and tomatoes, are planted near the kitchen.
Animals
Some owners of pekarangans keep livestock and poultry (traditionally chickens, goats, and sheep), usually in a household pen. These are usually allowed to roam around the gardens, village areas, and traditional markets to find food on their own. They are penned at night and are usually given additional feed. Other common domestic animals kept in pekarangans are fishes in ponds and songbirds (e.g. zebra dove, Geopelia striata), which are kept in cages on bamboo poles. The economic status of pekarangan owners plays a role in livestock ownership; lower-class owners tend to own several chickens whereas middle-class owners might have a goat or a sheep, and high-class owners may own several cows or water buffaloes. Livestock manure acts as an organic fertilizer for the gardens via composting, and sometimes a nutritional source for pond fishes.
Productive fish ponds are common in Sundanese traditional pekarangans. The fishes are fed with kitchen waste supplemented by animal and human waste. Villagers avoid the domestic use of fish pond water and instead use water from higher-ground water pipes.
The gardens may have a high diversity of soil fauna. According to Widyastuti, the soil fauna diversity in the gardens is suggested to be higher than that of teak forests. The diversity might be caused by the vegetation, which protects soil fauna from direct sunshine, especially in the dry season. Otto Soemarwoto and Gordon Conway accounted that the gardens are also believed to be "a good habitat" for reptiles and amphibians.
There are different findings in relation to wild birds. A high diversity of birds, including legally protected species, within the gardens were recorded in a West Java research while another study in Jambi suggests individual pekarangans are not effective as a means to conserve bird communities. This is because of the edge effects of their irregular shapes, their frequent disturbance, and their proximity to roads and houses. The pekarangans used for the Jambi study had unusually low levels of plant diversity, which may account for the results. Despite this, the gardens apparently still attract birds due to their food resources. A similar finding was repeated in a separate West Java study, indicating children shoot birds in the gardens and take their eggs while adults kill or chase them due to the perception of them as pests.
Ecology
Plant diversity in pekarangans arises from complex interactions between several factors that are not fully understood. These include environmental stability, the tropical climate that is favorable to plant growth, and their close proximity to the owners' domestic activities. Other natural factors are size, temperature decrease due to elevation, precipitation, and climatic events like El Niño. Anthropological factors include individual preferences and market proximity.
The diversity of plants aids individual plants to adapt to a changing environment, helping them survive in the long term. The biodiversity in the multi-layered system also helps to optimize solar energy and carbon harvesting, cool the domestic climate, protect the soil from erosion, and accommodate habitats for wild plants and animals. The genetic diversity also gives protection from the effects of pests and diseases. As an example, the abundance of insectivorous birds in the gardens helps control pests, helping the garden remain productive.
While on per individual basis pekarangans store only small amounts of carbon due to their size, on per area basis they hold an amount of carbon that is similar to primary or secondary forests, and greatly surpassing Imperata grasslands and fallow lands.
Natural factors
Plant diversity in pekarangans tends to increase as their size increases. Diversity of crop species, however, might reach a plateau in very large gardens. Larger pekarangans have a lower density of crop species because of more constant cultivation patterns. A pekarangan smaller than is insufficient for plant diversity and crop production. Some plant types, such as trees higher than 10 meters (33 ft), spice plants, and industrial crops are almost not present in gardens of or less. Home gardens in Java tend to be smaller; the majority of them are smaller than , as suggested by a report from 2004. Meanwhile, similar gardens in other Indonesian islands tend to be larger. Their average size is estimated to be ; a few reach the size of .
Pekarangans at high altitudes tend to have a smaller size, increased density of plants, and a smaller range of plant diversity. As altitude increases, temperature decreases, limiting plant diversity. Coconuts and fruit trees tend to develop better in lower-altitude pekarangans while vegetables tend to grow better at higher altitudes.
Pekarangans with better access to water—either by climate or by proximity to water resources—are able to facilitate annual crop cultivation. Those in West Java, when observed, perform better in accommodating plant diversity when the wet season occurs than in the dry season. The climatic conditions of Java enable the consistent growth of annual plants in its pekarangans, even in parts of East Java where the climate is drier.
Canopy in those gardens functions as a protection from intense raindrops. Most of their plants' heights are less than a meter, slowing down raindrops when they hit the soil. Leaf litter also helps protecting the soil against erosion. The role of plant canopies in consistently producing organic litter is believed to be more important in reducing erosion than its direct speed-reducing effects on raindrops. Nevertheless, gardens are less effective than natural forests in erosion reduction.
Human impact
Harvesting of rice—the dominant staple of Indonesia—influence the use of pekarangans in some ways. Production in the gardens decreases during rice-harvesting seasons but peaks during the rest of the year. Lower-class villagers benefit from the consistent productivity of starch crops in the gardens, especially in a period of food shortage pre-rice harvest or after a failed rice harvest by drought.
Settlement dynamics affect pekarangans in various ways. Expansion of settlements to new lands, caused by population growth, is the cause of the wide presence of food crops in newly made pekarangans. People who resettled via the Indonesian transmigration program might support plant diversity in the gardens in the places they migrate to. Plant species brought by internal migrants need to adapt well to the local environment.
Commercialization, fragmentation, and urbanization are major hazards to pekarangans' plant diversity. These change the organic cycles within the gardens, threatening their ecological sustainability. Commercialization requires a systemic change of crop planting. To optimize and produce more crops, a pekarangan's owner must specialize in its crops, making a small number of crops dominate the garden. Some owners turn them into monoculture gardens. Fragmentation stems from the traditional system of inheritance. Consequences from the reduction of plant diversity include the loss of canopy structures and organic litter, resulting in less protection of the gardens' soil; loss of pest-control agents, increasing the use of pesticides; loss of production stability; loss of nutrients' diversity; and the disappearance of yields-sharing culture. Despite urbanization's negative effect in reducing their plant diversity, it increases that of the ornamental plants.
A case study of home gardens in Napu Valley, Central Sulawesi, shows that the decrease in soil protection is caused by insufficient soil fertility management, regular weeding and waste burning, dumping waste in garbage pits instead of using it for compost, and spread of inorganic waste. The decrease of soil fertility worsens the decrease of crop diversity in the gardens.
Uses
Subsistence
Products from pekarangans have multiple uses; for example, a coconut tree can provide food, oil, fuel, and building materials, and also be used in rituals and ceremonies. The gardens' plants are known for their products' nutritional benefits and diversity. While rice is low in vitamins A and C, products from the gardens offer an abundance of them. Pekarangans with more perennial crops tend to create more carbohydrates and proteins, and those with more annual plants tend to create more portions of vitamin A. Pekarangans also act as a source of firewood and building materials.
Lower-class families tend to consume more leafy vegetables than the upper-class ones, due to their consistent availability and low price. Low-class families also favor bigger use of fuel sources from the gardens. Pekarangans in villages act as subsistence systems for families rather than an income source. In areas such as Gunung Kidul, food-producing uses of the gardens are more dominant than crop fields due to soil erosion in these regions.
Commercial
In urban and suburban areas, major fruit production centers, and tourist destination regions, pekarangans tend to act as an income generator. Income from the gardens is mostly from perennial crops. Good market access stimulates the cultivation of commercial crops within the gardens. Other factors that influence their economic significance are their area and the demand for a particular crop.
According to a 1991 article, the poor cultivate subsistence plants in their pekarangans with an emphasis on fruits and vegetables, while the rich tend to plant more ornamental plants and cash crops with higher economic value. An article from 2006 also concludes that the importance of commercial plants increases with owners' wealth. A study in Sriharjo, Yogyakarta Special Region, concludes that poorer pekarangan owners orient toward commercial uses while richer owners orient toward subsistence uses. Ann Stoler argued that as a rural family acquire more area of rice field, garden use becomes less intense, up until the family-owned rice field reach around , the minimal size typically needed to feed one family. Past this point, garden use starts to increase.
Other uses
The buruan (Sundanese for "front yard"), part of a Sundanese pekarangan, is used as a children's playground and adults' gathering place. Integrated with local customs and philosophies such as rukun and tri-hita-karana, the gardens aid other social interactions such as yield-sharing, ceremonies, and religious activities. Especially in urban areas, pekarangans also function as aesthetic ornaments of a house, mainly the front yard.
Sociology and economy
Pekarangans are mainly developed by women. Forms of such gardens in matriarchal tribes and societies, e.g. Minangkabau, Aceh, and communities in the 1960s Central Java, are more developed than in tribes that tend to be patriarchal, e.g. Batak. For the same reason, matriarchal culture around the gardens started to develop, such as the requirement for the permission of a landowner's wife before selling a plot of land they own – this happens in cities like Tegal. A female-led household would orient their use of the gardens toward household needs. In Madura, however, home gardens are described as the domain of men. Nevertheless, a pekarangan in general, regardless of the culture, is considered a responsibility of the entire family, including their offspring and the offspring's families. The men prepare the land prior to home garden use, plant tree crops, and sell the garden's crops, while women plant annual crops.
In a 2004 report, Javanese pekarangans are suggested to have higher net income-per-area than rice fields. The same report argued that the cost of the Javanese gardens' production is lower than that of rice fields. People who focus on the gardens' production instead of rice fields may gain better yields than their counterparts. Poor villagers, however, tend not to concentrate efforts toward the gardens; maintenance of the gardens as a sole income source would require the use of high-risk, high-reward crops, more intensive care, and income would be vulnerable to market fluctuations. Maintenance of diverse cash crops is more intense than that of rice fields and the intensity would make the villagers' gardening schedule less adaptable to rice farming activities.
In some cases, people are allowed to build houses in the pekarangans of others in exchange for doing work for their owners. The gardens, however, tend to have a low demand for labor, offering minimal labor opportunities.
Culture
The philosophy of living harmoniously, referred to as rukun, is followed by the Javanese and Sundanese; offering yields from pekarangans to others is believed to be the medium of such culture. This can be done by offering its products to their neighbors, for example during events such as births, deaths, weddings, and cultural events like the Javanese new year and the Mawlid (observance of the birthday of Muhammad). Some offer their products to cure diseases or to protect owners from dangers. Their products are also given during daily life, especially in rural areas. A rural pekarangan owner usually allows others to enter it for any practical reason: taking dead wood for fuel, pulling water from a well for their own use, or even taking its crops, though permission might be restricted or denied if the owner has only a limited yield for his or her own consumption. Requests to take products from the gardens for religious or medicinal purposes are rarely or never denied, but since some people believe asking permission to take medicinal plants in a pekarangan is taboo, they may also be taken without explicit permission.
Javanese culture interpreted the gardens as pepek ing karang – "a complete design". It can also be interpreted as pepek teng karangan, which, according to the anthropologist Oekan Abdoellah is a way of thinking, indicating agricultural practices within the gardens are a consequence of thinking about the ways to use their produce and satisfy their needs from them. Javanese culture, however, takes offense at the gardens' comparison with forests due to the low social value of forest in the culture. Wayang puppet plays depict forests as "places where wild animals and evil spirits reign" and its clearing, which is done only by men who are believed to have spiritual powers, is viewed as a respectable deed. The backyard of a Sundanese homestead is described as supados sungkur (to be unseen by others).
Associations of plants in Javanese pekarangans tend to be more complex than those in Sundanese pekarangans. In Javanese gardens, owners also tend to cultivate medicinal plants (jamu) while the Sundanese tend to grow vegetables and ornamental plants.
The Sundanese language has names for each part of a pekarangan. The front yard is called buruan, a space for a garden shed, ornamental plants, fruit trees, a children's playground, benches, and crop-drying. The side yard (pipir) is used for wood trees, crops, medicinal herbs, a fish pond, well, and a bathroom. The side yard is also a space for cloth-dying. The back yard (kebon) is used to cultivate vegetable plants, spice plants, an animal pent, and industrial plants.
Pekarangans in Lampung have their own elements; alongside plants are feet-washing places used before entering into a house's veranda (gakhang hadap), a rice-storage room (walai), an outdoor kitchenette or kitchen, a firewood-storage place, and livestock barn. The front yard is called tengahbah/terambah/beruan, the side yard is kebik/kakebik, and the back yard is kudan/juyu/kebon.
Balinese pekarangans are influenced by the philosophy of tri-hita-karana that divides spaces into parahyangan (top, head, pure), pawongan (middle, body, neutral), and palemahan (below, feet, impure). The parahyangan area of a Balinese pekarangan faces Mount Agung, which is regarded as a sacred place (prajan) to pray (sanggah). Plants with flowers and leaves that are regularly picked and used for Balinese Hinduism liturgical purposes are planted in the parahyangan area. The pawongan area is planted with regular flowers, fruits, and leaves. The palemahan area is planted with fruits, stems, leaves, and tubers. Balinese back yards, which are known in Tabanan and Karangasem as teba, are used as a place to cultivate crops and keep livestock for subsistence, commercial, and religious use as offerings. The Balinese further developed beliefs about what plants should and should not be planted in various parts of their pekarangans, following the teachings from the Taru Premana manuscript. As an example, nerium and bougainvillea are believed to emit positive auras while planted in the parahyangan/sanggah area of a pekarangan while negative auras are believed to appear if they are planted in front of the bale daja, a building specifically placed in the north part of a dwelling.
Taneyan, a Madurese kind of pekarangan, is used to dry crops and for traditional rituals and family ceremonies. Taneyan is a part of the traditional dwelling system of taneyan lanjhang – a multiple-family household, whose spatial composition is laid out according to the bappa, babbhu, guru, rato (father, mother, teacher, leader) philosophy that shows the order of respected figures in the Madurese culture.
History and development
By 1902, pekarangans occupied of land in Java, and the area increased to in 1937 and in 1986. In 2000, they occupied about . Indonesia as a whole had of such gardens. The number peaked at about in 2010.
Central Java is considered the pekarangans' center of origin, according to Oekan Abdoellah et al.; the gardens later spread to East Java in the twelfth century. Soemarwoto and Conway proposed that early forms of pekarangan date back to several thousand years ago but the first-known record of them is a Javanese charter from 860. During the Dutch colonial era, pekarangans were referred to as erfcultuur. In the eighteenth century, Javanese pekarangans had already so influenced West Java that they had partly replaced talun (a local form of mixed gardens) there. Since pekarangans contain many species, which mature at different times throughout the year, it has been difficult for governments throughout Javanese history to tax them systematically. In 1990, this difficulty caused the Indonesian government to forbid the reduction of rice fields in favor of pekarangans. Such difficulty might have helped the gardens to become more complex over time. Despite that, past governments still tried to tax the gardens.
Effects of economic and population growth in the late 20th century
Since the 1970s, Indonesia had observed economic growth rooted in the Indonesian government's five-year development plans (Repelita), which were launched in 1969. The economic growth helped increase the numbers of middle-class and upper-class families, resulting in better life and higher demand for quality products, including fruits and vegetables. Pekarangans in urban, suburban, and main fruit production areas adapted its efforts to increase their products' quality but this resulted in a reduction of biological diversity in the gardens, leading to an increased vulnerability to pests and plant diseases. Some disease outbreaks in commercial pekarangans occurred in the 1980s and the 1990s, such as the citrus greening disease that damaged many mandarin orange trees and the spread of the pathogenic fungi Phyllosticta, which affected almost 20% of clove trees in West Java. This vulnerability also affected their owners' economic and social conditions; owners became more susceptible to debt, the sharing culture in traditional commercial pekarangans vanished, and the poor enjoyed fewer rights from them.
Government programs
The Indonesian government launched a campaign in October 1951, namely Karang Kitri, which aimed to persuade communities to plant trees in their home gardens and other types of land. There was no incentive given in the campaign. The campaign ended in 1960. Use of pekarangans was included in a program by the Indonesian government in 1991 under a program called Diversifikasi Pangan dan Gizi ("Food and Nutrition Diversification").
Since the early 2010s, the government, through the Ministry of Agriculture, runs a pekarangan development program named Percepatan Penganekaragaman Konsumsi Pangan (P2KP, "Acceleration on Food Diversification") that is focused in urban and semi-urban areas. The program applies its agenda to a concept named Kawasan Rumah Pangan Lestari (KRPL; "Sustainable Food Houses Region"). P2KP was begun under the Indonesian Presidential Regulation No. 22 Year 2009. There is also an urban women-focused program named Gerakan Perempuan untuk Optimalisasi Pekarangan (GPOP; "Women's Movement for Pekarangan Optimization").
In addition to the national programs, some regions of Indonesia have implemented their own pekarangan use programs. The government of East Java launched a program called Rumah Hijau ("Green House") in 2010. The provincial government later collaborated with the Ministry of Agriculture to improve upon the Rumah Hijau program based on KRPL prototypes in Pacitan, making a new program named Rumah Hijau Plus-Plus.
References
Works cited
Gardening
Agroforestry systems
Indonesian culture
Landscape architecture | en |
doc-en-611 | The Great Seljuk Empire or the Seljuk Empire, was a high medieval Turko-Persian Sunni Muslim empire, originating from the Qiniq branch of Oghuz Turks. At the time of its greatest extent, the Seljuk Empire controlled a vast area, stretching from western Anatolia and the Levant in the west to the Hindu Kush in the east, and from Central Asia in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south.
The Seljuk empire was founded in 1037 by Tughril (990–1063) and his brother Chaghri (989–1060). From their homelands near the Aral Sea, the Seljuks advanced first into Khorasan and then into mainland Persia, before eventually conquering Baghdad and eastern Anatolia. The Seljuks won the battle of Manzikert in 1071, and then conquered most of the rest of Anatolia, wresting it from the Byzantine Empire. This was one of the impetuses for the First Crusade (1095–1099). The Seljuk empire began to decline in the 1140s, and by 1194 had been supplanted by the Khwarazmian Empire.
Seljuk gave his name to both the empire and the Seljuk dynasty. The Seljuk empire united the fractured political landscape of the eastern Islamic world and played a key role in both the First Crusade and Second Crusade. The Seljuks also played an important part in the creation and expansion of multiple art forms during the period in which they had influence.
Highly Persianized in culture and language, the Seljuks also played an important role in the development of the Turko-Persian tradition, even exporting Persian culture to Anatolia. The settlement of Turkic tribes in the northwestern peripheral parts of the empire, for the strategic military purpose of fending off invasions from neighboring states, led to the progressive Turkicization of those areas.
History
Founder of the dynasty
The founder of the Seljuq dynasty was an Oghuz Turkic warlord Seljuk. He was reputed to have served in the Khazar army, under whom, the Seljuks migrated to Khwarezm, near the city of Jend, where they converted to Islam in 985. Khwarezm, administered by the Ma'munids, was under the nominal control of the Samanid Empire. By 999 the Samanids fell to the Kara-Khanids in Transoxiana, but the Ghaznavids occupied the lands south of the Oxus. The Seljuks became involved, having supported the last Samanid emir against the Kara-Khanids, in this power struggle in the region before establishing their own independent base.
Expansion of the empire
Tughril and Chaghri
Oghuz Turks, led by the grandson of Seljuk, Tughril, were one of several groups of the Oghuz who made their way to Iran between about 1020 and 1040, first moving south to Transoxiana, and then to Khorasan, initially at the invitation of the local rulers, then under alliances and conflicts. However, prior to the arrival of the Seljuks to Khorasan, other Oghuz Turks were already present in the area: that is, the northern slopes of Kopet Dag mountains, which is principally the region stretching from the Caspian Sea to Marv; what is today - Turkmenistan. Contemporary sources mention places such as Dahistan (Atrek etrap), Farawa (corresponding to Kizyl-Arvat, today's Serdar) and Nasa (still known by this name), as well as Sarakhs and Marv.
After moving into Khorasan, Seljuks under Tughril wrested an empire from the Ghaznavids. Initially the Seljuks were repulsed by Mahmud and retired to Khwarezm, but Tughril and Chaghri led them to capture Merv and Nishapur (1037–1038). Later they repeatedly raided and traded territory with his successor, Mas'ud, across Khorasan and Balkh.
In 1040, at the Battle of Dandanaqan, they decisively defeated Mas'ud I of Ghazni, forcing him to abandon most of his western territories. By 1046, Abbasid caliph al-Qa'im had sent Tughril a diploma recognizing Seljuk rule over Khurasan. In 1048–1049, the Seljuk Turks, commanded by Ibrahim Yinal, uterine brother of Tughril, made their first incursion into the Byzantine frontier region of Iberia and clashed with a combined Byzantine-Georgian army of 50,000 at the Battle of Kapetrou on 10 September 1048. The devastation left behind by the Seljuk raid was so fearful that the Byzantine magnate Eustathios Boilas described, in 1051–1052, those lands as "foul and unmanageable... inhabited by snakes, scorpions, and wild beasts." The Arab chronicler Ibn al-Athir reports that Ibrahim brought back 100,000 captives and a vast booty loaded on the backs of ten thousand camels. In 1055, Tughril entered Baghdad and removed the influence of the Buyid dynasty, under a commission from the Abbasid caliph.
Alp Arslan
Alp Arslan, the son of Chaghri Beg, expanded significantly upon Tughril's holdings by adding Armenia and Georgia in 1064 and invading the Byzantine Empire in 1068, from which he annexed almost all of Anatolia. Arslan's decisive victory at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 effectively neutralized the Byzantine resistance to the Turkish invasion of Anatolia, although the Georgians were able to recover from Alp Arslan's invasion by securing the theme of Iberia. The Byzantine withdrawal from Anatolia brought Georgia in more direct contact with the Seljuks. In 1073 the Seljuk Amirs of Ganja, Dvin and Dmanisi invaded Georgia and were defeated by George II of Georgia, who successfully took the fortress of Kars. A retaliatory strike by the Seljuk Amir Ahmad defeated the Georgians at Kvelistsikhe.
Alp Arslan authorized his Turkmen generals to carve their own principalities out of formerly Byzantine Anatolia, as atabegs loyal to him. Within two years the Turkmens had established control as far as the Aegean Sea under numerous beghliks (modern Turkish beyliks): the Saltukids in Northeastern Anatolia, the Shah-Armens and the Mengujekids in Eastern Anatolia, Artuqids in Southeastern Anatolia, Danishmendis in Central Anatolia, Rum Seljuks (Beghlik of Suleyman, which later moved to Central Anatolia) in Western Anatolia, and the Beylik of Tzachas of Smyrna in İzmir (Smyrna).
Malik Shah I
Under Alp Arslan's successor, Malik Shah, and his two Persian viziers, Nizām al-Mulk and Tāj al-Mulk, the Seljuk state expanded in various directions, to the former Iranian border of the days before the Arab invasion, so that it soon bordered China in the east and the Byzantines in the west. Malikshāh was the one who moved the capital from Ray to Isfahan. The Iqta military system and the Nizāmīyyah University at Baghdad were established by Nizām al-Mulk, and the reign of Malikshāh was reckoned the golden age of "Great Seljuk". The Abbasid Caliph titled him "The Sultan of the East and West" in 1087. The Assassins (Hashshashin) of Hassan-i Sabāh started to become a force during his era, however, and they assassinated many leading figures in his administration; according to many sources these victims included Nizām al-Mulk.
In 1076, Malik Shah I surged into Georgia and reduced many settlements to ruins. From 1079/80 onward, Georgia was pressured into submitting to Malik-Shah to ensure a precious degree of peace at the price of an annual tribute.
Ahmad Sanjar
Ahmad was the son of Malik Shah I and initially took part in wars of succession against his three brothers and a nephew: Mahmud I, Barkiyaruq, Malik Shah II and Muhammad I Tapar. In 1096, he was tasked to govern the province of Khorasan by his brother Muhammad I. Over the next several years, Ahmad Sanjar became the ruler of most of Iran (Persia), and eventually in 1118, the sole ruler of the Great Seljuk Empire.
In 1141, Ahmad marched to eliminate the threat posed by Kara Khitans and faced them in the vicinity of Samarkand at the Battle of Qatwan. He suffered his first defeat in his long career, and as a result lost all Seljuk territory east of the Syr Darya.
Sanjar's as well as the Seljuks' rule collapsed as a consequence of yet another unexpected defeat, this time at the hands of the Seljuks’ own tribe, in 1153. Sanjar was captured during the battle and held in captivity until 1156. It brought chaos to the Empire - a situation later exploited by the victorious Turkmens, whose hordes would overrun Khorasan unopposed, wreaking colossal damage on the province and prestige of Sanjar. Sanjar eventually escaped from captivity in the fall of 1156, but soon died in Merv (present-day Turkmenistan), in 1157. After his death, Turkic rulers, Turkmen tribal forces, and other secondary powers competed for Khorasan, and after a long period of confrontations, the province was finally conquered by Khwarazmians in the early 1200s.
The Tomb of Ahmed Sanjar was destroyed by the Mongols led by Tolui, who sacked the city of Merv in 1221, killing 700,000 people according to contemporary sources during their catastrophic invasion of Khwarazm; however, modern scholarship holds such figures to be exaggerated.
Division of empire
When Malikshāh I died in 1092, the empire split as his brother and four sons quarrelled over the apportioning of the empire among themselves. Malikshāh I was succeeded in Anatolia by Kilij Arslan I, who founded the Sultanate of Rum, and in Syria by his brother Tutush I. In Persia he was succeeded by his son Mahmud I, whose reign was contested by his other three brothers Barkiyaruq in Iraq, Muhammad I in Baghdad, and Ahmad Sanjar in Khorasan. When Tutush I died, his sons Radwan and Duqaq inherited Aleppo and Damascus respectively and contested with each other as well, further dividing Syria amongst emirs antagonistic towards each other.
In 1118, the third son Ahmad Sanjar took over the empire. His nephew, the son of Muhammad I, did not recognize his claim to the throne, and Mahmud II proclaimed himself Sultan and established a capital in Baghdad, until 1131 when he was finally officially deposed by Ahmad Sanjar.
Elsewhere in nominal Seljuk territory were the Artuqids in northeastern Syria and northern Mesopotamia; they controlled Jerusalem until 1098. The Dānišmand dynasty founded a state in eastern Anatolia and northern Syria and contested land with the Sultanate of Rum, and Kerbogha exercised independence as the atabeg of Mosul.
First Crusade (1095–1099)
During the First Crusade, the fractured states of the Seljuks were generally more concerned with consolidating their own territories and gaining control of their neighbours than with cooperating against the crusaders. The Seljuks easily defeated the People's Crusade arriving in 1096, but they could not stop the progress of the army of the subsequent Princes' Crusade, which took important cities such as Nicaea (İznik), Iconium (Konya), Caesarea Mazaca (Kayseri), and Antioch (Antakya) on its march to Jerusalem (Al-Quds). In 1099 the crusaders finally captured the Holy Land and set up the first Crusader states. The Seljuks had already lost Palestine to the Fatimids, who had recaptured it just before its capture by the crusaders.
After pillaging the County of Edessa, Seljukid commander Ilghazi made peace with the Crusaders. In 1121 he went north towards Georgia and with supposedly up to 250 000 – 350 000 troops, including men led by his son-in-law Sadaqah and Sultan Malik of Ganja, he invaded the Kingdom of Georgia. David IV of Georgia gathered 40,000 Georgian warriors, including 5,000 monaspa guards, 15,000 Kipchaks, 300 Alans and 100 French Crusaders to fight against Ilghazi's vast army. At the Battle of Didgori on August 12, 1121, the Seljuks were routed, being run down by pursuing Georgian cavalry for several days afterward. The battle helped the Crusader states, which had been under pressure from Ilghazi's armies. The weakening of the main enemy of the Latin principalities also benefitted the Kingdom of Jerusalem under King Baldwin II.
Second Crusade (1147–1149)
During this time conflict with the Crusader states was also intermittent, and after the First Crusade increasingly independent atabegs would frequently ally with the Crusader states against other atabegs as they vied with each other for territory. At Mosul, Zengi succeeded Kerbogha as atabeg and successfully began the process of consolidating the atabegs of Syria. In 1144 Zengi captured Edessa, as the County of Edessa had allied itself with the Artuqids against him. This event triggered the launch of the Second Crusade. Nur ad-Din, one of Zengi's sons who succeeded him as atabeg of Aleppo, created an alliance in the region to oppose the Second Crusade, which landed in 1147.
Decline
Ahmad Sanjar fought to contain the revolts by the Kara-Khanids in Transoxiana, Ghurids in Afghanistan and Qarluks in modern Kyrghyzstan, as well as the nomadic invasion of the Kara-Khitais in the east. The advancing Kara-Khitais first defeated the Eastern Kara-Khanids, then followed up by crushing the Western Kara-Khanids, who were vassals of the Seljuks at Khujand. The Kara-Khanids turned to their Seljuk overlords for assistance, to which Sanjar responded by personally leading an army against the Kara-Khitai. However, Sanjar's army was decisively defeated by the host of Yelu Dashi at the Battle of Qatwan on September 9, 1141. While Sanjar managed to escape with his life, many of his close kin including his wife were taken captive in the battle's aftermath. As a result of Sanjar's failure to deal with the encroaching threat from the east, the Seljuk Empire lost all its eastern provinces up to the river Syr Darya, and vassalage of the Western Kara-Khanids was usurped by the Kara-Khitai, otherwise known as the Western Liao in Chinese historiography.
Conquest by Khwarezm and the Ayyubids
In 1153, the Ghuzz (Oghuz Turks) rebelled and captured Sanjar. He managed to escape after three years but died a year later. The atabegs, such as the Zengids and Artuqids, were only nominally under the Seljuk Sultan, and generally controlled Syria independently. When Ahmad Sanjar died in 1157, this fractured the empire even further and rendered the atabegs effectively independent.
Khorasani Seljuks in Khorasan and Transoxiana. Capital: Merv
Kermani Seljuks
Sultanate of Rum (or Seljuks of Turkey). Capital: Iznik (Nicaea), later Konya (Iconium)
Atabeghlik of the Salghurids in Fars
Atabeghlik of Eldiguzids (Atabeg of Azerbaijan) in Iraq and Azerbaijan. Capital: Nakhchivan (1136–1175), Hamadan (1176–1186), Tabriz (1187–1225)
Atabeghlik of Bori in Syria. Capital: Damascus
Atabeghlik of Zangi in Al Jazira (Northern Mesopotamia). Capital: Mosul
Turcoman Beghliks: Danishmendis, Artuqids, Saltuqids and Mengujekids in Asia Minor
After the Second Crusade, Nur ad-Din's general Shirkuh, who had established himself in Egypt on Fatimid land, was succeeded by Saladin. In time, Saladin rebelled against Nur ad-Din, and, upon his death, Saladin married his widow and captured most of Syria and created the Ayyubid dynasty.
On other fronts, the Kingdom of Georgia began to become a regional power and extended its borders at the expense of Great Seljuk. The same was true during the revival of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia under Leo II of Armenia in Anatolia. The Abbasid caliph An-Nasir also began to reassert the authority of the caliph and allied himself with the Khwarezmshah Takash.
For a brief period, Togrul III was the Sultan of all Seljuk except for Anatolia. In 1194, however, Togrul was defeated by Takash, the Shah of Khwarezmid Empire, and the Seljuk Empire finally collapsed. Of the former Seljuk Empire, only the Sultanate of Rûm in Anatolia remained.
As the dynasty declined in the middle of the thirteenth century, the Mongols invaded Anatolia in the 1260s and divided it into small emirates called the Anatolian beyliks. Eventually one of these, the Ottoman, would rise to power and conquer the rest.
Governance
Seljuk power was indeed at its zenith under Malikshāh I, and both the Qarakhanids and Ghaznavids had to acknowledge the overlordship of the Seljuks. The Seljuk dominion was established over the ancient Sasanian domains, in Iran and Iraq, and included Anatolia, Syria, as well as parts of Central Asia and modern Afghanistan. Seljuk rule was modelled after the tribal organization common among Turkic and Mongol nomads and resembled a 'family federation' or 'appanage state'. Under this organization, the leading member of the paramount family assigned family members portions of his domains as autonomous appanages.
Various emblems and banners have been recorded as having been used by the Seljuks in different periods. Early Seljuks used their traditional emblems, but gradually adopted local Muslim signs and banners. The official flag of the empire was most probably a black flag, similar to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. The flag was decorated with signs, which were either superimposed over it, or placed above the flag.
Capital cities
Seljuks exercised full control over Islamic Central Asia and the Middle East between 1040 and 1157. For most of its history, the empire was split into western and eastern half and did not have a single capital or political center. In the east, the chief seat of Seljuk rule was Marv in present-day Turkmenistan. In the west, various cities, where the Seljuk rulers lived periodically, served as capitals: Rayy, Isfahan, Baghdad, and later Hamadan. These western lands were known as the Sultanate of Iraq. Since 1118, the Seljuk rulers of Iraq recognized the suzerainty of the great Seljuk sultan Sanjar, who mostly ruled from Marv, and was known by the title of al-sultān al-a'zam, "the Greatest Sultan". The Seljuk rulers of Iraq were often mentioned as the "Lesser Seljuks".
Culture and language
Seljuks managed to preserve elements of steppe culture even at the peak of their empire. Oghuz Turkic language was used as the every-day language of the court, and was widely used alongside Persian by the population of the empire. Tughril relied on his vizier to translate from Arabic and Persian into Turkic for him, and Oghuz songs were sung at the wedding of Tughril to the caliph’s daughter. Later sultans, like Mahmud, could speak Arabic alongside Persian, however, they still used Turkic among themselves. The most signifact evidence of the importance of Turkic language is the big Turkic–Arabic dictionary, or the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, assembled in Baghdad for Caliph al-Muqtadi by Mahmud al-Kashgari. However, besides the Diwan, no works written in Turkic language survive from the Seljuk Empire. While the Maliknama was compiled from Turkic oral accounts, it was written in Persian and Arabic languages.
Steppe traditions influenced Seljuk marriages, with Tughril marrying his brother Chaghri's widow, a practice despised in Islam.
Military
General overview
The army of the earliest Seljuks was not similar to the renowned Turkic military of the classical 'Abbasid era. Their first invasions were more of a great nomadic migration accompanied by their families and livestock rather than planned military conquests. They were not a professional army, however warfare was a way of life for nearly all of adult male Turkmens.
According to a Seljuk vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, by the reign of Malik-Shah I, the sovereign had a large army at his disposal. There were Turkmens, mamluks, a standing army, infantry and the sultan's personal guard. Nizam al-Mulk also estimated Malik-Shah’s forces at 400,000 men, and often opposed cost-cutting plans (instituted by Taj al-Mulk) to bring these to 70,000.
Turkmens
Vizier Nizam al-Mulk, the greatest advocate of Iranian orientation for the Seljuk empire, admitted the debt dynasty owed to the Turkmens. After the establishment of the Seljuk state, Turkmens continued to be the driving force behind the Seljuk expansion in Anatolia. After the rule of Malik-Shah I, however, there are very few mentions of Turkmens in the Jibali region of the state, especially in their traditional axis of Rayy, Hamadhan and Hulwan.
Turkmens were difficult to manage, and they were susceptible to undisciplined pillaging. The greatest issue, however, was their dependence on pasturelands for their livestock. A great number of regions that constituted the Seljuk state were ecologically ill-suited for supporting a nomadic army. Turkmens' limitations are adeptly described by Arab scholar Sibt ibn al-Jawzi:
Long campaigns had to be discontinued due to Turkmens' insistence on returning home, and conquests had to be scheduled to satisfy the demands of Turkmens. The short-term needs of Turkmens made a longer term military plans unachievable.
Mamluks
The alternative to nomadic Turkmen troops was mamluks. While also of Turkic and often nomadic origin, dependence on pasturelands was non-existent for mamluks as they did not live a nomadic life. Previously, mamluks had constituted the later 'Abbasid, the Samanid and the Ghaznavid armies. In fact, the Ghaznavid dynasty was itself of mamluk origin.
The process of mamluk recruitment are well known from other periods in Islamic history, but there is almost no information directly relating to the Seljuks. The chief source of mamluks was most probably forays to the steppe. The alternative to raids was buying them from slave traders and various dealers as evidenced from a slave dispute between a merchant and Muhammad I Tapar.
Legacy
The Seljuks were educated in the service of Muslim courts as slaves or mercenaries. The dynasty brought revival, energy, and reunion to the Islamic civilization hitherto dominated by Arabs and Persians.
The Seljuks founded universities and were also patrons of art and literature. Their reign is characterized by Persian astronomers such as Omar Khayyám, and the Persian philosopher al-Ghazali. Under the Seljuks, New Persian became the language for historical recording, while the center of Arabic language culture shifted from Baghdad to Cairo.
Sultans of the Seljuk Empire
{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" border="1" style="width:77%; text-align:center;"
!The comparative genealogy of the Great Seljuks with their Khwarazm neighbors and the Anatolian Seljuks
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{{tree chart|boxstyle=background:AliceBlue;| | | | |MAN |F|AA| |AİL |MAN= Mānsūr|AA=Suleyman I Shah of Rûm(r. 1077–1086)| |AİL=Alp Ilig and Dawlat|SUL |Bb=Alp Arslan(r. 1063–1072)| |Bb| | | | | |QAW | | | | | | |Ii|Ii=Seljuk rule in Khwarazm(r. 1042-1077)|QAW=Kavurt Beg(r. 1048–1073)Kirman Seljuks|boxstyle_QAW= background-color:#E9FFDB;|boxstyle_Ii=background-color:LightCyan;|boxstyle_AA=background-color:PaleTurquoise;border:7px solid #0000FF;|boxstyle_Bb= background-color:LightCyan;border:7px solid DarkGreen;|SUL=Suleiman(r. 1063)|boxstyle_SUL= background-color:LightCyan;border:3px solid DarkGreen;}}
Important historical events'.
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Chaghri Beg defeated Shah-Malik ibn Ali in Makran in 1042 and ended Ghaznevid rule in Khwarazm
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Establishment
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Alp Arslan defeated Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes in the Battle of Malazgirt in 1071
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The First Crusade
Crusade of 1101
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Second Crusade
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ʿIzz ad-Dīn Kilij Arslān defeated Manuel I Komnenos in the Battle of Myriokephalon
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Third Crusade
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Ala ad-Din Tekish-Khwarazmshah ended The Great Seljuk Empire in Ray, Khorasan in 1194
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Zenith of Anatolian Seljuks
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Kayqubad the Great defeated Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu in the Battle of Yassıçimen in 1230
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Chormaqan defeated Mangubartī in the Battle of Indus on August 1231 and ended Khwarazmshahs
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Babai Revolt
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Baiju Noyan defeated Kay Khusraw II in the Battle of Kösedağ in 1243 and Anatolian Seljuks became a vassal state of Mongol Empire
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Güyük designated Kilij Arslan IV the Sultan of Rum in 1248
Triple reign (1249–1254)
Hulagu captured Alamut in 1256
Anatolian Seljuks were divided into two by a firman of Möngke Khan in 1258/1259
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Ilkhanate gained independence from the Mongol Empire in 1295 after the demise of Kublai Khan on February 18, 1294
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Ottoman State emerged in Söğüt, Bilecik in 1299
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Disestablishment period of
The Anatolian Seljuks
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Ilkhanate disintegrated after 1336
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Art of the Great Seljuk Empire
Architecture and ceramics
Various art forms were popularized during the Seljuk period, as evidenced by the vast amount of surviving artifacts. Most Seljuk arts are known to have been produced in what is modern-day Iran. However, the Seljuk sultans also encouraged artists to settle in Anatolia as part of a recolonization and reconstruction process of several cities. Many works of Seljuk art continued to be produced following the decline of the empire in the late 12th century. In this regard, the timeline associated with the production of Seljuk art does not entirely match the political events pertaining to the empire and its eventual fall.
Among other ceramics, the manufacture of polychrome ceramic tiles, often used as decor in architecture, were popularized during the Seljuk dynasty.Ceken, Muharrem. "Materials, Techniques, and Kilns Used in the Production of Seljuk and Beylik Period Glazed Tiles." In Tiles: Treasures of Anatolian Soil. Istanbul: Kale Group Cultural Publications, 2008. The Seljuks pioneered the use of the Minai technique, a painted and enameled polychrome overglaze for ceramics. The glazes on the Seljuk ceramics produced often ranged from a brilliant turquoise to a very dark blue. The art of Seljuk mosaic tile decorating would continue to dominate the interior of many Anatolian mosques following the period of Seljuk rule. The Seljuks also created ceramic house models, while other ceramic forms in the Seljuk period included pottery figurines, some of them children's toys.
In the realm of architecture, mosques and madrasas were created and embellished during the period of Seljuk control. Congregational mosques were either repaired, re-built, or constructed in their entirety. The Seljuk sultan also commissioned numerous madrasas to promote the teaching of orthodox Islamic sciences. These developments in architectural practice are coherent with the Seljuk dynasty's focus on Islam and the promotion of Muslim orthodoxy, the combining of Sufism and Sunnism.
One architectural form that flourished during the Seljuk dynasty was the muqarnas. Some interpretations maintain that the earliest known examples of muqarnas were constructed during the period of Seljuk hegemony, though it also remains possible that they were being developed at the same time in North Africa. The layering of multiple embellished cells with divergent profiles in muqarnas creates a dome that has a seemingly-insubstantial interior. The play of light on the surface enhances this visual effect. Art historian Oleg Grabar argues that the effect of muqarnas domes embodies Qur'anic water symbolism. Examples of muqarnas also appear in the niches of mosques built during the Seljuk empire. Overall, the architecture attributed to the Seljuk period is characterized by elaborate decoration, much like the other arts produced under Seljuk rule.
Book arts
Both secular and non-secular manuscripts were produced during the Seljuk period. These pieces are now limited in availability, considering their ultimate susceptibility to damage overtime. But those manuscripts that have survived over the centuries provide insight into the Seljuk's involvement in the arts of the book. Calligraphers and illuminators were responsible for the creation of these manuscripts, though sometimes calligraphers mastered the art of both writing and illustration. By the end of the 10th century, both illuminators and calligraphers were beginning to employ various colors, styles, and writing techniques in the realm of the book arts.
The Qur'an's produced during the period of Seljuk rule evidence developments in calligraphy and other changes in how the holy text was divided. Uniquely, calligraphers during this period frequently combined several scripts on one page of the Qur'an, such as Kufic and New Style. In addition to these changes in the text, the dawn of the Seljuk empire coincided with a newfound increase in the popularity of paper as a replacement for parchment in the Islamic world. The use of durable paper increased the production of compact, single-volume Qur'an's, whereas parchment codexes often contained multiple volumes of Qur'anic text. Despite this development, parchment would remain popular for the production of some Qur'an's, and multi-volume pieces continued to be produced. Illuminated borders continued to distinguish the Qur'ans produced during the Seljuk period and relative consistency was maintained with regard to their structure.
One example of a manuscript created during Seljuk rule is a thirty-volume Qur'an (juz) created c.1050, produced by only one calligrapher and illuminator (Freer Gallery of Art, District of Columbia, F2001.16a-b). As paper had just been introduced to the Islamic world, this piece is an early Islamic paper manuscript. This Qur'an is bound in brown leather, dyed in pink, decorated with gold, and offers an intricate frontispiece. These elements imply the care that went into the production of this text and indications of frequent usage confirm that it was appreciated. It is primarily written in the vertical "New-Style" Arabic script, a sharp, vertical script. The dominant use of New Style in this folio, also referred to as "new Abbasid Script," attests to the shift from the geometric Kufic script to a more legible calligraphic style, which occurred in the 10th century. Scattered remnants of Kufic, used primarily to indicate volume and page number, also appear in the text. The verticality of the paper in this manuscript speaks to the historic shift away from the horizontal use of paper in many Qur'ans, also a 10th-century development.
Another example of a religious manuscript produced closer to the end of the period of Seljuk Rule is the Qarmathian Qur'an (dispersed folio, Arthur M. Stackler Gallery of Art, District of Columbia, S1986.65a-b). This manuscript's folios are illuminated with a gold border and thin, spiraled illustration, featuring vegetal motifs. Despite the generous illumination, the four lines of Qur'anic text on the folio are exceptionally legible. Created between the years 1170-1200, this particular folio demonstrates the evolution of New Style, as both vocalized cursive and diacritical dots appear in this later version of the script. Only during the 13th century would New Style be replaced by the curvier proportional scripts for regular use.
A final example of a Seljuk Qur'an that has entered into scholarship is a manuscript studied in-depth by the late art historian Richard Ettinghausen. This piece was written in 1164 by Mahmud Ibn Al-Husayn and contains the entirety of the Qur'an (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, NEP27). Unlike the two Seljuk Qur'ans discussed prior, this manuscript primarily contains Naskh script, another early Arabic script that replaced Kufic. However, some Kufic calligraphy is embedded in the chapter headings. This aspect speaks to how the inclusion of Kufic in Qur'ans became more of a decorative element overtime, often included in headings as opposed to the main body of text. The manuscript is large, with seventeen lines of text per two-hundred and fifteen sheets of paper. Though not all of the Qur'an is illuminated, both the beginning and the end boast elaborate illustration, with blue, gold, and white hues. Ettinghausen describes the subsequent visual effect as "brilliant." The inscriptions feature detailed rosettes, vines, medallions, and arabesques, some exclusively as decoration and others to indicate the end of particular lines of Qur'anic text.
Manuscript production during the Seljuk period was not limited to religious texts. Beyond these religious manuscripts, scientific, literary, and historical pieces were created. One example of a secular manuscript is the Nusrat al-fatrah, a historiographical and literary account of the Seljuk period written in 1200 by Imād al-Dīn (Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, London). Meanwhile, the scientific manuscripts produced during the Seljuk period oftentimes pertained to geography, physics, mechanics, mathematics, and astronomy. The former Seljuk city of Isfahan not only boasted twelve libraries that contained a total of twelve thousand volumes, but also had an observatory where scholars could record their astrological findings. Secular manuscripts from the Seljuk empire bear illuminations that often relate to the alignment of planets and the zodiac, a couple examples of common themes.
Whether secular or non-secular, Seljuk illuminated manuscripts had enough influence as to inspire other relevant art forms, such as brass or bronze metal objects. For example, the large Qarmathian Qur'an influenced some of the inscriptions on Seljuk ceramic wares. Even mirrors, candlesticks, coins, and jugs manufactured in Anatolia during the Seljuk period would often bear occult astrological images inspired by manuscripts. Occult knowledge persisted in manuscripts produced after the decline in the Seljuk's political power in the late 12th century, as the Seljuk sultanate's influence on the book arts continued in Anatolia.
Historian Andrew Peacock demonstrates an interest in the Seljuks of Anatolia's focus on occult themes and its manifestation in the book arts. Peacock describes this finding as something that challenges the reigning view that the Seljuks were exclusively the "pious defenders of Islam" when it came to larger systems of belief. Some of the occult sciences that the Seljuks took special interest in included geomancy, astrology, alchemy. A relevant occult manuscript from a period of Seljuk influence is the Dustur al-Munajjimin, otherwise known as the "Rules of Astrologers," while another is the Daqa'iq al-Haqa'iq, or the "Fine Points of Eternal Truths." The latter text captures an interest in magic and spells, with a particular focus on calling upon spiritual beings, such as angels, through ritualistic acts (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Persan 174). The text was written by a man who wrote under a pen name, "Nasiri." Interestingly, Nasiri's Daqa'iq al-Haqa'iq'' challenges prevailing Islamic understandings of God while encouraging piety and invoking both Sufi terms and themes. For example, while incorporating a Sufi poem, the occult text speaks of supernatural bodies and disputes what Islam considers to be the accepted number of names for God.
Textiles
Similar to architecture, Seljuk fabrics depict inscriptions and decorative forms. These fabrics represent what could be called a "Sasanian renaissance" marking a new dominance of Persian culture. Textiles, along with literary works, are evidence of this. Contrast is the main feature of different techniques and fabric qualities. Stories of the period are told through a variety of inscriptions. At the same time, higher contrasts generate a more abstract approach to the ornaments and figures within the fabric patterns. Seljuk fabrics that were excavated in 1931 are distinguished by the representation of nature, by minimal ornamental details, and by the combination of colorful linens giving an interchangeable color effect to the fabric. Many realistic natural elements characterize the composition of the fabrics, such as animals and plants, forming patterns consisting of arabesque elements.
Examples of Seljuk art
See also
Nizari–Seljuk conflicts
Anatolian Seljuks family tree
Danishmend
Ghaznavid Empire
Rahat al-sudur
Seljuk architecture
Seljuk dynasty
History of the Turks
List of Turkic dynasties and countries
List of battles involving the Seljuk Empire
Timeline of the Sultanate of Rûm
Timeline of the Turkic peoples (500–1300)
Turkic migrations
Notes
Footnotes
References
Sources
Further reading
External links
http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/533602/Seljuq
Historical Turkic states
States and territories established in 1037
1194 disestablishments in Asia
Former monarchies of Central Asia
Former sultanates
1037 establishments in Asia
Medieval Azerbaijan
11th century in Armenia
12th century in Armenia
Medieval Syria
Medieval Iraq
States in medieval Anatolia | en |
doc-en-9058 | The Grand Duchy of Finland (; ; , , all of which literally translate as Grand Principality of Finland) was the predecessor state of modern Finland. It existed between 1809 and 1917 as an autonomous part of the Russian Empire.
Originating in the 16th century as a titular grand duchy held by the King of Sweden, the country became autonomous after its annexation by Russia in the Finnish War of 1808–1809. The Grand Duke of Finland was the Romanov Emperor of Russia, represented by the Governor-General. Due to the governmental structure of the Russian Empire and Finnish initiative, the Grand Duchy's autonomy expanded until the end of the 19th century. The Senate of Finland, founded in 1809, became the most important governmental organ and the precursor to the modern Government of Finland, the Supreme Court of Finland, and the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland.
Economic, social and political changes in the Grand Duchy of Finland closely paralleled those in the rest of the Russian Empire and in the rest of Europe. The economy grew slowly during the first half of the 19th century. The reign of Alexander II (1855–1881) saw significant cultural, social and intellectual progress, and an industrializing economy. Tensions increased after Saint Petersburg adopted Russification policies in 1898; the new circumstances saw the introduction of limited autonomy and the reduction of Finnish cultural expression. Unrest in Russia and Finland during the First World War (1914–1918) and the subsequent collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 resulted in the Finnish Declaration of Independence and the end of the Grand Duchy.
History
An extended Southwest Finland was made a titular Grand Duchy in 1581, when King Johan III of Sweden, who as a prince had been the Duke of Finland (1556–1561/63), extended the list of subsidiary titles of the Kings of Sweden considerably. The new title Grand Duke of Finland did not result in any Finnish autonomy, as Finland was an integrated part of the Kingdom of Sweden with full parliamentary representation for its counties. During the next two centuries, the title was used by some of Johan's successors on the throne, but not all. Usually, it was just a subsidiary title of the King, used only on very formal occasions. However, in 1802, as an indication of his resolve to keep Finland within Sweden in the face of increased Russian pressure, King Gustav IV Adolf gave the title to his new-born son, Prince Carl Gustaf, who died three years later.
During the Finnish War between Sweden and Russia, the four Estates of occupied Finland were assembled at the Diet of Porvoo on 29 March 1809 to pledge allegiance to Tsar Alexander I of Russia, who in return guaranteed that the area's laws and liberties, as well as religion, would be left unchanged. Following the Swedish defeat in the war and the signing of the Treaty of Fredrikshamn on 17 September 1809, Finland became a true autonomous Grand Duchy within the autocratic Russian Empire; but the usual balance of power between monarch and diet resting on taxation was not in place, since the Emperor could rely on the rest of his vast Empire. The title "Grand Duke of Finland" was added to the long list of titles of the Russian Tsar.
After his return to Finland in 1812, the Finnish-born Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt became counsellor to the Russian Emperor. Armfelt was instrumental in securing the Grand Duchy as an entity with relatively greater autonomy within the Russian realm, and acquiring so-called Old Finland that Russia had annexed from Sweden in the Treaty of Nystad (1721) and the Treaty of Åbo (1743).
The Beginning of the Grand Duchy
The formation of the Grand Duchy stems from the Treaty of Tilsit between Tsar Alexander I of Russia and Emperor Napoléon I of the French. The treaty mediated peace between Russia and France and allied the two countries against Napoléon's remaining threats: the United Kingdom and Sweden. Russia invaded Finland in February 1808, claimed as an effort to impose military sanctions against Sweden, but not a war of conquest, and that Russia decided to only temporarily control Finland. Collectively, the Finnish were predominately Anti-Russian, and Finnish guerillas and peasant uprisings were a large obstacles for the Russians, forcing Russia to use various tactics to quash armed Finnish rebellion. Thus, in the beginning of the war, General roda Voysk Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von Buxhoeveden, with permission of the Tsar, issued an oath of fealty on Finland, in which Russia would honour Finland's Lutheran faith, the Finnish Diet, and the Finnish estates as long as the Finns would remain loyal to the Russian Imperial Crown. The oath also dubbed anyone person who gave aid to the Swedish or Finnish armies a rebel.
The Finns complied, bitter over Sweden abandoning the country for their war against Denmark and France, and begrudgingly embraced Russian conquest. The Diet of Finland was now to only meet whenever requested, and was never mentioned in the manifesto published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Further on, Alexander I requested a deputation of the four Finnish estates, as he expressed concern over continued Finnish resistance. The deputation refused to act without the Diet, to which Alexander agreed with, and promised the Diet would shortly be summoned. By 1809, all of Finland had been conquered and The Diet was summoned in March. Finland was then united through Russia via crown, and Finland was able to keep the majority of its own laws, giving it autonomy.
Instead of the newly acquired territory being subjected to direct rule by an Imperial Governor-General, a novel administrative system was established in Finland, drafted in part by the liberal Mikhail Speransky. The new Grand Duchy would be governed by a Government Council, later the Senate of Finland, a body made up of Finnish citizens. The Governor-General would accordingly have a relatively diminished role. Further, the Emperor would deal with matters relating to Finland directly through a dedicated Secretary of State, without the involvement of his Russian cabinet or administration. This laid the foundation for the considerable autonomy enjoyed by Finland for most of the period of Russian rule.
Early years
The earlier years of the Grand Duchy can be seen as uneventful. In 1812, the area of Old Finland (known as Viipuri Province from 1812 to 1945) was gifted to Finland. Russia had annexed this territory from Sweden in the Great Northern War and the Russo-Swedish War (1741–1743). This surprising action by the Tsar was met with anger from certain parts of the Russian government and aristocracy, who wished to either return to the previous border or annex the communities west of St. Petersburg. Despite the outcry, the borders remained set until 1940. The gesture can be seen as Alexander's concern for Finland and his attempts of appeasement of the Finns, in attempts to gain their loyalty which would come from passive appeasement, compared to the vigorous Russification later in the nineteenth-century. Moreover, Alexander moved the capital from Turku to Helsinki, a small fortified town protected by Suomenlinna. Finland's main university also transferred to Helsinki after a fire broke out in Turku, destroying most of the building.
Despite promises of a Finnish Diet, the Diet was not called to meet until 1863 and many new laws going through the legislature were laws that would have required the approval of the Diet while under Swedish rule. Alexander went a step further to demand a Finnish House of Nobles, which organised in 1818. The house was designed to register all noble families in Finland so that the highest Finnish estate would be representative of the next Finnish Diet. As for Sweden, the majority did not think too much about Finland's conquest, as Sweden itself annexed Norway from Denmark in 1814 and entered a personal union with the nation. Whether or not Alexander purposely ignored the existence of the Diet is debatable, with notable factors such as the fall of Napoléon and the creation of the Holy Alliance, newfound religious mysticism of the Russian crown, and the negative experience with the Polish Sejm. Despite this, Alexander I ceased to give in to Finnish affairs and returned to governing Russia.
Alexander's death and the assimilation of Finland: 1820s–1850s
In 1823, Count Arseny Zakrevsky was made Governor-General of Finland and quickly became unpopular among both Finns and Swedes alike. Zakrevsky abolished the Committee for Finnish Affairs and managed to obtain the right to submit Finnish affairs to the Russian Emperor, bypassing the Finnish Secretary of State. Two years later, Alexander I died (). Zakrevsky seized the opportunity to require Finland to swear an oath of fealty which would refer to the Emperor as the absolute ruler of Finland – expecting that Emperor would be Constantine, Alexander's next-eldest brother. However, Nicholas, younger brother of Constantine and Alexander, became Emperor despite the Decembrist revolt against him in December 1825. Nicholas assured Finland's secretary of state, Robert Henrik Rehbinder, that he (Nicholas) would continue to uphold Alexander's liberal policies regarding Finland.
In 1830 Europe became a hotbed of revolution and reform as a result of the July Revolution in France. Poland, another Russian client state, saw a massive uprising against Saint Petersburg during the November Uprising of 1830–1831. Finland made no such move, as Russia had already won over Finnish loyalty. Thus, Russia continued its policies respecting Finnish autonomy and the quiet assimilation of the Finns into the empire. Zakrevsky died in 1831; Knyaz Alexander Sergeyevich Menshikov succeeded him as Governor-General of Finland and continued Finnish appeasement. The appeasement of the Finns could be seen as a prototype of the later Russification, as educated Finns moved to Russia in mass, seeking jobs within the Imperial Court to rise within Russian imperial society. The Russian language was studied excitedly as well, with more Finns seeking to learn Russian language, politics, culture, and to assimilate into Russian society. Even though Nicholas had no intentions on doing this, his inner office, specifically Nicholas's Interior Minister, Lev Perovski (in office: 1841–1852), advocated for Count Zakrevsky's ideas and further pushed the ideas of subtle Russification during the 1840s.
However, Finland did experience a nationalistic revolution in the 1830s - one based around literature. This marked the beginning of the Fennoman movement, a nationalistic movement that would operate in Finland until its independence. In 1831, the Finnish Literary Society was founded, which formed on the basis of appreciation of the Finnish language. Finnish was not represented as language of the scholarly elite, as most printed academic works, novels, and poetry was written in either Swedish or Russian. Copying the German reading rage, Lesewut, and subsequent Swedish mania, Finland entered the reading craze by the 1830s. This fad peaked in 1835 with the publication of The Kalevala, the Finnish epic. The Kalevala'''s influence on Finland was massive, and strengthened Finnish nationalism and unity, despite the epic being poetry or stories about Finnish folklore. The quest for literature expanded into the 1840s and 1850s and caught the eye of the Finnish church and the Russian crown. Finnish newspapers, such as Maamiehen Ystävä (The Farmer's Friend), began publication in both urban and rural areas of Finland. However, the Swedish academic elite, the church, and the Russian government opposed Finland's literature movement. Edvard Bergenheim, Archbishop of Turku from 1850 to 1884, called for double censorship on works opposing the church and works appearing socialist or communist. The reactionary policies of the Lutheran Church convinced the also reactionary Nicholas I () to prohibit (1850) the publishing of all Finnish works that were not religious or economic in nature, as such works would have been considered revolutionary and might encourage the Finnish majority to revolt against the church and crown. However, the censorship only fueled Finland's language strife and the Fennomanian movement.
The Crimean War and the 1860s–1870s
The works of Johan Snellman and other Fennoman authors combined literature and nationalism and increased the calls for language recognition and education reforms in Finland. This heightened during the Crimean War in which Finnish ports and fortresses on the Baltic Sea became subject for Allied attacks, specifically Suomenlinna and Bomarsund in Åland during the Åland War. As newspapers were printed in Swedish and Russian due to the censorship, many Finns could not read about the events of the Battle of Bomarsund and the Battle of Suomenlinna. Moreover, Nicholas I died in 1855, and the new emperor, Alexander II, had already planned educational reforms in outlying territories in Russia, including Finland. Alexander II also planned to call on the Diet of the Estates once more. Under Alexander's rule, Finland experiences a period of liberalization in education, the arts, and economic desires. In 1858, Finnish was made the official language of local self-government, such as provinces, where Finnish was the majority of the language spoken. However, the Finns feared that St. Petersburg would prevent the Diet from meeting on the basis that Polish and Russian citizens did not receive the same liberties and that the Diet would be eradicated. It was misinterpreted, as it only added a few extra steps to how the lawmaking process worked; the Diet was allowed to stay.
In 1863, Alexander called the Diet and issued that the Finnish language was to be on par with Swedish and Russian in the Grand Duchy, while also passing laws regarding infrastructure and currency. Alexander came to favor the Finnish working class over the Swedish elite, due to Swedish propaganda during the Crimean War urging revolt against the Russians. Alexander also passed a law regarding language ordinance in August 1863, requiring that the Finnish language must be introduced to all public businesses within twenty years. The law was expanded in 1865 to require that state offices must serve the public in Finnish if requested. Despite this, the language laws took time to be fully implemented due to the interference of the Swedish elite, who owned most of these offices and businesses. Despite this, the education laws pushed through and the first secondary schools instructed in Finnish began in the 1870s. The power of the Diet was also expanded in 1869, as it allowed the Diet more power and the ability to initiate various legislation; the act also called the Tsar to call upon the Diet every five years. An act passed regarding religion was also passed in 1869 which prevented the power of the State over the church. Moreover, Finland also received its own monetary system, the Finnish markka, and its own army.
Russification
The policies of Russification under Alexander III and Nicholas II easily sum up the time period from 1881 to 1917. In 1881, Alexander III took the throne after the death of his father and began a rule of staunch conservative, yet peaceful, rule of Russia. Finland, as well as many other outlying Russian territories, faced the burden of Russification, the cultural, social, economical, and political absorption into Russia. Compared to the early Russification of the 1830s and 1840s, the Russification of the late 19th-early 20th century was much more vigorous in its policies. Moreover, Finland faced political turmoil within its nation between various factions such as liberals, Social Democrats, Young Finns, and communists. Finland became a target for the Pan-Slavist movement, which called for Slavic unity in eastern Europe. Finland was viewed as conquered territory, and that as subjects, Finland was to respect the Tsar. Finland was also viewed as a land of settlement and that the "alien race" of the Finns were to be assimilated and protected from Western interference, thereby "blessing" the Finns with their presence. Moreover, Finnish representatives to the Tsar were replaced with Pan-Slavist advocates.
Russification only increased from there, but from the 1880s on, the conflict between the Swedish minority halted. Compared to the Baltic States, the Finnish majority was far better educated and more keen in Russian politics. The reactionary policies of Russification, which aimed to combine secular nationalism and a divine right monarchy, infiltrated the Finnish economy in 1885. Finland had managed to create a thriving modern industry based around textiles and timber that managed to rival the Russian economy at the time. Russian bureaucrats, out of both shock and jealousy, called for the revision of the Russo-Finnish Tariff. Russification had taken an economic turn as well, as the basis of the reformed tariff was economic uniformity, which only furthered economic difficulties of Finland. The tariff's revision in 1885, and subsequently 1897, was formed out of spite of Finland's commercial success and working-class unity. Russification policies continued into 1890, with the addition of the Imperial Post System in Finland, replacing the Finnish post. It was not until the mid-1890s, that the Finnish people realized the true intentions of the Russian crown.
Nicholas II ascended to the throne in 1894 after Alexander's death, and with him came General Nikolay Bobrikov, who was appointed governor-general. Under Bobrikov, the Finns had a near collective hatred of him, whose reactionary policies gave rise to socialism and communism among the Finnish working class. The Party of Active Resistance and Kagal, in particular, became very popular in Finland for the former's tactics of violence and the latter's tactic of propaganda and persuasion. At the beginning of this reign, Bobrikov almost immediately introduced a mandatory five-year military service, in which Finns had the possibility of being drafted into Russian units. Furthermore, he instituted that Russians be given the opportunity to serve in public office and that Russian be made the administrative language of Finland. In 1899, the February Manifesto under Nicholas II declared that Russian law was the law of the land, and Finland was to pledge allegiance to Russian law. The Diet was essentially downgraded to a state assembly and that Finland was a province of Russia, ignoring its autonomy. The Finnish Army as a whole was dissolved in 1901.
Bobrikov unintentionally united both Finns and Swedes against Russia, which only angered him more. With churches refusing to proclaim the law, judges refusing to carry it out, and conscripts refusing service, Bobrikov went on a frenzy with the current state of Finland. Bobrikov found little support in Finland, mainly from the Russian minority and members of the Old Finnish Party, an extreme right-wing party that found little success. Bobrikov brought in Russian officials to take government and state spots and, in an extreme act of anger, suspended the Finnish Constitution in 1903. His actions were met with extreme anger from Finns and Swedes, in which the moderate parties, the Young Finns and the Swedish Party combined to collectively fight Bobrikov. The Social Democratic Party of Finland, a Marxist party popular among peasants was also extremely hostile and advocated class warfare and took arms, in contrast to the Social Democrats elsewhere in Europe. Finally, the Party of Active Resistance, a nationalist party that advocated an armed struggle and guerilla tactics, received fame when member Eugen Schauman assassinated Bobrikov in Helsinki on June 16, 1904.
In 1905, Russia faced a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and amidst the turmoil in St. Petersburg, Finns remade their constitution and formed a new Diet whose representation was based on universal suffrage, giving women full suffrage before any other European nation after the short-lived Republic of Corsica. However, the Diet was quickly destroyed by Pyotr Stolypin, Nicholas II's prime minister. Stolypin proved to be even more vigorous than Bobrikov, as he believed every subject should be a stoic patriot to the crown and uphold undying loyalty to Russia. Stolypin wished to destroy Finland's autonomy and disregarded native tongues and cultures of non-Russian subjects, believing them to be traditional and ritualistic at best. The Finnish Diet once again formed to combat Stolypin, but Stolypin was bent on quashing Finnish insurrection and permanently disbanded the Diet in 1909. As with Bobrikov before him, Stolypin was unaware that such actions only fanned the flames and was subsequently assassinated by Dmitry Bogrov, a Jewish member of the far-left. From Stolypin's death henceforward, the Russian crown ruled Finland as a monarchist dictatorship until Russia's collapse during the Russian Revolution, from which Finland declared independence, a war of independence that soon transformed into a civil war.
Government and Politics
200px|thumb|right|Provinces of the Grand Principality of FinlandThe Russian emperor ruled as the Grand Prince of Finland and was represented in Finland by the Governor-General. The Senate of Finland was the highest governing body of the Grand Duchy and was composed of native Finns. In St. Petersburg Finnish matters were represented by the Minister–Secretary of State for Finland. The Senate had a primarily advisory role until it got the right to representation in 1886. On top of having its own central, regional and local administration, Finland had its own stamps, currency and army.
Alexander I did not want the Grand Duchy to be a constitutional monarchy but the governmental institutions born during the Swedish rule offered him a more efficient form of government than the absolute monarchy in Russia. This evolved into a high level of autonomy by the end of the 19th century.
There were a total of twenty Governors-General from the Finnish War until independence:
General Count Göran Magnus Sprengtporten 1808–1809
General Knyaz Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly 1809–1810
General Count Fabian Steinheil 1810–1823
Count Gustav Mauritz Armfelt 1812–1813
General Count Arseny Zakrevsky 1823–1831
Admiral Aleksander Mensikov 1831–1855
General Friedrich Wilhelm Rembert Graf von Berg 1855–1861
General Baron Platon Rokassovsky 1854–1855, 1861–1866
General Johan Mauritz Nordenstam 1861, 1864, 1868, 1870, 1872–1873
General Count Nikolai Adlerberg 1866–1881
General Count Fyodor Logginovich van Heiden 1881–1897
General-Lieutenant Stepan Goncharov 1897–1898
General Nikolai Bobrikov 1898–1904
General-Lieutenant Knyaz Ivan Obolenski 1904–1905
Privy Councillor Nikolai Gerard 1905–1908
General Vladimir von Boeckmann 1908–1909
General-Lieutenant Franz Albert Seyn 1909–1917
Privy Councilor Adam Lipski 1917
Mikhail Stakhovich 1917
Nikolai Nekrasov 1917
Provinces
The administrative division of the Grand Duchy followed the Russian imperial model with provinces ( governorate, , ) headed by governors. Few changes were made however, and as the language of the administrators was still Swedish the old terminology from the Swedish time continued in local use. The Viipuri Province was not initially part of the Grand Duchy, but in 1812 it was transferred by Tsar Alexander I from Russia proper to Finland. After 1831 there were eight provinces in the Grand Duchy until the end and that continued in the independent Finland:
Turku and Pori Province (, , )
Kuopio Province (, , )
Vaasa Province (, , )
Uusimaa Province (, , )
Mikkeli Province (, , )
Häme Province (, , )
Oulu Province (, , )
Viipuri Province (, , )
Flags
The Grand Duchy of Finland had no official flag, but different types of flags were used in different occasions. An official flag was debated even in the Diet of Finland in the 1860s, but one was never officially chosen.
An official maritime flag was chosen in 1812 for governmental use. It was a white flag, with the Russian flag in the upper corner and a compass rose in the middle. In 1883 it was replaced with a blue cross flag with the compass rose in the upper corner. A post flag (a white flag with the Russian flag in the upper corner and a post horn in the middle) was also used in the Grand Duchy, along with a customs flag (a blue flag, with the Russian flag on the upper corner and the logo of the customs agency in the middle).
Originally, there were no regulations regarding merchant flags until 3 October 1821, when Finnish ships were given the right to fly the Russian flag without permission. White, blue and red flags with the Russian flag in the corner were also used. Later on six and nine-striped flags with the colors of the Russian flag twice or thrice saw some use.
A blue cross flag similar to that of the modern flag of Finland was first used by the yacht club Nyländska Jaktklubben in 1861, equipped with the coat of arms of Uusimaa in the upper corner. It was inspired by the similar flag used by the Neva Yacht Club. The flag of the yacht club was made official by the Senate in 1890 when the Swedish-speaking Östra Nylands Segelförening adopted the Flag of Sweden.
At the end of the 19th century, flags with the coat of arms were used in unofficial contexts such as private estates and protests. In official contexts, the Russian white-blue-red tricolour was primarily used.
The Grand Duchy of Finland participated in the 1912 Summer Olympics with their own team. In the opening ceremony, the Finnish team marched behind the Russian team with a Finland-sign. In the medal ceremonies, the Russian flag above a white-blue pennant reading "Finland" was raised for the Finnish athletes.
Historical population of the Grand Duchy
1810: 863,000
1830: 1,372,000
1850: 1,637,000
1870: 1,769,000
1890: 2,380,000
1910: 2,943,000
1920: 3,148,000 (independent Finland, since 1917)
See also
Independence of Finland
Military of the Grand Duchy of Finland
Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic
Old Finland
Congress Poland – Kingdom of Poland (1815–1831), another constitutional monarchy within the Russian Empire
Åland War
Governorate of Estonia
Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Finnish Civil War
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
Alenius, Kari. "Russification in Estonia and Finland Before 1917," Faravid, 2004, Vol. 28, pp. 181–94 Online
Huxley, Steven. Constitutionalist insurgency in Finland: Finnish "passive resistance" against Russification as a case of nonmilitary struggle in the European resistance tradition (1990)
Jussila, Osmo, et al. From Grand Duchy to a Modern State: A Political History of Finland Since 1809 (Hurst & Co. 1999).
Kan, Aleksander. "Storfurstendömet Finland 1809–1917 – dess autonomi enligt den nutida finska historieskrivningen" (in Swedish) ["Autonomous Finland 1809–1917 in contemporary Finnish historiography"] Historisk Tidskrift, 2008, Issue 1, pp. 3–27
Polvinen, Tuomo. Imperial Borderland: Bobrikov and the Attempted Russification of Finland, 1898–1904 (1995) Duke University Press. 342 pp.
Thaden, Edward C. Russification in the Baltic Provinces and Finland'' (1981). JSTOR
External links
Grand Duchy of Finland at Flags of the World
The text of The Imperial Manifesto of 1811 in German and Finnish
Former countries in Europe
Former grand duchies
Former monarchies of Europe
Governorates-General of the Russian Empire
States and territories established in 1809
States and territories disestablished in 1917
Russian-speaking countries and territories
Swedish-speaking countries and territories
1809 establishments in Europe
1917 disestablishments in Europe | en |
doc-en-13234 | Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen, a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum.
Significant bitumen deposits are reported in Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Venezuela. The estimated worldwide deposits of oil are more than ; the estimates include deposits that have not been discovered. Proven reserves of bitumen contain approximately 100 billion barrels, and total natural bitumen reserves are estimated at worldwide, of which , or 70.8%, are in Alberta, Canada.
Crude bitumen is a thick, sticky form of crude oil, so viscous that it will not flow unless heated or diluted with lighter hydrocarbons such as light crude oil or natural-gas condensate. At room temperature, it is much like cold molasses. The Orinoco Belt in Venezuela is sometimes described as oil sands, but these deposits are non-bituminous, falling instead into the category of heavy or extra-heavy oil due to their lower viscosity. Natural bitumen and extra-heavy oil differ in the degree by which they have been degraded from the original conventional oils by bacteria.
The 1973 and 1979 oil price increases, and development of improved extraction technology enabled profitable extraction and processing of the oil sands. Together with other so-called unconventional oil extraction practices, oil sands are implicated in the unburnable carbon debate but also contribute to energy security and counteract the international price cartel OPEC. According to the Oil Climate Index, carbon emissions from oil-sand crude are 31% higher than from conventional oil. In Canada, oil sands production in general, and in-situ extraction, in particular, are the largest contributors to the increase in the nation's greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 to 2017, according to Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).
History
The exploitation of bituminous deposits and seeps dates back to Paleolithic times. The earliest known use of bitumen was by Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago. Bitumen has been found adhering to stone tools used by Neanderthals at sites in Syria. After the arrival of Homo sapiens, humans used bitumen for construction of buildings and waterproofing of reed boats, among other uses. In ancient Egypt, the use of bitumen was important in preparing mummies.
In ancient times, bitumen was primarily a Mesopotamian commodity used by the Sumerians and Babylonians, although it was also found in the Levant and Persia. The area along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was littered with hundreds of pure bitumen seepages. The Mesopotamians used the bitumen for waterproofing boats and buildings. In Europe, they were extensively mined near the French city of Pechelbronn, where the vapour separation process was in use in 1742.
In Canada, the First Nation peoples had used bitumen from seeps along the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers to waterproof their birch bark canoes from early prehistoric times. The Canadian oil sands first became known to Europeans in 1719 when a Cree native named Wa-Pa-Su brought a sample to Hudsons Bay Company fur trader Henry Kelsey, who commented on it in his journals. Fur trader Peter Pond paddled down the Clearwater River to Athabasca in 1778, saw the deposits and wrote of "springs of bitumen that flow along the ground." In 1787, fur trader and explorer Alexander MacKenzie on his way to the Arctic Ocean saw the Athabasca oil sands, and commented, "At about 24 miles from the fork (of the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers) are some bituminous fountains into which a pole of 20 feet long may be inserted without the least resistance."
Cost of oil sands petroleum-mining operations
In their May 2019 comparison of the "cost of supply curve update" in which the Norway-based Rystad Energy—an "independent energy research and consultancy"—ranked the "worlds total recoverable liquid resources by their breakeven price", Rystad reported that the average breakeven price for oil from the oil sands was US$83 in 2019, making it the most expensive to produce, compared to all other "significant oil producing regions" in the world. The International Energy Agency made similar comparisons.
The price per barrel of heavier, sour crude oils lacking in tidewater access—such as Western Canadian Select (WCS) from the Athabaska oil sands, are priced at a differential to the lighter, sweeter oil—such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI). The price is based on its grade—determined by factors such as its specific gravity or API and its sulfur content—and its location—for example, its proximity to tidewater and/or refineries.
Because the cost of production is so much higher at oil sands petroleum-mining operations, the breakeven point is much higher than for sweeter lighter oils like that produced by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and, the United States. Oil sands productions expand and prosper as the global price of oil increased to peak highs because of the Arab oil embargo of 1973, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the 1990 Persian Gulf crisis and war, the 11 September 2001 attacks, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The boom periods were followed by the bust, as the global price of oil dropped during the 1980s and again in the 1990s, during a period of global recessions, and again in 2003.
Nomenclature
The name tar sands was applied to bituminous sands in the late 19th and early 20th century. People who saw the bituminous sands during this period were familiar with the large amounts of tar residue produced in urban areas as a by-product of the manufacture of coal gas for urban heating and lighting. The word "tar" to describe these natural bitumen deposits is really a misnomer, since, chemically speaking, tar is a human-made substance produced by the destructive distillation of organic material, usually coal.
Since then, coal gas has almost completely been replaced by natural gas as a fuel, and coal tar as a material for paving roads has been replaced by the petroleum product asphalt. Naturally occurring bitumen is chemically more similar to asphalt than to coal tar, and the term oil sands (or oilsands) is more commonly used by industry in the producing areas than tar sands because synthetic oil is manufactured from the bitumen, and due to the feeling that the terminology of tar sands is less politically acceptable to the public. Oil sands are now an alternative to conventional crude oil.
Geology
The world's largest deposits of oil sands are in Venezuela and Canada. The geology of the deposits in the two countries is generally rather similar. They are vast heavy oil, extra-heavy oil, and/or bitumen deposits with oil heavier than 20°API, found largely in unconsolidated sandstones with similar properties. "Unconsolidated" in this context means that the sands have high porosity, no significant cohesion, and a tensile strength close to zero. The sands are saturated with oil which has prevented them from consolidating into hard sandstone.
Size of resources
The magnitude of the resources in the two countries is on the order of 3.5 to 4 trillion barrels (550 to 650 billion cubic metres) of original oil in place (OOIP). Oil in place is not necessarily oil reserves, and the amount that can be produced depends on technological evolution. Rapid technological developments in Canada in the 1985–2000 period resulted in techniques such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) that can recover a much greater percentage of the OOIP than conventional methods. The Alberta government estimates that with current technology, 10% of its bitumen and heavy oil can be recovered, which would give it about 200 billion barrels (32 billion m3) of recoverable oil reserves. Venezuela estimates its recoverable oil at 267 billion barrels (42 billion m3). This places Canada and Venezuela in the same league as Saudi Arabia, having the three largest oil reserves in the world.
Major deposits
There are numerous deposits of oil sands in the world, but the biggest and most important are in Canada and Venezuela, with lesser deposits in Kazakhstan and Russia. The total volume of non-conventional oil in the oil sands of these countries exceeds the reserves of conventional oil in all other countries combined. Vast deposits of bitumen – over 350 billion cubic metres (2.2 trillion barrels) of oil in place – exist in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. If only 30% of this oil could be extracted, it could supply the entire needs of North America for over 100 years at 2002 consumption levels. These deposits represent plentiful oil, but not cheap oil. They require advanced technology to extract the oil and transport it to oil refineries.
Canada
The oil sands of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) are a result of the formation of the Canadian Rocky Mountains by the Pacific Plate overthrusting the North American Plate as it pushed in from the west, carrying the formerly large island chains which now compose most of British Columbia. The collision compressed the Alberta plains and raised the Rockies above the plains, forming mountain ranges. This mountain building process buried the sedimentary rock layers which underlie most of Alberta to a great depth, creating high subsurface temperatures, and producing a giant pressure cooker effect that converted the kerogen in the deeply buried organic-rich shales to light oil and natural gas. These source rocks were similar to the American so-called oil shales, except the latter have never been buried deep enough to convert the kerogen in them into liquid oil.
This overthrusting also tilted the pre-Cretaceous sedimentary rock formations underlying most of the sub-surface of Alberta, depressing the rock formations in southwest Alberta up to deep near the Rockies, but to zero depth in the northeast, where they pinched out against the igneous rocks of the Canadian Shield, which outcrop on the surface. This tilting is not apparent on the surface because the resulting trench has been filled in by eroded material from the mountains. The light oil migrated up-dip through hydro-dynamic transport from the Rockies in the southwest toward the Canadian Shield in the northeast following a complex pre-Cretaceous unconformity that exists in the formations under Alberta. The total distance of oil migration southwest to northeast was about . At the shallow depths of sedimentary formations in the northeast, massive microbial biodegradation as the oil approached the surface caused the oil to become highly viscous and immobile. Almost all of the remaining oil is found in the far north of Alberta, in Middle Cretaceous (115 million-year old) sand-silt-shale deposits overlain by thick shales, although large amounts of heavy oil lighter than bitumen are found in the Heavy Oil Belt along the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, extending into Saskatchewan and approaching the Montana border. Note that, although adjacent to Alberta, Saskatchewan has no massive deposits of bitumen, only large reservoirs of heavy oil >10°API.
Most of the Canadian oil sands are in three major deposits in northern Alberta. They are the Athabasca-Wabiskaw oil sands of north northeastern Alberta, the Cold Lake deposits of east northeastern Alberta, and the Peace River deposits of northwestern Alberta. Between them, they cover over —an area larger than England—and contain approximately of crude bitumen in them. About 10% of the oil in place, or , is estimated by the government of Alberta to be recoverable at current prices, using current technology, which amounts to 97% of Canadian oil reserves and 75% of total North American petroleum reserves. Although the Athabasca deposit is the only one in the world which has areas shallow enough to mine from the surface, all three Alberta areas are suitable for production using in-situ methods, such as cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) and steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD).
The largest Canadian oil sands deposit, the Athabasca oil sands is in the McMurray Formation, centered on the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta. It outcrops on the surface (zero burial depth) about north of Fort McMurray, where enormous oil sands mines have been established, but is deep southeast of Fort McMurray. Only 3% of the oil sands area containing about 20% of the recoverable oil can be produced by surface mining, so the remaining 80% will have to be produced using in-situ wells. The other Canadian deposits are between deep and will require in-situ production.
Athabasca
Cold Lake
The Cold Lake oil sands are northeast of Alberta's capital, Edmonton, near the border with Saskatchewan. A small portion of the Cold Lake deposit lies in Saskatchewan. Although smaller than the Athabasca oil sands, the Cold Lake oil sands are important because some of the oil is fluid enough to be extracted by conventional methods. The Cold Lake bitumen contains more alkanes and less asphaltenes than the other major Alberta oil sands and the oil is more fluid. As a result, cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) is commonly used for production.
The Cold Lake oil sands are of a roughly circular shape, centered around Bonnyville, Alberta. They probably contain over 60 billion cubic metres (370 billion barrels) of extra-heavy oil-in-place. The oil is highly viscous, but considerably less so than the Athabasca oil sands, and is somewhat less sulfurous. The depth of the deposits is and they are from thick. They are too deep to surface mine.
Much of the oil sands are on Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake. CFB Cold Lake's CF-18 Hornet jet fighters defend the western half of Canadian air space and cover Canada's Arctic territory. Cold Lake Air Weapons Range (CLAWR) is one of the largest live-drop bombing ranges in the world, including testing of cruise missiles. As oil sands production continues to grow, various sectors vie for access to airspace, land, and resources, and this complicates oil well drilling and production significantly.
Peace River
Venezuela
The Eastern Venezuelan Basin has a structure similar to the WCSB, but on a shorter scale. The distance the oil has migrated up-dip from the Sierra Orientale mountain front to the Orinoco oil sands where it pinches out against the igneous rocks of the Guyana Shield is only about . The hydrodynamic conditions of oil transport were similar, source rocks buried deep by the rise of the mountains of the Sierra Orientale produced light oil that moved up-dip toward the south until it was gradually immobilized by the viscosity increase caused by biodgradation near the surface. The Orinoco deposits are early Tertiary (50 to 60 million years old) sand-silt-shale sequences overlain by continuous thick shales, much like the Canadian deposits.
In Venezuela, the Orinoco Belt oil sands range from deep and no surface outcrops exist. The deposit is about long east-to-west and wide north-to-south, much less than the combined area covered by the Canadian deposits. In general, the Canadian deposits are found over a much wider area, have a broader range of properties, and have a broader range of reservoir types than the Venezuelan ones, but the geological structures and mechanisms involved are similar. The main differences is that the oil in the sands in Venezuela is less viscous than in Canada, allowing some of it to be produced by conventional drilling techniques, but none of it approaches the surface as in Canada, meaning none of it can be produced using surface mining. The Canadian deposits will almost all have to be produced by mining or using new non-conventional techniques.
Orinoco
The Orinoco Belt is a territory in the southern strip of the eastern Orinoco River Basin in Venezuela which overlies one of the world's largest deposits of petroleum. The Orinoco Belt follows the line of the river. It is approximately from east to west, and from north to south, with an area about .
The oil sands consist of large deposits of extra heavy crude. Venezuela's heavy oil deposits of about of oil in place are estimated to approximately equal the world's reserves of lighter oil. Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), Venezuela's national oil company, has estimated that the producible reserves of the Orinoco Belt are up to which would make it the largest petroleum reserve in the world.
In 2009, the US Geological Survey (USGS) increased its estimates of the reserves to of oil which is "technically recoverable (producible using currently available technology and industry practices)." No estimate of how much of the oil is economically recoverable was made.
Other deposits
In addition to the three major Canadian oil sands in Alberta, there is a fourth major oil sands deposit in Canada, the Melville Island oil sands in the Canadian Arctic islands, which are too remote to expect commercial production in the foreseeable future.
Apart from the megagiant oil sands deposits in Canada and Venezuela, numerous other countries hold smaller oil sands deposits. In the United States, there are supergiant oil sands resources primarily concentrated in Eastern Utah, with a total of of oil (known and potential) in eight major deposits in Carbon, Garfield, Grand, Uintah, and Wayne counties. In addition to being much smaller than the Canadian oil sands deposits, the US oil sands are hydrocarbon-wet, whereas the Canadian oil sands are water-wet. This requires somewhat different extraction techniques for the Utah oil sands from those used for the Alberta oil sands.
Russia holds oil sands in two main regions. Large resources are present in the Tunguska Basin, East Siberia, with the largest deposits being Olenek and Siligir. Other deposits are located in the Timan-Pechora and Volga-Urals basins (in and around Tatarstan), which is an important but very mature province in terms of conventional oil, holds large amounts of oil sands in a shallow permian formation. In Kazakhstan, large bitumen deposits are located in the North Caspian Basin.
In Madagascar, Tsimiroro and Bemolanga are two heavy oil sands deposits, with a pilot well already producing small amounts of oil in Tsimiroro. and larger scale exploitation in the early planning phase. In the Republic of the Congo reserves are estimated between .
Production
Bituminous sands are a major source of unconventional oil, although only Canada has a large-scale commercial oil sands industry. In 2006, bitumen production in Canada averaged through 81 oil sands projects. 44% of Canadian oil production in 2007 was from oil sands. This proportion was (as of 2008) expected to increase in coming decades as bitumen production grows while conventional oil production declines, although due to the 2008 economic downturn work on new projects has been deferred. Petroleum is not produced from oil sands on a significant level in other countries.
Canada
The Alberta oil sands have been in commercial production since the original Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor Energy) mine began operation in 1967. Syncrude's second mine began operation in 1978 and is the biggest mine of any type in the world. The third mine in the Athabasca Oil Sands, the Albian Sands consortium of Shell Canada, Chevron Corporation, and Western Oil Sands Inc. (purchased by Marathon Oil Corporation in 2007) began operation in 2003. Petro-Canada was also developing a $33 billion Fort Hills Project, in partnership with UTS Energy Corporation and Teck Cominco, which lost momentum after the 2009 merger of Petro-Canada into Suncor.
By 2013 there were nine oil sands mining projects in the Athabasca oil sands deposit: Suncor Energy Inc. (Suncor), Syncrude Canada Limited (Syncrude)'s Mildred Lake and Aurora North, Shell Canada Limited (Shell)'s Muskeg River and Jackpine, Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL)'s Horizon, Imperial Oil Resources Ventures Limited (Imperial), Kearl Oil Sands Project (KOSP), Total E&P Canada Ltd. Joslyn North Mine and Fort Hills Energy Corporation (FHEC). In 2011 alone they produced over 52 million cubic metres of bitumen.
Venezuela
No significant development of Venezuela's extra-heavy oil deposits was undertaken before 2000, except for the BITOR operation which produced somewhat less than 100,000 barrels of oil per day (16,000 m3/d) of 9°API oil by primary production. This was mostly shipped as an emulsion (Orimulsion) of 70% oil and 30% water with similar characteristics as heavy fuel oil for burning in thermal power plants. However, when a major strike hit the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, most of the engineers were fired as punishment. Orimulsion had been the pride of the PDVSA engineers, so Orimulsion fell out of favor with the key political leaders. As a result, the government has been trying to "Wind Down" the Orimulsion program.
Despite the fact that the Orinoco oil sands contain extra-heavy oil which is easier to produce than Canada's similarly sized reserves of bitumen, Venezuela's oil production has been declining in recent years because of the country's political and economic problems, while Canada's has been increasing. As a result, Canadian heavy oil and bitumen exports have been backing Venezuelan heavy and extra-heavy oil out of the US market, and Canada's total exports of oil to the US have become several times as great as Venezuela's.
By 2016, with the economy of Venezuela in a tailspin and the country experiencing widespread shortages of food, rolling power blackouts, rioting, and anti-government protests, it was unclear how much new oil sands production would occur in the near future.
Other countries
In May 2008, the Italian oil company Eni announced a project to develop a small oil sands deposit in the Republic of the Congo. Production is scheduled to commence in 2014 and is estimated to eventually yield a total of .
Methods of extraction
Except for a fraction of the extra-heavy oil or bitumen which can be extracted by conventional oil well technology, oil sands must be produced by strip mining or the oil made to flow into wells using sophisticated in-situ techniques. These methods usually use more water and require larger amounts of energy than conventional oil extraction. While much of Canada's oil sands are being produced using open-pit mining, approximately 90% of Canadian oil sands and all of Venezuela's oil sands are too far below the surface to use surface mining.
Primary production
Conventional crude oil is normally extracted from the ground by drilling oil wells into a petroleum reservoir, allowing oil to flow into them under natural reservoir pressures, although artificial lift and techniques such as horizontal drilling, water flooding and gas injection are often required to maintain production. When primary production is used in the Venezuelan oil sands, where the extra-heavy oil is about 50 degrees Celsius, the typical oil recovery rates are about 8–12%. Canadian oil sands are much colder and more biodegraded, so bitumen recovery rates are usually only about 5–6%. Historically, primary recovery was used in the more fluid areas of Canadian oil sands. However, it recovered only a small fraction of the oil in place, so it is not often used today.
Surface mining
The Athabasca oil sands are the only major oil sands deposits which are shallow enough to surface mine. In the Athabasca sands there are very large amounts of bitumen covered by little overburden, making surface mining the most efficient method of extracting it. The overburden consists of water-laden muskeg (peat bog) over top of clay and barren sand. The oil sands themselves are typically thick deposits of crude bitumen embedded in unconsolidated sandstone, sitting on top of flat limestone rock. Since Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor Energy) started operation of the first large-scale oil sands mine in 1967, bitumen has been extracted on a commercial scale and the volume has grown at a steady rate ever since.
A large number of oil sands mines are currently in operation and more are in the stages of approval or development. The Syncrude Canada mine was the second to open in 1978, Shell Canada opened its Muskeg River mine (Albian Sands) in 2003 and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd (CNRL) opened its Horizon Oil Sands project in 2009. Newer mines include Shell Canada's Jackpine mine, Imperial Oil's Kearl Oil Sands Project, the Synenco Energy (now owned by Total S.A.) Northern Lights mine, and Suncor's Fort Hills mine.
Oil sands tailings ponds
Oil sands tailings ponds are engineered dam and dyke systems that contain salts, suspended solids and other dissolvable chemical compounds such as naphthenic acids, benzene, hydrocarbons residual bitumen, fine silts (mature fine tails MFT), and water. Large volumes of tailings are a byproduct of surface mining of the oil sands and managing these tailings is one of the most difficult environmental challenges facing the oil sands industry. The Government of Alberta reported in 2013 that tailings ponds in the Alberta oil sands covered an area of about . The Syncrude Tailings Dam or Mildred Lake Settling Basin (MLSB) is an embankment dam that is, by volume of construction material, the largest earth structure in the world in 2001.
Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS)
Some years ago Canadian oil companies discovered that if they removed the sand filters from heavy oil wells and produced as much sand as possible with the oil, production rates improved significantly. This technique became known as Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS). Further research disclosed that pumping out sand opened "wormholes" in the sand formation which allowed more oil to reach the wellbore. The advantage of this method is better production rates and recovery (around 10% versus 5–6% with sand filters in place) and the disadvantage that disposing of the produced sand is a problem. A novel way to do this was spreading it on rural roads, which rural governments liked because the oily sand reduced dust and the oil companies did their road maintenance for them. However, governments have become concerned about the large volume and composition of oil spread on roads. so in recent years disposing of oily sand in underground salt caverns has become more common.
Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS)
The use of steam injection to recover heavy oil has been in use in the oil fields of California since the 1950s. The cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) "huff-and-puff" method is now widely used in heavy oil production worldwide due to its quick early production rates; however recovery factors are relatively low (10–40% of oil in place) compared to SAGD (60–70% of OIP).
CSS has been in use by Imperial Oil at Cold Lake since 1985 and is also used by Canadian Natural Resources at Primrose and Wolf Lake and by Shell Canada at Peace River. In this method, the well is put through cycles of steam injection, soak, and oil production. First, steam is injected into a well at a temperature of 300 to 340 degrees Celsius for a period of weeks to months; then, the well is allowed to sit for days to weeks to allow heat to soak into the formation; and, later, the hot oil is pumped out of the well for a period of weeks or months. Once the production rate falls off, the well is put through another cycle of injection, soak and production. This process is repeated until the cost of injecting steam becomes higher than the money made from producing oil.
Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD)
Steam-assisted gravity drainage was developed in the 1980s by the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority and fortuitously coincided with improvements in directional drilling technology that made it quick and inexpensive to do by the mid 1990s. In SAGD, two horizontal wells are drilled in the oil sands, one at the bottom of the formation and another about 5 metres above it. These wells are typically drilled in groups off central pads and can extend for miles in all directions. In each well pair, steam is injected into the upper well, the heat melts the bitumen, which allows it to flow into the lower well, where it is pumped to the surface.
SAGD has proved to be a major breakthrough in production technology since it is cheaper than CSS, allows very high oil production rates, and recovers up to 60% of the oil in place. Because of its economic feasibility and applicability to a vast area of oil sands, this method alone quadrupled North American oil reserves and allowed Canada to move to second place in world oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. Most major Canadian oil companies now have SAGD projects in production or under construction in Alberta's oil sands areas and in Wyoming. Examples include Japan Canada Oil Sands Ltd's (JACOS) project, Suncor's Firebag project, Nexen's Long Lake project, Suncor's (formerly Petro-Canada's) MacKay River project, Husky Energy's Tucker Lake and Sunrise projects, Shell Canada's Peace River project, Cenovus Energy's Foster Creek and Christina Lake developments, ConocoPhillips' Surmont project, Devon Canada's Jackfish project, and Derek Oil & Gas's LAK Ranch project. Alberta's OSUM Corp has combined proven underground mining technology with SAGD to enable higher recovery rates by running wells underground from within the oil sands deposit, thus also reducing energy requirements compared to traditional SAGD. This particular technology application is in its testing phase.
Vapor Extraction (VAPEX)
Several methods use solvents, instead of steam, to separate bitumen from sand. Some solvent extraction methods may work better in in situ production and other in mining. Solvent can be beneficial if it produces more oil while requiring less energy to produce steam.
Vapor Extraction Process (VAPEX) is an in situ technology, similar to SAGD. Instead of steam, hydrocarbon solvents are injected into an upper well to dilute bitumen and enables the diluted bitumen to flow into a lower well. It has the advantage of much better energy efficiency over steam injection, and it does some partial upgrading of bitumen to oil right in the formation. The process has attracted attention from oil companies, who are experimenting with it.
The above methods are not mutually exclusive. It is becoming common for wells to be put through one CSS injection-soak-production cycle to condition the formation prior to going to SAGD production, and companies are experimenting with combining VAPEX with SAGD to improve recovery rates and lower energy costs.
Toe to Heel Air Injection (THAI)
This is a very new and experimental method that combines a vertical air injection well with a horizontal production well. The process ignites oil in the reservoir and creates a vertical wall of fire moving from the "toe" of the horizontal well toward the "heel", which burns the heavier oil components and upgrades some of the heavy bitumen into lighter oil right in the formation. Historically fireflood projects have not worked out well because of difficulty in controlling the flame front and a propensity to set the producing wells on fire. However, some oil companies feel the THAI method will be more controllable and practical, and have the advantage of not requiring energy to create steam.
Advocates of this method of extraction state that it uses less freshwater, produces 50% less greenhouse gases, and has a smaller footprint than other production techniques.
Petrobank Energy and Resources has reported encouraging results from their test wells in Alberta, with production rates of up to per well, and the oil upgraded from 8 to 12 API degrees.
The company hopes to get a further 7-degree upgrade from its CAPRI (controlled atmospheric pressure resin infusion) system, which pulls the oil through a catalyst lining the lower pipe.
After several years of production in situ, it has become clear that current THAI methods do not work as planned. Amid steady drops in production from their THAI wells at Kerrobert, Petrobank has written down the value of their THAI patents and the reserves at the facility to zero. They have plans to experiment with a new configuration they call "multi-THAI," involving adding more air injection wells.
Combustion Overhead Gravity Drainage (COGD)
This is an experimental method that employs a number of vertical air injection wells above a horizontal production well located at the base of the bitumen pay zone. An initial Steam Cycle similar to CSS is used to prepare the bitumen for ignition and mobility. Following that cycle, air is injected into the vertical wells, igniting the upper bitumen and mobilizing (through heating) the lower bitumen to flow into the production well. It is expected that COGD will result in water savings of 80% compared to SAGD.
Froth treatment
Energy balance
Approximately of energy is needed to extract a barrel of bitumen and upgrade it to synthetic crude. As of 2006, most of this is produced by burning natural gas. Since a barrel of oil equivalent is about , its EROEI is 5–6. That means this extracts about 5 or 6 times as much energy as is consumed. Energy efficiency is expected to improve to an average of of natural gas or of energy per barrel by 2015, giving an EROEI of about 6.5.
Alternatives to natural gas exist and are available in the oil sands area. Bitumen can itself be used as the fuel, consuming about 30–35% of the raw bitumen per produced unit of synthetic crude. Nexen's Long Lake project will use a proprietary deasphalting technology to upgrade the bitumen, using asphaltene residue fed to a gasifier whose syngas will be used by a cogeneration turbine and a hydrogen producing unit, providing all the energy needs of the project: steam, hydrogen, and electricity. Thus, it will produce syncrude without consuming natural gas, but the capital cost is very high.
Shortages of natural gas for project fuel were forecast to be a problem for Canadian oil sands production a few years ago, but recent increases in US shale gas production have eliminated much of the problem for North America. With the increasing use of hydraulic fracturing making US largely self-sufficient in natural gas and exporting more natural gas to Eastern Canada to replace Alberta gas, the Alberta government is using its powers under the NAFTA and the Canadian Constitution to reduce shipments of natural gas to the US and Eastern Canada, and divert the gas to domestic Alberta use, particularly for oil sands fuel. The natural gas pipelines to the east and south are being converted to carry increasing oil sands production to these destinations instead of gas. Canada also has huge undeveloped shale gas deposits in addition to those of the US, so natural gas for future oil sands production does not seem to be a serious problem. The low price of natural gas as the result of new production has considerably improved the economics of oil sands production.
Upgrading and/or blending
The extra-heavy crude oil or crude bitumen extracted from oil sands is a very viscous semisolid form of oil that does not easily flow at normal temperatures, making it difficult to transport to market by pipeline. To flow through oil pipelines, it must either be upgraded to lighter synthetic crude oil (SCO), blended with diluents to form dilbit, or heated to reduce its viscosity.
Canada
In the Canadian oil sands, bitumen produced by surface mining is generally upgraded on-site and delivered as synthetic crude oil. This makes delivery of oil to market through conventional oil pipelines quite easy. On the other hand, bitumen produced by the in-situ projects is generally not upgraded but delivered to market in raw form. If the agent used to upgrade the bitumen to synthetic crude is not produced on site, it must be sourced elsewhere and transported to the site of upgrading. If the upgraded crude is being transported from the site by pipeline, and additional pipeline will be required to bring in sufficient upgrading agent. The costs of production of the upgrading agent, the pipeline to transport it and the cost to operate the pipeline must be calculated into the production cost of the synthetic crude.
Upon reaching a refinery, the synthetic crude is processed and a significant portion of the upgrading agent will be removed during the refining process. It may be used for other fuel fractions, but the end result is that liquid fuel has to be piped to the upgrading facility simply to make the bitumen transportable by pipeline. If all costs are considered, synthetic crude production and transfer using bitumen and an upgrading agent may prove economically unsustainable.
When the first oil sands plants were built over 50 years ago, most oil refineries in their market area were designed to handle light or medium crude oil with lower sulfur content than the 4–7% that is typically found in bitumen. The original oil sands upgraders were designed to produce a high-quality synthetic crude oil (SCO) with lower density and lower sulfur content. These are large, expensive plants which are much like heavy oil refineries. Research is currently being done on designing simpler upgraders which do not produce SCO but simply treat the bitumen to reduce its viscosity, allowing to be transported unblended like conventional heavy oil.
Western Canadian Select, launched in 2004 as a new heavy oil stream, blended at the Husky Energy terminal in Hardisty, Alberta,
is the largest crude oil stream coming from the Canadian oil sands and the benchmark for emerging heavy, high TAN (acidic) crudes.
Western Canadian Select (WCS) is traded at Cushing, Oklahoma, a major oil supply hub connecting oil suppliers to the Gulf Coast, which has become the most significant trading hub for crude oil in North America. While its major component is bitumen, it also contains a combination of sweet synthetic and condensate diluents, and 25 existing streams of both conventional and unconventional oil making it a syndilbit— both a dilbit and a synbit.
The first step in upgrading is vacuum distillation to separate the lighter fractions. After that, de-asphalting is used to separate the asphalt from the feedstock. Cracking is used to break the heavier hydrocarbon molecules down into simpler ones. Since cracking produces products which are rich in sulfur, desulfurization must be done to get the sulfur content below 0.5% and create sweet, light synthetic crude oil.
In 2012, Alberta produced about of crude bitumen from its three major oil sands deposits, of which about was upgraded to lighter products and the rest sold as raw bitumen. The volume of both upgraded and non-upgraded bitumen is increasing yearly. Alberta has five oil sands upgraders producing a variety of products. These include:
Suncor Energy can upgrade of bitumen to light sweet and medium sour synthetic crude oil (SCO), plus produce diesel fuel for its oil sands operations at the upgrader.
Syncrude can upgrade of bitumen to sweet light SCO.
Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) can upgrade of bitumen to sweet light SCO.
Nexen, since 2013 wholly owned by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), can upgrade of bitumen to sweet light SCO.
Shell Canada operates its Scotford Upgrader in combination with an oil refinery and chemical plant at Scotford, Alberta, near Edmonton. The complex can upgrade of bitumen to sweet and heavy SCO as well as a range of refinery and chemical products.
Modernized and new large refineries such as are found in the Midwestern United States and on the Gulf Coast of the United States, as well as many in China, can handle upgrading heavy oil themselves, so their demand is for non-upgraded bitumen and extra-heavy oil rather than SCO. The main problem is that the feedstock would be too viscous to flow through pipelines, so unless it is delivered by tanker or rail car, it must be blended with diluent to enable it to flow. This requires mixing the crude bitumen with a lighter hydrocarbon diluent such as condensate from gas wells, pentanes and other light products from oil refineries or gas plants, or synthetic crude oil from oil sands upgraders to allow it to flow through pipelines to market.
Typically, blended bitumen contains about 30% natural gas condensate or other diluents and 70% bitumen. Alternatively, bitumen can also be delivered to market by specially designed railway tank cars, tank trucks, liquid cargo barges, or ocean-going oil tankers. These do not necessarily require the bitumen be blended with diluent since the tanks can be heated to allow the oil to be pumped out.
The demand for condensate for oil sands diluent is expected to be more than by 2020, double 2012 volumes. Since Western Canada only produces about of condensate, the supply was expected to become a major constraint on bitumen transport. However, the recent huge increase in US tight oil production has largely solved this problem, because much of the production is too light for US refinery use but ideal for diluting bitumen. The surplus American condensate and light oil is being exported to Canada and blended with bitumen, and then re-imported to the US as feedstock for refineries. Since the diluent is simply exported and then immediately re-imported, it is not subject to the US ban on exports of crude oil. Once it is back in the US, refineries separate the diluent and re-export it to Canada, which again bypasses US crude oil export laws since it is now a refinery product. To aid in this process, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners is reversing its Cochin Pipeline, which used to carry propane from Edmonton to Chicago, to transport of condensate from Chicago to Edmonton by mid-2014; and Enbridge is considering the expansion of its Southern Lights pipeline, which currently ships of diluent from the Chicago area to Edmonton, by adding another .
Venezuela
Although Venezuelan extra-heavy oil is less viscous than Canadian bitumen, much of the difference is due to temperature. Once the oil comes out of the ground and cools, it has the same difficulty in that it is too viscous to flow through pipelines. Venezuela is now producing more extra heavy crude in the Orinoco oil sands than its four upgraders, which were built by foreign oil companies over a decade ago, can handle. The upgraders have a combined capacity of , which is only half of its production of extra-heavy oil. In addition Venezuela produces insufficient volumes of naphtha to use as diluent to move extra-heavy oil to market. Unlike Canada, Venezuela does not produce much natural gas condensate from its own gas wells, and unlike Canada, it does not have easy access to condensate from new US shale gas production. Since Venezuela also has insufficient refinery capacity to supply its domestic market, supplies of naptha are insufficient to use as pipeline diluent, and it is having to import naptha to fill the gap. Since Venezuela also has financial problems – as a result of the country's economic crisis -, and political disagreements with the US government and oil companies, the situation remains unresolved.
Transportation
A network of gathering and feeder pipelines collects crude bitumen and SCO from Alberta's northern oil sands deposits (primarily Athabasca, Cold Lake, and Peace River), and feeds them into two main collection points for southbound deliveries: Edmonton, Alberta and Hardisty, Alberta. Most of the feeder pipelines move blended bitumen or SCO southbound and diluent northbound, but a few move product laterally within the oil sands region. In 2012, the capacity of the southbound feeder lines was over 300,000 m³/d (2 million bbl/d) and more capacity was being added. The building of new oil sands feeder pipelines requires only the approval of the Alberta Energy Regulator, an agency that deals with matters entirely within Alberta and is likely to give little consideration to interference from political and environmental interest from outside Alberta.
Existing pipelines
From Edmonton and Hardisty, main transmission pipelines move blended bitumen and SCO, as well as conventional crude oil and various oil and natural productions to market destinations across North America. The main transmission systems include:
Enbridge has a complex existing system of pipelines that takes crude oil from Edmonton and Hardisty east to Montreal and south as far as the Gulf Coast of the United States, with a total capacity of . It also has a northbound pipeline that takes diluent from refineries in Illinois and other Midwestern states to Edmonton with a capacity of of light hydrocarbons.
Kinder Morgan has the Trans Mountain Pipeline that takes crude oil from Edmonton over the Rocky Mountains to the west coasts of British Columbia and Washington State, with an existing capacity of . It has plans to add an additional of capacity to this pipeline within the existing pipeline easement.
Spectra Energy has a system of pipelines that takes crude oil from Hardisty south to Casper, Wyoming and then east to Wood River, Illinois. The first segment has a capacity of and the second segment .
TransCanada Corporation has the Keystone Pipeline system. Phase 1 currently takes crude oil from Hardisty south to Steele City, Nebraska and then east to Wood River, Illinois. The existing Phase 2 moves crude oil from Steele City to the main US oil marketing hub at Cushing, Oklahoma. Phases 1 and 2 have a combined capacity of .
Overall, the total pipeline capacity for the movement of crude oil from Edmonton and Hardisty to the rest of North America is about . However, other substances such as conventional crude oil and refined petroleum products also share this pipeline network. The rapidly increasing tight oil production from the Bakken formation of North Dakota also competes for space on the Canadian export pipeline system. North Dakota oil producers are using the Canadian pipelines to deliver their oil to US refineries.
In 2012, the Canadian export pipeline system began to become overloaded with new oil production. As a result, Enbridge implemented pipeline apportionment on its southbound lines, and Kinder Morgan on its westbound line. This rationed pipeline space by reducing the monthly allocation of each shipper to a certain percentage of its requirements. The Chevron Corporation Burnaby Refinery, the last remaining oil refinery on Canada's west coast, applied to the NEB for preferential access to Canadian oil since American refineries in Washington and California were outbidding it for pipeline space, but was denied because it would violate NAFTA equal access to energy rules. Similarly, new North Dakota tight oil production began to block new Canadian production from using the Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, and TransCanada southbound systems.
In addition, the US oil marketing hub at Cushing was flooded with new oil because most new North American production from Canada, North Dakota, and Texas converged at that point, and there was insufficient capacity to take it from there to refineries on the Gulf Coast, where half of US oil refinery capacity is located. The American pipeline system is designed to take imported oil from the Gulf Coast and Texas to the refineries in the northern US, and the new oil was flowing in the opposite direction, toward the Gulf Coast. The price of West Texas Intermediate delivered at Cushing, which is the main benchmark for US oil prices, fell to unprecedented low levels below other international benchmark oils such as Brent Crude and Dubai Crude. Since the price of WTI at Cushing is usually quoted by US media as the price of oil, this gave many Americans a distorted view of world oil prices as being lower than they were, and the supply being better than it was internationally. Canada used to be in a similar position to the US in that offshore oil was cheaper than domestic oil, so the oil pipelines used to run westward from the east coast to Central Canada, now they are being reversed to carry cheaper domestic oil sands production from Alberta to the east coast.
New pipelines
Lack of access to markets, limited export capacity, and oversupply in the US market have been a problem for oil sands producers in recent years. They have caused lower prices to Canadian oil sands producers and reduced royalty and tax revenues to Canadian governments. The pipeline companies have moved forward with a number of solutions to the transportation problems:
Enbridge's line from Sarnia, Ontario to Westover, Ontario near the head of Lake Erie has been reversed. This line used to take offshore oil to refineries in the Sarnia area. Now it takes Alberta SCO and blended bitumen to most refineries in Ontario.
Enbridge has applied to reverse its line from Westover to Montreal, Quebec. This line used to take offshore oil to refineries in southern Ontario. After reversal, it will take Alberta SCO and bitumen to Montreal. Since Suncor Energy owns a very large oil sands mine and upgrader in Alberta and also owns a large oil refinery in Montreal, it finds this project appealing. The alternative is closing the refinery since it is noncompetitive using offshore oil.
TransCanada is evaluating converting part of its mainline natural gas transmission system from western Canada to eastern North America to transport oil. Eastern North America is well supplied with natural gas as a result of the recent increases in US shale gas production, but has problems with oil supply since most of their oil comes from offshore.
Enbridge's Seaway Pipeline which used to take oil from the US Gulf Coast to the oil trading hub at Cushing was reversed in 2012 to take oil from Cushing to the Coast, helping to alleviate the bottleneck at Cushing. It has a capacity of but Enbridge is twinning the pipeline to add an additional .
Following the denial of a US regulatory permit for its Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada went ahead with the southern leg of the Keystone project. This will deliver from Cushing to the Coast. Since it is entirely within the states of Oklahoma and Texas, it does not require US federal government approval.
Future pipelines
With the main constraint on Canadian oil sands development becoming the availability of export pipeline capacity, pipeline companies have proposed a number of major new transmission pipelines. Many of these became stalled in government regulatory processes, both by the Canadian and American governments. Another factor is competition for pipeline space from rapidly increasing tight oil production from North Dakota, which under NAFTA trade rules has equal access to Canadian pipelines.
Enbridge has announced its intention to expand its Alberta Clipper line from to and its Southern Access line from to . It is also proposing to build a Flanagan South line with an initial capacity of expandable to .
Enbridge is proposing to build the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Bruderheim, near Edmonton, Alberta to the port of Kitimat, BC for loading on supertankers with an initial capacity of with a reverse flow condensate pipeline to take diluent from tankers at Kitimat to Alberta. This was approved by the Canadian federal cabinet on 17 June 2014, subject to 209 conditions. After this point, the company has to satisfy most of the conditions to National Energy Board satisfaction before construction can start. Satisfying the conditions is expected to take a year or more. The leaders of both main opposition parties promised to reverse the decision if they form the government in the 2015 election. This in fact occurred, as the Liberal party under Justin Trudeau won a majority government.
Kinder Morgan is proposing to increase the capacity of its Trans Mountain pipeline through British Columbia to by 2017. Kinder Morgan is also proposing to build the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline which will add of capacity to the West Coast of Canada and the US.
TransCanada has proposed the construction of the Keystone XL extension to its Keystone Pipeline which would add of capacity from Alberta to the US Gulf Coast. On 6 November 2015, American president Barack Obama announced that the State Department had rejected the proposed expansion.
TransCanada has also proposed to build the Energy East Pipeline, which would carry of oil from Alberta to refineries in Eastern Canada, including Quebec and New Brunswick. It would also have marine facilities that would enable Alberta production to be delivered to Atlantic markets by oil tanker. The Irving Oil Refinery in New Brunswick, which is the largest oil refinery in Canada, is especially interested in it since its traditional sources such as North Sea oil are shrinking and international oil is more expensive than Alberta oil delivered to the Atlantic coast.
In addition, there are a large number of new pipelines proposed for Alberta. These will likely be approved rapidly by the Alberta Energy Regulator, so there are likely to be few capacity problems within Alberta.
Rail
The movement of crude oil by rail is far from new, but it is now a rapidly growing market for North American railroads. The growth is driven by several factors. One is that the transmission pipelines from Alberta are operating at or near capacity and companies who cannot get pipeline space have to move oil by rail instead. Another is that many refineries on the east, west, and Gulf coasts of North America are under-served by pipelines since they assumed that they would obtain their oil by ocean tanker. Producers of new oil in Alberta, North Dakota, and West Texas are now shipping oil by rail to coastal refiners who are having difficulty obtaining international oil at prices competitive with those in the interior of North America. In addition, crude bitumen can be loaded directly into tank cars equipped with steam heating coils, avoiding the need for blending it with expensive condensate in order to ship it to market. Tank cars can also be built to transport condensate on the back-haul from refineries to the oil sands to make additional revenue rather than returning empty.
A single-track rail line carrying 10 trains per day, each with 120 tank cars, can move to , which is the capacity of a large transmission pipeline. This would require 300 locomotives and 18,000 tank cars, which is a small part of the fleet of a Class 1 railroad. By comparison, the two Canadian Class 1 railways, Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) and Canadian National Railway (CN), have 2,400 locomotives and 65,000 freight cars between them, and CP moves 30–35 trains per day on its main line to Vancouver. Two US Class 1 railways, Union Pacific Railroad (UP) and BNSF Railway handle more than 100 trains per day on their western corridors. CN Rail has said that it could move of bitumen from Edmonton to the deepwater port of Prince Rupert, BC if the Northern Gateway Pipeline from Edmonton to the port of Kitimat, BC was not approved.
With many of their lines being underused, railroads find transporting crude oil an attractive source of revenue. With enough new tank cars they could carry all the new oil being produced in North America, albeit at higher prices than pipelines. In the short term, the use of rail will probably continue to grow as producers try to bypass short-term pipeline bottlenecks to take advantage of higher prices in areas with refineries capable of handling heavier crudes. In the long term the growth in rail transport will largely depend on the continued pipeline bottlenecks due to increased production in North America and regulatory delays for new pipelines. At present rail moves over of crude oil, and with continued growth in oil production and building of new terminals, rail movements will probably continue to grow into the foreseeable future.
By 2013, exports of oil from Canada to the US by rail had increased 9-fold in less than two years, from in early 2012 to in late 2013, mainly because new export pipelines had been held up by regulatory delays. As a result, Canadian farmers suffered an acute shortage of rail capacity to export their grains because so much of Canada's rail capacity was tied up by oil products. The safety of rail transport of oil was being called into question after several derailments, especially after a train with 74 tank cars of oil derailed and caught fire in Lac Megantic, Quebec.
The ensuing explosion and firestorm burned down 40 buildings in the town center and killed 47 people. The cleanup of the derailment area could take 5 years, and another 160 buildings may need to be demolished. Ironically, the oil was not Canadian bitumen being exported to the United States but Bakken formation light crude oil being imported into Canada from North Dakota to the Irving Oil Refinery in New Brunswick. Although near a huge oil import port on the Atlantic Ocean, the Irving refinery is importing US Bakken oil by rail because oil from outside North America is too expensive to be economic, and there are no pipelines to deliver heavier but cheaper Western Canadian oil to New Brunswick. It was subsequently pointed out that the Bakken light oil was much more flammable than Alberta bitumen, and the rail cars were mislabeled by the North Dakota producers as to their flammability.
By 2014, the movement of crude by rail had become very profitable to oil companies. Suncor Energy, Canada's largest oil company declared record profits and attributed much of it to transporting oil to market by rail. It was moving about to Cushing, Oklahoma, and putting it into TransCanada's new Gulf Coast pipeline – which was originally going to be the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, before the northern leg across the border from Canada was stalled by US federal government delays.
Suncor has also been moving of Alberta bitumen and North Dakota tight oil by rail to its Montreal Refinery with plans to increase it to . Suncor claimed this saved about $10/bbl off the price of buying offshore oil. However, it was also anticipating the reversal of Enbridge's Line 9 from southwestern Ontario to Montreal to deliver oil even cheaper. Suncor has been considering adding a coker to its Montreal refinery to upgrade heavy oil sands bitumen, which would be cheaper than adding another upgrader to its oil sands operation. It was also shipping marine cargoes on an "opportunistic basis" from Texas and Louisiana "at significant discounts to the international crudes we would typically run in Montreal", thereby taking advantage of the recent US tight oil glut in addition to increased supplies of cheap Canadian oil sands bitumen.
Refining
Heavy crude oil feedstock#crude feedstock needs pre-processing before it is fit for conventional refineries, although heavy oil and bitumen refineries can do the pre-processing themselves. This pre-processing is called 'upgrading', the key components of which are as follows:
removal of water, sand, physical waste, and lighter products
catalytic purification by hydrodemetallisation (HDM), hydrodesulfurization (HDS) and hydrodenitrogenation (HDN)
hydrogenation through carbon rejection or catalytic hydrocracking (HCR)
As carbon rejection is very inefficient and wasteful in most cases, catalytic hydrocracking is preferred in most cases. All these processes take large amounts of energy and water, while emitting more carbon dioxide than conventional oil.
Catalytic purification and hydrocracking are together known as hydroprocessing. The big challenge in hydroprocessing is to deal with the impurities found in heavy crude, as they poison the catalysts over time. Many efforts have been made to deal with this to ensure high activity and long life of a catalyst. Catalyst materials and pore size distributions are key parameters that need to be optimized to deal with this challenge and varies from place to place, depending on the kind of feedstock present.
Canada
There are four major oil refineries in Alberta which supply most of Western Canada with petroleum products, but as of 2012 these processed less than 1/4 of the approximately of bitumen and SCO produced in Alberta. Some of the large oil sands upgraders also produced diesel fuel as part of their operations. Some of the oil sands bitumen and SCO went to refineries in other provinces, but most of it was exported to the United States. The four major Alberta refineries are:
Suncor Energy operates the Petro-Canada refinery near Edmonton, which can process of all types of oil and bitumen into all types of products.
Imperial Oil operates the Strathcona Refinery near Edmonton, which can process of SCO and conventional oil into all types of products.
Shell Canada operates the Scotford Refinery near Edmonton, which is integrated with the Scotford Upgrader, and which can process of all types of oil and bitumen into all types of products.
Husky Energy, operates the Husky Lloydminster Refinery in Lloydminster , which can process of feedstock from the adjacent Husky Upgrader into asphalt and other products.
The $8.5-billion Sturgeon Refinery, a fifth major Alberta refinery, is under construction near Fort Saskatchewan with a completion date of 2017.
The Pacific Future Energy project proposed a new refinery in British Columbia that would process bitumen into fuel for Asian and Canadian markets. Pacific Future Energy proposes to transport near-solid bitumen to the refinery using railway tank cars.
Most of the Canadian oil refining industry is foreign-owned. Canadian refineries can process only about 25% of the oil produced in Canada. Canadian refineries, outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan, were originally built for light and medium crude oil. With new oil sands production coming on production at lower prices than international oil, market price imbalances have ruined the economics of refineries which could not process it.
United States
Prior to 2013, when China surpassed it, the United States was the largest oil importer in the world. Unlike Canada, the US has hundreds of oil refineries, many of which have been modified to process heavy oil as US production of light and medium oil declined. The main market for Canadian bitumen as well as Venezuelan extra-heavy oil was assumed to be the US. The United States has historically been Canada's largest customer for crude oil and products, particularly in recent years. American imports of oil and products from Canada grew from in 1981 to in 2013 as Canada's oil sands produced more and more oil, while in the US, domestic production and imports from other countries declined. However, this relationship is becoming strained due to physical, economic and political influences. Export pipeline capacity is approaching its limits; Canadian oil is selling at a discount to world market prices; US demand for crude oil and product imports has declined because of US economic problems; and US oil domestic unconventional oil production (shale oil production from fracking is growing rapidly. The US resumed export of crude oil in 2016; as of early 2019, the US produced as much oil as it consumed, with shale oil displacing Canadian imports.
For the benefit of oil marketers, in 2004 Western Canadian producers created a new benchmark crude oil called Western Canadian Select, (WCS), a bitumen-derived heavy crude oil blend that is similar in its transportation and refining characteristics to California, Mexico Maya, or Venezuela heavy crude oils. This heavy oil has an API gravity of 19–21 and despite containing large amounts of bitumen and synthetic crude oil, flows through pipelines well and is classified as "conventional heavy oil" by governments. There are several hundred thousand barrels per day of this blend being imported into the US, in addition to larger amounts of crude bitumen and synthetic crude oil (SCO) from the oil sands.
The demand from US refineries is increasingly for non-upgraded bitumen rather than SCO. The Canadian National Energy Board (NEB) expects SCO volumes to double to around by 2035, but not keep pace with the total increase in bitumen production. It projects that the portion of oil sands production that is upgraded to SCO to decline from 49% in 2010 to 37% in 2035. This implies that over of bitumen will have to be blended with diluent for delivery to market.
Asia
Demand for oil in Asia has been growing much faster than in North America or Europe. In 2013, China replaced the United States as the world's largest importer of crude oil, and its demand continues to grow much faster than its production. The main impediment to Canadian exports to Asia is pipeline capacity – The only pipeline capable of delivering oil sands production to Canada's Pacific Coast is the Trans Mountain Pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver, which is now operating at its capacity of supplying refineries in B.C. and Washington State. However, once complete, the Northern Gateway pipeline and the Trans Mountain expansion currently undergoing government review are expected to deliver an additional to to tankers on the Pacific coast, from where they could deliver it anywhere in the world. There is sufficient heavy oil refinery capacity in China and India to refine the additional Canadian volume, possibly with some modifications to the refineries. In recent years, Chinese oil companies such as China Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec), China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), and PetroChina have bought over $30 billion in assets in Canadian oil sands projects, so they would probably like to export some of their newly acquired oil to China.
Economics
The world's largest deposits of bitumen are in Canada, although Venezuela's deposits of extra-heavy crude oil are even bigger. Canada has vast energy resources of all types and its oil and natural gas resource base would be large enough to meet Canadian needs for generations if demand was sustained. Abundant hydroelectric resources account for the majority of Canada's electricity production and very little electricity is produced from oil.
The National Energy Board (NEB) reported in 2013, that if oil prices are above US$100, Canada would have more than enough energy to meet its growing needs. The excess oil production from the oil sands could be exported. The major importing country would probably continue to be the United States, although before the developments in 2014, there was increasing demand for oil, particularly heavy oil, from Asian countries such as China and India.
Canada has abundant resources of bitumen and crude oil, with an estimated remaining ultimate resource potential of 54 billion cubic metres (340 billion barrels). Of this, oil sands bitumen accounts for 90 per cent. Alberta currently accounts for all of Canada's bitumen resources. "Resources" become "reserves" only after it is proven that economic recovery can be achieved. At 2013 prices using current technology, Canada had remaining oil reserves of 27 billion m3 (170 billion bbls), with 98% of this attributed to oil sands bitumen. This put its reserves in third place in the world behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. At the much lower prices of 2015, the reserves are much smaller.
Costs
The costs of production and transportation of saleable petroleum from oil sands is typically significantly higher than from conventional global sources. Hence the economic viability of oil sands production is more vulnerable to the price of oil. The price of benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil at Cushing, Oklahoma above US$100/bbl that prevailed until late 2014 was sufficient to promote active growth in oil sands production. Major Canadian oil companies had announced expansion plans and foreign companies were investing significant amounts of capital, in many cases forming partnerships with Canadian companies. Investment had been shifting towards in-situ steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) projects and away from mining and upgrading projects, as oil sands operators foresee better opportunities from selling bitumen and heavy oil directly to refineries than from upgrading it to synthetic crude oil. Cost estimates for Canada include the effects of the mining when the mines are returned to the environment in "as good as or better than original condition". Cleanup of the end products of consumption are the responsibility of the consuming jurisdictions, which are mostly in provinces or countries other than the producing one.
The Alberta government estimated that in 2012, the supply cost of oil sands new mining operations was $70 to $85 per barrel, whereas the cost of new SAGD projects was $50 to $80 per barrel. These costs included capital and operating costs, royalties and taxes, plus a reasonable profit to the investors. Since the price of WTI rose to $100/bbl beginning in 2011, production from oil sands was then expected to be highly profitable assuming the product could be delivered to markets. The main market was the huge refinery complexes on the US Gulf Coast, which are generally capable of processing Canadian bitumen and Venezuelan extra-heavy oil without upgrading.
The Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) performed an analysis, estimating that in 2012 the average plant gate costs (including 10% profit margin, but excluding blending and transport) of primary recovery was $30.32/bbl, of SAGD was $47.57/bbl, of mining and upgrading was $99.02/bbl, and of mining without upgrading was $68.30/bbl. Thus, all types of oil sands projects except new mining projects with integrated upgraders were expected to be consistently profitable from 2011 onward, provided that global oil prices remained favourable. Since the larger and more sophisticated refineries preferred to buy raw bitumen and heavy oil rather than synthetic crude oil, new oil sands projects avoided the costs of building new upgraders. Although primary recovery such as is done in Venezuela is cheaper than SAGD, it only recovers about 10% of the oil in place versus 60% or more for SAGD and over 99% for mining. Canadian oil companies were in a more competitive market and had access to more capital than in Venezuela, and preferred to spend that extra money on SAGD or mining to recover more oil.
Then in late 2014 the dramatic rise in U.S. production from shale formations, combined with a global economic malaise that reduced demand, caused the price of WTI to drop below $50, where it remained as of late 2015.
In 2015, the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) re-estimated the average plant gate costs (again including 10% profit margin) of SAGD to be $58.65/bbl, and 70.18/bbl for mining without upgrading. Including costs of blending and transportation, the WTI equivalent supply costs for delivery to Cushing become US$80.06/bbl for SAGD projects, and US$89.71/bbl for a standalone mine.
In this economic environment, plans for further development of production from oil sands have been slowed or deferred,
or even abandoned during construction.
Production of synthetic crude from mining operations may continue at a loss because of the costs of shutdown and restart, as well as commitments to supply contracts. During the 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war, the price of Canadian heavy crude dipped below $5 per barrel.
Production forecasts
Oil sands production forecasts released by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), and the Canadian Energy Research Institute (CERI) are comparable to National Energy Board (NEB) projections, in terms of total bitumen production. None of these forecasts take into account probable international constraints to be imposed on combustion of all hydrocarbons in order to limit global temperature rise, giving rise to a situation denoted by the term "carbon bubble". Ignoring such constraints, and also assuming that the price of oil recovers from its collapse in late 2014, the list of currently proposed projects, many of which are in the early planning stages, would suggest that by 2035 Canadian bitumen production could potentially reach as much as 1.3 million m3/d (8.3 million barrels per day) if most were to go ahead. Under the same assumptions, a more likely scenario is that by 2035, Canadian oil sands bitumen production would reach 800,000 m3/d (5.0 million barrels/day), 2.6 times the production for 2012. The majority of the growth would likely occur in the in-situ category, as in-situ projects usually have better economics than mining projects. Also, 80% of Canada's oil sands reserves are well-suited to in-situ extraction, versus 20% for mining methods.
An additional assumption is that there would be sufficient pipeline infrastructure to deliver increased Canadian oil production to export markets. If this were a limiting factor, there could be impacts on Canadian crude oil prices, constraining future production growth. Another assumption is that US markets will continue to absorb increased Canadian exports. Rapid growth of tight oil production in the US, Canada's primary oil export market, has greatly reduced US reliance on imported crude. The potential for Canadian oil exports to alternative markets such as Asia is also uncertain. There are increasing political obstacles to building any new pipelines to deliver oil in Canada and the US. In November 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama rejected the proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska.
In the absence of new pipeline capacity, companies are increasingly shipping bitumen to US markets by railway, river barge, tanker, and other transportation methods. Other than ocean tankers, these alternatives are all more expensive than pipelines.
A shortage of skilled workers in the Canadian oil sands developed during periods of rapid development of new projects. In the absence of other constraints on further development, the oil and gas industry would need to fill tens of thousands of job openings in the next few years as a result of industry activity levels as well as age-related attrition. In the longer term, under a scenario of higher oil and gas prices, the labor shortages would continue to get worse. A potential labor shortage can increase construction costs and slow the pace of oil sands development.
The skilled worker shortage was much more severe in Venezuela because the government controlled oil company PDVSA fired most of its heavy oil experts after the Venezuelan general strike of 2002–03, and wound down the production of Orimulsion, which was the primary product from its oil sands. Following that, the government re-nationalized the Venezuelan oil industry and increased taxes on it. The result was that foreign companies left Venezuela, as did most of its elite heavy oil technical experts. In recent years, Venezuela's heavy oil production has been falling, and it has consistently been failing to meet its production targets.
As of late 2015, development of new oil sand projects were deterred by the price of WTI below US$50, which is barely enough to support production from existing operations. Demand recovery was suppressed by economic problems that may continue indefinitely to bedevil both the European Community and China. Low-cost production by OPEC continued at maximum capacity, efficiency of production from U.S. shales continued to improve, and Russian exports were mandated even below cost of production, as their only source of hard currency. There is also the possibility that there will emerge an international agreement to introduce measures to constrain the combustion of hydrocarbons in an effort to limit global temperature rise to the nominal 2 °C that is consensually predicted to limit environmental harm to tolerable levels. Rapid technological progress is being made to reduce the cost of competing renewable sources of energy. Hence there is no consensus about when, if ever, oil prices paid to producers may substantially recover.
A detailed academic study of the consequences for the producers of the various hydrocarbon fuels concluded in early 2015 that a third of global oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80% of current coal reserves should remain underground from 2010 to 2050 in order to meet the target of 2 °C. Hence continued exploration or development of reserves would be extraneous to needs. To meet the 2 °C target, strong measures would be needed to suppress demand, such as a substantial carbon tax leaving a lower price for the producers from a smaller market. The impact on producers in Canada would be far larger than in the U.S. Open-pit mining of natural bitumen in Canada would soon drop to negligible levels after 2020 in all scenarios considered because it is considerably less economic than other methods of production.
Environmental issues
In their 2011 commissioned report entitled "Prudent Development: Realizing the Potential of North America’s Abundant Natural Gas and Oil Resources," the National Petroleum Council, an advisory committee to the U.S. Secretary of Energy, acknowledged health and safety concerns regarding the oil sands which include "volumes of water needed to generate issues of water sourcing; removal of overburden for surface mining can fragment wildlife habitat and increase the risk of soil erosion or surface run-off events to nearby water systems; GHG and other air emissions from production."
Oil sands extraction can affect the land when the bitumen is initially mined, water resources by its requirement for large quantities of water during separation of the oil and sand, and the air due to the release of carbon dioxide and other emissions. Heavy metals such as vanadium, nickel, lead, cobalt, mercury, chromium, cadmium, arsenic, selenium, copper, manganese, iron and zinc are naturally present in oil sands and may be concentrated by the extraction process. The environmental impact caused by oil sand extraction is frequently criticized by environmental groups such as Greenpeace, Climate Reality Project, Pembina Institute, 350.org, MoveOn.org, League of Conservation Voters, Patagonia, Sierra Club, and Energy Action Coalition. In particular, mercury contamination has been found around oil sands production in Alberta, Canada. The European Union has indicated that it may vote to label oil sands oil as "highly polluting". Although oil sands exports to Europe are minimal, the issue has caused friction between the EU and Canada. According to the California-based Jacobs Consultancy, the European Union used inaccurate and incomplete data in assigning a high greenhouse gas rating to gasoline derived from Alberta's oilsands. Also, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Russia do not provide data on how much natural gas is released via flaring or venting in the oil extraction process. The Jacobs report pointed out that extra carbon emissions from oil-sand crude are 12 percent higher than from regular crude, although it was assigned a GHG rating 22% above the conventional benchmark by EU.
In 2014 results of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that official reports on emissions were not high enough. Report authors noted that, "emissions of organic substances with potential toxicity to humans and the environment are a major concern surrounding the rapid industrial development in the Athabasca oil sands region (AOSR)." This study found that tailings ponds were an indirect pathway transporting uncontrolled releases of evaporative emissions of three representative polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)s (phenanthrene, pyrene, and benzo(a)pyrene) and that these emissions had been previously unreported.
Air pollution management
The Alberta government computes an Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) from sensors in five communities in the oil sands region, operated by a "partner" called the Wood Buffalo Environmental Association (WBEA). Each of their 17 continuously monitoring stations measure 3 to 10 air quality parameters among carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen sulfide (), total reduced sulfur (TRS), Ammonia (), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (), nitrogen oxides (NOx), ozone (), particulate matter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (), total hydrocarbons (THC), and methane/non-methane hydrocarbons (/NMHC). These AQHI are said to indicate "low risk" air quality more than 95% of the time. Prior to 2012, air monitoring showed significant increases in exceedances of hydrogen sulfide () both in the Fort McMurray area and near the oil sands upgraders. In 2007, the Alberta government issued an environmental protection order to Suncor in response to numerous occasions when ground level concentration for ) exceeded standards. The Alberta Ambient Air Data Management System (AAADMS) of the Clean Air Strategic Alliance (aka CASA Data Warehouse) records that, during the year ending on 1 November 2015, there were 6 hourly reports of values exceeding the limit of 10 ppb for , and 4 in 2013, down from 11 in 2014, and 73 in 2012.
In September 2015, the Pembina Institute published a brief report about "a recent surge of odour and air quality concerns in northern Alberta associated with the expansion of oilsands development", contrasting the responses to these concerns in Peace River and Fort McKay. In Fort McKay, air quality is actively addressed by stakeholders represented in the WBEA, whereas the Peace River community must rely on the response of the Alberta Energy Regulator. In an effort to identify the sources of the noxious odours in the Fort McKay community, a Fort McKay Air Quality Index was established, extending the provincial Air Quality Health Index to include possible contributors to the problem: , TRS, and THC. Despite these advantages, more progress was made in remediating the odour problems in the Peace River community, although only after some families had already abandoned their homes. The odour concerns in Fort McKay were reported to remain unresolved.
Land use and waste management
A large part of oil sands mining operations involves clearing trees and brush from a site and removing the overburden— topsoil, muskeg, sand, clay and gravel – that sits atop the oil sands deposit. Approximately 2.5 tons of oil sands are needed to produce one barrel of oil (roughly ⅛ of a ton).
As a condition of licensing, projects are required to implement a reclamation plan. The mining industry asserts that the boreal forest will eventually colonize the reclaimed lands, but their operations are massive and work on long-term timeframes. As of 2013, about of land in the oil sands region have been disturbed, and of that land is under reclamation. In March 2008, Alberta issued the first-ever oil sands land reclamation certificate to Syncrude for the parcel of land known as Gateway Hill approximately north of Fort McMurray. Several reclamation certificate applications for oil sands projects are expected within the next 10 years.
Water management
Between 2 and 4.5 volume units of water are used to produce each volume unit of synthetic crude oil in an ex-situ mining operation. According to Greenpeace, the Canadian oil sands operations use of water, twice the amount of water used by the city of Calgary. However, in SAGD operations, 90–95% of the water is recycled and only about 0.2 volume units of water is used per volume unit of bitumen produced.
For the Athabasca oil sand operations water is supplied from the Athabasca River, the ninth longest river in Canada. The average flow just downstream of Fort McMurray is with its highest daily average measuring . Oil sands industries water license allocations totals about 1.8% of the Athabasca river flow. Actual use in 2006 was about 0.4%. In addition, according to the Water Management Framework for the Lower Athabasca River, during periods of low river flow water consumption from the Athabasca River is limited to 1.3% of annual average flow.
In December 2010, the Oil Sands Advisory Panel, commissioned by former environment minister Jim Prentice, found that the system in place for monitoring water quality in the region, including work by the Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program, the Alberta Water Research Institute, the Cumulative Environmental Management Association and others, was piecemeal and should become more comprehensive and coordinated.
Greenhouse gas emissions
The production of bitumen and synthetic crude oil emits more greenhouse gases than the production of conventional crude oil. A 2009 study by the consulting firm IHS CERA estimated that production from Canada's oil sands emits "about 5% to 15% more carbon dioxide, over the "well-to-wheels" (WTW) lifetime analysis of the fuel, than average crude oil." Author and investigative journalist David Strahan that same year stated that IEA figures show that carbon dioxide emissions from the oil sands are 20% higher than average emissions from the petroleum production.
A Stanford University study commissioned by the EU in 2011 found that oil sands crude was as much as 22% more carbon-intensive than other fuels.
Greenpeace says the oil sands industry has been identified as the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions growth in Canada, as it accounts for 40 million tons of emissions per year.
According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and Environment Canada the industrial activity undertaken to produce oil sands make up about 5% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, or 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. It predicts the oil sands will grow to make up 8% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions by 2015. While the production industrial activity emissions per barrel of bitumen produced decreased 26% over the decade 1992–2002, total emissions from production activity were expected to increase due to higher production levels. As of 2006, to produce one barrel of oil from the oil sands released almost of greenhouse gases with total emissions estimated to be per year by 2015. A study by IHS CERA found that fuels made from Canadian oil sands resulted in significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions than many commonly cited estimates. A 2012 study by Swart and Weaver estimated that if only the economically viable reserve of oil sands was burnt, the global mean temperature would increase by 0.02 to 0.05 °C. If the entire oil-in-place of 1.8 trillion barrels were to be burnt, the predicted global mean temperature increase is 0.24 to 0.50 °C. Bergerson et al. found that while the WTW emissions can be higher than crude oil, the lower emitting oil sands cases can outperform higher emitting conventional crude cases.
To offset greenhouse gas emissions from the oil sands and elsewhere in Alberta, sequestering carbon dioxide emissions inside depleted oil and gas reservoirs has been proposed. This technology is inherited from enhanced oil recovery methods. In July 2008, the Alberta government announced a C$2 billion fund to support sequestration projects in Alberta power plants and oil sands extraction and upgrading facilities.
In November 2014, Fatih Birol, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, described additional greenhouse gas emissions from Canada's oil sands as "extremely low". The IEA forecasts that in the next 25 years oil sands production in Canada will increase by more than , but Dr. Birol said "the emissions of this additional production is equal to only 23 hours of emissions of China — not even one day." The IEA is charged with responsibility for battling climate change, but Dr. Birol said he spends little time worrying about carbon emissions from oil sands. "There is a lot of discussion on oil sands projects in Canada and the United States and other parts of the world, but to be frank, the additional CO2 emissions coming from the oil sands is extremely low." Dr. Birol acknowledged that there is tremendous difference of opinion on the course of action regarding climate change, but added, "I hope all these reactions are based on scientific facts and sound analysis."
In 2014, the U.S. Congressional Research Service published a report in preparation for the decision about permitting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The report states in part: "Canadian oil sands crudes are generally more GHG emission-intensive than other crudes they may displace in U.S. refineries, and emit an estimated 17% more GHGs on a life-cycle basis than the average barrel of crude oil refined in the United States".
According to Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), by 2017, the 23 percent increase in GHG emissions in Canada from 2005 to 2017, was "largely from increased oil sands production, particularly in-situ extraction."
Aquatic life deformities
There is conflicting research on the effects of the oil sands development on aquatic life. In 2007, Environment Canada completed a study that shows high deformity rates in fish embryos exposed to the oil sands. David W. Schindler, a limnologist from the University of Alberta, co-authored a study on Alberta's oil sands' contribution of aromatic polycyclic compounds, some of which are known carcinogens, to the Athabasca River and its tributaries. Scientists, local doctors, and residents supported a letter sent to the Prime Minister in September 2010 calling for an independent study of Lake Athabasca (which is downstream of the oil sands) to be initiated due to the rise of deformities and tumors found in fish caught there.
The bulk of the research that defends the oil sands development is done by the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP), whose steering committee is composed largely of oil and gas companies. RAMP studies show that deformity rates are normal compared to historical data and the deformity rates in rivers upstream of the oil sands.
Public health impacts
In 2007, it was suggested that wildlife has been negatively affected by the oil sands; for instance, moose were found in a 2006 study to have as high as 453 times the acceptable levels of arsenic in their systems, though later studies lowered this to 17 to 33 times the acceptable level (although below international thresholds for consumption).
Concerns have been raised concerning the negative impacts that the oil sands have on public health, including higher than normal rates of cancer among residents of Fort Chipewyan. However, John O'Connor, the doctor who initially reported the higher cancer rates and linked them to the oil sands development, was subsequently investigated by the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons. The College later reported that O'Connor's statements consisted of "mistruths, inaccuracies and unconfirmed information."
In 2010, the Royal Society of Canada released a report stating that "there is currently no credible evidence of environmental contaminant exposures from oil sands reaching Fort Chipewyan at levels expected to cause elevated human cancer rates."
In August 2011, the Alberta government initiated a provincial health study to examine whether a link exists between the higher rates of cancer and the oil sands emissions.
In a report released in 2014, Alberta's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. James Talbot, stated that "There isn’t strong evidence for an association between any of these cancers and environmental exposure [to oil sands]." Rather, Talbot suggested that the cancer rates at Fort Chipewyan, which were slightly higher compared with the provincial average, were likely due to a combination of factors such as high rates of smoking, obesity, diabetes, and alcoholism as well as poor levels of vaccination.
See also
Athabasca oil sands
Beaver River sandstone
Cold Lake oil sands
History of the petroleum industry in Canada (oil sands and heavy oil)
Melville Island oil sands
Oil megaprojects
Oil shale
Organic-rich sedimentary rocks
Orinoco Belt
Peace River oil sands
Petroleum industry
Project Oilsand
Pyrobitumen
RAVEN (Respecting Aboriginal Values & Environmental Needs)
Shale gas
Steam injection (oil industry)
Stranded asset
Thermal depolymerization
Utah oil sands
Wabasca oil field
World energy consumption
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Oil Sands Discovery Centre, Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada
Edward Burtynsky, An aerial look at the Alberta Tar Sands
G.R. Gray, R. Luhning: Bitumen The Canadian Encyclopedia
Jiri Rezac, Alberta Oilsands photo story and aerials
Exploring the Alberta tar sands, Citizenshift, National Film Board of Canada
Indigenous Groups Lead Struggle Against Canada’s Tar Sands – video report by Democracy Now!
Extraction of vanadium from oil sands
Canadian Oil Sands: Life-Cycle Assessments of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Congressional Research Service
Alberta Government Oil Sands Information Portal Interactive Map and Data Library
Petroleum geology
Petroleum industry
Articles containing video clips | en |
doc-en-15 | The history of Christianity in Sussex includes all aspects of the Christianity in the region that is now Sussex from its introduction to the present day. Christianity is the most commonly practised religion in Sussex.
Early history
After the Roman conquest of AD 43, the Celtic society of Sussex became heavily Romanized.
The first written account of Christianity in Britain comes from the early Christian Berber author, Tertullian, writing in the third century, who said that "Christianity could even be found in Britain." Emperor Constantine (AD 306-337), granted official tolerance to Christianity with the Edict of Milan in AD 313. Then, in the reign of Emperor Theodosius "the Great" (AD 378–395), Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire.
When Roman rule eventually ceased, Christianity was probably confined to urban communities. At Wiggonholt, on a tributary of the River Arun, a large lead tank with repeated chi-rho motifs was discovered in 1943, the only Roman period artefact in Sussex found with a definite Christian association. It may represent a baptismal font or a container for holy water, or alternatively may have been used by pagans.
Medieval
Saxon
After the departure of the Roman army, the Saxons arrived and founded the Kingdom of Sussex in the 5th century, bringing with them their polytheistic religion. The Saxon pagan culture probably caused a reversal of the spread of Christianity. According to Bede, Sussex was the last of the mainland Anglo Saxon kingdoms to be converted.
Æðelwealh became Sussex's first Christian king when he married Eafe, the daughter of Wulfhere, the Christian king of Mercia. In 681 St Wilfrid, the exiled Bishop of York, landed at Selsey and is credited with evangelising the local population and founding the church in Sussex. King Æðelwealh granted land to Wilfrid which became the site of Selsey Abbey. The seat of the Sussex bishopric was originally located here before the Normans moved it to Chichester Cathedral in 1075. According to Bede, Sussex was the last area of the country to be converted. However it is unlikely that Sussex was wholly heathen when Wilfrid arrived. Æðelwealh, Sussex's king, had been baptised. Damianus, a South Saxon, was made Bishop of Rochester in the Kingdom of Kent in the 650s; this may indicate earlier missionary work in the first half of the 7th century. At the time of Wilfrid's mission there was a monastery at Bosham containing a few monks led by an Irish monk named Dicul, which was probably part of the Hiberno-Scottish mission of the time. Wilfrid was a champion of Roman customs and it was these customs that were adopted by the church in Sussex rather than the Celtic customs that had taken root in Scotland and Ireland.
Shortly after Æðelwealh granted land to Wilfrid for the church, Cædwalla of Wessex killed Æðelwealh and conquered Sussex. Christianity in Sussex was put under control of the diocese of Winchester. It was not until c. 715 that Eadberht, Abbot of Selsey was consecrated the first bishop of the South Saxons.
St Lewinna, or St Leofwynn, was a female saint who lived around Seaford, probably at Bishopstone around the 7th century. According to the hagiography of the Secgan Manuscript, Lyminster is the burial place of St Cuthflæd of Lyminster. In the late 7th or early 8th century, St Cuthman, a shepherd who may have been born in Chidham and had been reduced to begging, set out from his home with his disabled mother using a one-wheeled cart. When he reached Steyning he saw a vision and stopped there to build a church. Cuthman was venerated as a saint and his church was in existence by 857 when King Æthelwulf of Wessex was buried there. Steyning was an important religious centre and St Cuthman's grave became a place of pilgrimage in the 10th and 11th centuries. In 681, Bede records that an outbreak of the plague had devastated parts of England, including Sussex, and the monks at Selsey Abbey fasted and prayed for three days for an end to the outbreak. A young boy with the plague prayed to St Oswald and his prayers were answered, and a vision of St Peter and St Paul was said to have appeared to the boy, telling him that he would be the last to die.
The church built at Steyning was one of around 50 minster churches across Sussex and these churches supplied itinerant clergy to surrounding districts. Other examples are churches at Singleton, Lyminster, Findon and Bishopstone. The jurisdiction of each minster church in the pre-Viking era seems to match early land divisions that were replaced by hundreds in the 10th or 11th centuries. It was not until 200–300 years after its conversion to Christianity in the 680s that a network of local parish churches existed in Sussex.
Various monastic houses were established in the Saxon period in Sussex including at Selsey Abbey, Lyminster Priory, Aldingbourne, Beddingham, Bosham, Chichester, Ferring and South Malling, near Lewes.
Norman and Angevin
Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, there was a purge of the English episcopate in 1070. The Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Selsey was deposed and replaced with William the Conqueror's personal chaplain, Stigand. During Stigand's episcopate the see that had been established at Selsey was transferred to Chichester after the Council of London of 1075 decreed that sees should be centred in cities rather than vills. 1094 saw the completion of Battle Abbey, which had been founded on the site of the Battle of Hastings after Pope Alexander II had ordered the Normans to do penance for killing so many people during their conquest of England. Monks also planned out the nearby town of Battle shortly after the conquest. Many of the monastic houses of this period were founded by Sussex's new Norman lords. Around 1081, the lord of Lewes Rape, William de Warenne and his wife Gundrada formed England's first and largest Cluniac monastery at Lewes Priory. The lord of Arundel Rape, Roger de Montgomerie established Arundel Priory in 1102. Sele Priory in the Rape of Bramber was founded by the Braose family by 1126.
Bishop Ralph Luffa is credited with the foundation of the current Chichester Cathedral.
The original structure that had been built by Stigand was largely destroyed by fire in 1114.
The medieval church also set up various hospitals and schools in Sussex, including St Mary's Hospital in Chichester (c. 1290-1300); St Nicholas' Hospital in Lewes, which was run by the monks of Lewes Priory; and the Prebendal School close to Chichester Cathedral.
The archdeaconries of Chichester and Lewes were created in the 12th century under Ralph Luffa.
Sussex has strong links with the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller including at Shipley, Poling and Sompting.
In the 13th century, Richard of Chichester was canonised as a saint, and a shrine dedicated to him at Chichester Cathedral became an important place of pilgrimage. St Richard later became Sussex's patron saint.
In 1450 Adam Moleyns became the first and only bishop of Chichester to be assassinated. Troops had been gathered to send to the war in France, but bad weather delayed their departure, and troops raided several towns along the coast. Moleyns was sent to Portsmouth to pay troops their outstanding wages, but was beaten so severely by the mob of soldiers that he died.
There is very little evidence of Lollardy in Sussex in the 15th century. Only one person was burnt to death as a Lollard, Thomas Bageley. Goring argues that pockets of Lollardy existed in the High Weald for over a century before Henry VIII's break with Rome. Lollards tended to congregate near diocesan boundaries so that they could flee across the boundary to safety. Reginald Pecock, bishop of Chichester from 1450–1459, was accused of heresy and only saved his life by privately and publicly renouncing his opinions.
Early modern
During this period Sussex has been described "as an anomaly: a southern county with a religious dynamic more in keeping with those of the north, connected to the Continent as much as the rest of the country, an entity that resisted easy co-option into Elizabeth I's 'little Israel of England'." Rye was probably the most Protestant of all Sussex towns, gaining a reputation as a 'godly commonwealth' well before the end of Henry VIII's reign. There was also strong opposition to the imposition of mass by Mary I.
The Reformation
As in the rest of the country, the Church of England's split with Rome during the reign of Henry VIII was felt in Sussex. In 1535, the king appointed Sir Thomas Cromwell as vicar-general. Cromwell visited Sussex later in 1535, as part of his national census of churches and monasteries. The census was intended to enable the more efficient taxing of church property. The following year, an Act was passed that decreed the dissolution of monasteries with an income of less than £200 per annum. This first phase was followed by the "voluntary" surrenders of the larger houses. Lewes Priory with Battle, was the first house in England, during the Dissolution, to surrender on a voluntary basis. The monks surrendered the house in November 1537 in return for either being given a small pension or a living as a priest. The site and possessions of Lewes Priory were granted to Henry VIII's vicar-general, Thomas Cromwell, who passed Lewes Priory to his son, Gregory Cromwell. Sussex did not do too badly compared to the rest of the country, as it only had one person in 500 who was a member of a religious order, compared to the national average of one in 256.
In 1538 there was a royal order for the demolition of the shrine of St Richard of Chichester in Chichester Cathedral. Thomas Cromwell saying that there was "a certain kind of idolatry about the shrine".
Richard Sampson, Bishop of Chichester, incurred the displeasure of Cromwell and ended up imprisoned in the Tower of London at the end of 1539. Sampson was released after Cromwell's fall from favour and execution in 1540. Sampson then continued at the see of Chichester for a further two years. He was succeeded as Bishop of Chichester by George Day. Day opposed the changes, and incurred the displeasure of the royal commissioners, who promptly suspended him as Bishop and allowed him only to preach in his cathedral church.
Henry VIII died in 1547; his son Edward VI continued on the path that his father had set. However his reign was only short-lived as he died after only six years.
The bishops of Chichester had not been in favour of the Reformation until the appointment of John Scory to the episcopate in 1552. During Henry VIII's reign two of the canons of Chichester Cathedral had been executed for their opposition to the Reformation, and during Edward VI's reign George Day was ultimately imprisoned for his opposition to the reforms.
Reign of Mary I
There had been twenty years of religious reform when the Catholic, Mary Tudor succeeded to the throne of England in 1553. Mary expected her clergy to be unmarried, so Bishop Scory thought it prudent to retire as he was a married man, and George Day was released and restored to the see of Chichester.
Mary's persecution of Protestants earned her the nickname "Bloody Mary". Nationally about 288 Protestants were burnt at the stake during her reign, including 41 in Sussex. Most of the executions in Sussex were at Lewes. Of these 41 burnings, 36 can be identified to have come from specific parishes, and the place of execution is known for 27 of them; because the details of the executions were recorded in the Book of Martyrs by John Foxe, published in 1563. Martyrs included Deryck Carver, a French-speaking Flemish man who had sought refuge in Brighton from persecution for his Calvinist beliefs; and Richard Woodman, an ironmaster from Buxted. There are Bonfire Societies in Sussex that still remember the 17 Protestant martyrs that burned in Lewes High Street, and in Lewes itself they have a procession of martyrs' crosses during the bonfire night celebration. According to Quinn, the authorities in Sussex during Mary's reign were rather less bloodthirsty than is generally assumed, often allowing their opponents to slip the noose when they could. Carver's meetings had been attended by many fishermen from both England and France, beginning the tradition of French Christian worship in Brighton.
There was a range of Protestant beliefs in Sussex during the reign of Queen Mary. Sussex's proximity to the Continent left it particularly exposed to European Protestantism, while its proximity to large parts of the Weald also left it open to pre-Reformation Protestantism. This was particularly so in the east of the county, with its trade links to Protestant areas of northern Europe and it covering a large part of the Weald, as well as being close to the Kentish border.
Reign of Elizabeth I
When Mary died in 1558, she was replaced by her Protestant sister Elizabeth I. Elizabeth re-established the break with Rome when she passed the 1559 Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity: the clergy were expected to take statutory oaths, and those that did not were deprived of their living. In the county nearly half the cathedral clergy and about 40% of the parish clergy had to be replaced, although some of the vacancies were due to ill health or death.
A case can be made for the Reformation as a religious phenomenon only arriving in Sussex with Bishop Richard Curteys from 1570. In the west, Curteys' reforms were hampered by the noble Catholic families, and in the east by more radical forms of Protestantism. Until then the loyal but conservative bishops Sherborne, Sampson and Day did not appear to enforce doctrinal orthodoxy. Through the influence of Richard Curteys, the Reformation in Sussex took on a Puritan tone from the 1570s and a tradition of 'radical parochialism' developed with well-educated preachers supporting ministers, often sponsored by Puritan landowners. Curteys circumvented the existing clergy by bringing in 'lecturers' or unbeneficed clergy who provided a new preaching tradition, and also gathered some existing clergy who were sympathetic to his aims. This was particularly strong in the Lewes area, in part because of its European trade links.
During the 1570s Puritan Christian names like "Feregod" became common in the Weald. Far from the seat of the Bishop of Chichester, radical towns like Rye and Lewes became "free-thinking" Protestant towns, and numbers of Protestants increased, with Huguenots seeking refuge after the St Bartholomew's Day massacre in France. In the 1560s and 1570s, there was a trend for giving Puritan children "godly" names, especially in East Sussex, signifying a Puritan counter-culture. Eighteen parishes in the east of Sussex record Puritan names, the highest concentration of which was in Warbleton, where around half the children were given Puritan names between 1587 and 1590. Such Puritan names included "Be-courteous Cole" (in Pevensey), "Safely-on-High Snat" (in Uckfield) and "Fight-the-Good-Fight-of-Faith White" (in Ewhurst. One child with a Puritan name, Accepted Frewen, later became Archbishop of York. Many Sussex Puritans emigrated across the Atlantic Ocean to New England, accounting for about 1% of New England's immigrants. Puritan migrants from other English regions, such as East Anglia, had much lower usage of hortatory names, and Puritans in the US state of Massachusetts followed the East Anglian rather than the Sussex naming custom.
In the late 16th century, Sussex was a complicated and divided region. The countryside was largely Catholic, dominated by the ancient Catholic families: the Howards at Arundel, the Percys at Petworth House, the Gages at Firle, the Brownes (the Lords Montague) at Cowdray Park, the Palmers at Parham House, as well as other minor dynasties like the Carylls, Lewkenors, Shelleys and Kemps. At the start of Elizabeth's reign all six of Sussex's noble families were Catholic. The towns, including Rye and Lewes, were more likely to be controlled by Protestants if not Protestant in orientation. The Earl of Arundel, Henry FitzAlan had considerable influence as Lord Steward of the Royal Household, privy councillor and Lord Lieutenant of Sussex (1559-1569) until he was involved in the Ridolfi plot to marry his son-in-law, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, to Mary Queen of Scots. Even after the 1580s when restrictions on Catholics were imposed, Sussex continued to be led by Catholic peers. The office of sheriff of Sussex was held by Catholics eleven times between 1558 and 1603.
At the end of Elizabeth's reign, Catholicism continued to be tolerated. On the death of her husband, Lady Montague withdrew to Battle Abbey, the family's seat in the east of the county. The establishment of what became known as "Little Rome" became a focal point for the local Catholic community, with as many as 120 people attending Mass. This shows that long-standing political loyalty by Catholics was repaid by a form of toleration.
The Catholic Sussex families which suffered imprisonment or financial ruin at this time were mostly those that were involved in conspiracies against Elizabeth. After the uprising of 1569, the eighth Earl of Northumberland was effectively sent into internal exile in Sussex, at his home at Petworth House. After 1577, central authorities mounted on a growing attack on Catholic recusants, forcing them to abandon apparent conformity at a greater cost. Fines for non-attendance at an Anglican church were increased from 12d per week to 20 pounds per month. In 1580 leading Sussex Catholics including John Gage of Firle and Richard Shelley of Warminghurst were imprisoned for recusancy and continued to pay the taxes and fines demanded. In 1583 Charles Paget was smuggled into England, meeting William Shelley at Patching to discuss a plan to land Spanish, German and Italian troops in Sussex and march to Petworth House, the home of Northumberland, and Arundel Castle, while a second force would land in Lancashire and be joined by an uprising of English Catholics. Shelley's and Northumberland's actions reveal there was some truth in the suspicions directed against Sussex Catholics.
With further legislation in the 1580s, Sussex Catholics caught harbouring priests were guilty of treason. Significantly, no member of the Sussex gentry or nobility was ever charged under these laws, and neither was there ever any uprising, even though there was a significant Catholic community in Sussex. In this, the west of Sussex was out of step with the rest of England, just as attempts to impose a "Godly magistracy" in Rye in the east of the county was out of step with the rest of Protestant England. During this period Sussex was often different from the rest of England, with east and west of the county often inversions of each other. West Grinstead Park, home of the Caryll family, became a Roman Catholic mission where priests arrived, generally at night up the River Adur to await "posting". he River Adur was extensively used by the many Catholics travelling covertly between London and the Continent. Thomas Pilchard was executed in 1587 for being a priest and Edward Shelley of Warminghurst died at Tyburn in London in 1588 for hiding a priest. In 1588 two Catholic priests, Ralph Crockett and Edward James, were arrested at Arundel Haven (now Littlehampton), taken to London and executed outside Chichester. Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel, who was canonised in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, spent much of his life at his family home of Arundel Castle. From a family of Catholic recusants, Howard was imprisoned in the Tower of London for leaving the country without the permission of Queen Elizabeth. He died there ten years later. Early in the 17th century, Bosham-born Benedictine priest, George Gervase, was executed in London.
17th century
In the 17th century, the diocese of Chichester was home to several Arminian bishops, including Bishops Andrews, Harsnett, Montagu, Duppa and King.
In the 1620s and 1630s many communities had licensed preachers. Lectureships at Rye, Lewes, Horsham and Midhurst extended preaching to the towns with the full support of the local gentry. From this time, Sabbatarianism gained ground with suppression of games and disorder. Bishop Montagu put forward extreme views against Puritanism and stressed the importance of ritual. Anthony Stapley, chairman of the Michaelmas quarter sessions in Sussex, was persuaded by Puritans to develop a harangue against the bishops in 1639, and in 1641 Stapley and Thomas Pelham petitioned Parliament on this issue. Latent hostility towards Catholics increased; and although Sussex contained as large a proportion of recusant households as many of the northern counties, few Catholic gentry in the county openly supported the king.
There were no battles of national significance in Sussex, during the 1642–1651 English civil war; however there were small sieges at Chichester and Arundel. The west of the county was generally royalist, although Chichester was for parliament and the east of the county, with some exceptions, was also for parliament. A few churches were damaged, particularly in the Arundel area. Also, after the surrender of Chichester, the Cathedral was sacked by Sir William Wallers parliamentary troops. Bruno Ryves, Dean of Chichester Cathedral said of the troops that "they deface and mangle [the monuments] with their swords as high as they could reach". He also complained that Waller's troops...
"... brake down the Organs and dashing the pipes with their Pole-axes..."
Mercurius Rusticus p. 139
Destruction of the cathedrals' music seems to have been one of the objectives, as Ryves also said, of Waller's men, that...
"they force open all the locks, either of doors or desks wherein the Singing-men laid up their Common-Prayer Books, their singing-Books, their Gowns and Surplesses they rent the Books in pieces and scatter the torn leaves all over the Church, even to the covering of the Pavement.."
Mercurius Rusticus p. 140
In 1643, Francis Bell, one of the priests at the Catholic mission in West Grinstead, was executed, along with other priests. The Caryll family were frequently persecuted and fined.
During Cromwell's interregnum, Rye stood out as a Puritan 'Common Wealth', a centre of social experiment and rigorous public morality under vicar Joseph Beeton and his successor John Allen. The people of Rye seem in general to have ignored the strict sabbatarianism enforced by the constables, particularly where 'immoderate drinking' was concerned.
Sussex Quakers and emigration to British North America
About a quarter of the incumbents were forced from their parishes and replaced with Puritans. Many people turned away from the traditional churches and in 1655 George Fox founded the Society of Friends at Horsham. Quakerism emerged in Sussex in the 1650s, to be firmly suppressed by a gentry concerned about its revolutionary tendencies. In 1656, Thomas Haycock of Horsham became the first person in Sussex to be sent to gaol for their Quaker beliefs. William Penn lived in the county for a while; in 1676 he bought the estate of Warminghurst, near Steyning. In 1677 a huge open air meeting of Quakers was held at Penn's home in Warminghurst in defiance of the law, with several hundred Quakers attending. Then in 1681 Charles II granted Penn lands in what became Pennsylvania and Delaware. Amongst those whom he carried to Pennsylvania as colonists were 200 people from Sussex. In 1682 Penn left the Kent port of Deal for the Province of Pennsylvania with about 100 passengers, mostly Quakers and mostly from Sussex. Quakers to leave Sussex for Pennsylvania included Samuel Carpenter who founded Horsham Township, Pennsylvania; and in 1677 William Clayton left for Pennsylvania, where his family founded with others a township they called Chichester, and opened the Chichester Friends Meetinghouse. Penn also created Sussex County and renamed the settlement of Hoernkills as Lewes.
Following the Rye House Plot of 1683 a new wave of religious persecution swept across England. Until the passing of the Toleration Act received royal assent in 1689 Quakers in Sussex and elsewhere had suffered considerable persecution, many of whom were imprisoned in Horsham Jail. While living at Warminghurst, Penn too was persecuted for his Quaker faith. The 1684 Chichester Quarter Sessions recorded that William Penn "being a factitious and seditious person doth frequently entertain and keep an unlawful assemblage and conventicle in his dwelling house at Warminghurst to the terror of the King's liege people." Penn sold the estate, at Warminghurst, to a James Butler in 1707.
The Quakers in Sussex debated with Matthew Caffyn, a General Baptist preacher and writer, including George Fox and William Penn. There is a well-known account in 1655 when two Quakers from the north of England, Thomas Lawson and John Slee, disputed doctrine with Caffyn. As a result of their debates, Lawson produced a pamphlet entitled An Untaught Teacher Witnessed Against (1655) and Caffyn produced a pamphlet Deceived and Deceiving Quakers Discovered, Their Damnable Heresies, Horrid Blasphemies, Mockings, Railings (1656). in 1696, Caffyn's increasingly radical, unorthodox beliefs caused a schism in the General Baptist Assembly, and its response to his changing theology was significant in the development of Unitarianism. The attorney-general of Rye, Samuel Jeake was exiled from the town after being found guilty of preaching under the Five Mile Act 1665. He was forced to remain outside of Rye until 1687 when the toleration which James II extended to Protestant dissenters enabled him to return to Rye.
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 under Charles II. It took over a year, after the restoration of Charles II in May 1660, for Chichester cathedral to get its choir back to full strength.
In the late 17th century, Sussex was a stronghold of the General Baptists.
In 1676 the Sussex parishes with the highest proportion of Catholics were almost entirely in the two most westerly Rapes of Chichester and Arundel: at least ten per cent of the population were Catholic in the parishes of Burton, Clapham, Coates, Midhurst, Racton, Shipley and Westfield.
In 1678 a former Hastings rector, Titus Oates fabricated the "Popish Plot", a supposed Catholic conspiracy to assassinate King Charles II and replace him with James (later James II). The plot led to the false implication, imprisonment and execution of William Howard. As a 'Catholic of distinction' the seventh John Caryll from Sussex was imprisoned in the Tower of London but was let out on bail. Following the persecutions and executions that followed the Titus Oates plot, the death penalty for being a priest was removed. Instead, unscheduled fines were doubled and all remaining civil rights were removed from people keeping the Roman Catholic faith. At this stage, most Sussex Catholic families conformed to the Anglican church, except notably for the Caryll family. In 1688 the seventh John Caryll went into exile to Saint-Germain in France with James II as private secretary to James' queen, Mary of Modena.
Late modern
18th century
There was a significant decline in non-conformity in Sussex in the early 18th century. Between 1676 and 1724 the strength of non-conformity in the county was reduced by at least one quarter. Around a third of the parishes in Sussex in 1724 had no dissenters. For instance in 1676, Horsham had over 100 non-conformists but by 1724 there were just 34.
The number of dissenters fell from 4,300 in 1676 to around 3,300 in 1724. In the 18th century, the Sussex grocer, Thomas Turner left a diary which suggests a high level of theological literacy amongst laypeople. At this time, the Sussex Weald and bordering towns such as Lewes were home to a number of fundamentalist sects. Cade Street Chapel in Heathfield was founded in 1769 for the followers of George Gilbert, who was popularly styled as 'The Apostle of Sussex'. Gilbert also preached in surrounding villages, often with great hardship and difficulty: at Ticehurst he was pelted with stones when the bells rang; at Bexhill he was plastered from head to toe in filth, and a large drum was played to drown out the sound of his voice until a woman put a knife into the drum.
Under Caffyn's guidance a General Baptist chapel was founded in Horsham in 1719, bringing together Baptists who had met in small house-groups in the town since 1669 or possibly as early as 1645. Worshippers from across northern Sussex came to this chapel; many were from the village of Billingshurst a few miles away. This group later became large enough to split from the Horsham congregation and establish a chapel in their home village.
Methodist pioneers came to the Rape of Hastings in 1756, with John Wesley visiting Rye in 1758. Wesley's last open air sermon was held in nearby Winchelsea in 1790. The Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion's first church was set up in 1761 in North Street, Brighton in what was originally Selina, Countess of Huntingdon's garden.
Sussex had a significantly larger proportion of Catholics than other southern counties. Between 1715 and 1720, 8 per cent of the population of Sussex were registered as Catholic, a proportion more in common with counties north of a line from the River Severn to the Wash. John Baptist Caryll, the last of the Caryll family, was penalised for his Catholic faith and was forced in 1754 to sell his Sussex homes including that at West Grinstead. He endowed the Priest's House to the Catholic Church via Lewes-born bishop Richard Challoner so that Catholic mass could be continued in the locality. When Challoner visited the West Grinstead Mission in 1741 he found 80 Catholics at Mass. Finally, history cannot forget the famous recusant, Maria Fitzherbert, who during this period secretly married the Prince of Wales, Prince Regent, and future George IV in 1785. The British Constitution, however, did not accept it and George IV later moved on. Cast aside by the establishment, she was adopted by the town of Brighton, whose citizens, both Catholic and Protestant, called her "Mrs. Prince." According to journalist, Richard Abbott, "Before the town had a [Catholic] church of its own, she had a priest say Mass at her own house, and invited local Catholics", suggesting the recusants of Brighton were not very undiscovered.
19th Century
Roman Catholic Church
Brighton's Roman Catholic community at the time of the Relief Act was small, but two factors caused it to grow in the 1790s. Many refugees from the French Revolution settled in Brighton after escaping from France; and Maria Fitzherbert, a twice-widowed Catholic, began a relationship with the Prince Regent (and secretly married him in 1785 in a ceremony which was illegal according to the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Royal Marriages Act 1772). She accompanied the Prince Regent whenever he visited Brighton, and had her own house (Steine House on Old Steine).
The first Catholic place of worship since the Reformation in Brighton was established above a shop in 1798; it was one of the earliest in Britain. In 1805 the priest in charge, a French émigré, started to raise money for a permanent building; a site on High Street, east of the Royal Pavilion and Old Steine, was found, and the Classical-style church was completed in 1807. It was demolished in 1981.
In 1818 the new rector, a friend of Maria Fitzherbert, wanted to extend the church. Mrs Fitzherbert donated £1,000 for this purpose, but before any action could be taken the events of 1829, when Catholic emancipation was fully achieved, encouraged Brighton's Catholic community to seek a new site for a larger, more elaborate church. A piece of undeveloped land on the estate of the Marquess of Bristol was bought for £1,050, and William Hallett, later a mayor of Brighton, designed and built the new church of St John the Baptist. It was consecrated on 7 July 1835 and opened on 9 July 1835. Many of the 900 Catholic churches opened in England since the 1791 Roman Catholic Relief Act had not been consecrated by that stage, so St John the Baptist's was only the fourth new church to be consecrated in England since the Reformation in the 16th century.
Founded in 1873, St. Hugh's Charterhouse, Parkminster is the first and only post-Reformation Carthusian monastery in the United Kingdom. In 1876 the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Consolation of West Grinstead was established, becoming the first Catholic shrine in honour of Mary to be established in England since the Reformation. Sussex was covered by the new Roman Catholic diocese of Southwark, created in 1850. New priests for the Catholic diocese of Southwark began to train at West Grinstead until they could move to a larger domestic property at Henfield. The diocese then moved its seminary to a purpose-built seminary in Surrey.
Non-conformist churches
Despite Methodism's early progress around Rye and Winchelsea in the Rape of Hastings, Methodism took longer to gain ground in the rest of Sussex. Methodism in the coastal towns of Sussex had a very unusual origin in that it was Methodists in the army who were the main or contributory founders of Methodism in towns from Chichester to Bexhill, including Lewes. Michael Hickman has argued that it was not until 1803 when Methodists and others in the army were allowed to worship freely on Sundays that Methodist soldiers could support or found Methodist societies in Sussex. 1805 saw the timber-framed Jireh Chapel open in Lewes, for Calvinist William Huntington whose tomb is at the rear of the chapel.
The General Baptist congregations at Billingshurst, Ditchling and Horsham gradually moved from General Baptist beliefs towards Unitarianism in the early 19th century.
In the mid 19th century John Sirgood founded the Society of Dependants at Loxwood in the north of the county. Nicknamed the 'Cokelers' their beliefs were largely derived from Wesleyan Arminianism. They believed in the people's ability to exercise free will and thereby achieve salvation rather than the Calvinistic assertion of predestination. They first established themselves at Loxwood because it was outside of the control of the large estates whose Anglican owners would have denied them land or premises. As well as at Loxwood, the Society of Dependants went on to found places of worship at Chichester, Hove, Northchapel and Warnham, as well as at three locations in Surrey.
1851 census
In 1851 the authorities organised a census of places of worship in England and Wales. The figures for Sussex indicated that there were more Anglican than non-conformist places of worship. In the neighbouring counties of Hampshire and Kent, there were more non-conformist places than Anglican.
The 1851 census shows that the Anglican church was particularly strong in the west of the county. These were areas where settlements were predominantly nucleated, with small parishes. Thakeham had the second highest rate of Anglicans in England (96% Anglican). Steyning, Petworth, Westhampnett and Westbourne were also over 80% Anglican. Anglican churches did well in the coastal towns including Brighton. In parts of the Sussex Weald the Anglican church had fewer churches than many other denominations, but not in terms of attendances at these churches.
Just over 40% of the places of worship in Sussex in 1851 were non-conformist, mainly Independents, Wesleyan Methodists and Baptists. There were also smaller congregations of Catholics, Quakers, Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion and Unitarians. Non-conformist chapels did well particularly in the Weald.
Old dissent - dating back to Lollardy, such as Baptists, Unitarians and Quakers - remained more popular than new dissent and could be seen particularly in the Weald and on the Downs. It was particularly noticeable in the towns such as Brighton, Shoreham, Hastings and Rye. Some parts of Sussex were areas of strength for Baptists, but the west was an area of relative weakness. Overall in Sussex, Wesleyan Methodism had some of the fewest adherents in Sussex in all of England. However Wesleyan Methodism was strong in the rape of Hastings along the border with Kent; it was weakest in the county west of Eastbourne. Primitive Methodists were almost absent from Sussex.
Primitive Methodists were almost completely absent from Sussex. Of the 44 Sussex parishes with Catholics in 1676, only two, Arundel and Slindon, also had a Catholic place of worship in 1851.
Anglo-Catholic reform in the Anglican Church and subsequent protest
In the mid 19th century, divine Frederick William Robertson became well-known and preached at the Holy Trinity Church, Brighton.
Formed in the 19th century, the cult of the Sussex martyrs was instigated at a time of the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England, bolstered by an increase in the Irish Catholic population, as well as the high-profile conversion to Catholicism of members of the Oxford movement, including Cardinal Newman and former Archdeacon of Chichester, Henry Edward Manning. Mark Antony Lower, an anti-Catholic propagandist and schoolmaster from Lewes, inaugurated the cult of the Sussex martyrs after the publication of his 1851 book The Sussex Martyrs to recall the dire actions of Catholicism in Sussex. Hostility to the Roman Catholic church, strong shortly after the Reformation had virtually died out by the early 19th century when religious tolerance was dominant mood. This began to change with the Evangelical Revival. The first Methodists to preach in Lewes were Calvinist Methodists, who saw the world as a sharp contrast between good and evil, God and the devil. The natural recipients of their negative projections were Catholics, who were becoming tolerated in England. More petitions were to come out of Lewes against Catholic emancipation that any other town in southern England. They came not from the old dissenters who favoured toleration but from the newly-formed Calvinist congregations. The local press in Lewes pandered to these prejudices. The introduction of ritualist practices in the Anglican church further increased anti-Catholic attitudes in Lewes.
In the mid 19th century the practice of burning an effigy of Pope Paul V at the Lewes Bonfire celebrations began. Paul V was a peaceable man who happened to be pope at the time of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and who cannot be held responsible for the Gunpowder Plot or the persecution of Protestants in the reign of Mary I, which were linked at this time by a misunderstanding of the past. In 1893 William Richardson, rector of the Southover district of Lewes, held sermons on the Sunday before 5 November warning about the perils of Catholicism. Many attendees were members of the newly-formed Orange Lodge in Lewes.
At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, memorials were erected across Sussex and several other English counties to honour people burnt to death as heretics in the reigns of Henry VIII and Mary I. These were largely a reminder of religious divisions of more than three centuries earlier which seemed remote from the public preoccupations of the day. The actions could only be seen an anti-Catholic or at least anti-papal. Whilst moderate supporters did not wish to offend the Catholic community, a memorial in Heathfield read "burnt to death at Lewes by the Roman Catholics". These monuments did not commemorate the martyrdoms of Catholics or the Protestant opponents of state-imposed orthodoxy, except where they were erected by nonconformists. Anger was directed against the Anglo-Catholic community more than Catholics.
In the Anglican church in the 19th century, the role of ritual became subject of great, often heated, debate. In Brighton the Anglican church became influenced by the Oxford Movement, to an extent unparalleled elsewhere in the country apart from London. In Anglo-Catholic circles, Brighton became associated with London, as in the collective title of "London-Brighton and South Coast Religion", a play on the name of the main railway company in Victorian Sussex, the "London, Brighton and South Coast Railway". The railway, coincidentally or otherwise, linked all the large and growing centres of Anglo-Catholic worship spreading from London to Brighton and then east and west along coast of Sussex to the neighbouring counties of Kent and Hampshire. Anglo-Catholic priests in Brighton, included Henry Michell Wagner whose churches included St Paul's Church and there was a powerful Protestant reaction including a riot in 1880. Brighton vicar Rev John Purchas was charged and ritualism spread to churches in Hastings and Worthing. Various militant Protestant groups formed branches and lodges across the county. Richard Enraght was also tried, arrested and imprisoned. The prolific Anglo-Catholic hymnologist John Mason Neale was attacked by a mob and hostile demonstrations ensued at East Grinstead.
In 1884 rioting ensued in Worthing, Eastbourne and Shoreham as mobs of people including members of the Skeleton Army reacted to Salvation Army criticism.
Contemporary Christianity
Church of England
In the Church of England in Sussex, the administration of the diocese of Chichester which covers the county was changed in 1912. In addition to the existing archdeaconries of Chichester and Lewes that date from the 12th century, a third archdeaconry of Hastings was created. This structure remained in place until the archdeaconries were reorganised under Eric Kemp in 1975. The archdeaconry of Hastings was dissolved and merged back into the archdeaconry of Lewes, which was renamed the archdeaconry of Lewes and Hastings. A new archdeaconry was created in the north of the county - the archdeaconry of Horsham. This structure remained until 2014 when the archdeaconry of Hastings was recreated in the east of the county and the archeaconry of Lewes and Hastings was renamed the archdeaconry of Brighton and Lewes. The suffragan Bishop of Horsham oversees the archdeaconries of Chichester and Horsham, while the suffragan Bishop of Lewes oversees the archdeaconries of Brighton & Lewes and Hastings. The bishop of Chichester retains oversight over the entire diocese of Chichester i.e. all of Sussex.
On 16 November 2001, Pat Sinton, became the first woman priest in Sussex to be ordained. Sinton was ordained by John Hind, the bishop of Chichester, following the departure of the previous bishop of Chichester, Eric Kemp. Although Kemp had encouraged women to serve in the permanent diaconate in his diocese he had been an opponent of the ordination of women to the priesthood and women priests were not licensed in the Diocese of Chichester during his episcopate. In September 2014 Fiona Windsor was made archdeacon of Horsham, making her the first female archdeacon in Sussex.
The Church of England in Sussex was damaged by sexual abuse scandals in the early 2000s.
Roman Catholic Church
In 1900 the Roman Catholic nun Maude Petre began a friendship with the Jesuit priest George Tyrell, which resulted in Petre building a cottage for Tyrell in the garden of her Storrington home. Both Petre and Tyrell were major figures in the Modernist controversy of the early 20th century. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton was formed in 1965 out of part of the diocese of Southwark. It includes Sussex and Surrey. In the early 2000s, the sexual abuse scandal in the Arundel and Brighton diocese hurt the public's trust in the work of local diocesan officials.
Relations with Sussex churches
Appointed as Bishop of Chichester in 1929, George Bell was a vocal supporter of the German resistance to Nazism and a pioneer of the Ecumenical Movement that aimed for greater co-operation between churches. Bell established in 1955 the first ever County Council of Churches in Sussex, since which similar structures have been formed in other parts of England.
There is a history of religious antagonism and anti-popery around the bonfire celebrations in Lewes. In the 1930s the mayor of Lewes requested that 'no popery' banners be removed and an end to the burning of effigies of Pope Paul V. In the 1950s the Cliffe Bonfire Society was banned from the Bonfire Council from taking part in the United Grand Procession for its refusal to stop carrying a 'no popery' banner and banners commemorating the 16th century Protestant martyrs burned at Lewes. In Lewes, women were to a significant degree responsible for using the spirit of ecumenism to build bridges between the denominations that had until then continued to be anti-Catholic. In 1984 Sussex church leaders were invited to Lewes to discuss Protestant-Catholic relations. Attendees included Eric Kemp, Bishop of Chichester, Peter Ball, suffragan Bishop of Lewes and Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, as well as their equivalent positions in the Baptist, Methodist and United Reformed churches. In a historic gesture after the meeting the leaders walked to the Martyrs' memorial and prayed for peace and reconciliation. The owners of the memorial, associated with Jireh Chapel, subsequently threatened the intruders for trespassing. The LDCC later persuaded BBC to make a Songs of Praise TV programme in Lewes on the theme of religious tolerance, broadcast on 5 November 1989. To many though, the bonfire celebrations have lost much of their religious meaning, with many Catholics taking part. There are parallels with the carnival celebrations that took place across western Europe when the established order was turned upside down and the lord of misrule held sway for the day. In 1981 Ian Paisley visited Lewes on Bonfire Night and tried to fan the flames of conflict by handing out anti-Catholic pamphlets. His intervention back-fired and the following year he was burned in effigy. Today, anti-Catholic attitudes are rare and the militant Calvinism that continues in Northern Ireland is all but extinct in Lewes.
In the 21st century, controversy continues to be associated around the Bonfire societies and competing definitions of tradition and bigotry. For instance, the burning in effigy of Pope Paul V was described in 2012 as "a scandalous piece of stone-cold bigotry"
Other Christian denominations
Established in 1971 the Anabaptist Bruderhof community was founded near Robertsbridge, the earliest such community remaining in Europe. From the 1980s, Sussex has three Greek Orthodox churches - at Brighton, Hastings and Eastbourne.
Following the Second Sudanese Civil War, many refugees came to Brighton and Hove and neighbouring areas. Hove and Worthing are now home to Coptic Orthodox Churches, two of 28 such churches in the British Isles. The churches were visited in 2017 by Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria and Bishop Paula of Tanta. In 1998 the congregation at Jireh Chapel in Lewes took the decision to affiliate with the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster. The church is one of seven such churches established in England.
In the Old Roman Catholic Church in Europe in 2012, Jerome Lloyd was made Metropolitan Archbishop of Selsey (officially "Archbishop Metropolitan of the Isle of the Seals (Selsey) and the New Market of the Regnenses (i.e. of the Celtic tribe the Romans conquered in AD43, now called Chichester) in the Kingdom of the South Saxons (i.e. Sussex)". Based in Brighton, the archbishop is one of a small number of priests who broadcast the traditional Mass in Latin live, via the internet and is the only priest to do so in Europe. The archbishop works on various projects to help homeless people in Brighton.
The turn of the 21st century saw the rise of so-called mega-churches and neo-charismatic and evangelical churches including Kingdom Faith in Horsham, set up by Colin Urquhart and the Newfrontiers group founded by Terry Virgo.
Current and former places of worship
Lists of all current and former places of worship in Sussex by district are as follows:
Adur District
Arun District
Brighton and Hove
Chichester (current)
Chichester (former)
Crawley
Eastbourne
Hastings
Horsham District
Lewes District
Mid Sussex
Rother
Wealden (current)
Wealden (former)
Worthing
See also
History of Christianity in England
History of Sussex
Religion in Sussex
List of monastic houses in East Sussex
List of monastic houses in West Sussex
History of local government in Sussex
Bibliography
References
Christianity in Sussex
History of Sussex
History of Christianity in England | en |
doc-en-163 | The Golden Horde, self-designated as Ulug Ulus, 'Great State' in Turkic, was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire after 1259 it became a functionally separate khanate. It is also known as the Kipchak Khanate or as the Ulus of Jochi.
After the death of Batu Khan (the founder of the Golden Horde) in 1255, his dynasty flourished for a full century, until 1359, though the intrigues of Nogai instigated a partial civil war in the late 1290s. The Horde's military power peaked during the reign of Uzbeg Khan (1312–1341), who adopted Islam. The territory of the Golden Horde at its peak extended from Siberia and Central Asia to parts of Eastern Europe from the Urals to the Danube in the west, and from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea in the south, while bordering the Caucasus Mountains and the territories of the Mongol dynasty known as the Ilkhanate.
The khanate experienced violent internal political disorder beginning in 1359, before it briefly reunited (1381–1395) under Tokhtamysh. However, soon after the 1396 invasion of Timur, the founder of the Timurid Empire, the Golden Horde broke into smaller Tatar khanates which declined steadily in power. At the start of the 15th century, the Horde began to fall apart. By 1466, it was being referred to simply as the "Great Horde". Within its territories there emerged numerous predominantly Turkic-speaking khanates. These internal struggles allowed the northern vassal state of Muscovy to rid itself of the "Tatar Yoke" at the Great Stand on the Ugra River in 1480. The Crimean Khanate and the Kazakh Khanate, the last remnants of the Golden Horde, survived until 1783 and 1847 respectively.
Name
The name Golden Horde, a partial calque of Russian Золотая Орда (Zolotája Ordá), itself supposedly a partial calque of Turkic Altan Orda, is said to have been inspired by the golden color of the tents the Mongols lived in during wartime, or an actual golden tent used by Batu Khan or by Uzbek Khan, or to have been bestowed by the Slavic tributaries to describe the great wealth of the khan. The Turkic word orda means "palace", "camp" or "headquarters", in this case the headquarters of the khan, being the capital of the khanate, metonymically extended to the khanate itself. It was not until the 16th century that Russian chroniclers begin explicitly using the term "Golden Horde" to refer to this particular successor khanate of the Mongol Empire. The first known use of the term, in 1565, in the Russian chronicle History of Kazan, applied it to the Ulus of Batu (Russian: Улуса Батыя), centered on Sarai. In contemporary Persian, Armenian and Muslim writings, and in the records of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries such as the Yuanshi and the Jami' al-tawarikh, the khanate was called the "Ulus of Jochi" ("realm of Jochi" in Mongolian), "Dasht-i-Qifchaq" (Qipchaq Steppe) or "Khanate of the Qipchaq" and "Comania" (Cumania).
The eastern or left wing (or "left hand" in official Mongolian-sponsored Persian sources) was referred to as the Blue Horde in Russian chronicles and as the White Horde in Timurid sources (e.g. Zafar-Nameh). Western scholars have tended to follow the Timurid sources' nomenclature and call the left wing the White Horde. But Ötemish Hajji (fl. 1550), a historian of Khwarezm, called the left wing the Blue Horde, and since he was familiar with the oral traditions of the khanate empire, it seems likely that the Russian chroniclers were correct, and that the khanate itself called its left wing the Blue Horde. The khanate apparently used the term White Horde to refer to its right wing, which was situated in Batu's home base in Sarai and controlled the ulus. However, the designations Golden Horde, Blue Horde, and White Horde have not been encountered in the sources of the Mongol period.
Mongol origins (1225–1241)
At his death in 1227, Genghis Khan divided the Mongol Empire amongst his four sons as appanages, but the Empire remained united under the supreme khan. Jochi was the eldest, but he died six months before Genghis. The westernmost lands occupied by the Mongols, which included what is today southern Russia and Kazakhstan, were given to Jochi's eldest sons, Batu Khan, who eventually became ruler of the Blue Horde, and Orda Khan, who became the leader of the White Horde. In 1235, Batu with the great general Subutai began an invasion westwards, first conquering the Bashkirs and then moving on to Volga Bulgaria in 1236. From there he conquered some of the southern steppes of present-day Ukraine in 1237, forcing many of the local Cumans to retreat westward. The Mongol campaign against the Kypchaks and Cumans had already started under Jochi and Subutai in 1216–1218 when the Merkits took shelter among them. By 1239 a large portion of Cumans were driven out of the Crimean peninsula, and it became one of the appanages of the Mongol Empire. The remnants of the Crimean Cumans survived in the Crimean mountains, and they would, in time, mix with other groups in the Crimea (including Greeks, Goths, and Mongols) to form the Crimean Tatar population. Moving north, Batu began the Mongol invasion of Rus' and spent three years subjugating the principalities of former Kievan Rus', whilst his cousins Möngke, Kadan, and Güyük moved southwards into Alania.
Using the migration of the Cumans as their casus belli, the Mongols continued west, raiding Poland and Hungary, which culminated in Mongol victories at the battles of Legnica and Mohi. In 1241, however, Ögedei Khan died in the Mongolian homeland. Batu turned back from his siege of Vienna but did not return to Mongolia, rather opting to stay at the Volga River. His brother Orda returned to take part in the succession. The Mongol armies would never again travel so far west. In 1242, after retreating through Hungary, destroying Pest in the process, and subjugating Bulgaria, Batu established his capital at Sarai, commanding the lower stretch of the Volga River, on the site of the Khazar capital of Atil. Shortly before that, the younger brother of Batu and Orda, Shiban, was given his own enormous ulus east of the Ural Mountains along the Ob and Irtysh Rivers.
While the Mongolian language was undoubtedly in general use at the court of Batu, few Mongol texts written in the territory of the Golden Horde have survived, perhaps because of the prevalent general illiteracy. According to Grigor'ev, , or decrees of the Khans, were written in Mongol, then translated into the Cuman language. The existence of Arabic-Mongol and Persian-Mongol dictionaries dating from the middle of the 14th century and prepared for the use of the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate suggests that there was a practical need for such works in the chancelleries handling correspondence with the Golden Horde. It is thus reasonable to conclude that letters received by the Mamluks – if not also written by them – must have been in Mongol.
Golden Age
Batu Khan (1242–1256)
When the Great Khatun Töregene invited Batu to elect the next Emperor of the Mongol Empire in 1242, he declined to attend the kurultai and instead stayed at the Volga River. Although Batu excused himself by saying he was suffering from old age and illness, it seems that he did not support the election of Güyük Khan. Güyük and Büri, a grandson of Chagatai Khan, had quarreled violently with Batu at a victory banquet during the Mongol occupation of Eastern Europe. He sent his brothers to the kurultai, and the new Khagan of the Mongols was elected in 1246.
All the senior Rus' princes, including Yaroslav II of Vladimir, Daniel of Galicia, and Sviatoslav III of Vladimir, acknowledged Batu's supremacy. Originally Batu ordered Daniel to turn the administration of Galicia over to the Mongols, but Daniel personally visited Batu in 1245 and pledged allegiance to him. After returning from his trip, Daniel was visibly influenced by the Mongols, and equipped his army in the Mongol fashion. Austrian visitors to his camp remarked that all of Daniel's horsemen dressed like Mongols. The only one who did not was Daniel himself, who dressed according to "the Russian custom." Michael of Chernigov, who had killed a Mongol envoy in 1240, refused to show obeisance and was executed in 1246.
When Güyük called Batu to pay him homage several times, Batu sent Yaroslav II, Andrey II of Vladimir and Alexander Nevsky to Karakorum in Mongolia in 1247. Yaroslav II never returned and died in Mongolia. He was probably poisoned by Töregene Khatun, who probably did it to spite Batu and even her own son Güyük, because he did not approve of her regency. Güyük appointed Andrey Grand prince of Vladimir-Suzdal and Alexander prince of Kiev. However when they returned, Andrey went to Vladimir while Alexander went to Novgorod instead. A bishop by the name of Cyril went to Kiev and found it so devastated that he abandoned the place and went further east instead.
In 1248, Güyük demanded Batu come eastward to meet him, a move that some contemporaries regarded as a pretext for Batu's arrest. In compliance with the order, Batu approached, bringing a large army. When Güyük moved westwards, Tolui's widow and a sister of Batu's stepmother Sorghaghtani warned Batu that the Jochids might be his target. Güyük died on the way, in what is now Xinjiang, at about the age of 42. Although some modern historians believe that he died of natural causes because of deteriorating health, he may have succumbed to the combined effects of alcoholism and gout, or he may have been poisoned. William of Rubruck and a Muslim chronicler state that Batu killed the imperial envoy, and one of his brothers murdered the Great Khan Güyük, but these claims are not completely corroborated by other major sources. Güyük's widow Oghul Qaimish took over as regent, but she would be unable to keep the succession within her branch of the family.
With the assistance of Batu, Möngke succeeded as Great Khan in 1251. Utilizing the discovery of a plot designed to remove him, Möngke as the new Great Khan began a purge of his opponents. Estimates of the deaths of aristocrats, officials, and Mongol commanders range from 77 to 300. Batu became the most influential person in the Mongol Empire as his friendship with Möngke ensured the unity of the realm. Batu, Möngke, and other princely lines shared rule over the area from Afghanistan to Turkey. Batu allowed Möngke's census takers to operate freely in his realm. In 1252–1259, Möngke conducted a census of the Mongol Empire, including Iran, Afghanistan, Georgia, Armenia, Rus', Central Asia, and North China. While the census in China was completed in 1252, Novgorod in the far northwest was not counted until winter 1258–59.
With the new powers afforded to Batu by Möngke, he now had direct control over the Rus' princes. However the Grand Prince Andrey II refused to submit to Batu. Batu sent a punitive expedition under Nevruy, who defeated Andrey and forced him to flee to Novgorod, then Pskov, and finally to Sweden. The Mongols overran Vladimir and harshly punished the principality. The Livonian Knights stopped their advance to Novgorod and Pskov. Thanks to his friendship with Sartaq Khan, Batu's son, who was a Christian, Alexander was installed as the Grand Prince of Vladimir (i.e., the supreme Russian ruler) by Batu in 1252.
Berke (1258–1266)
After Batu died in 1256, his son Sartaq Khan was appointed by Möngke Khan. As soon as he returned from the court of the Great Khan in Mongolia, Sartaq died. The infant Ulaghchi succeeded him under the regency of Boragchin Khatun. The khatun summoned all the Rus' princes to Sarai to renew their patents. In 1256 Andrey traveled to Sarai to ask for pardon. He was once again reappointed as prince of Vladimir-Suzdal.
Ulaghchi died soon after and Batu Khan's younger brother Berke, who had been converted to Islam, was enthroned as khan of the Golden Horde in 1258.
In 1256, Daniel of Galicia openly defied the Mongols and ousted their troops in northern Podolia. In 1257, he repelled Mongol assaults led by the prince Kuremsa on Ponyzia and Volhynia and dispatched an expedition with the aim of taking Kiev. Despite initial successes, in 1259 a Mongol force under Boroldai entered Galicia and Volhynia and offered an ultimatum: Daniel was to destroy his fortifications or Boroldai would assault the towns. Daniel complied and pulled down the city walls. In 1259 Berke launched savage attacks on Lithuania and Poland, and demanded the submission of Béla IV, the Hungarian monarch, and the French King Louis IX in 1259 and 1260. His assault on Prussia in 1259/60 inflicted heavy losses on the Teutonic Order. The Lithuanians were probably tributary in the 1260s, when reports reached the Curia that they were in league with the Mongols.
Mongol agents began taken censuses in the Rus' principalities. Novgorod in the far northwest was not counted until winter 1258–59. There was an uprising in Novgorod against the Mongol census, but Alexander Nevsky forced the city to submit to the census and taxation.
In 1261, Berke approved the establishment of a church in Sarai.
Toluid Civil War (1260–1264)
After Möngke Khan died in 1259, the Toluid Civil War broke out between Kublai Khan and Ariq Böke. While Hulagu Khan of the Ilkhanate supported Kublai, Berke sided with Ariq Böke. There is evidence that Berke minted coins in Ariq Böke's name, but he remained militarily neutral. After the defeat of Ariq Böke in 1264, he freely acceded to Kublai's enthronement. However, some elites of the White Horde joined Ariq Böke's resistance.
Berke–Hulagu war (1262–1266)
Möngke ordered the Jochid and Chagatayid families to join Hulagu's expedition to Iran. Berke's persuasion might have forced his brother Batu to postpone Hulagu's operation, little suspecting that it would result in eliminating the Jochid predominance there for several years. During the reign of Batu or his first two successors, the Golden Horde dispatched a large Jochid delegation to participate in Hulagu's expedition in the Middle East in 1256/57.
One of the Jochid princes who joined Hulagu's army was accused of witchcraft and sorcery against Hulagu. After receiving permission from Berke, Hulagu executed him. After that two more Jochid princes died suspiciously. According to some Muslim sources, Hulagu refused to share his war booty with Berke in accordance with Genghis Khan's wish. Berke was a devoted Muslim who had had a close relationship with the Abbasid Caliph Al-Musta'sim, who had been killed by Hulagu in 1258. The Jochids believed that Hulagu's state eliminated their presence in the Transcaucasus. Those events increased the anger of Berke and the war between the Golden Horde and the Ilkhanate soon broke out in 1262.
The increasing tension between Berke and Hulagu was a warning to the Golden Horde contingents in Hulagu's army that they had better escape. One contingent reached the Kipchak Steppe, another traversed Khorasan, and a third body took refuge in Mamluk ruled Syria where they were well received by Sultan Baybars (1260–1277). Hulagu harshly punished the rest of the Golden Horde army in Iran. Berke sought a joint attack with Baybars and forged an alliance with the Mamluks against Hulagu. The Golden Horde dispatched the young prince Nogai to invade the Ilkhanate but Hulagu forced him back in 1262. The Ilkhanid army then crossed the Terek River, capturing an empty Jochid encampment, only to be routed in a surprise attack by Nogai's forces. Many of them were drowned as the ice broke on the frozen Terek River. The outbreak of conflict was made more annoying to Berke by the rebellion of Suzdal at the same time, killing Mongol darughachis and tax-collectors. Berke planned a severe punitive expedition. But after Alexander Nevsky begged Berke not to punish the Rus' and the Vladimir-Suzdal cities agreed to pay a large indemnity, Berke relented. Alexander died on his trip back in Gorodets on the Volga. He was well loved by the people and called the "sun of Russia".
When the former Seljuk Sultan Kaykaus II was arrested in the Byzantine Empire, his younger brother Kayqubad II appealed to Berke. An Egyptian envoy was also detained there. With the assistance of the Kingdom of Bulgaria (Berke's vassal), Nogai invaded the Empire in 1264. By the next year, the Mongol-Bulgarian army was within reach of Constantinople. Nogai forced Michael VIII Palaiologos to release Kaykaus and pay tribute to the Horde. Berke gave Kaykaus Crimea as an appanage and had him marry a Mongol woman. Hulagu died in February 1265 and Berke followed the next year while on campaign in Tiflis, causing his troops to retreat.
Ariq Böke had earlier placed Chagatai's grandson Alghu as Chagatayid Khan, ruling Central Asia. He took control of Samarkand and Bukhara. When the Muslim elites and the Jochid retainers in Bukhara declared their loyalty to Berke, Alghu smashed the Golden Horde appanages in Khorazm. Alghu insisted Hulagu attack the Golden Horde; he accused Berke of purging his family in 1252. In Bukhara, he and Hulagu slaughtered all the retainers of the Golden Horde and reduced their families into slavery, sparing only the Great Khan Kublai's men. After Berke gave his allegiance to Kublai, Alghu declared war on Berke, seizing Otrar and Khorazm. While the left bank of Khorazm would eventually be retaken, Berke had lost control over Transoxiana. In 1264 Berke marched past Tiflis to fight against Hulagu's successor Abaqa, but he died en route.
Mengu-Timur (1266–1280)
Berke left no sons, so Batu's grandson Mengu-Timur was nominated by Kublai and succeeded his uncle Berke. However, Mengu-Timur secretly supported the Ögedeid prince Kaidu against Kublai and the Ilkhanate. After the defeat of Ghiyas-ud-din Baraq, a peace treaty was concluded in 1267 granting one-third of Transoxiana to Kaidu and Mengu-Timur. In 1268, when a group of princes operating in Central Asia on Kublai's behalf mutinied and arrested two sons of the Qaghan (Great Khan), they sent them to Mengu-Timur. One of them, Nomoghan, favorite of Kublai, was located in the Crimea. Mengu-Timur might have struggled with Hulagu's successor Abagha for a brief period of time, but the Great Khan Kublai forced them to sign a peace treaty. He was allowed to take his share in Persia. Independently from the Khan, Nogai expressed his desire to ally with Baibars in 1271. Despite the fact that he was proposing a joint attack on the Ilkhanate with the Mamluks of Egypt, Mengu-Timur congratulated Abagha when Baraq was defeated by the Ilkhan in 1270.
In 1267, Mengu-Timur issued a diploma – jarliq – to exempt Rus' clergy from any taxation and gave to the Genoese and Venice exclusive trading rights in Caffa and Azov. Some of Mengu-Timur's relatives converted to Christianity at the same time and settled among the Rus' people. One of them was a prince who settled in Rostov and became known as Tsarevich Peter of the Horde (Peter Ordynsky). Even though Nogai invaded the Eastern Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire in 1271, the Khan sent his envoys to maintain friendly relationship with Michael VIII Palaiologos, who sued for peace and married one of his daughters, Euphrosyne Palaiologina, to Nogai. Mengu-Timur ordered the Grand prince of Rus to allow German merchants free travel through his lands. This gramota says:
This decree also allowed Novgorod's merchants to travel throughout the Suzdal lands without restraint. Mengu Timur honored his vow: when the Danes and the Livonian Knights attacked Novgorod Republic in 1269, the Khan's great , Amraghan, and many Mongols assisted the Rus' army assembled by the Grand duke Yaroslav. The Germans and the Danes were so cowed that they sent gifts to the Mongols and abandoned the region of Narva. The Mongol Khan's authority extended to all Rus' principalities, and in 1274–75 the census took place in all Rus' cities, including Smolensk and Vitebsk.
In 1277, Mengu-Timur launched a campaign against the Alans north of the Caucasus. Along with the Mongol army were also Rus', who took the fortified stronghold of the Alans, Dadakov, in 1278.
Dual khanship (1281–1299)
Mengu-Timur was succeeded in 1281 by his brother Töde Möngke, who was a Muslim. However Nogai Khan was now strong enough to establish himself as an independent ruler. The Golden Horde was thus ruled by two khans.
Töde Möngke made peace with Kublai, returned his sons to him, and acknowledged his supremacy. Nogai and Köchü, Khan of the White Horde and son of Orda Khan, also made peace with the Yuan dynasty and the Ilkhanate. According to Mamluk historians, Töde Möngke sent the Mamluks a letter proposing to fight against their common enemy, the unbelieving Ilkhanate. This indicates that he might have had an interest in Azerbaijan and Georgia, which were both ruled by the Ilkhans.
In the 1270s Nogai had savagely raided Bulgaria and Lithuania. He blockaded Michael Asen II inside Drăstăr in 1279, executed the rebel emperor Ivailo in 1280, and forced George Terter I to seek refuge in the Byzantine Empire in 1292. In 1284 Saqchi came under the Mongol rule during the major invasion of Bulgaria, and coins were struck in the Khan's name. Smilets was installed by Nogai as emperor of Bulgaria. Accordingly, the reign of Smilets has been considered the height of Mongol overlordship in Bulgaria. When he was expelled by a local boyars c. 1295, the Mongols launched another invasion to protect their protege. Nogai compelled Serbian king Stefan Milutin to accept Mongol supremacy and received his son, Stefan Dečanski, as hostage in 1287. Under his rule, the Vlachs, Slavs, Alans, and Turco-Mongols lived in modern-day Moldavia.
At the same time, the influence of Nogai greatly increased in the Golden Horde. Backed by him, some Rus' princes, such as Dmitry of Pereslavl, refused to visit the court of the Töde Möngke in Sarai, while Dmitry's brother Andrey of Gorodets sought assistance from Töde Möngke. Nogai vowed to support Dmitry in his struggle for the grand ducal throne. On hearing about this, Andrey renounced his claims to Vladimir and Novgorod and returned to Gorodets. He returned with Mongol troops sent by Töde Möngke and seized Vladimir from Dmitry. Dmitry retaliated with the support of Mongol troops from Nogai and retook his holdings. In 1285 Andrey again led a Mongol army under a Borjigin prince to Vladimir, but Dmitry expelled them.
In 1283, Mengu-Timur converted to Islam and abandoned state affairs. Rumors spread that the khan was mentally ill and only cared for clerics and sheikhs. In 1285, Talabuga and Nogai invaded Hungary. While Nogai was successful in subduing Slovakia, Talabuga got stuck north of the Carpathian Mountains. Talabuga's soldiers got angry and sacked Galicia and Volynia instead. In 1286, Talabuga and Nogai attacked Poland and ravaged the country. After returning, Talabuga overthrew Töde Möngke, who was left to live in peace. Talabuga's army made unsuccessful attempts to invade the Ilkhanate in 1288 and 1290.
During a punitive expedition against the Circassians, Talabuga's became resentful of Nogai, who he believed did not provide him with adequate support during the invasions of Hungary and Poland. Talabuga challenged Nogai, but was defeated in a coup and replaced with Toqta in 1291.
Some of the Rus' princes complained to Toqta about Dmitry. Mikhail Yaroslavich was summoned to appear before Nogai in Sarai, and Daniel of Moscow declined to come. In 1293 Toqta sent a punitive expedition led by his brother, Dyuden to Rus' and Belarus to punish those stubborn subjects. The latter sacked fourteen major cities, finally forcing Dmitry to abdicate. Nogai was annoyed by this independent action and sent his wife to Toqta in 1293 to remind him who was in charge. In the same year, Nogai sent an army to Serbia and forced the king to acknowledge himself as a vassal.
Nogai's daughter married a son of Kublai's niece, Kelmish, who was wife of a Qongirat general of the Golden Horde. Nogai was angry with Kelmish's family because her Buddhist son despised his Muslim daughter. For this reason, he demanded Toqta send Kelmish's husband to him. Nogai's independent actions related to Rus' princes and foreign merchants had already annoyed Toqta. Toqta thus refused and declared war on Nogai. Toqta was defeated in their first battle. Nogai's army turned their attention to Caffa and Soldaia, looting both cities.. Within two years, Toqta returned and killed Nogai in 1299 at the Kagamlik, near the Dnieper. Toqta had his son stationed troops in Saqchi and along the Danube as far as the Iron Gate. Nogai's son Chaka of Bulgaria, first escaped to the Alans, and then Bulgaria where he briefly ruled as emperor before he was murdered by Theodore Svetoslav on the orders of Toqta.
After Mengu-Timur died, rulers of the Golden Horde withdrew their support from Kaidu, the head of the House of Ögedei. Kaidu tried to restore his influence in the Golden Horde by sponsoring his own candidate Kobeleg against Bayan (r. 1299–1304), Khan of the White Horde. After taking military support from Toqta, Bayan asked help from the Yuan dynasty and the Ilkhanate to organize a unified attack on the Chagatai Khanate under the leadership of Kaidu and his number two Duwa. However, the Yuan court was unable to send quick military support.
General peace (1299–1312)
From 1300 to 1303 a severe drought occurred in the areas surrounding the Black Sea. However the troubles were soon overcome and conditions in the Golden Horde rapidly improved under Toqta's reign. After the defeat of Nogai Khan, his followers either fled to Podolia or remained under the service of Toqta, to become what would eventually be known as the Nogai Horde.
Toqta established the Byzantine-Mongol alliance by Maria, an illegitimate daughter of Andronikos II Palaiologos. A report reached Western Europe that Toqta was highly favourable to the Christians. According to Muslim observers, however, Toqta remained an idol-worshiper (Buddhism and Tengerism) and showed favour to religious men of all faiths, though he preferred Muslims.
He demanded that the Ilkhan Ghazan and his successor Oljeitu give Azerbaijan back but was refused. Then he sought assistance from Egypt against the Ilkhanate. Toqta made his man ruler in Ghazna, but he was expelled by its people. Toqta dispatched a peace mission to the Ilkhan Gaykhatu in 1294, and peace was maintained mostly uninterrupted until 1318.
In 1304 ambassadors from the Mongol rulers of Central Asia and the Yuan announced to Toqta their general peace proposal. Toqta immediately accepted the supremacy of Yuan emperor Temür Öljeytü, and all yams (postal relays) and commercial networks across the Mongol khanates reopened. Toqta introduced the general peace among the Mongol khanates to Rus' princes at the assembly in Pereyaslavl. The Yuan influence seemed to have increased in the Golden Horde as some of Toqta's coins carried 'Phags-pa script in addition to Mongolian script and Persian characters.
Toqta arrested the Italian residents of Sarai and besieged Caffa in 1307. The cause was apparently Toqta's displeasure at the Genoese slave trade of his subjects, who were mostly sold as soldiers to Egypt. In 1308, Caffa was plundered by the Mongols.
During the late reign of Toqta, tensions between princes of Tver and Moscow became violent. Daniel of Moscow seized the town of Kolomna from the Principality of Ryazan, which turned to Toqta for protection. However Daniel was able to beat both Ryazan and Mongol troops in 1301. His successor Yury of Moscow also seized Pereslavl-Zalessky. Toqta considered eliminating the special status of the Grand principality of Vladimir, and placing all the Rus' princes on the same level. Toqta decided to personally visit northern Rus' to settle the conflict between the princes, but he fell ill and died while crossing the Volga in 1313.
Islamization
Öz Beg Khan (1313–1341)
After Öz Beg Khan assumed the throne in 1313, he adopted Islam as the state religion. He built a large mosque in the city of Solkhat in the Crimea in 1314 and proscribed Buddhism and Shamanism among the Mongols in the Golden Horde. By 1315, Öz Beg had successfully Islamicized the Horde and killed Jochid princes and Buddhist lamas who opposed his religious policy. Under the reign of Öz Beg, trade caravans went unmolested and there was general order in the Golden Horde. When Ibn Battuta visited Sarai in 1333, he found it to be a large and beautiful city with vast streets and fine markets where Mongols, Alans, Kypchaks, Circassians, Rus', and Greeks each had their own quarters. Merchants had a special walled section of the city all to themselves.
Öz Beg continued the alliance with the Mamluks begun by Berke and his predecessors. He kept a friendly relationship with the Mamluk Sultan and his shadow Caliph in Cairo. In 1320, the Jochid princess Tulunbay was married to Al-Nasir Muhammad, Sultan of Egypt. Al-Nasir Muhammad came to believe that Tulunbay was not a real Chingissid princess but an impostor. In 1327/1328, he divorced her, and she then married one of al-Nasir Muhammad's commanders. When Öz Beg learned of the divorce in 1334/1335, he sent an angry missive. Al-Nasir Muhammad claimed that she had died and showed his ambassadors a fake legal document as proof, although Tulunbay still lived and would only pass away in 1340.
The Golden Horde invaded the Ilkhanate under Abu Sa'id in 1318, 1324, and 1335. Öz Beg's ally Al-Nasir refused to attack Abu Sa'id because the Ilkhan and the Mamluk Sultan signed a peace treaty in 1323. In 1326 Öz Beg reopened friendly relations with the Yuan dynasty and began to send tributes thereafter. From 1339 he received annually 24,000 ding in Yuan paper currency from the Jochid appanages in China. When the Ilkhanate collapsed after Abu Sa'id's death, its senior-beys approached Öz Beg in their desperation to find a leader, but the latter declined after consulting with his senior emir, Qutluq Timür.
Öz Beg, whose total army exceeded 300,000, repeatedly raided Thrace in aid of Bulgaria's war against Byzantium and Serbia beginning in 1319. The Byzantine Empire under Andronikos II Palaiologos and Andronikos III Palaiologos was raided by the Golden Horde between 1320 and 1341, until the Byzantine port of Vicina Macaria was occupied. Friendly relations were established with the Byzantine Empire for a brief period after Öz Beg married Andronikos III Palaiologos's illegitimate daughter, who came to be known as Bayalun. In 1333, she was given permission to visit her father in Constantinople and never returned, apparently fearing her forced conversion to Islam. Öz Beg's armies pillaged Thrace for 40 days in 1324 and for 15 days in 1337, taking 300,000 captives. In 1330, Öz Beg sent 15,000 troops to Serbia in 1330 but was defeated. Backed by Öz Beg, Basarab I of Wallachia declared an independent state from the Hungarian crown in 1330.
With Öz Beg's assistance, the Grand duke Mikhail Yaroslavich won the battle against the party in Novgorod in 1316. While Mikhail was asserting his authority, his rival Yury of Moscow ingratiated himself with Öz Beg so that he appointed him chief of the Rus' princes and gave him his sister, Konchak, in marriage. After spending three years at Öz Beg 's court, Yury returned with an army of Mongols and Mordvins. After he ravaged the villages of Tver, Yury was defeated by Mikhail in December 1318, and his new wife and the Mongol general, Kawgady, were captured. While she stayed in Tver, Konchak, who converted to Christianity and adopted the name Agatha, died. Mikhail's rivals suggested to Öz Beg that he had poisoned the Khan's sister and revolted against his rule. Mikhail was summoned to Sarai and executed on November 22, 1318. Yuri became grand duke once more. Yuri's brother Ivan accompanied the Mongol general Akhmyl in suppressing a revolt by Rostov in 1320. In 1322, Mikhail's son, Dmitry, seeking revenge for his father's murder, went to Sarai and persuaded the Khan that Yury had appropriated a large portion of the tribute due to the Horde. Yury was summoned to the Horde for a trial, but he was killed by Dmitry before any formal investigation. Eight months later, Dmitry was also executed by the Horde for his crime. The title of grand duke went to Aleksandr Mikhailovich.
In 1327, the baskak Shevkal, cousin of Öz Beg, arrived in Tver from the Horde, with a large retinue. They took up residence at Aleksander's palace. Rumors spread that Shevkal wanted to occupy the throne for himself and introduce Islam to the city. When, on 15 August 1327, the Mongols tried to take a horse from a deacon named Dyudko, he cried for help and a mob killed the Mongols. Shevkal and his remaining guards were burnt alive. The incident in Tver caused Öz Beg to begin backing Moscow as the leading Rus' state. Ivan I Kalita was granted the title of grand prince and given the right to collect taxes from other Rus' potentates. Öz Beg also sent Ivan at the head of an army of 50,000 soldiers to punish Tver. Aleksander was shown mercy in 1335, however, when Moscow requested that he and his son Feoder be quartered in Sarai by orders of the Khan on October 29, 1339.
In 1323 Grand Duke Gediminas of Lithuania gained control of Kiev and installed his brother Fedor as prince, but the principality's tribute to the Khan continued. On a campaign a few years later, the Lithuanians under Fedor included the Khan's baskak in their entourage.
A decree, issued probably by Mengu-Timur, allowing the Franciscans to proselytize, was renewed by Öz Beg in 1314. Öz Beg allowed the Christian Genoese to settle in Crimea after his accession, but the Mongols sacked their outpost Sudak in 1322 when the Genoese clashed with the Turks. The Genoese merchants in the other towns were not molested. Pope John XXII requested Öz Beg to restore Roman Catholic churches destroyed in the region. Öz Beg signed a new trade treaty with the Genoese in 1339 and allowed them to rebuild the walls of Caffa. In 1332 he allowed the Venetians to establish a colony at Tanais on the Don. In 1333, when Ibn Battuta visited Sudak, he found the population to be predominantly Turkish.
Jani Beg (1342–1357)
Öz Beg's eldest son Tini Beg reigned briefly from 1341 to 1342 before his younger brother, Jani Beg (1342–1357), came to power.
In 1344, Jani Beg tried to seize Caffa from the Genoese but failed. In 1347, he signed a commercial treaty with Venice. The slave trade flourished due to strengthening ties with the Mamluk Sultanate. Growth of wealth and increasing demand for products typically produce population growth, and so it was with Sarai. Housing in the region increased, which transformed the capital into the center of a large Muslim Sultanate.
The Black Death of the 1340s was a major factor contributing to the economic downfall of the Golden Horde. It struck the Crimea in 1345 and killed over 85,000 people.
Jani Beg abandoned his father's Balkan ambitions and backed Moscow against Lithuania and Poland. Jani Beg sponsored joint Mongol-Rus' military expeditions against Lithuania and Poland. In 1344 his army marched against Poland with auxiliaries from Galicia–Volhynia, as Volhynia was part of Lithuania. In 1349, however, Galicia–Volhynia was occupied by a Polish-Hungarian force, and the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia was finally conquered and incorporated into Poland. This act put an end to the relationship of vassalage between the Galicia–Volhynia Rus' and the Golden Horde. In 1352, a Mongol-Russian army ravaged Polish territory and Lublin. The Polish King, Casimir III the Great, submitted to the Horde in 1357 and paid tribute in order to avoid more conflicts. The seven Mongol princes were sent by Jani Beg to assist Poland.
Jani Beg asserted Jochid dominance over the Chagatai Khanate and conquered Tabriz, ending Chobanid rule there in 1356. After accepting the surrender of the Jalayirids, Jani Beg boasted that three uluses of the Mongol Empire were under his control. However on his way back from Tabriz, Jani Beg was murdered on the order of his own son, Berdi Beg. Following the assassination of Jani Beg, the Golden Horde quickly lost Azerbaijan to the Jalayir king Shaikh Uvais in 1357.
Decline
Great troubles (1359–1381)
Berdi Beg was killed in a coup by his brother Qulpa in 1359. Qulpa's two sons were Christians and bore the Russian names, Michael and Ivan, which outraged the Muslim populace of the Golden Horde. In 1360, Qulpa's brother Nawruz Beg revolted against the khan and killed him and his sons. In 1361, a descendant of Shiban (5th son of Jochi), was invited by some grandees to seize the throne. Khidr rebelled against Nawruz, whose own lieutenant betrayed him and handed him over to be executed. Khidr was slain by his own son, Timur Khwaja, in the same year. Timur Khwaja reigned for only five weeks before descendants of Öz Beg Khan seized power.
In 1362, the Golden Horde was divided between Keldi Beg in Sarai, Bulat Temir in Volga Bulgaria, and Abdullah in Crimea. Meanwhile, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania attacked the western tributaries of the Golden Horde and conquered Kiev and Podolia after the Battle of Blue Waters in 1363. A powerful Mongol general by the name of Mamai backed Abdullah but failed to take Sarai, which saw the reign of two more khans, Murad and Aziz. Abdullah died in 1370 and Muhammad Bolaq was enthroned as puppet khan by Mamai. Mamai also had to deal with a rebellion in Nizhny Novgorod. Muscovite troops impinged on the Bulgar territory of Arab-Shah, the son of Bulat Temir, who caught them off guard and defeated them on the banks of the Pyana River. However Arab-Shah was unable to take advantage of the situation because of the advance of another Mongol general from the east. Encouraged by the news of Muscovite defeat, Mamai sent an army against Dmitri Donskoy, who defeated the Mongol forces at the Battle of the Vozha River in 1378. Mamai hired Genoese, Circassian, and Alan mercenaries for another attack on Moscow in 1380. In the ensuing battle, Mongol forces once again lost at the Battle of Kulikovo.
By 1360, Urus Khan had set up court in Sighnaq. He was named Urus, which means Russian in Turkish language, presumably because "Urus-Khan's mother was a Russian princess... he was prepared to press his claims on Russia on that ground." In 1372, Urus marched west and occupied Sarai. His nephew and lieutenant Tokhtamysh deserted him and went to Timur for assistance. Tokhtamysh attacked Urus, killing his son Kutlug-Buka, but lost the battle and fled to Samarkand. Soon after, another general Edigu deserted Urus and went over to Timur. Timur personally attacked Urus in 1376 but the campaign ended indecisively. Urus died the next year and was succeeded by his son, Timur-Melik, who immediately lost Sighnaq to Tokhtamysh. In 1378, Tokhtamysh conquered Sarai.
By the 1380s, the Shaybanids and Qashan attempted to break free of the Khan's power.
Tokhtamysh (1381–1395)
Tokhtamysh attacked Mamai, who had recently suffered a loss against Muscovy, and defeated him in 1381, thus briefly reestablishing the Golden Horde as a dominant regional power. Mamai fled to the Genoese who killed him soon after. Tokhtamysh sent an envoy to the Rus' states to resume their tributary status, but the envoy only made it as far as Nizhny Novgorod before he was stopped. Tokhtamysh immediately seized all the boats on the Volga to ferry his army across and commenced the Siege of Moscow (1382), which fell after three days under a false truce. The next year most of the Rus' princes once again made obeisance to the khan and received patents from him. Tokhtamysh also crushed the Lithuanian army at Poltava in the next year. Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, accepted his supremacy and agreed to pay tribute in return for a grant of Rus' territory.
Elated by his success, Tokhtamysh invaded Azerbaijan in 1386 and seized Tabriz. He ordered money with his name on it coined in Khwarezm and sent envoys to Egypt to seek an alliance. In 1387, Timur sent an army into Azerbaijan and fought indecisively with the forces of the Golden Horde. Tokhtamysh invaded Transoxania and reached as far as Bukhara, but failed to take the city, and had to turn back. Timur retaliated by invading Khwarezm and destroyed Urgench. Tokhtamysh attacked Timur on the Syr Darya in 1389 with a massive army including Russians, Bulgars, Circassians, and Alans. The battle ended indecisively. In 1391, Timur gathered an army 200,000 strong and defeated Tokhtamysh at the Battle of the Kondurcha River. Timur's allies Temür Qutlugh and Edigu took the eastern half of the Golden Horde. Tokhtamysh returned in 1394, ravaging the region of Shirvan. In 1395, Timur annihilated Tokhtamysh's army again at the Battle of the Terek River, destroyed his capital, looted the Crimean trade centers, and deported the most skillful craftsmen to his own capital in Samarkand. Timur's forces reached as far north as Ryazan before turning back.
Edigu (1395–1419)
Temür Qutlugh was chosen Khan in Sarai while Edigu became co-ruler, and Koirijak was appointed sovereign of the White Horde by Timur. Tokhtamysh fled to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and asked Vytautas for assistance in retaking the Golden Horde in exchange for suzerainty over the Rus' lands. In 1399, Vytautas and Tokhtamysh attacked Temür Qutlugh and Edigu at the Battle of the Vorskla River but were defeated. The Golden Horde victory secured Kiev, Podolia, and some land in the lower Bug River basin. Tokhtamysh died in obscurity in Tyumen around 1405. His son Jalal al-Din fled to Lithuania and participated in the Battle of Grunwald against the Teutonic Order.
Temür Qutlugh died in 1400 and his cousin Shadi Beg was elected khan with Edigu's approval. After defeating Vytautas, Edigu concentrated on strengthening the Golden Horde. He forbade selling Golden Horde subjects as slaves abroad. Later on the slave trade was resumed, but only Circassians were allowed to be sold. As a result most of the Mamluk recruits in the 15th century were of Circassian origin. Timur died in 1405 and Edigu took advantage to seize Khwarezm a year later. From 1400 to 1408, Edigu gradually regained the eastern Rus' tributaries, with the exception of Moscow, which he failed to take in a siege but ravaged the surrounding area. Smolensk was also lost to Lithuania. Shadi Beg rebelled against Edigu but was defeated and fled to Astrakhan. Shadi Beg was replaced by Pulad, who died in 1410 and was succeeded by Temur Khan, the son of Temür Qutlugh. Temur Khan turned against Edigu and forced him to flee to Khwarezm in 1411. Temur himself was ousted the next year by Jalal al-Din, who returned from Lithuania and briefly took the throne. In 1414, Shah Rukh of the Timurids conquered Khwarezm. Edigu fled to the Crimea where he launched raids on Kiev and tried to forge an alliance with Lithuania to win back the horde. Edigu died in 1419 in a skirmish with one of Tokhtamysh's sons.
Disintegration and succession
Khanate of Sibir (1405)
The Khanate of Sibir was ruled by a dynasty originating with Taibuga in 1405 at Chimgi-Tura. After his death in 1428, the khanate was ruled by the Uzbek khan Abu'l-Khayr Khan. When he died in 1468, the khanate split in two, with the Shaybanid Ibak Khan situated in Chimgi-Tura, and the Taibugid Muhammad at the fortress of Sibir, from which the khanate derives its name.
Uzbek Khanate (1428)
After 1419, the Golden Horde functionally ceased to exist. Ulugh Muhammad was officially Khan of the Golden Horde but his authority was limited to the lower banks of the Volga where Tokhtamysh's other son Kepek also reigned. The Golden Horde's influence was replaced in Eastern Europe by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who Ulugh Muhammad turned to for support. The political situation in the Golden Horde did not stabilize. In 1422, the grandson of Urus Khan, Barak Khan, attacked the reigning khans in the west. Within two years, Ulugh, Kepek, and another claimant Dawlat Berdi, were defeated. Ulugh Muhammad fled to Lithuania, Kepek tried to raid Odoyev and Ryazan but failed to establish himself in those regions, and Dawlat took advantage of the situation to seize Crimea. Barak defeated an invasion by Ulugh Beg in 1427 but was assassinated the next year. His successor, Abu'l-Khayr Khan, founded the Uzbek Khanate.
Nogai Horde (1440s)
By the 1440s, a descendant of Edigu by the name of Musa bin Waqqas was ruling at Saray-Jük as an independent khan of the Nogai Horde.
Khanate of Kazan (1445)
Ulugh Muhammad ousted Dawlat Berdi from Crimea. At the same time, the khan Hacı I Giray fled to Lithuania to ask Vytautas for support. In 1426, Ulugh Muhammad contributed troops to Vytautas' war against Pskov. Despite the Golden Horde's extremely reduced status, both Yury of Zvenigorod and Vasily Kosoy still visited Ulugh Muhammad's court in 1432 to request a grand ducal patent. A year later, Ulugh Muhammad lost the throne to Sayid Ahmad I, a son of Tokhtamysh. Ulugh Muhammad fled to the town of Belev on the upper Oka River, where he came into conflict with the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. Vasily II of Moscow attempted to drive him out but was defeated at the Battle of Belyov. Ulugh Muhammad became master of Belev. Ulugh Muhammad continued to exert influence on Muscovy, occupying Gorodets in 1444. Vasily II even wanted him to issue him a patent for the throne, but Ulugh Muhammad attacked him instead at Murom in 1445. On 7 July, Vasily II was defeated and taken prisoner by Ulugh Muhammad at the Battle of Suzdal. Despite his victory, Ulugh Muhammad's situation was pressed. The Golden Horde was no more, he had barely 10,000 soldiers, and thus could not press the advantage against Moscow. A few months later he released Vasily II for a ransom of 25,000 rubles. Unfortunately, Ulugh Muhammad was murdered by his son, Mäxmüd of Kazan, who fled to the middle Volga region and founded the Khanate of Kazan in 1445. In 1447, Mäxmüd sent an army against Muscovy but was repelled.
Crimean Khanate (1449)
In 1449, Hacı I Giray seized Crimea from Ahmad I, and founded the Crimean Khanate. The Crimean Khanate considered its state as the heir and legal successor of the Golden Horde and Desht-i Kipchak, called themselves khans of "the Great Horde, the Great State and the Throne of the Crimea".
Qasim Khanate (1452)
One of Ulugh Muhammad's sons, Qasim Khan, fled to Moscow, where Vasily II granted him land that became the Qasim Khanate.
Kazakh Khanate (1458)
In 1458, Janibek Khan and Kerei Khan led 200,000 of Abu'l-Khayr Khan's followers eastwards to the Chu River where Esen Buqa II of Moghulistan granted them pasture lands. After Abu'l-Khayr Khan died in 1467, they assumed leadership over most of his followers, and became the Kazakh Khanate.
Great Horde (1459–1502)
In 1435, the khan Küchük Muhammad ousted Sayid Ahmad. He attacked Ryazan and suffered a major defeat against the forces of Vasily II. Sayid Ahmad continued to raid Muscovy and in 1449 made a direct attack on Moscow. However he was defeated by Muscovy's ally Qasim Khan. In 1450, Küchük Muhammad attacked Ryazan but was turned back by a combined Russo-Tatar army. In 1451, Sayid Ahmad tried to take Moscow again and failed.
Küchük Muhammad was succeeded by his son Mahmud bin Küchük in 1459, from which point on the Golden Horde came to be known as the Great Horde. Mahmud was succeeded by his brother Ahmed Khan bin Küchük in 1465. In 1469, Ahmed attacked and killed the Uzbek Abu'l-Khayr Khan. In the summer of 1470, Ahmed organized an attack against Moldavia, the Kingdom of Poland, and Lithuania. By August 20, the Moldavian forces under Stephen the Great defeated the Tatars at the battle of Lipnic. In 1474 and 1476, Ahmed insisted that Ivan III of Russia recognize the khan as his overlord. In 1480, Ahmed organized a military campaign against Moscow, resulting in a face off between two opposing armies known as the Great Stand on the Ugra River. Ahmed judged the conditions unfavorable and retreated. This incident formally ended the "Tatar Yoke" over Rus' lands. On 6 January 1481, Ahmed was killed by Ibak Khan, the prince of the Khanate of Sibir, and Nogays at the mouth of the Donets River.
Ahmed's sons were unable to maintain the Great Horde. They attacked the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (which possessed much of the Ukraine at the time) in 1487–1491 and reached as far as Lublin in eastern Poland before being decisively beaten at Zaslavl.
The Crimean Khanate, which had become a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire in 1475, subjugated what remained of the Great Horde, sacking Sarai in 1502. After seeking refuge in Lithuania, Sheikh Ahmed, last Khan of the Horde, died in prison in Kaunas some time after 1504. According to other sources, he was released from the Lithuanian prison in 1527.
Records of Golden Horde existence reach however as far as end of 18th century and it was mentioned in works of Russian publisher Nikolay Novikov in his work of 1773 "Ancient Russian Hydrography".
Astrakhan Khanate (1466)
After 1466, Mahmud bin Küchük's descendants continued to rule in Astrakhan as the khans of the Astrakhan Khanate.
Russian conquests
The Tsardom of Russia conquered the Khanate of Kazan in 1552, the Khanate of Astrakhan in 1556, and the Khanate of Sibir in 1582. The Crimean Tatars wreaked havoc in southern Russia, Ukraine and even Poland in the course of the 16th and early 17th centuries (see Crimean–Nogai raids into East Slavic lands), but they were not able to defeat Russia or take Moscow. Under Ottoman protection, the Khanate of Crimea continued its precarious existence until Catherine the Great annexed it on April 8, 1783. It was by far the longest-lived of the successor states to the Golden Horde.
Tributaries
The subjects of the Golden Horde included the Rus' people, Armenians, Georgians, Circassians, Alans, Crimean Greeks, Crimean Goths, Bulgarians, and Vlachs. The objective of the Golden Horde in conquered lands revolved around obtaining recruits for the army and exacting tax payments from its subjects. In most cases the Golden Horde did not implement direct control over the people they conquered.
Eastern Europe
While the Mongols generally did not directly administer the Eastern European lands they conquered, in the cases of the Principality of Pereyaslavl, Principality of Kiev, and Podolia, they removed the native administration altogether and replaced it with their own direct control. The Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, Principality of Smolensk, Principality of Chernigov, and Principality of Novgorod-Seversk retained their princes but also had to contend with Mongol agents who enforced recruitment and tax collection. The Novgorod Republic was exempt from the presence of Mongol agents after 1260 but still had to pay taxes. The Mongols took censuses of Rus' lands in 1245, 1258, 1259, 1260, 1274, and 1275. No further censuses were taken after that. Some places such as the town of Tula became the personal property of individual Mongols such as the Khatun Taidula, the mother of Jani Beg.
The Rus' prince had to receive a patent for his throne from the khan, who then sent an envoy to install the prince on his throne. From the time of Öz Beg Khan on, a commissioner was appointed by the khan to reside at each of the Rus' principalities' capitals. Mongol rule loosened in the late 13th century so that some Rus' princes were able to collect taxes as the khan's agents. By the early 14th century, all the grand dukes were collecting taxes by themselves, so that the average people no longer dealt with Mongol overlords while their rulers answered to Sarai.
Mongol rule in Galicia ended with its conquest by the Kingdom of Poland (1025–1385) in 1349. The Golden Horde entered severe decline after the death of Berdi Beg in 1359, which started a protracted political crisis lasting two decades. In 1363, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania won the Battle of Blue Waters against the Golden Horde and conquered both Kiev and Podolia. After 1360, payment of tribute and taxes from Rus' subjects to the declining Golden Horde decreased significantly. In 1374, Nizhny Novgorod rebelled and slaughtered an embassy sent by Mamai. For a brief period after the victorious Battle of Kulikovo in 1380 by Dmitry Donskoy against Mamai, the Grand Duchy of Moscow was free of Mongol control until Tokhtamysh restored Mongol suzerainty over Moscow two years later with the Siege of Moscow (1382). Tokhtamysh also crushed the Lithuanian army at Poltava in the next year. Władysław II Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland, accepted his supremacy and agreed to pay tribute in turn for a grant of Rus' territory. In 1395, Timur annihilated Tokhtamysh's army again at the Battle of the Terek River, destroyed his capital, looted the Crimean trade centers, and deported the most skillful craftsmen to his own capital in Samarkand. Timur's forces reached as far north as Ryazan before turning back. Tokhtamysh fled to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and asked Vytautas for assistance in retaking the Golden Horde in exchange for suzerainty over the Rus' lands. In 1399, Vytautas and Tokhtamysh attacked Temür Qutlugh and Edigu at the Battle of the Vorskla River but were defeated. The Golden Horde victory secured for it Kiev, Podolia, and some land in the lower Bug River basin. Tokhtamysh died in obscurity in Tyumen around 1405. His son Jalal al-Din fled to Lithuania and participated in the Battle of Grunwald against the Teutonic Order.
From 1400 to 1408, Edigu gradually regained control of the eastern Rus' tributaries, with the exception of Moscow, which he failed to take in a siege but ravaged the surrounding countryside. Smolensk was lost to Lithuania. After Edigu died in 1419, the Golden Horde rapidly disintegrated but it still retained some vestige of influence in Eastern Europe. In 1426, Ulugh Muhammad contributed troops to Vytautas' war against Pskov and despite the horde's reduced size, both Yury of Zvenigorod and Vasily Kosoy still visited Ulugh Muhammad's court in 1432 to request a grand ducal patent. A year later, Ulugh Muhammad was ousted and fled to the town of Belev on the upper Oka River, where he came into conflict with Vasily II of Moscow, whom he defeated twice in battle. In 1445, Vasily II was taken prisoner by Ulugh Muhammad and ransomed for 25,000 rubles. Ulugh Muhammad was murdered in the same year by his son, Mäxmüd of Kazan, who fled to the middle Volga region and founded the Khanate of Kazan.
In 1447, Mäxmüd sent an army against Muscovy but was repelled. Another of Ulugh Muhammad's sons, Qasim Khan, fled to Moscow, where Vasily II granted him land that became the Qasim Khanate Both the khans Küchük Muhammad and Sayid Ahmad attempted to reassert authority over Moscow. Küchük Muhammad attacked Ryazan and suffered a major defeat against the forces of Vasily II. Sayid Ahmad continued to raid Muscovy and in 1449 made a direct attack on Moscow. However he was defeated by Muscovy's ally Qasim Khan. In 1450, Küchük Muhammad attacked Ryazan but was turned back by a combined Russo-Tatar army. In 1451, Sayid Ahmad tried to take Moscow again and failed.
In the summer of 1470, Ahmed Khan bin Küchük, ruler of the Great Horde, organized an attack against Moldavia, the Kingdom of Poland, and Lithuania. By August 20, the Moldavian forces under Stephen the Great defeated the Tatars at the battle of Lipnic. In 1474 and 1476, Ahmed insisted that Ivan III of Russia recognize the khan as his overlord. In 1480, Ahmed organized a military campaign against Moscow, resulting in a face off between two opposing armies known as the Great Stand on the Ugra River. Ahmed judged the conditions unfavorable and retreated. This incident formally ended the "Tatar Yoke" over Rus' lands.
Trade
Sarai carried on a brisk trade with the Genoese trade emporiums on the coast of the Black Sea – Soldaia, Caffa, and Azak. Mamluk Egypt was the Khans' long-standing trade partner and ally in the Mediterranean. Berke, the Khan of Kipchak had drawn up an alliance with the Mamluk Sultan Baibars against the Ilkhanate in 1261.
A change in trade routes
According to Baumer the natural trade route was down the Volga to Serai where it intersected the east-west route north of the Caspian, and then down the west side of the Caspian to Tabriz in Persian Azerbaijan where it met the larger east-west route south of the Caspian. Around 1262 Berke broke with the Il-Khan Hulagu Khan. This led to several wars on the west side of the Caspian which the Horde usually lost. The interruption of trade and conflict with Persia led the Horde to build trading towns along the northern route. They also allied with the Mamluks of Egypt who were the Il-Khan's enemies. Trade between the Horde and Egypt was carried by the Genoese based in Crimea. An important part of this trade was slaves for the Mamluk army. Trade was weakened by a quarrel with the Genoese in 1307 and a Mumluk-Persian peace in 1323. Circa 1336 the Ilkhanate began to disintegrate which shifted trade north. Around 1340 the route north of the Caspian was described by Pegolotti. In 1347 a Horde siege of the Genoese Crimean port of Kaffa led to the spread of the black death to Europe. In 1395-96 Tamerlane laid waste to the Horde's trading towns. Since they had no agricultural hinterland many of the towns vanished and trade shifted south.
Geography and society
Genghis Khan assigned four Mongol mingghans: the Sanchi'ud (or Salji'ud), Keniges, Uushin, and Je'ured clans to Jochi. By the beginning of the 14th century, noyans from the Sanchi'ud, Hongirat, Ongud (Arghun), Keniges, Jajirad, Besud, Oirat, and Je'ured clans held importants positions at the court or elsewhere. There existed four mingghans (4,000) of the Jalayir in the left wing of the Ulus of Jochi (Golden Horde).
The population of the Golden Horde was largely a mixture of Turks and Mongols who adopted Islam later, as well as smaller numbers of Finnic peoples, Sarmato-Scythians, Slavs, and people from the Caucasus, among others (whether Muslim or not). Most of the Horde's population was Turkic: Kipchaks, Cumans, Volga Bulgars, Khwarezmians, and others. The Horde was gradually Turkified and lost its Mongol identity, while the descendants of Batu's original Mongol warriors constituted the upper class. They were commonly named the Tatars by the Russians and Europeans. Russians preserved this common name for this group down to the 20th century. Whereas most members of this group identified themselves by their ethnic or tribal names, most also considered themselves to be Muslims. Most of the population, both agricultural and nomadic, adopted the Kypchak language, which developed into the regional languages of Kypchak groups after the Horde disintegrated.
The descendants of Batu ruled the Golden Horde from Sarai Batu and later Sarai Berke, controlling an area ranging from the Volga River and the Carpathian mountains to the mouth of the Danube River. The descendants of Orda ruled the area from the Ural River to Lake Balkhash. Censuses recorded Chinese living quarters in the Tatar parts of Novgorod, Tver and Moscow.
Internal organization
The Golden Horde's elites were descended from four Mongol clans, Qiyat, Manghut, Sicivut and Qonqirat. Their supreme ruler was the Khan, chosen by the kurultai among Batu Khan's descendants. The prime minister, also ethnically Mongol, was known as "prince of princes", or beklare-bek. The ministers were called viziers. Local governors, or , were responsible for levying taxes and dealing with popular discontent. Civil and military administration, as a rule, were not separate.
The Horde developed as a sedentary rather than nomadic culture, with Sarai evolving into a large, prosperous metropolis. In the early 14th century, the capital was moved considerably upstream to Sarai Berqe, which became one of the largest cities of the medieval world, with 600,000 inhabitants. Sarai was described by the famous traveller Ibn Battuta as "one of the most beautiful cities ... full of people, with the beautiful bazaars and wide streets", and having 13 congregational mosques along with "plenty of lesser mosques". Another contemporary source describes it as "a grand city accommodating markets, baths and religious institutions". An astrolabe was discovered during excavations at the site and the city was home to many poets, most of whom are known to us only by name.
Despite Russian efforts at proselytizing in Sarai, the Mongols clung to their traditional animist or shamanist beliefs until Uzbeg Khan (1312–41) adopted Islam as a state religion. Several rulers of Kievan Rus' – Mikhail of Chernigov and Mikhail of Tver among them – were reportedly assassinated in Sarai, but the Khans were generally tolerant and even released the Russian Orthodox Church from paying taxes.
Provinces
The Mongols favored decimal organization, which was inherited from Genghis Khan. It is said that there were a total of ten political divisions within the Golden Horde. The Golden Horde majorly was divided into Blue Horde (Kok Horde) and White Horde (Ak Horde). Blue Horde consisted of Pontic–Caspian steppe, Khazaria, Volga Bulgaria, while White Horde encompassed the lands of the princes of the left hand: Taibugin Yurt, Ulus Shiban, Ulus Tok-timur, Ulus Ezhen Horde.
Vassal territories
Venetian port cities in Crimea (center at Qırım). After the Mongol conquest in 1238, the port cities in Crimea paid the Jochids custom duties, and the revenues were divided among all Chingisid princes of the Mongol Empire in accordance with the appanage system.,
the banks of Azov,
the country of Circassians,
Walachia,
Alania,
Russian lands.
Genetics
A genetic study published in Nature in May 2018 examined the remains of two Golden Horde males buried in the Ulytau District in Kazakhstan ca. 1300 AD. One male, who was a Buddhist warrior of Mongoloid origin, carried paternal haplogroup C3 and the maternal haplogroup D4m2. The other male, who was Caucasian and possibly a slave or servant, was a carrier of the paternal haplogroup R1 and the maternal haplogroup I1b.
Coinage
Gallery
See also
Cuman people
Mongol invasion of Rus'
Russo-Kazan Wars
Tatar invasions
Tokhtamysh–Timur war
Volga Bulgaria
Division of the Mongol Empire
Berke–Hulagu war
History of the western steppe
List of Khans of the Golden Horde
List of medieval Mongol tribes and clans
List of Mongol states
List of Turkic dynasties and countries
Jarlig
Reference and notes
Bibliography
online
Further reading
Boris Grekov and Alexander Yakubovski, The Golden Horde and its Downfall
George Vernadsky, The Mongols and Russia
The Golden Horde, FTDNA
External links
The Golden Horde coinage
Golden Horde — articles at the World Archaeology
1502 disestablishments
History of Siberia
Medieval Russia
Nomadic groups in Eurasia
1240s establishments in the Mongol Empire
Muslim empires
States and territories established in the 1240s
States and territories disestablished in 1502
Khanates
Mongol states
Batu Khan
Historical Turkic states
Historical transcontinental empires | en |
doc-en-9331 | Pilipinas Got Talent (PGT) is a Philippine reality talent competition show on ABS-CBN that began on February 20, 2010, replacing The Singing Bee. It is based on the Got Talent franchise, a British TV format conceived and owned by Simon Cowell's SYCO company. "Pilipinas" is the Filipino word for Philippines. Anyone can join and showcase their talents in the audition. At the sound of four (three; from season 1-4) buzzers from the judges, the auditionees are asked to stop their act. With at least three (two; from season 1-4) yes from the judges, they are automatically in the list for Judges Cuts, where judges have to pick only 36 acts that will move to the semi-finals. Acts will compete against each other in order to gain the audience support to win the prize money and the title of Pilipinas Got Talent.
ABS-CBN acquired the Got Talent franchise, advertising it as "the first nationwide talent reality show in the Philippines," although other talent shows from other networks are aired with a similar format, such as Talentadong Pinoy on TV5.
Viewers are able to join through text and online registration via Internet. Auditions are held in key cities such as Manila, Baguio, Batangas, Cebu, Davao and Cagayan de Oro.
The first season premiered on February 20, 2010 on ABS-CBN and ended on June 13, 2010. A second and a third season aired back to back in 2011. The fourth season aired in 2013, with the fifth one airing two and a half years later in 2016. The sixth season started airing on January 6, 2018.
To date, there have been six winners: Jovit Baldivino, Marcelito Pomoy, the Maasinhon Trio, Roel Manlangit, the Power Duo, and Kristel de Catalina. The first four are singing acts while the latter two are interpretative dance acts. The winner of each season receives ₱2,000,000.00.
On May 14, 2015, Filipino shadow play group El Gamma Penumbra who appeared in the third season of the national franchise as a finalist was declared the Grand Winner of the very first season of Asia's Got Talent making them the first winner of the Asian Got Talent franchise. The show ended on April 29, 2018, and was replaced by Your Face Sounds Familiar Kids.
Overview
Auditions
Pre-auditions
This is the first stage of the competition. Major auditions were held in key cities in the Philippines. Since the second season, aside from the major auditions, there are mini-auditions where it can be held in several provinces and cities in the Philippines and judged by the staff of Pilipinas Got Talent. This round is held several months before the judges' audition. Contestants are also allowed to audition online by submitting their audition video through the Pilipinas Got Talent's official website. Acts that have made it through this stage then audition in front of the judges and a live audience.
Live auditions
Following the pre-auditions, acts audition in front of (as of 2016) four celebrity judges. The judges may end an act's performance early by pressing their red buzzer, which lights up their corresponding X above the stage. If an act receives X's from all judges, they must stop their performance. In addition, large audiences have also been a factor in the judging process, as their reaction to an act's performance may swing or influence a judge's vote. This makes the audience the so-called "fifth" ("fourth", from seasons 1-4) judge. From seasons 1 to 4, voting worked on a majority-of-two basis where two positive votes were required. Starting from season 5, voting works on a majority-of-three basis as there are four judges. The judging panel give an act a "Yes" if they like them and would like them to advance to the next stage of the competition, and a "No" if they dislike the act and do not wish to see them again.
In season 5, the Golden Buzzer is introduced. Each judge can press the Golden Buzzer only once per season. Any act on whom the Golden Buzzer is used will automatically advance to the live semi-finals. The hosts were given the power to press it on the 6th season.
Judges' cull
At the end of the live auditions round, the acts that have passed will move on to this round. In this round, the judges will deliberate all the acts who passed the auditions. In the end, only twenty-eight acts will be selected to enter the live semi-finals.
Semifinals
After judges deliberate the 28 acts in the judges cull, each act will then go to a battle of talents, wherein six acts only will qualify for the grand finals.
Grand finals
The acts that managed to pass through the first four eliminations (three in the first three seasons) will compete on a live grand finale event for a final performance in the show. This time, the winner will be up to the hands of the public as the grand winner will be announced as the act with the most number of public votes. The grand winner will receive a total amount of ₱2,000,000.00 (approximately £28,000.00/€32,000.00/US$39,000.00 as of 2018) while the second and third placers will receive ₱100,000.00 (approximately £1,400.00/€1,600.00/US$1,950.00 as of 2018) each. Nevertheless, those who were not able to reach the top 3, will receive a cash prize of ₱50,000.00 (approximately £700.00/€800.00/US$975.00 as of 2018) each.
Seasons
Seasons summary
^ Ai-Ai delas Alas was not able to attend the fifth semifinal week due to illness. Due to this, Vice Ganda was asked to take her duties, but only as a replacement judge for the week.
Season details
Season 1
The first season began on February 20, 2010. It was held in some major cities in the Philippines like Baguio, Batangas, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, Davao, and Metro Manila where the hopefuls are judged by judges Ai-Ai delas Alas, Kris Aquino and Freddie "FMG" Garcia. From thousands who auditioned, 220 acts made it to the Judges' Cull where the top 36 semi-finalists were selected.
The semi-finals were held on AFP Theater in Camp Aguinaldo from the first to fourth performance night and in Tanghalang Pasigueño from fifth to sixth performance night. On the other hand, the results show always held in Dolphy Theater in ABS-CBN. On June 12 and 13, 2010 the season ended in Araneta Coliseum of Quezon City, Metro Manila where the twelve acts competed. Finalist Jovit Baldivino from Batangas, sang his way to victory and won the prize of (about £29,650, €35,650, US$43,100).
Season 2
The second season premiered on February 26, 2011 replacing Star Circle Quest and Star Power respectively. Ai-Ai delas Alas, Kris Aquino, and Freddie Garcia reprised their judging duties from first season. Same with the hosts, Billy Crawford and Luis Manzano who was joined by Nikki Gil. The major auditions for the second season were held in Dagupan, Batangas, Naga, Cebu, Davao and Metro Manila. It is also the season where they held micro-auditions in other cities and provinces in the Philippines where hopefuls are judged by the Pilipinas Got Talent staff.
There are 174 acts who passed the auditions and made it to the Judges' Cut. The Luzon and Visayas auditionees where selected in Dolphy Theater in Quezon City where 26 acts made it to the semi-finals. On the other hand, the remaining 10 acts from Mindanao were visited by the judges in their respective hometown. The semi-finals were held in PAGCOR Theater in Parañaque City. In addition, there is a wildcard round for those semi-finalists who made it to the top three highest audience votes but lost the judges' votes are given a chance to compete again in order to make it to the grand finals. Only two will be chosen for this round.
On June 25 and 26, 2011, the season ended in Araneta Coliseum of Quezon City, Metro Manila where the fourteen acts competed. Falsetto singer Marcelito Pomoy from Cavite was crowned as the winner of the second season, winning the (about £29,000, €32,650, US$46,250) grand prize.
Season 3
The hosts announced in the grand finals of Season 2 that the show will return again within two weeks. The third season premiered last July 9, 2011 on ABS-CBN. Major auditions are held in Baguio, Manila, Batangas, Cebu, Bacolod, Tacloban, Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro, Davao, and General Santos City. There are also mini-auditions held in almost 70 municipalities and cities in the country. In addition, there are online auditions where participants are asked to upload their videos in Pilipinas Got Talent website. In this season, Luis Manzano and Billy Crawford became a judge substitute for a while of Aiai Delas Alas and Kris Aquino, respectively.
After the nationwide auditions (including online auditions), 187 acts made it to the next round called "The Judges Cull" where the judges were able to make a review of the contenders who passed the auditions which they are going to choose the top 36 semi-finalists. The Judges' Cull was held in ABS-CBN Studios in Quezon City where 24 acts from Luzon and Mindanao made it to the semi-finals. In addition, the 12 acts from Visayas were visited by the judges as well as Billy Crawford and Luis Manzano in their respective hometowns.
On October 23 and 24, 2011, the season ended in the Ynares Sports Complex in Antipolo, Rizal where the twelve acts competed. Maasinhon Trio, a singing trio from Southern Leyte, was announced as the winner of the third season, winning the grand prize of (about £28,900, €33,200, US$46,250).
Season 4
A teaser for the fourth season were aired after results night of The X Factor Philippines on July 29, 2012. Major auditions were held in key cities like Quezon City, Bacolod, General Santos, Cebu, Cagayan de Oro, and Davao City. In addition, winners of TFCkat, an international competition made by The Filipino Channel which is held in Filipino key areas all over the world, were also given slots for auditions in the Philippines. The show premiered on February 16, 2013.
After the nationwide auditions, 104 acts made it to the Judges Cull where the three judges made a review of their auditions in order to determine the top 36 quarterfinalists. This is the season which marks the introduction of semifinal round where the top 12 acts who won the quarterfinals will compete for the six slots in the grand finals.
On June 1 and 2, 2013, the season ended in PAGCOR Grand Theater in Parañaque, Metro Manila where six acts vied for the grand prize of ₱2,000,000.00 (about £31,100, €36,400, US$47,300). Roel Manlangit, a 13-year-old singer from Valencia, Bukidnon, was hailed as the winner of the fourth season.
Season 5
On May 17, 2015 in ASAP 20, Luis Manzano confirmed that the show will return for its fifth season and particularly be returning as host as well, following the success of the four Filipino acts who competed in the grand finals of Asia's Got Talent. Two of those acts were formerly part of this show and these are: singer Gerphil Geraldine "Fame" Flores, who competed in Season 1 but lost the judges' vote in the 4th semifinal week, and shadow play group El Gamma Penumbra, who competed in Season 3 but placed 4th in the finals. Flores placed third while El Gamma was declared the winner of the first season of the said regional franchise of Got Talent. On January 8, 2016, ABS-CBN announced that Garcia would return as judge for the fifth consecutive season, Ai-Ai de las Alas will not return due to her transfer to GMA Network after her contract expired and 16 years of association, while Kris Aquino cited her health problems. Therefore, numerous teasers are being released prior to the change of the lineup and two weeks leading to the premiere, actress Angel Locsin, actor Robin Padilla, and comedian Vice Ganda will be joining the judging panel. The season will premiere on January 23, 2016, replacing the weeknight slots of second season of Your Face Sounds Familiar, however, the filler movie block Kapamilya Weekend Specials filled the vacated timeslot of the aforementioned show. The grand finale was held on May 21 and 22, 2016 at the SM Mall of Asia Arena, Pasay, where dancesport duo Power Duo became the first non-singing act to win the show. Power Duo hailed as PGT season 5 grand winner, winning ₱2,000,000.00 (about £29,500, €38,100, US$42,750) cash.
Season 6
The sixth season of Pilipinas Got Talent premiered on January 6, 2018. On June 3, 2017, Billy Crawford announced that there will be auditions for this season on It's Showtime. A teaser was shown during the commercial break of It's Showtime and I Can Do That. Manzano cannot return to host the program due to I Can See Your Voice and was replaced by Toni Gonzaga. Garcia failed to appear on all the liveshows due to the death of his wife. The Grand Finale, so called "The Greatest Showdown", will be held on April 28 and 29 at the Bren Z. Guiao Convension Center & Sports Complex at San Fernando, Pampanga, where Kristel de Catalina became the second non-singing act to win the show. Kristel de Catalina hailed as PGT season 6 grand winner, winning ₱2,000,000.00 (about £28,100, €31,900, US$38,700) cash and a vacation package from 2GO Travel.
In March 2020, the season was re-aired until the network was shut down as part of ABS-CBN's programming changes due to the Enhanced community quarantine in Luzon
Season 7
Prior to the semi-finals of the sixth season, auditions for seventh season has been announced meaning that there will be a new season. Due to ABS-CBN shutdown and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it might cause delays for schedules of pre-auditions and live auditions. No much information/s yet for schedule of airing for a new season.
Hosts
Initially, Pilipinas Got Talent was supposed to be hosted by Kris Aquino, but was later moved to the judging panel and the tandem of Billy Crawford and Luis Manzano became the hosts of the show until the fifth season. Marc Abaya hosted the daily spin-off, Pilipinas Got More Talent only in the first season. Actresses Iya Villania and Nikki Gil have served as guest hosts. In season 6, Manzano will be replaced by Toni Gonzaga as host, joining Crawford.
Judges
Since season 1 until season 4, the judges of the show consists of Kris Aquino, who was earlier tapped for the hosting gig, backed out from judging at first. However, she announced at an episode on Showbiz News Ngayon that she has resumed her judging duties. She joins former ABS-CBN President and COO Freddie M. Garcia, and Comedy Queen Ai-Ai delas Alas. In season 3, Luis Manzano and Billy Crawford served as guest judges, temporary replacing Ai-Ai delas Alas and Kris Aquino as respectively during the auditions. Comedian Vice Ganda replaced Ai-Ai delas Alas during one of the quarterfinal in season 4.
In season 5, the judging panel has been changed. Ai-Ai delas Alas and Kris Aquino did not return to the judging panel. Delas Alas did not return due to her transfer to GMA Network, while Aquino cited her health problems. ABS-CBN board member Freddie M. Garcia confirmed his return as judge. On January 8, 2016, a teaser during FPJ's Ang Probinsyano revealed that actress Angel Locsin will be one of the judges. On January 9, 2016, a teaser during It's Showtime revealed that actor Robin Padilla will join Garcia and Locsin in the judging panel and on January 10, 2016, Vice Ganda was revealed to be the last judge that will join the other three during ASAP.
In the grand finals of season 5, host Luis Manzano and Billy Crawford announced that the show will have its sixth season. In the recent teasers released by ABS-CBN, it showed every judges from season 5 in each teasers together with Got Talent creator Simon Cowell, Vice Ganda is the first judge to be revealed, followed by Angel Locsin in the next day after the first teaser was shown, Robin Padilla coming in third judge to be revealed, and lastly Freddie M. Garcia. All of them are from the previous season and going to return to judging panel this upcoming season. Toni Gonzaga replaced Luis Manzano as host while Billy Crawford resumes his hosting duty.
In season 6, Freddie M. Garcia missed the live semifinals and the finals due to the death of his spouse.
Golden Buzzer
In season 5, the golden buzzer was introduced. Placed at the center of the judges' table, each judge has a chance to press it to send an act straight to the semifinals. It can be only pressed by a judge once per season. In season 6, the host(s) were finally given an opportunity to press the Golden Buzzer (as one) only once during the auditions.
Since the introduction of the golden buzzer, winners of the respective seasons have received it during their audition. Season 6 is the only season where all golden buzzer acts proceeded to the finals.
Color key
Winner
Top 3
Reached the Finals
Regular contestants
As of 2018, Pilipinas Got Talent has seen five acts who return to audition once more on subsequent seasons. Four of these acts made it through the live shows, which three of them was selected again for their subsequent attempt.
Controversies and criticisms
'Susan Boyle'-like issue
During the first season, Antonio J. Montalvan II of Philippine Daily Inquirer lamented about how auditions, particularly during the ones held in the southern island of Mindanao, reflect the Philippine showbiz culture of denigrating people from outside Metro Manila, who are often referred as "promdi." The writer narrated about one male contestant from Davao City who he wrote as "a Susan Boyle in the making," but the audience applause was cut short after judge Kris Aquino "wryly commented that to appreciate the contestant’s voice, one should not look at his face but only listen to his voice."
Preference for singers
After Manlangit was declared the winner of the fourth season, many Filipino netizens were disappointed with the show for its preference with singers. The show had produced four singers for four straight seasons, all of whom were males. Many had vented their disappointments on Twitter. One shared that in order to win the show, one must be a male singer with a very sad and tragic background story. Some netizens also recommended to change the title of the show to "Pilipinas Got Singers" and "Pilipinas Got Awa" (Philippines Got Mercy) pertaining much to the winning streak of singers in the show.
South Korean forced to speak Tagalog
In the sixth season of the show, Robin Padilla drew flak from the netizens for "forcing" a South Korean contestant to speak in Tagalog. In an episode aired on January 13, 2018, Kim Ji-wan, a South Korean who has been living in the Philippines for ten years, asked Robin Padilla to help him with his card trick. Padilla declined, stating that the Korean should speak in Tagalog. "Iho, Pilipinas Got Talent. Mag-Tagalog ka kasi magmumukha kaming katawa-tawa kung mag-i-English kami dito para sa'yo. Pilipinas Got Talent. Mag-Tagalog ka, iho." (Son, this is Pilipinas Got Talent. Speak in Tagalog because we will become a laughingstock if we speak in English just for you. This is Pilipinas Got Talent. Speak in Tagalog.)
Viewers quickly turned to social media sites, stating that Padilla's attitude towards the Korean contestant was rude and racist. After being criticized by the netizens, the judge did not express any remorse for his actions. He continued to comment on his Instagram account, with a middle finger emoji, saying, “Ako pa ba ang dapat magadjust sa isang dayuhan na 10 taon na sa Pilipinas? Naku hindi po mangyayari! Never!” (Am I supposed to adjust to a foreigner who has been living for 10 years in the Philippines? That won't happen!).
Objectification of women
In the sixth season of the show, the Playgirls, a four-member girl group, washed a car while gyrating and twerking in their underwear. Angel Locsin pressed her buzzer a few seconds into the performance, later explaining that she did not want men to objectify the Playgirls: "Kaya ko kayo binuzz, ayaw kong ma-objectify kayo. Masyado ako nagmamalasakit para sa inyo para i-go ko 'to at patuloy kayong panoorin ng mga kalalakihan na ginagawa iyan" ("I buzzed you because I don't want you to be objectified. I care too much for you to allow you to be watched by men while you're doing that"). Robin Padilla then asked the Playgirls to clarify if the sultry performance was indeed their choice and if they enjoyed what they did, to which they replied "yes". Padilla then added: "Gusto niyo ba 'yun na mga kalalakihan ay humahanga sa inyo?" ("Do you like it that men admire you?"), to which Locsin protested: "Seryoso ka?" ("Are you serious?"). Padilla then explained that he wanted to hear the performers' viewpoint, wherein they stood by their earlier performance. Padilla then acknowledged Locsin's statements, telling the Playgirls that Locsin—a women's rights advocate—intended to protect them. Padilla then apologized to Locsin.
The Playgirls' performance and the exchange between Padilla and Locsin sparked online discussions about the sexualization and objectification of women. Some netizens agreed with Locsin's position, while others interpreted her opinion as slut-shaming. The Playgirls themselves criticized Locsin on their own Facebook pages after the incident, pointing out her bikini costume when she played Darna back in 2005. Meanwhile, the Gabriela Women's Party commended Locsin "for her firm stance against the objectification of women".
Robin Padilla's sexist remarks.
In the sixth season of the show, Robin Padilla was criticized multiple times for his sexist and misogynistic remarks.
Semifinals
During the semifinals, Robin Padilla was severely criticized by the viewers for his unsolicited comment to Kristel de Catalina. During the second week of live semifinals aired on April 1, 2018, Kristel de Catalina, a single mom, performed a spiral pole dance act that received a standing ovation from the judges and the audience. Angel Locsin was the first to comment, stating, "Ikaw ang pinakamabigat na makakalaban ng contestants ng PGT. Kailangan talaga nila mag-level up para makatapat sayo. Sobrang wow." (You are the toughest contestant to beat in PGT. They really need to level up. You are overwhelming.) Locsin was followed by Robin Padilla. "Umpisa pa lang solb na ko sayo eh. Alam mo, 'di ako natakot sa lahat ng ginawa mo. Wala akong naramdamang takot kasi alam kong kayang kaya mo. Perfect yung [form] mo; precision." (I’ve liked [your performance] from the start. I wasn't scared at all by everything you did, because I know you can really do it. Your form is perfect; you've got precision.) The last to comment was Vice Ganda. "Tapos na?" (It's over already?), he asked jokingly. "Tapos na, 'di ba? Thank you so much because you saved the night. Wala. Lampaso yung kalaban. Nilampaso mo yung kalaban." (It's over, right? Thank you so much because you saved the night. You've swept away the competition and your competitors.) Vice Ganda also added, "Lalong nagpaganda pa 'yung simbolismo nung ginagawa mo, 'yung simbolismo na ginagawa mo na pinapakita mo sa buong mundo na ikaw ay isang solo parent. Ikaw ay isang babae at ang isang babae ay kayang umangat at magningning kahit nag-iisa." (The symbolism of what you did all the more made things beautiful, how you are showing the whole world that you are a single parent. You are a woman, and a woman can rise above and shine although alone.) It was at this point when Robin Padilla suddenly spoke to the microphone, exclaiming, "Pero kailangan mo pa rin ng lalaki!" (But you still need a man!) Vice Ganda immediately clarified, pointing to Padilla, "Para sa kanya 'yon. Para kay Robin 'yon." (That's for him. That's for Robin.)
The viewers turned again to social media quickly, calling out Padilla for his sexist and misogynistic remark.
Grand Finals
Padilla was once again under fire by netizens for his sexist and misogynistic comment made after Kristel de Catalina's grand final performance on April 28, 2018. Padilla commented first, saying, "Kristel, alam mo, 'yung mga ginagawa mo delikado, pero gusto kong malaman mo na kahit isang beses hindi ako ninerbiyos dahil alam ko napakagaling mo, napakahusay mo." (Kristel, you know, what you're doing is dangerous, but I want you to know that no matter how many times I watch you perform, I don't get nervous, because I know that you are so great, you are so talented.) "Gusto ko lang malaman mo na gustong gusto ko na meron sa'yong nag-a-assist sa'yo na lalaki ngayon. Isang malaking bagay na makita ko ang assistant mo may lalaki diyan sa baba, hindi man katabi mo pero assistant mo," Padilla added. (I just want you to know that I really like it that there's a guy assisting you now. It's a huge thing for me to see that you have a male assistant there below; he may not be next to you, but he's still your assistant.)
As usual, the viewers slammed the judge through social media sites. One Twitter user called him out for tagging women as "individuals who cannot live without men".
Awards
References
External links
ABS-CBN original programming
2010 Philippine television series debuts
2018 Philippine television series endings
2010s Philippine television series
Television series by Fremantle (company)
Filipino-language television shows | en |
doc-en-17024 | The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a four-blade, twin-engine, medium-lift utility helicopter manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft. Sikorsky submitted the S-70 design for the United States Army's Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS) competition in 1972. The Army designated the prototype as the YUH-60A and selected the Black Hawk as the winner of the program in 1976, after a fly-off competition with the Boeing Vertol YUH-61.
Named after the Native American war leader Black Hawk, the UH-60A entered service with the U.S. Army in 1979, to replace the Bell UH-1 Iroquois as the Army's tactical transport helicopter. This was followed by the fielding of electronic warfare and special operations variants of the Black Hawk. Improved UH-60L and UH-60M utility variants have also been developed. Modified versions have also been developed for the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard. In addition to U.S. Army use, the UH-60 family has been exported to several nations. Black Hawks have served in combat during conflicts in Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and other areas in the Middle East.
Development
Initial requirement
In the late 1960s, the United States Army began forming requirements for a helicopter to replace the UH-1 Iroquois, and designated the program as the Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS). The Army also initiated the development of a new, common turbine engine for its helicopters that would become the General Electric T700. Based on experience in Vietnam, the Army required significant performance, survivability and reliability improvements from both UTTAS and the new powerplant. The Army released its UTTAS request for proposals (RFP) in January 1972. The RFP also included air transport requirements. Transport within the C-130 limited the UTTAS cabin height and length.
The UTTAS requirements for improved reliability, survivability and lower life-cycle costs resulted in features such as dual-engines with improved hot and high altitude performance, and a modular design (reduced maintenance footprint); run-dry gearboxes; ballistically tolerant, redundant subsystems (hydraulic, electrical and flight controls); crashworthy crew (armored) and troop seats; dual-stage oleo main landing gear; ballistically tolerant, crashworthy main structure; quieter, more robust main and tail rotor systems; and a ballistically tolerant, crashworthy fuel system.
Four prototypes were constructed, with the first YUH-60A flying on 17 October 1974. Prior to delivery of the prototypes to the US Army, a preliminary evaluation was conducted in November 1975 to ensure the aircraft could be operated safely during all testing. Three of the prototypes were delivered to the Army in March 1976, for evaluation against the rival Boeing-Vertol design, the YUH-61A, and one was kept by Sikorsky for internal research. The Army selected the UH-60 for production in December 1976. Deliveries of the UH-60A to the Army began in October 1978 and the helicopter entered service in June 1979.
Upgrades and variations
After entering service, the helicopter was modified for new missions and roles, including mine laying and medical evacuation. An EH-60 variant was developed to conduct electronic warfare and special operations aviation developed the MH-60 variant to support its missions.
Due to weight increases from the addition of mission equipment and other changes, the Army ordered the improved UH-60L in 1987. The new model incorporated all of the modifications made to the UH-60A fleet as standard design features. The UH-60L also featured more power and lifting capability with upgraded T700-GE-701C engines and an improved gearbox, both from the SH-60B Seahawk. Its external lift capacity increased by up to . The UH-60L also incorporated the SH-60B's automatic flight control system (AFCS) for better flight control with the more powerful engines. Production of the L-model began in 1989.
Development of the next improved variant, the UH-60M, was approved in 2001, to extend the service life of the UH-60 design into the 2020s. The UH-60M incorporates upgraded T700-GE-701D engines, improved rotor blades, and state of the art electronic instrumentation, flight controls and aircraft navigation control. After the U.S. DoD approved low-rate initial production of the new variant, manufacturing began in 2006, with the first of 22 new UH-60Ms delivered in July 2006. After an initial operational evaluation, the Army approved full-rate production and a five-year contract for 1,227 helicopters in December 2007. By March 2009, 100 UH-60M helicopters had been delivered to the Army. In November 2014, US military ordered 102 aircraft of various H-60 types, worth $1.3 billion.
Following an operation in May 2011, it emerged that the 160th SOAR used a secret version of the UH-60 modified with low-observable technology which enabled it to evade Pakistani radar. Analysis of the tail section, the only remaining part of the aircraft which crashed during the operation, revealed extra blades on the tail rotor and other noise reduction measures, making the craft much quieter than conventional UH-60s. The aircraft appeared to include features like special high-tech materials, harsh angles, and flat surfaces found only in stealth jets. Low observable versions of the Black Hawk have been studied as far back as the mid-1970s.
In September 2012, Sikorsky was awarded a Combat Tempered Platform Demonstration (CTPD) contract to further improve the Black Hawk's durability and survivability. The company is to develop new technologies such as a zero-vibration system, adaptive flight control laws, advanced fire management, a more durable main rotor, full-spectrum crashworthiness, and damage tolerant airframe; then they are to transition them to the helicopter. Improvements to the Black Hawk are to continue until the Future Vertical Lift program is ready to replace it.
In December 2014, the 101st Airborne Division began testing new resupply equipment called the Enhanced Speed Bag System (ESBS). Soldiers in the field requiring quick resupply have depended on speed bags, bags filled with items airdropped from a UH-60. However, all systems were ad hoc with bags not made to keep things secure from impacts, so up to half of the airdropped items would be damaged upon hitting the ground. Started in 2011, the ESBS sought to standardize the airdrop resupply method and keep up to 90 percent of supplies intact. The system includes a hands-free reusable linear brake and expendable speed line and multipurpose cargo bag; when the bag is deployed, the brake applies friction to the rope, slowing it down enough to keep the bag oriented down on the padded base, a honeycomb and foam kit inside to dissipate energy. The ESBS not only better protects helicopter-dropped supplies, it allows the Black Hawk to fly higher above the ground, up from 10 feet, while traveling , limiting exposure to ground fire. Each bag can weigh and up to six can be deployed at once, dropping at . Since supplies can be delivered more accurately and the system can be automatically released on its own, the ESBS can enable autonomous resupply from unmanned helicopters.
Design
The UH-60 features four-blade main and tail rotors, and is powered by two General Electric T700 turboshaft engines. The main rotor is fully articulated and has elastomeric bearings in the rotor head. The tail rotor is canted and features a rigid crossbeam. The helicopter has a long, low profile shape to meet the Army's requirement for transporting aboard a C-130 Hercules, with some disassembly. It can carry 11 troops with equipment, lift of cargo internally or of cargo (for UH-60L/M) externally by sling.
The Black Hawk helicopter series can perform a wide array of missions, including the tactical transport of troops, electronic warfare, and aeromedical evacuation. A VIP version known as the VH-60N is used to transport important government officials (e.g., Congress, Executive departments) with the helicopter's call sign of "Marine One" when transporting the President of the United States. In air assault operations, it can move a squad of 11 combat troops or reposition a 105 mm M119 howitzer with 30 rounds ammunition, and a four-man crew in a single lift. The Black Hawk is equipped with advanced avionics and electronics for increased survivability and capability, such as the Global Positioning System.
The UH-60 can be equipped with stub wings at the top of fuselage to carry fuel tanks or various armaments. The initial stub wing system is called External Stores Support System (ESSS). It has two pylons on each wing to carry two and two tanks in total. The four fuel tanks and associated lines and valves form the external extended range fuel system (ERFS). U.S. Army UH-60s have had their ESSS modified into the crashworthy external fuel system (CEFS) configuration, replacing the older tanks with up to four total crashworthy tanks along with self-sealing fuel lines. The ESSS can also carry of armament such as rockets, missiles and gun pods. The ESSS entered service in 1986. However, it was found that the four fuel tanks obstruct the field of fire for the door guns; thus, the external tank system (ETS), carrying two fuel tanks on the stub wings, was developed.
The unit cost of the H-60 models varies due to differences in specifications, equipment and quantities. For example, the unit cost of the Army's UH-60L Black Hawk is $5.9 million while the unit cost of the Air Force HH-60G Pave Hawk is $10.2 million.
Operational history
Australia
Australia ordered fourteen S-70A-9 Black Hawks in 1986 and an additional twenty-five Black Hawks in 1987. The first US produced Black Hawk was delivered in 1987 to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). de Havilland Australia produced thirty-eight Black Hawks under license from Sikorsky in Australia delivering the first in 1988 and the last in 1991. In 1989, the RAAF's fleet of Black Hawks was transferred to the Australian Army. The Black Hawks saw operational service in Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, East Timor and Pakistan. In April 2009, the then-defence chief Air chief marshal Angus Houston, told the government not to deploy Black Hawks to Afghanistan as at the time they “lacked armor and self-defense systems”, and despite an upgrade to address this underway, it was more practical to use allies’ helicopters. In 2004, the government selected the Multi-Role Helicopter (MRH-90) Taipan, a variant of the NHIndustries NH90, to replace the Black Hawk even though the Department of Defence had recommended the S‐70M Black Hawk. In January 2014, the Army commenced retiring the fleet of thirty-four Black Hawks from service (five had been lost in accidents) and had planned for this to be completed by June 2018. The Chief of Army delayed the retirement of 20 Black Hawks until 2021 to enable the Army to develop a special operations role capable MRH-90. On 10 December 2021, the S-70A-9 Black Hawks were retired from service. On the same day, amid issues with the performance of the MRH-90s the government announced that they would be replaced by up to 40 UH-60M Black Hawks. The government is yet to place an order. The Australian reported that is hoped that six UH-60Ms maybe delivered in 2023 with all deliveries completed by 2026.
Brazil
Brazil received four UH-60L helicopters in 1997, for the Brazilian Army peacekeeping forces. It received six UH-60Ls configured for special forces, and search and rescue uses in 2008. It ordered ten more UH-60Ls in 2009; deliveries began in March 2011.
China
In December 1983, examples of the Aerospatiale AS-332 Super Puma, Bell 214ST SuperTransport and Sikorsky S-70A-5 (N3124B) were airlifted to Lhasa for testing. These demonstrations included take-offs and landings at altitudes to and en route operations to . At the end of this testing, the People's Liberation Army Air Force purchased 24 S-70C-2s, equipped with more powerful GE T700-701A engines for improved high-altitude performance. While designated as civil variants of the S-70 for export purposes, they are operated by the People's Liberation Army Air Force.
Colombia
Colombia first received UH-60s from the United States in 1987. The Colombian National Police, Colombian Air Force, and Colombian Army use UH-60s to transport troops and supplies to places which are difficult to access by land for counter-insurgency (COIN) operations against drug and guerrilla organizations, for search and rescue, and for medical evacuation. Colombia also operates a militarized gunship version of the UH-60, with stub wings, locally known as Arpía ().
The Colombian Army became the first worldwide operator of the S-70i with Terrain Awareness and Warning Capability (HTAWS) after taking delivery of the first two units on 13 August 2013.
In March 2017, the National Police of Colombia ordered 10 additional UH-60 helicopters that will increase their total to 19 helicopters in operation.
Israel
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) received 10 surplus UH-60A Black Hawks from the United States in August 1994. Named Yanshuf () by the IAF, the UH-60A began replacing Bell 212 utility helicopters. The IAF first used the UH-60s in combat during 1996 in southern Lebanon in Operation "Grapes of Wrath" against Hezbollah.
Mexico
The Mexican Air Force ordered its first two UH-60Ls in 1991, to transport special forces units, and another four in 1994. In July and August 2009, the Federal Police used UH-60s in attacks on drug traffickers. In August 2011, the Mexican Navy received three upgraded and navalized UH-60M. On 21 April 2014, the U.S. State Department approved the sale of 18 UH-60Ms to Mexico pending approval from Congress. In September 2014, Sikorsky received a $203.6 million firm-fixed-price contract modification for the 18 UH-60 designated for the Mexican Air Force.
Philippines
In March 2019, the Philippines' Department of National Defense (DND) signed a contract worth US$241.4 million with Lockheed Martin's Polish subsidiary PZL Mielec for 16 Sikorsky S-70i Black Hawks to the PAF. On 10 December 2020, the PAF received its first batch of six S-70i Black Hawks that it commissioned in a ceremony. The remaining 10 helicopters are to be delivered in 2021. The air service received another five S-70i helicopters in June 2021. On 22 February 2022, DND and PZL Mielec formally signed the contract for 32 additional S-70i Black Hawks.
Poland
In 2019, Poland ordered 7 S-70i Black Hawks with 4 delivered to the Polish Special Forces and 3 to the Police that same year. Another 4 S-70i helicopters are on order with 2 scheduled for delivery in 2023 and 2 in 2024.
Slovakia
In February 2015, the U.S. State Department approved a possible Foreign Military Sale of nine UH-60Ms with associated equipment and support to Slovakia and sent to Congress for its approval. In April 2015, Slovakia's government approved the procurement of nine UH-60Ms along with training and support. In September 2015, Slovakia ordered four UH-60Ms. The first two UH-60Ms were delivered in June 2017; the Slovak Air Force had received all nine UH-60Ms by January 2020. These are to replace its old Soviet Mil Mi-17s. In 2020, Slovak minister of defense announced Slovakia's interest in buying two more UH-60Ms.
Slovak Training Academy from Košice, a private company, operates four older UH-60As for new pilot training.
Sweden
Sweden requested 15 UH-60M helicopters by Foreign Military Sale in September 2010. The UH-60Ms were ordered in May 2011, and deliveries began in January 2012. In March 2013, Swedish ISAF forces began using Black Hawks in Afghanistan for MEDEVAC purposes. The UH-60Ms are to be fully operational by 2017.
Taiwan
Taiwan (Republic of China) operated S-70C-1/1A after the Republic of China Air Force received ten S-70C-1A and four S-70C-1 Bluehawk helicopters in June 1986 for Search and Rescue. Four more S-70C-6s were received in April 1998. The ROC Navy received the first of ten S-70C(M)-1s in July 1990. 11 S-70C(M)-2s were received beginning April 2000. In January 2010, the US announced approval for a Foreign Military Sale of 60 UH-60Ms to Taiwan with 30 designated for the Army, 15 for the National Airborne Service Corps (including the one that crashed off Orchid Island in 2018) and 15 for the Air Force Rescue Group (including the one that crashed 2 January 2020).
Turkey
Turkey has operated the UH-60 during NATO deployments to Afghanistan and the Balkans. The UH-60 has also been used in counter-terror/internal security operations.
The Black Hawk competed against the AgustaWestland AW149 in the Turkish General Use Helicopter Tender, to order up to 115 helicopters and produce many of them indigenously, with Turkish Aerospace Industries responsible for final integration and assembly. On 21 April 2011, Turkey announced the selection of Sikorsky's T-70.
In the course of the coup d'état attempt in Turkey on 15 July 2016, eight Turkish military personnel of various ranks landed in Greece's northeastern city of Alexandroupolis on board a Black Hawk helicopter and claimed political asylum in Greece. The helicopter was returned to Turkey shortly thereafter.
United States
The UH-60 entered service with the U.S. Army's 101st Combat Aviation Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division in June 1979. The U.S. military first used the UH-60 in combat during the invasion of Grenada in 1983, and again in the invasion of Panama in 1989. During the Gulf War in 1991, the UH-60 participated in the largest air assault mission in U.S. Army history with over 300 helicopters involved. Two UH-60s (89-26214 and 78–23015) were shot down, both on 27 February 1991, while performing Combat Search and Rescue of other downed aircrews, an F-16C pilot and the crew of a MEDEVAC UH-1H that were shot down earlier that day.
In 1993, Black Hawks featured prominently in the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia. Black Hawks also saw action in the Balkans and Haiti in the 1990s. U.S. Army UH-60s and other helicopters conducted many air assault and other support missions during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The UH-60 has continued to serve in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Customs and Border Protection Office of Air and Marine (OAM) uses the UH-60 in its operations specifically along the southwest border. The Black Hawk has been used by OAM to interdict illegal entry into the U.S. Additionally, OAM regularly uses the UH-60 in search and rescue operations.
Highly modified H-60s were employed during the U.S. Special Operations mission that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden during Operation Neptune Spear on 1 May 2011. One such MH-60 helicopter crash-landed during the operation, and was destroyed by the team before it departed in the other MH-60 and a backup MH-47 Chinook with bin Laden's remains. Two MH-47s were used for the mission to refuel the two MH-60s and as backups. News media reported that the Pakistani government granted the Chinese military access to the wreckage of the crashed 'stealth' UH-60 variant in Abbotabad; Pakistan and China denied the reports, and the U.S. Government has not confirmed Chinese access.
Other and potential users
The United Arab Emirates requested 14 UH-60M helicopters and associated equipment in September 2008, through Foreign Military Sale. It had received 20 UH-60Ls by November 2010. Bahrain ordered nine UH-60Ms in 2007.
In December 2011, the Royal Brunei Air Force ordered twelve S-70i helicopters, which are similar to the UH-60M; four aircraft had been received by December 2013. On 12 June 2012, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency notified Congress that Qatar requested the purchase of twelve UH-60Ms, engines, and associated equipment.
On 25 February 2013, the Indonesian Army announced its interest in buying UH-60 Black Hawks as part of its effort to modernize its weaponry. The army wants them for combating terrorism, transnational crime, and insurgency to secure the archipelago.
On 27 May 2014, Croatian Defence Minister Ante Kotromanović announced the beginning of negotiations for the purchase of 15 used Black Hawks. On 12 October 2018, the US via Ambassador Robert Kohorst donated two UH-60M helicopters with associated equipment and crew training to Croatia's Ministry of Defence. The helicopters are to be delivered in 2020.
Tunisia requested 12 armed UH-60M helicopters in July 2014 through Foreign Military Sale. In August 2014, the U.S. ambassador stated that the U.S. "will soon make available" the UH-60Ms to Tunisia.
On 23 January 2015, the Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein confirmed that Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) is receiving S-70A Blackhawks from the Brunei government. These helicopters, believed to be four in total, were expected to be transferred to Malaysia by September with M134D miniguns added. The four Blackhawks were delivered to Royal Brunei Air Force (RBAF) in 1999.
In 2018, Latvia requested to buy four UH-60M Black Hawks with associated equipment for an estimated cost of $200 million. On 3 August 2018, the State Department approved the possible Foreign Military Sale. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of the possible sale. In November 2018, Latvia signed for the purchase of four UH-60 helicopters. Deliveries are to be completed by 2021.
In 2019, Lithuania announced plans to buy six UH-60M helicopters before ordering four UH-60Ms in 2020. In 2019, Poland ordered four UH-60Ms for its special forces.
Variants
The UH-60 comes in many variants, and many different modifications. The U.S. Army variants can be fitted with the stub wings to carry additional fuel tanks or weapons. Variants may have different capabilities and equipment to fulfill different roles.
Utility variants
YUH-60A: Initial test and evaluation version for U.S. Army. First flight on 17 October 1974; three built.
UH-60A Black Hawk: Original U.S. Army version, carrying a crew of four and up to 11 equipped troops. Equipped with T700-GE-700 engines. Produced 1977–1989. U.S. Army is equipping UH-60As with more powerful T700-GE-701D engines and also upgrading A-models to UH-60L standard.
UH-60C Black Hawk: Modified version for command and control (C2) missions.
CH-60E: Proposed troop transport variant for the U.S. Marine Corps.
UH-60L Black Hawk: UH-60A with upgraded T700-GE-701C engines, improved durability gearbox, and updated flight control system. Produced 1989–2007. UH-60Ls are also being equipped with the GE T700-GE-701D engine. The U.S. Army Corpus Christi Army Depot is upgrading UH-60A helicopters to the UH-60L configuration. In July 2018, Sierra Nevada Corporation proposed upgrading some converted UH-60L helicopters for the U.S. Air Force's UH-1N replacement program.
UH-60V Black Hawk: Upgraded version of the UH-60L with the electronic displays (glass cockpit) of the UH-60M. Upgrades performed by Northrop Grumman featuring a centralized processor with a partitioned, modular operational flight program enabling capabilities to be added as software-only modifications.
UH-60M Black Hawk: Improved design wide chord rotor blades, T700-GE-701D engines (max each), improved durability gearbox, Integrated Vehicle Health Management System (IVHMS) computer, and new glass cockpit. Production began in 2006. Planned to replace older U.S. Army UH-60s.
UH-60M Upgrade Black Hawk: UH-60M with fly-by-wire system and Common Avionics Architecture System (CAAS) cockpit suite. Flight testing began in August 2008.
Special purpose
EH-60A Black Hawk: UH-60A with modified electrical system and stations for two electronic systems mission operators. All examples of type have been converted back to standard UH-60A configuration.
YEH-60B Black Hawk: UH-60A modified for special radar and avionics installations, prototype for stand-off target acquisition system.
EH-60C Black Hawk: UH-60A modified with special electronics equipment and external antenna. (All examples of type have been taken back to standard UH-60A configuration.)
EUH-60L (no official name assigned): UH-60L modified with additional mission electronic equipment for Army Airborne C2.
EH-60L Black Hawk: EH-60A with major mission equipment upgrade.
UH-60Q Black Hawk: UH-60A modified for medical evacuation. The UH-60Q is named DUSTOFF for "dedicated unhesitating service to our fighting forces".
HH-60L (no official name assigned): UH-60L extensively modified with medical mission equipment. Components include an external rescue hoist, integrated patient configuration system, environmental control system, on-board oxygen system (OBOGS), and crashworthy ambulatory seats.
HH-60M Black Hawk: UH-60M with medical mission equipment (medevac version) for U.S. Army.
HH-60U: USAF UH-60M version modified with an electro-optical sensor and rescue hoist. Three in use by Air Force pilots and special mission aviators since 2011. Has 85% commonality with the HH-60W.
HH-60W Jolly Green II: Modified version of the UH-60M for the U.S. Air Force as a Combat Rescue Helicopter to replace HH-60G Pave Hawks with greater fuel capacity and more internal cabin space, dubbed the "60-Whiskey". Deliveries to begin in 2019.
MH-60A Black Hawk: 30 UH-60As modified with additional avionics, night vision capable cockpit, FLIR, M134 door guns, internal auxiliary fuel tanks and other Special Operations mission equipment in early 1980s for U.S. Army. Equipped with T700-GE-701 engines. Variant was used by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The MH-60As were replaced by MH-60Ls beginning in the early 1990s and passed to Army Aviation units in the Army National Guard.
MH-60K Black Hawk: Special operations modification first ordered in 1988 for use by the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment ("Night Stalkers"). Equipped with the in-flight refueling probe, and T700-GE-701C engines. More advanced than the MH-60L, the K-model also includes an integrated avionics system (glass cockpit), AN/APQ-174B terrain-following radar, color weather map, improved weapons capability, and various defensive systems.
MH-60L Black Hawk: Special operations modification, used by the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment ("Night Stalkers"), based on the UH-60L with T700-701C engines. It was developed as an interim version in the late 1980s pending fielding of the MH-60K. Equipped with many of the systems used on MH-60K, including FLIR, color weather map, auxiliary fuel system, and laser rangefinder/designator. A total of 37 MH-60Ls were built and some 10 had received an in-flight refueling probe by 2003.
MH-60L DAP: The Direct Action Penetrator (DAP) is a special operations modification of the baseline MH-60L, operated by the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. The DAP is configured as a gunship, with no troop-carrying capacity. The DAP is equipped with ESSS or ETS stub wings, each capable of carrying configurations of the M230 Chain Gun 30 mm automatic cannon, 19-shot Hydra 70 rocket pod, AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, AIM-92 Stinger air-to-air missiles, GAU-19 gun pods, and M134 minigun pods, M134D miniguns are used as door guns.
MH-60M Black Hawk: Special operations version of UH-60M for U.S. Army. Features the Rockwell Collins Common Avionics Architecture System (CAAS) glass cockpit and more powerful YT706-GE-700 engines. All special operations Black Hawks to be modernized to MH-60M standard by 2015.
MH-60 Black Hawk stealth helicopter: One of two (known) specially modified MH-60s used in the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan on 1 May 2011 was damaged in a hard landing, and was subsequently destroyed by U.S. forces. Subsequent reports state that the Black Hawk destroyed was a previously unconfirmed, but rumored, modification of the design with reduced noise signature and stealth technology. The modifications are said to add several hundred pounds to the base helicopter including edge alignment panels, special coatings and anti-radar treatments for the windshields.
UH-60A RASCAL: NASA-modified version for the Rotorcraft-Aircrew Systems Concepts Airborne Laboratory; a US$25M program for the study of helicopter maneuverability in three programs, Superaugmented Controls for Agile Maneuvering Performance (SCAMP), Automated Nap-of-the-Earth (ANOE) and Rotorcraft Agility and Pilotage Improvement Demonstration (RAPID). The UH-60A RASCAL performed a fully autonomous flight on 5 November 2012. U.S. Army personnel were on board, but the flying was done by the helicopter. During a two-hour flight, the Black Hawk featured terrain sensing, trajectory generation, threat avoidance, and autonomous flight control. It was fitted with a 3D-LZ laser detection and ranging (LADAR) system. The autonomous flight was performed between 200 and 400 feet. Upon landing, the onboard technology was able to pinpoint a safe landing zone, hover, and safely bring itself down.
OPBH: On 11 March 2014, Sikorsky successfully conducted the first flight demonstration of their Optionally Piloted Black Hawk (OPBH), a milestone part of the company's Manned/Unmanned Resupply Aerial Lifter (MURAL) program to provide autonomous cargo delivery for the U.S. Army. The helicopter used the company's Matrix technology (software to improve features of autonomous, optionally-piloted VTOL aircraft) to perform autonomous hover and flight operations under the control of an operator using a man-portable Ground Control Station (GCS). The MURAL program is a cooperative effort between Sikorsky, the US Army Aviation Development Directorate (ADD), and the US Army Utility Helicopters Project Office (UH PO). The purpose of creating an optionally-manned Black Hawk is to make the aircraft autonomously carry out resupply missions and expeditionary operations while increasing sorties and maintaining crew rest requirements and leaving pilots to focus more on sensitive operations.
VH-60D Night Hawk: VIP-configured HH-60D, used for presidential transport by USMC. T700-GE-401C engines. Variant was later redesignated VH-60N.
VH-60N White Hawk "White Top": Modified UH-60A with some features from the SH-60B/F Seahawks. Is one of the VIP-configured USMC helicopter models that perform Presidential and VIP transport as Marine One. The VH-60N entered service in 1988 and nine helicopters were delivered.
VH-60M Black Hawk "Gold Top": Heavily modified UH-60M used for executive transport. Members of the Joint Chiefs, Congressional leadership, and other DoD personnel are flown on these exclusively by the 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Export versions
UH-60J Black Hawk: Variant for the Japanese Air Self Defense Force and Maritime Self Defense Force produced under license by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Also known as the S-70-12.
UH-60JA Black Hawk: Variant for the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force. It is license produced by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
AH-60L Arpía: Export version for Colombia developed by Elbit Systems, Sikorsky, and the Colombian Air Force. It is Counter-insurgency (COIN) attack version with improved electronics, firing system, FLIR, radar, light rockets and machine guns.
AH-60L Battle Hawk: Export armed version unsuccessfully tendered for Australian Army project AIR87, similar to AH-60L Arpía III. Sikorsky has also offered a Battlehawk armed version for export in the form of armament kits and upgrades. Sikorsky's Armed Black hawk demonstrator has tested a 20 mm turreted cannon, and different guided missiles. The United Arab Emirates ordered Battlehawk kits in 2011.
UH-60P Black Hawk: Version for South Korea Army, based on UH-60L with some improvements. Around 150 were produced under license by Korean Air.
S-70A Black Hawk: Sikorsky's designation for Black Hawk. Designation is often used for exports.
S-70A-1 Desert Hawk: Export version for the Royal Saudi Land Forces.
S-70A-L1 Desert Hawk: Aeromedical evacuation version for the Royal Saudi Land Forces.
S-70A-5 Black Hawk: Export version for the Philippine Air Force.
S-70A-6 Black Hawk: Export version for Thailand.
S-70A-9 Black Hawk: Export version for Australia, assembled under licence by Hawker de Havilland. First eight delivered to the Royal Australian Air Force, subsequently transferred to the Australian Army; remainder delivered straight to the Army after rotary-wing assets divested by the Air Force in 1989.
S-70A-11 Black Hawk: Export version for the Royal Jordanian Air Force.
S-70A-12 Black Hawk: Search and rescue model for the Japanese Air Self Defense Force and Maritime Self Defense Force. Also known as the UH-60J.
S-70A-14 Black Hawk: Export version for Brunei.
S-70A-16 Black Hawk: Engine test bed for the Rolls-Royce/Turbomeca RTM 332.
S-70A-17 Black Hawk: Export version for Turkey.
S-70A-18 Black Hawk: UH-60P and HH-60P for Republic of Korea Armed Forces built under license.
Sikorsky/Westland S-70-19 Black Hawk: This version is built under license in the United Kingdom by Westland. Also known as the WS-70.
S-70A-20 Black Hawk: VIP transport version for Thailand.
S-70A-21 Black Hawk: Export version for Egypt.
S-70A-22 Black Hawk: VH-60P for South Korea built under license. Used for VIP transport by the Republic of Korea Air Force. Its fuselage is tipped with white to distinguish from normal HH-60P.
S-70A-24 Black Hawk: Export version for Mexico.
S-70A-26 Black Hawk: Export version for Morocco.
S-70A-27 Black Hawk: Export version for Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force and Hong Kong Government Flying Service; three built.
S-70A-28D Black Hawk: Export version for Turkish Army.
S-70A-30 Black Hawk: Export version for Argentine Air Force, used as a VIP transport helicopter by the Presidential fleet; one built.
S-70A-33 Black Hawk: Export version for Royal Brunei Air Force.
S-70A-39 Black Hawk: VIP transport version for Chile; one built.
S-70A-42 Black Hawk: Export version for Austria.
S-70A-43 Black Hawk: Export version for Royal Thai Army.
S-70A-50 Black Hawk: Export version for Israel; 15 built.
S-70C-2 Black Hawk: Export version for People's Republic of China; 24 built.
S-70i Black Hawk: International military version assembled by Sikorsky's subsidiary, PZL Mielec in Poland.
S-70M Black Hawk: Modified military version assembled by Sikorsky's subsidiary, PZL Mielec in Poland from 2021.
See: Sikorsky SH-60 Seahawk, Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk, Piasecki X-49, and Sikorsky HH-60 Jayhawk for other Sikorsky S-70 variants.
Operators
See SH-60 Seahawk, HH-60 Pave Hawk, HH-60 Jayhawk, and Sikorsky S-70 for operators of other H-60/S-70 family helicopters.
Afghan Air Force (to Aug. 2021)
Taliban (captured in Aug. 2021)
Albanian Air Force - Three on order.
Austrian Air Force
Royal Bahraini Air Force
Brazilian Air Force
Brazilian Army
Brazilian Navy (see SH-60)
Royal Brunei Air Force
Chilean Air Force
People's Liberation Army
Colombian Air Force
Colombian Army
Croatian Air Force 2 (2 on order; 4 more planned)
Egyptian Air Force
Israeli Air Force
Japan Air Self-Defence Force
Japan Ground Self-Defence Force
Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force
Royal Jordanian Air Force
Lithuanian Air Force (4 UH-60Ms on order; deliveries are to begin in late 2024.)
Royal Malaysian Air Force
Mexican Air Force
Mexican Navy
Royal Moroccan Gendarmerie
Philippine Air Force (16 in service, 32 S-70i on order)
Polish Special Forces (4 in service, 4 S-70i on order)
Royal Saudi Air Force
Royal Saudi Land Forces
Saudi Arabian National Guard
Royal Saudi Navy
Republic of Korea Air Force
Republic of Korea Army
Republic of Korea Navy
Slovak Air Force
Swedish Air Force
Republic of China Air Force
Republic of China Army
Republic of China Navy
Royal Thai Army
Royal Thai Navy (see SH-60)
Royal Thai Air Force (5 on order)
Tunisian Air Force
Turkish Air Force (6 T-70s on order)
Turkish Army
United Arab Emirates Air Force
United States Air Force (see HH-60)
United States Army
United States Navy (see SH-60)
United States Coast Guard (see MH-60)
Former operators
Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force
Government Flying Service
Accidents
From 1981 to 1987, five Black Hawks crashed (killing or injuring all on board) while flying near radio broadcast towers because their electromagnetic emissions disrupted the helicopters' flight control systems. The Black Hawk helicopters were not hardened against high-intensity radiated field, contrarily to the SB-60 Seahawk Navy version. The pilots were instructed to fly away from emitters, and, in the long-term, shieldings were increased, and backup systems were installed.
On 3 March 1994, a UH-60 helicopter of the 15th Fighter Wing, Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) exploded above Yongin, Gyeonggi-do, killing all of the six personnel on board, including General Cho Kun-hae, then Chief of the Air Staff of South Korea.
On 14 April 1994, two U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawks in northern Iraq were shot down by mistake by U.S. Air Force F-15s patrolling the northern no-fly zone that had been imposed after the 1991 Gulf War. Twenty-six crew and passengers were killed.
On 12 June 1996, two Australian Army Black Hawks collided during an Army night-time special forces counter-terrorism exercise resulting in the death of eighteen soldiers - fifteen members of the SASR and three from the 5th Aviation Regiment.
On 10 March 2015, a UH-60 from Eglin Air Force Base crashed off the coast of the Florida Panhandle near the base. All eleven on board were killed.
On 2 January 2020, a UH-60M helicopter of the Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) in Taiwan, crashed on a mountainside, killing eight people on board, including General Shen Yi-ming, chief of the general staff of Republic of China's armed forces.
On 23 June 2021, a Philippine Air Force S-70i crashed in Capaz Tarlac during a night flight training, killing all crew members.
On 22 February 2022, two Utah National Guard Black Hawk helicopters crashed at the Snowbird, Utah ski resort during a training exercise. One Black Hawk was overcome by whiteout conditions caused by the downdraft in the snow, and crashed, causing parts of the rotor blades to strike the other helicopter, forcing a hard landing. There were no major injuries of crew or skiers.
Specifications (UH-60M)
See also
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Bishop, Chris. Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk. Oxford, UK: Osprey, 2008. .
Leoni, Ray D. Black Hawk, The Story of a World Class Helicopter. Reston, Virginia: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2007. .
Tomajczyk, Stephen F. Black Hawk. St. Paul, Minnesota: MBI, 2003. .
External links
UH/HH-60 Black Hawk U.S. Army page
Lockheed Martin's BLACK HAWK page
YUH-60A cutaway image on flightglobal.com
UTTAS program, origin of the Black Hawk on helis.com
UH-60A, H-60, AH-60L and Sikorsky S-70 GlobalSecurity.org
UH-60 Blackhawk medium size utility helicopter(Air recognition)
S-70A-42 Black Hawk of the Austrian Army
Military.com with data on range extending devices
UH-60 Black Hawk on kamov.net
Twin-turbine helicopters
United States military helicopters
H-060, U
1970s United States helicopters
Sikoysky H-60 Black Hawk
H-060 Black Hawk
Search and rescue helicopters
Aircraft first flown in 1974 | en |
doc-en-16198 | This is a list of international sports federations, each of which serves as a non-governmental governing body for a given sport and administers its sport at a world level, most often crafting rules, promoting the sport to prospective spectators and fans, developing prospective players, and organizing world or continental championships. Some international sports federations, such as the International Swimming Federation and the International Skating Union, may oversee multiple activities referred to in common parlance as separate sports: FINA, for example governs swimming, diving, synchronised swimming, and water polo as separate "disciplines" within the single "sport" of Aquatics.
International sports federations form an integral part of the Olympic and Paralympic movements. Each Olympic sport is represented by its respective international sports federation, which in turn helps administer the events in its respective sport during the Games. For a sport to become an Olympic sport, its international sports federation must be recognized by the International Olympic Committee.
Likewise, an international sports federation must be recognized by the International Paralympic Committee for its sport to become a paralympic sport, though in the latter case, several Paralympic Sports are governed by a dedicated committee of the International Paralympic Committee itself, under the World Para branding, for example track and field athletics for disabled athletes is governed by the IPC itself, under the name "World Para Athletics". Other Paralympic sports are governed within the structure of the able-bodied equivalent: for example, the UCI governs both able-bodied and paralympic cycling.
Federations recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF)
The following are recognised by the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF):
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Sport !! Federation
|-
| Aquatics || FINA (Fédération internationale de natation)
|-
| Archery || World Archery Federation (WA)
|-
| Athletics || World Athletics (formerly International Association of Athletics Federations; IAAF)
|-
| Badminton || Badminton World Federation (BWF)
|-
| Basketball || FIBA
|-
| Boxing (amateur) || International Boxing Association (formerly Association Internationale de Boxe Amateur; AIBA)
|-
| Canoeing || International Canoe Federation (ICF)
|-
| Cycling || Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) (or International Cycling Union, ICU)
|-
| Equestrianism || International Federation for Equestrian Sports (Fédération Équestre Internationale, FEI)
|-
| Fencing || Fédération Internationale d'Escrime (FIE)
|-
| Football/Soccer || FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association)
|-
| Golf || International Golf Federation (IGF)
|-
| Gymnastics || Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) (International Gymnastics Federation, IFG)
|-
| Handball || International Handball Federation (IHF)
|-
| Field hockey || Fédération Internationale de Hockey (FIH) (International Hockey Federation)
|-
| Judo || International Judo Federation (IJF)
|-
| Modern pentathlon || Union Internationale de Pentathlon Moderne (UIPM)
|-
| Rowing || Fédération Internationale des Sociétés d'Aviron (FISA) (International Rowing Federation)
|-
| Rugby union || World Rugby (WR)
|-
| Sailing || World Sailing
|-
| Shooting sports || International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF)
|-
| Table tennis || International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF)
|-
| Taekwondo || World Taekwondo (WT)
|-
| Tennis || International Tennis Federation (ITF)
|-
| Triathlon || International Triathlon Union (ITU)
|-
| Volleyball and beach volleyball || Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB)
|-
| Weightlifting || International Weightlifting Federation (IWF)
|-
| Wrestling || United World Wrestling (UWW)
|}
Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations (AIOWF)
The following are recognized by the Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations (AIOWF):
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col" style="width: 25em;" | Sport !! Federation
|-
| Biathlon || International Biathlon Union (IBU)
|-
| Bobsleigh and skeleton || International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF)
|-
| Curling || World Curling Federation (WCF)
|-
| Ice hockey || International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF)
|-
| Ice skating (including figure skating, speed skating, and short-track speed skating) || International Skating Union (ISU)
|-
| Luge || Fédération Internationale de Luge de Course (FIL)
|-
| Skiing (including Alpine, Nordic combined, cross-country, freestyle, and ski jumping) and snowboarding || Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS)
|}
Association of the IOC Recognised International Sports Federations (ARISF)
The following are recognised by the Association of the IOC Recognised International Sports Federations (ARISF):
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col" style="width: 25em;" | Sport !! Federation !! Discipline !! Federation
|-
| Air sports (including aerobatics, air racing, ballooning, gliding, hang gliding, and parachuting/skydiving) || Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI)
|-
| American football || International Federation of American Football (IFAF)
|-
| Auto racing || Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA)
|-
| Bandy || Federation of International Bandy (FIB)
|-
| Baseball, softball, and Baseball5|| World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC)
|-
| Basque pelota || Fédération Internationale de Pelota Vasca (FIPV)
|-
| rowspan="3" | Billiard sports (including carom billiards, pocket billiards (pool), and snooker) || rowspan="3" | World Confederation of Billiards Sports (WCBS)
| Carom || Union Mondiale de Billard (UMB)
|-
| Pool || World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA)
|-
| Snooker || International Billiards and Snooker Federation (IBSF)
|-
| rowspan="3" | Boules sports || rowspan="3" | Confédération Mondiale des Sports de Boules (CMSB)
| Bocce || Confederazione Boccistica Internazionale (CBI)
|-
| Boule lyonnaise || Fédération Internationale de Boules (FIB)
|-
| Pétanque || Fédération Internationale de Pétanque et Jeu Provençal (FIPJP)
|-
| rowspan="2" | Bowling || rowspan="2" | International Bowling Federation (IBF)
| Ten-pin bowling || World Tenpin Bowling Association (WTBA)
|-
| Nine-pin bowling || World Ninepin Bowling Association (WNBA)
|-
| Bridge || World Bridge Federation (WBF)
|-
| Cheerleading || International Cheer Union (ICU)
|-
| Chess || Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE)
|-
| Climbing and mountaineering || Union Internationale des Associations d'Alpinisme (UIAA)
|-
| Cricket || International Cricket Council (ICC)
|-
| DanceSport || World DanceSport Federation (WDSF)
|-
| Floorball || International Floorball Federation (IFF)
|-
| Flying disc || World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF)
|-
| Ice stock sport || International Federation IceStockSport (IFE)
|-
| Karate || World Karate Federation (WKF)
|-
| Kickboxing || World Association of Kickboxing Organizations (WAKO)
|-
| Korfball || International Korfball Federation (IKF)
|-
| Lacrosse || Federation of International Lacrosse
|-
| Life saving || International Life Saving Federation (ILS)
|-
| Motorcycle sport || Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM)
|-
| Muaythai || International Federation of Muaythai Amateur (IFMA)
|-
| Netball || International Netball Federation (INF)
|-
| Orienteering || International Orienteering Federation (IOF)
|-
| Polo || Federation of International Polo (FIP)
|-
| Powerboating || Union Internationale Motonautique (UIM)
|-
| Racquetball || International Racquetball Federation (IRF)
|-
| Roller sports (including inline hockey, roller racing, rink hockey, roller derby, skateboarding, and artistic roller skating) || World Skate (WS)
|-
| Sambo || Fédération Internationale de Sambo (FIAS)
|-
| Ski mountaineering || International Ski Mountaineering Federation (ISMF)
|-
| Sport climbing || International Federation of Sport Climbing (IFSC)
|-
| Squash || World Squash Federation (WSF)
|-
| Sumo || International Sumo Federation (ISF)
|-
| Surfing and bodyboarding || International Surfing Association (ISA)
|-
| Tug-of-war || Tug-of-War International Federation (TWIF)
|-
| Underwater sports || Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques (CMAS)
|-
| University sports || Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire (FISU)
|-
| Water skiing and wakeboarding (including cable skiing and cable wakeboarding) || International Waterski & Wakeboard Federation (IWWF)
|-
| Wushu || International Wushu Federation (IWUF)
|}
Federations recognized by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC)
There are 11 international federations recognized by the IPC, while the IPC itself serves as the international federation for 10 sports.
On 30 November 2016, the IPC adopted the "World Para" brand for all 10 of the sports that it directly governs.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Sport !! Federation
|-
| Alpine skiing || World Para Alpine Skiing
|-
| Archery || World Archery Federation (WA)
|-
| Athletics || World Para Athletics
|-
| Badminton || Parabadminton World Federation (PBWF) / Badminton World Federation (BWF)
|-
| Boccia || Boccia International Sports Federation (BISFed)
|-
| Cycling || Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI)
|-
| Equestrian || International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI)
|-
| Flying disc || World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF)
|-
| Nordic skiing (including biathlon and cross-country skiing) || World Para Nordic Skiing
|-
| Para Dance Sport || World Para Dance Sport
|-
| Para ice hockey || World Para Ice Hockey
|-
| Powerlifting || World Para Powerlifting
|-
| Rowing || International Rowing Federation (FISA)
|-
| Sailing || International Association for Disabled Sailing (IADS)
|-
| Shooting || World Shooting Para Sport
|-
| Snowboarding || World Para Snowboard
|-
| Swimming || World Para Swimming
|-
| Para table tennis || International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF)
|-
| Volleyball || World Organization Volleyball for Disabled (WOVD)
|-
| Wheelchair basketball || International Wheelchair Basketball Federation (IWBF)
|-
| Wheelchair curling || World Curling Federation (WCF)
|-
| Wheelchair rugby || International Wheelchair Rugby Federation (IWRF)
|-
| Wheelchair tennis || International Tennis Federation (ITF)
|}
At the time of the IPC's "World Para" rebranding, it changed the official name of the sport from "wheelchair dance sport" to "Para dance sport".
At the time of the IPC's "World Para" rebranding, it changed the official name of the sport from "sledge hockey" to "Para ice hockey".
At the time of the IPC's "World Para" rebranding, it changed the official name of the sport to "shooting Para sport".
Disability specific organizations
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Sport !! Federation
|-
| Paralympic sports for athletes with cerebral palsy || Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association (CPISRA)
|-
| Football 7-a-side || International Federation of Cerebral Palsy Football (IFCPF)
|-
| Football 5-a-side || International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA)
|-
| Goalball || International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA)
|-
| Judo || International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA)
|-
| Wheelchair fencing || International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation (IWAS)
|-
| For athletes with an intellectual disability || Inas
|}
Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF)
Federations whose sports are either included in the Olympic Games (ASOIF, AIOWF) or recognized by the IOC (ARISF) are also members of the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF), formerly known as SportAccord. Other members of GAISF (non-IOC recognized) compose the Alliance of Independent Recognized Members of Sport (AIMS).
{| class="wikitable"
! Sport !! Federation
|-
| Aikido || International Aikido Federation (IAF)
|-
| Arm wrestling || World Armwrestling Federation (WAF)
|-
| Bodybuilding || International Federation of Bodybuilding & Fitness (IFBB)
|-
| Casting || International Casting Sport Federation (ICSF)
|-
| Darts || World Darts Federation (WDF)
|-
| Dragon boat racing || International Dragon Boat Federation (IDBF)
|-
| Draughts || World Draughts Federation (FMJD)
|-
| Fishing || International Confederation of Sport Fishing (CIPS)
|-
| Fistball || International Fistball Association (IFA)
|-
| Go || International Go Federation (IGF)
|-
| Sport Ju-Jitsu || Ju-Jitsu International Federation (JJIF)
|-
| Kendo || International Kendo Federation (IKF)
|-
| Miniature golf || World Minigolfsport Federation (WMF)
|-
| Powerlifting || International Powerlifting Federation (IPF)
|-
| Savate || Federation Internationale de Savate (FISav)
|-
| Sepak takraw || International Sepaktakraw Federation (ISTAF)
|-
| Sled dog sports || International Federation of Sleddog Sports
|-
| Soft tennis || International Soft Tennis Federation (ISTF)
|-
| Teqball || International Federation of Teqball (FITEQ)
|}
Other than full members (composing ASOIF, AIOWF, ARISF and AIMS), there are Associate members of GAISF.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Sport !! Federation
|-
| Commonwealth Games || Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF)
|-
| Masters Games || International Masters Games Association (IMGA)
|-
| Mediterranean Games || International Committee of Mediterranean Games (ICMG or CIJM)
|-
| Military World Games || Conseil International du Sport Militaire (CISM)
|-
| World Mind Sports Games || International Mind Sports Association (IMSA)
|-
| || World Olympians Association (WOA)
|-
| || Panathlon International (PI)
|-
| Paralympic Games || International Paralympic Committee (IPC)
|-
| School Sports || International School Sport Federation (ISF)
|-
| Special Olympics || Special Olympics (SOI)
|-
| || International Association for Sports and Leisure Facilities (IAKS)
|-
| || Federation Internationale de Chiropratique du Sport (FICS)
|-
| Sports for the Deaf || International Committee of Sports for the Deaf (CISS)
|-
| || International Federation of Sports Medicine (FIMS)
|-
| || International Sports Press Association (AIPS)
|-
| CSIT World Sports Games || International Workers and Amateurs in Sports Confederation (CSIT)
|-
| World Games || International World Games Association (IWGA)
|-
| || World Union of Olympic Cities
|-
| || World Federation of the Sporting Goods Industry
|}
Other international sports federations
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col" style="width: 15em;" | Sport !! Federation
|-
| Aesthetic group gymnastics || International Federation of Aesthetic Group Gymnastics (IFAAG)
|-
| Amputee football || World Amputee Football Federation (WAFF)
|-
| Australian rules football || Australian Football International (AFI)
|-
| Axe throwing || World Axe Throwing League (WATL)
|-
| Beach handball || World Beach Handball Association (WBHA)
|-
| Beach soccer || Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSWW), Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)
|-
| Beeni || World Beeni Federation (WBF)
|-
| Brazilian jiu-jitsu || International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation (IBJJF), Sport Jiu Jitsu International Federation (SJJIF)
|-
| Bodyboarding || International Bodyboarding Association (IBA)
|-
| Bodybuilding, physique sports, and fitness || World Bodybuilding and Physique Sports Federation (WBPF)
|-
| Boot throwing || International Bootthrowing Association (IBTA)
|-
| Canadian five-pin bowling || Canadian 5 Pin Bowlers Association (C5PBA)
|-
| Bowls || Professional Bowls Association (PBA)
|-
| Bowls || World Bowls (WB)
|-
| Boxing || World Professional Boxing Federation (WPBF)
|-
| Broomball || International Federation of Broomball Associations (IFBA)
|-
| Cageball || Professional Cageball Association (PCA)
|-
| Chess || International Amateur Chess Federation (IACF)
|-
| Correspondence chess || International Correspondence Chess Federation (ICCF)
|-
| Corporate football || International Federation of Corporate Football (FIFCO)
|-
| Cricket || International Cricket Council (ICC)
|-
| Croquet || World Croquet Federation (WCF)
|-
| Crossminton || International Crossminton Organisation (ICO)
|-
| Debating || World Debating Council (WDC)
|-
| Debating (in Spanish) || Consejo Mundial de Debate (COMUDEES)
|-
| eSports || International e-Sports Federation (IeSF), Global Esports Federation (GEF)
|-
| Dodgeball || World Dodgeball Federation (WDBF)
|-
| Elephant polo || World Elephant Polo Association (WEPF)
|-
| Floor tennis || World Floor Tennis Federation (WFTF)
|-
| Footgolf || | Federation for International FootGolf (FIFG)
|-
| Gaelic football || Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA)
|-
| Gaelic handball || Irish Handball Council, United States Handball Association (USHA)
|-
| Gateball || World Gateball Union (WGU)
|-
| Gillidanda || Gilli Danda International Federation
|-
| Goalball || International Blind Sports Federation (IBSA)
|-
| Golf || The R&A; United States Golf Association (USGA)
|-
| Greyhound racing || American Greyhound Track Operators Association (AGTOA), National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC)
|-
| Ground golf || International Ground Golf Federation (IGGF)
|-
| Gungdo || World Kung-do Federation
|-
| Ham radio contesting, amateur radio direction finding, and high speed telegraphy || International Amateur Radio Union (IARU)
|-
| Hapkido boxing || Hapkido Boxing International Organization (HBIO)
|-
| Harness horse racing || Harness Horsemen International (HHI), Union Europeenne du Trot (European Trotting Union) (UET)
|-
| Horseback archery || International Horseback Archery Alliance (IHAA)
|-
| Horse racing || International Federation of Horseracing Authorities (IFHA)
|-
| Horseshoes || National Horseshoe Pitchers Association of America (NHPA)
|-
| Hurling || Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA)
|-
| Intercrosse || Fédération Internationale d’Inter-Crosse (FIIC)
|-
| Juggling || World Juggling Federation (WJF)
|-
| Kabaddi || International Kabaddi Federation (IKF)
|-
| Kendo || World Kendo Association
|-
| Kettlebell lifting || International Union of Kettlebell Lifting (IUKL)
|-
| Kickboxing || International Kickboxing Federation (IKF)
|-
| Kin-Ball || International Kin-Ball Federation (IKBF)
|-
| Kite sports || International Federation of Kitesports Organisations (IFKO)
|-
| Krav maga || International Krav Maga Federation (IKMF)
|-
| Lethwei || World Lethwei Federation (WLF)
|-
| Mallakhamb || Mallakhamb Confederation of World (MCW)
|-
|- Mixed martial arts || World MMA Confederation (WMMAC)
|-
|- Mixed martial arts || Asian MMA Confederation (AMMAC)
|-
|- Mixed martial arts || Oman MMA Committee (OMMAC)
|-
| Mixed martial arts || International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF), International Sport Combat Federation (ISCF)
|-
|- Mixed martial arts || Iran MMA association (AMMAA)
|-
| Modern Arnis || International Modern Arnis Federation (IMAF)
|-
| Mountain running || World Mountain Running Association (WMRA)
|-
| Mountainboarding || International Mountainboard Riders Association (IMRA)
|-
| Muay Thai || International Kickboxing Federation (IKF)
|-
| Obstacle racing || World Obstacle (FISO)
|-
| Obstacle sports (O-sport) || World O-Sport Federation (WOF)
|-
| Paddleball || National Paddleball Association (NPA)
|-
| Padel || International Padel Federation (IPF)
|-
| Parkour || World Freerunning Parkour Federation (WFPF)
|-
| Pencak Silat || International Pencak Silat Federation (PERSILAT)
|-
| Pesäpallo (Finnish baseball) || Pesäpalloliitto
|-
| Pickleball || International Federation of Pickleball (IFP)
|-
| Pigeon racing || Royal Pigeon Racing Association (RPRA)
|-
| Pogo stick || World Pogo Stick Federation (WPSF)
|-
| Poker || International Federation of Poker (IFP)
|-
| Pole dance || International Pole Sports Federation (IPSF)
|-
| Practical shooting || International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC)
|-
| Quidditch || International Quidditch Association (IQA)
|-
| Quizzing || International Quizzing Association (IQA)
|-
| Racketlon || Fédération Internationale de Racketlon (International Racketlon Federation) (FIR)
|-
| Radio-controlled car racing || International Federation of Model Auto Racing (IFMAR)
|-
| Rafting || International Rafting Federation(IRF)
|-
| Ringball || International Ringball Federation(IRBF)
|-
| Ringette || International Ringette Federation (IRF)
|-
| Rogaining || International Rogaining Federation (IRF)
|-
| Rounders || National Rounders Association (NRA)
|-
| Rock-It-Ball || International Rock-It-Ball Federation (IRIBF)
|-
| Rope skipping || International Jump Rope Union (IJRU), World Rope Skipping Confederation (WRSC), International Rope Skipping Federation (IRSF), World Inter-School Rope Skipping Organisation (WIRSO), International Rope Skipping Organisation (IRSO)
|-
| Rubik's Cube || World Cube Association (WCA)
|-
| Rugby fives || Rugby Fives Association (RFA)
|-
| Rugby league || Rugby League International Federation (RLIF)
|-
| Shinty || Camanachd Association
|-
| Shuttlecock || International Shuttlecock Federation
|-
| Silambam || World Silambam Association (WSA)
|-
| Skateboarding || World Skateboarding Federation (WSF); International Skateboarding Federation (ISF)
|-
| Skibobbing || International Skibob Federation (FISB)
|-
| Slot car racing || International Slot Racing Association (ISRA)
|-
| Sport jiu-jitsu || Sport Jiu Jitsu International Federation (SJJIF)
|-
| Sport stacking || World Sport Stacking Association (WSSA)
|-
| Ssireum || World Ssireum Federation (WSF)
|-
| Street and ball hockey || International Street And Ball Hockey Federation (ISBH)
|-
| Sqay || International Council of Sqay (ICS)
|-
| Table hockey || International Table Hockey Federation (ITHF)
|-
| Table football (Table soccer; foosball) || International Table Soccer Federation (ITSF)
|-
| Tag || World Chase Tag
|-
| Tank biathlon || International Federation of Tank Biathlon
|-
| Targetball || International Targetball Federation (ITF)
|-
| Tchoukball || Fédération Internationale de Tchoukball
|-
| Tent pegging || International Tent Pegging Federation (ITPF)
|-
| Throwball || International Throwball Federation (ITF)
|-
| Touch football || Federation of International Touch (FIT)
|-
| Unicycling || International Unicycling Federation (IUF)
|-
| Virtual motorsport || Global Virtual Motorsport Association (GVMA)
|-
| Vovinam || International Vovinam Federation (IVF), Vovinam-VietVoDao World Federation (VVWF)
|-
| VX || Global VX
|-
| Wheel gymnastics || International Wheel Gymnastics Federation
|-
| Yoga || Yogasports Confederation of World (YCW)
|}
Miscellaneous
International Ball Game Confederation (CIJB) (Confederation Internationale du Jeu de Balle)
International Game Fish Association (IGFA)
International Gay Bowling Organization (IGBO)
International Pitch and Putt Association (IPPA)
International Ringball Federation (IRBF)
See also
Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations (AIOWF)
Association of IOC Recognised International Sports Federations (ARISF)
Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF)
International Olympic Committee (IOC)
International Paralympic Committee (IPC)
International Beach Games Federation (IBGF)
International Council of Traditional Sports and Games (ICTSG)
World School Games Federation (WSGF)
Notes and references
Further reading
Cornelius, Steve; Cornelius, Danie. The Legal Status of International Sports Federations 2014 (1) Global Sports Law and Taxation Reports 6.
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Sports rules and regulations | en |
doc-en-3163 | The Battle of the Soyang River was fought during the Korean War between United Nations Command (UN) and the Chinese People's Volunteer Army (PVA) and Korean People's Army (KPA) during the Spring Offensive of April–May 1951. The attack took place across the entire front but with the main thrust below the Soyang River in the Taebaek Mountains. The objective of the main effort was to sever the six Republic of Korea Army (ROK) divisions on the eastern front from the remainder of the US Eighth Army and annihilate them and the US 2nd Infantry Division. Secondary attacks would be mounted by PVA and KPA forces across the entire front.
The attack was launched on 16 May 1951 and succeeded in swiftly pushing back the ROK I Corps which retreated in good order and III Corps which was routed, while the US 2nd Infantry Division to their left mounted a stronger defense before gradually giving up ground. By 19 May the PVA/KPA advance was losing momentum due to reinforcement of the UN forces, supply difficulties and mounting losses from UN air and artillery strikes. On 20 May the UN launched a counterattack on the west of the front and the PVA/KPA began to withdraw after suffering heavy losses with the offensive coming to an end on 22 May.
Background
Eighth United States Army commander General James Van Fleet expected the PVA's next effort to come either in the west, as had the main force of the April attacks, or on his central front. Judging the Uijongbu-Seoul, Bukhan River, and Chuncheon-Hongch'on corridors to be the most likely axes of enemy advance, he shifted forces by 4 May to place most of his strength and all US divisions in the western and central sectors and aligned the US I, IX and X Corps so that each was responsible for one of these avenues. Deployed around Seoul, I Corps blocked the Uijongbu approach with the US 1st Cavalry and 25th Infantry Divisions and the ROK 1st Division on line and the US 3rd Infantry Division and British 29th Brigade in reserve. IX Corps, its sector narrowed by a westward shift of its right boundary, now had the British 28th Brigade, US 24th Infantry Division, ROK 2nd Division, ROK 6th Division and US 7th Infantry Division west to east on the No-Name Line and the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team (187th RCT) in reserve for defense against an enemy strike down or out of the Bukhan River valley. In the left portion of the X Corps sector, the US 1st Marine Division and the US 2nd Infantry Division, less the bulk of the US 23rd Infantry Regiment in Corps' reserve, covered the Chuncheon-Hongch'on axis. Though the concentration of strength in the western and central areas left the remainder of the front comparatively thin, Van Fleet believed that the six ROK divisions in the east- the 5th and 7th in the right portion of the X Corps sector, the 9th and 3rd in the ROK III Corps sector, and the Capital and 11th in the ROK I Corps sector- could hold the line since opposing KPA forces were weak and since the terrain barriers of the higher Taebaek Mountains favored defense.
On 30 April Van Fleet had ordered intensive patrolling to locate and identify PVA/KPA formations as they continued to move out of contact. Patrols searching above the front during the first two days of May, however, encountered no major enemy force except at the I Corps left where ROKA 1st Division patrols found the KPA 8th Division deployed astride Route 1. To deepen the search in the west and central areas, Van Fleet ordered patrol bases set up out along a line reaching east as far as Route 24 in the X Corps sector. Each division fronted by this line was to establish a regimental combat team in a base position organized for perimeter defense. Patrols operating from the bases could work farther north with full fire support, and the forward positions would deepen the defense in the sectors where Van Fleet expected to be most heavily attacked. While the fortification of the No Name Line continued, the front east of Route 24 was to be advanced to to Line Missouri, both to restore contact and to clear a stretch of Route 24 and a connecting secondary road angling east to the coast for use as a supply route by the ROK divisions defending the sector. Van Fleet also directed a foray to destroy KPA forces in I Corps' west sector after the KPA 8th Division stopped short the 12th Regiment of the ROK 1st Division's attempt to establish a patrol base up Route 1 on 4 May.
The six ROK divisions in the east opened the advance toward Line Missouri on 7 May. Along the coast, ROK I Corps forces met almost no opposition, and on 9 May the ROK 11th Division's tank destroyer battalion moved some beyond Line Missouri to occupy the town of Kansong, where Route 24 ended in a junction with the coastal highway. Forces of the ROK 5th Division on the left flank of the advance in the X Corps zone reached Line Missouri the same day. The other four divisions, though still as much as short of the line on 9 May, had made long daily gains against scattered delaying forces. In the west, the bulk of the ROK 1st Division advancing up Route 1 between 7 and 9 May levered KPA forces out of successive positions and finally forced them into a general withdrawal. Setting the 15th Regiment in a patrol base 6 miles up Route 1, General Kang Mun-bong pulled his remaining forces back into his No Name fortifications.
From other bases in the I, IX and X Corps sectors, patrols doubled the depth of their previous reconnaissance but had no more success in making firm contact than had patrols working from the No Name Line. Available intelligence in formation indicated that the PVA 64th, 12th, 60th, and 20th Armies were completely off the west and west central fronts for refurbishing and that each of the four armies still in those sectors - the 65th, 63rd, 15th and 27th Armies - had only one division forward as a screen while remaining divisions prepared to resume the offensive. Since there were no firm indications that the resumption was an immediate prospect, however, General Van Fleet on 9 May issued plans for returning the Eighth Army to Line Kansas. In the first phase of the return I, IX and X Corps were to attack, tentatively on 12 May, towards Line Topeka running from Munsan-ni east through Chuncheon, then northeast toward Inje. ROK III and I Corps in the east meanwhile were to continue their attack to Line Missouri, a step which would carry them above Line Kansas.
On 11 May Van Fleet decided against the Topeka advance after changes in the intelligence picture indicated that PVA/KPA forces were within a few days of reopening their offensive. Air observation of enemy troops where none previously had been seen suggested forward movements under cover of darkness, reports told of large enemy reconnaissance patrols, and both agents and prisoners alleged an early resumption of the Spring Offensive. Extensive smoke screens rose north of the 38th Parallel ahead of IX Corps and above the Hwacheon Reservoir in the X Corps sector. Drawing Van Fleet's particular notice were reports that five armies - the 60th, 15th, 12th, 27th, and 20th - were massing west of the Bukhan for a major attack in the west central sector. In further instructions for defense, Van Fleet ordered the No Name fortifications improved and directed IX Corps commander General William M. Hoge to give special attention to the Bukhan corridor, where the heaviest enemy buildup was reported. Hoge was to place the bulk of the IX Corps artillery on that flank. "I want to stop the Chinese here and hurt him," Van Fleet told Hoge. "I welcome his attack and want to be strong enough in position and fire power to defeat him." Lavish artillery fire, in particular, was to be used. If gun positions could be kept supplied with ammunition, Van Fleet wanted five times the normal day of fire expended against enemy attacks. As calculated by his supply officer, Colonel Stebbins, the "Van Fleet day of fire" could be supported for at least seven days, although transportation could become a problem since Stebbins could not haul other supplies while handling that amount of ammunition. Rations and petroleum products already stocked in corps sectors, however, would last for more than seven days.
Immediate army reserves for the advance to Line Topeka were to have been the 3rd Division, to be withdrawn from I Corps, and the newly arrived 25th Canadian Infantry Brigade. Though the Topeka advance was off, Van Fleet ordered the Canadians to move north, beginning on 15 May, to Kumnyangjang-ni, southeast of Seoul, and prepare to counter any enemy penetration in the Bukhan or Seoul-Suwon corridors. The 3rd Division was still to pass to army reserve and organize forces capable of reinforcing or counterattacking in the I, IX or X Corps sectors in at least regimental combat team strength on six hours' notice. Beginning on 11 May the 15th Regimental Combat Team assembled near Ich'on, at the intersection of Routes 13 and 20 southeast of Seoul, ready to move on call into the X Corps sector; for operations in support of the IX Corps, the 65th Regimental Combat Team assembled near Kyongan-ni, southeast of Seoul and directly below the Bukhan River corridor; and the 7th Regimental Combat Team assembled in Seoul for missions in the I Corps' sector.
The six ROK divisions on the eastern front were to stay forward of the No Name Line, but were not to make further attempts to occupy Line Missouri. In the X Corps' sector, the ROK 5th and 7th Divisions, whose forces had all but reached the Soyang River southwest of Inje, were to fortify their present positions. ROK III and I Corps were to set their four divisions in fortified defenses between the lower bank of the Soyang south of Inje and the town of Kangson-ni, north of Yangyang on the coast, after conducting spoiling attacks on 12 May in the two principal communications centers ahead of them, Inje and Yongdae-ri, the latter located on Route 24 northeast of Inje. The reconnaissance company of the ROK 9th Division already had entered Inje without a fight during the afternoon of 11 May and dispersed an enemy force about a mile beyond the town before retiring on 12 May, but other forces of the two ROK Corps were prevented by distance and moderate resistance from reaching the objectives of their attacks in the one day allotted for them.
Light contact along the remainder of the front revealed little about enemy dispositions, but the composite of reports from air observers, agents, civilians, and prisoners made clear by 13 May that major PVA forces had begun to shift eastward from the west and west central sectors. Steady rain and fog all but eliminated further air observation on 14 and 15 May; poor visibility also hampered ground patrols; and a IX Corps reconnaissance-in-force by the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team up the valley northeast of Kap'yong toward what was believed to be a large concentration of enemy forces had to be canceled shortly after it started on the 15th because of the rain and poor road conditions. As much as could be determined by 16 May was that the eastward shift probably extended to the Chuncheon area.
A few reports tracing the shift indicated that some PVA units would move beyond Chuncheon. According to a PVA medical officer captured northeast of Seoul on 10 May, the 12th Army and two other armies were scheduled to leave the west central area late on 10 May, march east for four days, then attack the 2nd Division and the ROK divisions on the eastern front. Another captive taken on 13 May in the same general area said that the 15th Army was to march east for three days and attack the 2nd Division in conjunction with KPA attacks on the ROK front. Large enemy groups reported by X Corps observers to be moving east as far as Yanggu on 11 and 12 May were believed to be PVA, and a deserter from the engineer battalion of the 80th Division, 27th Army, picked up on 13 May in the Chuncheon area stated that his battalion had been bridging the Bukhan. The X Corps Intelligence Officer believed it most likely, however, that the forces moving east of the Bukhan as far as Yanggu were from the 39th or 40th Armies, both of which had been in the east central sector for some time. In any event, he considered major PVA operations on the eastern front to be impracticable. Given the logistical difficulties the PVA experienced in supporting offensive operations even in the Seoul area, where the distance to their rear supply bases was shortest and where the roads were more numerous and in better condition than anywhere else, he doubted that they would commit a large force in the eastern mountains where a supply line could not be maintained and where living off the land would be almost impossible. The Eighth Army intelligence staff as of 16 May had no corroborating evidence of the reported movement east of the Bukhan and even had some doubt that the PVA shift extended as far east as Chuncheon.
According to the consensus of current estimates of enemy dispositions as of 16 May, KPA I Corps on the west had spread forces eastward toward Route 33, taking over ground previously occupied by the PVA XIX Army Group. The PVA 65th Army astride Route 33 north of Uijongbu and the 63rd Army in the adjacent ground to the east formed the new front of the XIX Army Group. Reports placed the 64th Army northwest of the 65th. West to east, the 60th, 15th and 12th Armies were believed to occupy the new front of the PVA III Army Group from a point above the Bukhan River in the vicinity of Kap'yong eastward almost to Chuncheon. More tentatively located, the 20th and 27th Armies of the PVA IX Army Group were reported to be off the front in the area north of Chuncheon and the group's 26th Army possibly in the same vicinity. The PVA XIII Army Group apparently was still on the east central front, its 40th Army astride Route 17 just above Chuncheon and the 39th Army next to the east with its bulk between the Hwacheon Reservoir and the Soyang River and light forces occupying a bridgehead below the Soyang between Chuncheon and the river town of Naep'yong-ni some upstream to the northeast. On the basis of these dispositions, General Van Fleet continued to believe that the main PVA effort would come in the west-central sector, probably toward the Han River corridor, and would be made by five armies, the 60th, 15th, 12th, 27th and 20th. He also anticipated strong attacks toward Seoul over Route 1 and through the Uijongbu corridor as well as another on the Chuncheon-Hongch'on axis.
The actual extent of the PVA shift from the west had been indicated by the few reports of planned and ongoing movements beyond the Bukhan. By 16 May PVA commander Peng Dehuai had moved five armies into the area along the Soyang River between Chuncheon and Inje behind screening forces of the 39th Army and the KPA III Corps. The 60th and 15th Armies of the III Army Group were in the area between Chuncheon and Naep'yong-ni. At and immediately beyond Naep'yong-ni was the 12th Army, now attached to the IX Army Group. Farthest east, the 27th and 20th Armies of the IX Army Group were clustered in the vicinity of Kwandae-ri just west of Inje.
Peng planned to launch his main attack on a southeastward course below the Naep'yongni-Kwandae-ri stretch of the Soyang. His reason for shifting the main effort into the higher Taebaek Mountains despite the portended logistical problems may have been because the rugged ridges and sparse road net would reduce to some degree the UN Command's advantage of superior mobility, firepower, and airpower.
As revealed by the prisoners taken on 10 and 13 May, the objective of the main effort, to be launched during the evening of 16 May by the 15th, 12th and 27th Armies, was to sever the six ROK divisions on the eastern front from the remainder of the Eighth Army, to annihilate them, and to destroy the 2nd Division. In support of the main effort, KPA V Corps was to attack out of the Inje area in the ROK III Corps sector, and KPA II Corps, which had moved down from Hoeyang where it had been refurbishing since late March, was to attack along the east coast and atop the Taebaeks against ROK I Corps. On the west flank of the main attack, the 60th Army, less its 181st Division, which had been attached to the 12th Army to reinforce the main effort, was to conduct a holding attack against the 1st Marine Division. The XIX Army Group, now stretched out from the Kap'yong area west to Route 33 above Uijongbu, and KPA I Corps, astride Route 1, were to make similar attacks in the IX Corps and I Corps sectors.
Battle
On 16 May after crossing the Soyang River northwest of Kwandae-ri with its 81st Division in the lead, the 27th Army opened the attack against the ROK 5th and 7th Divisions with hard blows centered at the seam between the two divisions that almost immediately began to dislodge the line regiments. X Corps' commander General Edward Almond authorized the two divisions to withdraw to the No Name Line around midnight. There followed a familiar story of infantry units scattered by PVA attacks while they were attempting to disengage, broken communications, loss of control, a search for missing troops and the reorganization of those that could be found. Reordered forces of the ROK 5th Division were sent out in echelon to the southeast along the 2nd Division's right flank. By midday on 17 May the only infantry units of the ROK 7th Division that had been located were two battalions of the reserve 3rd Regiment which were in position and engaged behind the No Name Line near the village of Sangam-ni () on the primitive road whose stretch northeast to Hyon-ni () and then northwest to Inje was the single route serving the ROK III Corps sector. Engaging the 3rd Regiment were forces of the 81st Division, whose main body had cut southeast through the ground abandoned by the ROK 7th Division to block the road just above Sangam-ni.
The 30th Field Artillery Battalion of the ROK 9th Division encountered the roadblock while withdrawing as a result of orders from ROK forward headquarters calling the ROK III and I Corps back to the No Name Line. Though the two corps had held up well under attacks by the KPA 6th and 12th Divisions of the KPA V Corps and the KPA 27th and 2nd Divisions of the KPA II Corps, General Almond's authorization of the ROK 5th and 7th Divisions to retire to the No Name Line had led the ROK headquarters to follow suit on the morning of 17 May. As the two ROK III Corps divisions drew back to No Name positions centered above Hyon-ni, staying scarcely a step ahead of pursuing KPA forces, their artillery battalions (the 30th followed in column by the 11th of the ROK 3rd Division) moved below Hyon-ni toward Sangam-ni. The PVA blocking force waited until the 30th Battalion filled a narrow stretch of road twisting through a steep-sided defile in the heart of its position, then blanketed the artillerymen with fire. In the scramble out of the trap, only the tail-end battery saved its guns and vehicles. By evening the 11th Battalion and the crippled 30th Battalion returned north to firing positions in the Hyon-ni area. ROK III Corps commander General Yu Jae-hung meanwhile sent the Corps' reserve, a regiment of the ROK 9th Division, south from Hyon-ni to deal with the block, but its efforts were futile against the stronger PVA force. With the west flank left open by the collapse of the ROK 7th Division, the ROK III Corps was in danger of being enveloped, or, with the PVA 81st Division continuing to block the road to the rear and the KPA 6th and 12th Divisions still pushing in from the north, of being caught in a squeeze.
With the right flank of the 2nd Division no more than sketchily protected by ROK 5th Division units, General Clark L. Ruffner's forces also faced the prospect of being enveloped. As in the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River in late November, the division was again to be threatened from the east after ROK forces gave way while it contended with strong PVA attacks from the north. General Ruffner had manned the left and center of the division's sector south of Naep'yong-ni with the 9th and 38th Infantry Regiments and had reconstituted Task Force Zebra, the tank-infantry group that had performed well in late April, to occupy the line at the right. The French Battalion, the only division reserve, was at Han'gye () on Route 24, about behind the Zebra line, deliberately set there by Ruffner to reinforce quickly the somewhat thin task force position.
38th Infantry and Task Force Zebra
Under earlier orders to send daily patrols to the Soyang in the area immediately east of Chuncheon, the 9th Infantry had deployed one battalion on the No Name Line and two in patrol bases. On the highest ground in the division sector, two battalions of the 38th Infantry occupied a string of prominent heights along the No Name Line, the 3rd at the left, the 1st at the right. out on the west, the 2nd Battalion manned a patrol base that blocked ridgeline and valley approaches to the 3rd Battalion's position. Above the right flank of the 1st Battalion, a provisional company of ROK Rangers held a blocking position on a ridge offering enemy forces a good approach down the boundary between the 38th Infantry and Task Force Zebra. Colonel Coughlin, commander of the 38th, had set the attached Netherlands Battalion on Hills 710 and 975 behind the 1st Battalion with instructions to be prepared to counterattack anywhere in the 1st's sector.
Task Force Zebra, led by Lt. Col. Elbridge Brubaker, commander of the 72nd Tank Battalion, now included all but one company of the tank battalion; the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment; the 1st Ranger Company; the Ivanhoe Security Force (a provisional company of ROK troops originally organized for division rear area security missions); and the ROK 3rd Battalion, 36th Regiment, attached from the ROK 5th Division. The ROK battalion occupied a patrol base along the trace of Line Missouri and the Ivanhoe Security Force a forward blocking position adjacent to the 38th Infantry's ROK Rangers on the west flank. On the No Name Line, the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry, Company C of the tank battalion and the Ranger Company stood along both Route 24 angling in from the northeast through the Hongch'on River valley and a minor road running down a valley from the northwest and joining Route 24 just behind the task force position. West to east on ridges commanding the two roads were Companies F, E and G and the Rangers. The tanks stood behind barricades of wire and minefields blocking both valleys, though not the roads, which had been left free of obstacles to allow patrols to pass through. Company B of the tank battalion, in reserve, and the trains and command post of the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry, were at the valley village of Chaun-ni (), on Route 24 behind the lines. Colonel Brubaker's command post was farther down Route 24 at the village of Putchaetful ().
Daylight probes of the Zebra patrol base and sharp patrol skirmishes close to the lines of the 38th Infantry were forerunners of attacks by one division of the PVA 15th Army and two divisions of the 12th. In the 12th Army's attack, launched about dusk, the press of 35th Division forces along the 38th Infantry - Task Force Zebra boundary forced the Ivanhoe Security Force and adjacent company of ROK Rangers back against Company F, 23rd Infantry, before defensive fires smothered the assault. On the 12th's east wing, the 92nd Regiment, 31st Division, attacking the Zebra patrol base expelled and disorganized the ROK 3rd Battalion, 36th Regiment. ROK soldiers streamed through the main Zebra line until midnight, most of them down the northwest valley defended by the 3rd Platoon of Company C, 72nd Tank Battalion. French troops at Han'gye collected the disordered groups as they continued down Route 24 and assembled them for reorganization and screening for enemy infiltration.
Shortly after midnight, fifty or sixty PVA leading a column of the 92nd Regiment in pursuit of the ROK charged through the opening in the northernmost of two wire aprons strung across the valley. Forced off the road by fire from the tankers, the PVA deployed to the left and right, exploding mines and setting off trip flares. The larger body of PVA to the rear deployed under the light of the flares, and successive lines of skirmishers attempted to break the wire and reach the tanks. The 3rd Platoon, reinforced by the 2nd Platoon, shot down waves of charging troops while artillery fire walked up the valley above the wire. When the PVA gave up the effort shortly before dawn, bodies hanging in the wire, sprawled in the minefields and lying on the road and high ground to the north numbered about four hundred and fifty.
Concentrating on Company E on Hill 755 at the center of the patrol base, a force from the PVA 45th Division, 15th Army, though delayed and hurt while breaching minefields and wire entanglements, drove off the company with the second wave of its assault. About 02:30, as the attack spread to Company F on the left flank of the split position, Colonel Coughlin ordered the patrol base force to withdraw behind the 3rd Battalion. Apparently spent by the effort to take Hill 755 and blanketed by covering artillery fire, the PVA made no immediate attempt to follow the withdrawal.
At the right of the 1st Battalion, platoons of Companies A and C occupying Hills 1051 () and 914 () and a saddle between turned back a series of attacks opened at dusk by small units of the 35th Division in concert with the assaults that drove back the two provisional ROK companies along the 38th Infantry-Task Force Zebra boundary. But following these apparent tests of the defenses, a full attack by the division's 103rd Regiment about 02:00 forced Company A forces out of the saddle, opening the way for a sweep behind the 1st Battalion or for a deep penetration down a valley leading southeast to Route 24 at Putchaetful, well behind the positions of Task Force Zebra. Colonel Coughlin kept the gap under mortar and artillery fire for the rest of the night and ordered the Netherlands Battalion to send a company north from Hill 975 at first light to close it. General Ruffner directed the French Battalion to send a company up the valley from Putchaetful to clean out any PVA who sifted through the mortar and artillery barrages.
Moving from Hill 975 toward Hill 1051 on the near side of the saddle, the Dutch company lacked the numbers to push through PVA who by daylight closed in around a platoon of Company A on the 1051 crest. The remainder of the Netherlands Battalion, under Colonel Coughlin's order, joined its forward company about 09:30, but, finding that Hill 1051 had fallen to the PVA, the Dutch commander, Lt. Col. William Eekhout, held up his advance while he softened the height and the saddle beyond with artillery. French troops meanwhile advancing up the valley northwest of Putchaetful engaged enemy forces less than above Route 24. An estimated five hundred PVA had worked their way into the valley. A Chinese-speaking radioman with the Netherlands Battalion at midmorning intercepted a PVA order to "send all troops east of Hill 1051." That neither sender nor recipient of the order was identifiable made estimating the strength of the forces involved impossible, but the PVA obviously planned to exploit the breakthrough. Expecting that the Dutch attack to close the gap would start shortly, General Ruffner ordered the French to assist by reinforcing the drive up the valley; he urged speed so that the gap would be eliminated before the PVA could pour troops through.
Before the Dutch and French were able to move, "literally thousands" of PVA, according to 38th Infantry estimates, were passing through the gap by 11:00. Groups moving along the far edge of the saddle widened the opening by forcing a platoon of Company C off Hill 914. PVA killed or wounded by artillery pounding the saddle and the area below it marked the paths of the larger number veering east toward the front of Task Force Zebra and of the remainder heading down the valley toward the French. Viewing this scene from the vicinity of Hill 1051, Colonel Eekhout continued to hold up the Dutch attack.
After the opening PVA attacks and ROK withdrawals had exposed the division's east flank and bared the Task Force Zebra front, General Ruffner had asked General Almond to return the remainder of the 23rd Infantry Regiment from Corps' reserve for use in thickening the Zebra position. Almond released the regiment about 11:30 after the PVA strength on the Zebra front began to build. Taking command of the front, including all Zebra forces and the French Battalion, at 14:30, Colonel Chiles concentrated the 2nd Battalion in the left half of the sector, put in the 3rd Battalion on the right, and placed the 1st Battalion in reserve just above Han'gye. Except for exchanging fire with Company F on the left flank, the PVA moving onto the front were inactive throughout the afternoon, but their number continued to grow as the Netherlands Battalion, though Colonel Coughlin on orders from General Ruffner instructed it to attack at 13:00, failed to advance. General Ruffner sensed from the Dutch failure to move that Colonel Coughlin "was looking half way over the shoulder" instead of concentrating on the essential task of closing the gap. Ruffner again ordered the Dutch to attack, this time at 15:00, and started forward by helicopter to direct the attempt himself, but his craft crashed on a hilltop near the 1st Battalion command post. Neither Ruffner nor his pilot was seriously injured, but Ruffner was stranded well beyond the time set for opening the attack. Hiking to the battalion command post to meet a rescue helicopter sent out by the division surgeon, he returned to his headquarters after receiving assurances that the Dutch had jumped off on time. There he learned that PVA on and around Hill 1051 had stymied the Dutch and that PVA on the far side of the gap had pushed Company C completely out of position and forced its remnants back to the position of Company F, 23rd Infantry. Ruffner now considered two courses open to him, to commit greater strength against the PVA penetration or to set troops along its southwest shoulder, a move which, with the French Battalion blocking the valley in the 23rd Infantry sector, would, if somewhat thinly, seal off the penetration. He opted for the second course. By evening he had the Netherlands Battalion on the way to occupy Hill 975 () and thus extend the right flank of Company A, 38th Infantry, now on Hill 790 () about a mile below Hill 1051, and had the 2nd Battalion of the 38th moving up to defend a ridge curving southeast of Hill 975 to Hill 691.
Reinforcing and realigning X Corps
In search of reserves to back up his hard-pressed central forces, Ruffner at mid-morning had asked General Almond's permission to pull the two patrol base battalions of the 9th Infantry out of the left sector, which was obviously outside the zone of the PVA's main attack. Almond instructed him to plan the move but deferred a final decision until he could determine how the removal of the two battalions would affect the dispositions of the 1st Marine Division. Almond raised the matter with General Van Fleet during the afternoon while apprising the Army commander of the Corps' situation and requesting reinforcement. Given the course of PVA attacks and the enemy units so far identified, Almond believed that Peng Dehuai was attempting to turn the right flank of X Corps with the 27th Army, would wait until the 27th seriously threatened the flank, then would make his main effort down the Chuncheon-Hongch'on axis with the III Army Group. Prisoners taken during a local but stiff four-hour nighttime attack on a battalion of the US 7th Marine Regiment occupying a forward blocking position on Route 29 had identified the 180th Division of the 60th Army, indicating that the full III Army Group was in position for an attack such as Almond anticipated. Almond doubted that X Corps could hold against a PVA move of this design unless the Corps' hard-hit center and tattered right were strengthened. In immediate reinforcement he asked for a regimental combat team to help stabilize his right flank and for one heavy and two medium artillery battalions to increase long range fire on enemy concentration areas.
To enable the 2nd Division to place more of its strength in the threatened areas, General Van Fleet moved the IX Corps-X Corps boundary east. In the resulting shift of units, the 7th Division on the IX Corps' right was to take over part of the 1st Marine Division's sector, and Marines were to relieve the 9th and 38th Regiments, freeing them for employment farther east. Van Fleet also ordered ROK III and I Corps back to Line Waco, which he had delineated in his withdrawal plan of 28 April, some to south of the No Name Line. Allowing ROK III Corps no option, he ordered General Yu to eliminate the enemy roadblock at Sangam-ni so that all vehicles and weapons could be evacuated. On X Corps' right, General Almond was to organize positions angling southeast to a juncture with ROK III Corps on Line Waco above the village of Habaejae ().
Reinforcements ordered to the X Corps' sector by Van Fleet included the ROK 8th Division, which was to move north, initially to Chech'on, as soon as security battalions and National Police could take over its anti-guerrilla mission in southern Korea. An earlier arrival would be the 3rd Division less its 7th and 65th Regimental Combat Teams. Geared for a move to the X Corps' sector since 11 May, the leading battalion of the 15th Regimental Combat Team made the trip from its assembly area southeast of Seoul to Hoengsong by midmorning on 17 May. The remainder of the force, which included the division's medium artillery battalion, completed the move early on 18 May. Also sent east by Van Fleet were a battery of 155-mm. guns and a battery of 8-inch howitzers, both taken from IX Corps. These additions gave Almond a total of five battalions and four batteries of medium and heavy artillery.
In shifting Marines east into the 2nd Division's sector, Almond initially ordered the relief of the 9th Infantry by midday on 18 May. Maj. Gen. Gerald C. Thomas, the new commander of the 1st Marine Division, made the move by pulling the 7th Marines back from their forward patrol base and blocking positions to relieve the 1st Marine Regiment on the No Name Line at the division's right, then by sidestepping the 1st Marines onto the 9th Infantry's front. The 5th Marine Regiment, on the division's left flank, later were to swing roundabout into the 38th Infantry's sector after being replaced by forces of the 7th Division.
Late on 17 May Almond authorized both divisional and Corps' artillery units to quintuple their ammunition expenditure (the Van Fleet day of fire) and directed them to concentrate fire on likely avenues of enemy approach within of defensive positions. Ammunition expenditure would increase dramatically, reaching 41,350 rounds and 1,187 tons on 18 May and even higher amounts afterward. As had been predicted by the Eighth Army supply officer, sufficient ammunition to support the heavy expenditure was maintained at the army supply point serving X Corps, but not without difficulty. The supply point stocks of two days of fire at the Van Fleet rate dwindled to one and could not be raised above that amount. The high consumption also strained Corps' and unit transportation in hauling ammunition from the army supply point at Wonju to the base corps dump at Hongch'on, a round trip of over , and from Hongch'on to artillery units.
The use of MPQ radars to direct bombers in close support missions at night, a technique employed only sparingly until April, also reached a peak, particularly in guiding B-29 sorties. On 17 May Far East Air Forces commander General George E. Stratemeyer directed that no fewer than twelve of the medium bombers be committed to the nightly support. Typical of one night's effort was a drop of three hundred fifty 500-pound proximity-fuzed general-purpose bombs on twenty targets selected by X Corps' headquarters, all of them enemy troop concentrations, some within of the front. Casualty estimates by follow-up patrols and the statements of captives attested to the precision of the radar guided attacks.
In the 2nd Division sector, the main nighttime targets of air and artillery attack-most observed in their approach well before dark on 17 May were fresh PVA columns coming in on the positions of the 38th Infantry, passing through the gap, and moving east across the front of the 23rd Infantry. Crowding the front of the 3rd Battalion, 38th Infantry, forces of the 135th Regiment, 45th Division, broke the wire and penetrated the line, but with losses too high to be able to withstand counterattacks. Sweeps to clear rear areas and a final counterattack to drive out PVA who had occupied some of the bunkers restored the battalion's position early on 18 May.
To the east, the course of battle verged on the calamitous and chaotic for PVA and 2nd Division forces alike. From late afternoon traffic on the artillery net Colonel Coughlin estimated the strength of the new influx of PVA forces in the gap area to be 3000. Early evening reports from the Netherlands Battalion on Hill 975 tended higher. The Dutch reported PVA in waves of a thousand each crossing the saddle between Hills 1051 and 914 and walking upright through the artillery bombardment rather than in the crouch that soldiers tend to assume when moving under heavy fire. Those not hit were simply stepping over the fallen to continue moving down the valley. On the receiving end of the PVA stream, the 23rd Infantry commander, Colonel Chiles, reported to General Ruffner that bombing attacks and artillery barrages rolling up the valley were carpeting the defile with PVA casualties.
Coming through the valley was the PVA 181st Division. Its leading units had the French Battalion under attack by dark. Sharply hit from the front and flanked on the left after two hours under assault, the French withdrew south to hills edging Route 24 just above Putchaetful. The battalion gained respite from attack for the remainder of the night, but its withdrawal opened the left flank of the 23rd Infantry and gave the PVA free access to Route 24 between Putchaetful and Chaun-ni. Small PVA groups infiltrating Chaun-ni about 03:30 harassed the command posts of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, 23rd Infantry and Company C, 72nd Tank Battalion, and blew up a loaded ammunition truck before pulling back into the high ground west of the village. Meanwhile, the bulk of the division filled the hills bordering Route 24 on the west between Chaun-ni and the French Battalion. Forces on the south reengaged the French while detachments slipping out of the hills about daylight mined the road below Chaun-ni and at a second point farther south within view of the French.
Along the front of the 23rd Infantry, the PVA attacked Company F on the left flank with fire and assault until about midnight, then broke contact and moved east. The reach of an apparent general PVA movement east and then south had been indicated earlier when the ROK 5th Division units echeloned along the right flank of the 23rd reported heavy pressure and, with General Almond's approval, withdrew behind a lateral stretch of the Hongch'on River almost due east of Chaun-ni. Leading the southeastward swing was the 31st Division, sliding east onto the front of the 23rd Infantry was the 35th Division, and approaching from the northwest to join the move was the 34th Division, which, when inserted between the 31st and 35th Divisions on 18 May, would fully commit the PVA 12th Army. The 4th Platoon, Company C, 72nd Tank Battalion, moved out to the immediate right rear of the 3rd Battalion following the ROK withdrawal, but a wide expanse of ground along the right of the regiment remained open. With an uncovered flank inviting envelopment by the PVA forces sweeping it on the east and its withdrawal route blocked by the 181st Division, the 23rd Infantry by daylight on 18 May was in a situation similar to that of ROK III Corps.
The situation in the sectors of the 1st and 2nd Battalions, 38th Infantry, by morning of 18 May was equally critical. Between these two battalions, the position of the Netherlands Battalion on Hill 975 had crumbled of its own accord early the previous evening when most of the Dutch troops, after witnessing the flow of PVA through the gap, streamed off the height. "They have seen so many Chinamen and [so much] firing today," Colonel Coughlin explained to General Ruffner, and they "think that if our air and artillery can't stop them then there's not much they can do." Though their commander, Colonel Eekhout, regained control quickly, Colonel Coughlin, at General Ruffner's instruction, sent the battalion into an assembly near Hang'ye for rest and reorganization and stretched out the forces of Company A and F to man the vacated position.
Repair of the line at Hill 975 was still under way when 44th Division forces broke it farther west at the juncture of Companies B and A. PVA coming through lapped around Company B on Hill 724 and piled up on Hill 710 () behind Companies A and F. Company E, sent west from the Hill 975-Hill 691 ridge by Coughlin to plug the new gap, bogged down in encounters at Hill 710, while PVA moving south off 710 surrounded and attacked the command posts of the 1st and 2nd Battalions collocated at the foot of the height and blocked the regimental supply road farther south. In what turned out to be an overreaction to the deeper PVA incursion, Coughlin ordered back both Company E from Hill 710 and Company G from the 975-691 ridge and sent a platoon of his tank company and a detachment of Dutch troops up the supply road to clear the command post area. With little help needed from the rifle companies, the tank-infantry team eliminated the PVA roadblock and opened a way out for the beleaguered command post group by morning of the 18th.
None of the three forward companies was under heavy pressure at daylight, but Company B remained surrounded, and Companies A and F were isolated by the PVA behind them. To the east, the 23rd Infantry was strained by heavy morning attacks, especially Company F on the left flank and Company I on the right. As the attacks began to lash the 23rd, General Ruffner convinced General Almond that the 23rd and the adjoining three companies of the 38th had to withdraw immediately if they were to withdraw in good order. Almond instructed Ruffner to establish a line running from the still solid position of Coughlin's 3rd Battalion in the Hill 800 complex southeast through Han'gye to Hill 693 beyond Route 24. To meet General Van Fleet's earlier order that X Corps tie in with ROK III Corps on Line Waco, Almond extended the line another to the vicinity of Habaejae; along the extension he planned initially to set up blocking positions using available units of the ROK 5th, 3rd and 7th Divisions.
In earlier moves to deepen the defense in the 38th Infantry sector, General Ruffner during the night had shifted the 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, east to positions behind Colonel Coughlin's 3rd Battalion and shortly before daylight had ordered the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry to move roundabout and come up on the right in the ground just west of Han'gye. Upon relief by the 1st Marines around midday the 9th's remaining battalion was now to insert itself between the 3rd and 2nd as the regiment developed defenses along the divisions modified line between Hill 800 and Route 24. During the shift of battalions, which would continue well into the afternoon, the 3rd Battalion and later the 2nd were to send forces forward to break the ring of PVA around Company B, 38th Infantry and clear Hill 710 behind Companies A and F to assist their withdrawal. Once the three companies were back, the 38th Infantry, less its 3rd Battalion, was to become division reserve.
For the 23rd Infantry, assigned to occupy the new line east of Route 24, the major problem in getting back to the line was the road block below Chaun-ni. Threatened in particular by the block were the convoys of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, Company C, 72nd Tank Battalion, and two platoons of the heavy mortar company, all located in and around Chaun-ni with no alternative withdrawal route for wheeled vehicles. To clear the road for the trains, Colonel Chiles organized a two-pronged attack, the 3rd Battalion to make sure that the east side of the road was clear, the 2nd Battalion to take on the task of forcing back the PVA occupying the heights bordering the road on the west. Company C, 72nd Tank Battalion was to bring up the rear, fending off the PVA still pressing the line if they attempted to follow the disengagement. Two platoons of tanks from Company B, 72nd Tank Battalion were to assist the attack of the 2nd Battalion from firing positions in the river bottom east of the road opposite the PVA blocking position.
The PVA let the 3rd Battalion go when it disengaged, but heavy tank fire, time on target artillery fire and air strikes were needed to keep PVA forces off the tail of the 2nd Battalion as it peeled off the line in a column of companies. Reaching the Chaun-ni area by early afternoon, the 3rd Battalion occupied hills opposite the roadblock while the 2nd Battalion attempted to push the PVA away from the road. With the PVA holding the advantage of superior numbers on commanding ground, after an hour Colonel Chiles realized that his forces could not clear the PVA position. The danger of being rolled up from the north meanwhile was growing as PVA coming into the area vacated by the 3rd Battalion joined the attempt to follow the rearward move. Electing a faster, if riskier, course, Chiles ordered the trains to run by the roadblock with two platoons of tanks from Company C as escort. The 2nd Battalion in the meantime was to cross the road at Chaun-ni and withdraw with the 3rd.
During the morning the intelligence officer of the 72nd Tank Battalion at Putchaetful had received a French report that PVA had mined the road, and he had relayed the report to an enlisted man at the command post of the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry at Chaun-ni. At that point the information had somehow gone astray. A costly consequence of the communications lapse came when the convoy of wheeled vehicles interspersed among tanks traveling in fourth gear attempted its run. A mine in a field planted below Chaun-ni disabled the lead tank, trucks piled up behind, and PVA fire from the hills and draws to the west chased drivers and tank crews as they dropped down a embankment off the east shoulder of the road and splashed across the Hongch'on River to reach cover behind the tanks of Company B in the stream bed. The second tank in column shoved the abandoned trucks off the road and safely bypassed the knocked-out tank, but lost a track in the minefield near the French position. Observing both explosions from Chaun-ni, a staff officer of the 2nd Battalion ordered the remainder of the convoy to move east off the road just below the village and follow the stream bed south. The tanks churned in behind those of Company B, but under small arms, machine gun, and mortar fire ranging in from the west, panicky truck drivers drove helter-skelter into the hills beyond the stream bed. Some vehicles caught fire; ammunition trucks exploded; others eventually were halted by one or another accident of terrain, drivers and riders joined the withdrawal of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions. Stragglers and abandoned communications equipment, weapons, and personal gear dotted the track of the two battalions as they made a tiring march under flanking fire from the west for part of the way and under drenching rainstorms that broke about 18:30. By midnight both units were behind the 1st Battalion, which during the afternoon had occupied the first ridge east of Route 24 on the new defense line. The 3rd Battalion filled lower ground between the ridge and the road while the 2nd Battalion and the French battalion, which had disengaged from the PVA roadblock force as the two battalions east of the road had come abreast, assembled to the rear for the remainder of the night.
As the two remaining tank platoons of Company C brought up the rear of the withdrawal they were ordered by the company commander to leave the road at Chaun-ni and follow the stream bed south, as Company B already had done, one platoon missed the turnoff point and came upon the disabled tank below town. Unable to turn around in the narrow road space between the embankment on the east and steep slopes on the west and faced with the danger of mines to the south, the tankers chose the nearly vertical drop on their left. Two tanks snapped drive shafts in the plunge. The two immobilized tanks raised Company C's tank losses since 16 May to five. The trains of Company C, the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, and half the heavy mortar company, more than 150 vehicles, many with heavy weapons, ammunition, or other gear aboard, had been left behind and by dark were being picked over by the PVA. Casualties suffered by the 23rd Infantry and its attachments totaled 72 killed, 158 wounded, and 190 missing. In return for these losses in men and equipment, the regiment exacted an estimated 2,228 killed and 1,400 wounded and took 22 prisoners from the PVA 31st, 35th and 181st Divisions.
West of Route 24, by late afternoon the 9th Infantry reinforced by the Netherlands Battalion and Company G of the 38th had occupied positions between Hill 800 and Route 24, but had not cleared a way through the PVA around Company B and behind Companies A and F. In a new plan for getting the three units out, Colonel Coughlin used a rolling artillery barrage, coupling it to an umbrella of circling aircraft. For ten minutes ahead of the withdrawal, set for 18:00, seven battalions of artillery, a mix of light, medium and heavy guns, were to fire across the front of the companies, then at 18:00 were to place concentrations on Hill 710 and to box in the three companies as they shifted east and withdrew down the 975-691 ridge. A liaison plane overhead was to control the delivery of air strikes and adjustment of the box as the companies moved and also was to relay all other communications. A sudden, severe thunderstorm breaking twenty minutes after the start of the withdrawal drove all planes back to their bases and thus not only eliminated air support, but also forced the artillery to stop firing the protective barrage and interrupted radio contact between Coughlin's headquarters and the withdrawing units. Small groups filtering through the lines of the 9th Infantry during the remainder of the night were an indication of the final disruption caused by the storm. Head counts on the morning of 19 May were two officers and eighty-one men for Company A, no officers and seventy-four men for Company B, and no officers and eighty-one men for Company F. Casualties had reduced the other companies of both the 1st and 2nd Battalions to similar figures. Officer losses in the 2nd Battalion were especially high, among them the battalion commander, battalion executive officer, battalion operations officer, and two company commanders.
The X Corps' line shaped by the withdrawals and shifts on 18 May amounted to a deep salient with the 3rd Battalion, 38th Infantry, at its apex in the Hill 800 complex and the 1st Marine Division presenting a solid face toward Chuncheon on its northwest shoulder. Along its upper northeast shoulder, the 9th Infantry and 23rd Infantry carried the line from the Hill 800 mass beyond Han'gye to a point about short of Hill 683 (), which General Almond had set as the eastern limit of the 2nd Division's new sector. Hill 683 had fallen to the PVA, however, when the ROK 5th Division forces that had taken position along the Hongch'on River east of Chaun-ni were driven back and disorganized during the day by the PVA 34th Division. Units regrouped by nightfall, a mix of three battalions of infantry from the 35th and 36th Regiments and a company of engineers, were clustered around the village of Hasolch'i () located on a lateral mountain track south of Hill 683. Pulling out of contact at the southern end of the PVA 81st Division's roadblock at Sangam-ni early in the day, the bulk of the 3rd Regiment engineer battalion and the tank destroyer company of the ROK 7th Division now defended the X Corps' east flank from positions just below the village of P'ungam-ni (), southeast of Hasolch'i. Of the 7th Division's other forces, about 700 had been corralled far to the south in Chech'on; another group had been found at the village of Soksa-ri (), located on Route 20 over southeast of P'ungam-ni in the ROK III Corps' sector.
ROK troops straggling into the area just north and east of Soksa-ri by nightfall attested to the misfortunes of the ROK 3rd and 9th Divisions when they had attempted to withdraw to Line Waco. In starting the move down the road from Hyon-ni, the ROK III Corps' commander, General Yu, had ordered the 9th Division to take the lead and deal with the PVA roadblock at Sangam-ni while the 3rd Division, bringing up the rear, handled any KPA attempts to roll up the column from the north. By midmorning Yu's forces were caught in the predictable squeeze, the PVA 81st Division holding its Sangam-ni position against the 9th Division's efforts to reduce it while forces of the KPA 6th and 12th Divisions closed in on the 3rd Division in the Hyon-ni area. Both ROK divisions broke away in disorder into the heights east of the road, leaving behind all remaining artillery pieces and more than three hundred vehicles. Paths through the mountains channeled the disorganized troops southeast toward Soksa-ri. Out of radio contact with his forces since early morning, but informed of their southeasterly movement by air observers, General Yu air-dropped to some groups orders assigning them to Line Waco positions. He also set up straggler lines in the Soksa-ri area, but by nightfall had regained control of forces in little more than battalion strength.
While Yu struggled to reorder his two divisions and deploy them on Line Waco, General Almond ordered additional modifications of the X Corps' front to straighten and shorten the line and to shift 2nd Division forces farther east into the weakly defended sectors of the ROK 5th and 7th Divisions. The 5th Marines, now scheduled to take over the western portion of the 2nd Division's sector during the afternoon of 19 May, were to occupy positions centered some south of Hill 800 which would eliminate the bulge manned by the 3rd Battalion, 38th Infantry, in the Hill 800 mass and the two adjoining battalions of the 9th Infantry. Unaware that the 800 complex would be abandoned, the PVA 45th Division meanwhile suffered unnecessarily in nightlong attempts to take it. Successive assault waves of the fresh 133rd Regiment were shattered, mainly by heavy concentrations of artillery fire. On the crest of Hill 800, where the PVA centered most of their charges, the men of Company K, 38th Infantry, in fact did little fighting themselves but simply sat inside their bunkers and allowed the PVA to enter their lines, then called down a blanket of artillery fire. The PVA pulled back about dawn on 19 May, leaving behind some eight hundred dead.
The new line of the 2nd Division, to be occupied on 19 May, cut Route 24 just below Han'gye on the west and reached across lateral ridges eastward, into what had become enemy territory, through Hill 683 to the village of Nuron-ni (), above P'ungam-ni. General Ruffner assigned the 23rd Infantry to the central sector centered on Hill 683. Given the 15th Regimental Combat Team of the 3rd Division by Almond as a replacement for the 38th Infantry's going into Corps' reserve, Ruffner ordered the 15th initially to occupy the P'ungam-ni area as a preliminary to moving forward to the Nuron-ni sector of the line. Both the 9th Infantry and the 15th Regimental Combat Team thus faced the prospect of having to fight to gain the line they were to defend, but, once the two regiments were on the line, the 2nd Division would hold good positions looking down into the valley of the Naech'on River, a westward flowing tributary of the Hongch'on.
To help strengthen the X Corps' eastern sector, Van Fleet at midnight on 18 May ordered the remainder of the 3rd Division eastward from the Seoul area, the 7th Regimental Combat Team to move on 19 May, the 65th Regimental Combat Team on 20 May. General Almond directed the division, less its 15th Regimental Combat Team, which was to remain attached to the 2nd Division, to protect X Corps' east flank from enemy attacks out of the sector of the muddled ROK III Corps. 3rd Division commander General Robert H. Soule was initially to concentrate forces at Pangnimni, located on Route 20 south of Soksa-ri, then reconnoiter and set up blocking positions in the Soksa-ri area.
From Hoengsong, where 3rd Division headquarters had set up on moving east with the 15th Regimental Combat Team, Soule moved a tactical command post group to the Pangnim-ni area early on 19 May and sent his reconnaissance company up Route 20 to patrol as far as Hajinbu-ri, east of Soksa-ri. The company found the road clear and made contact with ROK III Corps' troops in the Hajinbu-ri area. On its return run during the afternoon, the company left a platoon in Soksa-ri to watch a mountain road reaching the village from Sangam-ni and Habaejae to the northwest, then moved on to Changp'yong-ni (), southwest of Soksa-ri. There the 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry, first to arrive from the west, blocked Route 20 and mountain trails coming in from the northwest. Reaching the area after dark, the remainder of the 7th Infantry assembled at Ami-don, south of Changp'yong-ni.
At the right of the 2nd Division to the northwest, the 15th Regimental Combat Team attacked through the ROK 3rd Regiment at 11:00 to seize P'ungam-ni and high ground to the northwest along the trail leading to Nuron-ni on the modified No Name Line another to the north. Moving against light resistance, the combat team consolidated positions on its objective after dark. As the 15th moved beyond the village, the ROK 3rd Regiment and smaller units of the ROK 7th Division in the area advanced through light to moderate opposition to positions north and northeast of P'ungam-ni, the latter along a trail leading to Habaejae.
At the new left of the 2nd Division along Route 24, the PVA 181st Division wheeling out of its roadblock near Chaun-ni reengaged the 23rd Infantry just above Han'gye shortly before dawn and kept the 1st and 3rd Battalions pinned in position until counterattacks, artillery fire, and air strikes called in under gradually clearing skies finally forced a release about midday. The two battalions occupied positions straddling Route 24 on the new line below Han'gye by early evening. While the 2nd Battalion moved east to a centrally located reserve position along the lateral track leading to Hasolch'i, the attached French Battalion attempted to take position on the regimental right and make contact with a unit of the ROK 36th Regiment located northwest of Hasolch'i in the sector to be occupied by the 9th Infantry. But PVA stoutly defending an intervening height prevented the French from closing ranks with the ROK.
It was well after dark before the 9th Infantry completed its eastward shift into its new sector above Hasolch'i. First to arrive, the 1st Battalion moved up on the right of the ROK 35th Regiment into positions northeast of Hasolch'i looking down into the valley of a small stream that fed the Naech'on River. The 2nd Battalion took position behind the forces of the ROK 36th Regiment to await daylight before relieving the ROK and extending westward toward the French Battalion. With a similar objective, the 3rd Battalion assembled near Hasolch'i to await morning before moving up on the right of the 1st Battalion to close the gap between the 9th Infantry and the 15th Regimental Combat Team in the P'ungam-ni area.
The ROK III Corps' sector remained a scene of scattered forces throughout 19 May, troops trickling into collecting points along Route 20, some of both the 3rd and 9th Divisions taking up random positions about above the road. None, despite General Yu's air-dropped orders the day before, stopped on Line Waco some farther north. The one fortunate circumstance was an absence of enemy contact. In marked contrast, ROK I Corps all but completed an orderly withdrawal to Line Waco, both its divisions moving along the coast, the Capital in the lead and the 11th, though not in contact, prudently bounding south by regiment in bringing up the rear. Leading the way west along Line Waco, the 26th Regiment of the Capital Division refused the Corps' inland flank left open by ROK III Corps.
By nightfall on 19 May, the full PVA IX Army Group stood opposite X Corps' new eastern front between Han'gye and Soksa-ri. Though the group remained generally on a southeastward course, its attached 12th Army was turning more to the south on the front of the 2nd Division with four divisions abreast: the 181st already was in the Han'gye area; the 35th was approaching next to the east; the 34th was entering the area above Hasolch'i, where its leading forces had stopped the French Battalion at the right of the 23d Infantry; and the bulk of the 31st now was located above P'ungam-ni after being forced out of the village by the 15th Regimental Combat Team. Making a fast march to the southeast of P'ungam-ni, the 93rd Regiment, 31st Division was nearing Soksa-ri on Route 20. Using the mountain road running southeast from Sangam-ni through Habaejae to Soksa-ri as its axis, the 27th Army also was headed for the Soksa-ri area, advancing with its three divisions in column, the 81st still in the lead after helping to rout ROK III Corps, the 79th and 80th trailing in the vicinity of Habaejae. Behind the 27th Army, the 20th Army, in group reserve, was beginning to move southeast from the Kwandae-ri area along the Soyang River. Coming from the Hyon-ni area on a line of march projecting to Hajinbu-ri were the KPA 6th and 12th Divisions of V Corps and moving toward Hajinbu-ri on a parallel course just to the east were the KPA 2nd and 27th Divisions of II Corps, which, after failing in frontal attacks against ROK I Corps, had shifted west in an apparent attempt to envelop the ROK.
PVA/KPA action decidedly had slackened on the X Corps' front during the afternoon of 19 May after the 181st Division gave up its attack on the 23rd Infantry in the Han'gye area. But, with PVA continuing to mass ahead of the 2nd Division, the slack appeared to be mostly a result of attempts to move fresh units forward to take over the assault. Although the pell-mell withdrawal of ROK III Corps had taken its scrambled forces out of contact, the passage of PVA in strength southeastward through Habaejae and beyond presaged heavy action along Route 20. It seemed that enemy forces would not only quickly revive their drive against X and ROK III Corps but, with strong PVA reserves and KPA divisions on the move, that they would increase it.
The PVA overextend
On 18 May, after the PVA had reached P'ungam-ni, then the deepest point of penetration, and as the substantial sweep of PVA around the 2nd Division into the sectors of the collapsing ROK units had become apparent, UN Commander General Matthew Ridgway suggested that General Van Fleet attempt to relieve the pressure on his forces in the east by attacking in the west to threaten enemy lines of communication in the Iron Triangle. Ridgway recommended a two-division attack moving on the Route 33 axis towards Ch'orwon. He thought such an attack would have a good chance of succeeding since intelligence indicated that only four PVA armies occupied the sector of the front west of Chuncheon and since Peng Dehuai would need at least a week or ten days to shift any material part of his mass from the east to oppose the advance. Nor had PVA/KPA forces on the western front shown much aggressiveness. Enemy attacks had forced back some patrol base and outpost units and had tested the main line in both the I Corps and IX Corps sectors, but these attacks had been isolated affairs, not coordinated actions in a concerted holding operation.
Judging PVA/KPA forces in the east central area to be clearly overextended after he reconnoitered the front on 19 May, Ridgway enlarged his concept to take advantage of their vulnerability and ordered Van Fleet to attack across the entire front. Agreeing that the PVA/KPA forces could be trapped, Van Fleet laid out an operation that he believed could produce decisive results if the attack moved fast enough. Though stabilizing the line in the east remained a problem, he now viewed that task with no great alarm even though PVA/KPA forces were deepening and strengthening their penetration. If for no other reason, he expected their logistical difficulties in the mountains to slow if not stop their advance within a matter of days; they would have created only a "long bag" that could be closed behind them by rapid drives to block their main routes of resupply and withdrawal. Van Fleet's plan called for I Corps, IX Corps and part of the 1st Marine Division at the left of X Corps to advance on 20 May toward the Munsan-Chuncheon segment of Line Topeka. Once the Topeka segment was occupied, strikes to start closing the bag were to be made toward the Iron Triangle, one up Route 3 to secure a road center in the Yongp'yong River valley some above Uijongbu, another up Route 17 beyond Chuncheon to seize the complex of road junctions at the west end of the Hwacheon Reservoir.
There were several reasons to doubt that the 2nd Division could stand on the Han'gye-Nuron-ni line in the X Corps sector. The line was long, there were gaps, and PVA still occupied some of the important ground. General Almond consequently ordered the 2nd Division to withdraw further and the 1st Marine Division to adjust its neighboring positions in accommodation. In anticipation of penetrations of X Corps' lines, Almond also acquired the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team from IX Corps for use as a fire brigade in counterattacks.
The passage of PVA 27th Army units through the Habaejae area and, farther north, the movement of 20th Army forces in the same southeasterly direction also raised the possibility that the PVA intended to sweep east along Route 20 behind ROK III Corps, turn the east flank of the X Corps, or both. The PVA 93rd Regiment, 31st Division reinforced this possibility when the regiment announced its arrival in Soksa-ri by driving the platoon of the 3rd Division's reconnaissance company out of town during the night of 19 May and by stopping a battalion of the 7th Infantry that attempted to regain the town on the 20th. The 81st Division, 27th Army also revealed its approach on 20 May by engaging the ROK 23rd Regiment, 3rd Division about north of Soksa-ri.
Yet even as the PVA IX Army Group appeared to be bringing up reserves and disposing forces for continuing its drive, there were indications that the offensive was losing impetus. Under a pummeling by B-29s, which dropped a hundred seventy tons of proximity-fused bombs ahead of the 2nd Division during the night of 19 May, the PVA 12th Army developed only one attack of any size by daylight, this by a 34th Division force of about five hundred men against Company C, 9th Infantry, northeast of Hasolch'i. Ground fire, air strikes and a counterattack by Company A virtually wiped out the force. At the division's left, large groups of PVA approaching the 23rd Infantry at a trot out of the Naech'on River valley about midday on 20 May wavered under mortar and artillery fire and air attacks and turned back before reaching the regiment's line. Put on the run were formations from the 181st Division, whose forces earlier had so stoically endured a heavy air and artillery pounding while passing through the gap in the 38th Infantry's lines near Hill 1051. Rear rank forces of the 12th Army moving up in battalion-size groups meanwhile provided deeper targets for aircraft and artillery as they approached and entered assembly areas in preparation for night attacks. Kept under heavy artillery fire and precise B-29 bomb runs, none of these forces came in on the 2nd Division during the night of 20 May.
Now confident that the 2nd Division could occupy and hold the Han'gye-Nuron-ni line, General Almond late on 20 May cancelled his earlier withdrawal order and turned to a greater concern of easing the threat of envelopment from the east either by a shallow swing around the ROK 7th Division forces below P'ungam-ni or by a deeper drive through the 3rd Division sector in the Soksa-ri area. Reducing the deeper threat somewhat was the arrival of the US 65th Infantry Regiment, which allowed General Soule to strengthen his blocks and recapture Soksa-ri on 21 May. ROK 8th Division forces also had reached Chech'on, from where they could be moved up quickly to reinforce X Corps' east flank defenses. In the P'ungam-ni area, reassembled forces of the 5th and 7th Regiments of the ROK 7th Division provided additional protection against a PVA strike out of the Habaejae area, protection which Almond further deepened and widened with the bulk of the still somewhat decrepit 38th Infantry. To relieve the threat in both the P'ungam-ni and Soksa-ri areas, Almond ordered an attack on 22 May to seize and block enemy movement through Habaejae by Task Force Yoke, a group of infantry, tanks and artillery units that he constituted under the command of Col. Lawrence K. Ladue, the deputy Corps' commander.
The force of PVA attacks declined all across the X Corps front on 21 May, but grew stronger in the ROK III Corps' sector and at the left of ROK I Corps. ROK 9th Division forces between Soksa-ri and Hajinbu-ri fell below Route 20 under attacks by the PVA 81st Division, while ROK 3rd Division units above Route 20 northeast of Hajinbu-ri began to collapse under KPA V Corps assaults. Near Yuch'on-ni (), east of Hajinbu-ri, the ROK 20th Regiment, 11th Division holding positions facing north and northwest athwart Route 20 to prevent an enemy sweep behind the bulk of the ROK I Corps on Line Waco was hit hard by forces of KPA II Corps. The PVA/KPA pressure continued at all points of attack into the evening.
Despite the PVA/KPA action in the Hajinbu-ri-Yuch'on-ni area and continuing reports of reserves moving south, General Van Fleet was convinced, as he reported to General Ridgway, that "the enemy's initial punch in the eastern and central eastern section is shot." To keep PVA/KPA forces from slipping out of the bottom of their long bag in the Hajinbu-ri area, Van Fleet late on 21 May directed ROK III Corps to make no further withdrawals and to restore defensive positions north of Route 20. ROK I Corps meanwhile was to fall back from Line Waco to positions that would secure Route 20 between Yuch'on-ni and Kangnung on the coast. Anxious to close the top of the bag, Van Fleet enlarged and substantially altered the concept of the counterattack opened on 20 May. The main effort was now to be directed toward seizing the road centers, with the front otherwise being advanced only as necessary to protect the main effort. I Corps, as under Van Fleet's earlier order, was to seize the road hub in Yongp'yong River valley. His new order shifted the IX Corps-X Corps boundary east as of 23 May to give IX Corps the Hongch'on-Chuncheon-Hwacheon road and the road center on the western side of the Hwacheon Reservoir as its main objective. X Corps was to open a general advance on 23 May to seize the road complex in the Yanggu-Inje area east of the reservoir.
Even as Van Fleet ordered ROK III Corps to regain positions above Route 20, the ROK 3rd and 9th Divisions again tumbled back under enemy attacks that by early afternoon of 22 May completely dispersed both divisions and overran their command posts. Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG) advisers notified Van Fleet that the commanders of both divisions and the principal staff members of the ROK 9th Division had disappeared. The ROK 3rd Division commander, Brig. Gen. Kim Jong-oh, at first believed to have been either killed or taken captive, was located along with many members of the division on 23 May some southeast of Hajinbu-ri. Under the direction of the KMAG adviser, troops of the ROK 9th Division meanwhile assembled southwest of Hajinbu-ri. With the commander, Brig. Gen. Choi Suk, still unlocated, General Yu placed the deputy Corps' commander in charge. Convinced by the continuing failure of the Corps that Yu and his staff could not conduct operations successfully, General Van Fleet late on 22 May ordered the ROK III Corps headquarters inactivated, the ROK 3rd Division transferred to ROK I Corps, the ROK 9th Division given to X Corps and X Corps made responsible for the former ROK III Corps sector. He also ordered the ROK forward headquarters off the front and placed ROK I Corps under his own direct command.
In the Yuch'on-ni area, KPA II Corps forces early on 22 May cut Route 20, turned their attack east, and dispersed the ROK 20th Regiment, 11th Division. Given the strong PVA/KPA effort in the Hajinburi-Yuch'on-ni region over the past two days, the approach of reserves, and no evidence that enemy forces were having serious logistical problems, the Eighth Army intelligence officer, in contrast to General Van Fleet's sensing that the enemy offensive had lost its momentum, predicted a continuation in force along and below Route 20. The location and course of enemy forces below Hajinbu-ri convinced Colonel Tarkenton that they would attempt a deep southwestward push toward P'yongch'ang and Yongwol along Route 20 as a preliminary to the seizure of the Chech'on road and rail hub; the eastward enemy drive appeared to be aimed at enveloping Kangnung.
General Van Fleet countered the threat to Kangnung with new orders to ROK I Corps, then still withdrawing from Line Waco to positions above Route 20 between Yuch'on-ni and the coast under his orders of the 21st. I Corps' commander General Paik Sun-yup was to organize strong positions facing west astride Route 20 to block any eastward enemy drive along the road, but if he could not hold a continuous line above Route 20 with his west flank refused, he was to set his forces in perimeter around the Kangnung road center. But as Van Fleet dispatched these orders near midnight on 22 May, the composite of recent and current reports from the front confirmed a general PVA/KPA withdrawal. Now three days into their advance, I Corps and IX Corps had found contact progressively more difficult. The first indications of PVA/KPA withdrawal on the X Corps' front had appeared late on 21 May. Evidently withdrawal orders had taken longer to reach the deeper PVA/KPA forces in the Hajinburi-Yuch'on-ni area, forces who began moving back after dark on 22 May.
Aftermath
Crippling losses, particularly in the PVA 12th and 15th Armies, had forced Peng Dehuai to abandon his offensive. The inability of these weakening armies to mount effective attacks against the adjusted X Corps positions after 19 May had endangered the PVA/KPA forces farther east since the failure to advance astride Route 24 meant that the PVA/KPA moving to and below Route 20 in the Hajinbu-ri-Yuch'on-ni sector were simply taking themselves farther and farther out on a limb. Though fresh reserves were available, the casualties among the assault echelons had been exceptionally heavy, largely as a result of the Van Fleet rate of artillery fire and round the-clock air attacks, and Peng apparently decided against subjecting his reserves to the same punishment and extreme losses. Peng called for a rapid, almost precipitate, withdrawal, with covering forces fighting only light delaying actions except where strong blocks were needed to keep withdrawal routes open. The previous general disposition of forces was to be restored, the Hwacheon Reservoir again marking the division between PVA and KPA sectors and also marking generally the northern limit of the withdrawal.
For the PVA armies south and southeast of the reservoir, plans for getting past the lake were designed to avoid a jam-up of troops when they reached that obstacle. The 20th and 27th Armies of the IX Army Group were to withdraw around the east end of the reservoir, then move along its northern bank to the west end. Leading the way, the 20th Army was to set up a blocking position between Hwacheon town and the reservoir. The 27th Army, on coming out of the Hajinbu-ri area with its rear covered by KPA II and V Corps, was to concentrate behind the 20th. The KPA rearguards were to set up defenses east of the reservoir, V Corps between the reservoir and the near outskirts of Inje, II Corps from Inje eastward. PVA III Army Group, with the 12th Army returned to its control, was to withdraw around the west end of the reservoir. From below Chuncheon, the PVA 60th Army, less its 81st Division still with the 12th Army, was to fight a delaying action along Route 17 to hold the road open for the 15th and 12th Armies as they withdrew northwest, passed through the ground below the reservoir, and moved through Hwacheon town into the Iron Triangle. The rearguard 60th Army, on passing behind the 20th Army at Hwacheon, was to follow. West of the Bukhan River, the three armies of the XIX Army Group were to withdraw generally northwestward, pulling away from the I Corps and the IX Corps toward areas located on either side of the upper reaches of the Imjin River and in the Iron Triangle. Northwest of Seoul, KPA I Corps was initially to withdraw behind the lower Imjin and was eventually to move west beyond the Ryesong River for rest and rebuilding.
On 20 May the UN began their general counteroffensive which by mid-June had erased all PVA/KPA gains in the Spring Offensive.
See also
Chinese Spring Offensive
UN May–June 1951 counteroffensive
References
Battles involving the United States
Conflicts in 1951
Military operations of the Korean War
United States Marine Corps in the 20th century
May 1951 events | en |
doc-en-10080 | All Terrain Walkers are armoured fighting vehicles from the Star Wars universe that traverse the landscape on mechanical legs. They are used by the Old Republic, the Galactic Empire, and the First Order for ground assault, reconnaissance or transport. Throughout the saga walkers have played a pivotal role in the fate of characters and the outcome of battles. Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) is responsible for their animation and design, often using models, stop-motion animation, and relevant matte paintings to depict their presence in the films.
There are a variety of walkers: The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi introduces the All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT) and All Terrain Scout Transport (AT-ST). Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and The Clone Wars introduced earlier Clone Wars-era models of walkers, such as the All-Terrain Tactical Enforcer (AT-TE), and the All Terrain Recon Transports (AT-RT). The Star Wars Legends continuity features numerous walker variants, several which have been merchandised in popular culture, while the later films Rogue One and Star Wars: The Last Jedi depicted, respectively, the former the AT-ACT variant to the standard AT-AT, the latter a restyled AT-AT for its new and more modern setting, and a new, even larger walker known as the AT-M6.
All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT)
The All Terrain Armored Transport, or walker, is a quadruped mechanized infantry combat vehicle used by Imperial ground forces.
The AT-AT (pronounced either casually as 'at at', or using only the letters '') was first introduced in The Empire Strikes Back (as the Galactic Empire's main units against Rebel Alliance infantry during the Battle of Hoth) and also appears in Return of the Jedi (as the vehicle used to transport Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader to their shuttle on the forest moon of Endor) and in Rogue One (in the AT-ACT variant, used to respond to the attacks of Rebel infantrymen of the Rogue One unit during the Battle of Scarif, although later defeated by the arriving Rebel Red Squadron of starfighers).
The also appears in a destroyed form in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, explained in the video game Star Wars Battlefront (2015) to be a residue of the Battle of Jakku, which was the Empire's last defeat and resulted in its dissolution. Modified forms appear in The Last Jedi (used by the First Order to attack Resistance forces in a former Rebel base).
The theme park attraction Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, set after The Last Jedi, features two full-sized AT-ATs in a hangar bay. These walkers, while mostly static, can move their cannons to allow for a scene in which the walker's drivers spot the ride vehicles and fire at them.
Origin and design
Joe Johnston's original design for the Empire's war machines was a giant, multi-wheeled vehicle; this design later became the "Juggernaut" in West End Games' roleplaying material, and the design was reworked into the clone turbo tank for Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. Johnston said Lucas wanted the walkers to look like anthropomorphic walking tanks to make them frightening.
For The Empire Strikes Back, however, the final design was a four-legged walker. Inspiration for the came from Paraceratherium, an extinct genus of rhinoceros and the largest land mammal in history. George Lucas later dismissed claims that the design was inspired by container cranes at the Port of Oakland (across San Francisco Bay from ILM's San Rafael offices), calling it a "myth"; animator Phil Tippett told the San Francisco Chronicle the same thing.
ILM created models ranging from in height. ILM filmed the using stop-motion animation against matte paintings created by Michael Pangrazio because attempts at compositing miniature footage against live-action background footage yielded mediocre results. Additionally, ILM studied elephants to determine the best way to animate the four-legged . Although the stop-motion animation style gave the a jerky, "staccato-like" effect on film, ILM found this movement acceptable because of the mechanical nature.
The sound of the AT-AT walking was created by sound designer Ben Burtt using a punch press.
Depiction
The All Terrain Armored Transport is an assault walker used by Imperial ground forces to blast through enemy lines with its sheer mass and firepower and deploy a platoon of crack assault troops. The thick armor plating on the AT-AT will deflect or absorb anything but the heaviest turbolaser weaponry. Standing over tall, the is as much a weapon of terror as anything else, and its mere presence is often enough to intimidate the local populace into obedience. Its prodigious height also helps the walker see over obstacles and provides a clear line of sight for its weaponry, carried in its heavily armored head. A pair of Class II heavy laser cannons mounted in the head's "chin" can be fired in quick succession or simultaneously for a single, power blast, and can engage targets from many kilometers away; on either side of the "temples" are mounted medium repeating blasters and targeting rangefinders. When it comes time to deploy, troops carried in the exit out of the sides via harness-and-cable from extendable boom racks while speeder bikes exit out the front and back using harnesses.
The walker's crew consists of two pilots and a vehicle commander; while both pilots are fully qualified, one usually serves as the driver and the other as gunner. pilots receive specialized training in order to operate their walkers, using terrain sensors in the head and footpads to find sure footing, and as such warrant extra layers of protection and long-lasting power packs in their life-support suits.
Although imposing, these weapons of terror have a number of design flaws. Their size makes them conspicuous targets, especially on open terrain, and while they can navigate most rugged ground certain features such as steep hillsides or swamps can impede them. Their high center of gravity and unstable legs also make them susceptible to tripping. And while largely impervious to attack, their neck and underbelly are vulnerable to blasters and missiles.
In the Battle of Hoth, General Veers leads a group of and AT-STs dubbed Blizzard Force in the attack on the Rebels' Echo Base, as only slow-moving ground vehicles can penetrate the base's shield system. During the battle, the AT-AT designated Blizzard 2 is destroyed when Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson use their snowspeeder's tow cable to trip it up and target its now-exposed neck with blaster fire to blow it up. Luke Skywalker destroys another AT-AT, Blizzard 4, by using a magnetic grapple to reach its underbelly, cut open a hole with his lightsaber and throw in a grenade. Ultimately the Empire is victorious as General Veer's Blizzard 1 destroys the shield generator, and in the ensuing rout he orders the remaining AT-ATs and AT-STs to overrun the Rebels' trenches and capture as many as possible.
A ruined appears in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the makeshift home of the scavenger Rey on the planet Jakku. Using scavenged parts from the walker and other vehicles, Rey is able to construct a power system for her home along with booby traps and motion sensors to deter potential thieves. Information in the AT-AT's manifest reveal it was designated Hellhound 2, part of the complement of the Star Destroyer Interrogator, but the ultimate fate of its crew is unknown.
The First Order uses an updated model of the AT-AT during the Battle of Crait at the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Built by Kuat-Entralla Drive Yards, these versions of the venerable AT-AT address some of the stability issues that plagued the Imperial walkers. They also use lighter armor material to add additional layers of protection and address weak points without increasing weight.
Analysis
In 2011, a fan-led effort to get a life-sized, fully functional AT-AT built was stopped by Lucasfilm as violating their intellectual property. Commenting on the effort, Heiko Hoffman, a robotics expert at HRL Laboratories, argued that building an AT-AT would easily cost US$100 million or more. He also argued that building such a vehicle would poses challenges since structural strength does not increase the same way as mass and there would be tremendous stress on the legs and joints, though he noted the AT-AT's method of walking was "statically stable" and appropriate for a heavy vehicle. A later estimate conducted in 2016 argued that building a real-life AT-AT would cost US$228.5 million. Using the M1 Abrams as a starting point, such a vehicle would weigh over 1,000 tons and generate 19 megawatts of power.
Dr. Malcolm Davis, director of the Defense & Strategy Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, asserts that the AT-AT has several flaws which make it an ineffective design. Compared to tracked vehicles, Davis notes that while walking vehicles like the AT-AT can potentially step over obstacles, they cannot run as fast and destroying a leg would topple one over. The AT-AT also has a limited field of fire with all its weapons mounted in the head and its slab sides would be more vulnerable to shaped charge munitions as opposed to angled sides. Joe Pappalardo of Popular Mechanics also argues that the AT-AT is a poorly-designed troop transport, being slow, top-heavy and conspicuous with its legs being a particular vulnerability. He contends that the Empire would've won the Battle of Hoth faster and more easily if they had deployed smaller conventional vehicles.
All Terrain Scout Transport (AT-ST)
The All Terrain Scout Transport (AT-ST) is a two-legged mech walker introduced briefly in The Empire Strikes Back and featured extensively in Return of the Jedi. These vehicles were designed to screen and protect the flanks of slower moving AT-ATs and the larger tanks used by the Empire. Due to their design and movement, they are often dubbed as a "chicken walker". The name Scout Walker is also used to refer to an . This name was used for the official toy instead of the name. Used in the battle of Endor and also used in the battle of Hoth.
An AT-ST also appears briefly in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, patrolling Jedha City following an attack by Saw Gerrera's forces. A modified AT-ST later appears in The Mandalorian under the possession of a group of raiders, as the Empire has ceased to exist by the time of the series. An updated model of the AT-ST is used by the First Order in The Last Jedi. Shortly before the film's climax, an AT-ST is commandeered by BB-8.
Video games such as Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Shadows of the Empire (in a much expanded Battle of Hoth) include numerous , and these can be destroyed by direct shooting from the player's craft, in contrast to the heavily armored which have to be tripped by tow cables. are also player-controllable units in several real-time strategy games.
Origin and design
A single AT-ST makes a brief appearance in The Empire Strikes Back alongside the larger during the Battle of Hoth. The was meant to have more screen time; however, one scene depicting a snowspeeder shooting at the model was ruined when the set's background shifted.
For Return of the Jedi, ILM made the design more detailed. Numerous models were created, including a full-sized for on-location shooting. Director Richard Marquand and producer Robert Watts had cameos as operators for the scene in which Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and a pair of Ewoks commandeer an AT-ST.
Lee Seiler sued Lucasfilm in the mid-1980s, claiming that the infringed on his copyright on what he called a "Garthian Strider", which he said he created in 1976 or 1977. The case was dismissed with the court noting that not only did Seiler not produce the supposed drawings at trial, but that the copyright came one year after The Empire Strikes Back debuted.
Depiction
According to Star Wars sources, the in-universe development of the can be traced back to earlier walker models like the and . Constructed as a companion to the larger AT-AT, the scout walker's lightweight bipedal design allows it to travel across rugged ground and fulfill a variety of missions, including patrolling, reconnaissance and mop-up operations. During major ground combat, protect the flanks of and hunt down any infantry or smaller threats which evade the assault walkers. A powerful gyro stabilizer, sophisticated shock absorbers, and terrain-measuring sensors in the footpads allow the scout walker to move faster and traverse areas which would be impassible to an . Standard weaponry includes a chin-mounted twin medium blaster cannon, with a twin light blaster cannon and a concussion grenade launcher on either side of the head. AT-STs may carry different side-mounted weapons, such as a light blaster cannon and/or concussion missile launcher.
are crewed by two pilots, one who controls the weaponry while the other drives the walker. Their uniforms include fire-resistant boots, jumpsuits over basic armor plating, and crew helmets with attached telemetry receiver units. The two operate the scout walker looking out of the forward viewports or by relying on viewscreens and holoprojectors which help them see the area all around the walker. While the computer can pilot it easily enough over level ground, pilots must use their dexterity and superior sense of balance to help it navigate more difficult terrain.
In order to achieve its speed and size, the is forced to sacrifice offensive and defensive capability. Its chin-mounted blasters are only effective out to , while the side-mounted weaponry has less range. Lightweight armor plating is proof against blasters and other small arms, but cannot withstand heavier laser cannons and missiles. The must rely on high-intensity power cells as it is too small to carry a full power generator, limiting its range.
In The Empire Strikes Back, scout for and provide support for the slower during the Battle of Hoth; when the shield generator is destroyed, they race ahead of the assault walkers to capture as many of the fleeing Rebels as possible. During the ground skirmish of the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi, after initially inflicting heavy casualties on the Rebels and Ewoks, several are destroyed when they prove highly vulnerable to the Ewoks' primitive booby traps, with one crushed between two large tree trunks swung on ropes. Another is hijacked thanks to Chewbacca climbing aboard and using his strength to rip open its roof hatch; he proceeds to turn its weapons against the other to help win the battle.
An updated model of the AT-ST is used by the First Order during the Battle of Crait in The Last Jedi. Based on the classic Imperial scout walker, this version boasts improved stability and greater protection thanks to new lightweight armor plating.
Analysis
In episode 208 of Mythbusters, the Build Team (Grant Imahara, Kari Byron and Tory Belleci) tested the plausibility of the scene in Return of the Jedi wherein a swinging log trap destroyed an AT-ST. The team determined that the logs in the scene each weighed approximately and were swung at a 45 degree angle at the walker, impacting with the energy equivalent of around two megajoules. To test this in real life, the team created a swinging log rig out of telephone poles and, after shoring the structure up with steel reinforcement, swung replica logs at an armored truck. The team declared the myth plausible when the logs succeeded in punching the truck's side panels off its frame.
All Terrain Tactical Enforcer (AT-TE)
The All Terrain Tactical Enforcer, or walker, is a mechanized infantry combat vehicle used by the Grand Army of the Republic ground forces. Having six grappling legs and a low centre of gravity, this armoured walker could navigate any terrain – even climbing vertical cliffs. It appears in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, The Clone Wars multimedia campaign, Star Wars Battlefront II and in the early episodes from the second season of Star Wars Rebels.
Origin and design
Conceived by Ryan Church as a predecessor to the , the animation for Attack of the Clones was supervised by Rob Coleman. Tom St. Amand, who worked on the scenes in The Empire Strikes Back, provided his experience to create a similar appearance for the .
Depiction
first appeared in Attack of the Clones during the Battle of Geonosis, where they serve as both assault vehicles and infantry transports for the Grand Army of the Republic. Their in-universe manufacturer is Rothana Heavy Engineering, a subsidiary of Kuat Drive Yards and long-time enemy to the Trade Federation and Techno Union. A total of 2,160 were deployed in the battle, airlifted across the battlefield by special LAAT/c carriers to engage Separatist forces.
The walker's unique six-legged design and flexible midsection gives it excellent stability and allows it to traverse otherwise impassible terrain. Its footpads contain terrain sensors and tractor-field generators which enhance its purchase on rough ground. They can also be magnetized, allowing the to even hang upside-down on metal surfaces.
A turret-mounted mass driver cannon atop the has a low rate of fire but can be used to bombard fixed emplacements or shoot down slow-moving aircraft. Six turret-mounted laser cannons, four on the front of the hull and two in the rear, defend it against enemy infantry. The 's conductive armor spreads heat to minimize penetration from enemy fire, and is well-shielded against electromagnetic pulse and ion cannon weapons.
The carries two squads of clone troopers into battle, with seating split between the front and rear sections of the walker. These are connected by a flexible "concertina" section which also houses the walker's power generators. Inertial compensators beneath this seating helps to keep troopers secure, with seat restraints in case of compensator failure.
In the Star Wars Rebels second-season episode Relics of the Old Republic, a heavily customized is used by clone troopers Rex, Wolffe and Gregor as a mobile residence on the planet Seelos. Modifications made to the walker include renovating the interior to make room for bunk beds and a kitchen, and replacing the main cannon with rod and reel for catching the planet's wildlife. During a confrontation with a group of Imperial AT-ATs, the clones' is destroyed, but thanks to the crew of the Ghost the Imperials are defeated and a captured is used to replace it.
Analysis
B.K. Lok of That Hashtag Show argues that the is the best-designed walker in the Star Wars universe. Specifically in comparison to the , they argue it's harder to hit, is more stable, and possess greater all-around weapons coverage.
List of Star Wars walkers
Many vehicles were created for various Star Wars media and depicted as technological evolutionary predecessors and successors to the walkers featured in the original trilogy.
In film and television
Utilized by the Republic, Empire and First Order
All Terrain Attack Pod (AT-AP): Featured in Revenge of the Sith and Clone Wars media, as a variation of the AT-PT. Alex Jaeger designed the AT-AP per Lucas' request to "diversify the Clone armor". Nicknamed the "sniper tank", the AT-AP features a variety of artillery weapons, a retractable third leg for stability, and other offensive features.
All Terrain Open Transport (AT-OT): Introduced in Revenge of the Sith and other sources, is a heavily armored transport whose open design makes it vulnerable from above. The AT-OT can transport 34 clone troopers, who are protected by thick armor and four laser cannons. During the late stages of Revenge of the Sith's development, it was called the "Clone CAT walker".
All Terrain Recon Transports (AT-RT): Introduced in Revenge of the Sith operated by clone troopers searching for Yoda (Frank Oz) on Kashyyyk. The AT-RT is described as a precursor to the AT-ST, though it also shares similarities to the AT-PTs of the same era. A scene cut from Revenge of the Sith would have shown Yoda distracting clone troopers while Chewbacca removes them from their AT-RT in a manner similar to how he obtains control of an AT-ST in Return of the Jedi. AT-RT animators studied AT-ST movement to recreate part of the "original funkiness of movement" caused by the stop-animation style used in the original trilogy.
All Terrain Defense Pod (AT-DP): Introduced in Star Wars Rebels, the AT-DP is described by Star Wars references as a successor to the AT-RT, combining speed with an armored cockpit to protect a pilot and gunner. Standing high and weighing , the AT-DP can reach speeds of . Because it is only armed with a single Kyuzo Maad-38 heavy laser cannon, the Empire primarily uses AT-DPs for defensive purposes like policing or sentry duty.
All Terrain Mobile Artillery (AT-MA): Introduced in The Force Awakens, the AT-MA is a model of quadruped base defense walker used by the First Order to defended Starkiller Base. While it resembled the All Terrain Armored Transport once used by the Galactic Empire in terms of size and weaponry, the AT-MA was primarily designed for defense, rather than transport or assault. Several of these walkers were deployed across the planet to protect its installations, and at least three of them were present during General Armitage Hux's speech before the destruction of the Hosnian system. Several AT-MAs were portrayed in the ground vehicles storage area of a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer.
All Terrain Armoured Cargo Transport (AT-ACT): Introduced in Rogue One, these walkers are slightly larger than the standard AT-AT, with a hollowed-out center section that can hold a cargo container. Director Gareth Edwards instructed the film's concept artists to design walkers based on their idealized memory of the AT-AT. According to background material, the AT-ACT was built for hauling cargo at Imperial construction sites and research facilities. Larger than AT-ATs at tall, an AT-ACT's central container can hold of cargo. Although not meant for use on the battlefield, the AT-ACT is heavily armored against most handheld weapons and equipped with two Taim & Bak MS-2 heavy laser cannons, allowing it to be deployed into combat in an emergency.
All Terrain MegaCaliber Six (AT-M6): Featured in The Last Jedi, the AT-M6 is a class of walking siege-artillery vehicles used by the First Order. In-universe sources identify the -tall walker's primary weapon as a MegaCaliber Six turbolaser cannon mounted on its back. This cannon is described as being powerful enough to punch through deflector shields rated to withstand planetary bombardments. The walker's front legs are meant to support the weight of the cannon and withstand its recoil, which combined with its hunched back gives it the overall appearance of a simian. Additional weapons include two heavy dual laser cannons and two medium anti-ship laser cannons.
All Terrain Heavy Hauler (AT-HH): Featured in The Last Jedi, utilizing many more legs than most walkers to allow it to tow heavy cargo.
All Terrain Heavy Scout (AT-HS): A model of walker fielded by the First Order. The LEGO version of the AT-HS was based on a piece of concept art for The Last Jedi which, although canon, was ultimately not used in the final cut of the film.
All Terrain Cold-weather Mobile Heavy Cannon (AT-CMHC): A remodeled variant of the Umbaran UMHC used by the Imperial Military. This prototype model was specialized in sub-zero temperatures.
Utilized by other factions
Umbaran mobile heavy cannon (UMHC): Used by Umbarans during the Clone Wars. Later, both the Imperial Army and Alliance to Restore the Republic used them during the Galactic Civil War. MHCs were heavily armored and had an articulated electromagnetic plasma cannon mounted on top of its dome-like body.
In Expanded Universe media
All Terrain Personnel Transport (AT-PT): Introduced during the climax of Timothy Zahn's novel Dark Force Rising, is a two-legged, one-person vehicle designed for the Old Republic as a "personal weapons platform for ground soldiers." The AT-PT is equipped with two blaster cannons, a concussion grenade launcher, and an array of sensors. The AT-PT is also featured in several video games, including Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Star Wars: Force Commander, and Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.
Mountain Terrain Armored Transport (MT-AT): Introduced in Jedi Academy Trilogy, dubbed "spider walkers", are octrupedalism specially for mountain terrain.
All Terrain Anti-Aircraft (AT-AA): Featured in various Expanded Universe media, is a four-legged anti-aircraft vehicle used by the Galactic Empire. The All Terrain Advance Raider (AT-AR) appears in Marvel Comics' Star Wars series and an All Terrain Experimental Transport (AT-XT) appears in LucasArts' Star Wars: The Clone Wars game. DK Publishing's Attack of the Clones: Incredible Cross-Sections book mentions an All Terrain Heavy Enforcer.
Merchandise
Kenner released AT-AT and AT-ST toys as part of their Empire Strikes Back line, and Hasbro released toys based on those molds when the Special Edition trilogy was distributed. Micro Machines also released AT-AT, AT-ST, and AT-TE toys. Both Decipher Inc. and Wizards of the Coast published AT-AT and AT-ST cards for their Star Wars Customizable Card Game and Star Wars Trading Card Game, respectively. Lego has released AT-AT, AT-ST, AT-DP, AT-AP, AT-OT, AT-RT, AT-TE, AT-M6, and AT-HS models.
See also
Mecha
Iron Dobbin, an early mechanical horse from 1933
Walking truck, a real-world quadrupedal "walker" from 1969
BigDog, a dynamically stable quadruped military robot built in 2003
Bibliography
References
External links
Index of Technology section of the Star Wars Databank – Includes several All Terrain walkers
Star Wars vehicles
Fictional mecha
Star Wars articles needing photos
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doc-en-11767 | Boal (Galician-Asturian: Bual) is a municipality, a civil parish and a town in the Autonomous Community of the Principality of Asturias (Spain). It borders north with El Franco and Coaña, south with Illano, west with Castropol and east with Villayón.
The main way of access to the municipality is the regional road AS-12, which connects Navia with Grandas de Salime. The whole municipality has a population of 1,632 inhabitants, whereas there are about 496 inhabitants in the capital town.
Etymology
Etymologically, it is usually considered that "Boal" comes either from the Indo-european languages, *bod- (stream, ditch), or from the Latin, bove or *bovale (ox). Although some authors believe that "Boal" could be understood as the expression of an old anthroponym or person name, Bovali (iler) or Baudiliu (adducing the form Baudali), it is common to consider its original meaning either as "terreno frecuentado y apropiado para el pasto del ganado vacuno" ("land frequented and appropriate for the grazing of cattle") or as "corral de bueyes o dehesa boyal" ("corral for oxen or ox pasture"). In fact, Corominas mentions in Aragonese boalage, boalar, "dehesa boyal" ("ox pasture") as derivatives of boal, which would be at the same time a variant of boyal, "perteneciente al buey o al ganado vacuno" ("belonging to ox or to cattle") .
History
Ancient times
There still remain traces proving the existence of settlements in this municipality in a time prior to the arrival of Romans. Although it is supposed that there were already populated enclaves in the area during the Paleolithic, there are no remains of this time, so such a supposition could not be demonstrated. Nevertheless, remains of the Neolithic have reached up to the present day. For example, several burial mounds were found in the mountain range of Penouta in what is one of the vastest burial mound fields in the whole Asturias, with 72 catalogued tombs. Likewise, dolmens near Llaviada (nowadays disappeared) are supposed to date from this time, together with the oscillating granitic mass known as Penedo Aballón (located near Penouta, and knocked down in 2004, probably by a few vandals).
From the Bronze Age (approximately 1500-1100 b.C) are believed to date the anthropomorphic paintings (both masculine and feminine) found in the Cova del Demo ("Cave of Devil" in English), located near the hamlet of Froseira, in the civil parish of Doiras.
All the preceding facts, together with the signals of mining work devoted to the extraction of metals and, especially the Celtic fortifications of Pendia, Los Mazos and La Escrita also prove the aforementioned pre-Roman settlements.
The subsequent Roman presence, after the conquest carried out by the legions under command of General Publio Carisio (the X Gemina and the V Alaudae), left imprints such as several coins and ceramics fragments, as well as probably the origin of the names of some small villages such as Vega de Ouria, likely due to the presence of some river gold working in that time. In those days, it is believed that the area corresponding to the civil parish of Castrillón was populated by the astur tribe of Pesicos, whereas the area located western from the Navia River would have been inhabited by the gallaeci tribe of Albions.
After about four centuries of Roman domination, the barbarians entered the Iberian Peninsula, and Suebi settled down in the western area of Asturias, reaching their maximum expansion about the year 450. It is known that later arrived Visigoths, that occupied the whole territory about 584. However, there are very little archaeological remains of all those populations.
Middle Ages
Little is known about the history of Boal at the beginning of the Middle Ages, during the asturian monarchy. The fights between the bishops of Oviedo and Lugo for the territories located between the rivers Navia and Eo came to an end by means of an agreement promoted by the king Alfonso VII. Thus, all those territories and Boal included among them were submitted to the bishop of Oviedo by donation in the year 1154, under the generic denomination of territory of Castropol.
In 1368, the bishop D. Gutierre, appointed Alvar Pérez Osorio as "governor" of the Tierra de Ribadeo y Grandas, which comprised the current municipalities of Boal, Castropol, Coaña, El Franco, Grandas de Salime, Illano, Pesoz, San Martín de Oscos, Santa Eulalia de Oscos, Tapia, Taramundi and Vegadeo, having up to 41 parishes. This was a time of many violent uprisings because of the high taxes Pérez Osorio obliged the inhabitants of the area to pay.
Subsequently, bishops created several villages and municipalities, so at the beginning of the 16th century, the Tierra de Ribadeo was divided into five municipalities: Castropol, Piantón, Barres, El Franco and Grandas, with Boal belonging to the municipality of El Franco.
Modern Ages
This system of municipalities was in force until the arrival of the King Felipe II, who obtained permission from the Pope Gregory XIII to divide and sell any town, place and jurisdiction, what allowed him to obtain financing for wars and to pay the great debt he had. There were attempts of buying jurisdictions by some individuals (with the intention to advance in the social scale), but the most usual was the buying by the people.
This favored that in those years Boal disassociated from the Church. In 1579, Alonso López de Navia y Bolaño, an inhabitant of the town of Navia, gave power to Pedro Bermúdez to arrange with Alonso de Camino, who initially registered the parishes of Serandinas, Boal, Doiras, Pesoz, Coaña, Trelles, Villacondide, etc., expecting to buy them, for shortly after transferring the parishes of Boal, Serandinas and Doiras to Rui Garcia de Cangas in order to reduce expenses.
The fears of the people of villages to depend on the lords, considering the abuses they committed against their inhabitants, led them to "buy themselves" and to incorporate to the Crown. Thus, the parishes of Boal, Serandinas and Doiras were redeemed in 1580, starting to have the jurisdictional status of "realengo" (directly depending on the King).
The definitive independence of Boal as a municipality took place in 1584, when representatives of the inhabitants of its parishes met, drawing up the first local regulations and agreeing on the way to choose the offices of town councilors, mayor, constables, attorneys, etc. Thus, parishes became towns with civil and criminal jurisdiction, and representatives would meet once a year to choose the aforementioned offices. In this time, the capital of the municipality changed and it was held in several of its villages (Prelo, Armal, Castrillón, and the town of Boal), but it definitely returned to Boal in 1791.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, in which the clearly predominant activities in Boal were agriculture and cattle farming, beautiful family seats and palaces were built in the municipality, but at present most of them are almost completely disappeared, although with some exceptions such as the Palace of Miranda, in the village of Prelo. There is no doubt that the 18th century was the most prosperous for the municipality because, in addition to the fundamental farming activities, the craftwork industries became noticeably important too, and by the middle of this century there were 4 fulling mills, 8 mallets to stretch iron, one forge, and 42 mills for grain.
19th century
It is also known that during the Spanish War of Independence the French troops occupied Boal in the belief that the town hosted a weapons factory. A group of inhabitants of Boal took part in the "Alarma del cerezal" (a group of people who met to avoid an invasion or to defend from the enemy), but they could not avoid Maurice Mathieu’s soldiers to invade the town on March 19, 1809, establishing a camp in Llaviada, and causing numerous deaths, plundering and damages.
A few years later, in 1814 and 1820, Serandinas unsuccessfully tried to become a municipality independent of Boal. Furthermore, in July 1823 noticeable damages were caused by a group of about 24 robbers commanded by Miguel Álvarez Samartino de la Trapa, who stole money from the taxes income and tore documents of the municipal secretary’s office. It is believed that two inhabitants of Armal could have taken part in these happenings, but they could not be captured as people in their village would have covered them up.
During the Carlist Wars the municipality was invaded again: in 1836, a guerrilla group commanded by San Breixo entered in Boal, but he was captured in the following year and subsequently executed by firing squad in the cemetery of Piantón by a militia formed in Boal. Shortly after, in 1837, it was inaugurated the parish church devoted to Santiago Apóstol, and in 1842, the town hall and the jail.
It is also worth mentioning other events that took place in the municipality in this century. Among them is the cholera epidemic of 1854 and 1855, although it was not excessively virulent. That was not the case of the smallpox epidemic of 1870, much more serious and deadly.
Also in the 19th century, Boal saw the birth of one of its most distinguished figures, Bernardo Acevedo y Huelves, whose name was later given to the municipal library. Among his works it is worth highlighting "Boal y su concejo" ("Boal and its municipality"), a very clarifying picture about the way of life and the customs in the municipality at the end of the 19th century, which also shows the importance the industry of iron forge (at present disappeared) had by that time.
In connection with this, it is worth mentioning the uprising that took place in 1895, in which the forgers of the municipality destroyed all the machines for making tacks that Víctor Sánchez, a local businessman, was installing in the village of Armal with the aim to start a strong tacking industry able to face the great external competition, especially that English one, which finally made unfeasible the traditional means of working iron in the municipality.
20th century
The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th were years of important migratory flows, especially to the Americas. From these years date several large houses, property of emigrants who had made fortune in the Americas, such as for example Villa Anita. In addition, the money furnished by many emigrants contributed decisively to the construction of various schools in several villages of the municipality and the elementary school of the capital town, known as "Las Graduadas", in 1934, which was promoted by the "Sociedad de Instrucción Naturales del Concejo de Boal" ("Association for the Education Natives of the Municipality of Boal") in La Habana (Cuba). Also in these years several public washing houses were built in the municipality.
Some other infrastructures of capital relevance for Boal were built at the beginning of the 20th century. That was the case of the road connecting Navia and Grandas de Salime, with the construction of the stretch from Navia to Boal. Furthermore, in 1934 it was built the dam of Doiras, and in the year 1951 it was started the large-scale exploitation of the tungsten mines near Penouta, although they closed in 1961.
The decadence of tungsten mining, which had employed up to 254 workers, and the end of the construction of the big reservoirs along the Navia River, together with the gradual abandonment of cattle farming (still at present the main economic activity of the municipality) led to new migratory flows, especially from the 1950s on, but in this case they were directed preferentially to other regions of Spain (the industrialized center of Asturias, Madrid, etc.) or to Europe (Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, etc.), giving rise to a progressive depopulation that still continues at present.
Geography
Physical geography
Being located in the middle basin of the Navia River, the municipality of Boal is crossed by that river from south/south-east to north-east, where its course acts as a natural border with the neighboring municipality of Villayón. On its way through this municipality, the Navia River is dammed first in Doiras, and later, downstream, by that of Arbón, already located in Villayón. Two noticeable tributaries pouring their water on the Navia River in the municipality of Boal are the Urubio River (in the reservoir of Doiras) and the Pendia River (in the reservoir of Arbón).
The main elevation of the terrain is located already bordering with the municipalities of Illano and Castropol: it is the range of La Bobia, of 1,201 m above sea level. It is also worth mentioning La Cristaleira (1,036 m) in the southern area of the municipality, Pena Queimada (921 m) in the north-western area, Penouta (899 m) in the northern zone (from there it is possible to see a wide panoramic view of the coast from the municipality of Navia to the environs of Foz, in the province of Lugo) and Penácaros (732 m) in the central area. The capital town of the municipality is located relatively far away from the main valley of the Navia River, in the headwaters of the Pendia River and surrounded by the three aforementioned mountains, at about 450 m above sea level.
Civil parishes
The municipality of Boal is divided in 7 civil parishes:
Boal (in Eonavian: Bual): 966 inhabitants.
Castrillón (in Eonavian: Castriyón): 182 inhabitants.
Doiras: 153 inhabitants.
Lebredo (in Eonavian: Llebredo): 13 inhabitants.
La Ronda (in Eonavian: A Ronda): 63 inhabitants.
Rozadas: 176 inhabitants.
Serandinas (in Eonavian: Serandías): 223 inhabitants.
(Source: INE)
Main populated places
Boal: 526 inhabitants.
Armal: 154 inhabitants.
Doiras: 98 inhabitants.
Miñagón: 94 inhabitants.
Rozadas: 79 inhabitants.
Serandinas: 69 inhabitants.
Prelo: 61 inhabitants.
Los Mazos: 49 inhabitants.
Sampol: 41 inhabitants.
Castrillón: 39 inhabitants.
(Source: INE)
The parish of Boal
The parish of Boal is in size with a population of 1,137 (INE 2007).
The town of Boal is the head of this civil parish and also the capital of the homonymous municipality. It is located in the south-eastern mountainside of the Penouta range near the headwaters of the Pendia River, at about 450 m above sea level. It has a population of 588 inhabitants, being they distributed among the three main districts which the town consists of:
Boal de Arriba (Upper Boal): this is the historical nucleus of the village, with narrow streets (Alonso Rodríguez Street and Buenos Aires Avenue) where the older houses are located, together with the fairground that hosts the cattle market, and the cemetery.
Zona central (Central area): includes the Plaza de la Iglesia (Church Square), where the parish church devoted to Santiago Apóstol is located, the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (Town Hall Square) and the Asturias Avenue, where the Casa de Cultura (House of Culture) that hosts the municipal library, and most of the shops and bars, restaurants and hotels are located. This area includes also the Everardo Villamil Street and the Republic of Cuba Avenue.
Boal de Abajo (Lower Boal): it has grown along the AS-12 road (Melquiades Álvarez Street and Isidoro Fontana Street) and the Rosalía de la Cruz Street, hosting some interesting examples of the architecture of those emigrants who had made fortune in the Americas, among which we can stress the Casa de Damiana (1919) and, already on the road out of the village in direction to Grandas de Salime, Villa Anita (1926), decorated with glazed tiles in all its façades. Moreover, the elementary school (Escuelas Graduadas, nowadays called Centro Público de Educación Básica Carlos Bousoño) and the high school, together with the municipal sports center and pool are located in this area.
Villages of the parish of Boal
Demography
Evolution of the population in the municipality of Boal since 1842 (Source: INE)
During the first decades of the 19th century the municipality of Boal kept a slow increase of population that was noticeably accelerated with the construction of the dam of Doiras in 1930, reaching in that year its historical maximum of 7,365 inhabitants. The relatively high levels of population remained until 1960, not just because of the dam but also because of the tungsten mining near Penouta and because of the existence of a traditional agriculture requiring a lot of labor. Thanks to all these factors, the municipality of Boal could be once the most populous one in the middle course of the Navia River. Nevertheless, from 1960 on and due to the closing of mines and to the changes experienced by the traditional agriculture, a very important migratory flow started.
Emigration has marked the municipality in different ways. By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th one, the migratory flow went overseas, to the Americas, especially to Argentina and Cuba, from where emigrants kept their influence in the municipality. A proof of that are the very important money transferences they made and which allowed the construction of different buildings, as well as their promoting of the education of the remaining youth in Boal. All this flow of money was interrupted by the Cuban revolution.
By the middle of the 20th century emigration started again and strongly, but this time it was directed to different destinations: to the centre of Europe, France, Germany, and also to the main industrial towns and cities of Asturias, especially Gijón and Avilés, etc.
All these facts have brought a dramatic change in the demographic figure of the municipality, to the point that, as it can be observed on its representation, at present people over 60 years old constitute up to 42,7% of the total population, whereas people below 20 years old represent just as low as 8,4%.
(Source: INE)
Economy
Although the percentage of workers is clearly a majority in the service sector (see table), its weight is quite lower than the regional mean, and it is not crazy to state that still at present, economy in Boal is based to a large extent on cattle farming, which employs almost one third of the working population, and is mainly destined to milk production, being Boal the main producer among the western municipalities in Asturias.
In recent years apiculture has experienced a noticeable growth, becoming honey one of the most typical products in the municipality. In spite of this, this activity is usually in a secondary place, constituting an extra-earnings source for many families, but not the main one. Nevertheless, as a proof of the importance of apiculture for the municipality, it is worth mentioning the famous Feria de la Miel (Honey Fair). Moreover, a few years ago it started working the company Boal Apícola, which markets about 20 tons of honey a year.
Politics
The political party that has been ruling during more time in the municipality of Boal since 1979 has been the PSOE. The current mayor is the socialist José Antonio Barrientos, who is in his office since 1999, having been re-elected three times.
Gastronomy
In this mainly agricultural and farming municipality we can taste infinity of natural products, among which it is worth mentioning its excellent vegetables, beans and the great quality potatoes. Thus, Boal’s traditional cooking makes use of all those resources to have among its most typical dishes the stock with "cimois" (rapini) or collard greens.
Being this municipality rich in meat, such as veal, pork, kid, lamb and mutton, etc., it is not surprising other dishes such as the meat or sausages pie, the lacón with rapini and "cachelos" (pieces of cooked potato) or the corn "rapa" (similar to a pie but using corn and bacon) have a prominent place too. Game constitutes another important chapter in Boal’s cooking, being frequent pieces such as roe deer and wild boar, apart from partridge, Eurasian woodcock and hare.
Regarding sweets and pastry, it is worth mentioning "cocadas", "venera" (a kind of almond-based marzipan) and "cereixolos". Moreover, honey has a huge variety of applications on the local cooking, which is not surprising taking into account that it is a typical product in the municipality having widely recognized quality. And, of course, it is possible in Boal to enjoy the rest of asturian typical dishes.
Tourism
Its most ancient signs are the cave paintings in the Cova del Demo. They are male, female and zoomorphic paintings. We can also find different architectural examples: palaces, large houses and churches, among which it is worth mentioning the following:
The Miranda Palace in Prelo, built during the 15th and 16th centuries and declared "well of cultural interest" in 1982. At first it consisted in a square tower with three floors that was subsequently extended. It had small openings that were later enlarged. The main body of the palace has two floors in the back side and one floor in the front side, due to the unevenness of the terrain. Above the entrance door it is placed a big coat of arms belonging to the family González de Prelo y Castrillón. Between the tower and the chapel there is an extra body, with corridors supported by stone columns. The chapel dates from 1776, having rectangle floor with two loopholes in both wings, and two Rococo-inspired altarpieces painted in black and white. The wooden sculptures from the 17th and 18th centuries were removed because of the bad situation of the ceiling.
The Berdín Palace in Doiras, from the 18th century, which attracts the attention because of its great size and its walls without any kind of decoration. It is constructed with masonry, with blocks of stone. Its floor has a U shape, and in the façade of the central courtyard there is a gallery above monolithic columns.
The Palace of Armal, with the typical structure of the rural large houses: rectangular floor, built with masonry and slate, and having very little decoration.
Villa Anita: it was built in 1926 by an emigrant to Cuba. It is a villa with a T-shaped floor, with three floors, in which English influences can be observed, together with Japanese ones and others from the Middle Ages. The façade is decorated with white ceramics (glazed tiles from Talavera) on its wings, having the main façade plant patterns. There is a glazed balcony on the first floor. The roof has two wings and it is covered with slate, and over the eaves it has some wooden decoration made of cut borders. The inside is as rich and well-preserved as the outside.
Villa Damiana, built in 1919, is also a wonderful example of the historically-inspired architecture.
Old Elementary School "Escuelas Graduadas" in Boal: this school was built between 1930 and 1934, promoted as other public works in the municipality by the "Sociedad de Instrucción Naturales del Concejo de Boal", founded in La Habana, Cuba (this was due to the high number of emigrants from Boal who had gone to that country in search of fortune) although it had also money contribution from the state and from emigrants in Buenos Aires. It is a great building constructed with stone, with large windows and two entrances framed by big porchs, because boys entered by one wing whereas girls entered by the opposite one. All the roofs have big wooden eaves.
The Church of Santiago Apóstol in Boal, built between 1831 and 1837, with a Latin cross-shaped floor and a lateral porch built of granitic blocks of stone.
The public Washing House in Boal, built thanks to the money sent by emigrants to the Americas and inaugurated in 1928. It has been recently restored and transformed into the Center for the Interpretation of the Washing Houses in the municipality of Boal. The building exhibits an important constructive wealth with a functional style, having mouldings and pinnacles, and it is a good example of the charitable anxiety for their native villages and for the poorest people of the returning emigrants.
Casa de la Apicultura is an apiculture museum.
Festivities
The municipality of Boal hosts a great number of festivities and fairs. Among the most important ones we can stress the following:
On May 15: the feast in honor of San Isidro which is held close to its hermitage in the mountain near the Penouta range.
On June 13 and 14: the feast in honor of San Antonio in Armal.
On July 24, 25 and 26: the feast in honor of Santiago Apóstol, in Boal. On July 21 and 22, the feast in honor of the Virgen de la Magdalena in Doiras.
On August 25: the feast in honor of San Luis in the homonym village.
In October/November: the Feria de la Miel (Honey Fair) at the last weekend of October or the first one of November.
It is also worth mentioning the fortnightly market that takes place in Boal, hosted on every alternate Mondays. In addition, there are also several cattle markets during the year. Two of them are hosted in the fairground of Boal on the second Saturday of October and on the last one of April, and other two are hosted in the La Bobia range: on May 29, that of San Fernando and on June 26 that of San Pelayo.
People from Boal
Celestino Álvarez, writer and journalist immigrated to Cuba.
Carlos Bousoño, poet and literary critic.
See also
List of mayors of Boal
Castrillón (Boal)
References
External links
Federación Asturiana de Concejos (Asturian Association of Municipalities)
Boal in the Guía del Occidente (Guide of Western Asturias)
Situation of the reservoir of Doiras
Boal in asturiasturismo.com
Personal website about Boal, with infinity of pictures of the municipality
Monograph about Boal in the journal La Nueva España
Fundación Parque Histórico del Navia (Foundation Historical Park of the Navia)
Compendium of etymologies in asturian toponymy
Search engine of asturian place names in the journal La Nueva España
This article incorporates material from the Federación Asturiana de Concejos, which allowed through an authorization the addition of contents and their publication under the GFDL license.
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